A kind of silence

There are many kinds of silence. Which holds me now?

I spend a lot of time in silence. Reading by the window, sipping my coffee or tea, looking out at the trees, the runners, the kids playing in their carefree way on the swings though it will abruptly end one day; a man digging a hole, a colleague returning from the gym. 

There are flashes of insight; something deep is remembered. I can't pull it all together. There is no 'together'.   

At times I do wonder. Wouldn't say that I'm gripped by panic but there is a sense of a constraint, a closing off. Silent words. Time is passing sentence on me.

At other times I feel I'm living a charmed life. Here I am, reading whatever I want, not knowing how things will turn out or how any of this will-if at all- settle into a pattern. What will come of this aimless reading? 

I have always greatly enjoyed people's company and have also loved to joke around-as befits a clown of the very first order. It's not that other people irritate me. No, it's not that at all. Nor am I on any high horse. I'm not any horse at all! But I can't engage in conversations about money or property or even academic ones since I find all of that unreal (not boring or pointless, but vacuous).

My silence is not something that one could call religious in any way. It is not connected to any 'practice' and nor does it deliberately seek some 'end'. It's just the way it is. This blog, too, is a silent space now that I think of it. 

Is it connected to a general slowing down in your life? It seems like a plausible explanation (not that you're overly concerned by such questions because you're not really interested in yourself that way). 

I don't think it's depression either. Sadness? Perhaps that's closer? But then there's nothing new there.

On the whole the overriding sentiment is: let it be. See what happens, what it does to you.              

In-gold

Here Ingold is referring to two kinds of toolkits: the'learner's toolkit' on his computer (which is represented by three icons: a disembodied head with headphones; a mobile phone; and a face with sunglasses) and his own 'toolkit': a pencil, a pair of glasses and a notebook.

"Comparing the two toolkits says much about the difference between the idea of learning, as it is increasingly understood today, and the idea of study I have advanced here. The iconic triptych of headphones, screen and shades paints to my mind a frightening picture of the idealised learner as currently conceived in a state-of-the-art, IT-obsessed educational environment. The learner of the toolkit appears to be an isolated individual, securely locked in and shielded from any sensory contact with the surroundings – from light by shades, from sound by phones (the head has no nose for scent, and being just a head, lacks hands to feel). This individual is completely immobile, but also placeless: indeed the blurb that accompanies the toolkit makes much of the fact that it is accessible on line, anywhere, anytime. But while blind and deaf to others, and to the world, our learner is fed with a continual stream of information, downloaded from remote sources into his head: visually, from the screen of his smart-phone; aurally through the phones that cover his ears. What kind of learning is this, which calls for no productive effort on the part of the learner, nor even for his presence, which replaces the teacher by a programme, which severs head from body, mind from world, and immunises the learner from the potentially corrupting effects of any disturbance from outside by means of a protective shield? In recent decades it has given rise to an entire industry, complete with its legions of providers, brands and watchwords. Biesta calls the industry ‘learnification’, a word whose sheer ugliness reflects his abhorrence of that to which it refers."

To affirm the wonder of pencils! That makes me feel ancient but also realize that I don't care. 

K-punk

k kkkkkk 

Love this little clip...

Capitalist Realism

"Ask students to read for more than a couple of sentences and many - and these are A-level students mind you - will protest that they can't do it. The most frequent complaint teachers hear is that it's boring. It is not so much the content of the written material that is at issue here; it is the act of reading itself that is deemed to be 'boring'. What we are facing here is not just time-honoured teenage torpor, but the mismatch between a post-literate 'New Flesh' that is 'too wired to concentrate' and the confining, concentrational logics of decaying disciplinary systems.

On this account, 'boring' is not opposed to 'interesting'. To be bored simply means to be removed from the communicative sensation-stimulus matrix of texting, MTV and fast food, to be denied, for a moment, the constant flow of sugary gratification on demand. Some students want Nietzsche in the same way that they want a hamburger; they fail to grasp - and the logic of the consumer system encourages this misapprehension - that the indigestibility, the difficulty is Nietzsche."

Some very interesting thoughts on burn-out, the future and the conversion of culture into museum pieces (which is reminiscent of Agamben's great essay).

--Mark Fisher.

Well, that's how it is. The book is over, as are slow reading (Haldane) and slow food. Cut to the chase, get to the bottom dollar.

Defeatist? Maybe. It's not a question of pessimism or optimism though. Just about thinking, in a cool and calm fashion: if that's the way it is, then what next? What next for you?  De-linking, withdrawal- as much as possible? Illich's question haunts you: what would it be to live a life that wasn't so structured?

I don't think 12,000 years of neolithic logic can be upturned. If history is cyclical-as the great traditions teach- then isn't there a point where the wheel stops turning? The Kali Yuga? 

Let

Let your self go, man. You been perched up there a long time, bro'
Let England shake, I don't give a damn.
Every white artist that dies is a genius, a lyrical, misunderstood prophet against his age. 

Let go and let equilibrium be restored. 
When night comes it's just me & you.
The prison walls fall.

The black sun shines,
but you can't see it.
Loss holds us in circles
-- broken.

The story of an artist

 Lend me a dime and I'll tell you a story. One you probably know, but I'll throw in some feelings this time.   

The way things are, the way things will be.

C3 B4

 The end of summer..

The end of summer was like no other day. There was no time for farewells, no space to give time to what the heart had stored. The main door was left open, the gate flung back; indecision and haste wrapped around you. The moment which you breeze through without a proper accounting for-as if there ever could be one!

Through the porthole, back to this inner chamber. The light flickers, falters, and then fails. The great summer sun of your days in the open are over. All that remains are eyes that are narrower, less reliable, and hands that have darkened with time.