Tsunamis and other glitches

[imomus]

I'm not blogging anything much today because I spent my high-yield blogging hours (between 9 and 11am) writing a piece about Berlin Wheatpasting that'll go up on Design Observer (if all goes according to plan) on January 3rd. [Ah, they've just told me it can go up tomorrow instead.]

I'm spending the day watching the awful pictures coming in from Sumatra and Sri Lanka; whole communities reduced to matchwood. A tragedy more epic than 9/11. This quake / tsunami double whammy seems to be the worst natural disaster in years, and, like the Lisbon earthquake back in Voltaire's day, reminds the pantheistic Panglosses amongst us that Nature is not always beneficent.

Well, I have to pack for a flight to London this evening. If you want a stimulating read, perhaps I could recommend GlitchSlapTKO, where Athens, Georgia / Nakameguro b-boy and blogger Bobby D has recently been typing stuff about Mishima's ideas about Japan, a way of thinking 'kept hidden under the leaves'.



Also recently on GlitchSlapTKO (which has been known to take pot shots at 'Clique Opera', and at times seems oddly obsessed by this blog), a brief imaginary conversation was reported (by a highly unreliable narrator) between 'Momus' and 'Aristotle'. It takes place on a Yamanote line platform. Momus is on his way to check out Harajuku fashions, Aristotle seems keen to get some 'hot sento action' in a shitamachi bathhouse (perhaps he'll be doing his art crit thing at SCAI the Bathhouse, a sento converted into an art gallery in Shitaya, Tokyo, also recently blogged on GlitchSlap). The conversation goes like this:

Aristotle: Well, frankly speaking, I really wish you'd tone down the anti-Platonic tenor of your blog.
Momus: [his feathers slightly ruffled] Really!?
Aristotle: Um-hum. I mean, sure...I've had MY little falling outs with Plato over the years and all, but you and I both know that Plato never intended for his timeless contemplations on Metaphysics, which were just honest inquiries in the realm of thought at the time, to be grossly misappropriated 1000 years later by the Fathers of the Church and poorly translated into Latin in order to shore up the rickety philosophical basis for monotheistic religions like Christanity.
Momus: Yeah, but they made me hate my body for years and years...
Aristotle: I know. I know. But it isn't HIS fault. Instead of lambasting him for the shortcomings of his interpreters, why not praise him for his lucidity and the honesty of his thought. After all, these are two things you seem to value in your writing, right?
Momus: ...

The real Momus would not have fallen silent at that point. He would have raised Plato's famous condemnation of artists. Plato thought painters were 'mere grinders of multi-coloured drugs' and called poets ignorant imitators and braggarts – flatterers, seekers of public approval, emotional con-men. If Japan were The Republic, a b-boy glitch-slapper like Bobby D would long ago have been escorted to the airport by Plato's philo-police.

Comments

[class-worrier.livejournal.com]

Plato thought painters were 'mere grinders of multi-coloured drugs' and called poets ignorant imitators and braggarts – flatterers, seekers of public approval, emotional con-men

Combine both and you have musicians!

[dzima.livejournal.com]

I find the GlitchSlapTKO hard to read sometimes, I don't know if it's only me. Whenever he writes something long, I either have to reread it or just give up half way through. It's kind of the opposite to your Journal: no matter what you write about or how long, your writing style is very easy to understand and engaging.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Oh, absolutely. Too much Deleuze, or crack in the Athens water supply or something, seems to have wrought havoc with Mr D's intelligibility. Or perhaps he's just glitch-slapping us.

[uberdionysus.livejournal.com]

The things about natural disasters is that we no longer believe that all of 'god's creations' are de facto good, so natural disasters have less of an emotional impact (as far as a symbol that reflects on the nature of man). Everyone feels horrific and sad but natural disasters don't often change how people view the world (these days). Man made disasters like 9-11 (and even more importantly, Rwanda, Sudan, former Yugoslavia, etc) crack our conception of Who We Are.

Even a relatively small disaster like Tienanmen Square has cultural after-shocks that last for decades because man-made disasters still become symbols of ideology and human nature. Natural disasters do not. I would say that even man-made disasters like Union Carbide and Chernobyl have a more profound impact on the memetic pool.

Since Lisbon, we have successfully disassociated evil with nature.

[jinty]

The Asian Tsunami disaster has been particularly striking in my household over today's afternoon because my sister and brother in law (with little four-year-old son) have only returned from Thailand about a week or 10 days ago, and would have been right in the middle of things (and indeed probably dead) if it had hit a little earlier. An example of close-to-home is painful, less close-to-home would have been more of a spectacle.

Go the real Momus for bringing up the Republic anti-poetry and anti-art stance.

[transient-poet.livejournal.com]

Nice post-Platonic resonse. Interesting for someone who so dislikes text (http://www.livejournal.com/users/imomus/64906.html), but I suppose it makes sense. Of course if you just keep in mind that Plato was only looking for the perfect piece of ass, all the ideal forms shit falls apart.

[seanthesean.livejournal.com]

"mere grinders of multi-coloured drugs" seems like a compliment to me, especially when describing the effects of paintings.

[33mhz.livejournal.com]

In Plato's defense, I've never met a poet that wasn't also a complete attention whore. (Full disclosure: I was a member of the poetry/writing club at my highschool, so my experience is limited to myself, highschoolers and poets willing to come talk to south Texas highschoolers.)

Now, they do exist. Emily Dickinson is probably the perfect example. I'm trying to decide whether she's an exception that proves the rule or just an exception. Probably the former, since she was not known as a poet until after death parked his lexus on her face.

[seanthesean.livejournal.com]

i grew up in earthquake land (san francisco bay area) and always loved earthquakes! i was terribly excited that one day all of the buildings would be destroyed and we could build a future city on the rubble. i am also excited about the rising oceans for this reason. (nature stirs things up not out of spite, but just for the value of stirring things up.)

[milkrobot.livejournal.com]

really? i think it's rather wonderful, the reasoning is so lively, and he is hilarious

a mater of taste i guees, i looked at jean snow's blog and found it hooooorribly boring.

[(Anonymous)]

i have to agree with milkrobot, i too enjoy pulling my way through his essays even if i feel a bit disoriented and discombobulated (they say that in georgia, right?) by the end. and YES he is hilarious... cheers to b-boy bobby D.
-roddy

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/recenteqsww/Quakes/uscvad.htm

[eptified.livejournal.com]

I always thought the point of the republic was to demonstrate the limitations of logic by postulating an ideal society that gets more and more ridiculous as the text continues, until at the end we discover that Socrates' own moral/intellectual system is also underpinned by a Big Lie. S. as a character in Plato's works has always struck me as more a trickster than a utopian-- irony surely isn't as recent an invention as all that.