Sunday, May 29, 2011

I live in my pasts.

Yesterday. The cafe. I work the espresso machine when The Wrathful Poetess comes in. I try to restrain myself - the customer comes first - but a grin splits my cheeks. She gives me a hug.

Later, and I had described my housing situation. She says, "Oh."

She says, "I suppose you could always crash on someone's couch."

I ask, eyebrow raised, "Maybe in someone's bed?"

She pauses. She laughs. "Yes, I'm sure someone would let you into their bed."

Later, I ask how long she and Man-at-Arms have been going out (seven weeks). She says, "You just came back too late."

She says, "We met through an online dating service."

She says, "The girls and I were just talking about how big your dick must be. One of us was going to scoop you."

Later, she finds the necklace I put in her tip cup. "Thank you," she says. "I love big things."

My eyebrows should just stay raised forever and ever, amen. I say, "It's just a gift. Gift qua gift."

She asks, "No ulterior motive?"

No. It's not a hair comb. It's not a pocket watch.

Friday, May 27, 2011

Nesting Internal Exiles

There was, by the way, no rapture. I don't feel like talking about the non-events that have transpired after the non-apocalypse.

Instead, a year ago today: a diner in downtown Moscow. The tulips are wilting at the feet of red-thumbed Mayakovsky (he never loved to garden). Boisterous Anglophones around the table, boisterously discussing the calculated act of boisterously confessing boisterous sins, that awkward game of trying to sound convincingly like you have confessed but not revealed too much. Oh yes - Gypsy Song stole candy at the grocery store. Ginger Doctor joked, 'You wouldn't mention that you'd jacked off seven times before going?"

"No," said Gypsy Song. "You're supposed to confess things you're sorry for, not things you plan on doing again the next day."

Ginger Doctor asked, "But what if that was just a statement?"

Gypsy Song laughed, imagined: "Father, I masturbated seven times today..."

Ginger Doctor continued, "'Are you sorry about it?'

No, I just wanted to tell you.'"

Sunday, May 22, 2011

Don't turn. Don't look.

Euridice: Remember: so long I've not escaped the Dark--
I'll remain worse than a dragon.
Yet I'll become as I once was -
When my breast (unaccustomed, now only with pain) again heaves.
It seems we're near; it seems I can hear
The wind and the sea.
-from "Orpheus," Elena Shvarts (1982)

Friday, May 20, 2011

"This is my prayer/I'll die living as free as my hair"

There is a virulently vocal and excitable section of the population of the American population anticipating the full release of Gaga's new album. (Barring any destruction of the current world order beforehand). As a case in point, consider this pre-release:



Thanks to the power of social media, one of Gaga's tweebs (showing here) could react to "Hair" on a platform that allowed him to write "directly" to his Mother Monster:
@ladygaga cannot listen to Hair without crying. no jock judging me is gonna stop my freedom. i'm as free as my hair. bubble dreams < 3
19 May
Unexpected or no, Gaga (who has over 10 million followers and has only tweeted 764 times since March of 2008) almost immediately replied:
@gagaforgaga2010 you sound like you're on the right track baby. But you can cry AND dance. Fever dries tears.
19 May
Cue euphoric reaction.

What I'm trying to get at here is the manipulation of raw power in this Gaga<->fan dynamic. The basic interaction is the following illusion. One "could" petition the angel from afar; the telescopic refractions of Twitter hyperbolize the distance (I-am-but-one-of-10-million-who-adore) between fans and the object of their desires while simultaneously and disorientingly allowing the vertigo of "touching" her (I-can-address-a-tweet-to-Gaga-and-wonder-if-she-sees-it).

Yet by responding (even to an infinitesimal proportion of such tweets), Gaga transforms the Freudian wish-fulfillment from the realm of dreams and the unanticipatable to the realm of the actual and expectational. The new mindscape is related to the previous by a chiasmus; the fan-subject is no longer one lost among the legions, but one among many worshippers for whom the thought constantly resonates: "It could happen to me!"

The Devil doesn't affect heads of state but rather possesses the historical no-man subject. Gaga's cult of personality (scenario of power?) similarly magnifies her hierarchical status by personalizing the vertical bonds of power between fawning fanatics and Goddess. In no way humanizing Gaga by its personal value (as opposed to, say, a paparazzo's photographs), the interaction heightens the paradoxical sublime of her near-but-far-away cult body.

I'm the spirit of my Hair, it's all the glory that I bare.

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Heard it on the news today

A little boy found on the roadside
So easily marginalized,
Demeaned, trivialized:
This is a symptom! Synecdoche!
This is everything wrong with
American culture, writ large!
Big in the little! Exclamation point!
Just don't confront the terrible truth:
There is a little boy on the roadside.

Sunday, May 1, 2011

A Character Sketch

Technological fetishism, as I have previously mentioned.

There is that individual who serves the technological revolution (sluzhit technologicheskoi revoliutsii). He tracks the updates of the digital devices. He charts his life in pixelated hues, and follows the university health center on Facebook. Just because he can. No one thinks to update the health center's profile. No one enters into a relationship with it. There are no scandalous pictures of the health center, sloshed, at a Baseball Bros and Female-Sports-Journalists-in-the-Lockerroom theme party.

The servant of the technological revolution is a dichotomous subject. At the same time he participates in such obsessive hoarding, he is a nihilist. The old model is become redundant. Destroy it. The update is available. Purchase it. Download. Consume. Devour the regurgitated contents spewn all over the office floor.

The servant of the technological revolution slowly enacts his vision upon the rest of the world. He's at a party thrown in his honor, and even as he hoards the drinks and presents awarded to him, he sits with the youngest, the sexiest, the most nubile. He sees no reason to consume any but the newest software patches.