Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.61.0410291424580.5959@panix3.panix.com>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
To: Cyb <cybermind@listserv.aol.com>,
"WRYTING-L : Writing and Theory across Disciplines" <WRYTING-L@LISTSERV.UTORONTO.CA>
Subject: distraught, i second and agree
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 2004 14:25:09 -0400 (EDT)
distraught, i second and agree i second and agree with Ryan here although he's not responsible for this post and i dream of Canada. the past few days I've sent out what might be my best image-work, certainly work relevant to our position today in terms of both phenomenology and politics, no one comments on these works, there might be a small spike, i don't know in website access. but what can i expect, sending out so much work all the time, no matter what the quality. it loses its relevance by surplus. it's useless like this post is useless. occasionally a friend will reply, but that's all. at least i hope you're ordering your neighbors to vote. this isn't a time for niceties. i third and agree with Susanne here and would if possible stop the paranoia and hatred, albeit my work is brilliant and invisible to you as is this post, a form of mea culpa or bootstrap starting with an inconceivable ab nihilo - the quantity of thinking that expresses itself outside the body returns within, in the recent images which i have created, which are not so much created as a kind of reportage on the state of interiority in relation to digital incursion. of course one never knows what one misses and there are my own personal attack dogs out there who will point out the disaster of cross-posting, my evil in general, flooding their mailboxes with unwanted spam. i fourth and agree with Murray here that they could simply place my address in delete or kill or other filter, say procmail, as i have done with them, in order to protect myself psychologically, since some of the ugliest attacks have come personally to me at one or another conference, i remember in particular a nasty smirking talentless individual who wanted above all to appear in the know following like a dead dog after another dead dog, perhaps there is no name for that. i am far too vulnerable to these people whose idea of humanity is unbridled and highly applied machismo in situation where discourse should be the rule of the day. i fifth and agree with Carole that every text should stand on its own, that every text is a file, that the entire digital world is composed of files, of strings of symbols, ordered somewhat coherently in a world order that exudes very little self-defense. not only is a chain determined by its weakest link, but the weakest link also turns the rest of the chain into literal garbage, polluting the earth, although otherwise perfectly fine, which is one reason to recycle constantly, just as almost everything we own is from one or another recycling, due to constant poverty and stress. but i note that Tom or Jennifer will place a work up for gracious comment and much discussion into the night and my form of daily dosage of tv's worst journalist moments transformed into text goes almost entirely unnoticed, as for one thing, it actually at times requires download or attentive reading, and who has the time for that when probably half a billion are online now or getting online, and spam reaches a good sixty to eighty percent of all packets down the line. still i hunger as the election approaches for a morsel of positivity that i'm doing something right, instead of hearing from the usual attack dogs who surely could for a moment change to hotmail and send me violent and uncontrollable email as if my life were in danger, or my mental health, already suffering from the incipient fascism in this country and trying, as we all are, to do something about it. i am a president and i do what a president has to do. i am an artist and i do what an artist has to do. we all have this selfishness built into our genetic structures, however usually it's not so much on the surface, most often there is a modicum of super-structural cultural configurations on top of raw libido. political esthetics, wolves on the attack both here and in real-space, even though the animals are misused, some of the most beautiful on earth. i agree with James that the same isn't true at all for the current human species, which is hardly humane, none of us are, in any sense of the word, and perhaps i go farther yet in praying for extinction, which the current regime in fact might authorize or abet. the value of this is incalculable, since, if there is no reason to save forests or whales, there is even less reason to save ourselves, and in fact reason has very little to do with it. it's a matter of taste, and mine goes to the majority, and it's a matter of the least pain, and our elimination will certain savage the earth to a considerably less degree than is going on now. i agree with Mark that this pessimism might not be warranted, but there is little else, given the vagaries and vandalization of power in the hands of a few, which will increasingly be the case as the wealthy turn towards encasement and gated communities, control and command and communication centers, the rest of us allowed to fare in poisonous air and misguided weaponry. one man, one woman, one atomic bomb, and one child, and nothing more is ever or will ever be necessary. in the shadow of this, my misguided attempts at writing or imaging or programming or sound or video, light or smell, scent or odor, touch or travesty, lend themselves to nothing whatsoever, but it's my genes speaking that keeps me on the move, hoping for a missive in return and a kinder or more gentle one at that. i agree with Adrian that this is hardly likely, that one has only so much time in the world, and the time of the world seems increasingly limited, and how much attention can you pay to any one human, and there are just so many minutes in the day. as well, there is always the danger of repetition, or psychosis or neurosis setting in, moving out of control so subtilely that it's hardly noticeable until suddenly one awakens, as if from a dream, finding oneself in a field of slaughter or unparalleled violence in the midst of an all-too-familiar world. it's there that the missive arrives, in a ruined mailbox or inbox, read by eyes almost blinded by a surfeit of ultraviolent, and it's there that the last reprieve appears, for a minute, and almost a minute too late. i agree with Eleanor that the time is always already gone in future anterior, that the future has already happened. i am too late, myself, as usual, and will not garner your respect. _