Love and Regret "Before the Bridge" - Future Islands

I will walk you home 

and I will leave you there

I'll take the books you stole

And leave the heart that bared this soul

I hope you have what you need

(I hope the moon is listening)

I hope you have what you need

(I gave my soul, my body)

I hope you have what you need

(I hope the moon is listening)

I hope you have what you need

(I gave you soul and body)

And if things hadn't changed

I would have buried you deep in my arms

And if things had stayed the same

I would have carried you as far as the stars

Whatever has us know

I can't forget somehow

For to forget a love is to regret

And what is love is regret

And what isn't love is a test

And if things hadn't changed

I would have buried you deep in my arms

And if things had stayed the same

I would have carried you as far as the stars

Do you believe in love?

Do you believe in love?

Hold your tongue

Hold your tongue

Whatever has us now

I can't forget somehow

For to forget a love is to regret

The Funeral Selfie...

 

"if the social ego also beats death"

To patiently queue at a famous person’s funeral for take a selfie with the widow even more famous and maybe even smiled, one must have crossed the entire cable between the human and the inhuman. And above all you must not have missed the appointment even with an episode of Men and women and of You’ve Got Mail.

One must have lost the sense of modesty, the measure of limits and even of death. One must have internalized the idea that the show must go on, rather that the show is life itself, that we are the actors. And one must be, having lost the sense of the monstrous, completely immersed in the idea that you exist if you show yourself.

The funeral selfie

"It’s television, honey and you can’t help it", one could say paraphrasing Hutcheson – Bogart. In reality, things are more complex. It is a pervasive and effective form of cultural hegemony, not exactly Gramscian. It is based on unawareness, distraction, the ephemeral search for a handful of seconds of celebrity to immortalize with a photo on social media.

The funeral selfie celebrates the union between television and social media: I photograph myself with the incarnation of TV and then spam the image on a shared channel.

Bad television teacher

Behind this gesture is the repudiation of any form of confidentiality, of polite respect. There is the triumph of ostentation, of exposing oneself as a vitalistic form, as a sense of existence. Anyone who thinks that today social control passes through social networks will have to think again: television has not yet given up its dominance in forging minds and indeed has fully accomplished its mission, to make us believe that what happens in there is all true while it is art and fiction.

Selfie with the living at the bedside of the dead

That’s why there were so many waiting their turn, not to greet a dead person, but to take a picture with a living person and embark on the hunt for "the Amen of digital devotion which is the like", as Byung Chul Han writes.

To allow this, the world of television leaves the screens and hands itself over to its own people, lets itself be touched – something inconceivable in a true monarchy, where kings are intangible – lets itself be photographed. In the end, the emotion of the selfie remains emotional capitalism it is just it is just one of the commodities to be paid for with shares.

Fake it til You Make it!

Paul Rebeyrolle

Survival... is NOT Enough!

Survival

Oh, the Ennui...

Waiting...for Nikhil.

Nikhil Parekh, "Object of Desire"

Thick sheets of raw cardboard paper,

sewn from dried pulp mixture,
processed and woven in looming mill machine,
a commodity manufactured at threadbare costs,
desert brown in color, and rough in texture,
cut to various shapes of
square, rectangle, triangle, penta and cone,
with steel cutters piercing its hard flesh,
particles of golden sawdust floating in air,
transforming barbaric paper to trimmed angel,
rendering it feasible for further treatment,
the prime of which is an overlapping fold,
followed by rich wax paint,
printing designs befitting all occasions,
like marriage, love, laughter and examination,
with finely calligraphed captivating quotes,
accentuating magical conversion of raw paper, into royal greeting card,
a carrier of fluctuating emotions,
a cheaply procurable object of desire