Imprudent partying? That sounds like a redundancy, but not quite. You see, our party had no technological knowledge. All we did was eat and watch movies, while the little kids (I am not a little kid), ran around and around – in my opinion, annoyingly. Not only that, it made me nervous as heck, because I felt as though, with all this going around, someone was going to eventually shoot around with an AK-47 and detonate terrorist bombs. Good thing it did not happen.

Yes, I am this ignorant about guns.

If any of that had gone on, especially with baby Jaydon(sp? – fucking serious I can’t even spell his name?). Had he done any of that, I would probably blame it on the media, just like the media ironically does whenever some crazy shit happens. I would say that baby’s been watching too much Bin Laden news reports! And I’ll do it sitting down right next to my fellow news reporter! Hypocritical much? I thought so. And I don’t blame the media, for reasons other than me being a hypocrite otherwise. If you really think the media is the cause, rather than a random correlative, you should go primitivist. To me, most of religion, especially the restorationist types, has a unique relationship with and/or sympathy for primitivism, in a way.

The reason I call this partying imprudent is basically it was all simply this: eating, watching TV (i.e., How the Grinch Stole Christmas, and Yes Man [which was absolutely hilarious]), and for me, not much talking was going on. But it was good – it was okay. At least I got a break from being on the computer, right?

So, anyway, it’s been Christmas Eve now, and I just finished opening my gifts. As expected, I got clothing – a green shirt, a green sweater, another shirt with yellow lines, and some nice smooth slacks (looking good, ‘cuz it’s huntin’ season for Santa’s reindeer!).

I’m pretty sure everyone else has had a good Holiday season, especially the non-singles and imprudent sexuals. As well as the goths. Have a very Gothic X-Mas!

I wonder if whoever made this noticed that the black star symbolizes anarchism? This will be a subliminal way of messaging my fellow insurrectionist!

I wish I could celebrate more merrily. If I weren’t afraid to dance, dance (or sumthin’). Just, I wish parties for me were less about being an introvert, than being a complete personality-nudist. I would have way more fun, because that means way more interaction with the peeps *and by interaction I’m not only referring to sex). I know I’ve cracked a lot of sex jokes in this blog here-and-there, but please don’t get your penigina in a bunch? And if you don’t know what the hell a penigina is, ask your hermaphrodite cousin.

If only I could celebrate Christmas with Abe. That would mean quite a lot more, and I would be happier and more elevated! I mean, in the long run, usually. He’s a nice guy. Meh. I wonder how he would react to see me talking about him…

Oh well. This blog is for me to expose myself completely, insofar as I don’t share things that I believe will be seriously dangerous to other much more vital aspects of my life, like..my actual life.

Talk about a Gothic X-Mas, my grandma still seems to be in the stone age of gender roles, and my Uncle seems a bit personally reserved about it, though he is quite libertarian on the matter (which I respect him for). Women wearing pants was inconceivable, yet it doesn’t occur to anyone the irony of bashing boy-skirts. Humanitarian hypocrisy? It’s not that everyone should get with the times, but get with being rational despite the times. At least internally, and in self-honesty. And gothic people are now called abnormal? Maybe counter-cultural, but nothing more than that.

———

Music to walk alone in the snow to. Music to stay home and feel winter sentimental with. The time is not for jingle bells, and already worn out carols that you forgot what meant, or sexist crooner tunes from the 50s for that matter. Whatever, if you want to hear that, just have a stroll down shopping street and get bombarded. Here’s what I would rather listen to when white snow covers the city, candles are lit in the windows, you walk in silent winter evenings or sit at home cuddling up with all your winter sentimentality (which is perfectly nice and good).

Bibio not only made one of my favourite albums this year, he has a back catalogue of delicious guitar meditations, well worth diving into and exploring. Contrary to his most recent album, which is far more complex and genre eclectic, the old stuff revolves around the same focus on electro-acoustic guitar patterns and simple drum loops. Some call it laptop folk. Whatever it is I love it.

Bibio – Looking Through the Facets of a Plastic Jewel

In the 60s, Jan Johanson made a stunning interpretation of old swedish folk tunes by adding jazz. They are intrinsically tied to my feelings and perception of Sweden, and always make me long for natural landscapes and hiking trips, or simply say “fuck it all, I’m becoming a primitivist and I’ll move out into the wild and eat lingon berries and chant sad polka tunes by the mountain rivers”

Jan Johanson – Polska från Medelpad

Jan Johanson – Vallåt från Jämtland

I have already mentioned Pat Metheny once before in relation to the turning of music into muzak through use in commercial advertisements. Luckily, this part of Metheny has not been distorted by that, so we can go straight to it. Album is One Quiet Night. Playing on a baritone guitar gives Metheny the sound of expansive, grand thickness, like he’s painting yet vaster winter landscapes with every guitar stroke, I mean strum.

Pat Metheny – One Quiet Night

Pat Metheny – Song For The Boys

* Whoa: The UN international climate change conference is in chaos as the G77, which represents 130 developing countries “pulled the emergency plug” suspending the talks over wealthy countries’ reluctance to discuss a legally binding emissions treaty. I hope this is just a negotiating tactic in response to the so-called “suicide pact” and not a true collapse of the talks.

* If anyone tries to tell you that uncertainty about climate change is a reason for inaction, he’s either a fool or a scoundrel. Probably a bit of both.

* Two from ChartPorn: an interactive map showing the estimated effects of a 4 Celsius degree change in global temperatures and Climate Anomalies, 2007-09.

* Now we see the violence inherent in the system: Hundreds of billions in crime money knowingly laundered by banks during credit crunch.

The Observer reports that an estimated $352bn of drug and mafia money was laundered by the major banks at the peak of the credit crunch, while regulators turned a blind eye, since the highly liquid criminal underworld was the only source of the cash necessary to keep the banks’ doors open.

* ‘In the lawless mountain realms of Asia, a Yale professor finds a case against civilization.‘ Via MeFi.

In Zomia’s small societies, with their simple technologies, anti-authoritarian tendencies, and oral cultures, Scott sees not a world forgotten by civilization, but one that has been deliberately constructed to keep the state at arm’s length. Zomia’s history, Scott argues, is a rejection of the mighty lowland states that are seen as defining Asia. He calls Zomia a “shatter zone,” a place where people go to escape the raw deal that complex civilization historically has been for those at the bottom: the coerced labor and conscription into military service, the taxation for wars and pharaonic building projects, the epidemic diseases that came with intensive agriculture and animal husbandry.

* Nicholas Stephanopoulos on phasing out the filibuster. Via Matt Yglesias, who notes the real problem with this proposal:

If we actually were in a situation where Democrats were clamoring for a restoration of majority rule and Republicans were blocking it, then I think a clever compromise would be just what the doctor ordered. But as best I can tell only Tom Harkin has any real interest in doing this. A few public option stalwarts, like Sherrod Brown, have pressed for the use of reconciliation to do health care. But even on this proponents of majority rule seem to be a minority of the Democratic caucus. Which is to say that the issue is less that Republicans are insisting on the filibuster in order to preserve their ability to block legislation than it is that Democratsare insisting on a supermajority rule in order to preserve each individual member’s ability to make demands.

* And I’ve used this precise argument from xkcd many times with regard to both climate change and evolutionary biology. It’s logically sound, but, alas, gets few results.

John Zerzan, anarcho-primitivist superstar, and Jonathan Shockley (aka mr1001nights, his youtube moniker) have a discussion about a possible symbiosis between syndicalism and primitivism. This is quite shocking, as Zerzan has been virulently opposed to “the Left”, or red anarchism, i.e., social anarchism, libertarian socialism, anarcho-communism, and anarcho-syndicalism. Is Zerzan turning over a new-leaf? An interesting conversation. Below is the clip, plus links to both John Zerzan’s radio show, and one in which Shockley is a participant called the Authority Smashing! Hour.

Shockley’s The Authority Smashing! Hour

Zerzan’s Anarchy Radio

part of an ongoing series of columns I’ve written, reprinted from the TU Rambler.

November, 2009.
Most pharmaceutical ads I see usually say something about only being effective when combined with “proper diet and exercise.”  But what does that mean?  Last week we talked about eating healthy; this week, let’s talk about exercise.  Our culture seems to have an obsession with “getting ripped”, which I’m pretty sure is the male equivalent of girls starving themselves trying to look like Kate Moss, but instead we have protein shake-chugging guys going to the gym trying to look like men, at least the way a sculptor or an art director or Mtv says men should look.  But really, there’s no reason to try to become Ahnold Schwarzenegger.  When in life are you ever going to need to lift 400 pounds?

Like I said last week, if you want to see human beings at their height of physical fitness, you have to turn the clock back about 20,000 years.  If the lifestyles of modern-day hunter-gatherers are any indication, your ancestors were way more fit than you.  How’s this for analogy: Paleo-man is to ‘carved out of wood’ as you are to white bread.  Modern man is a flabby, out-of-shape wimp.  “But,” you protest, “I spend fifteen hours a week in the gym pumping iron and running on an elliptical machine!  Surely that makes me better than some hairy Ice Age brute.”

Yes, perhaps you are more outwardly muscular than Mr. Cro-Magnon Man.  But look at modern hunter-gatherers living on the savannah: none of them look like Kimbo Slice, or even Mr. T.  There is more to being healthy, fit, and trim than counting repetitions and bulking up and drinking Gatorade.  Our ancestors didn’t pencil in a block of time each day for ‘workout’.  Bushmen get their exercise in the course of their normal day, chasing gazelle, climbing trees, throwing spears or shooting a bow-and-arrow (chances are so did your great-great-grandfather, who probably had to chop wood, make tools, and plow his fields by hand).  While I’d like to be as hale as the former, I could happily settle for the latter.

Here’s a novel idea: instead of buying a Bowflex, buy (or even make!) a bow and learn to shoot it;  master some stairs instead of hopping on the Stairmaster; don’t run laps around the track, map out a route and take a jog around town (you might even take a bag and pick up trash along the way).

Human beings weren’t meant to get their exercise the way most people do now: under florescent lights, hooked up to a machine (identical to the one next to it), in front of a window, unable to feel the wind or the sun on your face.  We evolved in an ever-changing landscape, not separate from it.  A change of scenery can transform exercise from drudgery to fun, but the scene out the window of the [campus Athletic Center] rarely changes.

part of an ongoing series of columns I’ve written, reprinted from the TU Rambler.

November, 2009.
This week, let’s talk about food.  Most “go green how-to” articles will tell you to shop locally at farmer’s markets, to choose organic, pesticide-free produce, and eat ethically-raised, free-range meat.  This is fine, but for a poor college student, it’s Expensive!  Yes, pesticides in food are bad, but I believe that what are even worse are the foods and drinks which are essentially nothing but chemicals.  Don’t even get me started on corn syrup.  Have you looked at an ingredients list recently?  A box of my roommate’s chicken-flavored pasta and rice has almost the same things in it as a pouch of instant vegetable soup.  What the heck are thiamine mononirate or disodium inosinate or maltodextrin?  The reason these exist is preservation: our current industrial food system means that food packaged in California might be shipped to Maine, where it may sit on the shelf for months; the mysterious additives ensure a long shelf-life.

As an Anthropology student, I’ve a whole lot of my time at Transy talking about pre-agricultural societies.  And I’ve come to the conclusion that humans have never been healthier than we were about 20 or 30,000 years ago.  After that, we discovered agriculture, and it all starts to go downhill.  You see, back in our good ol’ hunter-gatherer days, our diet was varied, we got plenty of exercise, and we sure weren’t eating corn or bread.  Take a look at The Food Pyramid (the 1992 one most of us grew up with, the one with horizontal layers, not that weird new one where everything radiates from the top).  According to it, the foundation of our diet should be “6-11 servings of bread, cereal, rice, and pasta”: these didn’t exist until humans settled down, started farming, and built cities.  The switch to agriculture led to nutrient deficiency and modern diseases like diabetes, heart disease, and obesity (not to mention social stratification, organized religion, and state warfare).

So what can you do?  I’m not saying that you should immediately revert to a hunter-gatherer diet (but if you want to try, get ahold of me and we’ll talk), and I’m definitely not advocating the status-quo diet of soda and Doritos.  But start small—cut out the Twinkies and Gatorade.  Try eating in the style of our ancestors, snacking on fruits, nuts and berries throughout the day, with one big, varied supper at night.  Fiber and meat are great; a bit of dairy (another post-agriculture invention) now and then is good; even Ramen is fine, but pitch the flavor packet and throw the noodles in a hearty stew of meats and vegetables.

There’s a very different way of thinking that comes along with a healthy hundred thousand-year old way of eating.  You start to feel more HUMAN.

part of an ongoing series of columns I’ve written, reprinted from the TU Rambler.

May, 2009.

(This conclusion to “The Green Man Says”, Vol I comes hot on the heels of The Swine Flu and associated Chicken Little-esque pandemic paranoia.)

When I went home for Mayterm break last month, my librarian mom was reading a book called Life As We Knew It, which deals with the chaos that ensues when the moon’s orbit changes; narrated by a 16-year old girl, it’s basically Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging meets “The Day After Tomorrow”.  As someone interested in end-of-the-world scenarios, survival, and the estranged relationship between modern civilization and the natural world, this book seemed right up my alley, and I flew through it in about four long sittings.
While I’m sure it’s fine reading for the target audience of middle school girls, readers looking for an insight on survival strategies or the future of the human race would be sorely disappointed.  Up until the lunar cataclysm, the main character’s family makes absolutely no preparations; they spend the book living off a supply of canned goods bought in a panic after the disaster; and while the mother does try to grow a food garden, she only starts after the proverbial shit has hit the fan.
However, the author—whether or not she meant to—does show the reader the extent to which most people are painfully dependent on the infrastructure of our ‘civilization’ and disconnected from the natural world.  As a species, we Homo sapiens lived in kinship with nature for 100,000 years; now, as a consequence of shortsightedness and poor decisions stemming from our separation from nature (which only really began in the last 200 years or so) we might not survive another hundred years.
My main complaint with Life As We Knew It is this: the character and her family spend most of their time huddled inside their house waiting to be saved, believing that their world will eventually be getting back to normal, and they are completely unable to imagine a different, better world; they are content to live by the rules and norms of the ‘old’ one.  The late Michael Crichton once wrote that the only difference between a bear and a human is imagination; at this critical point in our species’ history, it is imperative now that we work to imagine a new future for ourselves, one that is actually sustainable*, because the present system—rooted in petroleum, consumption, and convenience—certainly isn’t.
“Get out of the new one if you can’t lend a hand, the times they are a-changing”.

*(For the inquisitive reader, looking for specifics, I point to the concept of Permaculture, which is probably the best middle ground between the two extremes of Primitivism (the Project Mayhem-style, all-out destruction of civilization) and the dead-end that, unless we make some big changes, is where we’re headed now).

part of an ongoing series of columns I’ve written, reprinted from the TU Rambler.

2 March 2009.
As part of Transylvania’s delegation to the 2009 PowerShift conference, I spent the last several days in our nation’s capitol, an experience which has illuminated much for me.  The city seems to consist entirely of white marble neoclassical buildings and brings to mind imperial Rome, built by architects who believed their monuments would last forever, only to have their empire fall within a few hundred years.  Such is our similar position: our current (I would like to say previous) unsustainable way of life, in which we see our species as immortal and believe that the world’s seemingly infinite resources are ours for the taking, can only end with our own destruction.  While exploring the National Mall, a friend and I wondered what would linger in a thousand years after humans check out.  Not much, we hoped; toppled columns and ruins among a young forest; the remains of the Washington Monument leaning at a 45-degree angle.

While I heard many speakers this weekend discuss the ideal (and very achievable) sustainable future—one which is brought about by nonviolent action and progressive legislation, powered by clean and renewable energy, and which justly incorporates marginalized groups—I heard no-one mention what I believe to be the key in the whole issue—the modern disconnect from the natural world; it seemed to me that we are attempting to fix the symptoms, and not the root problem.

One of PowerShift’s keynote speakers, Van Jones (named a TIME 2008 Environmental Hero), explained that focusing on just fixing our energy issues wouldn’t necessarily ensure survival for our world; we’ll just have solar tanks and geothermal fighter jets.  Climate change is not, he said, just a technological, political, legislative, or business challenge; it’s a moral challenge.

I was reminded of what Erik Reece (a professor at University of Kentucky) wrote in the conclusion to his 2006 book Lost Mountain:

“While [the] sense of kinship among all living things can be explained through molecular biology, it will only be a force for change, a moral force, if it is understood by the individual.  No one wants to be told what to do: turn off lights, drive less, recycle.  But if a desire to change the way one consumes limited resources comes out of an inner conviction, a deep feeling of conscience, then it is not too late for a real transformation of our culture.”

Ann Magnuson; image courtesy of papermag.com

When I originally started thinking about artists who might expand the definition of what a diva is, the first person who came to mind was the subject of this post. Who else but a diva could be seen in concert halls and magazines as well as museum exhibits, obscure sitcoms, and cultish b-movies? Campy, profane, versed in popular culture, obsessed with the fragmented nature of female personae, and tailed by a devoted audience, Magnuson definitely seems to meet the requirements of being diva.

Like Wynne Greenwood (aka Tracy + the Plastics), Magnuson made a name for herself through the available art scene, specifically by managing Club 57 in the East Village during the early 1980s. At the time, Club 57 — which originally claimed its residence in a church basement — was a burgeoning scene comprised of folks like Keith Haring, Kenny Scharf, the B-52s, Klaus Nomi, and Fab Five Freddy. Magnuson and her patrons were obsessed with the radioactive kitsch of their Cold War-era adolescence and she would often arrange theme nights like day-glo erotic art show and Elvis Presley hootenannies or turn the venue into a putt-putt golf or a tiki lounge. During this time, she also became a part of Pulsallama, a percussion-based girl group that Magnuson thought of as an anti-band rebelling against the “fashionable primitivism” Malcolm McLaren was espousing with Bow Wow Wow, who he was managing (re: manipulating) at the time. Magnuson had left the group by the time they made “The Devil Lives in My Husband’s Body,” but you can get a good sense of what they were about in the music video below.

A key trait for any diva to me seems to be the ability to inhabit various roles, sometimes in opposition to one another, through performance. Folks might be quick to offer up a better-known pop icons like Madonna, Christina Aguilera, and Beyoncé, but let’s not forget Magnuson who often differed from these women by using her chameleon-like ability to create characters that poked fun at female stereotypes, materialism, confessionalism, and the hollowness of fame. Pairing up with Tom Rubnitz, she put together “Made for Television” in 1981 for PBS’s Alive From Off Center. The 15-minute piece, which simulates late-night channel surfing, features believeable send-ups of televangelism, soap operas, and game shows with Magnuson playing all the parts. Particularly with regard to how hollow and alienating our collective fixation of fame can be, it reminds me of Eileen Maxson’s “Lost Broadcasts,” which depicts the artist as a reality show hopeful whose staggeringly candid audition tape is being fast-forwarded and talked over by a disinterested casting agent fielding a phone call.

I cannot locate ”Made For Television” online, but I have seen it in exhibition. If you hear about it coming to your town, I suggest you see it. If you find it on the Interwebz, share with the group.

In the mid-1980s, Magnuson got together with Mark Kramer to form Bongwater, a band where this kind of performance was all too common.   

Ever the actress, she would off-set duties with Bongwater with turns in the ABC Jamie Lee Curtis/Richard Lewis sitcom Anything But Love, The Adventures of Pete and Pete, and The Hunger as well as Susan Seidelman’s beloved Desperately Seeking Susan and Making Mr. Right (which totally looks like a movie I should see).

In 1995, Magnuson released her first solo album, The Luv Show, which was apparently inspired by the mad-cap narratives, sex-crazed vixens, and pop-art shine of Russ Meyer movies. It certainly explains the cover, though no explanation needs to be given for songs like “Miss Pussy Pants.”

Ann Magnuson, ever the saucy minx; image courtesy of salon.com

While Magnuson was never going to be a mainstream talent, it’s heartening to know that our media culture had room for a smart, cheeky lady all too willing to represent in the margins. Actually, they still seem to have the room for her, as Magnuson released her second solo album Pretty Songs & Ugly Stories in 2006, embarks on cabaret tours, and does occasional film work. More importantly, Magnuson seems all too willing to deconstruct the very idea of the diva, who she is, who she pretends to be, who she represents, and where her markers of identity blur and splinter. She might be Cindy Sherman’s kind of diva. She’s definitely my kind of diva.

ZAZEn chapter six-Aerial Map of the Carnage- is up now —pass it around…

oconomowoc, wisconsin, seen from the air courtesy of the wisconsin historical society

Okay, did that link work? Aw hell.HEre some more thoughts on all this…

It’s strange to be running into ZAZEN now because  I am  deep in work on another novel. In this one I decided to take all the things that were problematic for me in ZAZEN and only do those things. Which reminded me of a fundamental choice I contend with daily: Is it better to work on what you don;t do well and get better, ferreting out your weaknesses and slavishly harassing them? OR is it better to develop what you do well and pursue it into obsession.   For years my answer was a combination of both–do what you don;t do well AND pursue it into obsession. But then I got better at what I didn’t do well and was still pretty half-baked at what I did well…and it all got very confusing…

Chapter 5 is UP! More to come this week.  Including some kind of blogover (Blog+Makeover).

a man made of pencil lead, courtesy of A5 magazine

I was chastised for not posting a link to ZAZEN. I thought I did.  So now it is time to confess my computer ineptness. This is also why I am jailed in this particularly unaesthetic wordpress look–and why I can’t figure out how to post other pieces of permanent material on the useless siding. (look to the left of the this text. look to the right: useless siding). I seem to have a 10 second fuse with computers and photographs, which is why the one above me looks like it does. It was taken on a phone. Stefan Jecusco (amazing musician and the man who did the cover of ZAZEN) says I look like an old sailor. I think I look dour. Anyway….regarding yesterday’s survey…my vote is Effie Briest. Anna Karenina deserved to throw herself in front of a train for her lack of imaginative scope. If Emma Bovary lived today she would be Anna Nichol Smith, or at least have her own reality tv show. Effie, however, dreams she hears the gowns of the dead trailing across the imaginary dancefloor upstairs and has a damn fine sense of sexual immediacy.

I think only I am taking my survey.

It’s been strange to watch the posts come up on Arthur. I try not to reread them as I send off the pdfs or I would certainly lose myself in another flurry of rewrites. It’s great to see Stefan Jecusco’s Rat Queen cover on Arthur every day though. (For those who don’t know, the Rat Queen is coming…)

And, as promised, I will try to write something every day, or mos at least. I can’t promise it will be of any interest to the world at large but I’ll start with this: of the dead adulteresses, Emma Bovary, Effie Briest, and Anna Karenina who really deserved to live? One? All? I’ll post my vote tomorrow. In the meantime, the first four chapters of ZAZEN are up. Please pass them around to friends.

http://www.arthurmag.com

Maybe you have come here because you have read some of my novel Zazen through Arthurmagazine, or maybe because you are lost and wandering in a cyber forest (follow the hag with the fruit)–either way, bear with me as I try to figure this thing out . Like everyone else, I had a million thoughts today. I’m not convinced any should be written down. More about rats and geology another time. thnx.

Let me preface this entry by saying that in the middle of writing this I went back and titled this “(part 1?)”. The reason being that as I was writing I came to the realization that there is a whole lot that can be said about this all and I suspect I will probably get into more specific details of this subject in later entries. Let me also say that my train of thought more often than not tends to jump around, so if this is all incoherent, I apologize. Also feel free to ask me questions. 

I have been trying to sum up my thoughts in response to the Gathering Around the Unhewn Stone conference I attended, anarcho-primitivism, civilization, etc. The very basic premise of this conference was that civilization has dug itself into a hole and we need to rethink how we live. But it’s all simply too complicated, and any one criticism can itself be criticized. Whether or not civilization is inherently evil is beyond me to evaluate. So, true to form, in effort to delve to the root of problem, I am ever seeking to simplify things and evaluate the basics of what I believe is wrong with our modern day society, (I should interject here and state that I personally talk about the ills of society as opposed to civilization, because A. the opinion of anyone who criticizes civilization is automatically discredited, and B. Evaluating civilization is so massive of a task that I know I would get in over my head, and I can be more specific in clearly evaluating certain elements of society (similarly I wouldn’t call myself an anarchist, or a primitivist)). 

I agree with a lot of the anarcho-primitivist “movement”, as it were, however I wonder if maybe anarcho-primitivism is nothing more than another system trying to make life as pain-free as possible. Of course, anarcho-primitivism’s criticism of civilization is that we don’t need a system. But in efforts to detach ourselves from the current system, are we merely advocating a different one? Systems run on ideals- ideals that say if everything was a certain way, life would be perfect, or at least better. The ideal that everyone should be free, for example (of course any system that claims to advocate freedom for all is directly at odds with itself). But what I wonder is, does God’s kingdom run on an idealistic system? 

Evangelical christianity got a whole hell of a lot wrong. But the idea that God wants to be in relationship with us is something that, although having been desperately misconstrued, is something I think it got right. “In the beginning” we were in perfect communion with God, with each other, and with the earth. Now whether or not you see “the fall” as symbolic/metaphoric or as literal happenings doesn’t undermine or determine the truth of the matter- that we were meant to be in perfect community. What exactly this means or looks like is something that is hard for us to understand, as we have have grown up in a society where living God’s will perfectly is impossible. We have become so ingrained with the world’s idea of the way things are, it is impossible for us to look at things unveiled. We think in the most simplistic of terms, “Oh in the Garden of Eden, everything was perfect and there was no pain”. So in modern society when we try to figure out how to return to this painless lifestyle we come to some desperate conclusions. We think living pain-free means not being indebted to anyone or anything. We think, “Oh we have to be self-sufficient and self-reliant. We shouldn’t mine or use natural resources because we’re killing the earth. We shouldn’t exploit third world labor.” etc.  But I don’t think that’s what God wanted. We’re not meant to be perfect individuals capable of living in our own little worlds by ourselves. While it is notable that we usually think it’s okay to give to and help others, we rarely want to rely on others for our own needs. This is evident from family life to politics. 

However, we’re not meant to live alone. That’s not the way ANY one is. Not even God. We all have an intrinsic need and desire for community. That means we’re going to be indebted to each other. But indebtedness doesn’t equal pain. It’s a humble acknowledgment of the limit of our capabilities and a request for relationship.

So bringing this back to civilization versus anarcho-primitivism. Civilization/our society sees our indebtedness and tries to address it with a system. All of these systems are flawed, from capitalism to socialism, democracy to fascism (and I daresay it’s a short-step from one to the other). These systems try to evaluate the whole and set up guidelines that will solve and fix the “problem” of indebtedness. Anarcho-primitivism at its best, sees these systems as detrimental to community. Or at least I do.

Rather than connecting people and creating relationships, civilization takes the place of relationships. Instead of being in communion with the earth or with the farmer down the road, we can just go to the supermarket and buy food without worrying about how it was grown/produced/obtained. Instead of living with the poor and needy we can set up systems to “help” like socialist economics- never mind the fact that systems are what divide people into poor and rich strata in the first place. Instead of answering to their responsibility to indigenous persecution, empires like America set up things like Native American reservations where we can compartmentalise and deal with our issues from a comfortable distance. Instead of conversing with Mexican immigrants to determine how we live peacefully in coexistence even though that might include some self-sacrifice, we hide behind the veil of legality. Instead of acknowledging the differences between races and cultures, and learning to live in relationship, we seek to adopt a single mindset that will eradicate the need for such a relationship. Instead of addressing the core differences between nations, and learning to live in respectful self-sacrificial international relationship, we seek to globalize and control the world. Instead of thinking about why nations don’t get along, we seek to bomb everyone until there’s only a single like minded people group left. Instead of living in communion with God we set up formulas to being saved and certain rules for self-impressed piety or self-deprecating false humility. Instead of living in communion with each other we set up religious systems that homogenize peoples into single like-minded cultures that welcome all- all who assimilate. 

My belief is God’s kingdom isn’t founded on such systems. He had several opportunities to set up a system (In the desert with Satan, palm-sunday, etc). He also didn’t set up a religion. That’s not to say that religions are invalid. But religions are just more systems to understand God. Jesus came to free us from religion, not instigate it. He walked with his people and was in relationship with them. The pharisees were always trying to trick/trap Jesus by asking him legalistic questions about religion and politics, (The stories of working on the sabbath and of paying taxes are two that immediately come to mind). But he always evaded these questions with profound statements. That’s not to say he didn’t have anything to say about these things (although some would think otherwise). I think his point was that systems of any kind try to replace the need for community and relationship that God intended us to live in. Jesus delivered us from this bondage to the world, and brought us back to that communion. When mankind sets up all these systems of government, material production, technological advancement, etc, it is essentially saying, “We don’t need God and we don’t need each other.” In todays society, it has become more apparent than ever that this mindset is false.

For all of our efforts, we have only made things worse. Our life is a non-stop war. In war, one of act violence must be supported by another, and another, until eventually everything gets so blown out of proportion and you have a mess worse than whatever problem you had to begin with. It’s like when you lie to your parents when you’re young. You tell one lie, and another to cover that up, and another to cover that up, and another, and another. Anarcho-primitivism says this phenomenon is what occurs in every aspect of civilization. From medicine to politics. Whether or not these systems are inherently evil I cannot determine. I do know, however, that they have degenerated into an ungodly mess. And we need to return the basic need and commandment of community.  I don’t know if the anarcho-primitivist movement is successfully accomplishing this but it’s something I am personally striving for. I should also throw out there, however, the fact that this endeavor isn’t anything new and several notable people like St. Francis and Mother Theresa saw the ills of society and strived to live radical lifestyles that sought peaceful, honest, genuine, community. Community with God, His creation, and with each other. 

On the back of my program for the conference was a quote by American Activists, and I think I will wrap this entry up with it: “If you have come to help me, you are  wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.”

Jared Diamond, author of Guns, Germs, and Steel and a professor at UCLA, writes in this article for Discover magazine on the curse of agriculture.

Diamond writes that the diet of indigenous people is often superior to that of the neolithic diet, the latter of which would already be far superior to the average diet of simply large proportions of unhealthy food that people today consume; and these indigenous, or paleolithic, diets are on practiced on, “some of the world’s worst real estate.” Definitely a far cry from the original habitat of indigenous people before being forced to new lands that require new adaptations, often sacrifices, and longer hours of work. Though even with these setbacks, indigenous people by and large live a healthier life and work less than those living in the grip of civilization.

Further, paleopathological comparison of pre and post agricultural people goes to show that post-agriculturalists exhibited a fast crash in average height, the presence of malnutrition and iron-deficiency anemia, a noticeable increase in infectious diseases, and degenerative conditions of the spine from physical labor.

The temptation of agriculture is the chance to increase population sizes, but we’ve traded quality for quantity.

FREDY PERLMAN

This is the reaction to the news of Paul Baran’s death of an American pursuing graduate studies in economics at the University of Belgrade, Yugoslavia.

The MONTHLY REVIEW with the news that Paul Baran is dead arrived in Belgrade yesterday (May 15th).

To those of us who were young enough to consider Baran a teacher and not a colleague, he was what Thomas Mann called an “archetype.” Offered the narrow experience of the “well defined scientific project,” we are able to resist only because of the force of Baran’s profound experience. His esteem for the critical intellect, his demonstration that the field of this intellect is not an academic discipline but the world of suffering and struggle, his proof that today as well as in the time of Vico, Hegel, and Marx, man can grasp and change what man constructed, are the instruments with which we evaluate all other “methodologies.”

Baran taught us how to use our “critical techniques”; he shatteringly demonstrated that techniques are toys if they are not addressed to the essential, if they do not unmask the forces of exploitation, physical and psychological.

Perhaps above all, he tried to teach us that there is no “intellectual compromise,” that between the critical and the servile intellect there are no shades. This is the hardest lesson of all. It means that as soon as we get an inkling of exploitation, our task is to explode it-even if we find it accidentally and where we weren’t looking for it, even if it means losing the post at the institute or the support of our party. In this we had counted on the support of Baran.

= = =

from Monthly Review (March 1965, vol 16 #11) Special issue: “Paul Baran (1910–1964) A Collective Portrait”, p 125.

Fiqah over at Racialicious and Possum Stew has an extensive, fascinating and much-needed take-down of Harlem gospel tours, from a personal perspective.

As you may know, there are plenty of African-American, largely Baptist, churches in Harlem which are well-known for their excellent (primarily gospel) music.  It’s not necessary to be a believer to appreciate the talent and incredible sound, and Fiqah herself describes how she’s not religious, but rather goes to church with a friend occasionally just to appreciate the music.  This doesn’t seem at all problematic to me; a few people going occasionally, behaving respectfully toward church community members, and appreciating good music can only be positive.

However, to make money, some churches have opened up to “gospel tours,” which essentially means white Americans and European and Asian tourists paying money to come in and hear the music.  But Fiqah describes some downright disrespectful behavior: nonstop talking, cell phone conversations, and worst of all, acting like the service and the music were spectacles to be gawked at instead of human beings making some good sounds in the service of their beliefs.

When people’s experiences on these tours have been written up, it sounds uncomfortably like old-school ethnomusicology (read: “I went to a faraway place with strange brown-skinned natives and listened to their crazy music.  They are so sensual and primitive!”):

I meet Tim Rawlins at the Memorial Baptist church choir practise. He’s rare proof of the fact that white men can sing gospel. He says I’ve got to surrender to the music – feel it – and forget I’m English.

Tim: “What I like about gospel music, is that it breaks from that old European tradition which separates intellect and reason from feeling and really in Gospel music you feel with great thought and you think with great feeling…”

That probably means loosening up physically too. When the elderly women start to practice I find myself entranced watching the soloist, Lonnie Gray. She’s 77 years old but she’s out there, her face enraptured, her hips swaying, moving with the rhythm – feeling it.

Please, spare me.

The takeaway: respectfully appreciating, enjoying, potentially participating in, learning about music of other communities, and hopefully thereby building relationships across communities = good.  Fetishizing those communities and reinforcing existing problematic power structures = emphatically not good.

Ethnomusicology has largely moved on from this approach; maybe we need to be doing more as a discipline to help educate mainstream society on respectful, egalitarian ways to learn about musical communities.

Am citit articolul de mai jos, am zâmbit cu durere văzând cât de sugestivă e poza (şi nu e singura poza la fel de sugestivă pe care am văzut-o, şi sunt convins că ai văuut şi tu poze de-astea), şi probabil acelaşi lucru ai făcut şi tu, ai zâmbit. Ne amuzăm de stupiditatea situaţiei, facem haz de necaz, că se pare că e singurul lucru pe care îl facem. Nu zic “îl PUTEM face” ci zic îl facem. Asta mi-a trecut prin gând: dacă putem face mai mult, ce-i de făcut? Până când perseverăm în nesimţire, mizerie, hoţie, minciună, primitivism, aşa cum spune titlul?

“Stim cu totii cat de departe suntem, la propriu si la figurat, de lumea civilizata. Incepand de la infrastructura pana la comportamentul si mentalitatea oamenilor, Romania este una dintre cele mai primitive tari ale Europei. [...]

Romania iti da impresia ca, in fapt, majoritatea romanilor dezvolta chiar o placere in a trai astfel, ca jungla salbatica in care isi scalda viata de zi cu zi o mare parte a locuitorilor acestui tinut este mediul natural al poporului roman”… citeşte tot pe Ziare.com

poză găsită AICI

RU

• Jekaterina Moskalyova / Ekmos Art
• Transpersonal paintings / Surrealism / Abstraction / Primitivism / Meditative drawing /Spontaneous and simultaneous drawing / Graphics / Cartoons / Painting on silk / Textiles / Painting on walls and furniture
• Born in Latvia. By nature she is melancholic.  She loves silence, night, rain, forest, poppies, animals. She loves her boyfriend. She does not like when someone ignores her or is not paying attention.  She hates lies.  Recently she realized that she dislikes therapy.  Despite the fact that there was time when she admired it.  She loves when her biggest dreams come true.
• She made her first drawing when she was 8 or 9 years old. She loved reading comics about Micky Mouse. And her favorite character was Donald Duck.
• She chose painting because she likes it.  It is like a tool – sometimes to spill out your soul to the canvas. Or something that disturbs you. Sometimes – it’s a tool of memorializing happy and positive moments of your life.  She prefers surrealism. Psychedelia.
• She never had thought about her own ideal painting or model. She does not think that it’s that essential. Itself the idea of “ideal painting”, “ideal model” – sounds silly to me. Every person is able to see something important for him in any image. “Every person hes his own idea of what’s ideal.”
• She will never draw something she can’t see.  We mostly draw something we see.. even if sometimes it’s an awful rape scene.  Sometimes it can be – colorful, filled with love and harmony.
• She says: “To tell you the truth I don’t think I am a painter. I am just drawing what I have inside me”
• All her works are mostly psychedelic (those are usually one’s which are not made on a request, just those which i paint for myself) and are full of expressions, they may sometimes be absurd, illogical, sometimes naive or frightening.  In general it’s a whole world, someone may like it, someone may disgust it.  Jekaterina is happy for any reaction.

You can find her at:

Ekmos-Art

   Everyone is excited now about the proposed initiatives to reform mental health care, and though there are numerous references to “mental health services” in H.R. 3200, I have seen little or no discussion about the debates within the fields, for instance, who exactly is qualified to mess with our brains and endocrine systems by treating everything from marital spats to incipient schizophrenia, OCD, or the numerous “personality disorders” covered in DSM IV (soon to be DSM V: I can’t wait). According to the House bill under consideration, mental health services are to be reimbursed as long as the provider has either a doctorate or a master’s degree (i.e., is a clinical psychologist or a social worker), has had two years of supervision in treating clients, and is licensed by the state. I have already asked one psychiatrist friend to comment on how M.D.s are viewing these proposals, and know from personal experience and study in both older practices and more recent cultural history treatments of “madness” (heavily influenced by Michel Foucault) that there is zero agreement among “counselors” (as H.R. 32oo calls these providers) as to what causes mental illness, let alone how to treat, manage, or cure it/them. Meanwhile the Foucauldians instruct the hip young at the better universities that madness is a social construction invented by the bourgeoisie who want to control everyone else. And the writing of history itself is under suspicion: it is a narrative “written by the plebs” to punish geniuses like himself.

    Readers of my prior blogs will notice that all of them deal either directly or tangentially with how we feel and act/don’t act in the world, and how we identify the source of evil or account for our own unhappiness or failure, often blaming “the Jews” or modern women (these are conflated in the idea of the femme fatale). Like Freud, I take instruction from the arts, for the major literary figures of the last several centuries were all concerned with what passes for sanity, adjustment, or vigorous, righteous resistance to arbitrary authority, and one recurring theme is the incarceration by conservative families of their dissident young)–a major theme in early nineteenth-century literature.. In this one, short I hope, I want to comment on  what I learned from reading passages from Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain (1922), particularly in one of the debates between “Naphta” a Jew turned authoritarian Jesuit, and Settembrini, an optimistic bourgeois humanist who believes in amelioration, health, and progress. (Mann is obviously arguing with himself, trying to reconcile or at least examine the warring parts of his own personality: read Dr. Faustus as another case study of Mann’s preoccupation with this theme, as was Herman Melville before him.) Here is an excerpt from Magic Mountain:

 [Hans Castorp thinks that “disease was unhuman”:] “On the contrary, Naphta hastened to say. Disease was very human indeed. For to be man was to be ailing. Man was essentially ailing, his state of unhealthiness was what made him man. There were those who wanted to make him “healthy,” to to make him “go back to nature,” when, the truth was, he never had been “natural.” All the propaganda carried on today by the prophets of nature, the experiments in regeneration, the uncooked food, fresh-air cures, sun-bathing, and so on, the whole Rousseauian paraphernalia, had as its goal nothing but the dehumanization, the animalizing of man. They talked of “humanity,” of nobility—but it was the spirit alone that distinguished man, as a creature largely divorced from nature, largely opposed to her in feeling, from all other forms of organic life. In man’s spirit, then, resided his true nobility and his merit—in his state of disease, as it were; in a word, the more ailing he was, by so much was he the more man. The genius of disease was more human than the genius of health. How, then, could one who posed as the friend of man shut his eyes to these fundamental truths concerning man’s humanity? Herr Settembrini had progress ever on his lips: was he aware that all progress, is so far as there was such a thing, was due to illness, and to illness alone? In other words, to genius, which was the same thing? Had not the normal, since time was, lived on the achievements of the abnormal? Men consciously and voluntarily descended into disease and madness, in search of knowledge which, acquired by fanaticism, would lead back to health; after the possession and use of it had ceased to be conditioned by that heroic and abnormal act of sacrifice. That was the true death on the cross, the true Atonement.” [Knopf, 1968 edition, pp. 465-66]

     I was astonished to read this paragraph, for it gave me a new clue as to why Melville had written to Hawthorne shortly after he completed Moby-Dick, “I have written a wicked book, and feel as spotless as the lamb.” And does not “crazy” Ahab carry “a crucifixion in his face”? As writer, Melville’s primitivist descent into madness (into the world controlled by the Devil?) accomplished several things for him: 1. as in Typee, he could safely criticize his conservative family and certain missionaries from a distance; but 2. as romantic artist he took the risk of destroying religion, and religion was the route to social cohesion and conservative notions of “order.” And it must be said here that “Naphta” and his predecessors (Nietzsche) knew very little about real “madness” and its multiple causation in genetic inheritance, belief systems that distort reality (and somewhat described in prior blogs here), overwhelming stress, and other factors that physicians have studied and continue to explore with emphasis on the physiology of the brain.

    And remember R. D. Laing and the 1960s-70s vogue for his romantic views of madness as a source of connection with the real world? I was reminded too of Diderot’s primitivism in his Supplement to the Voyage of Bougainville (centuries before Laing’s ravings), a fantasy of life in Tahiti where there are no sexual prohibitions whatsoever. Which takes me to the 60s counter-culture/New Left appropriation of primitivism in their astonishing and still existing devotion to rock ‘n roll and/or hip-hop culture as a form of rebellion and self-assertion against the hypocritical dowdy and classical-music, old-standard loving prior generations–the generation they blamed for the Viet Nam war and the election of Richard Nixon.

    It is my view that primitivism is no solution to racism, but rather a ratification of the old stereotype conveyed by Diderot: that (perpetual?) adolescents  can escape “surplus repression” (Marcuse), or the Performance Principle (Freud) by going native. But in the elevation of black criminal elements (e.g. the Panthers or the Afrocentric pseudo-historians, one of whom repeatedly produced the viciously anti-Western and antisemitic “Afrikan Mental Liberation Weekend” for KPFK in Los Angeles), they are maintaining the stereotype of the black person as savage yet entertaining minstrel, a minstrel supposedly ragging on the upper classes. So sensible black intellectuals who identify with a supposedly (jewified) puritanical and genteel middle-class and the American Dream are seen as uncool killjoys and can be safely ignored.

   The primitivist strategy, like pornography, is controversial. For its defenders, though appearing crazy,  primitivism is a harmless catharsis for anti-social impulses. I suppose one would have to study individuals and their ideological leanings, including the ability to form and maintain enduring attachments, or conversely, to change their minds as they travel along the road to “objectivity” to make inroads on this judgment. (See Lippmann’s writing on this beneficent transformation, emphasized in my last blog.) More later as I survey existing debates within the field of mental health. Surely the narratives that are constructed for us by our families and teachers relating to our own biographies, to the national biography, and to America’s relations to other groups or societies, are of concern for all workers striving to enhance what is all too loosely described as mental health.

Edward Carpenter, in his short work Civilisation: Its Cause and Cure, aptly likens civilisation to that of a disease. Just as our bodies encounter and improve its defenses against diseases, so must we encounter civilisation:

In order then, at this point in his evolution, to advance any farther, man must first fall; in order to know, he must lose. In order to realise what health is, how splendid and glorious a possession, he must go through all the long negative experience of disease; in order to know the perfect social life, to understand what power and happiness to mankind are involved in their true relation to each other, he must learn the misery and suffering which came from mere individualism and greed; and in order to find his true Manhood, to discover what a wonderful power it is, he must first lose it — he must become a prey and a slave to his own passions and desires — whirled away like Phaeton by the horses which he cannot control.

Carpenter looks at our current situation not pessimistically, but with acceptance in acknowledgment of its necessity.  It is merely a historical stage that humanity must pass through in order to improve upon itself.

As a musician and aspiring ethnomusicologist, I’d like to take some time to discuss primitive music.

The following is an except from Primitive Music: An Inquiry into the Origin and Development of Music, Songs, Instruments, Dances, and Pantomimes of Savage Races:

It is with music as with language: however far we
might descend in the order of primitive people, we should
probably find no race which did not exhibit at least some
trace of musical aptitude, and sufficient understanding to
turn it to account. In fact it would appear that among
races of the very lowest order of civilisation there are
frequently to be found some which have more musical
capacity than many of a higher order.

It has been pointed out by various primitivist groups that primitive music is often times very complex, even when compared to western art music. The western tradition of music in fact did away with some of the complexity within “primitive” music. With the widespread use of the Well-Tempered tuning system, the majority of music because an extended trip from a I chord to a V chord and back, and the rhythmic complexity and mixed meters seen in folk music (particularly in Eastern Europe) were done away with.

Book cover

Man the Hunted is a recent anthropological work by biological anthropologist Dr. Donna Hart, and physical anthropologist Dr. Robert Sussman. While at odds with the typical conception of “Man the Hunter“, it does refute the assertion that humans are fundamentally violent and prone to war, at least in a grand historical view.

Were our ancestors gentle savages or bloodthirsty brutes? They were social animals; they were primates; they were complex beings in their own right who were not necessarily headed in a foreordained direction. They were trying to adapt to their environment and reproduce successfully. Most primate societies and individuals exhibit cooperation as a social tool, not aggression. Success is not synonymous with brutality; it comes through finesse and friendship.

We think early hominids were prey items for a great number of large, fierce, hungry creatures. Man the Hunted needed to make friends (not enemies) and supporters (not slaves), and needed to work together with females (not dominate them).

I found this chapter important for furthering the exposition of the importance of cooperation not solely amongst primitive man, but primitive man and women; that recent male domination over females is a recent occurrence to societal norms.