on being gwyneth

i actually don’t like the widespread diffusion of underground culture into the mainstream.

underground cultures serve needs that are very specific to their members, some of which are not really all that useful – or even healthy – in the larger society. broadcasting them reduces their semiotics to commodity and parody, and at the same time “normalizes” attitudes and motivations which may be empowering or usefully self-referential in context, but which are otherwise absurd at best, and truly ugly at worst.

this goes for hip-hop, goth, s/m, punk, paganism, extreme metal (which, like several of the prior examples, is much more than just a genre of music). people flaunt codes they know nothing of. the shock-value of a subculture’s plumage is converted to mere spectacle, and its shocking attitudes are inflated by prurient (and prudish) attention to the point where they erase whatever consciousness shaped them.

i’m not saying that anyone should remain in any kind of closet, or pursue their own worldview with anything but visible pride and gusto. but i do think that people should examine themselves, find what’s real, not just hip or cool, and live that, rather than what’s in the tabloids, in the mall, or on VH1.

i keep trying to approach the idea of fully-authored email sort of in the way one might have used overseas mail a century and a half ago, to keep in touch with acquaintances, bankers, political affiliates, family, etc., back in the old country. the electronic equivalent of quill and ink, carefully considered and penned, since a single cycle might easily take a couple of months.

but i don’t even keep in touch with my own mother.

blogs, networks, chats, seem to provide the illusion of immediacy that we lack in our social lives. chat is ephemeral, and that is its value, in some ways. people don’t really think or talk in essays all the time. they natter, and talk all over each other, and lose the subject, and so on.

so… yakkity yak.

a thing may be the icon of an idea, but that thing is always its own meaning.

an architectural design is the Nth order schematic of an architect’s concept. the building itself is the first order model.

what does a book mean? a summary is a schematic; a dissertation, a ramified accretion of interpretations. but the meaning of the book is exactly what it contains.

the woman asks the vendor what a certain exotic fruit tastes like. he cuts it open, hands it to her, and says, “like this.”

i miss eigenradio.

i try, sometimes, to listen to entropy. it’s my zazen. to let sound be only sound, not stimulus. to be fully aware, but not processing.

cage was right.