, an interview with Nathaniel Dorsky (I was turned on to Dorsky by Josh
Weinstein).
permalinkApril 23, 2005
There have been many false alarms that the world's oil production was about to peak, in the past.
However, evidence is increasing that we
may well really be at or near peak world oil production, finally. What's more, even if oil production remains flat
or stable for some time, consumption continues to rise, and it seems increasingly unlikely that
oil extraction rates will meet rising demand. Thus: we may be headed for an oil shock in the near
future of a magnitude that might make the 70's oil crisis seem like a cakewalk by comparison.
For some reason, the other day, New York suddenly seemed really small to me, somehow. In a good
way: a place which is actually quite manageable in size.
I have to say this story really amused me: Americans
have started to pay down their credit cards. In reaction to absurdly high interest rates and the
nearly criminally insane so-transparently-corrupt-it-is-laughable "reform" of the bankruptcy law passed
recently by Congress and signed by Bush,
Americans have decided to pay down their credit cards. Ha! What a deliciously ironic turn of events for the credit
card companies! First they think they're getting this incredible windfall in the form of bankruptcy
legislation hand-tailored to their specifications, but then consumers, who finally are beginning to
wake up to the behavior of these companies, decide to start paying down their cards --- dramatically
lowering the credit card companies' profits. It's a classic example of a very common mistake ---
assuming that when you change one thing, everything else will stay the same.
It might turn out that the old bankruptcy law was in fact helping the credit card companies make
money by making people feel less afraid to build up debt. Ha ha!
permalink
April 22, 2005
TESTTESTTESTTESTTESTTESTTES
TTESTTESTTESTTESTTESTTESTTE
STTESTTESTTESTTESTTESTTESTT
TESTTESTTESTTESTTESTTESTTES
TTESTTESTTESTTESTTESTTESTTE
STTESTTESTTESTTESTTESTTESTT
permalink
April 21, 2005
Brianna's thought for the day:
If you lose the spirit of repetition, your practice will become quite difficult.
permalinkApril 20, 2005
Another thing that stuck in my mind after seeing the Arbus show was something from a letter
she wrote near the end of her life about this day she was reviewing some student work. She said at one point she hardly
wanted to look at the pictures, because they were bad and she was worried she would somehow learn
how to take bad pictures from them. I think I know what she means: looking at bad (pictures, films,
books, etc.) isn't necessarily neutral. You can learn how not to see from them, I think.
permalink
April 18, 2005
One thing I noticed while looking at the Diane Arbus photos was how old
many of the young people looked in her older photos. In Hollywood period movies they tend to
make younger people look exactly like young people do today, except with different
clothes; but in fact people really looked different, almost physically so; their posture,
their facial expressions, even their very bodies seem to look old --- the way older people
sometimes look. I realized that it's not that we really necessarily change into
old people as we grow older --- perhaps most older people always looked and acted basically
the way they do now, even when they were young.
The interesting thing is, however, almost none of Arbus' famous photographs are of these
old-looking young people. Though the exhibit had a lot of them, I am hard pressed to find
even one example on the web. That's mostly because most of those photographs were taken
before the mid-60's --- but most of her famous photographs are from the mid-60's on. It's
as though the biggest shift in people's appearance happened sometime in the 60's. Further,
it seems as though the pictures we want to look at are of people who look the
way younger people look today.
There are exceptions, however --- in the few pictures we see of Arbus herself, she looks
thoroughly modern. Perhaps artists have always had a more timeless style, or perhaps they
merely lead the general public by a few decades.
permalink
April 16, 2005
I was planning to go away to meditate this weekend, but I had too much work to do,
so I decided to stay home and work. However, in the evening I went to see the
Diane Arbus show at the Met.
I had only seen Arbus' photos here and there, over the years, and had no idea
what the sweep of her work was like --- very impressive. But more striking
still was how much the exhibit revealed of the photographer herself through her
writings, interviews, notes, and journal entries; what a remarkable woman. I would
want to marry her if she weren't dead. She was a perceptive, vivid, and evocative writer with a
great facility with words. One quote of hers struck me so much I spoke it into my voice recorder for later reference:
One of the things I felt I suffered from as a kid was I never felt adversity. I was confirmed in a sense of unreality which I could only feel as unreality, and the sense of being immune was, ludicrous as it seems, a painful one. It was as if I didn't inherit my own kingdom for a long time.
I feel exactly the same way.
permalinkApril 15, 2005
It seems to me that the reason the Democrats are starting to lose on the national
level is that we no longer consistently appeal to the working class. Traditionally,
Democrats have appealed to both the highly educated (winning among people with graduate
degrees) and the lowest income, a combination that worked well for decades. Now,
however, the Republicans have found a strategy of appealing to the wealthy and upper-middle
class as well as white working class people by emphasizing policies which benefit the rich
and appeal to social conservatism. Democrats have been so afraid to resort to "class warfare"
that we've lost our working class base, and with it,
elections. Interestingly, billionares (not
millionaires) are now voting Democratic, which means the Democrats can now accurately claim to represent
the top echelons both in education and income. Democrats need to also appeal to
the working class, again, to succeed nationally.
permalink
April 14, 2005
Jenny Doussan recommended the following book to me:
The Theater and its Double by Antonin Artaud.
permalink
April 13, 2005
The Discipline of DE
by William Burroughs,
from Exterminator,
as posted on Wikilicious.
permalink
April 12, 2005
From another email I just wrote:
...By "the sorts of insights [you have been having]" I mean seeing that the constructed
consensus reality that people ordinarily latch onto isn't the whole story,
that there are many other ways of seeing the world, that there is no single
privileged way, there's no absolute meaning, etc. These insights are, I
believe, completely correct, and at first I agree frightening and even
destabilizing. I remember the first time I was meditating and encountered
emptiness in a visceral way --- it felt like everything I knew and cared
about was being reduced to meaninglessness. But there is "the other side."
The initial shock of the deconstruction of ordinary meaning is a feeling of
loss, but on the other side there's something else, a freedom. Because
ordinary meaning is actually a prison of sorts, one that we construct for
ourselves, we're own own gatekeepers and guards. What lies beyond is where
we already are and it's actually far more vast and full and real than the
things we think we're losing when we shatter the illusion of the solidity of
constructs. It's like tearing up a cartoon map of the world and first
feeling scared and disoriented but then seeing the beautiful vista of nature
and reality spread out before you. It's breathtaking and very satisfying.
Regarding Buddhism I would say that though I study and practice Buddhism I
don't think of myself as a "Buddhist". To me that term is limiting and
unnecessary. I think insights are available to anyone and various things
have been seen by lots of people from diverse cultures (for example we were
talking about Bataille, but there are many examples). Buddhism as a cultural
tradition took some insights further into the realm of practice, daily life,
body/energy, etc. in the West there has been more of a focus on philosophy
and theory, though what you said about Artaud brings it more into a practical
realm of practice via theater. Further, "Buddhism" is a very large term that
applies to a lot of teachings and sects and practices of varying levels of
profundity and insight, some of which are contradictory, etc. I tend to lean
more towards the Zen/Chan and Dzogchen teachings, which are closest to
postmodern in their flavor (though they differ slightly, it's very subtle, we
could chat about that someday).
permalinkApril 9, 2005
Part of an email I wrote today:
Rain in Los Angeles is often dramatic and powerful; I remember one terrific
storm when I was in high school with clouds mounting up above the city, lit
by the downtown lights, it looked like a gigantic cathedral, frightening and
vast. When the clouds let forth it was literally sheets of water crashing
down --- it didn't even look like drops of rain. It's a desert climate in
some ways, warm during the day and cool at night, with rain infrequent but
often intense.
New York rain seems more dreary somehow, though Portland rain always seemed
different to me --- because it is frequent but often broken by sunlight
popping in, it felt more clarifying than dreary, most of the time. You could
almost feel the plants drinking in the water. There were often days with
rain and sun at the same time --- rain falling through sunlight is really
beautiful. Olympia and Seattle were a bit more grey, but Portland has a
mixture of rain and sun that really is nice.
permalinkApril 8, 2005
I saw the Greater New York show at
PS 1 today. Mostly, it sucked.
I was kind of surprised at how mediocre to bad it was --- is this really the best that New York
has to offer? There were only a few pieces here and there that I thought stood
out; and I thought the films and video were okay, but not stellar.
Is this a failure of New York artists or a failure of curating?
permalink
April 7, 2005
When it comes to romantic feelings, I think I am motivated primarily by a
thought (perhaps it is more like a fantasy) that the woman involved is, or could be,
or "should" be --- interested in me. Sure, she might not be saying it or exhibiting it,
but I still need to think or feel that, deep down, she is or could be interested in me. If, for
whatever reason, I find out that this is not in fact the case, I find my romantic thoughts
and feelings disappear. I find it difficult to even remember, at that point, what
those feelings were like any longer. It's sad, in a way, to lose that feeling of romantic
interest in someone, even if nothing was ever going to come of it (for example, because
of marriage, etc.) I miss it. But once the thought that, perhaps in some alternate universe
in which we were both available, we might get together, once that thought is gone, then
the desire disappears as well, for me.
Most women, on the other hand, seem to operate on a different principle: if the mystery
about whether a man is interested in them is resolved too quickly (for example, by the man declaring his
interest too early on), that's when women lose interest. It's certainty that kills
romance in both cases, but in one case it's certainty there's no interest, and in the other,
certainty that there is interest.
permalink
April 6, 2005
It's very late and I haven't posted (again) --- and as I lie here on the floor with my laptop, trying to think of what to write to "catch up" with my posting, I see ...
my washing machine. A washing machine which I really love. It's an Equator 3612,
which we've had in the loft here for almost two years now, and it works beautifully. Great things about it: it's a combined washer and dryer in one, it's got an evaporative dryer that
doesn't require an outside vent (the moisture just comes out a tube and goes down the
drain), it hooks to an ordinary faucet (our bathroom sink in this case), and it runs on
110 volt power. The only downside is the first one we had broke after about six
months --- but it always ran kind of loud. The replacement they sent us was always a lot quieter and has run fine since we got it. The high-speed spin cycle does vibrate a bit but it only
goes for five minutes or so like that at a time, and otherwise the machine runs very quietly.
It does take a while to do a load (about 2.5-3 hours), but it washes and dries at once so
you don't really have to think about it much. It's also very energy- and water-efficient.
It's fantastic for New York.
permalink
April 4, 2005
Arrington de Dionyso at the Knitting Factory this Wednesday. Arrington is from that
Olympia crowd which includes the mysterious and prolific Kenneth Mroczek,
McCloud Zicmuse (who stayed with me a few nights ago
and just performed here in New York --- that was fun, I got to hold some of his pictures up and
light them up with a flashlight while he was playing, on the spur of the moment),
the lovely and very talented Khaela Maricich,
Sarah Brown (who has no website at the moment but who is a brilliant and wonderful artist,
writer, political lobbyist, and all-around philanthropy woman now),
Miranda July (well, she used to hang out there
a lot in the old days, though now she's grown to be about 1000 feet tall ... at least
when seen from a distance), Anna Oxygen, and lots
of other interesting people.
permalink
April 3, 2005
Whups, I'm starting to slack off on my pledge to post once a day.
I was thinking about first impressions and judging character --- even telling if someone is telling
a lie. I remember at least two occasions when I had an overwhelming first impression of someone which
turned out to be precisely accurate. The first was when I met the CEO of a company that friends of friends
of mine had started. The moment I met him I had this huge, immediate reaction: slimeball. Who knows why?
Well, he then proceeded, through a variety of shady maneuvers, to attempt to steal the company
from the founders (thankfully he was stopped), and then he fled the country. Later, these same friends of
friends decided that I was responsible for some problems with a project we had been working on, and
they decided to try to hire one of the people I had hired to do some of the work over my head, so
to speak, because for some reason they thought he had done all the work. I tried to warn them, however,
that this guy (though I liked him a lot) was not really the sort of
person who could get work done without a very careful approach to managing him --- yet they attempted to make
him the lead on the project --- even though he wasn't, as these friends of friends of mine
evidently had concluded, primarily responsible for the work on our earlier projects which had gone well.
As it turned out, they ignored my advice and he quit after about a month.
On another occasion --- I saw this guy standing and talking on the other side of a large room, and immediately I thought "this is a
very angry person" --- I had no idea why. Well, we discovered it was exactly true --- for example, he got so mad once while
playing a video game that he literally broke the chair he was sitting in after losing a round. Thankfully
he recognized his problem and tried to deal with it, later.
A couple things strike me as odd about this: first, how did I know that one guy was a total slimeball,
and another very angry? Was it their body language? Some sort of psychic aura? Smell? Why did these friends of
friends, on the other hand, while being very intelligent people, have such terrible judgement when it came
to people, at least in these instances? What makes for good or bad judgement when it comes to trusting people?
permalink
April 1, 2005
I'm not doing an April Fool's entry. Sorry. Too tired for jokes.
How about: things we wish had been April Fool's jokes?
Wolfowitz tapped for World Bank.
Report: Iraq intelligence 'dead wrong'.
Bush nominates Bolton as UN ambassador.
Bush Launches Preemptive Attack on Social Security.
permalink