It's occurred to me that thanks to the reluctant writers of the ULA, who balked at my style of doing things, I've been forced to pick up my game as a writer, having no one but myself now to promote. I spent ten years neglecting my own writing, cranking out the occasional poem or zeen but not taking it seriously. I had all these "stars," you see.
The past year I've focused on my own work-- and on pushing my abilities. I don't know how good my work ultimately is, or will be, but it's significantly better than it was. My soon-enough-to-be-released novel isn't perfect-- nothing is-- but it contains some very good things.
Monday, March 19, 2012
Sunday, March 18, 2012
St. Paddy's Aftermath
This morning the streets of Philadelphia are filled with wrecked cars and the sidewalks are covered in vomit.
Friday, March 16, 2012
It's Jackie Wilson!
BEST ROCK SINGER
Elvis Presley could sing in any style and genre-- gospel, country, pop, r&b, rock, even mock-opera. His voice had great range. Yet the one rock n' roll singer Elvis was in awe of was Jackie Wilson. Hear a number of his recordings and you see that only a few others even come close. I put Presley at #2, the fabulous Roy Orbison #3.
Elvis Presley could sing in any style and genre-- gospel, country, pop, r&b, rock, even mock-opera. His voice had great range. Yet the one rock n' roll singer Elvis was in awe of was Jackie Wilson. Hear a number of his recordings and you see that only a few others even come close. I put Presley at #2, the fabulous Roy Orbison #3.
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Best Rock Singer?
Who's the best rock/rock n' roll singer of all time? I've thought about this question for a long time and have finally settled on a definitive answer. We're talking rock, or a variation therein, not straight pop. Whitney doesn't qualify. We're also talking singer, not star, dancer, persona. So, no, it's not Elvis Presley, though he's probably Top Three.
Is it: Jim Morrison? Bruce Springsteen? James Brown? Mick Jagger? Bob Dylan? Bono? Prince? Sting? Buddy Holly? Otis Redding? Cher? Blondie? Siouxsie Sioux? Del Shannon? Little Richard? Roger Daltrey? Marvin Gaye? David Lee Roth? Robert Plant? Freddie Mercury? Ray Charles? Johnny Cash? Aretha Franklin? Van Morrison? Sam Cooke? Cheryl Crow? Courtney Love? Jerry Lee Lewis? Fats Domino? Chubby Checker? Tommy James? Etta James? Axl Rose? Rod Stewart? David Bowie? Iggy Pop? Janis Joplin? Grace Slick? Kurt Cobain? Chrissie Hynde? Eric Burdon? Bjork? Pat Benatar? Tom Petty? Who am I missing?
Is it a contemporary artist? Does Adele qualify?
Stay tuned.
Is it: Jim Morrison? Bruce Springsteen? James Brown? Mick Jagger? Bob Dylan? Bono? Prince? Sting? Buddy Holly? Otis Redding? Cher? Blondie? Siouxsie Sioux? Del Shannon? Little Richard? Roger Daltrey? Marvin Gaye? David Lee Roth? Robert Plant? Freddie Mercury? Ray Charles? Johnny Cash? Aretha Franklin? Van Morrison? Sam Cooke? Cheryl Crow? Courtney Love? Jerry Lee Lewis? Fats Domino? Chubby Checker? Tommy James? Etta James? Axl Rose? Rod Stewart? David Bowie? Iggy Pop? Janis Joplin? Grace Slick? Kurt Cobain? Chrissie Hynde? Eric Burdon? Bjork? Pat Benatar? Tom Petty? Who am I missing?
Is it a contemporary artist? Does Adele qualify?
Stay tuned.
Monday, March 12, 2012
Peyton and Tiger
A SPORTS REPORT
Those football teams looking to gamble on quarterback Peyton Manning's return to health should look at the example of golf's Tiger Woods, who after an injury a few years ago has yet to regain his championship form.
Those football teams looking to gamble on quarterback Peyton Manning's return to health should look at the example of golf's Tiger Woods, who after an injury a few years ago has yet to regain his championship form.
Destroying Our Roots
I note that last week the New York Times carried a huge ad attacking the Catholic Church. The ad was paid for by the Freedom From Religion organization.
Can there be a freedom from anything? The only way to have freedom from something is to wipe it out.
If you're really going to have freedom from Christianity, say, you'd have to destroy western civilization itself. There's no end of writers and artists you'd have to toss out of the canon, Tolstoy and Milton and Rembrandt, Dostoevsky and Dante and Michaelangelo only among the very most prominent of them. For 2,000 years, most of the intellectual progress in the west, for all the missteps and conflicts, was spawned by Christianity and Christians, including the preservation and renewal of classical thought.
In this country, most of today's bastions of secular intellectual thought, such as Yale, Princeton, and Harvard, were established by believing Christians. Do their graduates know this? The two great social justice movements of American history, the Abolitionist movement in the 19th century and the Civil Rights movement in the 20th, were initiated and led by Christians putting Christian ideals into practice.
Many Americans aren't believing Christians. Many like myself aren't very active or practicing. But most of us are cultural and historical Christians. I was raised in a Roman Catholic milieu. I can no more take that tremendous heritage out of my being than I can freely cut off my right arm. Neither can we remove the Christian heritage from our civilization without greatly altering that civilization, taking a giant leap of faith-- a gamble that by killing all trace of God and the church all will proceed as before.
Can there be a freedom from anything? The only way to have freedom from something is to wipe it out.
If you're really going to have freedom from Christianity, say, you'd have to destroy western civilization itself. There's no end of writers and artists you'd have to toss out of the canon, Tolstoy and Milton and Rembrandt, Dostoevsky and Dante and Michaelangelo only among the very most prominent of them. For 2,000 years, most of the intellectual progress in the west, for all the missteps and conflicts, was spawned by Christianity and Christians, including the preservation and renewal of classical thought.
In this country, most of today's bastions of secular intellectual thought, such as Yale, Princeton, and Harvard, were established by believing Christians. Do their graduates know this? The two great social justice movements of American history, the Abolitionist movement in the 19th century and the Civil Rights movement in the 20th, were initiated and led by Christians putting Christian ideals into practice.
Many Americans aren't believing Christians. Many like myself aren't very active or practicing. But most of us are cultural and historical Christians. I was raised in a Roman Catholic milieu. I can no more take that tremendous heritage out of my being than I can freely cut off my right arm. Neither can we remove the Christian heritage from our civilization without greatly altering that civilization, taking a giant leap of faith-- a gamble that by killing all trace of God and the church all will proceed as before.
Sunday, March 11, 2012
Lacan and Writers
I've been trying to grasp the ideas of Jacques Lacan, which I find intriguing. I'm using the filter of Slavoj Zizek, who's a more readable writer than Lacan himself, whose prose, like that of so many French philosophers, is deathly boring.
I take Lacan's core idea that of the divide between conscious and unconscious which leads to paradox. For instance, the most upstanding man in church, the model of uprightness, might on Saturday night be the biggest sinner in the community-- or even a serial killer. On the other hand, the athiest who publicly rejects God in fact internalizes him, and may be more rigidly obsessed with rules than the believer. I'm not sure Lacan's notions are often true, but they're at least sometimes true.
How do Lacan's ideas apply to writers? I think of two instances where they might.
I remember in 2006 when the ULA protested a "Howl" celebration at Columbia University for its phoniness. When Jellyboy the Clown and I entered Miller Hall, where the "celebration" was taking place, it was like walking into a morgue. These upscale folks honoring the Beats were the most unalive uncelebratory unBeat rigidly constipated people I'd ever seen. They listened to a creaky recording of "Beat"-- not a lively version-- and you could hear absolutely nothing else. We'd entered a church service, and not a very lively one at that. High Mass at its most stifling. The Beats? Wild men? Joy? There was none of this. The Beats were treated by the unBeat audience as dead mummies to be silently worshipped, but dare not one behave in any manner resembling the actual Beats! It was a Lacanian paradox. Those who'd ostensibly rejected all rules had imposed upon themselves their own-- or really, brought the same rules and uptight behavior that the Beats thought they'd destroyed, back.
A second example might be the 3,000 or 30,000-- by now it might be 3 million-- system writers who signed a public petition proclaiming their support for the Occupy Wall Street movement. The petition, of course, asks them to do nothing. There's no commitment, and since everyone is signing it, including literature's One Percent, there's absolutely no risk. Most if not all of these writers gave no support to the Underground Literary Alliance when it was around making noise last decade. Some of them were actively hostile to it. The ULA was a very Occupy-like organization ten years ahead of the fact, with the difference that we wanted to apply our ideas of democracy to the literary realm itself. (And of course found, "You can't do that!")
What's a Lacanian analysis of the current petition? Mine is that by signing it, the writers publicly demonstrate their commitment to abstract concepts of concern and change-- without having to actually change anything. It's like walking around with a badge or sign on themselves that says, "I Care." Now designated publicly as virtuous, they're absolved from being so in reality. The Lacanian paradox is that those writers on the list are least likely to put Occupy ideas into action; to try to make them, in their own field-- where they wield actual influence-- a reality. They don't have to make them a reality! After all, they're on the list.
I'd look then, to find establishment writers of character, honesty, and integrity, for those names not on the list. Those not playing the phony game. I've spotted two surprising names not on the list, who you'd think would automatically be on there. I think I may have misjudged those fellows-- they may have more honor than I thought-- and wonder if I owe them an apology.
I take Lacan's core idea that of the divide between conscious and unconscious which leads to paradox. For instance, the most upstanding man in church, the model of uprightness, might on Saturday night be the biggest sinner in the community-- or even a serial killer. On the other hand, the athiest who publicly rejects God in fact internalizes him, and may be more rigidly obsessed with rules than the believer. I'm not sure Lacan's notions are often true, but they're at least sometimes true.
How do Lacan's ideas apply to writers? I think of two instances where they might.
I remember in 2006 when the ULA protested a "Howl" celebration at Columbia University for its phoniness. When Jellyboy the Clown and I entered Miller Hall, where the "celebration" was taking place, it was like walking into a morgue. These upscale folks honoring the Beats were the most unalive uncelebratory unBeat rigidly constipated people I'd ever seen. They listened to a creaky recording of "Beat"-- not a lively version-- and you could hear absolutely nothing else. We'd entered a church service, and not a very lively one at that. High Mass at its most stifling. The Beats? Wild men? Joy? There was none of this. The Beats were treated by the unBeat audience as dead mummies to be silently worshipped, but dare not one behave in any manner resembling the actual Beats! It was a Lacanian paradox. Those who'd ostensibly rejected all rules had imposed upon themselves their own-- or really, brought the same rules and uptight behavior that the Beats thought they'd destroyed, back.
A second example might be the 3,000 or 30,000-- by now it might be 3 million-- system writers who signed a public petition proclaiming their support for the Occupy Wall Street movement. The petition, of course, asks them to do nothing. There's no commitment, and since everyone is signing it, including literature's One Percent, there's absolutely no risk. Most if not all of these writers gave no support to the Underground Literary Alliance when it was around making noise last decade. Some of them were actively hostile to it. The ULA was a very Occupy-like organization ten years ahead of the fact, with the difference that we wanted to apply our ideas of democracy to the literary realm itself. (And of course found, "You can't do that!")
What's a Lacanian analysis of the current petition? Mine is that by signing it, the writers publicly demonstrate their commitment to abstract concepts of concern and change-- without having to actually change anything. It's like walking around with a badge or sign on themselves that says, "I Care." Now designated publicly as virtuous, they're absolved from being so in reality. The Lacanian paradox is that those writers on the list are least likely to put Occupy ideas into action; to try to make them, in their own field-- where they wield actual influence-- a reality. They don't have to make them a reality! After all, they're on the list.
I'd look then, to find establishment writers of character, honesty, and integrity, for those names not on the list. Those not playing the phony game. I've spotted two surprising names not on the list, who you'd think would automatically be on there. I think I may have misjudged those fellows-- they may have more honor than I thought-- and wonder if I owe them an apology.
Friday, March 09, 2012
False Narratives
I empathize with Sarah Palin regarding the endless cultural destruction campaign on her character and personality which-- don't kid yourself on this-- is a sophisticated destruction of American democracy.
On a vastly, vastly smaller scale, this is what happened to myself and the Underground Literary Alliance. A distorted image of the target was created, one with just enough of a tangential connection to reality to make it believable. I was portrayed as a semi-rational megalomaniacal dictator to enough extent that as I tried to keep the team moving, some members believed the portrayal. By the ULA's end, major ULA figures believed I was the campaign's major problem. When I finally had enough and stopped pulling the wagon, the campaign stopped moving. I'm sure those ULAers who bought the portrayal are still standing with mouth agape, wondering, unknowingly, what happened to the ULA.
The ULA itself was characterized by established lit's hatchetmen as "terrorists" and Stalinists. Also, a favorite trick was used, one I've seen used again and again in different places and situations. That's to turn the marginalized voice into a threat able to marginalize the dominant mindset. The ultimate absurdity for us was The Believer's false 2003 claim that we wanted to-- or ever could-- shut out a writer like Jeffrey Eugenides. In 2007 this was still being thrown up to me, such as in a radio interview with a local PBS station. It's as if, once it was printed in The Believer, it became reality.
What was the truth? Does anyone care about the truth? The truth is that Jeffrey Eugenides continues to be published and win Pulitzer Prizes, while ULA writers are blackballed, nonpersons for eternity.
Of course I waste my time just typing this. It does no good to correct the false narrative if you don't control the culture or media. As with Sarah Palin, the narrative has become the reality. Truth shredded. Our establishment doesn't need Putin-like strong arm tactics. So primitive! Our subtle authoritarian anti-democrats are exponentially more sophisticated. There's also no Masha Gessens anyplace to investigate, to examine credibly such things as a Harvard versus Harvard presidential election choice-- for that would be to investigate themselves, those who are consciously or subconsciously doing the selecting and the distorting.
Or, to make counterarguments, to bring up facts afterward doesn't matter. The victimizers never apologize.
(p.s. And Julianne Moore, please stop the endless rationalizing. You've participated in a nasty smear project. In doing so you've besmirched yourself as much as Sarah Palin.)
On a vastly, vastly smaller scale, this is what happened to myself and the Underground Literary Alliance. A distorted image of the target was created, one with just enough of a tangential connection to reality to make it believable. I was portrayed as a semi-rational megalomaniacal dictator to enough extent that as I tried to keep the team moving, some members believed the portrayal. By the ULA's end, major ULA figures believed I was the campaign's major problem. When I finally had enough and stopped pulling the wagon, the campaign stopped moving. I'm sure those ULAers who bought the portrayal are still standing with mouth agape, wondering, unknowingly, what happened to the ULA.
The ULA itself was characterized by established lit's hatchetmen as "terrorists" and Stalinists. Also, a favorite trick was used, one I've seen used again and again in different places and situations. That's to turn the marginalized voice into a threat able to marginalize the dominant mindset. The ultimate absurdity for us was The Believer's false 2003 claim that we wanted to-- or ever could-- shut out a writer like Jeffrey Eugenides. In 2007 this was still being thrown up to me, such as in a radio interview with a local PBS station. It's as if, once it was printed in The Believer, it became reality.
What was the truth? Does anyone care about the truth? The truth is that Jeffrey Eugenides continues to be published and win Pulitzer Prizes, while ULA writers are blackballed, nonpersons for eternity.
Of course I waste my time just typing this. It does no good to correct the false narrative if you don't control the culture or media. As with Sarah Palin, the narrative has become the reality. Truth shredded. Our establishment doesn't need Putin-like strong arm tactics. So primitive! Our subtle authoritarian anti-democrats are exponentially more sophisticated. There's also no Masha Gessens anyplace to investigate, to examine credibly such things as a Harvard versus Harvard presidential election choice-- for that would be to investigate themselves, those who are consciously or subconsciously doing the selecting and the distorting.
Or, to make counterarguments, to bring up facts afterward doesn't matter. The victimizers never apologize.
(p.s. And Julianne Moore, please stop the endless rationalizing. You've participated in a nasty smear project. In doing so you've besmirched yourself as much as Sarah Palin.)
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