You've stopped listening to contemporary music. I guess it's a sign of old age when you find comfort in what is familiar and that only. One of the disadvantages of a happy childhood is that you can never quite forget it. Someone said that on the recent death of Benny Green-that he always had a bit of the child in him. Exupery, too, I suppose. Or maybe it's nothing as poetic and really has something more to do with the sheer amount of music, films etc. that is available nowadays. Time narrowing down to a point, a point in the past, is not something that is willingly achieved but, instead, a function of institutional developments (including the advancement of technology that disrupts any continuity). At a more delusional level, perhaps some of those sentiments get overblown into a fully developed hatred of the present (From The Time Machine: "I don't care much for the times I'm living in").
There's a certain grace in accepting the times one is living in, the time that has passed, even if one feels estranged from the former. Was there a time when time wasn't time; will that time come again?
Nihilism today is to live as if there is only today.
There was time-and you blew it and the magic spell broke.
But 'there was time' also suggest an amazing capaciousness.
~~~
Gosh, that Kanye West is crap. The anti-music that is rap and hip-hop, the fake gangsta, hard-man, disillusioned loner against 'the system'. It's not just the misogyny; it's the whole sell-out to corporate America, the way they perpetuate 'the system'. Rebel Sell, in fact. Get you free Che Guevara mug while you're at it. Or maybe a poster of Aung Sui.
To think a bit more about commoditization: Mutuals. Mutually Beneficial Arrangements (or Relationships) is just another term for prostitution, dressed up (or down, depending on your preferences). Sounds quite harmless, something Adam Smith might propose(only might, though). If both parties to the contract-and this is how we tend to think of 'relationships' nowadays-benefit from the transaction then what's wrong with that (Pareto improvement, etc., etc.). Does it matter that these might not be voluntary transactions or that an element of co-ercion is involved given the asymmetric situation the parties are in (typically it is a rich man looking for a young (ish) student for "companionship", no strings attached. A growing number of university students, it is argued, are using this as a way of paying-off their debts. Which just goes to show how successful capitalism is in generating a problem and then using the market, or promoting a market mentality, to resolve the problem. Another way of saying that is that capitalism needs crises or contradictions, or that at the very minimum it plays off them ('17 Contradictions'). The same old story, in other words.
~~~
Tim Parks, NYRB: Readings and Re-readings:
'What is different on a second and subsequent readings is our growing capacity for retention, for putting things in relation to one another.'
We're pulled in two directions:
'Knowledge, wisdom even, lies in depth, not extension. The book, at once complex and endlessly available for revisits, allows the mind to achieve an act of prodigious control. Rather than submitting ourselves to a stream of information, in thrall to each precarious moment of a single reading, we can gradually come to possess, indeed to memorize, the work outside time.'
On the other hand:
'Yet such [temporary] perceptions are very much part of the pleasure of being here in the present.'
'Words in general have a vocation for rearranging and fixing experience in a way that can be communicated across space and time. Yet often it seems that our experience of the words once written down is as volatile and precarious as our other sense impressions.'
'A contemporary environment that offers us more and more books and less and less time to read them.'
~~~
The commoditization of the book (industry). Ursula Le Guin's fabulous polemic:
~
"At the end of the day, we’re part of a long-running story. We just try to get our paragraph right."
--Obama (D. Remnick, The New Yorker)
~
Traditions and rituals, to keep time in its place, so that we (can) remember off by heart. We see everything with memory..
The Sunday papers is a venerable tradition in this corner of the world but you think twice-a rare luxury..no, you think twice because of the cost, the availability of it all online. Like much else, it will buckle under commercial pressures. And yet, for all that, there's something glorious in the actual physical experience of reading it (the smudge marks of the print, the crispness of the pages, the black and white photos). Even better when accompanied by a packet of minstrels.
(Lithuanian) rye bread and pickled herring, followed by an avocado and rocket salad. A small corner of heaven.
Roti King off Euston is in terms of value for money one of the best places to eat in London. Malaysian food in a small, run-down basement restaurant/cafe. The seats are totally dilapidated and there's hardly space to move, but good, simple food.
There's a certain grace in accepting the times one is living in, the time that has passed, even if one feels estranged from the former. Was there a time when time wasn't time; will that time come again?
Nihilism today is to live as if there is only today.
There was time-and you blew it and the magic spell broke.
But 'there was time' also suggest an amazing capaciousness.
~~~
Gosh, that Kanye West is crap. The anti-music that is rap and hip-hop, the fake gangsta, hard-man, disillusioned loner against 'the system'. It's not just the misogyny; it's the whole sell-out to corporate America, the way they perpetuate 'the system'. Rebel Sell, in fact. Get you free Che Guevara mug while you're at it. Or maybe a poster of Aung Sui.
To think a bit more about commoditization: Mutuals. Mutually Beneficial Arrangements (or Relationships) is just another term for prostitution, dressed up (or down, depending on your preferences). Sounds quite harmless, something Adam Smith might propose(only might, though). If both parties to the contract-and this is how we tend to think of 'relationships' nowadays-benefit from the transaction then what's wrong with that (Pareto improvement, etc., etc.). Does it matter that these might not be voluntary transactions or that an element of co-ercion is involved given the asymmetric situation the parties are in (typically it is a rich man looking for a young (ish) student for "companionship", no strings attached. A growing number of university students, it is argued, are using this as a way of paying-off their debts. Which just goes to show how successful capitalism is in generating a problem and then using the market, or promoting a market mentality, to resolve the problem. Another way of saying that is that capitalism needs crises or contradictions, or that at the very minimum it plays off them ('17 Contradictions'). The same old story, in other words.
~~~
Tim Parks, NYRB: Readings and Re-readings:
'What is different on a second and subsequent readings is our growing capacity for retention, for putting things in relation to one another.'
We're pulled in two directions:
'Knowledge, wisdom even, lies in depth, not extension. The book, at once complex and endlessly available for revisits, allows the mind to achieve an act of prodigious control. Rather than submitting ourselves to a stream of information, in thrall to each precarious moment of a single reading, we can gradually come to possess, indeed to memorize, the work outside time.'
On the other hand:
'Yet such [temporary] perceptions are very much part of the pleasure of being here in the present.'
'Words in general have a vocation for rearranging and fixing experience in a way that can be communicated across space and time. Yet often it seems that our experience of the words once written down is as volatile and precarious as our other sense impressions.'
'A contemporary environment that offers us more and more books and less and less time to read them.'
~~~
The commoditization of the book (industry). Ursula Le Guin's fabulous polemic:
~
"At the end of the day, we’re part of a long-running story. We just try to get our paragraph right."
--Obama (D. Remnick, The New Yorker)
~
Traditions and rituals, to keep time in its place, so that we (can) remember off by heart. We see everything with memory..
The Sunday papers is a venerable tradition in this corner of the world but you think twice-a rare luxury..no, you think twice because of the cost, the availability of it all online. Like much else, it will buckle under commercial pressures. And yet, for all that, there's something glorious in the actual physical experience of reading it (the smudge marks of the print, the crispness of the pages, the black and white photos). Even better when accompanied by a packet of minstrels.
(Lithuanian) rye bread and pickled herring, followed by an avocado and rocket salad. A small corner of heaven.
Roti King off Euston is in terms of value for money one of the best places to eat in London. Malaysian food in a small, run-down basement restaurant/cafe. The seats are totally dilapidated and there's hardly space to move, but good, simple food.
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