We Must Probe It From the Outset (Part 4 of 5)

The following is a series of attached photos sent from Liza to the group. As usual, we publish typed excerpts of these illuminated texts along with the original photo. The best way is to read the text, of course, is to to experience it in its illuminated form.

D. On Finding Aesthetics Within Anaesthetics

The concluding sentence on the previous page is most certainly most overused quote; especially while teaching. While the decline of the 'aura' of both works of art & human experiences is troubling on the one hand, the other hand is encouraging. Are you with me up until this point? I hope so (though I'm barely with myself, you see). Through this panoramic viewpoint, it's clear to me that our most effective mode of transportation back to the garden is by boarding the motorized machine. We must utilize the simulation as our best weapon against simulation. I'm reminded in the previous sentence of a sentence from my previous letter: →"To look upon this horror and utilize our repulsion to propel us closer to God is the most brutal form of attack against this demonic presence." Also of an e-mail I sent to Art back in May: "I think one can simultaneously scorn the regurgitory culture and utilize it for its instrumental value in understanding American mythos. To me, total immersion into the circling pools of excremental matter is the best way to stay afloat. By reconfiguring our submission, we can then make guppy-like journeys away from these subjective surfaces in search of the depths of objective truth. Understand it we may not ever, but we mustn't let our befuddlement blockade our probing! "It is so much simpler to bury reality than it is to dispose of dreams. This is why we "can't sit back and let something grow of its own momentum. [We] must probe it from the outset."

We Want Rome, Not Salt Lake City!

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to Will on 6 August 2015.



One final word.

I wanted to apply some of this thinking to an explanation of "Hey Rome." One of the concepts that has interested me lately is the fact that ours is the only persecuted religion that did not merely find a safe, uninhabited location to set up shop (e.g. Salt Lake City). Instead, Christ was crucified by Rome, then set up his Church in Rome. At the time, Rome had only one principle from which it derived its privilege and prominence, that of brute power. And this is the important thing: Christianity did not engage Rome on the playing field of this principle, the stacked deck of this principle. Christianity, in other words, did not beat Rome at its own game, did not engage its content.

In reading Camus's "Myth of Sisyphus," I've realized that he is almost entirely right, that he takes the questions raised by existentialism and modernity through to their most coherent conclusion. But this intellectual victory takes place inside the stacked deck of a certain line of thinking, the context in which this content is undeniably true. I can't quite describe the parameters of this context, but I know that, in addition its sole axiom being that of humiliated thought, it also is an overwhelmingly white male club.

I'm likening the unassailability of this philosophical position to the political one enjoyed by Rome.

It sometimes seems like we are going to live with this principle of humiliated thought--which sets the stage for the murderous dictatorship of relativism--forever, putting God and creation further and further in our rearview mirror until it altogether disappears.

I'm sure a lot of people felt the same way about Rome.

But could it be that Christ has a similar takeover in mind, one that will use the basic root and branch system established by the prior order? God uses Cyrus, Caiaphas, Rome, etc., why not juggernauts like Planned Parenthood or Dan Gilbert? I have come to believe that this is the mysterious way God operates; it is one of my most compelling reasons for belief right now. So much more definitive of a victory than beating down one's enemy.

What would it look like if the Church showed up, not in "the promised desert / wasteland that you set aside for me"--i.e. the postmodern version of Salt Lake City--but rather smack dab in the middle of the postmodern Rome of relativism, hyperreality, or whatever, metastasizing through all its mechanisms and making it entirely its own ("one day I'll make you my home sweet home")?

I think McLuhan had some ideas about the end of the Gutenbergian era with its stacked deck individualism, linear thinking, privacy, repression, detachment, specialization, modern militarism, etc.--all of which put non-Latin, Teutonic Europe in the driver's seat of modern history. McLuhan saw modern media as retribalizing us, and, if we can take his devout Catholicism as a data point in his philosophy, he saw the Church as the best bet for transitioning (back?) into this paradigm. Interestingly, he saw non-white peoples (bye bye northern European Übermensch and all your awful offspring) as being more able to capitalize on the values of this dawning era. Incidentally, he also believed that the new tribal values would ultimately be highly conservative but consensus, as they are in non-alphabetic, tribal societies.

Some I am sure are not finding any of this humorous or thought-provoking anymore. Facebook and Twitter pages have gotten very mirthless. Recent events have made almost everyone (myself included) take sides as drummers or warriors such that we can no longer comprehend one another (cf. Tower of Babel). But I continue to think what we are doing on all fronts is important.

I also hope some of this answers your questions about why we are engaging modernity so much. Although you may not like reading Sartre, Camus, Nietzsche, or Baudrillard like I do, you do like Don DeLillo, who work posits similar theses. I don't think that's because these musings "spark my intellect without engaging my soul." Rather, it's because we have the universe's most commodious frame, that we can comprehend everything "according to the whole." And that perhaps this is one small way in which God as "All in All" is made manifest. We want Rome, not Salt Lake City!

The idea is to keep hanging around getting fed to the lions until the emperor has a vision.

Simultaneously Villain and Savior

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Will to Art on 6 August 2015.



I do see why we absolutely must engage the concepts of simulacra, the undead nature of language, and the secular worldview that derives from Camus and Sartre. I get why we need to engage Nietzsche, too, and any time I forget, I've got Planned Parenthood to remind me. Speaking of Derrida, I was thinking about your last major email, and the value in keeping Farthington "of indeterminant ethnicity" (I think those are DeLillo's words about Willie Mink; Jack Gladney also is frustrated by Orest Mercator for the same reason) and of having him set "indefinite longevity" as a goal.

Orwell talks about this idea that when Big Brother needs 2+2 to equal 4, it equals 4, and when he needs it to equal 5, it equals 5, but that's not exactly what Derrida is talking about.

Philosophically, we live in the age of O'Brien: the unborn child is a child when society needs her to be a child, a fetus when it needs her to be a fetus, tissue when it needs her to be tissue, a clump of cells when it needs her to be a clump of cells. But all we're really doing is doublethink: choosing temporary meanings.

Still, our increasing tendency to keep all options open approaches Derrida, where language is like a zombie--resistant to binary oppositions of words like "alive" and "dead." And for some reason, the more digital/binary our existence becomes, the more our communication becomes undead.

I think about this with that horrible Chevy commercial that borrows its plot from Sophie's choice: a mom must choose which child goes in the Chevy and which child goes in the car with inadequate airbag protection. The salesman who gives her the choice is also her savior, because he lets both kids go in the Chevy. So he is simultaneously villain and savior and neither and both...we can't sort the two out.

This undead thing works well for Farthington, who may or may not be alive, and who communicates digitally.

What Kind of Garbage Would That Make?

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Liza to the group on 28 May 2015.

And Steffi's hand, too

Where to begin!

I like all of this. I especially like your idea that the more packaged garbage you buy, the closer you are to qualifying for packaged nothingness. Gold-Member/Street-Cred status. Perhaps with the first batch of packaged garbage, the buyer also receives a packaged Frequent Buyer card. Only instead of punching holes in the same card with each subsequent purchase, we just send out a brand new packaged card with an additional punched-hole in it. Eventually, we'll have punched so many holes in the card that the card will be a hole. Or, in other words, packaged nothingness. How gritty! How raw, how sacred, how holey! Blessed are the hungry, for theirs is the kingdom of garbage.

Thou must waste abundantly in order to be-holed this abundance of waste, ye loyal customers. In proliferating, ye shall eradicate!

This all makes perfect sense to me (but don't worry--not too much sense). Over-consumption of trash, after all, fills us fully with an existential emptiness. This is a wasting that is also an abundance.

"For we on garbage-bins hath fed, and shrunk to ilks of nothingness" (Coleridge, kind of).

The more we eat the more we shrink. The more we replenish, the more we diminish.

My thinking is a bit scattered right now from a succession of strange, long days, so I’m going to let Bob Moorehead summarize part of what I’m trying to get at here:

The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings, but shorter tempers; wider freeways, but narrower viewpoints. We spend more, but have less; we buy more, but enjoy it less. We have bigger houses and smaller families; more conveniences, but less time. 

The quote is quite long, but the following non-sequential excerpts (that I've formatted sequentially--I am a shameful academic) are worthy of mention:

We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values. We’ve learned how to make a living, but not a life. We've conquered outer space but not inner space. We’ve cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul. We build more computers to hold more information to produce more copies than ever, but have less communication. These are the times of fast foods and slow digestion; tall men, and short character; steep profits, and shallow relationships; more kinds of food, but less nutrition. These are days of two incomes, but more divorce; of fancier houses, but broken homes. These are days of quick trips, disposable diapers, throwaway morality, one-night stands, overweight bodies, and pills that do everything from cheer to quiet, to kill. It is a time when there is much in the show window and nothing in the stockroom; a time when technology can bring this letter to you, and a time when you can choose either to share this insight, or to just hit delete.

Relating this oppositional accord that Moorehead's laid out to the gar(b)age sale that we've laid out, the less we feel, the more we buy. The more we buy, the less we value. The less we value, the more we waste. The more we waste, the fuller we are. The fuller we are, the emptier we are. And so it goes forever.

It could also be said that the more Carlton cleans up the garbage, the more of a mess he makes. Isn't this, ultimately, what Gilbert is doing to the city of Detroit, too? (More to come on Gilbert's own cunning methods of displacing the city's "garbage" in a future message.)

So, then, it only makes sense that the charity's top benefactors earn their way to packaged nothingness. They have gorged themselves on the garbage until "(n)othing beside remains. Round the decay / Of that colossal wreck (Detroit?), boundless and bare" (“Ozymandias”--and more Gilbert symbolism).  How commendable! I feel like there should also be packaged plaques. Or maybe once they've cleared the trash from their specific lots and therefore achieved nothingness, they get the honor and glory of sending their own trash to the same curb they helped "clean up." You know, to give someone else the same opportunity. To ritualize the process. Maybe, if they're feeling extra high on charity, they could even sponsor a poor neighborhood kid or something. Carlton Farthington, after all, is fo' the chilrun.

Moving along, this all waywardly circles back to that sketch of Carlton from a few weeks back. Art, perhaps it makes a bit more sense now in both its original context (DeLillo’s Underworld) and my recontextualization of it (White’s Sweet World).

The original quote,

Marian and I saw products as garbage even when they sat gleaming on store shelves, yet unbought. We didn’t say, "What kind of casserole will that make?" We said, "What kind of garbage will that make?"

The recontextualized quote in regards to all of the above:

In the sketch, Carlton doesn’t think about the delicious pie he could make from the apple because he’s too busy thinking about the garbage he will make. And now, as he packages this garbage and sends it off to others, they no longer ask themselves, 'What kind of garbage will this make?' They ask themselves 'What kind of nothingness will this make?' Where once there was garbage, now there is a hole. They see only the absence of the garbage.

Not to probe too much deeper into this, but the sketch could also be interpreted as the way people utilize the gleaming new products that drop from the Apple tree at genetically modified speeds. Though in theory this technology could be used to deepen our connections with others and to engage in the world in innovative ways, we most widely use it to disconnect and disengage. We’ve turned an object with great potential to be an agent of positive social change into an agent of unsocial change. Or, to paraphrase Moorehead, our computers have not taught us how to communicate but rather how to copy. Repost, Retweet, Recycle.

The sexualization of the apple as a women’s body in the sketch also ties into this garbage theme, but I’ll save that for another time.

In the interim, think: degradation, objectification, disposability, the Big Emptiness, womb envy, and on and on.  

Sounds like a riveting segue into my next e-mail regarding my thoughts on the relationship shared between the wild band of savage sisters and Arthur. Hmmm....

All of that, and more, tomorrow!

When
I will sing a song of garbage,

Liza

A Permeating Presence (Part 2 of 2)

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Liza to the group on 20 May 2015.



Relating back to the initiating artist’s presence in the project, I don't think it inhibits its growth.

Contrarily, I think it is this permeation of presence that guarantees its growth. There’s a lot of speculation, which you know if you read the article I sent, that the anonymous Kanye Quest gamer who uploaded the Pastebin was either the game developer or an Ascensionist.

Why? To become part of the story.
Why? To bring awareness to the story.
Why? To only tell part of a story bound to enrapture many with its creepiness, mysteriousness, and incompletion.

(Think Slender Man's blank face, which alone encourages infinite amounts of interpretation. Would the manifestation of the Sea Devil costume ultimately close this channel for open interpretation? Whereas seeing was once believing, in the age of simulacra we only have to believe in something to see it. So, like Slender Man, the more ambiguous Farthington is, the more we believe in his existence. The more we believe in his existence, the more we see him. Simulacrum precedes reality, yes, but it must also remain simulacrum which must remain reality.)

None of the aforementioned speculation comes as a surprise, of course, but what I’m fascinated by is the extension of this speculation from the first Pastebin that was posted "anonymously" to every subsequent article, comment, video, etc. The digital footprint is the same, some claim.  If discovered too early, this can inhibit the story's growth, yes. After a certain point, however, it really doesn’t matter. The story has already become bigger than the storyteller, and is no longer the storyteller’s to tell. It is now ours to do with it what we want, to take it where we want it to go. Eventually it becomes bigger than us even, and goes where it wants to, heedless to our instructions. The initiating artist then not only provided us with road signs leading us to what McLuhan calls the “roads and canals” of modern media ("make happen agents") but our messenger has also become our partial guide through the roads and canals. I think, were the initiating artist to recede too quickly once the others begin to exceed, the others would go wayward and the story’s survivability would be doomed.

This reminds me, have any of you seen The Institute? How about Faults?

I think both personify this notion.

A Permeating Presence (Part 1 of 2)

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Liza to the group on 20 May 2015.



What an interesting phenomenon that Slender Man is.

Over the past couple of years, many of my students have been inhabitants of the Slenderverse. It was interesting to witness some of their involvement in this world dwindle into nothingness following the Wisconsin tragedy. It was equally as interesting, albeit more horrifying, to witness some of their involvements deepen post-pronouncement.

(Does this validate the Tulpa Theory? Can we kill Slender Man simply by killing our thoughts of him? Or does he operate on some sort of quantum level? Is he still there even when we can't see him? Has the story become bigger than the storyteller(s)?)

It is perhaps more interesting to me now as I sit here and relate all of these stored memories to everything we’ve been talking about.

Art, I'm with you. There’s something very Baudrillardian about Slender Man’s proxies acting out their hyperrealities in "reality," of their human experience not becoming simulated but rather being a simulation of reality. I fear we're treading dangerously close to Baudrillard's fourth stage of the sign-order system. Some would even argue that we’re already living in it. Do you think these girls were just plain maladjusted and therefore were predisposed for "possession," or do you think they were unable to foresee the repercussions that would arise in the transference of their digital fantasies in the realm of reality because their sign "has no relation to reality whatsoever. It is its own pure simulacrum"? Have any of you seen the film Heavenly Creatures? Perhaps the Slenderverse was their Fourth World.

In response to your first message, I partially agree that the knowable presence of a project’s initiating artists can suffocate the project’s aura (and subsequently its survivability). However, I also believe the initiating artist is frequently the one who helps catalyze the progression of the story from the constructed identity of an anonymous observer. Someone relatable, someone detached, someone with similar levels of separation from the project as the rest of us.

So, the initiating artist is there with a permeating presence, (s/)he just chooses (wisely) to stay concealed behind the curtain until the final scene. Sometimes (s/)he never emerges at all. Sometimes we assume the process was organic. Sometimes it was really just an unlabeled Genetically Modified Organism, creating a schism between what we think we are consuming and what we are actually consuming.  

Art, this goes back to the e-mail I sent you in regards to DeLillo and the postmodern propensity toward anti-reality, toward the blind acceptance of artifice as reality. Unless we diligently peel off the layers upon layers of gleaming, plastic packaging we’ll never know what they’re hiding at their core. However, what are we to do when there is no core, only endless layers of more synthetic packaging? Do we bemoan the lack of objectivity or do we embrace the abundance of subjectivity? Is all of this fruitless to even wonder about since there is no fruit, just a representation of the fruit?