ozen, alone and divorced from any
real sense of reality, more often
than not drunk and experiencing a variety of pseudopsychedelic mental
strains and stresses, all the while ensconced in the relative safety of
his humble hovel (always staring fixedly, and more than partially
aroused, at that empty blank offwhite wall above his computer), our
agent began to experience an inversion that, typically, was, as it
turned out, always-already there. Slowly drawn towards the
realization that
the world he was describing and living through was both composed of and
best approached through other people's words while his own identity,
his own text as it were, formed only a series of epigraphical
commentaries on this world, he found himself through no fault of his
own swallowed up by the inevitably marginalized aspect of his
own text. Once this happened, our man in the field found himself
in a situation where he himself became reduced to existing, as best he
could, as the peripheral gloss on a text not originally his-- but one which had been originally,
or
so he had initially assumed, both by and of him-- this
phenomenon
having its origins in a process that was at least partially of his own
making, his own words and world and life being reduced to a marginal
introductory commentary on a much greater (yet simultaneously
infinitely more trivial) work that, being not of and by him still
somehow allowed a filtered portion of his own identity to shine through
a fractured morass that ultimately became nothing more than a scattered
assemblage of
randomly-collected, unevenly (in)significant data. The senses of
madness and fragmentation (cloaks of many colours, in all honesty) that
this inexorable psychic process occasioned in the hero of these words
were, in their least
aspect, the
amplification of a perceived and no doubt thoroughly "verified"
ontological travesty occasioning, on a good day, several hours of
seriocomic, yet no less than sincere, if not hyperbolic, bouts of
writhing, howling, teeth-gnashing, sky-bound yawps of "FUC
-- uage is the Mouse of Being: the
trails and traces of the late Bria
The past is so sad, the present is worse
Thank heaven we haven't a future
-- Momus, "Sempreverde"
I love writing
Knowing how to write is very important
If you can't write, how are you going to tell somebody the bad news?
-- Sally Brown
The human body is an image on screen talking
-- William S. Burroughs, The
Ticket That Exploded
We think it our duty to warn the public that, in spite of the title of
this work and of what the Editor says of it in his Preface, we do not
guarantee the authenticity of this narrative, and have even strong
reasons for believing that it is but a romance. It seems to us,
moreover, that the author, who yet seems to have sought after
verisimilitude, has himself destroyed that, and maladroitly, owing to
the period which he has chosen in which to place these
adventures. Certainly, several of the personages whom he brings
on his stage have morals so sorry that it were impossible to believe
that they lived in our century, in this century of philosophy, where
the light shed on all sides has rendered, as everyone knows, all men so
honorable, all women so modest and reserved.
Our opinion is, therefore,
that if the adventures related in this work possess a foundation of
truth, they could not have occurred save in other places and other
times, and we must censure our author, who, seduced apparently by his
hope of being more diverting by treating rather of his own age and
country, has dared to clothe in our customs and our costumes a state of
morals so remote from us.
-- Laclos, Les Liasons
Dangereuses
Every project is a
camouflaged form of slavery.
-- E.M. Cioran, Drawn and
Quartered
I hear new news every day, and those ordinary rumours of war, plagues,
fires, inundations, thefts, murders, massacres, meteors, comets,
spectrums, prodigies, apparitions, of towns taken, cities besieged in
France, Germany, Turkey, Persia, Poland, etc., daily musters and
preparations, and such-like, which these tempestuous times afford,
battles fought, so many men slain, monomachies, shipwrecks, piracies
and sea-fights; peace, leagues, stratagems, and fresh alarums. A vast
confusion of vows, wishes, actions, edicts, petitions, lawsuits, pleas,
laws, proclamations, complaints, grievances are daily brought to our
ears. New books every day, pamphlets, corantoes, stories, whole
catalogues of volumes of all sorts, new paradoxes, opinions, schisms,
heresies, controversies in philosophy, religion, etc. Now come
tidings of weddings, maskings, mummeries, entertainments, jubilees,
embassies, tilts and tournaments, trophies, triumphs, revels, sports,
plays: then again, as in a new shifted scene, treasons, cheating
tricks, robberies, enormous villainies in all kinds, funerals, burials,
deaths of princes, new discoveries, expeditions: now comical, then
tragical matters. To-day we hear of new lords and officers
created,
to-morrow of some great men deposed, and then again of fresh honours
conferred; one is let loose, another imprisoned; one purchaseth,
another breaketh; he thrives, his neighbour turns bankrupt; now plenty,
then again dearth and famine; one runs, another rides, wrangles,
laughs, weeps, etc. Thus I daily hear, and such-like, both
private
and public news; amidst the gallantry and misery of the world--
jollity,
pride, perplexities and cares, simplicity and villainy; subtlety,
knavery, candour and integrity, mutually mixed and offering
themselves--
I rub on privus privatus;
as I have still lived, so I now continue,
statu quo prius, left
to a solitary life, and mine own domestic
discontents: saving that sometimes, ne quid mentiar, as
Diogenes went
into the city and Democritus to the haven to see fashions, I did for
my recreation now and then walk abroad, look into the world, and could
not choose but make some little observation, non tam sagax observator,
ac simplex recitator, not as they did, to scoff or laugh at all,
but
with a mixed passion.
-- Robert Burton, The
Anatomy of Melancholy
Where steeples crash in fire and thunder
Where sheets of steel obscure the land
Where word and sense are torn asunder
Here was the place I chose to stand
Just when I think I'm going under
I remain.
-- Brian Eno, "Going Under"
In the morning I walked to the bank. I went to the automated
teller machine to check my balance. I inserted my card, entered
my secret code, tapped out my request. The figure on the screen
roughly corresponded to my independent estimate, feebly arrived at
after long searches through documents, tormented arithmetic.
Waves of relief and gratitude flowed over me. The system had
blessed my life. I felt its support and approval. The
system hardware, the mainframe sitting in a locked room in some distant
city. What a pleasing interaction. I sensed that something
of deep personal value, but not money, not that at all, had been
authenticated and confirmed.
-- Don DeLillo, White Noise
The ground on which our life prospects are presumed to rest is
admittedly shaky-- as are our jobs and the companies that offer them,
our partners and networks of friends, the standing we enjoy in wider
society and the self-esteem and self-confidence that come with
it. "Progress", once the most extreme manifestation of radical
optimism and a promise of universally shared and lasting happiness, has
moved all the way to the opposite, dystopian and fatalistic pole of
anticipation: it now stands for the threat of a relentless and
inescapable change that instead of auguring peace and respite portends
nothing but continuous crisis and strain and forbids a moment of
rest. Progress has turned into a sort of endless and
uninterrupted game of musical chairs in which a moment of inattention
results in irreversible defeat and irrevocable exclusion. Instead
of great expectations and sweet dreams, "progress", evokes an insomnia
full of nightmares of "being left behind"-- of missing the train, or
falling out of the window of a fast accelerating vehicle.
-- Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid
Times
I slept in the sun the other day
I thought I was fine
Everything seemed perfect
Till I had you on my mind
I tried to love you
I did all that I could
I wish that the bad now
Would finally turn into good
If I could kiss you now
I'd kiss you now again and again
I don't know where I begin
And where you end
-- Moby, "Where You End"
NOY!!!
-- LocoRoco
We believe that we invent symbols. The truth is that they invent
us; we are their creatures, shaped by their hard, defining edges.
When soldiers take their oath they are given a coin, an asimi stamped
with the profile of the Autarch. Their acceptance of that coin is
their acceptance of the special duties and burdens of military
life-- they are soldiers from that moment, though they may know nothing
of the management of arms. I did not know that then, but it is a
profound mistake to believe that we must know of such things to be
influenced by them, and in fact to believe so is to believe in the most
debased and superstitious kind of magic. The would-be sorcerer
alone has faith in the efficacy of pure knowledge; rational people know
that things act of themselves or not at all.
-- Gene Wolfe, Shadow of the
Torturer
A prophet predicted a space probe
That predicted the start of a world
An impossibly remote opportunity
A flash of the dice in the game of chance
Played by a lonely young girl
Then came a messiah, a second messiah
A third messiah then another messiah
Then everything changed
Signal to noise, boys will be boys
And girls will be boys
Increment is decrement, Christ is anti-Christ
And so on and so on-- to cry is to laugh
There are multiplications and variations
There is no true path
-- Momus, "Cibachrome Blue"
Once sealed in this writing, once and for all, the Saying
à-Dieu crosses in one word, but to infinity, greeting and
the
promise, welcome and separation: the welcome at the heart of
separation, of holy separation. At the moment of death, but also
in the encounter with the other at this very moment, in the gesture of
welcoming-- and always to infinity: Adieu.
-- Jacques Derrida, Adieu to
Emmanuel Levinas
You may assume that it is impossible to love a nonhuman semiotic
ghost. But think twice, and you will also understand that it is
our increasing commitment to high-tech media that enables us to find
sexuality not only in humans but also in nonhuman agents created from
software.
-- Takayuki Tatsumi, Full
Metal Apache
For even if we have the sensation of being always enveloped in,
surrounded by our own soul, still it does not seem a fixed and
immovable prison; rather do we seem to be borne away with it, and
perpetually struggling to transcend it, to break out into the world,
with a perpetual discouragement as we hear endlessly all around us that
unvarying sound which is not an echo from without, but the resonance of
a vibration from within. We try to discover in things, which
become precious to us on that account, the reflection of what our soul
has projected on to them; we are disillusioned when we find that they
are in reality devoid of the charm which they owed, in our minds, to
the association of certain ideas; sometimes we mobilise all our
spiritual forces in a glittering array in order to bring our influence
to bear on other human beings who, we very well know, are situated
outside ourselves where we can never reach them.
-- Marcel Proust, Swann's Way
A way a lone a last a loved a long the riverrun, past Eve and Adam's,
from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of
recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.
-- James Joyce, Finnegans
Wake
I just prattle about reality... that way they always think I'm nuts.
-- Thorax
Through all the streets no relief-- I will show you fear on walls and
windows people sky-- Wo weilest du?-- Hurry up please its accounts--
Empty is the third who walks beside you-- Thin mountain air here and
there and out the window-- Put on a clean shirt and dusk through narrow
streets--
Whiffs of my Spain from vacant lots-- Brandy neat-- April wind
revolving lips and pants-- After dinner sleep dreaming on rain-- The
soldier gives no shelter-- War of dead sun is a handful of dust-- Thin
and tenuous in gray shivering mist of old Western movies said: "Fill
your hand, Martin."
"I can't, son-- Many years
ago that image-- Remember I was carbon dioxide-- Voices wake us and we
drown-- Air holes in the faded film-- End of smoky shuttered rooms-- No
walls-- Look anywhere-- No good-- Stretching zero the living and the
dead-- Five for rain-- Young hair too-- Hurry up please it's William--
I will show you fear in the cold spring cemetery-- Kind, wo weilest du?"
"Here," said she, "is your
card: Bread knife in the heart."
-- William S. Burroughs Nova
Express
Both sides of the river
There is bacteria
[...]
I need to hide
-- Public Image Ltd, "Careering"
Coming home I liked to put suntan lotion on my arms, face and legs and
go running down the quiet streets of oleanders and palms and along the
drainage canal banked with red dirt. I ran in dense heat and
strong light and I thought about the protection factor bumping up to
sixty now, I wondered about this even though I'm olive-skinned, dark as
my old man-- from fifteen to thirty to sixty, where once upon a time a
factor of fifteen was the absolute maximum sunblock scientifically
possible. Running past tree trunks limed white against the
unrelenting sun.
-- Don DeLillo, Underworld
The simulacrum is never what
hides the truth-- it is truth that hides the fact that there is none.
The simulacrum is true.
-- Ecclesiastes
-- Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra
and Simulation
You taught me language, and my profit on't
Is, I know how to curse. The red plague rid you
For learning me your language
-- Shakespeare, The Tempest
I am now trying an experiment very frequent among modern authors, which
is to write upon nothing;
when the subject is utterly exhausted, to
let the pen still move on; by some called the ghost of wit, delighting
to walk after the death of its body.
-- Jonathan Swift, A Tale of
a Tub
I'm going to lie here for the rest of my life!
Maybe somebody will buy this field, and make it into a parking lot...
I'll just lie here, and let them blacktop right over me!
When people park their cars, they'll ask what that bump in the blacktop
is and it'll be me!!
That's all I'll ever be... a bump in a parking lot!
-- Charlie Brown
Perhaps, radical virtualization-- the fact that the whole of reality
will soon be "digitalized", transcribed, redoubled in the "big Other"
of cyberspace-- will somehow redeem "real life", opening it up to a new
perception, just as Hegel already had a presentiment that in the end of
art (as the "sensible appearing of the Idea"), which occurs when the
Idea withdraws from the sensible medium into its more direct conceptual
expression, simultaneously liberates sensibility from the constraints
of Idea?
-- Slavoj Zizek, The Plague
of Fantasies
Unable to slow the mind-boggling pace of change, let alone to predict
and control its direction, we focus on things we can, or believe we
can, or are assured that we can influence: we try to calculate and
minimize the risk that we personally, or those nearest and dearest to
us at that moment, might fall victim to the uncounted and uncountable
dangers which the opaque world and its uncertain future are suspected
to hold in store for us. We are engrossed in spying out "the
seven signs of cancer" or "the five symptoms of depression", or in
exorcising the spectre of high blood pressure, a high cholesterol
level, stress or obesity. In other words, we seek substitute
targets on which to unload the surplus existential fear that has been
barred from its natural outlets, and we find such makeshift targets in
taking elaborate precautions against inhaling someone else's cigarette
smoke, ingesting fatty food or "bad" bacteria (while avidly swilling
the liquids which promise to contain the "good" ones), exposure to sun,
or unprotected sex. Those of us who can afford it fortify
ourselves against all visible and invisible, present or anticipated,
known or as yet unfamiliar, diffuse but ubiquitous dangers through
locking ourselves behind walls, stuffing the approaches to our living
quarters with TV cameras, hiring armed guards, driving armoured
vehicles (like the notorious SUVs), wearing armoured clothing (like
"big-soled shoes") or taking martial arts classes. "The problem",
to quote David L. Altheide once more, "is that these activities
reaffirm and help produce a sense of disorder that our actions
precipitate." Each extra lock on the entry door in response to
successive rumours of foreign-looking criminals in cloaks full of
daggers and each next revision of the diet in response to a successive
"food panic" makes the world look more treacherous and
fearsome, and
prompts more
defensive actions-- that will, alas, add more vigour to
the self-propagating capacity of fear.
-- Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid
Times
Byron, as he burns on, sees more and more of this pattern. He
learns how to make contact with other kinds of electric appliances, in
homes, in factories, and out in the streets. Each has something
to tell him. The pattern gathers in his soul (Seele, as the
core of the earlier carbon filament was known in Germany), and the
grander and clearer it grows, the more desperate Byron gets.
Someday he will know everything, and still be as impotent as
before. His youthful dreams of organizing all the bulbs in the
world seem impossible now-- the Grid is wide open, all messages can be
overheard, and there are more than enough traitors out on the
line. Prophets traditionally don't last that long-- they are
either killed outright, or given an accident serious enough to make
them stop and think, and most often they do pull back. But on
Byron has been visited an even better fate. He is condemned to go
on forever, knowing the truth and powerless to change anything.
No longer will he seek to get off the wheel. His anger and
frustration will grow without limit, and he will find himself, poor
perverse bulb, enjoying it....
-- Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's
Rainbow
After reading a section of an early journal of mine, Maggie Lah said,
"You write your journal like it was fiction." I said, "What makes
you think it isn't?"
-- Peter Straub, Lost Boy
Lost Girl
I said "I'm going to rape you"
She said okay
I said "Don't say okay because then it's not rape"
She said "Okay, I won't say okay"
On two tabs of Sempreverde
-- Momus, Sempreverde
