Hammer-philia

The following is the transcript from a letter I received not so long ago. I've been mired in a very very cool correspondence with a very cool person who lives very far away. Don't you love the internet?


I think that is my biggest concern in art and culture right
now, the way cynicism pollutes and calcifies the human
experience. I am longing for a new anti-digital, anti-
advertising romanticism

I like these quotes from David Foster Wallace, whose
writing is like reading a technical manual or a dictionary
written by someone on acid.

"The really important kind of freedom involves attention and
awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about
other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in
myriad petty, unsexy ways every day."


An ad that pretends to be art is -- at absolute best -- like
somebody who smiles warmly at you only because he
wants something from you. This is dishonest, but what's
sinister is the cumulative effect that such dishonesty has on
us: since it offers a perfect facsimile or simulacrum of
goodwill without goodwill's real spirit, it messes with our
heads and eventually starts upping our defenses even in
cases of genuine smiles and real art and true goodwill. It
makes us feel confused and lonely and impotent and angry
and scared. It causes despair.

My motto is simply: VERITAS. seek and understand the
truth. It is never sexy, cool or exciting. Even love is
unexciting. I love babysitting. I spent 3 hours with Kami
and Luken today looking at and talking about rocks and
collecting them and climbing walls and doing prat falls. It
makes me think about how incredible it is to actually
experience the world with no filters, just direct sensation. I
think in this culture, that is the most seditious, radical thing
to do. to look at things and touch things. Have you ever
thought about all the incredible taboos operating around
touch? Like by touching another person you are
transgressing so many social rules. I think computers are
really funny sometimes. They are supposed to be
machines operating around information but they provide
information as a reward for tactile manipulation. They are
essentially little boxes that need to be constantly
massaged. Or even movement? the social rules that
govern walking? Luken and Cami and me were walking
down the sidewalk today and doing Buster Keaton-type
comic falls into people's hedges and it was like we kept
thinking we were going to get into trouble, but how could
anyone deny the obvious fun of Buster Keaton falls into
soft, springy hedges? I'm suprised everyone doesn't do
that. Kami was eating a cinammon roll today and the
raisins kept trying to escape! It was a stampede! Luken
made up this poem:

Unlucky Jones,
He Has No Bones
All he can do is twist
He's never even been kissed
Because he's dumb.

I was reading an article about the information age today. I
don't know if I would even call it the information age. Maybe
the age of total occlusion would be better. the age in which
sensation died. I think the romantics are so radical. I often
find myself empathizing very much with Rimbaud who just
walked away from everything for a world of infinite
sensation. I think Romanticism is even more relevant now,
but this time the industrial numbness is so much more
insidious as thoughts and emotions have become products
in an advertising - based economy. The most difficult thing
now is to be vulnerable and raw and unafraid of the constant
numbing assault of culture. It is better to be hurt by it than
numb. I love vulnerability. Being vulnerable means being
capable of love, and being human, and discarding "cool"

that marx quote is amazing. Everything just sliding away.
it is heartbreaking.

Have a great day, lecture star!