Greed

I grow weary of reading, especially from good writers who are in the thick of it all, like Glenn Greenwald, about Wall Street and Greed. Greed did not cause the financial disaster. Greed is simply (one) part of who we are. Knowing that violence is a potential we all have inside us, we create, sustain and actively reinforce systems from micro to macro to mitigate our violent tendencies. Of course our systems aren't perfect, but we generally agree that violence is something we don't want too much of, and so we can appeal to these co-created systems--laws, customs, religious convictions/commandments, personal principles, interpersonal relationships, to protect ourselves and each other from the very real violence that can well up inside each and every one of us and gush out into the world.

No, it wasn't Greed that caused the crisis. The creation, sustaining, and expanding of systems that enable our Greed was what caused the great cave-in of 2008 ('09,'10,'11...). Or, we could say that the roof fell in on us due to the deliberate and collectively unchallenged dismantling of the societal systems that had been keeping our own Greed from devouring us. I pat myself on the back for the timely mining metaphor. Down there, you ignore the systems that keep you safe at your own peril. We correctly call this reasoned caution 'Conservative'. Of course, like in our mining metaphor, most of us are down there, in the mine, and are rightly conservative with the conditions of our own well-being. Predictably, the few radicals, or Neoliberals (who are to Liberals what neosoul is to soul) interested in ignoring the safeguards are up top, and too big(-headed) to (consider the catastrophic consequences of their actions which will fall onto others if they) fail. Sometimes they even convince a miner or two (or millions) of their quaint/crackpot/dangerous management theories. For the most part though, down in the mine you know that if that roof caves in it doesn't care whether you're a foreman or a grunt, a newbie or a 40-year veteran about to retire (or for that matter any other kind of "difference" you can think of). It turns out that the systems we create to safeguard us from the most destructive parts of ourselves work best if we're all inside the same room, facing the same consequences. Some used to call it "society".

In the leadup to our present morass, and apparently seductive enough to weather a modicum of international scrutiny and a light, brief public flogging, some societal systems directly rewarded Greed in the form of enormous short-term benefits, like young broker pay incentives, to name but one example. Some ideologies lying around, (like a club, ideologies are desirous of being wielded), most notably The Friedmanism, pretended to believe that "greed is good", *, that somehow a "market" (a term which, by the way, refers to the collective known as 'all of us', to varying intensities, depending on our wealth and how/where we invest it) unrestrained by societal forces that mitigate greed would alchemically turn shit into gold bars with which we could beat the shit out of each other, in order to have more shit to make more gold. I know, it sounds like a child made it up. That is, a poor, brutish child who has suffered many hardships and privations (like, say, the Industrial Revolution, or the Twentieth Century). But, in some sense of course, that is who we are.

A teacher of mine in high school once clarified for us, "Here in America we have the notion that everyone can be a billionaire. That's just not true. Many complicated factors notwithstanding, it is true that anyone can become a billionaire--but not everyone." Imagine 300 million billionaires. What would it mean, then, to be a billionaire? $16,000 muffins. Nope, it's a game of contrasts, and most of us delude ourselves to some degree into investing our precious emotional, physical and mental efforts into playing that lotto, hoping for a miracle, imagining our feet up on the desk in that single wide trailer, smoking a cigar, watching the miners go in and out of that dark hole, basking in the cheap cologne smell of our self-evident exceptionalism, barking orders to the foremen down below to ignore the rules that keep them and the men and women they are responsible for, and with whom they will live and die, safe.

Now, some might say we should go up top and kill that son of a bitch. While I can comprehend the presence of that kind of anger, I'm telling you that to go and nurture it, even for a second, to cultivate it into bloodthirst, is indefensible. We all live and die together in this mine; to fortify the very behaviors that would tear us apart doesn't make any sense. No--we all have a part to play: after all, in our modern world we need administrators!

No--I say we just go up top and move him and his double-wide back down into the mine.



* (thank you kindly to anyone who could please direct me to writing on how an extreme "Christian" Evangelism coexists with raggedy Randy Ayn?)

The Nothingness of Personality

A reading of Jorge Luis Borges' 1922 essay The Nothingness of Personality, in an English translation. There is no self!

Town & Country, Part 3: The Parks

Perception

Just a quick note to say that it's come up again, as it continues to do from time to time these past 2 months or so. This fact of reality being mediated, first by the senses and then by whatever mechanical or digital or other filter we employ.

We never (or--most of us, almost never, ?) have a direct experience. The time lapse between brain and foot and back again is compensated for in order to walk and balance. The visual cortex reconstructs what's in front of us; we see what our visual organs can register, filter, process and understand; we apprehend what is in front of our faces by "seeing" it in our minds. Our hearing modulates, mixes, and eliminates from the constant raw sound it recieves, based on what it has learned will be most useful or relevant in any given moment.

And then there's media. Compressed music and video, porous mockups of the smooth, solid original, with enough of the structure to remind us of the contours and textures of the original. Sometimes like calling a gutted building a building. Technically, it is, but before it had rugs and windows and intact trim. Now, it is the representation of a building, and the illusion works best if you look at it in short bursts from far away. Compressed media as signpost, bookmark, mnemonic device. Thumbnails. What happens when there is no original with heft to reference, no intact landscape to plunder for parts? When what we make is full of holes from its very inception?

Welcome to the swiss cheese factory.


p.s. This really is a 10 minute post, I apologize. I'll try and revise it soon.

A Question

Dear Brooklyn Academy of Music,

Why call it the Next Wave Festival?

Laurie Anderson? I saw her at BAM in 1990. It was really, really loud. Mark Morris? Personally, I prefer the Trockaderos for 'quirky' queer ballet, but, ok... Pina Bausch? She was fabulous. And now she's gone. We deserve a yearlong festival of her work.

They're accomplished artists all, but again the question--why "Next Wave"?

Now, I realize that older artists have to eat, too. Arts funding is "not like it was in the '70's", as Laurie Anderson so wryly put it (in the '80's). And I realize that the money base of BAM ticket buyers will be baby boomers wanting a nostalgia blast of greatest hits (or at least familiar formats) from favorite artists (see: endless touring; Stones, Rolling). I also realize that the benefits of getting those Moneyed Patrons in the door can trickle down to the younger, "emerging" artists on the Festival bill (provided said Patronage actually winds up patronizing those less familiar young'ns). Must we also indulge said Moneyed Older Patrons with the moniker "adventurous audiences"? Are they that narcissistic? Are they that un-self aware that they can't smell such a craven heap of false marketing flattery a mile away? Wait a minute--are they?

Well, anyway...I guess more to the point:
Can't the festival just be called something else?

I made a list of possibilities:

alliterative-- The BAMy Boom Festival

offbeat-- New Tricks by Old Dogs Festival

direct-- The Secure the Funding Base Festival

west coast-- The Next Wavy Gravy Festival

free of charge-- The Nextel Festival

lowbrow/whimsical-- Old Art Farts Tent Revival

hard truth-- The Seating's More Comfortable Than Issue Project Room Festival

Thank you for considering my question, and some alternate names. I wish all of us a great festival.

Sincerely,
Bryce Kasson


p.s. the printed festival flyer I received in the US mail is a good old fashioned format that for some reason features the artists I mention above much more prominently then your newfangled website, which seems to be full of newfangled artists whose names are news to me. Hmmm:
http://www.bam.org/view.aspx?pid=1096

Let me be weak, let me sleep, and dream of...

Last Friday night, the 10th of September, I went to an interfaith peace rally in Lower Manhattan. It was timed to honor 9/11, and to show support for that proposed Islamic community center that for some reason those of us who do not live in New York are all now familiar with. I wanted to show my support for the community center (you know, Obama’s Mosque), and get together with goodhearted interfaith-type New Yorkers.

On the website the request was to yes bring candles, not to bring signs--American flags OK (I think I saw one)--and to dress in white. I had a moment of distress imagining there was no white clothing in my backpack, but upon closer review I fished out exactly 2 articles of clothing. I put on my flared white corduroys and favorite linen western shirt and took the R train to Park Place from Brooklyn. I arrived at 6:45, half an hour early. There were news vans with tall antennas idling fumes into the late afternoon air. There were lots of police of every type: beat cops, traffic cops, brass in suits. A few people. And--the Free Speech Zone!!! Now if you’re not from America, or like me have been living outside the country for the past few years, you might say to yourself, “Isn’t the entire USA one big free speech zone?” Then again, maybe you’ve experienced this new civic product in its exported form at a local protest or G-something summit in your home town.

It was my first time seeing this makeshift metal corral in person. My first thought: if the police tried to pull this kind of crap on Argentine protesters, they’d set the country on fire. My second thought: I refuse to enter into this contract; I am not going into that police-made and -monitored ‘free speech zone’--I like the one right here where I’m standing, thank you very much.

But, of course, “You can’t stand there, sir.” On the sidewalk, that is. “Gotta get in there”, meaning the pen, “Or keep on walking.” So I kept on walking. I walked down a few blocks to “Ground Zero”, which is an energetic mini-city of construction and catering and hustle and bustle, surrounded outside its security gates by the hustle and bustle of commuters getting on the PATH train to go home for the evening to New Jersey. Walking back to the rally, I was attracted to the sound of drumming coming from the sidewalk of a side street. Half a block from the vigil, I saw 3 young women in three gradations of skin tones dancing energetically to a few white guys drumming. As I approached, one of the young women offered me a tambourine--”Would you like to drum?” Yes. Yes, I would.

I joined in, marking out steady sixteenth notes on the tambourine. We were drumming! All that drumming and dancing began attracting videocameras, at first amateurs and then a couple professionals from local news channels. More passersby showed up who were willing to join in by watching, drumming, or even dancing. It turns out the group was called Belly Dancers for Change, and they were also manifesting their support for interfaith/cross cultural dialogue and the Córdoba House. I played with them for about 45 minutes. Before I got there, the organizers of the vigil had asked them to take their particular brand of ecumenical support elsewhere. So they walked across the street and did their thing. Eventually a cop in a suit, apparently an emissary from the rally, informed us very politely that “The folks over there would really like for you all to either stop playing or move farther away.” It seems all the noise and swirling bodies weren’t what the rally organizers had imagined. Fair enough. Owing to the fact that we were each supporting the same cause, and that we felt like we had played long enough, as a group we decided to open up some quiet for the candlelight vigil.

Walking half a block back towards the vigil I was almost knocked over by the image I encountered: sheep in a paddock. In the time I was drumming the stockades on 2 blocks had filled up with gentle peaceniks, overwhelmingly caucasian and I suspect also overwhelmingly Unitarian, baby boomers dressed in white, like so many sheep in a pen. Few were physically robust, many were overweight. When told by an amplified voice to “Raise your candles!”, they did, some with a little hoot. When sermonized by a black preacher in strident, Old Testament tones, they bore it stoically. When another young, enthusiastic female voice pointed out donation buckets to make the rally possible, they gave. My thought was, do they have to pay the cops to pen themselves in? The appeal for money of course was a nice churchy touch. Then, effervescent, the same woman bellowed at the crowd, “You can’t see it from where you are down there, but from up here onstage you all look so beautiful!!” Like beautiful, beautiful sheep, I thought. That’s when another young white woman began to sing a Dave Matthewsesque version of “Down By the Riverside”.

I went to get a slice of pizza and headed back to Brooklyn. I felt fortunate I had found a more sympathetic expression of why I wanted to be there, in the sub-rally of music and dancing. In the end, though, I was happy for all of it: for everyone who came out to clamor for tolerance, and all their various forms of expression of indignance at the inane and irksome Islamophobic idiocy currently circulating through the polis. Just one thing: Tolerance of that Free Speech Zone thing has got to go, people.

¡Viaje al Teatro Jorge Newberry en Lincoln!