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imomus'He was carried off by a combination of the Flinge and the Lurgie.' That's what people will say, shaking their heads, when I go. I can feel them already at work in my body, the Flinge and the Lurgie. They're gnawing away at the fibrous cells of my lungs, they're depositing stones in my kidneys, they're dropping poops in the core of my spine. At the moment they're not really doing any serious damage, they're just mucking about. But little by little, year by year, they'll dig in deeper, take over more. As entropy makes me weaker, the Flinge and the Lurgie will get stronger, until, like parasite assassins or rock critics, they decide the time has come to kill the host and move on to another victim.
It's a weird age I'm at right now. In a way nothing has changed since I was, say, 21. At 21 I might have had 50 years of life ahead of me, and I might still have 50 years of life ahead of me. At 21 all my nuclear family was still alive, and they're still alive now. When I was 21 The Cure were making records, and they're still making records. At 21 I started making records, and I'm still making records. In more than 20 years, everything has changed and yet, in some ways, hardly anything has changed. I haven't reproduced. The world hasn't ended in a nuclear conflagration (a real possibility when I looked into the future from 1981). Some things changed: the Soviet Union disappeared, the internet came along, some James Bond villain-type billionaire who lived in a mountain cave flew jets into important bits of New York City. Well, I lived through three big bits of history, and perhaps I'll live through three more events on that magnitude before the Flinge and the Lurgie carry me away.
The main difference between me at 21 and me now, apart from not feeling quite so great when I get up in the morning (thanks to the still-benign Flinge and Lurgie) is that I don't expect either disasters or miracles to happen any more. Things will probably just go on pretty much the way they have been (and overall I must say I'm having a tremendously good life so far) until that fateful moment when a doctor tells me 'I'm afraid you have chronic Flinge-Lurgie syndrome, I give you six months.' I no longer expect (or want) to 'become famous', for instance. My next record will be greeted with the usual widescale indifference, no matter how good it is. I don't expect to earn or win significant amounts of money. I don't even expect to fall in love with some amazing person who'll change my whole life. Will I have children? It seems unlikely. I can't even afford proper dental treatment, let alone a kid. Will I die? Oh, obviously. I can feel it in my bones.
Somewhere in his diary, Paul Klee says, with admirably Swiss asceticism: 'You can disregard the stomach by giving it neither too little nor too much. I regarded marriage as a sexual cure. To work I needed stability, and I found that stability wrapped up in monogamy.' Klee always had a sardonic take on mortality. One of his drawings is entited 'Sick Man Making Plans'. Late in his own life, when he knew he would soon die, he made a series of drawings of angels. 'How does one make an angel when one knows, when one suspects, that the angel being formed is the shape of one's own dying?' Klee's epitaph reads: 'I cannot be grasped in the here and now, for I live just as well with the unborn as with the dead... somewhat closer than usual to the heart of creation, but far from close enough.' Identifying with 'creation' rather than the self or the body seemed to give Klee a sort of immortality.
'Death to all who are not pirates!' writes my son in his LiveJournal. Well, he's not really my son. He's some guy in Massachusetts called Rob. In fact I don't even know if that's his name. Let's just call him Koala. I stumbled on his journal, Koalas in Love, pretty much by chance. Maybe he left a comment on mine, I can't remember. His userinfo page tells us:
'i like to dance around in my room to nintendo music with scary glasses on..but most of all i want to travel, mostly to japan and finland!!! i draw waaaaaay toooo much, cause i don't do anything else. i have fucking righteous friends who, along with me and my girlpal, are in the "we are totally cooler than scene kids" gang. we like to make cookies/cakes/brownies while watching bad fantasy films. these things keep me happy, along with my stuffed dolphin, synthesizer and playmobils.'
I was dancing around in my room last night to an early Beatles record I found in a fleamarket. Like father, like koala. I travel to Japan and Finland. I don't draw as much as Koala does, but I know enough to recognise that he's visually talented and will go far with the skill and motivation you can feel radiating from his page. His journal reminds me of the most optimistic and excitable and motivated moments of my own life. Koala could be my biological son, because he's 21 and I'm twice that. He's not my biological son, but I could consider him a member of a big tribe of 'cultural kin'. I don't need to know that my genes are in him, it's enough for me to know that he shares a lot of the memes that I feel most strongly about. Japan, design, glamour, appetite, colour, freedom, embodiment, the quest for value in art.
I searched Koala's page yesterday for the word 'Momus' and couldn't find it, but today, just as I'm writing about Koala being my secret 'meme son', I see he's updated with an entry saying he's been listening to my 'Summerisle' record! What an amazing co-incidence! But it's not really so surprising. You see, we're related. This is how meme kin communicate. Much more than normal families, who share mere genes, we're on the same wavelength, with a kind of sixth sense, which is art. We share aspirations, culture, talent, memes.
Anyway, what I wanted to say about Koala (and perhaps a hundred other 'meme sons' and 'meme daughters' I've identified) is that if I died tomorrow (in, say, a suicide bomb attack on the master tapes to Sting's new album), Koala would carry on the battle. He would march on with the values. The meme son would complete and expand the work of the meme father. Death cannot hinder our meme army, nor Flinge-Lurgie Syndrome halt our missionary work. Let meme-copulation thrive, and let the revolution continue!
It's a weird age I'm at right now. In a way nothing has changed since I was, say, 21. At 21 I might have had 50 years of life ahead of me, and I might still have 50 years of life ahead of me. At 21 all my nuclear family was still alive, and they're still alive now. When I was 21 The Cure were making records, and they're still making records. At 21 I started making records, and I'm still making records. In more than 20 years, everything has changed and yet, in some ways, hardly anything has changed. I haven't reproduced. The world hasn't ended in a nuclear conflagration (a real possibility when I looked into the future from 1981). Some things changed: the Soviet Union disappeared, the internet came along, some James Bond villain-type billionaire who lived in a mountain cave flew jets into important bits of New York City. Well, I lived through three big bits of history, and perhaps I'll live through three more events on that magnitude before the Flinge and the Lurgie carry me away.
The main difference between me at 21 and me now, apart from not feeling quite so great when I get up in the morning (thanks to the still-benign Flinge and Lurgie) is that I don't expect either disasters or miracles to happen any more. Things will probably just go on pretty much the way they have been (and overall I must say I'm having a tremendously good life so far) until that fateful moment when a doctor tells me 'I'm afraid you have chronic Flinge-Lurgie syndrome, I give you six months.' I no longer expect (or want) to 'become famous', for instance. My next record will be greeted with the usual widescale indifference, no matter how good it is. I don't expect to earn or win significant amounts of money. I don't even expect to fall in love with some amazing person who'll change my whole life. Will I have children? It seems unlikely. I can't even afford proper dental treatment, let alone a kid. Will I die? Oh, obviously. I can feel it in my bones.
Somewhere in his diary, Paul Klee says, with admirably Swiss asceticism: 'You can disregard the stomach by giving it neither too little nor too much. I regarded marriage as a sexual cure. To work I needed stability, and I found that stability wrapped up in monogamy.' Klee always had a sardonic take on mortality. One of his drawings is entited 'Sick Man Making Plans'. Late in his own life, when he knew he would soon die, he made a series of drawings of angels. 'How does one make an angel when one knows, when one suspects, that the angel being formed is the shape of one's own dying?' Klee's epitaph reads: 'I cannot be grasped in the here and now, for I live just as well with the unborn as with the dead... somewhat closer than usual to the heart of creation, but far from close enough.' Identifying with 'creation' rather than the self or the body seemed to give Klee a sort of immortality.
'Death to all who are not pirates!' writes my son in his LiveJournal. Well, he's not really my son. He's some guy in Massachusetts called Rob. In fact I don't even know if that's his name. Let's just call him Koala. I stumbled on his journal, Koalas in Love, pretty much by chance. Maybe he left a comment on mine, I can't remember. His userinfo page tells us:
'i like to dance around in my room to nintendo music with scary glasses on..but most of all i want to travel, mostly to japan and finland!!! i draw waaaaaay toooo much, cause i don't do anything else. i have fucking righteous friends who, along with me and my girlpal, are in the "we are totally cooler than scene kids" gang. we like to make cookies/cakes/brownies while watching bad fantasy films. these things keep me happy, along with my stuffed dolphin, synthesizer and playmobils.'
I was dancing around in my room last night to an early Beatles record I found in a fleamarket. Like father, like koala. I travel to Japan and Finland. I don't draw as much as Koala does, but I know enough to recognise that he's visually talented and will go far with the skill and motivation you can feel radiating from his page. His journal reminds me of the most optimistic and excitable and motivated moments of my own life. Koala could be my biological son, because he's 21 and I'm twice that. He's not my biological son, but I could consider him a member of a big tribe of 'cultural kin'. I don't need to know that my genes are in him, it's enough for me to know that he shares a lot of the memes that I feel most strongly about. Japan, design, glamour, appetite, colour, freedom, embodiment, the quest for value in art.
I searched Koala's page yesterday for the word 'Momus' and couldn't find it, but today, just as I'm writing about Koala being my secret 'meme son', I see he's updated with an entry saying he's been listening to my 'Summerisle' record! What an amazing co-incidence! But it's not really so surprising. You see, we're related. This is how meme kin communicate. Much more than normal families, who share mere genes, we're on the same wavelength, with a kind of sixth sense, which is art. We share aspirations, culture, talent, memes.
Anyway, what I wanted to say about Koala (and perhaps a hundred other 'meme sons' and 'meme daughters' I've identified) is that if I died tomorrow (in, say, a suicide bomb attack on the master tapes to Sting's new album), Koala would carry on the battle. He would march on with the values. The meme son would complete and expand the work of the meme father. Death cannot hinder our meme army, nor Flinge-Lurgie Syndrome halt our missionary work. Let meme-copulation thrive, and let the revolution continue!
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Re: Oops, I accidently put this in the comments for the previous post; please disregard that version
Date: 2004-12-17 08:09 pm (UTC)Re: Oops, I accidently put this in the comments for the previous post; please disregard that version
Date: 2004-12-17 09:50 pm (UTC)Oh, and here are some links that you, or whoever reads this, might have already seen, but that relate to the link you posted in the previous comment.
http://www.gamingopenmarket.com/
http://www.wired.com/news/games/0,2101,65865,00.html
Re: Oops, I accidently put this in the comments for the previous post; please disregard that version
Date: 2004-12-17 10:39 pm (UTC)he makes the claim that he sees the histories/logs of these objects existence becoming more important than the objects themselves. The phrase he uses is, "the objects become just hard copy"
Yes, and I have very mixed feelings about this thesis. It seems like a high-tech version of Platonism. My table is just the 'hard copy' of some ideal table up in the sky... or on a computer screen. The data traces left by the table are more important than the table itself. It seems like a very literary approach to objects, and I don't mean that in a good way. But later Sterling says that the object is merely a nexus for a set of social relations, and that sounds rather like Marx, and I'm back onside. And if I think of what I said just a few inches up this thread, that I'm so grateful that my work touched someone and that that makes everything worthwhile, I'm possibly saying that the information traces I -- a human 'spime', an entity moving through space-time -- leave are more important than my body itself. Feelings like that seem inevitable for artists -- 'it's the music that matters... the music is timeless... etc'.
But I think the relationship between object and blueprint, between real and ideal, between spime and info-trace, between langue and parole, is much more interactive and mutual than Sterling allows. I think a Japanese potter or gardener would know that. It disturbs me that Sterling is so keen to say the object itself doesn't matter. Even in the Christian story, think how incredibly important incarnation is.
Re: Oops, I accidently put this in the comments for the previous post; please disregard that version
Date: 2004-12-18 03:48 am (UTC)"I'm possibly saying that the information traces I -- a human 'spime', an entity moving through space-time -- leave are more important than my body itself. Feelings like that seem inevitable for artists "
I think that the internet has made many more people into casual artists in that sense than ever before. It has created a whole culture of people who live for their own log of existence, and the way that interacts with people other than themselves. Does this value of your creative output's continued existence over all else fit into some definition of artist? Gack, scratch that. I hate inadequate definitions, and that would inevitably be one.
A couple of brief questions before I leave this point to rest for the time being. You seem to both support and understand Marx, as well as appearing to be pretty smart. My knowledge of Marx is limited to having read the communist manifesto and some stuff in political science text books; I found them both to be laughable. What site(s) or book(s) would you recommends if you were trying to convince someone that he had some worthwhile points/ideas?
Finally, I've been having a real blast watching various academic lectures online, is there some sort of all, or most, encompassing site for these that I don't know about, or do they just need to be found individually?