tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31416501.post8923249237279524719..comments2023-12-08T00:45:09.046-08:00Comments on The Fullfillment* Centre: let your poison be your curecarlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17886258675618058752noreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31416501.post-4055817932106570632012-02-26T02:32:07.570-08:002012-02-26T02:32:07.570-08:00i fancied a change, basically.
anyway its still g...i fancied a change, basically.<br /><br />anyway its still got an impostume url<br /><br />plus when i started blogging i was working on a novel called at that point the impostume and the quote above about Jason Phereus was the .. what's the word for a quote that prefaces a work? I suppose i understood that it was only by not isolating myself and in some way doing battle with my enemies (including myself) that my particular set of problems would be resolved, and lo by indirect means it came to pass....carlhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17886258675618058752noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31416501.post-17486966819045231262012-02-25T08:34:53.214-08:002012-02-25T08:34:53.214-08:00Why is this blog now called 'Jason Phereus'...Why is this blog now called 'Jason Phereus' BTW?David K Waynehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10756535951359716522noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31416501.post-26556774094921718382012-02-24T08:13:50.935-08:002012-02-24T08:13:50.935-08:00Pleasures all mine Dan, more power to you!Pleasures all mine Dan, more power to you!carlhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17886258675618058752noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31416501.post-90359077779956881512012-02-23T19:38:32.357-08:002012-02-23T19:38:32.357-08:00Many thanks for the conversation Carl, definitely ...Many thanks for the conversation Carl, definitely gone away with a lot to think about. A therapy session about therapy really...Tendenzromannoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31416501.post-16799775940366735492012-02-23T05:21:24.526-08:002012-02-23T05:21:24.526-08:00Great post, lots to digest.
I'll be the "...Great post, lots to digest.<br /><br />I'll be the "actually" guy re: Stockhausen. I did fancy myself as a bit of a bedroom avant-guard musician in my mid-teens, producing all kinds of weird, unlisentable noise with broken toy keyboards, cheapo guitar effects and a second-hand four track. Tieing in with the rest of your post, I found it very theraputic and self-affirming indeed. It didn't matter that the "music" was nothing special and of no interest to anyone else, the process was the point for me. <br /><br />"Paul Mason, obviously influenced in some way theoretically by reading Capitalist Realism, is Economics Editor of Newsnight"<br /><br />Wow. That is a turn up for the books.brodnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31416501.post-38797112810301476742012-02-22T15:54:40.824-08:002012-02-22T15:54:40.824-08:00Afraid I can't contribute much to the talk of ...Afraid I can't contribute much to the talk of political writing, other than to say it strikes me as <i>precisely</i> the kind of writing through which you make yourself a better person - after all, isn't to point to arrive at a practical position, a place from which you can live better?<br /><br />As far as music goes, I will gladly cop to being sick. It's a perfect analogy, because like any good junkie, I'm in a place where I prefer the company of my habit to that of real humans. There are occasional moments of withdrawal, but the true terror comes when the drug stops working, prompting a desperate search for a stronger hit.<br /><br />But then, of course I care about music to an extent that is well beyond <i>reasonable</i> to most people. It took my own family years to realize that I'm not just a "music Nazi" (as my sisters called me), because <i>it's my fucking job</i>. It's just kind of a bonus that my vocation leads to more bollocky pseudo-philosophical fistfights than, say, being a patent attorney. (Then again, that may be giving patent attorneys short shrift.)Sebhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15861556483662617818noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31416501.post-51097104825979356762012-02-22T10:57:41.409-08:002012-02-22T10:57:41.409-08:00It's hard to say where the line is between dep...It's hard to say where the line is between depression and unhappiness. I was never on medication because I thought it better to deal with it on my own, and it's only with hindsight and probably reading K-Punk on the subject that I came to realise how intense and... ambient it was. And certainly on the other side many people who are legitimately unhappy rather than depressed have gotten the 'chemical kosh'.<br /><br />'The personal is political' eh? It certainly has great uses and I loved all the Zero books, but i wouldn't discount, say, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz in the papers all the time denouncing austerity's appeals to what he calls 'the confidence fairy.' It's about using all the weapons at your disposal really innit?<br /><br />I must say all you've said has been haunting me a bit all day... what do people actually DO all day once they've got over consuming culture all the time. which makes me think 'Oof, I must be deep into all this if I can't comprehend a life without it.'Tendenzromannoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31416501.post-4351637117899994602012-02-22T09:06:33.043-08:002012-02-22T09:06:33.043-08:00I should add another couple of things here, first...I should add another couple of things here, firstly I've never been depressed, I have just been plain old unhappy, I wan't even miserable and to be frank i was a lot funnier and more sociable than I have been since I was happier,so there is no dramatic tortured mental state or inability to function going on or anything spectular, i was just unhappy in the deep and daily way that many perfectly agreeable people are who ahve talked themselves into believing that a stoical, uncomplaining unhapiness is the hallmark of a truly adult life have. There may be a certain northern british tang to all that too.....<br /><br />secondly, well, yes. I`m pretty much in total agreement with everything you say and have said. To be frank, since the financial crisis of few years ago I have been amazed by the shift in discourse and the increasing militancy of people a generation younger than<br />me, I'm optimistic about the political situation in the UK though I think it will take a number of years to change course.<br /><br />Re politicl writing, I think we have to ask ourselves still what it is or should be at this point and how it exists. my suspicion here is that it should be rather autobiographical, personal and subjective, indeed i think a part of the success of the first wave of Zero books ( Mark, Owen Nina and Dominic) is that they are all fairly autobiographical.carlhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17886258675618058752noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31416501.post-43970906589694362792012-02-22T04:25:35.543-08:002012-02-22T04:25:35.543-08:00I'll reply here with a couple of quick notes l...I'll reply here with a couple of quick notes lest our blogs become dedicated to this rally.<br /><br />I definitely subscribe to the 'lancing the boil' analogy for the image of writing and have used it myself before, particularly as regards the way in which writing - collecting your thoughts and gathering them into an order - is painful, but eases the pain of all that psychic clutter in being arranged and externalised. I daresay you can let it go BECAUSE you know it's out there, on your blog or wherever, and you can come back to retrieve it later on if need be.<br /><br />I can't speak for how far down the rabbit hole of depression you've been but I can recall, through a haze, sustained periods where I was stewing in my own psychic filth basically: I saw good writing and dismissed it as ego-driven self-congratulation, I looked at everything and found a reason not to do it. <br /><br />Recalling it is like trying to recall the thought patterns of a drug trip: disjointed, with kernels of the odd wisdom maybe, but at the time they all appeared to form a coherent whole, a worldview I find unrecognisable now.<br /><br />I think, though, that writing has a value, can speak in a language beyond the aggregation of individuals. In a broad sense we both belong to a Centuries-old Left tradition, snottily dismissed as a 'secular religion' (I see no problem with that with some qualifications).<br /><br />The political aspect of writing has a power that I think is returning: It's one of those 'pinch me' moments for me that Paul Mason, obviously influenced in some way theoretically by reading Capitalist Realism, is Economics Editor of Newsnight, that political reality is in such disarray that the BBC had to concede such an influential position to a Leftist. Seems unimaginable five years ago, and here we are.<br /><br />It seems to me that to some extent the decadent view, or self-view, of the writer stems from a world where it seems impossible to break ideology through it. I have an idea for a sustained piece of writing, studying ideology in Hollywood films. As its starting point I ref. a Guardian article which ref.s a couple of American Fox News analyses: The new Muppets film is Communist because it has an oil baron villain wanting to buy them out of their theatre, and Happy Feet 2 is multiculturalist propaganda because Robin Williams is doing one of his pathetic foreign accents and the characters with American accents team up with him to work toward a common goal. I argue that, say, the overtly Communist A Bug's Life, was made in the period of the End Of History, ideological decadence, and as such passed by unnoticed as far as I can see. So the crisis of Capitalism has galvanised the right once more to tirelessly route out subversive thoughts, and it's a battle we should engage in. Ideology builds its own gravedigger, basically.<br /><br />I suppose what I'm trying to say is that I think the political of where I'm writing from saves me from my self, belongs to a project outside of my self, and this is where the 'secular religion' thing holds more water. Whether or not I or others will change the world with theoretical writing is up for debate, but people have lived and died to write politically.Tendenzromannoreply@blogger.com