On Music: Nils Frahm

I've purchased two tickets for Dan and I to hear and see the musician Nils Frahm perform at the Chicago Symphony Center. I did so on a whim and I didn't plan it, but once I saw the news from the CSC I immediately purchased them knowing that I would regret it later if I didn't. 

I've been listening to a lot of his work recently and cannot tell you how much it improves my day to day, night to night. For me, his music is a beautiful toning out of all noise, a symbiosis of the inner and outer worlds via acoustics, a focusing in on detail, and a control of chaotic forms. 

It's about vibe. Worrying less. Resting your eyes, your ears. Keeping your spirit high. Frahm has said as much. It might also be about slowing down. Thinking all the way through. Seeing clearly, hearing clearly. Equilibrium. Disassembling. Then putting things back together, in a new way, a dance always changing.

I think there's a bit of a bauhaus aesthetic going on here, and perhaps some minimalism too, a bit a folk, a cold technicality yet vibrating with warmth and color... jazz and classical, high and low. This entire genre (I don't really like that word. I'm learning to accept it.) is something I'm delving into so gratefully. It includes: Olafur Arnalds, Ludivico Einaudi, Brian Eno, Eluvium, Jon Hopkins, Max Richter, more. For now I'm listening to everything Nils.

The music is so wonderful for me because it encourages me to live a certain way. Like if I wanted to, I could live exactly how I choose to, if I would just take the reigns. The single word that comes to mind for me when listening to Frahm's music is simply this: restraint. And it teaches. And it is constant.

- F

P.S. One more - 

Three Projects of Differing Natures (Part 2)

In a previous post I outlined three projects I'm interested in delving further into. The first, mental illness, is slowly underway, and will take the form of a long form essay. The second, researching the Philippines and Filipino culture, is something I've decided to put on hold. Not because I will not be studying it, but because I have no desire to turn that into an actual project. I am currently a member of the Asian American & Pacific Islander Committee at the Chicago Public Library and have decided to put forth efforts into organization, initiation, and promotion of programs and materials, but as of right now, I cannot go further than that - my interest in the subject is far too disorganized and personally muddy to even contemplate any sort of authentic production. The third project, on fairy-tales and folklore, is also ongoing and will not culminate into any specific project at the moment.

A recapitulation of projects happening simultaneously and currently:

1. Mental Illness (as stated earlier, this is be a completed essay - using Scanners, Donnie Darko, and Venom as great artistic examples of film that represent symptoms of psychosis)

2. In progress CPL blog posts to be published:
  a. - on Musicians and Musicianship in Literature - which will include five novels that I will read in full, that I will review in my usual way and post here, and finally write the final annotations to be posted publicly here
b. - on the television show Twin Peaks, which will follow the same process as the first (a.)
 c. - on Cats, which will follow the same process as the first (a.)

3. Philosophy/Critical Theory, because it is necessary that I continue to follow this path that I started so very long ago. Short-term goal: the completion of reading a few necessary books that I purchased a while ago, and written reviews of these books that will be shared with all of you.


Side projects/goals/resolutions:

1. practice the piano and share with friends/fam/co-workers and whoever, video recordings for new pieces to be posted on this blog

2. learn how to make a good dip for crackers and pretzels and share with friends/fam/co-workers and whoever

3. continue to practice mediation, and try for every day or every night

- F

P.S. I found this on The New Inquiry's instagram, and I have to hand it to them. I'm more fascinated by their instagram posts than the actual periodical at the moment, so I will follow. 

On Cultural Detritus (II)

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about mass produced poetry of the kind you see floating like plastic rubbish in a poverty stricken body of water near Indonesia. Floating in the feeds, Pinterest, instagram, etc. I don't think I was too harsh, but I don't think I was absolutely, completely honest. In writing it I was. Then I thought about it as few days later. I thought about how many poems by L. Leav and Nayyriah Waheed (in particular) I've saved. Plenty. Here are some of my favorites:

I cannot say that I think this poetry is bad or good. It is helpful. It has helped me, as I've written before, though I've since neglected intentionally following these authors on social media or feeling that I need to read their books. 

My personal reasons why: I pick and choose what I agree with or don't. This one works today, this one doesn't, but it might another day. This one is because so and so has been aggravating me, this one because I feel gross, this one because it sounds nice. This one because I'm in a good mood. When there happens to be a constant, it is most of the time a cliche. Only rarely do you find a gem. 

But never the entirety - 

But when I like an author, when I truly like, even love, an author, artist, philosopher, writer, musician, or theorist (a creator, as it were) I know my liking of it is authentic when I like that creator's entire body of work. It has nothing to do with agreement, it has to do with pleasure, entertainment (surely), quality, style, intent, authenticity (perhaps this is subjective), and that dizzying sinking feeling when you are experiencing a piece of work (by reading or looking or whatever) that hits you in the gut, then moves up your chest and you feel like you can't breathe then you are again and you're sitting but you get weak in the knees and then all of a sudden you're just absolutely positive that your brain has delightfully fried, neurons firing and making the world seem all aglow. The chandelier above your head is literally sparkling with renewed electricity, you're seeing through the director's eyes, the camera's lens, and you're able to adjust the settings just so to make everything look enchanted. Then everything becomes lusty and desirous. And you don't even know who the hell is behind that piece of work. And that desire wasn't even the initial feeling at all. So you go back. And think and try to comprehend. The point is you go back. And take in e v e r y t h i n g and gnaw it from the inside out. 

That story is for another post.

From my last post on this subject, this subject of mass produced poetry: What worries me is when an individual sifting through social media can find just the right saying to piss someone particular off, or give their flawed argument power, or read something to instill a false sense of confidence within themselves. And this stuff isn't used sparingly. It's a constant flow of this, never encouraging deep thinking or thought at all. 

Further, it is a momentary fix, a band-aid without the Neosporin, a cigarette for the addict, that fourth cup of coffee you really don't need but it's become a habit. 

Let me go on to say - 

When I write here, when I write anywhere, when anyone writes anything anywhere - don't forget that there is a person behind that piece of work. That the piece of work is part of a large body of work and it is fixed within that frame. Think of Heidegger and his slow coming to facism. Think of Dr. Seuss and only finding out later of his racist cartoons, written prior to his children's books. Think of how people and ideas change, how they transform over time and circumstance. I think a lot of people tend to forget this, which is part of the reason I wanted to give a follow-up post regarding the prior. 

That this poetic detritus is not good, not bad. But helpful - to some of us - all the same. 

I'm also writing because there is another type of cultural detritus, if you will, that I've been drawn to since I was a child. I've written about two rap artists before - Eminem and Yelawolf in particular - whose music I love listening to and who I've felt increasingly more guilty about liking as I've gotten older.

But then I saw a tweet by one of my old professors:

 And hell fucking yes. Thanks for giving me the OK to not give a s*&^ about liking the music I grew up with, coming back to it later, and still liking it for its anger and for its representation of a very specific class set and for its (I believe unconscious/subsconcious) themes of mental illness. I also hope not to use the term guilty pleasure ever again (see above).

An example of my shame from a few years back, which I posted on Facebook:

This is my kind of cultural detritus. My next move now is to be able to write about it, to be able to break it apart and speak something relevant about it. 

I'm sure you know Black Metal, and that a lot of iterations of black metal seem to be an ongoing search for a hunter/gatherer and/or primitive "race" of people disconnected from historical context - a context which tends to point out their colonial identifiers. I wanted to show you this, because I think prior to black metal's explosion there was a different iteration of this desire, namely:

I know, I know but Black Metal is a little less. A little less or a little more something.

Don't forget to take your vitamins. 

- F

Yes! No!

Always feeling relaxed and happy, smiling to myself and laughing, reading Mary Oliver's poetry.

- F

Wings of Desire

Wings of Desire:

People are distracted by objects of desire,
and afterwards repent of the lust they've 
indulged,
because they have indulged with a phantom
and are left even farther from Reality 
then before. 
Your desire for the illusory is a wing,
by means of which a seeker might 
ascend to Reality.
When you have indulged a lust, your
wing drops off ;
you become lame and that fantasy flees.
Preserve the wing and don't indulge 
such lust,
so that the wing of desire may bear you
to Paradise. 
People fancy they are enjoying
themselves, 
but they are really tearing out 
their wings
for the sake of an illusion. 

Short review from me, here: https://feliciareviewsbooks.blogspot.com/2019/01/the-pocket-rumi-by-rumi-edited-by-kabir.html

- F

Day Off

Hi,

&

music:

- F

Isn't it romantic?

Just a beautiful kissing scene from a really quite disturbing movie (yet one of my favorites when I was little). 

Enjoy!

- F

Explicit Content

(When I write: "this body that I possess", who is the I being spoken?)

For long periods of time, the mind goes on, its thoughts, its thinking... it is as if one represses thinking of the body, its manifestation, its individual parts, because it is always hidden. It is private and covered in shame. Shame from what by who and when and where. It is under attack, with no time to look at itself, until much too late. 

Finally, I saw this, on Instagram, and understood:

What is unbelievable is that whole cultures and subcultures are founded on this, this thing that can't really be spoken. Whole sicknesses. Whole ideologies. Whole whole whole and we can't ever really be too specific.

- F

P.S. I'm also wondering how the hell this word was even created:

Gangster rap has adopted it.

Everyone

I'm currently reading The Pocket Rumi translated by Kabir Edmund Helminski. 

It doesn't sit well that a lot of his poetry is not something we might call a common humanity or shared human values, though I know there are many that follow his writing and what it teaches. I know, for me, a lot of what his poetry talks about is something I feel that I've always strived for and towards, somehow innately. But not everyone has experienced what I have and has seen the things I've seen in the body that I possess.

Tell me, what historical struggle, what coming together of societal conditions, what political events urges a person towards love? Rumi doesn't believe in good and evil, in the moral sense, but he cannot deny his striving towards goodness. It's in his work, this combining of goodness and love and also, quite differently than the Christian messiah, equality between the material and immaterial possessions of the rich and poor. And the cause? Why does he write such things? He looks down on no man, not thieves, not the wearers of gold, not the drunkard, not the mad. 

Again, it doesn't sit well that people - what I feel to be more than that "many" that do - would not and cannot see the value in following his teachings, not as a Messiah or Prophet, but as a poet, one of a great many. 

Here is my question: is it in the structure that the power and magic lies? That this is not sermon, but poetry, but art? 

(I didn't think I would, because I don't typically "review" poetry but now I might, given more thought.)

I'm reading his work quickly and I don't feel guilty about it. There is much to do, much to read, much to write. I stopped for a minute on this verse:

- F

How can you deny what you don't know?

I've begun to contemplate writing about mental illness more seriously these past weeks. It seems that I do better reviewing things, such as books, than just writing about the things in themselves, so I've picked these films - thus far - to help me illustrate symptoms of psychosis as I've experienced it:

* Donnie Darko, directed by Richard Kelly (2001)

*Venom, directed by Ruben Fleischer (2018)

*Scanners, directed by David Cronenberg (1981)

Along with these examples I'm also trying to create a loose personal timeline to describe certain triggering events that led up to my apparent "psychotic" symptoms. I did not know I was potentially mentally ill prior to the diagnosis, but looking back now I see that I was, very much so, but had nothing sufficient enough to warrant psychotherapeutic treatment. 

I'm feeling energetically inspired by this endeavor. That being said I'm going to take my sweet time. 

Updates on other things will be posted until then.

- F

Where Does The Dance Begin, Where Does It End? by Mary Oliver

- Mary Oliver (1935-2019)

And precisely the kind of writing I hate.

Here's an article from Jacobin which irks me with its defensive tone.

Really? Everybody is talking about Democratic Socialism these days?

What Is Democratic Socialism? by Neal Meyer

When an article aims to define a subject with such a huge scope in one article, I'm skeptical. 

- F 

David Harvey's Anti-Capitalist Chronicles

I am so glad I found this podcast on Twitter the other day. I've only just listened to the very first episode: Does Socialism Affect Freedom? but I can say that it has already helped me to understand Marx and Marxism so much more clearly, particularly because Harvey uses the example of property in such a simple, understandable way. 

In the first episode, he breaks down this quote from Marx:

Here's the link to the podcast: http://davidharvey.org/2018/11/new-podcast-david-harveys-anti-capitalist-chronicles/

- F

This is not poetry.

I don't want to get high, I want to get low."

I want

calm excitement 

over

depressive anxiety.

Can you

help me find

the balance?

Tuning my body, tuning my mind 

to you
to you 
to you

- F

From Lars Von Trier's Melancholia" (2011)

Leo: Dad said there's nothing to do and nowhere to hide.  

Justine: If your Dad said that, then he's forgotten about something. He's forgotten about the Magic Cave.  

Leo: The Magic Cave? 

Justine: Yup.  

Leo: Is that something everybody can make? 

Justine: Aunt Steelbreaker can. 

- F

Screwing the pooch?

This little fluff monster means no harm.

- F

On Cultural Detritus (1)

A few days ago at work, while sorting a book cart that I filled with three rows of PN (Library of Congress call number) books, I came across a book of poetry by the now popular poet, Lang Leav. And then I came across a similar looking book by the author Michael Faudet:

I had a feeling these two were partners, after flipping through the poetry - Leav's I had already been acquainted with - and after looking through Faudet's I realized that they must be together. I opened Dirty Pretty Things to its dedication page. I don't remember it word for word, but it was dedicated to Lang, and went something like I hope this is as beautiful as when you slowly open your eyes in morning. 

I turned to my colleague and said, "Awwww, isn't it cute that these two poets are dating?" And my voice, as were my feelings, bordering on sarcasm but not quite there yet.

He says, "Who?"

"Lang Leav and this guy... Michael Faudet. They have similar poetry," I replied.

"What's it like?" he asked.

My immediate, unthinking, off the cuff response was, "It's like that stuff you see on social media and mostly on Instagram and Pinterest."

"Ah," he said. "Like Rupi Kaur."

"Yes, exactly," I responded. 

He walked over to me and took a look at the Lang Leav book. I read him Faudet's dedication out loud. 

"Oooooohhhhh noooooooo," he exclaimed.

"Yeah," I say. "Yeah."

He opened up Leav's book to the dedication page and confirmed that hers was dedicated to Faudet. Hers went something like you are the sea. The sea in the sea of strangers we supposed.

He sat back down.

After thinking back to the one Lang Leav book I read, The Universe of Us, I remembered that it wasn't exactly my personal idea of good poetry. I knew of it precisely because of social media. It floods the feeds. Similar poets include Rupi Kaur, Nayyirah Waheed, Nikita Gill. Look them up and you will see that they all follow similar forms. 

"What do you think makes poetry like this so popular?" I asked my colleague. 

"Not to be mean, but it's the kind of stuff you would read in a high school kid's personal diary," he said.

"Agreed. But I wonder what makes it so popular now. I wrote stuff similar to this in high school, and I bet that no one then thought it was... cool. Certainly not popular," I reflected.

He shrugged. "It simple to read. It's poetry for people who don't want to look for a deeper meaning."

Our conversation ended there but I'm still thinking about it. This kind of mass produced poetry - mass produced now because it includes many, many more people besides the poets I've mentioned, along with all the positive vibes and encouragement and it's okay to be sad bullshit fed into the social media machine by various organizations and individuals, businesses and apps, etc. etc. makes it hard to take any of this seriously. 

Of course, it works, to a certain extent. When I was still in the throes of mental illness I was given a book of motivational quotes that did indeed help me. What worries me is when an individual sifting through social media can find just the right saying to piss someone particular off, or give their flawed argument power, or read something to instill a false sense of confidence within themselves. And this stuff isn't used sparingly. It's a constant flow of this, never encouraging deep thinking or thought at all. 

My response to the above poems: (What is so special about our hearts surviving so much physical pain and emotion? Or it is not special at all? Have you forgotten death. You're alive, yes you are alive. I'll stay soft alright, if I don't have to shoot you down first. Tell me how to be strong not just what it looks like. And what, exactly, is worthy of strength? Don't be a victim to your emotions. I'm glad you like your gift.)

If this type of poetry is so popular we should all try it. The creation of one's own content. This form of poetry, if you can call it that, is not difficult. Your thoughts are streamed onto the page in a rhythmic set. You vocalize your emotions, thoughts. You don't need a creative writing instructor to figure this out. Maybe we can try for something better, more personal, more direct. 

There was a comment my colleague made that I almost forgot about. Look up Rupi Kaur memes. Here are some.

- F

Was it light?

Was it light?
Was it light within?
Was it light within light?
Stillness becoming alive,
Yet still?

A lively understandable spirit
Once entertained you.
It will come again.

- Theodore Roethke

By now, you have carved usable spaces out of them. Some and somewhat, at least.

Still don't *get* Communism? This may help. 

"While the bourgeois revolution concentrated power in the hands of a minority class, the proletarian revolution would transfer power to a class representing the majority."

from Are Workers the Gravediggers of Capitalism? by Matt Vidal | Jacobin

How slow do I have to read this article again in order for everything to make sense? Why does this feel like calculus. Maybe it is, in a way. 

I promise I'm trying. 

- F

like flowers of tar opening up your chest

a brilliant piece from Bright Wall/Dark Room: In This Heat by Fran Hoepfner  

- F

P.S. When we are bound, the ash heap piles in a forgotten flower pot, higher and higher. Even in the winter the heat fills us up in the form of nicotine, reeking of death. 

HALP

Hey. 

Hey, stranger.

If you're not at that second thought yet - I've been there. It'll be OK.

And if you're past that point, I'll have cookies in hand ASAP. With milk and coffee or tea or whatever it is to help you to not go gentle into that good night. 

- F

These are ugly times (or something like that).

Cultural detritus: Examples.

A. 

The regurgitation of what has been said too much or too little to the masses, signifying the fact that whoever's advice this was in the initial circumstance does not matter one whit, nor does context. In any case, it works, but it's purely momentum, like shoving petroleum or hydrocarbon down your car's throat, nowhere to go and no passengers. Worse, you're not entirely sure you're awake enough drive.  And the second, when things get so bad you have to reminded by another unnamed entity of good things, sunsets and tea, or the fact you have hair, or that sweaters are comfortable. Worse again, these things do not exist out of their own rhetorical ideologies, the first Christian (arguably) and the second "American", only because it the form in which both are iterated here - and they pose as if they are universal. Speedy conclusion: we hate our parents or we have bad parents. 

B. 

Fairly harmless advertising for what no longer needs advertising: a typical list featuring exactly what you'd expect. Not to say that those aren't great books, but more information needs to be added here, who are the readers, what does classic mean, how are "classics" different from the canon, what is the Western canon, what is "literary" as opposed to what is not. The problem is that this doesn't say much at all, except, I bet you like lists, here's one.

C.

Because Ariana Grande is the new Britney Spears of our current era, and she's just flooding all the feeds, her dogs, her relationships, her songs that are way, way, way too catchy, her awful clothes that are way, way, way too cute. There is nothing I can grasp here that isn't pure sugar, more like amphetamine, along with the come down and addiction. Also, she wrote a song that made being a slut  seem really, really cool, and I am in awe of those who may argue for feminist undertones:

 

D. 

Ugly, uglier, ugliest. Yes, indeed, these are truly ugly times. Snapchat filters are the worst, we all want to look like we have piles of makeup on and ears of some kind, some underlying longing for cuteness and missing the point. The animal has teeth, claws, and does not care about what it looks like, it does not care for anything more than shelter and safety and killing whoever gets in the way, with no concern for what we call cute or kind or nice or sparkly. One thing that we might share is a bit of play, a bit of fun. That's me, by the way. In any case, it's hideous all the same. 

These are all things which should be understood as diversions, distractions. The sickening excess of it all is that is it regurgitated, over and over again, piling up like detritus, or kipple, a rubbish heap of images and words that come to mean nothing yet give us an injection like heroin that only lasts a few minutes, urging us to continue mindlessly towards death. The subsequent anxiety encroaches, always, worse each time.

So I'll stop here. A resolution for more meaningful, authentic, honest, and intentional input and output from here on out. 

- F

My cat, the cinephile.

I've been working on a new post for CPL on science fiction disaster films. An asteroid will fly by Earth in February, one deemed by NASA as potentially hazardous. 

The past few days have been full of many, many things, but mostly this:

1. Boring trailers before Pacific Rim.

2. Curiously attractive trailers before Edge of Tomorrow.

3. Falling asleep during Fury Road.

4. Daytime amusement at the beginning of Melancholia, hoping for things to play with out of a television screen followed by disappointment. (I'm not sure why I like this Von Trier film so much, by the way, but I do.)

5. Gravity is on my list too.

- F