Where the Great Bull Dies

Seen "Yang Ban Xi – The Eight Model Works", the strange case of a documentary that is almost unbearable to watch, although it deals with an absolutely fascinating subject. It's about Chinese propaganda films from the Sixties, i. e. movie adaptations of the eight ballet operas which were the only form of entertainment officially permitted in China for the ten years of Cultural Revolution. The documentary is excruciatingly boring because the director apparently had no idea where she was going with the movie and she didn't meet any personality strong enough to hold the film together from the inside. Most of the screen time is wasted by shots of people who were to some degree involved in the making or appreciation of these films, giving pale answers to uninteresting questions and then going about their daily business, driving around on their bike, visiting each other and ordering their meals in a restaurant for what seems like bloody five minutes. For some reason, one also gets to see a lot of Chinese youth of today do lots and lots and lots of hiphop to remixes of the old "Yang Ban Xi" propaganda songs. The choreographies are utterly dull, they just make the usual Watts gangsta aerobic moves done to death around the world. Because of all this tedious floundering, all you get to see of the original movies are a few 30 second snippets without context, but these snippets are amazing indeed. You can marvel at male and (rather scantily clad) female members of the Chinese Red Brigades, dancing about "en pointe", in perfectly synchronized, highly stylized movements, waving very red flags and stylized wooden machine guns under fake cherry trees, angrily denouncing foreign capitalist demons, shooting evil landowners with paper hats and then reaching for the sky while an incredibly red sun rises over the horizon of an incredibly kitschy technicolour landscape to the sound of wailing huqins. Most of the actors look like they took LSD for the shoot, there's an otherworldly enthusiasm in their eyes, and a scary frozen grin seems to have been permanently screwed to their cheeks by some extraterrestrial agency. Despite the subtle horror and the utter hilariousness of it all, there’s some strange beauty about this mixture of pronounced fervour and implicit nastiness. It's a real pity that after the film, you still know more or less doodly squat about the phenomenon; but in two years time, this stuff will have a cult following, I guess, so one can watch the originals on DVD, find detailed info on the net, and this bad movie at least will have had some good effects. Or so I hope.

Ackerbau und Viehzucht

The Reformed Faction of Zoviet France (i. e. Zoviet France sans Ben Ponton) gave a concert in Berlin recently. They killed. For seconds, I was a wooden stick in a fallow field with Tàpiesian ghosts and banshees swarming around me, preparing an earthquake.

Like One That Had Been Led Astray Through the Heaven’s Wide Pathless Way

Been to the Nationalgallerie to see an exhibition about melancholy in the arts. I increasingly dislike these exhibitions centered around a concept; nothing worse than a pack of curators who think they have had an idea. For this occasion, they assembled a lot of nice pictures (Dürer, Goya, C. D. Friedrich, Munch, Warhol, Anselm Kiefer) and a lot of intriguing objects (astrolabes, antique tombstones, 19th century photos of depressive patients, ancient books on the four humours, narwhal tusks), but the blur of heterogeneous stuff you constantly have to switch between just turns everything into cliché. Everything drowns everything else out, and in the general clamor you only hear the shrillest voices. The effect is enhanced if the curators see fit to install loudspeakers and force an exhibition soundtrack on you that is apparently supposed to get everybody into the mood. In this particular case, there was a corner where they had Beethoven's "Malinconia" on continuous play. At least, you only had to endure it in the four adjoining rooms. Anyway, I think a Munch exhibition or a Goya exhibition would have been cheaper and better. As it was, the Munch paintings might as well have been posters, because you couldn't really focus on them anyway, in all the Wunderkammer commotion.

Ce ne peut être que la fin du monde, en avançant

Am besten an Kalifornien ist das kalifornische Licht, das unabhängig vom Wetter (das zur Zeit meines Besuchs entgegen der Mär vom sunny California fast durchgängig kühl und regnerisch war) zu allen Tageszeiten von allen Seiten zu kommen scheint, sozusagen natürliches Filmstudiolicht. Die Höhepunkte der Reise waren entsprechend Beleuchtungsphänomene oder zumindest mit Beleuchtungsphänomenen assoziiert, z. B. unter dunklem Himmel das durchbrechende Licht auf der Vegetation, die auf den Ruinen unter Alcatraz wächst, oder der kalifornischste Moment der Reise: Zur blauen Stunde in Los Angeles stelle ich fest, daß der Amok/Koma Bookstore erstens umzieht und zweitens geschlossen hat, und trotte wieder Richtung Stadtzentrum. Der Himmel ist an den Rändern noch rötlich, das Wetter regnerisch. Das aus Funk und Fernsehen bekannte Licht schwindet langsam, in der Dämmerung wirkt die Stadt (auch wenn's spätestens seit Mike Davis ein Klischee sein mag, das zu sagen) seltsam irreal, der gemeinsame Nenner zwischen der Fußgängerzone von Castrop-Rauxel und dem L. A. von "Blade Runner". Auf dem zentralen, recht leeren öffentlichen Platz im für die Größe der Stadt sehr kleinen Downtown hat sich ein Landschaftsarchitekt ausgetobt: Auf Terassen hat er breite, dekorative Hollein-Wände in blau und quietschgelb aufgestellt (überhaupt sieht man in der Stadt viel von dieser Blau-Gelb-Kombination, an der Küste hatte man z. B. - anscheinend zu Zwecken der Schädlingsbekämpfung - einen ganzen Wohnblock in eine große blau-gelbe Plane eingepackt, das Gebäude wirkte wie ein riesiges Hüpfzelt), dahinter Palmen auf kleinen Hügeln in Reihen, dahinter ragen dann die illuminierten, halbrunden oder oktogonalen, ineinandergestuften und -gefächerten Hochhausformen, mit wesentlich mehr Art Deco als in New York - jedes Hausdach scheint hier eine Krone zu tragen zu müssen. Der Autolärm aus allen Richtungen sehr laut und tief, Polizei und/oder Feuerwehr scheinen ständig irgendwo im Einsatz zu sein. Aber trotz des Lärms und der immensen Größe der Stadt, wirkt alles seltsam provinziell und kleinteilig, nicht miteinander verbunden, "the big nowhere" wie Ellroy sagt; als wäre die ganze Stadt restlos parzelliert und privatisiert worden. Dafür spricht auch die massive Präsenz von Scientology, der privatisiertesten aller Religionen; an jeder Ecke kann man ihre Niederlassungen finden. (Die Freimaurer waren auch mal da, aber ihre Loge am Hollywood Boulevard ist jetzt ein Theater für Standup-Comedy, was sagt uns das?) Ein paar Blocks nördlich des Platzes die fensterlosen städtischen Verwaltungsgebäude, die wie Festungen aussehen und vor denen unprofessionell wirkende Models für unprofessionell wirkende Photographen posieren und sich dabei die Schulter verrenken.

Noch eine Assoziation, die ich im Staate hatte: Nicht nur Downtown L. A., sondern ganz allgemein diese Mischung von Vorstädtischem und Megalomanischem scheint mir einen ganz entscheidenden Einfluß auf fast alle amerikanischen Science-Fiction-Filme gehabt zu haben. Das Weltall wird logisch konzipiert als ein unendliches Suburbia ohne Downtown. Mir fallen als leuchtende Vorbilder spontan der New Jersey Turnpike ein, der Hafen von Oakland mit seinen riesigen Kränen, die angeblich die Vorbilder für irgendwelche Wesen in "Star Wars" waren, außerdem der Vergnügungspark "Six Flags Magic Mountain", den ich in der Morgendämmerung bei der Fahrt mit dem Greyhound nach Los Angeles von fern gesehen habe, große bunte Stangen auf einem Berg, die wie die Reste eines Picknicks Außerirdischer wirkten.

Life is a Police Raid, Old Chum

Had a rather pleasant dream lately, like the first chapters of a New Weird novel: I was in a futuristic Berlin club that also was my apartment. Lots of strange people, some looked like they came straight out of a Hieronymus Bosch tableau, and some others with heavily painted Weimar faces seemed to be extras in an expressionist movie. Then some cops came and looked like giant metal beetles. In order to deal with the situation, I smashed an electronic toy dog. Later, only the red cushion on my living room floor remained, and some black, spidery stirrings in the air. Was the animal finally dead? I didn't find out, but I'm still hoping.

One Drone, One Life, One Purpose

Throbbing Gristle gave two concerts in Berlin recently. I could start foaming at the mouth and tell you that these were the two best concerts I've ever been at, and go on and on heaping superlatives. But it would be oversimplified, because other gigs I've been at were musically more interesting, intellectually challenging etc. To put it more precisely, on these two occasions, I had an encounter with My Music, period. As in Gysin's laconic statement: "You know your music when you hear the tune". So, if this concert would never have ended, I would have been content to stay there and have my batteries recharged endlessly.

For the first concert on new year's eve, Genesis wore pink net stockings, a pink top and a skirt with metal sequins. In comparison, other band members were a lot more unobtrusive, Sleazy particularly, at the back of the stage, kind of blending with the technicians even further back. Soundwise, Mr. Christoperson stood out, though, the general vibe seemed rather Coilish to me, but closer to the old TG aesthetics. Equipment was unobtrusive, too, gone were these elaborate self-made analogue synth switchboards of yore. They had gone digital, so Chris and Sleazy remained crouched over their Mac laptops during most of the performance. Chris also had something like a little theremin which he attacked occasionally. Cosey switched between laptop, guitar and trumpet, Gen between laptop, bass and voice. They didn't perform many of the olden songs, only "Convincing People" and "Slug Bait", plus, I think, the rhythm of "Still Walking" popped up somewhere. In the end, they performed "Hamburger Lady" as an encore, according to Genesis the "first encore they ever gave" which is probably true judging from all the tapes I've heard. Generally, the sound was less abrasive and primitive now, tendentially more similar to "normal" synth sounds, and most of their new material not only had regular song structures but even actual melodies. Some of it I really didn't appreciate all that much, but that was fine, too, they were checking out possibilities, so at least weren't copying themselves. Best were the new instrumental parts involving massive noise walls. Occasionally, my body got lost in these massive condensations of the sound you hear every day, layered so densely it takes you to another place that is somehow more real than every day (and which first looked like some sort of shopping mall to me, later like a battlefield). When the noise peaked, I felt at the height of my power too, for a few seconds, no body could have filled the space of my body better than my body at these few precious moments. From time to time, they were battling with technical problems of Volksbühne equipment, but they bore themselves admirably. After the main left speaker for some reason couldn't be made to work anymore (but didn’t blow, apparently), they just went on playing and one hardly noticed.

After the concert was over and I had come off, we walked across Alexanderplatz, dodging the new year's eve fireworks of former NVA soldiers, and visited two designer friends of my companion at Stalinallee (which is called Karl-Marx-Allee since Khrushchev and is now also called Frankfurter Allee in parts, but who cares). This location is rather interesting: the Stalinallee flats were a big architectural project, built almost immediately after the war, designed for privileged socialist living involving party members. They're big apartment houses in Stalinist style which I'd call classicist brutalism, somewhere between Art Deco, Nazi architecture and birthday cake decoration. Lots of white doric pillars in small entrance halls. We had a nice chat there, then went back to the Volksbühne for their new year's eve party. Rechenzentrum and T.raumschmiere played, which was sort of okay, but mere whipped cream compared to TG.

On the next day, entering Volksbühne for the second TG performance, I heard how the checkroom attendant disconcertedly asked a friend, if a Neonazi band was playing today, because "all these people with uniforms and badges and stuff" were walking around. The friend reassured her. That day, TG did a live score for "In the Shadow of the Sun". I think I already ranted about that movie, it's definitely one of my favorites, so this was a particular treat. In the centre of the stage, there was a big movie screen, the band hovered in the shadows, in front of two laptops at each side of the screen, Chris and Sleazy at the left, Cosey and Gen at the right. Gen wore rather unremarkable thingies and mainly worked on his guitar. They were improvising, their glances flitting back and forth between their laptop screens and the movie screen. Very subdued and restrained, but really powerful. The sound was trance-inducingly magnificent, a bit more conventional than the original soundtrack, but also more open and dense. The only problem was that I had had the notion that it might be a good idea to sit in the third row in order to see the band better. What's the big rule everybody? Yes, stupid people are always in front. So, to my right, some would-be freaks were chattering loudly and enthusiastically and stupidly through a fair amount of a set which demanded undivided attention. To my left, an alt.rock boy-girl-unit didn't appreciate the music much and made sure everybody knew. Behind me, a group of teens with Saxon dialect kept banging their boots in the back of my seat. It was hard to really give myself over to the sound under these circumstances, but when I got on the right frequency, it was like standing on the sun, the fire everywhere making very clear statements about the evanescence of life and the need to abandon all its so-called accomplishments pretty soon.

The Shadow Knows

Saw these old horror movies by Jacques Tourneur (e. g. "Night of the Demon", the old "Cat People", "I Walked With A Zombie"). Storywise, the stuff is fairly predictable, and the dialogues are far from magnificent, but Tourneur has an impeccable sense of lighting and handles shadows like nobody's business. One could say that shadows have the lead role in these movies; darkness becomes a splendidy rich and pregnant force positively eager to dissolve and absorb the human form. Nothing much else happening in these films, but it's plenty sufficient. Highly recommended.

Please Stay Tuned

An interesting film I've seen not long ago was the experimental "Ein Tag im Leben der Endverbraucher" by Harun Farocki. It's basically a one-hour feature composed entirely out of TV ads (of the Seventies and Eighties), arranged so that they seem to depict the life of an average family. The effect is ridiculous bordering on the surreal. E. g. the wife is visiting the dentist. The event is cut together from several toothpaste ads of the same brand. First she's in a lady's toilet talking to a colleague. She announces that she's going to see the dentist, the colleague commiserates, our heroine says, no, no, my dentist always congratulates me on my teeth, that's because I take so-and-so which has been clinically tested by andsoon. Next she's in the waiting room (another actress now, but that hardly matters), all the other patients are suffering more or less quietly, but to console them she just tells them that her dentist always congratulates her on her teeth, and that's because she takes so-and-so which has been clinically tested by andsoon. Next she's with the dentist, and what do you know, he does congratulate her again on her teeth, the forgetful slob, but on the other hand, it's no wonder her teeth are in such a dandy state, he says, that's because she takes so-and-so which has been clinically tested by andsoon. Next, we are in an office, several men and women standing around in business suits, troubled about her colleague who has gone to see the dentist, what must she be going through, the poor thing. Enter our heroine (yet another actress avatar) telling everybody that it was no trouble at all, her dentist congratulated her andsoon, andsoon, you get the idea. The whole sequence takes about five minutes, and somehow there's something genuinely scary about it. News from the undead. In a few years, all blockbusters will probably look more or less like this.

Alles blickt erwartungsvoll auf Siegfried, welcher über der Betrachtung des Ringes in fernes Sinnen entrückt ist

These days, I've watched a DVD of Wagner's "Ring", the production from 1976, directed by Chéreau and conducted by Boulez. Never cared much for Wagner, but was quite impressed with the music now, it's like the raw mother of all movie soundtracks. Good production, too. I couldn't shake off the idea that I'd very much like to see a Marx Brothers opera scored by Wagner from start to finish. How about an adaptation of "A Night at the Opera"? Can't you all just see the huge Bayreuth stage with Groucho Marx rising from a dinner table in a lush restaurant and singing with a big baritone voice over a typical Wagnerian chord progression: "Niiiiiiiine dollars foooorty for diiiiiiiinner?" Violins dramatically fiddling in the background, Groucho stretches out his arms, booming over two octaves: "Thiiiiiis is an ouuuuuuuutrage!." Dramatic crashing of drums, the wind instruments go ape, Groucho turns toward the woman he had dinner with, throws her the bill, cymbals crash, he starts singing in a lower key, with tragic determination, accompanied by low strings: "If I were youuuuuuuu, I wouuuuuuuuldn't paaaay it." Then he walks off in his archetypical walk to the sounds of the Siegfried theme, while everybody else faints. Heck, I'd like to see that. Anyway, I think I like the "Götterdämmerung" part best, especially the beginning, but what's with that ending? It doesn't seem to make any fucking sense, the Rhine daughters (or whatever they're called in English) have got the ring back, so why does Walhalla burn down? Insurance fraud? I mean,if a James Bond movie came out in which bloody Secret Agent 007 saved the world yet once again in the last minute, by blowing yet another Eastern European/terrorist/whatever bogeyman into tiny bits as usual, and then the world would end anyway, just for kicks, people would complain about the logical inconsistency. But since Wagner is supposed to be Kultur, no one complains if he does the same thing. I mean, am I the first one who's complaining?

To Beep or Not to Beep

I recently got myself a DVD with old Warner Brothers cartoons from my public library, because there were two cartoons directed by Bob Clampett on it, and I like his hysterical vibe very much. The rest was directed by Chuck Jones and Tex Avery. On this occasion, a nice conceptualization struck me: In his book "God - A Biography" Jack Miles talks schematically about the three great biblical prophets saying that Isaiah was the manic among them, Jeremiah the depressive, and Ezekiel the psychotic. You could say a similar thing about the three great WB cartoon directors: the psychotic would be Tex Avery (compare "Symphony in Slang" to Schreber), the depressive would be Chuck Jones (well, for example his "Roadrunner" cartoons sure breathe existential despair), and the manic would be Bob Clampett - and Fritz Freleng would be the normal middle-of-the-road guy. Not that I've got anything against Freleng.

The Utmost Bound of the Everlasting Hills

Not too long ago, I saw a something like a home movie by and about Pasolini called "Sopraluoghi in Palestina per il vangelo secondo Matteo". It basically consists of quite nice black-and-white images of Pasolini wandering around in some areas of Israel looking for good locations for his Jesus movie and complaining that the landscapes are not archaic enough, except maybe the desert, and the bloody locals can't be used as extras, because the Israeli faces are thoroughly modern and the Arab faces are thoroughly animalistic (ipsissima verba!) and both convey no sense of spiritual longing, so there you have it. A guy from the Vatican he dragged along sort of hobbles around all the time and keeps repeating that everything was more splendid here 2000 years ago, before the Arabs came, no, really. And Pasolini keeps saying that all this has been very interesting and illuminating for himself personally, but he can't use most of this darn place in his movie, and most of the landscapes remind him of Italy anyway. Turned out he shot his Jesus movie in Southern Italy, and the movie made a young Italian jurist named Agamben a star. And the rest, as they say, is history.

O Socrates, Would You Suppose That Such Vile Things As Mud And Dirt Have An Idea Distinct From The Actual Objects, Or Not?

Was rather intrigued by some ghost stories by Robert Aickman. What strikes me about them is that they give you not the comfy shivers you usually get from horror yarns, but a very real sense of psychic desolation; they're effective evocations of a certain kind of very English squalor. Often, the proceedings are quite enigmatic, and there seems to be no underlying scheme to figure out, just glimpses of really nasty and embarassing and unhealthy lives moving at the edge of vision. There are all sorts of (somewhat pretentious) allusions to mythology and cultural history, but nothing's spelled out. What really seems to make some of these stories special is a certain realism in the depiction of stagnant environments that keep folding into themselves and feeding on themselves. It made me think of my (nice) doctor grandmother with her basement full of old, useless pharmaceutical products and her fridge full of red beet juice. It also reminded me of some notion I first had while reading Amos Tutuola's "My Life in the Bush of Ghosts": if there really were ghosts in the attic and vampires in the basement, they would produce no dark glamour and sense of wonder at all. The dealings with them would be nothing but a darn tedious drag and you'd wish they all would just go someplace else and bother some other folks.

The Black Rabbit Serves

Got involved with "Watership Down" once more after all these years. I had the book read to me by Andrew Sachs recently and that brought me to watch the movie on DVD again. I remember that it impressed me very deeply when it came out and I was quite young, sort of the first movie that really got to me, especially the vision/myth sequences with the black rabbit, done by the shamefully uncredited John Hubley. I still think the film is a remarkable achievement, especially the landscape sequences and the music. Adams' stubborn English civil-servant-style love of family and the "fellows" and a walk in the woods and the simple things in life seems to shine through. Kind of narrow, but nice in its narrowness. The movie also conveys some of the fun Adams has with nature terms, revelling in words like "gravelspit" and "cowslip" and "ragwort". Plus, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that the original version was dubbed by several major actors I know from Shakespeare dramatizations on tape or video. Richard Briers as Fiver and Michael Hordern booming quite convincingly as the voice of God sound especially good to these ears. Ralph Richardson manages to be staggering in his two-minute-cameo as the Chief Rabbit, an obvious self-parody. Every time I see or hear him it becomes clearer to me that Richardson was magnificent. I'm generally ambivalent about him and Gielgud, because they're so IMPORTANT and bloody KNIGHTED and they bear themselves like they've got WORLD CULTURAL HERITAGE tattooed under their armpits, but then again it's undeniable that they can eat all them modern, slick, smug, empty-headed one-note wonders like Kenneth Branagh for breakfast without a strain. There's nobody who can speak like SIR Ralph and SIR John anymore, it's a part of culture that's just gone. Pity. Anyway. Something else that struck me about "Watership Down" is this: A plot that takes about 600 pages in the book is compressed into a series of climaxes in the movie; it works, but feels somewhat breathless and cramped today. However, when I saw it as a kid it seemed to have all the epic breadth you could wish for. Apparently you just fill a lot in intuitively at that age. Consequently, if something strikes me as hasty and flattened out nowadays, that might just reflect the fact that I've gotten slower in tuning into something, more picky and arrogant. That makes me kind of uncomfortable with judging works of art. I'll get over it, though, I guess.

Diggers, Rise!

Recently, I saw that movie "Rize" about the new street dance style from L. A. called "krumping" I've somehow gotten interested in. The phenomenon in itself is worth investigating, but the film is marred by its stupid director who apparently used to direct commercials and music videos before. So we get all these stupidly manipulative emotional strategies we know and loathe, in the way the music is used, the way the interviews are conducted (cluelessly, manipulatively and redundantly), the way the movie never asks a lot of relevant questions, and especially in the way the camera behaves; e. g. presenting the dancing bodies mostly from below in a glossy way that seems to strive for sexiness. Almost every other decision the director made is dumb, too, but the absolute cryptoracist nadir is that some dance scenes are intercut with movie snippets of an African tribe dancing filmed by the absolutely disgusting Mrs. Riefenstahl. Yo' director man's apparently suggesting that it's somehow in their genes when black kids from L. A. paint their faces, dress up in weird things and dance around in an aggressive way, because, lookahere, African tribe members are also painting their faces, dressing up in weird things and dancing around in an aggressive way. That juxtaposition makes it rather hard to keep the lunch down, especially since it's so obvious that the parallel is tenuous, to say the least. E. g. the anonymity and vague threat of the krumpers' clown masks have a lot more to do with all-white J. W. Gacy and Stephen King's "It" than with any Yoruba rituals. The clown dance comes across not as a participation in any archetypal harvest ritual, but a sort of staged fight against an enormous pressure weighing the dancers down. It looks admirably spastic and quite aggressive, but the people involved seem to be surprisingly gentle all the same; the style apparently was devised by some ex-con part-time clown as an alternative to gang warfare. What fascinates me is that there's something of the strife for the nonhuman about it; waves of pure disembodied aggression seem to be passing through these people. If "krumping" is done well, it looks like people channeling fighting dinosaurs. And that may be the reason why it works beyond the usual aesthetic confines of pop: some dancers are beautiful, some are notably ugly. But the dance somehow makes the latter ones a wonder to behold too, especially some enormous only-in-America rotundities who wobble when the vibrations pass through them. I'd like to be able to do something similar, heck, I'd like to be able to dance anyway, but I'd even more like to be able to krump. Hope this craze catches hold in Europe, too. Somehow, I think it will.

Where Despair Ends And Tactics Begin

Two days ago, I went to see Mark Stewart & Maffia. I waited more or less 15 years for this concert and wasn't disappointed, it turned out to be a thing of beauty. Quite a wonder how music that relentlessly oozes crushing despair can be so uplifting. Wimbish's bass is still wicked and Sherwood an absolute genius at the mixer. Stewart seemed a bit lame at first, as he started off with a rather tired version of "Liberty City", but then he warmed up and was magnificent. When they peaked, I had a rare experience of immersion, the impression of not hearing but being the music for a few seconds. No feeling of a body that isn't part of the sound, no sense of gravity weighing me down. It's probably a meaningless question, but is this what all the techno kids feel during their supposed love parade ecstasies? I kept wondering afterwards. Sadly, the band had the bothersome tendency to deliver medleys instead of songs: over LeBlanc's machine-style drumming, the guitarists laid some indistinct riff to which Stewart was reciting snippets from several songs that bled into each other. I know that this is an On-U custom, but it's a bad idea anyway, because the songs have no time to gather momentum. It was especially sad when Stewart gave four lines from his historic "Jerusalem" version and then stopped and did something else. Any amount of lines from that song is a darn treat, but if they'd played the whole track, I might have disappeared into the P. A. and never come back And wouldn't that have been interesting?

Uns Ist In Alten Mæren Wunders Vil Geseit

I have watched "Sin City" recently. Generally, the schematic black-and-white images with strong contrasts are kind of nice, but the style seems to work much better in the comic itself. I have the same criticism with this as with "Immortal", basically: why all the work which keeps armies of people busy for bloody years, if all you do is imitate another medium which does the job better at much lower cost? (Yeah, I know the answer is "big bucks", but anyway.) If I just ignore that problem for the moment, it's a good enough but not great specimen of that most "romantic" of male-oriented genres, the medieval "Aventiure". You’re told basically the same story three times over, it’s always about some fallen damsel in distress and the hard, lonely knight who has to save her somehow from the dragon. And the more dark and corrupt the environment of our heroes the better, since the hero's beat-up soul shines all the brighter for it. And that’s basically what the Sin City ambience comes down to, a foil for scarred male souls to contrast favorably against. Plus, the medieval action reduces the futurist setting to pure facade. I missed some real street life in that city, instead of just hard-boiled decoration. Even though some of them distressed damsels are very impressive indeed, and watching Mrs. Alba in particular felt like being constantly clobbered over the head with a gold dust bullion, I would have prefered another, more ugly and shady story in the same world; a life in the day of a corrupt lawyer or something, somebody who really has no eroticized idealism and spiritual shining armour to keep the filth away.

By the way, is it just me, or did the yellow guy remind everyone else of the bush, too?

The Spy Who Dug Commodities

I had some Ian Fleming audiobooks read to me lately, provided by my trusty public library. Never having seen them Bond movies, I thought I might do some catching up and got "Goldfinger" and "Casino Royale". To my surprise, the books are not really about espionage at all, they're all about luxurious lifestyle and status symbols. Generally, reading them feels like being lost in a whiskey ad which is somewhat tedious, but also strangely attractive. Fleming is not that interested in the secret service, not even on a phantasmatic level; in the hidden center of the two books are topics totally unrelated to all that spy stuff: "Casino Royale" seems to be about baccarat and "Goldfinger" about golf. (In the middle of the book, there's a description of a game of golf between Bond and Goldfinger which takes up several chapters and seems to take forever, even in the abridged audio version.) The Bond novels' main topic seems to be the swashbuckler's constant defense against all those people who are set to take his expensive hobbies and manhood-enhancing toys from him - let's just call them evil people and communists, shall we? That's what all these ridiculous descriptions of agent operations come down to. From start to finish, the stories could be read as allegories of the psychic and organisational ups and downs of someone who lives way beyond his means, as Fleming apparently did until his novels started to sell.

For A Change, A Very German Entry

Während meine Kusine in Indien war, habe ich ein gewisses Bedürfnis nach Exotismus verspürt und, um es wenigstens kompensatorisch zu befriedigen, eine ethnologische Forschungsexpedition in ein tribales Territorium der näheren Umgebung unternommen, nebbich in die Schrebergartenkolonien nördlich meines Blocks. Meine Recherchen haben ergeben, daß sich das Schrebergartenterrain fünf Stämme teilen: Gegen West erstreckt sich die grüne Kolonie Oeynhausen. Gegen Nord stemmt sich die Kolonie Mannheim gegen die Forckenbeckstraße. Gegen Ost ruht die unauffällige Kolonie Alt-Rheingau im Schatten der Reemtsma-Fabrik. Gegen Süd schluckt die Kolonie Friedrichshall den eventuell anbrandenden Schall. Gegen Südost tut die Kolonie Kissingen eigentlich nichts besonderes, außer dem Wanderer zu bedeuten, daß das wahre Kissingen weit entfernt liegt. Ich habe keine Beweise, aber den distinkten Eindruck, daß die Kolonien nach Straßen benannt sind, die auf die Kolonien zuführen bzw. an sie grenzen bzw. irgendwie in der Nähe sind. Ein echtes Problem für diese Theorie stellt die Kolonie Alt-Rheingau dar, es gibt allerdings eine Rheingauer Straße ca. 1 km östlich.

Die Expeditionsroute verläuft von Friedrichshall nach Mannheim und darüber hinaus. Es ist mir vergönnt, eine sich von Süd nach Nord tief ins Herz der Kolonie erstreckende Schneise zu finden. Ein Schild kündet, daß die Schneise von den Eingeborenen der "Rosenweg" genannt wird; er endet im Norden an einem vom West nach Ost verlaufenden "Dahlienweg", der seinerseits im Osten auf den von Nord nach Süd verlaufenden "Veilchenweg" stößt und dort auch endet. Am westlichen Ende stößt der "Dahlienweg" auf noch einen vierten Weg, dessen Namen nicht erfindlich ist. (Meine Theorie lautet, daß dieser Weg ebenfalls nach einer Blume benannt sein dürfte, aber das steht nirgends und Verifizierung der Theorie wird auf eine spätere Expedition vertagt werden müssen, weil ich nämlich vom Dahlienweg nordwärts in den Veilchenweg einbiege.)

Die Forschungen in situ sind Artefakten, d. h. zunächst vor allem Fahnen und anderen Utensilien gewidmet, mit denen die Einheimischen ihr Terrain und ihre Potenz im weitesten Sinne markieren. Schon nach kurzer Zeit stoße ich auf der Westseite des Rosenwegs auf ein besonders enigmatisches Exemplar: Ein roter Zettel in Klarsichtfolie ist befestigt an zwei in ein Beet gerammten Stangen. Auf dem Zettel steht:

"Schlacken und Steine
statt Gemüse und Obst."

Wird hier ein Wunsch zum Ausdruck gebracht? Handelt es sich um eine Warnung? Eine Drohung? Homöopathische Magie? Eine Art negative Utopie? Vor diesem Rätsel versagt die Findigkeit des Forschers, aber schon bald trifft er auf Artefakte, deren Interpretation weniger Schwierigkeiten bereitet: Viele Bewohner haben, vielleicht aus irgendeinem bevorstehenden oder vergangenen festlichen Anlaß, ihren Garten mit Leinen, an den bunte Wimpel hängen, dekoriert. Immer noch auf dem Rosenweg, weiter nördlich, stoße ich gegen West auf ein besonders markant markiertes Environment: ein handtuchgroßer Garten so dicht mit Deutschland- und Bayernwimpeln behängt, daß man nicht weiß, wie sich der Bewohner in diesem Gestrüpp noch vom Gartentor zu seiner Hütte bewegen will. Weiter nördlich sehe ich gegen Ost die erste Hertha BSC-Flagge des Tages, schwach flatternd über einer besonders kleinen Hütte, vor der zwei bärtige Männer in kurzen Hosen an einem Tisch vor einem Getränk sitzen und den Wanderer ansehen. Westlich des Rosenwegs treffe ich noch weiter nördlich auf eine weitere Fahnenstange mit einer weiteren Hertha BSC-Flagge, unweit von einer hüfthoch in einem Rasen steckenden Bayrischen Flagge. Noch weiter nördlich ist an der Ostseite des Rosenwegs eine Abwehrzauberformel zu finden: eine ovale Holzplatte mit teilweise in blau und gelb angemalter Gravur, abbildend einen stilisierten lachenden Mann und eine stilisierte lachende Frau, beide mit mit Knollennasen und Latzhosen, der Mann hat einen Strohhut auf. Das Paar steht vor einem Kürbis, der vermutlich Fruchtbarkeit und generell Holz vor der Hütte symbolisiert. Darunter steht in Schreibschrift:

"Des Gärtners größter Fluch
sind Unkraut und Besuch.
Unkraut geht noch…"

Am westlichen Ende des Dahlienweges schließlich eine Fahnenstange mit zwei untereinander hängenden Fahnen. Die obere Fahnenhälfte der oberen Fahne ist schwarz, die untere Fahnenhälfte weiß. Im Zentrum, in einem weißen Kreis, befindet sich ein stark stilisiertes Wappen, das ein Kranich oder sonst ein großer Vogel sein könnte, ein langer, waagrechter, von links nach rechts leicht ansteigender, leicht nach oben hin gebogener schwarzer Strich, von dem nach oben fünf ein wenig dickere, nach links biegende Striche abzweigen. Die untere Fahne zeigt ein rotes Kreuz auf weißem Grund, am oberen Kreuzbalken eine Krone, im Zentrum des Kreuzes ein sechszackiger Stern. Am Rand ist der Stern rot, sein Inneres ist weiß, in diesem weißen Feld eine stilisierte rote Hand. Ich will gar nicht anfangen, darüber zu spekulieren, was das nun wieder alles zu bedeuten hat. Wahrscheinlich sind diese Fahnen nur dazu da, Ortsfremde in den Wahnsinn zu treiben. Psychologische Kriegsführung. Oder so.

Es ist zu bemerken, daß sich die Domizile mit markanten Artefakten vor allem in der Nordostecke der Kolonie häufen. Ein auffallendes Exemplar (das übrigens auf der Westseite des Veilchenwegs sich befindet) ist ein beigegelb angestrichenes Holzhaus mit waagrechter Bretterschalung, sehr niedrig, weiß nicht, ob die Leute da drin aufrecht stehen können. Das Dach sehr weit ragend, zur Giebelseite mit dicken Holzplatten verstärkt. Am Giebel selbst ist eine Platte aus Plastik o. ä. angeklebt, auf der die Bewohner mit unvermischten Acrylfarben o. ä. einen Abwehrzauberspruch appliziert haben:

"Wer frei sein Zung nit zügeln kann
und böse red [sic!] von Jedermann [sic!],
der selbig [sic!] weiß zu dieser Frist
das [sic!] ihm dies Haus verboten ist"

Die Schrift in schwarz, links haben alle Buchstaben noch einen verwischten roten Rand, für angedeuteten dreidimensionalen Effekt. Drumherum sind schematische Blümchen gemalt, oben Veilchen ohne Stiel, unten unidentifizierbare rote Blumen mit Stiel und ein wenig Grünzeug, das nur aus Stiel zu bestehen scheint, gesetzt der Fall, das sollen nicht die Stiele von den Veilchen oben sein. Es könnte sich dabei um Fruchtbarkeitssymbole handeln: Ich habe in den entsprechenden Milieus schon manchmal beobachten können, daß weibliche Eingeborene der südwestlichen Bezirke bei einsetzender Geschlechtsreife überall schematische Blümchen hinmalen, wenn man ihnen die Hände nicht irgendwo festbindet. Die zum beigen Haus gehörigen Anwohner habe ich bisher nicht in situ beobachten können. (Unweit davon war aber unjüngst eine Gruppe von Handwerksmännern zu vermerken, die Tischtennis gespielt und dabei aus mir nicht ganz erfindlichen Gründen laut gebrüllt hat.) Vorne am Haus ein von Steinplatten eingekreister Gemüsegarten, hinten Rasen, beide werden offenbar nicht regelmäßig gepflegt. Im Gemüsegarten stakt ein gebogener Draht in der Erde, von der etwas Blütenimitierendes herunterhängt. Ich wage gar nicht mir auszumalen, was für gräßliche Initiationsriten mit Hilfe dieser Vorrichtung an leicht bewölkten Sonnabendnachmittagen abgehalten werden. Vor den Fenstern des beigen Hauses weiße, breite Lattengitter; sie scheinen ebenso gut dafür geeignet zu sein, Leute draußen am Reinkommen wie Leute drinnen am Rauskommen zu hindern. Beides ist vermutlich eine gute Idee, diese kleine Welt ist wahrlich auf das Schönste geordnet.

Ich neige langsam zu der Vermutung, daß die Stämme, die ich da erforsche, ein durchaus kriegerisches Volk sind, mit dem vorsichtig umzugehen ist. Zu dieser Vermutung paßt, daß ich auch vergleichsweise wenige Einheimische treffe; vielleicht haben sie sich schon in jahrelangen tribalen Auseinandersetzungen wechselseitig dezimiert. Wie in Jugoslawien. Oder so.

An zahlreichen Gärten zum Weg hin hängt ein kleines, rundes Schild, das vermutlich "Kackverbot für Hunde" signalisieren soll. Das Schild ist dem Überholverbotsschild nachempfunden, nur daß auf ihm statt zweier schematisierter nebeneinanderfahrender Autos ein schematisierter kackender Hund zu sehen ist. Die meisten Eingeborenen halten denn auch nur Hausgenossen, die überhaupt keinen Dreck machen, d. h. die aus Keramik. Es handelt sich nicht nur um Gartenzwerge, sondern um eine durchaus vielfältige Fauna. Generell ist zunächst zu sagen, daß gegen Norden die Statuen größer werden, gegen Süden kleiner, die südlichen aber dafür häufiger im Rudel auftreten. Auf dem Rosenweg sind vor allem Individuen der Klassen Aves und Hominides zu beobachten: rosa Flamingos, ein Reiher und diverse Gänsekolonnen, ein weißes Elfchen mit einer Schubkarre und Arrangements von die Passanten z. T. böse musternden Gartenzwergen. Auf dem Veilchenweg sind mehr Amphibien und herbivore Säugetiere anzutreffen, Rehe und vor allem diverse Lämmer, was vielleicht damit in Verbindung steht, daß wir jetzt einen deutschen Papst haben. Lämmer wie Rehe treten normalerweise paarig auf, was vermutlich auch irgendwas zu bedeuten hat. Unter den Amphibien dominieren die Frösche, speziell im Gedächtnis ist mir noch ein geistesabwesend aussehender Frosch, um den man einen Gartenschlauch gewickelt hat. Aber auf dem nördlichen Veilchenweg bin ich auch überraschend auf einen Vorgarten voller Keramikgänse gestoßen, was zur Differenzierung meiner geographischen Einteilung zwingt. Die Gans ist übrigens generell stark vertreten, man kann sich fragen, woher ihre Attraktivität rührt. Vielleicht ist sie ein passender Ausdruck großbäuerlicher Ambitionen? Die eigentlich verblüffende Entdeckung mache ich dann aber am äußersten nördlichen Ende des Veilchenwegs: Der Garten vor einem kleinen, dunklen Holzhaus, von dessen Dach aus mir nicht erfindlichen Gründen zwei gelbe Räder hängen, ist mit Keramikfiguren bedrohlich übervölkert. Entlang dem steingepflasterten Weg, der zum Haus führt, sind eine Taube, ein Hund und ein Gartenzwerg postiert, im Beet entlang des östlichen Gartenzauns befinden sich dann noch, von Süden nach Norden, eine Gans, ein Karnickel, dann noch eine Gans und ein Frosch. Irgendwie unkoordiniert stehen auf dem dahinter befindlichen Rasen ein Rabe, ein Storch und ein Hund herum. Direkt vor einem großen Strauch ungefähr in der Mitte des Gartens steht ein Schäfer mit einem Lamm im Arm und einem Schaf zu seiner Linken. Hinter dem Strauch sind ein Reiher und ein Ferkel auszumachen, eventuell noch weitere Tiere, die aber vom Strauch selbst verdeckt werden. Restlos alle dieser Figuren sind gegen den Weg gekehrt und scheinen den Passanten anzusehen. Wie Travis Bickle in "Taxi Driver" zu seinem Spiegelbild sagt: "You talkin' to me? You talkin' to me? You talkin' to me? Then who the hell else are you talkin' to? You talkin' to me? Well, I'm the only one here. Who the fuck do you think you're talking to? Oh, yeah? Okay."

Follow Your Dreams

At the moment, I'm reading "The Origins of Totalitarianism" by Hannah Arendt. Good book, because Arendt isn't moralizing, she's just very curious what made Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia tick, and she's trying to find out the way a detective might investigate a murder: she's looking for clues in the past of the suspects, mainly in the 19th century. Maybe that's why it reads like a crime novel at some points. It seems to me to be a very timely book, too, good for a better understanding of certain characteristics the Bush administration. I'm not saying that the USA is a totalitarian state yet, but some strategies are very similar, e. g. the tendency first to tell a lie and then change reality in order to make it fit. Sixty years ago, it went like: "Russians have no culture. They do have a culture, you say? Well, no problem, we put some of them in this cage here and give them nothing to eat for weeks. Look, now they start eating each other. See what I mean? Russians have no culture, they're savages. So there." Today, it's more like: "Arabs are evil and want to kill us. They don't want to kill us, you say? Well, no problem, we just bomb a few thousands of them into smithereens, torture some more for no reason whatsoever and occupy one of their countries on the flimsiest of pretexts. Look, now they call us Satan and blow themselves up near where we're standing. See what I mean? Arabs are evil and want to kill us, no respect for life. They're savages. So there." Seems to work like a charm at the moment.

Immortal Cattle

A few weeks ago, I saw that "Immortal" movie by Enki Bilal. Disappointing. A few nice retro SF visual ideas of weird guys moving around in an elegantly decaying Eastern bloc - style New York ruined by an incredibly stupid, cramped, opportunistic story woven around it containing even more stupid, awkward dialogues trying to be metaphysical. The sad thing is, his comic he based that movie on, "Foire aux Immortels", used to be one of my favorites back when it came out, it's as if he failed to engage with his own work. Quite a few French comic artists I used to adore in the Eighties (Bilal, Sokal, Druillet etc.) seem to be fixated on CGI nowadays. It's not for them, would somebody please tell them that CGI is a trap for artists like them? Yeah, it looks like a good idea and the new big thing and a challenge and what they always dreamt of and all that, but it's too much work, too much money, too many people involved, so all the creativity gets stale and formulaic, and accordingly the results are dull. They also often try to bend a genre before having mastered it. If you want to take SF movies to a new level you have to be able to do standard SF first, just soldering ambitious pictural and textual "Kultur"-quotations together with an insufficient mixture of genre elements doth not anything memorable make. Plus, mistakes like that are a lot more forgivable if they're just committed by a guy at his drawing board without the need of them being spelled out and amplified by armies of tech and movie people busy for years with programming, designing, acting, marketing, arguing, keeping the sets clean, feeding the crew etc.

Another movie I saw recently is "Island of Lost Souls". I mainly went to see it because Raymond Bellour was going to introduce it and he's one of the best movie theoreticians on the planet, so I thought it might be interesting. However, he just narrated the basic facts about the movie for three minutes, attached some half-baked thoughts to it and was out of the door. I liked the movie, though, an adaptation of the "Island of Dr. Moreau" with a disconcertingly beautiful panther woman and Charles Laughton as Moreau. There's a ritualistic scene with Laughton and Bela Lugosi playing one of his creatures with a lot of facial hair, both interacting as follows:

Dr. Moreau: What is the law?
Sayer of the Law: Not to eat meat, that is the law. Are we not men?
Beasts (in unison): Are we not men?
Dr. Moreau: What is the law?
Sayer of the Law: Not to go on all fours, that is the law. Are we not men?
Beasts (in unison): Are we not men?
Dr. Moreau: What is the law?
Sayer of the Law: Not to spill blood, that is the law. Are we not men?
Beasts (in unison): Are we not men?

Somehow, there's something memorable about this exchange, I tend to imagine it was quoted and reworked not only by Devo but also in thousands of campus rituals involving a lot of booze.

Infinitesimal Socialism

Antonio Negri writing about Marx reminds me of a tortoise writing about Zeno's second paradox: "Hooray, hooray, Achilles cannot catch me!"

Moving Targets

I've seen a few good movies recently, one was "Model" by Frederick Wiseman, a documentary about a model agency in NYC. I saw Wiseman's "Titicut Follies" some time ago and was deeply impressed, a documentary made in a Massachusetts asylum for the criminally insane with guards and doctors who are blatantly sadistic and abuse the inmates (who for some reason are stripped naked most of the time) on camera. Scenes of systematic humiliation are intercut with Vaudeville show numbers organized in the asylum by a guard, the "Titicut Follies" of the title. In these scenes, the bulky inmates with their sad, dead, empty stares are made to wear party hats, wave pom-poms and sing jolly songs. I'm convinced that this movie was a formative influence on David Lynch. Anyway, "Model" was nothing as impressive, but it gave good insight in the way a model agency functions. Apart from that, I had the impression that Wiseman first tried to make a courageous statement on the commodification of beauty and its insiduous effects (lots of shots of showroom dummies in the first half of the movie, plus beautiful model faces contrasted with not-remotely-as-beautiful faces in the street.) But then he just became distracted by the sheer glamour of the models; at some points the camera stops keeping an objective distance and just stares, open-mouthed. And rightly so, but why should I watch this? Another movie I saw was "Los Angeles Plays Itself", a three-hour film essay by CalArt teacher Thom Andersen about the depiction of L. A. in the movies. I thoroughly enjoyed most of this unsystematic, rambling overview, especially the parts about the way real buildings were used in movies (e. g. the Bradbury Building in "Blade Runner", "D. O. A", "Wolf" et al.). There was a fascinating sequence on the changing uses of Bunker Hill, interesting takes from black, independent movies with a "neorealist" aesthetic, and a good rant on the fact that the modernist architectural landmarks of L. A. are mostly used as the homes of villains in Hollywood movies. Sometimes the film came across at a bit too opinionated and pedantic, but in the end I had the impression that this was the best movie I'd seen in a year. The third feature, "The Price of Survival" by Louis van Gasteren, is a documentary about the family of a Dutch holocaust survivor who recently died and had been so utterly traumatized in the camps that he never found his way back into regular life and instead dragged his wife and three children into his persistent memories. Some of the movie felt somewhat formulaic and some of the interviews intrusive, but an image that I think will stay with me is a shot of the father standing up from the sofa in their living room and reporting his "prisoner number" in German; the tone of his voice, his look and his posture just make it tangible that, in a way, he still is in the camp at this very moment.

With All Its Special Effects

I had some interesting dreams recently. Among them, a dream about man-sized elves floating in a white sky and down a mountain range full of bizarre rock formations. Also a rather unpleasant dream about public torture in a square in front of a South American police station. Quite Elizabethan choice of subjects, I guess. And yesterday I dreamt of a beautifully decorated African terracotta dog that seemed to be alive and was moving around in something like a very small open stable in a video in a museum exhibit next to a smiling bronze fetish flitting around in a rock garden with a beautiful woman just having passed around the corner. Dans le champ du rêve tu es chez toi, as Lacan said.

Come and Play With Us, Lex Animata In Aeternum!

Last week I went to see the Stanley Kubrick exhibition at the Martin-Gropius-Bau. It was totally superficial, like here's-some-stills-from-
the-movie-here's-a-video-clip-here's-a-poster-here's-some-original-props-here's-
some-press-clippings-here's-some-notes-scribbled-by-Kubrick-personally-on-
his-napkin-here's-some-stills-from-the-next-movie-here's-a-clip-here's-
the-poster-here's-some-more-props etc. I learned just about nothing at all. (Except that Kubrick would have filmed "The Aryan Papers" if Stupid Spielberg hadn't done that thoroughly awful "Schindler's List" at about the same time. "Aryan Papers" could have been a good movie as opposed to "Eyes Wide Shut", darn it.) However, some of the original props had a high fetishistic value for me. Especially in the "Shining" section: the knife Shelley Duvall stumbled around with through the second half of the film and particularly the costumes of the Grady twins gave me faintly Roman Catholic real presence vibes. I toy with the idea that if poop Ratzinger should ever dress up as the Grady twins, I might accept him into my heart of hearts.

Welcome to Utva

I got the new Nurse With Wound album "Shipwreck Radio" and, boy, are its dark concrète drones and sound morphs from the edge of the world ever gorgeous, especially the first CD. Hearing it almost brings back the excitement I felt when I first discovered the registered Nurses, when their records seemed to open my skullcap painlessly and insert a load of mysterious yet vaguely familiar objects, surprisingly often including myself, into my cerebral bloodstream. For a while it looked as if Stapleton was down to treading water, but that particular old man, Schmürz be praised, still seems to have much thick, dark, muddy blood all around him in his sea of kidneys. Highly recommended to the two people who actually read this blog.

Hoc est enim corpus meum

The historian Caroline Walker Bynum gave a talk in Potsdam a few days ago, and I was surprised to learn from her that, due to some bleeding wafers, a small town close to Berlin was actually one of the most important pilgrimage sites of the 13th century, coming right after Jerusalem, Rome and Santiago. Well, I never. Brandenburg doesn't exactly look spiritual these days...

Il est bon d'être charitable. Mais avec qui?

Recently, I've been obliged to read some Lévinas. Maybe I'm missing out on something here, but it seems to me that the texts contained an almost completely empty feel-good-philosophy only useful for official speeches and extended self-congratulation. Following Lévinasian ethics is supposed to be subversive and moral at the same time, heroically sacrificing "self-survival" for the other. But that claim is so big that it's larger than life and evaporates in contact with everyday questions. The other can't be any old other sitting next to you in the subway, because you would not really know what to do with her/him by the guidance of the imperative to put the other first. Basically, this ethos is realizable only regarding somebody with whom you're already intimate and able to have dyadic relationship; it finally only makes sense in a marital bond (as Lévinas himself points out). And even in this relation only in privileged moments (e. g. watching your special someone sleeping). It seems to me that for these moments you don't really need ethics, because you're swept up in their dynamic anyway. Ethics can't strengthen your ability to love. However, ethics can help, or at least become interesting, further down the road, when the debate starts who of you is going to take out the trash, i. e. when a political question arises and "the third" inevitably enters who "the other" always is on the verge of becoming. And at this crucial point, Lévinas has doodly-squat to say except banalities such as that one should "consider carefully" the relation between other and third. When he considers it himself, he takes the route straight back to dull convention. E. g. Lévinas advocates self-defense not on the basis of self-survival but on the basis of your obligation against your loved ones and your community. Obviously, the effect would in both cases be just the same in close to 100 % of the cases, as every good propagandist knows. Plus, the empirical representatives of Lévinasianism I've met despite all their otherizings seems to me rather full of themselves, similar to a certain kind of clergy who bug everybody with their demonstrative, narcissistic self-effacement.

Out Of The Strong Came Forth Sweetness

John Balance died a few days ago in a domestic accident while drunk, 42 years old. I'm surprised how melancholic I feel about the death of this man I never met. I had stopped following his work closely a while ago, but some of his records were really important to me back then, holding weird delusional charms that somehow managed to give me some pride in my sense of alienation. Listening to some Coil songs again, I think their blend of innocence and depravity holds up well.