Saturday, June 29, 2024

Glimpsing Beauty and Sublimity Amidst an Ever-Pervasive Background of Publicly Enforced Technological or Cultural, Harassment Averse, Self-Isolation

I long ago lost a hound, a bay horse, and a turtle-dove, and am still on their trail. Many are the travelers I have spoken concerning them, describing their tracks and what calls they answered to. I have met one or two who have heard the hound, and the tramp of the horse, and even seen the dove disappear behind a cloud, and they seemed as anxious to recover them as if they had lost them themselves.
~ Henry David Thoreau, Walden; or, Life in the Woods (1854).


EMILE DEWEAVER, "Profile"

You see me swagger to a stop
at the crosswalk, chin bobbing on
the currents of my playlist, and the Nike

Swoosh on my sleeveless says
I hold my shape after washing.
I look upstreet, presenting you

the question curving along my cheek.
What a nice man you’re thinking,
his Afro is nonthreatening

like a light bulb invented by Thomas Edison.
You’re having ideas, right? Weighing
myths and elongating for answers.

I’m walking your way, broad as day,
and you have to choose. Do
you relax your shoulders and step

into the street or clench your toes
and face your faith in the human
race: all men are created

sequals, every black
man is not a syllable.
---

...nor every man/ woman his/ her profile,
unless we all so genuinely pretend

So in the music video, we see two behaviourally different profiles of a young woman, one commuting/ blending into an "urban normie" profile version, the other at the beach, establishing a fitness/ beauty profile version.  Gone is authenticity.  Gone is sincerity.  All we see is the genuine pretending of her adapting her profile to suit second order observational positions of "profilicity" through the self-isolation technology of music and headphones, she dances, alone.  All opportunities for presenting a dance card to a like-minded individualist on a comparable derive, technologically foreclosed. 

Object-relations mediating the social.  Cultural-relations mediating the social.  Will human-relations ever restore or establish a new social without such intervening and foreclosing intermediaries?
Oh wait.  We have.  They're called "Digital Relations" and "Social Media" :(  New foreclosing intermediaries

18 comments:

Jen said...

Will human-relations ever restore or establish a new social without such intervening and foreclosing intermediaries?
****

When was this ever the case that at least cultural relations weren't the foundation of social interactions? I would love to see it happen, but we seem to be less and less open to knowing the other without a common cultural connection.

Thersites said...

Indeed... and not just a commodified mediator (which is where we seem to be "globally" unifying around). Is there any more to this 1st step (trade)? A "surplus" other than mere "capital"?

Thersites said...

Domination -> Communality -> Reciprocity ->

Better to trade in thoughts than commodified objects or actual human beings. A mere "virtual reality".

Thersites said...

"Knowing What Can Be
Unburdened by What Has Been"

-Kamala Harris, "The Social Outsider's Dream"

Thersites said...

Public face - Private face - Secret face 9merged into 1

Openness - Transparency - Smoothed Edges - The post-modern unachievable. "Yes, you can unopposed by no you can't." Pure "Achievement Society" without the controlling access gates of borders and computer firewalls.

Thersites said...

The medium is the message. The interposed "techs". Headphones.

...sorry, just free-associating.

Thersites said...

It's what passes for "thought" in my addled brain.

Thersites said...

I would have liked to have danced in front of her at the pier. Gauge her reaction. And if I had creeped her out, rapidly withdrawn.... away towards the shore so she wouldn't have to concern herself, and could keep me in sight and at a distance. But I did not seize Kairos, and let the opportunity pass. I am a fool, indeed. :(

Thersites said...

...and I could not hear the music.

Thersites said...

"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music" Nietzsche?

Thersites said...

In her case, others could 'see it' (headphones)... and in the video hear the diegetic supplement and conclude 'beauty' vice 'madness'. :)

Thersites said...

Perhaps all our lives really need are non-diegetic accompaniments... pleasant "muzak" from shopping mall elevators to drives us all insane. ;)

Thersites said...

...or SHOP-SHOP-SHOP!!!! ...thru Inception.

-FJ the Dangerous and Extreme MAGA Jew said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
-FJ the Dangerous and Extreme MAGA Jew said...

Oooops. Let's try that again with the proper html:

btw - We visited our daughter last weekend and celebrated my wife's birthday and our 45th anniversary where I was pleased to discover a platinum record in her home-office with my daughter's name on it... for representing this artist, who sold over a million downloads of one her songs on the very first day it was released.

Funny how we take such pride in out children's accomplishments. :)

-FJ the Dangerous and Extreme MAGA Jew said...

Our...

Freudian slips all around today. @@

Jen said...

Happy anniversary and happy birthday to your wife! I'm proud of my kids for the most basic things.

Joe Conservative said...

I hear ya! Like NOT becoming hikikomori. ;)