to remember

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Smart book about the nature of beauty and desire, September 22, 1997

By	fluxk@mindspring.com (New York, New York) - See all my reviews

and the role of parental organizations in contemporary society.

Hickey's basic premise is that beauty is the agency of visual pleasure. This notion puts Hickey in opposition with a lot of art criticism which is largely concerned with how art is "good for you." Most theorists and scholars are primarily interested in what the art is "saying" -- i.e., interested in art's virtue and ethics but not with its efficacy.
Hickey, however, argues that it doesn't matter _what_ the movie is saying unless you like it first. That is, we don't analyze a movie unless we like it. I still don't know if Pulp Fiction, The Silence, or His Girl Friday are good for me, but because I like them, I constantly think about them and their social virtues (if any). Hickey argues that why a work is efficacious in the first place is as important (if not more so) than whether or not its good for you.
That's sort of the premise of the book. Hickey explores the reasons why "good for you" replaced "do I like it" and deals with the modern roles of institutions (with nods to Foucault and J. Jacobs) in relation to regulating desire.
Hickey's a wonderful writer. The prose is fast, vivid and jocose. Worthwhile for anyone interested in art or beauty.

sometimes you just have to look

and I just heard a smattering of gunshots.

the professor (stay away from marianne)

wrote me back! now i need to craft a reply that makes me sound much smarter than i actually am! how nice of him to challenge me, though!

Dear Andrea

The essay on The Semiotics of Hunger has I believe also appeared in the
hardcopy version of the journal, though I have not seen it. The
article only skims over the representation of the anorectic body, and
I myself would like to know more about the relationship of art and
design to how the starved body or thinness has become attractive and
culturally determined. Perhaps you can tell me more about this? What have
you been reading in Semiotics? How do you read Kafka's story? Do you know
Sander Gilman's book, Kafka: The Jewish Patient? I recommend it, though
it gives a different interpretation from mine.

With best wishes,
Sincerely,
Efraim

all it took

an im conversation. TAME. one friend, outside detroit. a goth puppet, skulls, undressed babydolls, a nerdtech, a locomotive mechanic, a man in a speedo on a snowmobile, anna nicole's screentests, ed asner stretching, a woman singing down a dimly light hallway with very tall ceilings, a lump of coal, two little frogs, one paper crane, a santa shaped butt plug, an effeminate black male startling me, then teasing him, pancheros at 2am, freaking a 130 pound dog out at 3am. machine gun dreams. I, know y'all niggaz ain't fuckin wit me cuz I cant fuck wit my damn self HERE I GO!!! sprinkle me, and what's on my mind. god love 95. now i miss top authority. and murderdog.

kafka's grand daughter

i read "A Hunger Artist" last night. talk about self-pity. is it self-righteous to compare yourself to a Kafka character, especially when so much has been written about the autobiographical slant of his fiction?

well. of what i have read (online,) it seems as though we are supposed to take this dying artist seriously. that we are meant to be affected by his ability to die for his art and empathize with the lack of fanfare for his genius or talent. part of me did, or wanted to. but in my state, part of me hated him, and was annoyed with him, for all the similarities between us.

for the everyday man, there are more important things to worry about. but which should i chose to let eat me alive? the bills or my lack of success as an artist?

i came across this while researching "A Hunger Artist". I just wrote to the editor and the author asking for a printed copy for purchase. as a new student of semantics it was very exciting to read a practical application for these new vocab words and it was also exciting to read an alternate take on the symbols in "A Hunger Artist". C'mon online world. Give Kafka a little more credit here. Forget about Gregor for a second.

***********
Speaking of, reading some history of "Metamorphosis", i remembered a cd demo that i got (took) from State Control (whatever, no one else was going to listen. no one else is crying about it) and i looked for it this morning. Gregor Samsa. (now i know how to pronounce it too!). i realized why i liked it so much, too. the first song has almost the exact same chord progression as a Cranberries song on No Need to Argue. or at least it does in my mind.

***********
what are the semantics of this entry?

dangerous neighborhood

i've left the house. although this doesn't seem martian, it is nervous.
if someone looks at me for too long, i am likely to burst into tears.
of course i upped the ante by leaving the house without medication.
and am gambling even further above my means by drinking coffee.
luckily, the last person to walk past did not so much as notice me.

thank fucking god. some days i would like to just be invisible.
if you have no idea what i am talking about, read John Berger.
my gospel. at least a few months out of the year.

a few things

have lifted the shroud.

i left bed three times today. first, to evacuate as they say. second, to eat. which i promptly regretted and then felt guilty for. third, to actually bathe. at about 7:00 p.m.

at about 8:30 my phone rang. i didn't recognize the number, so as usual, i handed the phone to Gabe. there is a reason why, which i relayed to the person on the phone. usually the numbers are just wrong. and then i have to have some sort of uncomfortable conversation about how young i sound.

the person calling has, i don't think, ever called me. so it was a complete surprise. and in my state, i probably shouldn't be on the phone. but gabe insisted the phone at me. i took it and immediately my mood lifted. i (and my last boyfriend) stayed with will in paris, my first time there. and just a few months before that, i had a crush on him when he was my music composition teacher. but it was unrequited (story of my former life) and i moved on (see boyfriend above). will and i were also in a vocal training class together and i guess that is what spurned the call.

he asked if i had been singing and then said a lot of very nice things about my voice. i (of course) accused him of a foggy memory. that chit chat really couldn't have come at a better time. he is someone i admire so much [he moved to detroit with a girl. was a mechanic. they broke up. he was i think 23 or so when he got into uofm. created his own curriculum and graduated from it, which has since been picked up as a degree offered there (non-violence studies). he lived in france for a year, is now fluent. moved to spain for a while. also fluent. graduated and moved to the west coast. is back on the east. i think we fixed an alternator together once. but it is my memory that is foggy.]

his pep talk has made me want to get into the soundproof room for one hour a day and practice. i am so horribly out of practice.

this other super smart dude is also making me feel brighter:

DAVE HICKEY: In my experience, you always think you know what you’re doing; you always think you can explain, but you always discover, years later, that you didn’t and you couldn’t. This leads me to suspect that the principal function of human reason is to rationalize what your lizard brain demands of you. That’s my idea. Art and writing come from somewhere down around the lizard brain. It’s a much more peculiar activity than we like to think it is. The problems arise when we try to domesticate the practice, to pretend that it’s a normal human activity and that “everybody’s creative.” They’re not.
interview in believer mag

and lastly, the first trans-gendered actor in a series, in a trans role:
dirty sexy money