Happy Christmas!

Lighter than Air

The Barred Subject

Not long after the 1957 paper in which the term first appears, in the seminar of 1957-8, Lacan goes on to use the bar to strike through his algebraic symbols S and A in a manner reminiscent of Heidegger's practice of crossing out the word "being."[2]The bar is used to strike through the S to produce, , the "barred subject'." The bar here represents the division of the subject by language, the split. Thus whereas before 1957 S designates the subject (e.g. in schema L), from 1957 on S designates the signifier and designates the (divided) subject.

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Woke Up!

Don't I Know Ya?

The Ellsberg Paradox

Even if he had never leaked the ‘Pentagon Papers’, Daniel Ellsberg would still be famous – though admittedly much less so. In the news again this week defending Edward Snowden for leaking information about classified NSA surveillance programs, Ellsberg is also known for a contribution to behavioral economics. He is the inventor of the Ellsberg Paradox.

The Paradox goes like this: Imagine a friend puts a tall flower pot in front of you containing marbles of three different colors. It’s a clay pot, so you can’t see inside, but your friend tells you that there are 90 marbles in total, and that 30 are red. The other 60 are black or yellow, but you don’t know how many there are of each. Your friend then offers you a choice between two gambles. If you choose gamble A, you will win $100 if you draw a red marble from the pot. If you choose gamble B, you will win $100 if you draw a black marble from the pot. Which would you choose?

If you are like most people, you will go for gamble A and hope to draw a red marble. Fine, but note what this implies. Because you are not indifferent between the gambles, it suggests that you think there are likely to be fewer than 30 black marbles in the pot, and thus that there are more than 30 yellow marbles.

Your friend then offers you a second choice. In this case, if you choose gamble C, you will win $100 if you draw a red or yellow marble. Or, if you choose gamble D, you will win $100 if you draw a yellow or black marble. Which would you choose?

Thinking through it logically, you should choose gamble C. You know there are 30 red marbles, and your first choice suggests you think there are more than 30 yellow marbles. In contrast, you know that there are only 60 yellow and black marbles combined – the choice offered by gamble D. But of course this is a paradox, which means that most people don’t select C. Instead, they tend to choose the seemingly irrational gamble D.

Ellsberg’s Paradox is often taken as evidence that people have an aversion to ambiguity. Although gambles A and D are logically inconsistent, both are options in which you can be certain about the probabilities – you know exactly how many there are of the relevant marbles. The precise probabilities associated with Gambles B and C, in contrast, are unknown.

There is something ironic about this. Daniel Ellsberg, the man whose Paradox demonstrates how much people dislike ambiguous outcomes is also Daniel Ellsberg, the most famous whistleblower in American history. One’s fate doesn’t get much more uncertain than when one leaks large amounts of classified national security information. Pitting your puny self against the full and angry apparatus of the state (in a polite moment, Nixon called Ellsberg a “sonofabitch”; in a less polite one, he raided Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office), hoping that the public will respond is a huge gamble that very few people are willing to take.

But whistleblowers are unusual. There is an alternative interpretation of the Ellsberg Paradox, which suggests that when someone doesn’t provide you with full information about your choices, it is sensible to assume that they are trying to pull a fast one. As such, people may choose the certain gambles because they are averse to being deceived.

High tolerance for uncertainty about their own outcomes, coupled with intolerance for what they perceive as deceit is perhaps what characterizes whistleblowers. Put differently, whistle-blowers are willing to accept ambiguity about the future that lies in store for them in order to reduce the ambiguity of other people’s choices. They open a crack in the clay pot, so that the black and yellow marbles – the hidden contingencies - are revealed.

There is no doubt that things once hidden have been revealed this week. Your reaction to Edward Snowden’s decision to leak information about classified NSA programs likely depends on what you think has been uncovered. Has Snowden has reduced ambiguity that was important for protecting against terrorism, in which case he is a traitor? Or has he exposed an unwarranted, even undemocratic deception, in which case he is a hero?

Either way, he has broken the law and is likely go to jail. Perhaps he will spend some of his time there inventing a paradox of his own.

The Puppy Song

Just Four, Tonight?

How many for dinner?

Leonora Carrington

Leonora Carrington, "Grandmother Moorhead's Aromatic Kitchen" (1975)

Ever since I learned that Leonora Carrington died in May, I have been thinking about her. I first came across her work as an undergraduate art history student almost 20 years ago in a class on Surrealism. In the context of the traditional art history canon, she is mostly known for having run off with Max Ernst in 1937, but I immediately became intrigued with her work and her extraordinary life. She was a prolific painter and writer: her paintings are otherworldly and complex, sometimes disturbing – but in a good way. Populated with mythical beings in dreamlike surroundings, she created a world that seems imbued with symbolic meaning, yet defies any easy deciphering.

Raised in a wealthy and conservative family in Lancashire, England, she was expelled from a number of finishing schools – the proverbial black sheep of her family. She agreed to appear as a débutante at the court of George V in exchange for taking art classes at Amédée Ozenfant’s school in London. It was through the school that she first met Max Ernst at a dinner party and suddenly she was living in Paris with the rest of the surrealists. Can you imagine? But World War II put an end to that idyll when Ernst was arrested in France. Unable to secure his release, Carrington had to escape into Spain where she had a nervous breakdown. Long story short, she was committed to an asylum, released into the custody of her nanny (whom her family had sent for her and who was charged with returning her to England), but then escaped her watch through a bathroom window in Lisbon where she fled to the Mexican Embassy, happened to run into a friend, the poet and journalist Renato LeDuc, married him on the spot and set sail for America. That kind of thing just doesn’t seem to happen anymore. After a year or so of living in New York City, she and LeDuc moved to his hometown of Mexico City where they parted ways amicably. Mexico was very friendly to European artists who fled the war, offering many of them citizenship and fostering a creative expatriate arts community that co-existed – not always happily – with the circle of Mexican artists surrounding Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo.

She spent the rest of her life in Mexico city, eventually marrying Hungarian photographer, Emeric Weisz, and having two sons. Although running off with Ernst, joining the surrealist movement and her movie-script escape from war-torn Europe is the stuff of biopics, it is her settling in Mexico that is most interesting to me. In her early days there, she became acquainted with a fellow refugee painter, Remedios Varo – who lived a similarly remarkable life – and the two of them forged an extraordinary creative friendship, much of which was played out in the kitchen. Both were interested in alchemy and magic – subjects popular with surrealists – but brought them into the domestic sphere. Much of her work – both painting and writing – deals with what is magical in the everyday.

The early days in Mexico City were a struggle – money was scarce and she had few painting supplies. But Carrington and Varo had something else that – to me – was just as precious: time. They spent hours in one another’s kitchens collaborating on their writing and experimenting with food. Perhaps it is because I harbor a secret desire to run off to Mexico and paint, or perhaps it is because everything sounds better in the past (see “Midnight in Paris“), that I have completely romanticized their domestic idyll.
Leonora Carrington, "Remedios Varo," Still Life Reviving, (1963)
Together in their kitchens, Carrington and Varo spent time concocting absurd recipes: one designed to stimulate a dream of being the King of England, another simulated caviar out of squid ink and tapioca. Yet another recipe, found penned in Varo’s hand, purports to induce erotic dreams:

INGREDIENTS:

A kilo of strong roots
three white hens
a head of garlic
four kilos of honey
a mirror
two calf livers
a brick
two clothespins
a corset with stays
two false moustaches
hats to taste

Put on the corset and make it quite tight. Sit down in front of the mirror, relax your nervous tension, smile and try on the mustaches and hats according to taste (three-cornered, Napoleonic, Basque, Beret, etc.)… Run and pour the broth (which should be very reduced) quickly into a cup. Quickly come back with it to in front of the mirror, smile, take a sip of broth, try on one of the mustaches, take another sip, try on a hat, drink, try on everything, taking sips in between and do it all as quickly as you can.

Source

You're the Only One...

Moby

Kissing the Lipless

Paused

It hurts to turn the radio on
Stamina's gone
My spirit is weak
Because every time I start to move on
Keep hearing that song
I'm brought to my knees
To permanently see in reverse
Take the remorse out of defeat
Because everything that's under my skin
Where I end and begin
Still belongs to me

I'm fine to sit and stare at the door
Can't run anymore
Too weary to stand
I'm bound in the effect with the cause
My life is on pause
It's out of my hands
To perfectly perform in reverse
There's no way to rehearse
There's nothing to plan
Because everything that's under my skin
Where I end and begin
That's who I am

Oh, only silence can restore
The sense of place I had before
Oh, only silence can repair
My sense of self I lost somewhere
Oh oh, oh, only silence can restore
The sense of place I had before
Oh, only silence can repair
My sense of self I lost somewhere

Because the last time I let myself feel this way
It was a long, long time ago
And now we get so scared, and we get so scared
To be nowhere left alone
Because the last time you let yourself feel this way
It was a long, long time ago
And now we get so scared, and we get so scared
To be nowhere left alone

Because it's now or never now
It's now or never now, now, now
Because it's now or never now
It's now or never now, now, now
Because it's now or never now
It's now or never now, now, now
Because it's now or never now
It's now or never now, now, now, now, now, now, now

Love and Be Creative!

What Does not Kill me...

Up Close and Personal

...oh, wait...

I am All that I Need

I am all that I need
And I'll be till I'm through
And I'm light on my feet
Good to be without you
Distant light, distant dancer
Mute at midnight she might look like the answer
But I'm all that I need

So it's true, I've gone too far to find you
And the thumbprint scar I let define you
Was a myth I made you measure up to
It was all just water, winding by you
And the basking, gnashing, foaling, feeding
And the rising, falling, melting, freezing
And the raising for destroying feeling
(All we do, this repeats)
You've got all you need on me
And now I see that it's all corroding
Soonest seething, soonest folding
But the night won't last if you just hold fast, so calm down
(I'm hardly made of steel)
Tell me, are you so concealed?
(Can't I just go to sleep?)
You're no more so blind to me

Are you alone?
I don't believe you
Are you at home, I'll come right now
I need to see you
Thin as a shim and Scottish pale
Bright white light like a bridal veil
"I don't need you"
Cut to chewed through finger nails

I was a child in the ivy then
I never knew you, you knew me
Not like you knew me
Off on the other ocean now
All is behind you, all is sea

Follow the Day!

The Death of the Epic..

...and surrender to spectacle (the "shadow" of the epic) in the post-modern age.

Rimbaud and Baudelaire

Arthur Rimbaud, "Evening Prayer" (Translated by Paul Schmidt)

I spend my life sitting, like an angel in a barber's chair
Holding a beer mug with deep-cut designs
My neck and gut both bent, while in the air
A weightless veil of pipe smoke hangs.
Like steaming dung within an old dovecote
A thousand Dreams within me softly burn:
From time to time my heart is like some oak
Whose blood runs golden where a branch is torn.
And then, when I have swallowed down my Dreams
In thirty, forty mugs of beer, I turn
To satisfy a need I can't ignore,
And like the Lord of Hyssop and of Myrrh
I piss into the skies, a soaring stream
That consecrates a patch of flowering fern.

Charles Baudelaire, "A Pagan's Prayer" (Translated by William Aggeler)

Ah! do not dampen your ardor;
Warm my numb heart again,
Pleasure, torture of souls!
Goddess! hear me, I beseech you!

Goddess who permeates the air,
Flame in our underground cavern!
Grant the prayer of a soul bored utterly,
Who offers you a brazen hymn.

Pleasure, be my queen forever!
Put on a siren's mask
Fashioned of flesh and of velvet

Or pour on me your heavy sleep,
In wine, formless and mystical,
O Pleasure, elastic phantom!

Ever the Fool...

Greta Bursts Out!

Way Down We Go

Never Gonna Stop

Yeti

Bowie-Dali

Watching them come and go
The Templars and the Saracens
They're traveling the holy land
Opening telegrams
Torture comes and torture goes
Knights who'd give you anything
They bear the cross of Coeur de Leon
Salvation for the mirror blind
But if you pray all your sins are hooked upon the sky
Pray and the heathen lie will disappear
Prayers they hide the saddest view
(Believing the strangest things, loving the alien)
And your prayers they break the sky in two
(Believing the strangest things, loving the alien)
Thinking of a different time
Palestine a modern problem
Bounty and your wealth in land
Terror in a best-laid plan
Watching them come and go
Tomorrows and the yesterdays
Christians and the unbelievers
Hanging by the cross and nail
But if you pray all your sins are hooked upon the sky
Pray and the heathen lie will disappear
Prayers they hide the saddest view
(Believing the strangest things, loving the alien)
And your prayers they break the sky in two
(Believing the strangest things, loving the alien)
You pray til the break of dawn
(Believing the strangest things, loving the alien)
And you'll believe you're loving the alien
(Believing the strangest things, loving the alien)

Where My Dreams Go to Die...

How Green was my Valley?

How green, how green was my valley?
To be told of such hills
To be held in such spots
To behold such warmth
Call to arms these harmonies!
And in happy agony we sing
How green, how green was my valley?
How green, how green was my valley?

Oh, your deeps and your shades
Where the wild roses pray
Such heat from pride
Glorious, the voice of man!
Like the nightingales, we sing
How green, how green was my valley?
How green, how green was my valley?

Clear softness in our hymn
Soft, like coming rain
Soft, like Bronwen
Victoria! Victoria!
Voices our queen might envy
How green, how green was my valley?
How green, how green was my valley?

The Bowie Process - Heroes

Regrets

Pulp Fiction

Not Sorry

Still Foolish

The Phantom Life is Not Living...

Silenced

Keep on Dancin'

Difference and Repetition

Reasons? Who Needs Reasons?

Media Induced Hypnosis...

...invites didacticism

Picante!

Statuesque Figures, Reprised

Polaroid

“Never try to convey your idea to the audience,” said Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky, “—it is a thankless and senseless task. Show them life, and they’ll find within themselves the means to assess and appreciate it.”

Klimt

OK, Go!

Mene Mene Tekel Parsin

Robots

The Evolution of "Courtly" Love?

The Story

Licenses for Love, and Other Misnomers

The glove compartment is inaccurately named
And everybody knows it
So I'm proposing a swift orderly change

'Cause behind its door, there's nothing to keep my fingers warm
And all I find are souvenirs from better times
Before the gleam of your taillights fading east
To find yourself a better life

I was searching for some legal document
As the rain beat down on the hood
When I stumbled upon pictures I tried to forget
And that's how this idea was drilled into my head

'Cause it's too important to stay the way it's been

There's no blame for how our love did slowly fade
And now that it's gone, it's like it wasn't there at all
And here I rest where disappointment and regret collide
Lying awake at night

There's no blame for how our love did slowly fade
And now that it's gone, it's like it wasn't there at all
And here I rest where disappointment and regret collide
Lying awake at night, up all night
When I'm lying awake at night

Lateral Thought

Many years ago in a small Indian village, a farmer had the misfortune of owing a large sum of money to a village moneylender. The moneylender, who was old and ugly, fancied the farmer’s beautiful daughter. So he proposed a bargain. He said he would forgo the farmer’s debt if he could marry his daughter.

Both the farmer and his daughter were horrified by the proposal. So the cunning money-lender suggested that they let providence decide the matter. He told them that he would put a black pebble and a white pebble into an empty money bag. Then the girl would have to pick one pebble from the bag.
If she picked the black pebble, she would become his wife and her father’s debt would be forgiven. If picked the white pebble she need not marry him and her father’s debt would still be forgiven and if she refused to pick a pebble, her father would be thrown into jail.

They were standing on a pebble strewn path in the farmer’s field. As they talked, the moneylender bent over to pick up two pebbles. As he picked them up, the sharp-eyed girl noticed that he had picked up two black pebbles and put them into the bag. He then asked the girl to pick a pebble from the bag.

Now, imagine that you were standing in the field. What would you have done if you were the girl? If you had to advise her, what would you have told her?

Take a moment to ponder this. What would you recommend that the girl do?
There are three possibilities coming to your mind :

The girl should refuse to take a pebble.

She should show that there were two black pebbles in the bag and expose the moneylender as a cheat.

Or she should pick a black pebble and sacrifice herself in order to save her father from his debt and imprisonment.

The girl put her hand into the moneybag and drew out a pebble. Without looking at it, she fumbled and let it fall onto the pebble-strewn path where it immediately became lost among all the other pebbles.

“Oh, how clumsy of me!” she said. “But never mind, if you look into the bag for the one that is left, you will be able to tell which pebble I picked.”

The moneylender dared not admit his dishonesty. The girl changed what seemed an impossible situation into an extremely advantageous one.

This story is to spot the difference between lateral thinking and logical thinking originally quoted by a well known author Edward de Bono.

Radical Reframings

Static

Deafness to imperatives
is profundity in the wise man,
children and grandchildren
don’t bother him,
don’t alarm him.

To represent a particular outlook,
to act,
to travel hither and yon
are all signs of a world
that doesn’t see clearly.
In front of my window
—wise man says—
is a valley
where shadows pool,
two poplars mark a path,
leading you will know where to.

Perspective
is another word for stasis:
you draw lines,
they ramify
like a creeper—
tendrils explode—
and they disburse crows in swarms
in the winter red of early dawns

then let them settle—

you will know—for whom.

- Gottfried Benn, "Static Poems"

Fusions

Mighty Zeppy

Ancient Mysteries....

...are they on video?

Sound Like Anyone?

Sigmund v. Carl

Context

"Darkness", -Moby

I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;
Morn came and went—and came, and brought no day,
And men forgot their passions in the dread
Of this their desolation; and all hearts
Were chill'd into a selfish prayer for light:
And they did live by watchfires—and the thrones,
The palaces of crowned kings—the huts,
The habitations of all things which dwell,
Were burnt for beacons; cities were consum'd,
And men were gather'd round their blazing homes
To look once more into each other's face;
Happy were those who dwelt within the eye
Of the volcanos, and their mountain-torch:
A fearful hope was all the world contain'd;
Forests were set on fire—but hour by hour
They fell and faded—and the crackling trunks
Extinguish'd with a crash—and all was black.
The brows of men by the despairing light
Wore an unearthly aspect, as by fits
The flashes fell upon them; some lay down
And hid their eyes and wept; and some did rest
Their chins upon their clenched hands, and smil'd;
And others hurried to and fro, and fed
Their funeral piles with fuel, and look'd up
With mad disquietude on the dull sky,
The pall of a past world; and then again
With curses cast them down upon the dust,
And gnash'd their teeth and howl'd: the wild birds shriek'd
And, terrified, did flutter on the ground,
And flap their useless wings; the wildest brutes
Came tame and tremulous; and vipers crawl'd
And twin'd themselves among the multitude,
Hissing, but stingless—they were slain for food.
And War, which for a moment was no more,
Did glut himself again: a meal was bought
With blood, and each sate sullenly apart
Gorging himself in gloom: no love was left;
All earth was but one thought—and that was death
Immediate and inglorious; and the pang
Of famine fed upon all entrails—men
Died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh;
The meagre by the meagre were devour'd,
Even dogs assail'd their masters, all save one,
And he was faithful to a corse, and kept
The birds and beasts and famish'd men at bay,
Till hunger clung them, or the dropping dead
Lur'd their lank jaws; himself sought out no food,
But with a piteous and perpetual moan,
And a quick desolate cry, licking the hand
Which answer'd not with a caress—he died.
The crowd was famish'd by degrees; but two
Of an enormous city did survive,
And they were enemies: they met beside
The dying embers of an altar-place
Where had been heap'd a mass of holy things
For an unholy usage; they rak'd up,
And shivering scrap'd with their cold skeleton hands
The feeble ashes, and their feeble breath
Blew for a little life, and made a flame
Which was a mockery; then they lifted up
Their eyes as it grew lighter, and beheld
Each other's aspects—saw, and shriek'd, and died—
Even of their mutual hideousness they died,
Unknowing who he was upon whose brow
Famine had written Fiend. The world was void,
The populous and the powerful was a lump,
Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless—
A lump of death—a chaos of hard clay.
The rivers, lakes and ocean all stood still,
And nothing stirr'd within their silent depths;
Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea,
And their masts fell down piecemeal: as they dropp'd
They slept on the abyss without a surge—
The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave,
The moon, their mistress, had expir'd before;
The winds were wither'd in the stagnant air,
And the clouds perish'd; Darkness had no need
Of aid from them—She was the Universe.

-Lord Byron, "Darkness"

Fistful of Mercy, "30 Bones"

Teach me to feel another's woe, to hide the fault I see, that mercy I to others show, that mercy show to me.

- Alexander Pope

Night Lights

Pressing Strings

Women's protests are a great awakening, but with many dangers. It could eventually be a case of rules being made to be broken.
Last week, the American philosopher and gender theorist Judith Butler helped organize an, outwardly straightforward, conference in São Paulo, Brazil. Butler may be well-known for her work on transgenderism, but the title of the event was ‘The Ends of Democracy’ and thus had nothing to do with the topic. Yet, nevertheless, a crowd of right-wing protesters gathered outside the venue where they burned an effigy of Butler while shouting “Queimem a bruxa!” (Portuguese for “Burn the witch!”).

This weird incident is the latest in a long series, which prove that sexual difference is today politicized in two complementary ways: the transgender fluidification of gender identities and the resulting conservative backlash.

Indeed, the famous description of the capitalist dynamics in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels' Communist Manifesto should be supplemented by the fact that global capitalism has seen sexual "one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more impossible." And that, also in the domain of sexual practices, "all that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned." Because perhaps capitalism tends to replace the standard normative heterosexuality with a proliferation of unstable shifting identities and/or orientations?

Today’s celebration of “minorities” and “marginals” is the predominant majority position – even alt-rightists who complain about the terror of liberal political correctness present themselves as protectors of an endangered minority. Or take those critics of patriarchy who attack it as if it was still a hegemonic position, ignoring what Marx and Engels wrote more than 150 years ago, in the first chapter of their aforementioned tome: "the bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations.” But this is still ignored by those leftist cultural theorists who focus their critique on patriarchal ideology and practice.

So what should we do with regard to this tension? Shall we limit ourselves to supporting the transgender fluidification of identities while remaining critical of its limitations? There is a third way of contesting the traditional form of gender identities exploding now - with women massively coming out about male sexual violence. That said, all the features of the media coverage of this event should not distract us from what is really going on; and that is nothing less than an epochal change, a great awakening, a new chapter in the history of equality.

Huge shift

Right now, thousands of years of how relations between the sexes were regulated and arranged are questioned and undermined. The protesting movement is now not an LGBT+ minority but a majority, that of women. What is coming out is nothing new – it is something we (vaguely, at least) knew all the time and just were not able (or willing and ready) to openly address: hundreds of ways of exploiting women sexually.

Women are now bringing out the dark underside of our official claims of equality and mutual respect, and what we are discovering is, among other things, how hypocritical and one-sided our fashionable critique of women’s oppression in Muslim countries was (and is): so, we have to confront our own reality of oppression and exploitation.

As in every revolutionary upheaval, there will be numerous “injustices” and "ironies.” For example, I doubt that Louis CK’s acts, deplorable and lewd as they are, could be put on the same level as direct sexual violence. But, again, all this should not distract us; we should instead focus on the problems that lie ahead.

Although some countries are already approaching a new post-patriarchal sexual culture (just look at Iceland, where more than two thirds of children are born out of wedlock, and where women occupy more posts in public power institutions than men), one of the key tasks is, first, the need to explore what we are gaining and losing in this upheaval of our inherited courtship procedures. Because new rules will have to be established so that we will avoid a sterile culture of fear and uncertainty.

Indeed, some intelligent feminists noted long ago that if we try to imagine a wholly politically correct courtship, we get uncannily close to a formal market contract. The problem is that sexuality, power, and violence are much more intimately intertwined than we may expect it so that also elements of what is considered brutality can be sexualized, i.e., libidinally invested – after all, sadism and masochism are forms of sexual activity. As a result, sexuality purified of violence and power games can well end up getting desexualized.

New challenges

The next task is to make sure the ongoing explosion will not remain limited to the public lives of the rich and famous but will trickle down and penetrate the daily lives of millions of ordinary ‘invisible’ individuals. And the last (but not least) point is to explore how to link this awakening to the ongoing political and economic struggles, i.e. how to prevent it from being appropriated by Western liberal ideology (and practice) as yet another way to reassert our priority. One has to make an effort that this awakening will not turn into just another case where political legitimization is based on the subject’s victimhood status.

Is the basic characteristic of today's subjectivity not the weird combination of the free subject who themselves as ultimately responsible for their fate and the subject who grounds the authority of his speech on their status as a victim of circumstances beyond their control? Where every contact with another human being is experienced as a potential threat - if the other smokes, if he casts a covetous glance at me, he already hurts me: this logic of victimization is today universalized, reaching well beyond the standard cases of sexual or racist harassment.

Merely recall the growing financial industry of paying damage claims, from the tobacco industry deal in the USA and the financial claims of the Holocaust victims and forced laborers in Nazi Germany, up to the idea that the USA should pay African-Americans hundreds of billions of dollars for all they were deprived of due to their past slavery. This notion of the subject as an irresponsible victim involves the extreme narcissistic perspective from which every encounter with the other appears as a potential threat to the subject's precarious imaginary balance; as such, it is not the opposite, but, rather, the inherent supplement of the liberal free subject. In today's predominant form of individuality, the self-centered assertion of the psychological subject paradoxically overlaps with the perception of oneself as a victim of circumstances.

Two sides

In a hotel in Skopje where I recently stayed, my companion inquired if smoking is permitted in our room. The answer she got from the reception person was unique: “of course not, it is prohibited by the law. But you have ashtrays in the room, so this is not a problem.”

This was not the end of our surprises: when we entered the room, there was effectively a glass ashtray on the table, and on its bottom, there was an image painted, a cigarette over which there was a large circle with a diagonal line across it designating prohibition. So it was not the usual game one encounters in easy-going hotels where they whisper to you discreetly that, although it is officially prohibited, you can do it carefully, standing by an open window or something like that.

Thus, the contradiction (between prohibition and permission) was openly assumed and thereby canceled and treated as non-existent, i.e., the message was: “it’s prohibited, and here it is how you do it.” Back to the ongoing awakening, the danger is that, in a homologous way, the ideology of personal freedom will be effortlessly combined with the logic of victimhood (with freedom silently reduced to the freedom to bring out one’s victimhood), thereby rendering superfluous a radical emancipatory politicization of the awakening, making the women’s fight one in the series of fights – fights again global capitalism and ecological threats, for a different democracy, and against racism, etc.

-Slavoj Zizek, "Will the new rules of sexuality be like an ashtray with a no-smoking sign?"

Night Flowers

New Conceptions

...or Old?

Hippo's

I'll be fine on my own, she said, I don't need you inside my head
(She'll be fine on her own)
I'll be fine on my own, she said, all my love's wrapped in shades of red
(She'll be fine on her own)

No holds barred in the ring so you'll fight me
Give 'em hell, give 'em teeth like you taught me
Tireless mess, seeking thrills getting bitey
When I'm in doubt

Pudgy face kissing lace in the backseat
Wrinkle toss of the coin that I can't see
Punch forget out of you to be like me
Where around is enough for a family

I'll be fine on my own, she said, I don't need you inside my head
(She'll be fine on her own)
I'll be fine on my own, she said, all my love's wrapped in shades of red
(She'll be fine on her own)

Growing pains splaying rain on the high sea
Scale a tree, snap a branch so you can't leave
On the ground, lost and found, understand me
Putting words in my mouth, trying to get free

Solid punch kind of eyes make 'em wobbly
Gothic vine growing fire in the lobby
Lighten up, buttercup, get a hobby
Yeah, swing, sucker, swing, finish sobbing

She'll be fine on her own, she said

I'll be fine, I'm alright, it's my body
Gonna stick to my guns, like you taught me
Holy hell, I can tell that you hate me
Dying moon, keep me up, keep me waiting

Stepford Futures

Quantum Life Forms

Let Her RIP!

Stuck...

Given Up Ghosts

I won't see you
You'll still be there
In the pictures
In the air
I'm not crazy
You're not sane
We're no different
We're not the same

I don't wanna see your face anymore
I don't wanna hear your knock on my door

Broken inside, dying outside
Leavin' me hangin'
Leavin' me hangin'

And it's hard to resist you
And it's hard to forget you
But I'm leanin' on something else
I'm leanin' on something else
And it's hard to forget you
And it's hard to let you go
But I'll give up that ghost
I'll give up that ghost

I won't wait up for you
I won't be here
I won't buy into that hoax
that has hooked me all these years
I'm not crazy
You're not sane
You're no different
You're not the same

I don't wanna see your face anymore
I don't wanna hear your footsteps right outside my front door

Broken inside
Dying outside
Leavin' me hangin'
Leavin' me hangin'

And it's hard to resist you
And it's hard to forget you
But I'm leanin' on something else
I'm leanin' on something else
And it's hard to forget you
And it's hard to let you go
But I'll give up that ghost
I'll give up that ghost

Leavin' me broken
Leavin' me dyin'
Leavin' me hangin'
Leavin' me hangin' (etc.)
I know you still haunt me

And it's hard to resist you
And it's hard to forget you
But I'm leanin' on something else
And it's hard to forget you
And it's hard to let you go
But I'll give up that ghost
I'll give up that ghost
I'll get you off my mind

I'll lean on something else
I'll wish for something else
And it's hard to forget you
And it's hard to let you go
But I'll give up that ghost
I'll give up your ghost

Is Civilization a Cure for Nature?

The Solution to the Problem of Sexual Harassment...?