Do I need some text above the link...?
La Vie
I'm giving this speech more or less the same treatement as Nietzsche, only not held to paragraphs, and with no audio; my music fills my space, and leaves little room for my voice - which, actually, makes it that much easier to externalize that internal monologue. I should make a note, here: Why do I find it so hard to open myself like this when I am not alone? Although - I may be able to answer that, with concepts highly related to my experiences with Burners - Performance, versus Jam. With myself, it is as an uninterrupted philosophy jam - with others, too easily, it can become a performance. Participation in a community versus a seperation of it -
Anyway, onto the same concept from a different source:
"The commodification of our culture, as representing a final phase of late 20th century capitalism, has only gradually become apparent, and even now the scale of its effects on our society are not well understood. Had I known this when I scanned that sea of television antennas many years ago, I would have realized that beneath each roof in every house, there existed people held in isolation from the world at large. Like those famous prisoners in Plato's cave, these internees are given only spectral shadows to experience. They stare steadily at entertaining images and by degrees mistake them for palpable things and real experience. Gnawed by an incessant appetite, a boundless hunger for spectacle and it's ambiguous promise of satisfaction, they endure this vicarious state from day to day, from year to year, now throughout entire lifetimes, in a state of isolation from the sunlit world and from one another."
He's talking about television, and the effect the marketing of ads has had on all of us. When I look at this from the perspective of calling it escapism - I then look at myself, and what I do, and ask - am I doing the same? And I want to say - No! I am better than that, stronger, and the media I consume isn't that sort of thing!
Maybe it's true and maybe I'm fooling myself, but I can certainly taste aspects of each answer in my life. It's the promise of Magic (and, via Clark's law, technology), that we can replace the craft in art so that each and every one of us can easily and flawlessly express that which lies within. It's why magic - or, to use what seems to be the favored meme-set of those I've been spending my time with - the Force of the Jedi - is so appealing. To make your will directly manifest, to cut through the weaknesses or flaws of flesh straight to the expression.
(To be fair to my fine friends, I don't think they put much emphasis on the Force part of the Jedi)
We all want to already be who we wish to be, and skip the hard part of becoming them. Or, I know I do - and maybe that's part of my personal issues and personality failings. Heh. Well - no, hmm. When I look at myself closer, I'm seeing something importantly different, and perhaps very fittingly different.
It's escapism, vain hope, lazy desires, when I have an unclear idea of who I wish to be. When I hold in my mind's eye the man I wish to be, as much as I know him, I find myself relishing getting there. Perhaps it is that the act of envisioning shows the differences between us - so that I am not him, and even should I be able to make my will manifest, it wouldn't be the will I want to have.
Hmm. Might I then say, when you learn the craft of an art, the art crafts you?
----
A lifestyle, with its panoply of status coded goods, is a commodified version of what we used to call a way of life. Marketers have learned to sort us into separate stalls like cattle in a feed lot. Using focus groups, it's endlessly possible to invent new and appealing lifestyles which give us the illusion we are making lifestyle statements and are members of imaginary peer groups.
And that's part of where what I talked about in the start of this post comes from - that participation in a culture rather than a consumption of it. I am not my money; my money joins a culture when I buy this or that from it, but I do not. A culture isn't something you can own; it is only something you can participate in. I would put forth that this is why the tickets to Burning Man are so cheap (and, when you look at what you do, they are - compare them to anything else of similarity) - it is because their monetary costs are incidental. The real price of admission is participation - and through participation, we join and form a real peer group, not one that is imaginary.
Although it's unfair to say this about places I've never really been - I feel as though this is why I don't enjoy regular clubs but have so very much loved Fanfest and the Burner parties - regular places are full of people that don't realize they can be someone, and that you don't be someone by having things. (Differentiating from "spending your money", because there are people for whom that is the participation in their chosen community. Unusually, I might say then that those who spend money because they enjoy the act are OK, it's the people who think the things they now "own" make them who they have to be that have the problem. And, again, I find myself with that wonderful Fight Club quote:
The things you own end up owning you.
What, then, if I pick very carefully the things that I own, and then fully engulf myself in being owned by them?
It's parallel to an interesting concept, but as described, it's exactly what the quote is warning against. There's a style of doing that, I feel, that makes it work out - think of the Car Guy, who saved up to buy some old or fancy car, and keeps it in top shape through constant work. He has an identity, through the mutual ownership he has with his object - but there's still something sad about him. Yet - if we take that car, and damage it, and Car Guy works contentedly to restore this car - ah, then I do not pity him. He is then truly Car Guy, for it is not the fact of possession which defines him, it is the participation he has with the vehicle.
That may be part of why I do not want to invite anyone over to my home - I don't participate enough with it. It's a place that I occupy still, not the place that I live. I happen to have it, but I don't participate (enough) with it. Which is very true! I don't spend time here to be here, I spend it, generally, on my way from here to there. It's a base camp, not a home.
Hmm.
----
Our entire public environment, in fact, is being redesigned for the sole purpose of facilitating anonymous acts of consumption
And I say I love GrubHub; and yet it allows me to avoid talking to a person at all to get my food. Facebook allows me, nominally, to talk to everyone I know; but in and amongst all that, am I really trying to be heard? Am I really trying to hear anyone else?
I may or may not have talked about the Crazy Christian guy on the Promenade, so I'll describe him briefly: He sets up a booth, with signs, speakers, and a mic, and invites people to talk to him about his opinions, which I consider extreme and inflamatory. But I have a lot of respect for the guy, and what he's doing - and he's using a public space to be public.
I also can't help but wonder about the interplay between privacy concerns and what sets us up to these "anonymous acts of consumption". I mean, that's not all there is to privacy concerns, but I feel like part of it matches.
It is inserted into movies and it dances at the corners of computer screens. "What will you do next?", we ask our heroes in their shining moments of glory, and they tell us, "I'm going to Disneyland."
I wonder how much of whatever underlying dakine I'm trying to get at (I can't even grab the worldless concept yet, so it's not just the translation to words) shows up in my constant desire to be doing things - that when I am with friends, or lovers, I feel such a need to be doing something, because my heroes didn't just say, "I'm going to be with my friends", they added; " at Disneyland."
---
When children addicted to video games slaughter other children with automatic weapons, and do this in the style of video games, we know that something tragic is occurring. Critics call for better values, as if values were something that could be advertised and sold.
I find this quote, and concept, striking, but don't have anything in particular to say about it at the moment. It's something to reference at another time, I think.
---
"Imagine you are put upon a desert plain, a space which is so vast and blank that only your initiative can make of it a place... The Black Rock desert is an empty void. Not a bird or bush or bump disturb its surface. It is a place that is no place at all apart from what we choose to make of it."
The Buddha says to take all wisdom given to us, and compare it to that which we know is true. I don't know what else to say than that this attitude is true. We are meant to make, and create, of our own will and initiative. If what we own owns us, then what we make is us.
---
So the punks, responding, perhaps, a little crudely at times, made it their first tenet that "we won't sell out!". And then they had another idea. The other idea was "make your own show". Never sell out, make your own show.
Ahhhhh - How often do I get what I want, rather than what I need? I have always said that at RPI, we really, really, had to make our own fun, as there was so little to be found around.
I'm also getting a better appreciation of why Flow Temple was invite-only, but it still bothers me that so many thought they couldn't invite. Or that they couldn't invite me.
---
There's this concept I think I mentioned in this post, but maybe not so explicitly, that I'm gestating. It's still a bit fuzzy, but it's the whole idea of the cost to join is participation. The only price there is that you're here to do, not to consume.
---
I'm reading this speech and it's like gamers grew up and became adults. We make our own fun! he shouts; We make the show, and there is no audience!
---
When I look at this culture, and the acts that they do, I feel a fear, a fear related to the idea of hitting rock bottom, or of loss of what I have. I fear The Man, and what he may do should I participate in these things. And I am at war with myself; Fuck the Man and I Like My Job.
And sitting back, is the me that's asking, "Well, who is it that you want to be?" So we're compromising, and continuing what we're doing - but perhaps paying a bit more attention to who I want to be.
---
It partakes somewhat of the paranoia of anarchism, too. Because, really, underlying it is the fundamental assumption that it's hopeless, that all that you can do is fight these little guerrilla battles, because who could confront the organized army that's besetting us?
It's cocky to say this - but my immediate gut reaction to this is - I CAN. That's who! I mean, not yet - really, but, well, as RPI has always said, why not change the world?
---
There are never enough grants, and they're fewer and fewer. The grants are laying really thin on the ground anymore.
He talks of private grants - grants from companies, investing in art as part of a business scheme. But I'm remembering both the Renaissance, and what I'm doing with a friend - Patronage. One person, who wants the art another makes - only I've got my own flavor on it. I've requested a particular thing from a friend, given a particular idea, that I cannot, and perhaps, would not, make myself. And it'll be his art, and his piece, but I feel like there'll always be a little piece of my in it; like all the mass of a baby comes from the mother but half of it's seed is from the father. If this works out, I'll have this piece of art, and all throughout it's creation, the author will know who it's for, and the original idea comes from a synthesis of thought.
Anyway - I wonder what the state of Patronage of the Arts is today.
Ironically, I think BRAF sponsors artists the way that corporations do - I mean, they have a different point and purpose, which does make all the difference - but the method is the same. There's a part of me that wants to be a patron - ha! There's the gist of it. Don't be a Patron of the Arts, be a patron of artists. Specific people that you know, that you want to see the next work of - not representatives of a Category.
---
one of the first ideas is that you don't sell out, and if you want to get a little more positive, a little more optimistic than the punks ever managed to be, you can turn that around and convert it into a gift-giving ethic. If you're making your own show, then
Give that show, don't just put it on.
---
So I'm thinking over the BRC "economy", and I can't help but think of the Yint "economy", where trade is a means to mutually optimize resource usage. "I can give up [this] for [that] or [that] or [that] because to me, they are all equivelent" - that's the core concept of the Yint economy. And I might have a hard time seperating from that - "I can't give [that] away!" I might say, "I need it!".
Which is all fine and dandy - but beside the point. It's a gift-giving place - in which case, take the Yint though and flip the operation direction around - it's not about maximising the resource usage, it's about maximising the gift giving. "If I can get [that], [that], or [that], I can give away [this] and be OK!"
---
I'm just gonna post this up raw, but maybe I'll come back and edit it later. But, to leave it with a synopsizing statement - This speech makes me feel like everything I've ever really cared about grew up, got together, and threw a party, and that party is called Burning Man. It's a personal fault that I've been the sort of person who didn't go to something so obviously and completely up their alley, and that part of me is even more On The List that it used to be.
Do things, dammit.
(and stop getting all riled up like before you have to sleep, bozo)
---
----
