Saint Genet

"'Abjection is a methodical conversion, like Cartesian doubt and Husserlian epoché: it establishes the world as a closed system which consciousness regards from without, in the manner of the divine understanding. The superiority of this method to the other two lies in its being lived in pain and pride. It therefore does not lead to the transcendental and universal consciousness of Husserl, the formal and abstract thinking of the Stoics, or the substantial cogito of Descartes, but to an individual existence at its highest degree of tension and lucidity.'...

Throughout his life the profligate Baudelaire needed bourgeois morality to condemn him. Genet is a true revolutionist. In Genet, freedom is won for freedom's sake. Genet's triumph, his "sanctity," is that he broke through the social framework against unbelievable odds to found his own morality. Sartre shows us Genet making a lucid, coherent system out of le mal. Unlike Baudeliare, Genet is free of self-deception.

What Sartre wants to show is how Genet, by means of action and reflection, has spent his whole life attaining the lucid free act. Cast from his birth in the role of the Other, the outcast, Genet chose himself. The original choice is asserted through three different metamorphoses—the criminal, the aesthete, the writer. Each one is necessary to fulfill freedom's demand for a push beyond the self. Each new level of freedom carries with it a new knowledge of the self. Thus the whole discussion of Genet may be read as a dark travesty on Hegel's analysis of the relations between self and other. Sartre speaks of the works of Genet as being, each one of them, small editions of The Phenomenology of Mind...."

--Susan Sontag on Sartre's Saint Genet

Happiness is Two Kinds of Ice Cream...

It's funny, and a truism to say that different things can pop up in a person's mind becoming more or less personal or important depending on the thought you confront yourself with at any given moment. Thought is a continuum, a constant wave to be ridden. I guess I have an amusement park ride in mind. One that steadily vacillates back and forth on a squiggly, continuous flow. Not too fast, steady. Not too slow, but with a definite rythm to it. At least that's my vision now.

The things that become most important to you, who you are, and what you value can all come as a great surprise, can contradict what you "stood for" initially, if you're open to challenge, and if you're learning, or trying to learn and keep yourself stimulated. It can be important to step outside of the square box you're stuck in in your daily routine. Don't be afraid to take a different route, or to pick up something new, or to dig deeper into something that sparks your interest.

Of course, there are no perfect worlds. There is no paradise out there. There is no peaceable kingdom, which is what I'd hoped for, what I dreamt of, or deluded myself with all along, perfection. I guess supremity in anything would get boring after a while, after all, supreme beauty, supreme happiness. Happiness is defined by what it's not, which reminds me of the Wallace Steven's poem Sunday Morning:

Is there no change of death in paradise?
Does ripe fruit never fall? Or do the boughs
Hang always heavy in that perfect sky,
Unchanging, yet so like our perishing earth,
With rivers like our own that seek for seas
They never find, the same receding shores
That never touch with inarticulate pang?
Why set pear upon those river-banks
Or spice the shores with odors of the plum?
Alas, that they should wear our colors there,
The silken weavings of our afternoons,
And pick the strings of our insipid lutes!
Death is the mother of beauty, mystical,
Within whose burning bosom we devise
Our earthly mothers waiting, sleeplessly.

Kathy Acker Documentary

Last year I went to Munich for the opening of a friend who was including a story of mine in his art catalog. While we were sitting around watching a video of him in his apartment in Kathy Acker's black dress, he told me that my writing reminded him of her writing. He wanted to know if I'd ever read her work, but I'd never heard of her before.

Call me conservative, conventional, out of it, under-educated. Sure, I would say, I'm all of these things. Not to mention being buried under a depression for most of my life. God, spare me from its clutches, please, for the rest of my life, please....

My friend advised me to read Acker, and I told him I would, but then forgot her name completely by the time I left Munich again. Who was this woman, anyway? The dress was huge. Of course, my friend is an extremely thin man, so lacking in every form of curve. He described the dress as "Goth." So I imagined a large woman with dried out died black hair, ripped fishnet stockings, lots of black eyeliner, and black lipstick. Maybe a little purple thrown in somewhere for a dash of color.

I decided to dismiss his recommendation to read her work, since I knew that I'd never remember her name again, and we haven't been in touch since I left Munich. His art career is taking off, and I can't imagine him wasting too much more time with someone like me, although I could be wrong.

On the recommendation of a volunteer at the Rotterdam International Film Festival, I booked a ticket to see "Who's Afraid of Kathy Acker," a documentary by an Austrian woman, Barbara Caspar.

It all came together, and I realized she was the writer he compared me to.

Gosh, I can't imagine my writing is too much like hers, but my friend is very well read and educated. Maybe he was giving me an undeserved compliment, or making an attempt at associating my work with a greater trend or tradition. After seeing the documentary, I'm sure I'm quite the opposite in demeanor to Ms. Acker. Certainly, I haven't got her ambition, drive, connections. I certainly do not care, and am not trying to emanate anyone at all.

It was when they interviewed my friend's mentor Carolee Schneemann, that I was reminded of his comment. It all came together. The black dress, and all.

Since I prefer lyrical prose, and really should have been a musician or a singer, I wonder if I would even be capable of appreciating her work. She comes highly recommended, but I wonder about the literary merit of her writing. She struck me as more of a performer, or performance artist, but she also amassed a body of writing, fiction, non-fiction, essays. I heard her perform some of her work in the documentary, and I thought, my writing, at its best, "sounds" better.

There are moments when I have grandiose, delusional fantasies of success, or of doing something great, but mostly I realize that I'm too lazy, my self-esteem is too low, and I'm too confused to carry out any grand scheme. I'm content to write a few little stories when I'm feeling up to it, and I've been thinking more and more, it would be nice to earn enough money to go "home" more often. I think that if I can manage to raise two well-balanced people, that will be my greatest achievement.

Delusion is a funny thing, though. Sometimes, when I have them, I can imagine that I'd have to be interviewed, answer questions, go on tour, and then I think, oh, I could never do that. They always ask you things like, what are your influences? Well, who the hell are they, I wonder? I could scratch up a few. There's Dorris Lessing. I could rattle off a bunch of poets. There are a lot of writers I've enjoyed reading. Jane Smiley was good. Alice Sebold told me to read Alice Adams, so I did. Acker idolizes Rimbaud, whose work I've read in English, but I can't say he's an influence. Of course there's Raymond Carver, right? I've read philosophy, but I've never immersed myself in it, and I've never so much as dabbed my toes in people like Baudrillard or Deleuze, which probably puts me out of the cool mainstream clicking hipster types. I always kind of wondered why it was necessary to place oneself into a line of thought in order to write a few stories, and it's not. I say. It's not.

When I get beyond the fantasies, though, I do believe obscurity is preferable. We grow up with the notion that fame seeking is a desirable goal, that glory is the highest form of attainment but really, this is a misguided notion. Toiling away in obscurity, going on your way in anonymity. We need a new language for this.... Sometimes I think it's best not having anyone to talk to at all, my head rings with conversation so irritably sometimes hours after an exchange with someone, when I was quite happy thinking to myself. Too often potential contacts or friendships disappoint, so why should I want to be famous. I think fame is boring, an irritation, a distration.

In the film they interviewed young New York female college students talking about how much Kathy Acker speaks to them. Her voice is their voice, they said. Her most notorious book is about the incestuous love affair between a father and his ten-year-old daughter.

I realize incest is something we shouldn't keep quiet about. It really is too much of a taboo subject. People need to be more aware of it in order to stop it, I think. There are too many taboos, and we really are pushed far too much into uniform conformity. I won't argue that point. I guess the talk show phenomenon touches on this a bit, but I never watch them.

I sort of doubt, though, considering the content, that Acker's novel on incest could speak to me much, or that I would consider that she's speaking for me. I really don't know what to say. I suppose I ought to read the work before commenting. It just struck me. I think it would disturb me a lot to read it, and I can't imagine it being edifying in any way. There are so many other stories to read out there.

As a teenager in New York I once responded to an advertisement in the Village Voice to work in a nightclub. When I called, the woman on the other end of the line made it clear that it would entail more than collecting tickets and smiling, or serving drinks. I had the impression that nightclub work paid well, and I wanted to earn some good money. Plus, it seemed exciting, glamorous, "happening." I don't remember exactly what the woman asked me, but she wanted to know how open I'd be to certain things, and I said, sorry, but my sister is here, I can't talk about this now, to which the woman replied, well, how old is your sister, and i said 16. Then she told me, "You know, you're too much of a nice girl for this job. Thank you." The world is in need of nice gals like me, ain't it. We're the ones keeping this world spinin' around, baby.

Django

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This seems to be the best clip of Django Reinhardt playing available on YouTube...

Film Festival Writer?

I had intended on writing reports on all the twenty or so odd films I saw at the Rotterdam Film Festival, but it's already moving so faraway into the past, it's becoming clouded already by everything that's moving in to replace it. Writing becomes a bit like stealing. Stealing time to write, pushing every other distraction out of the way in order to write. When I'm not writing, I'm dreaming of writing. Writing is always a vague notion for me. It's always lurking in the hazy regions of my thought. Writing requires the ability to insist on your right to it to yourself, to the people around you. Writing requires carving a space for yourself, to borrow a cliché. The funny thing is, when I'm not writing, and think that I really ought to be doing other more responsible things, I become so overwhelmed, I'm not capable of doing those things, either. Amid this lack, I may as well be writing.

Things to Do....

Listen to Nina Simone and cry about everything you've lost, the people you miss. Remember, sadness is normal.">

Rotterdam Film Festival Wrap-up

I wound down the Rotterdam International Film Festival with James Benning's filming of Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty in the Great Salt Lake, Utah.

The first shot is of the Jetty in 1970, spanning intermittent years up until last year. The years I recall are 70, 71, 74, 84, 88, 2002-2007. The years touch upon everyplace I've lived. One year, I think '88, he even filmed one day after my birthday! What glorious weather it was.

It was a great canvas upon which to cast my thought, which as so often, was whirling.

It was almost a challenging act in meditation. In a packed theater there are so many potential distractions. The mind can wander, especially in such a "blank," film, without narrative pull. I found myself creating a narrative of my own, which wasn't too much of a challenge, since I lived in Utah. I imagined how old I was in 1970 (I was a baby), and then in consecutive years of the Jetty filming.... How old were my siblings. What were we doing, where were we living in relation to the Jetty. It became a personal internal narrative, a game that I played with myself while observing the water, the rocks, Antelope Island, the clouds. There was so much to see. At a certain point, he had a shot of some boulders so caked in salt, they looked like animal sculpture. It's true. In other shots, the boulders were covered in snow. Toward the end were shots of the rocks caked in moss. It made me want to go float in the salt water and brine next to the Jetty like I did when I was twelve. It made me think it's time to live in Utah again.

When I fly in and out of Salt Lake, I can see the Jetty from the plane. It's such a graceful, curling line, jutting out of the Salt Lake. Nature there undisturbed by nearly anything else constructed by human beings. It's just the lake and a spattering of mountains. Such calm. Antelope Island is visible in the distance in many of Benning's shots. It's an island I've wanted to visit. People say there are Buffalo living there.

More on the festival soon. I saw a lot, and have been busy. It's over, so now I have more time again for blog meanderings.