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I aim to decolonize my mind. I keep thinking about the timidity of cultural revolution in this country where people think that we've come a long way because we can have long hair and not have to wear a suit and tie at work, or the bourgoisie who pierce their lip or eyebrow or navel or something and think they're at the cutting edge of rebellion. I am not knocking an individual's right to do what they want. More power to them. But it bothers me that this is the acceptable limit of discourse on (r)evolution. They don't understand that what's happening is countercultural elements are co-opted by the mainstream, made to look cool, and poised as "rebellion" when it's really just another form of fashion fascism. Trends are bullshit. Piercing can be a very spiritual thing, but the people who really look to piercing as something more than a fashion statement are disregarded in general. If you have a thousand pins in your face, you're a freak. When in actuality, IMO, you are the true purveyor of counter-culture. I don't personally am not into peircings, but I hate co-option of counterculture.
The capitalist industry takes the profound, perverts it, and makes it mundane. Our rites of passage are now stolen from world culture, but stripped down and commercialized. Piercing, tattooing, bungee-jumping, etc... But those who pierce their brow now, because it's acceptable aren't really trying to deviate, and probably never would have been. Hmm... It's hard to express my feeling, because I certainly don't desire to prohibit anyone their right to do as they wish... But I feel that half the time, people aren't really expressing themselves so much as programmed by a system to "rebel" in specific certified ways.
I've written an essay about this before, about so called "rebellion" on MTV... Those shitty rap/metal bands who think they're so rebeliious, but they have no deeper meaning, no substance apart from the culture they exist in. I suppose the difference between rebellion and revolution is a matter of degrees and specificities. Rebellion is timid, meek, acceptable. Revolution is full-spirited, passion. It's not about being cool. It doesn't seek to be cool. Rebellion is juvenile, misanthropic antics without any sort of essence or larger goal, easily subverted into the mainstream channels of discourse of reality. Revolution is much more complex.
Long hair may be a cultural revolution to limited degrees. Other fashion revolutions may alter our mindset in limited ways, but they don't really alter the fundamentals, and that's why they're allowed. They're surface, superficialities. Easily another image to sell. It's not that I'm against any of these things, but I only wish people would really ask if they would do this without any sort of social pressures.
I aim to decolonize myself. I am bound by specific symbol-systems. I wish to cut these word-bonds that confine me to limited reality discourses. I initially designed a symbol to act as an imprint-system for symbioid, to make it easily referenced. But I realize that the whole purpose of symbioid is to deconstruct, to destroy fascism and propaganda. Most anti-propagandists use propaganda just as much as their enemy. I aim to remove propanda from myself, even my own propaganda. My catch-phrase used to be "choose your propaganda" which is still quite accurate, because everything is a system that's propagandized to you. But I want to reduce my reliance on symbols... However, it's impossible to completely eliminate symbol-systems from existence, becasuse that's what our world lives in. Reality is defined by language.
I've been reading "Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia" by Deleuze and Guattari, and one interesting quote they have is this: "The one vocation of the sign is to produce desire, engineering it in every direction. " This is similar to buddhism in that buddhism realizes that in order to be liberated we must escape desire, and in order to do that, we need to penetrate past the language barriers we construct for ourselves, and penetrate into the nature of things, realizing their "suchness". Instead of compartmentalizing things such that by looking at a tree, i automatically give it a word signifier "tree" and from their give it it's general function and role as to what a tree is, without really seeing that individual tree for it's own self. The buddhist attempts to move past labels and seeing the nature of that tree, in it's detail, from the leaves and bark and structure to it's purpose in life, it's progression in time, etc... Instead of a basic template which we ascribe a word to and then attach all categories to that template, we look at the individual object and remove the template and it's label. No longer do adjectives or nouns exist, I guess my point is that liberation from language is the ultimate liberation. The destruction of language and symbol systems constitutes a re-ordering of the individual. I aim to be like the phoenix, continually dying so that I may be reborn anew from the ashes of the old. But I fear the process of that death. I fear losing what I already have and what i have become.
There's so many more things swimming through my mind. I sometimes feel that I should be egalitarian, but I realize that I'm elitist and hold a general contempt for humanity. Lacan states that we are slaves not because we're duped, but because we all, in some way or another, desire to be slaves. And I enslave myself, just as much as another, but in a different way. I want to become aware of the way I enslave myself, what my desire for enslavement and how it relates to my desire for liberation.
I've been thinking about the process of art, the role of the artist, and where I'm going with my art. No longer am I about "self-expression", nor "cultural-reflection" but rather I want to be involved in the process of art as art. Understanding that it's the production of art that is the art, and not so much the final product. With this I think I may be able to produce that which I desire to produce... I've held myself back so much thinking I'm lazy, but I think I may have had a misunderstanding of what I really wanted to do. I want to explore media theory more than actual music or art. To express these theories in artistic forms without being constrained by what I think something should or shouldn't be. Instead of worrying about making "music" or some such thing, I will only worry about expressing ideas, and not trying to make it conform to a specific social construct of what should or shouldn't be expressed.
And so now that I've occupied your time in a most delirious way, and wasted bandwidth on your system, i'll let you be. 'sbeen a while, and I'm glad I'm back, but I'm still not back as much as I'd like. Still so much moving in to do. grr.. anyways, peace out y'all.
The capitalist industry takes the profound, perverts it, and makes it mundane. Our rites of passage are now stolen from world culture, but stripped down and commercialized. Piercing, tattooing, bungee-jumping, etc... But those who pierce their brow now, because it's acceptable aren't really trying to deviate, and probably never would have been. Hmm... It's hard to express my feeling, because I certainly don't desire to prohibit anyone their right to do as they wish... But I feel that half the time, people aren't really expressing themselves so much as programmed by a system to "rebel" in specific certified ways.
I've written an essay about this before, about so called "rebellion" on MTV... Those shitty rap/metal bands who think they're so rebeliious, but they have no deeper meaning, no substance apart from the culture they exist in. I suppose the difference between rebellion and revolution is a matter of degrees and specificities. Rebellion is timid, meek, acceptable. Revolution is full-spirited, passion. It's not about being cool. It doesn't seek to be cool. Rebellion is juvenile, misanthropic antics without any sort of essence or larger goal, easily subverted into the mainstream channels of discourse of reality. Revolution is much more complex.
Long hair may be a cultural revolution to limited degrees. Other fashion revolutions may alter our mindset in limited ways, but they don't really alter the fundamentals, and that's why they're allowed. They're surface, superficialities. Easily another image to sell. It's not that I'm against any of these things, but I only wish people would really ask if they would do this without any sort of social pressures.
I aim to decolonize myself. I am bound by specific symbol-systems. I wish to cut these word-bonds that confine me to limited reality discourses. I initially designed a symbol to act as an imprint-system for symbioid, to make it easily referenced. But I realize that the whole purpose of symbioid is to deconstruct, to destroy fascism and propaganda. Most anti-propagandists use propaganda just as much as their enemy. I aim to remove propanda from myself, even my own propaganda. My catch-phrase used to be "choose your propaganda" which is still quite accurate, because everything is a system that's propagandized to you. But I want to reduce my reliance on symbols... However, it's impossible to completely eliminate symbol-systems from existence, becasuse that's what our world lives in. Reality is defined by language.
I've been reading "Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia" by Deleuze and Guattari, and one interesting quote they have is this: "The one vocation of the sign is to produce desire, engineering it in every direction. " This is similar to buddhism in that buddhism realizes that in order to be liberated we must escape desire, and in order to do that, we need to penetrate past the language barriers we construct for ourselves, and penetrate into the nature of things, realizing their "suchness". Instead of compartmentalizing things such that by looking at a tree, i automatically give it a word signifier "tree" and from their give it it's general function and role as to what a tree is, without really seeing that individual tree for it's own self. The buddhist attempts to move past labels and seeing the nature of that tree, in it's detail, from the leaves and bark and structure to it's purpose in life, it's progression in time, etc... Instead of a basic template which we ascribe a word to and then attach all categories to that template, we look at the individual object and remove the template and it's label. No longer do adjectives or nouns exist, I guess my point is that liberation from language is the ultimate liberation. The destruction of language and symbol systems constitutes a re-ordering of the individual. I aim to be like the phoenix, continually dying so that I may be reborn anew from the ashes of the old. But I fear the process of that death. I fear losing what I already have and what i have become.
There's so many more things swimming through my mind. I sometimes feel that I should be egalitarian, but I realize that I'm elitist and hold a general contempt for humanity. Lacan states that we are slaves not because we're duped, but because we all, in some way or another, desire to be slaves. And I enslave myself, just as much as another, but in a different way. I want to become aware of the way I enslave myself, what my desire for enslavement and how it relates to my desire for liberation.
I've been thinking about the process of art, the role of the artist, and where I'm going with my art. No longer am I about "self-expression", nor "cultural-reflection" but rather I want to be involved in the process of art as art. Understanding that it's the production of art that is the art, and not so much the final product. With this I think I may be able to produce that which I desire to produce... I've held myself back so much thinking I'm lazy, but I think I may have had a misunderstanding of what I really wanted to do. I want to explore media theory more than actual music or art. To express these theories in artistic forms without being constrained by what I think something should or shouldn't be. Instead of worrying about making "music" or some such thing, I will only worry about expressing ideas, and not trying to make it conform to a specific social construct of what should or shouldn't be expressed.
And so now that I've occupied your time in a most delirious way, and wasted bandwidth on your system, i'll let you be. 'sbeen a while, and I'm glad I'm back, but I'm still not back as much as I'd like. Still so much moving in to do. grr.. anyways, peace out y'all.
