A.I.R. Pittsurgh

Artists Image Resource is a super cool non-profit in Pittsburgh. AIR is a "image laboratory" run by artists where folks can learn everything from screen printing and bookbinding to digital imaging and intaglio. Artists can rent access to equipment for cheap or come out for the open studio nights and use the screen printing stuff for free (Tuesdays and Thursday nights). AIR also has a gallery space and throws some rad parties. In fact this coming Saturday there is going to be a gathering/party of sorts any Pittsburgh folks should come out!

Of Time and The City

Terrence Davies' Of Time and The City is a truly poetic film. Described as "a love song and a eulogy" Davies' work adresses urbanity, homosexuality, youth, memory, poverty, tradition, religion, sport, archieteture, love, old age, literature, and time by focusing on Liverpool just after the WWII. Mostly composed of achieval clips, Of Time and The City does something truly unique with the medium of film. This film is an absoulute must see. If you don't believe me check out what the NY Times said about it here.

Shell Oil and Ken Saro-Wiwa

In 1995 Ken Saro-Wiwa has sentenced to death by hanging by a military tribunal in Nigeria. Wiwa was an activist, author, and political figure who was actively working to protect the Ogoni people from exploitation at the hands of multinational oil companies and a corrupt government. There has been an ongoing set of lawsuits against Shell (accused of being directly involved with the killing of 9 activists) which were supposed to have taken place on the 26th of last month but have been postponed. I just read this article in the NY Times--it gives a good idea of what kind of man Ken Saro-Wiwa was and how important this trail is. Shell most likely worked hand in hand with murderers and fascists to protect profits and they continue to use highly destructive methods of extracting the oil they sell. A couple of years ago it seemed as if people in this country were getting wise to the oil problem but that slipped away. Nearly every car I see contains one person, the auto industry is crumbling, and still tax payers vote against public transit---I cannot help but be reminded of the Dead Kennedy's: Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death. I realize that sometimes people are going to drive alone or that sometimes it is just too gross out to ride a bike but there are serious consequences to the way we lead our lives. Knowledge is for action--if we know about the problems it is our responsibility to act differently.

Susan Stewart

The Forest

You should lie down now and remember the forest,
for it is disappearing--
no, the truth is it is gone now
and so what details you can bring back
might have a kind of life.

Not the one you had hoped for, but a life
--you should lie down now and remember the forest--
nonetheless, you might call it "in the forest,"
no the truth is, it is gone now,
starting somewhere near the beginning, that edge,

Or instead the first layer, the place you remember
(not the one you had hoped for, but a life)
as if it were firm, underfoot, for that place is a sea,
nonetheless, you might call it "in the forest,"
which we can never drift above, we were there or we were not,

No surface, skimming. And blank in life, too,
or instead the first layer, the place you remember,
as layers fold in time, black humus there,
as if it were firm, underfoot, for that place is a sea,
like a light left hand descending, always on the same keys.

The flecked birds of the forest sing behind and before
no surface, skimming. And blank in life, too,
sing without a music where there cannot be an order,
as layers fold in time, black humus there,
where wide swatches of light slice between gray trunks,

Where the air has a texture of drying moss,
the flecked birds of the forest sing behind and before:
a musk from the mushrooms and scalloped molds.
They sing without a music where there cannot be an order,
though high in the dry leaves something does fall,

Nothing comes down to us here.
Where the air has a texture of drying moss,
(in that place where I was raised) the forest was tangled,
a musk from the mushrooms and scalloped molds,
tangled with brambles, soft-starred and moving, ferns

And the marred twines of cinquefoil, false strawberry, sumac--
nothing comes down to us here,
stained. A low branch swinging above a brook
in that place where I was raised, the forest was tangled,
and a cave just the width of shoulder blades.

You can understand what I am doing when I think of the entry--
and the marred twines of cinquefoil, false strawberry, sumac--
as a kind of limit. Sometimes I imagine us walking there
(. . .pokeberry, stained. A low branch swinging above a brook)
in a place that is something like a forest.

But perhaps the other kind, where the ground is covered
(you can understand what I am doing when I think of the entry)
by pliant green needles, there below the piney fronds,
a kind of limit. Sometimes I imagine us walking there.
And quickening below lie the sharp brown blades,

The disfiguring blackness, then the bulbed phosphorescence of the roots.
But perhaps the other kind, where the ground is covered,
so strangely alike and yet singular, too, below
the pliant green needles, the piney fronds.
Once we were lost in the forest, so strangely alike and yet singular, too,
but the truth is, it is, lost to us now.

The form of this poem is just stunning.

The Deer Hunter & The Importance of Film

I am tremendously skeptical of film. I feel like the potentials inherent in the medium of film are too great for most people involved in the business. The complexity of the production demands a rare sense of subtlety and restraint. Films are hard to make and easy to ruin much like poems. Unlike poetry there is a lot of money in film, it is an industry, and can be used as a means of obscuring truth and reality (sometimes to the chagrin of the actors and directors).

The Deer Hunter is a nearly perfect film because it attempts to realize the potentials inherent in the medium. Like a great poem it uses a set of particulars to reveal the universal. It doesn't achieves this by reduction or simplification, but by condensation. I mean that the specific details in every frame carry within them a nearly infinite set of relationships to the history, politics, religion, sexuality, life, chance, etc.. There is something of the older notion of totality in The Deer Hunter. Unlike many other Vietnam films TDH grounds the horror of war at home, in the church or the grocery store, in cultural practices that produce concepts like honor, survival, heroism, marriage, and American-ness.

What a film like TDH make clear is that it is possible to pierce the veil of commonplace (the typical material for most films) and in doing so show us the importance and obviousness of what we had failed to realize. TDH is important because it teaches us to see what is right in front of our faces. Check it out--Walken and De Niro are incredible.

Kraynick's Bike Shop

This is the ultimate Grandpa's basement of a bike shop--packed from head to toe with old beautiful bike parts. Combined with Free Ride this shop makes Pittsburgh a bike fanatic's mecca. It is down on Penn Ave. near the ultra-dank Spak Brothers Pizza. Pittsburgh is cutty more folks need to visit.

Shame on California, Shame on Us

I remember when Prop. 8 passed I was in the Murray Ave. Grill with a bunch of Pittsburgh folks. No one seemed to pay much attention to the events in California because we were all freaking out that Obama was taking office. There was some hope, something better was coming. On November 4, 2008 paired with the good news, I had a sickening realization: we have learned very little despite the rhetoric of progress, our innocence, as Blake understood all too well, will be our end. Many friends and colleagues believe very deeply in cultural politics, and I think that they have there place, but I cannot help but see them as part of the problem. There is no question that politics has been de-politicized by republicans and democrats. Two parties inhabit out cultural imaginations limiting the political field making politics all too similar to religion. It seems as if the ease of identifying 'politically'--knowing your party, three or four catchphrases like small government or equality, and most importantly what you're against-- leaves out issues of policy, people, legislation, and purpose.

For our generation it is far too easy to mindlessly inhabit a position in the field of cultural politics or to excuse oneself completely by claiming to be a 'radical'. Politics are not easy and that is no accident--that is political. People say that the government doesn't work: that is total bullshit. The government does work but like any other institution it operates in concrete ways in budgets, policy decisions, and through active agents. Althusser and Foucault were just plain wrong about what we do about ISA's (I will stop there, if you want to talk to me about it I will buy you coffee or a beer). For the last 25 years there has been a largely right wing movement to insure the obscurity of the concrete movements of government by playing with cultural signification. During this time period the left, largely inhabiting the universities, played into this de-politicization of the political. Ironically this was achieved by turning to what we thought was politics. By theorizing justice, understanding subjects, deconstructing ideologies, and turning away from literature we thought we were getting somewhere. Meanwhile Clinton fucked the American worker, education lost more and more funding, Republicans and cooperate lobbyists insured markets were de-regulated, we continued to talk about the family, about values, etc. The 'trickle-down' effect of the lefts cultural turn only bolstered the right-wing's main message: government doesn't work.

But it does: yesterday California courts upheld the decision to ban same-sex marriage. I fear that this will just be gobbled up in a simple cultural manner where those of us who consider ourselves socially progressive get angry at conservatives, Christians, etc. This is a legitimate threat we should all fear. Hatred and ignorance will always exist in people but if they get a good education, live long enough, and free enough they will figure it out. These freedoms need protection. When we make hatred and ignorance policy and law we take a deep dive backwards into barbarism, we insure another century of blindness. In a free society laws are for protecting people not excluding them. We shouldn't be cynical seeing this as evidence of the government not working, instead we should be outraged at the way the government is being used.

I resent and deny the current political formations that put the left on the defensive--we have values, communities, and families too and we don't need to prove that. What we need to talk about is the concrete policies of the the centrists and right wingers. We need to make the values inherent in their policies and choices intelligible to everyone--there are things that are plain wrong to everyone. We need to talk about the continued exploitation of workers and the lower classes, we need to talk about funding cuts to education and the public sector, we need to expose the systematic ignorance that has been institutionalize, and the down right evil that has been carried out in the recent past, we need to organize beyond casual and comfortable cultural lines and start thinking and understanding our own government.

Please write to Arnold Schwarzenegger and Barack Obama and let them know how disappointed you are.