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.

Reading Flaubert

Flaubert's Sentimental Education was the first great novel I ever read. Today I decided to pick it back up--it is glorious. If someone was only going to read one novel this summer Sentimental Education would be my pick. The cleanliness of the prose and the power of description are nearly unmatched but better than that it provides a view into one of the most important moments in recent history: France in the middle of the 19th century.

A Poem for Lauren

even when there is pause in the chase

the good is not up for capture.

while we slumber nothing stays still

and that is relief; the heart of all humor.

True fools feign forever with measure.

Habits, well intentioned but heartless,

grind the mind, concealing hope--

best to be a false fool with careful dance:

there are todays in which hope is held

in a strangers voice, each moment is leading,

and the harness which holds us promises

some give when lines are too taut

What I have been up to.

Gavin and I hit up the East Liberty farmer's market on Saturday morning. It is a quaint little layout in an indoor structure with tons of cool goodies. Next week I want Gavin to drink some raw milk!

I have been focusing a ton on preparing good healthy meals for myself. I love cooking because it allows for a little period of hectic creativity everyday and it is cheap too. It is a little tough to adjust to cooking for one person but once you do your options can really open up.

I have also been taking a joy in wearing sneakers after many months of rough Pittsburgh weather. I recently read Thoreau's essay on walking and it made me want to take more walks. My mother is an avid walker and Lauren is a true master of the epic summer walk. When I first met Lauren she would walk everywhere from Queen Anne which is pretty gnarly. When I visit her in Chapel Hill we take the most glorious of walks. Walks bring about the best conversations even if you are walking alone.

A day off

Today I mostly rode my bike. I am still trying to find employment and am reading many books at once. My Hegel reading group will start next week which should prove to be interesting. I am also increasingly jealous of friends who are back in Seattle enjoying the great weather and each other's company. I did get hip to a rad label today. My good friend Gavin has a bunch of the stuff they put out. Worth checking them out--Mississippi Records.

2 Poems By R.P. Warren

Tell Me a Story (1)

Long ago, in Kentucky, I, a boy, stood
By a dirt road, in first dark, and heard
The great geese hoot northward.

I could not see them, there being no moon
And the stars sparse.  I heard them.

I did not know what was happening in my heart.

It was the season before the elderberry blooms,
Therefore they were going north.

The sound was passing northward.

Tell Me a Story (2)

In this century, and moment, of mania,
Tell me a story.

Make it a story of great distances, and starlight.

The name of the story will be Time,
But you must not pronounce its name.

Tell me a story of deep delight.

Reading Coetzee

I have been reading J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace and finding it to be one of the best novels I have ever read. Coetzee's use of domestic animals as a sort of conduit for self-realization is incredible. In reading Darwin I have realized that he placed animals closer to humanity than ever before and that it must have been really strange to his contemporaries. One interesting contour of Modernity is the realization and rejection of the animal world. I mean to say that man's physical and day to day realtion to animals was quite a bit closer in the 17th and 18th centuries yet animals were seen as essentially different--with modernity this relation has been slowly reversed. We now know that we are essentially closer to animals yet their presence in our world is abstracted and tucked away, more distant than before. There is much cruelty in this distance--I do not know if it is more or less than before but I think that it must be very different. Disgrace is a hard book but clear in its language and careful in its structure--I hope some of you will read it and let me know what you think. It makes me think of friends who have left the city for the farms--I often wonder about what they are finding there. I miss them because it is clear that the work of the farm teaches many important lessons and that they will only be better people for their toil.

Reconsidering Zizek

Slavoj Zizek is, I think, crazy. On many levels I have very little in common with his thinking, however, I ran across a lecture of his online in which he 'improvises' on some subjects which are important. Ideology strikes me as a necessary and dangerous subject which we must talk about today. Elsewhere I have found Zizek to be absoultuely intractable but in this lecture he is at least clear. The man's mind is on fire and he is clearly an important figure. Check it out.

On the Question of Dress

(Samuel Beckett knew how to wear clothing)

There are a number of interesting and inspirational blogs out there on street-fashion. I follow a number of them and have this blog linked to one of the best: The Sartorialist. I am all for culture being ordinary but I am opposed to obviousness. All too often I see street fashion blogs paying attention to the obvious attention grabbing dressers who are trying their hardest to destroy the ordinary. Flashiness bothers me because it implies a lack, it implies a disregard or mistrust of the ordinary--to miss the importance and beauty of the ordinary is an unforgivable failure of perception. The ordinary can be expensive or cheap, it can blend in or stand out, and most importantly it can allow you to be seen.

Here are a number of interesting, ordinary, and relatively affordable designers that I am excited by right now.

Dunderdon

Dunderdon does really plain, fitted, durable, and tasteful stuff at a fair price.

L.L. Bean

Old Brands like L.L. Bean, Lands End, or Woolrich make classic clothing at a fair price. I wouldn't ever buy a pair of pants but jackets, sweaters, and shoes are all a go. I like this moccasin because of its structure. It is designed with purpose in mind: leather laces, eyelets, a defined toe, and a waterproof sole. It works year round and in all weather meaning it can age nicely and take on a bit of history. Perhaps it will even replace the done to death boat shoe.

A.P.C.

A.P.C. jeans are simply the best jeans you will ever own. Don't wash them, size down, and wear them everyday.

I will keep up on the fashion/dress stuff as I see fit.

Arendt and Bogus Science

In reading The Life of the Mind one finds a tremendous anxiety concerning the death of traditional metaphysics. Arendt was a student and lover of Martin Heidegger and his influence is clear in the pages of Arendt's work. In particular Arendt takes up a phenomenological position on the notion of appearance and attempts to reverse the prominence of the ideal and inner over the empirical and outer by citing the work of Swiss biologist Adolf Portmann. Portmann is now a favorite of religious fanatics who are opposed to Darwin's theory of evolution. Arendt follows Portmann in suggesting it is the exterior which appears (intentionally) to us is what differentiates us, but a simple reading of Darwin would show that difference permeates both the invisible and visible. The root of the problem is the deadly simplicity of Heidegger’s notion of concealment.

I bring this up only to point at a serious problem concerning the opposition between the 'analytic' and 'continental' philosophers. Oftentimes I am told that certain individuals only work on 'analytic' philosophy (insert shit eating grimace) or I hear "I only deal with continental philosophy”. The opposition isn’t without grounds. My feeling is that there is still antagonism over the logical positivists all out war on metaphysics which still continues because continental philosophers representing metaphysics show, much like Arendt, an unforgivable and xenophobic ignorance of modern science. Similarly, many ‘analytics’ are woefully condescending about traditional philosophical questions which they appear to have never thought very seriously about. Again commonplace divisions won’t do.

Take a look at this quote from Albert Einstein: “Concepts which have proved useful for ordering things easily assume so great an authority over us, that we forget their terrestrial origin and accept them as unalterable facts. Then they become labeled as ‘conceptual necessities,’ ‘a priori situations,’ etc. The road of scientific progress is frequently blocked for long periods by such errors.”

Darwin and Blake?

The Origin is a stunning piece of writing. Today I stumbled across this gem:

"The structure of every organic being is related, in the most essential yet often hidden manner, to that of all other organic beings, with which it comes into competition for food or residence, or from which it has to escape, or on which it preys. This is obvious in the structure of the teeth and talons of the tiger; and in that of the legs and claws of the parasite which clings to the hair on the tiger's body. But in the beautifully plumed seed of the dandelion, and in the flattened and fringed legs of the water-beetle, the relation seems at first confined to the elements of air and water. Yet the advantage of plumed seeds no doubt stands in the closest relation to the land being already thickly clothed by other plants; so that the seeds may be widely distributed and fall on unoccupied ground. In the water-beetle, the structure of its legs, so well adapted for diving, allows it to compete with other aquatic insects, to hunt for its own prey, and to escape serving as prey to other animals." Darwin pg. 72

Recently I saw Nancy Armstrong of Duke University give a talk on Darwin. In her lecture Armstrong talked about the crisis Darwin's work brought to the notion of the individual for European culture. Scattering The Origin of Species are all sorts of passages that show that Darwin's thinking has some strange resonance with the poet William Blake. Both men, in quite different ways, realized that idealized notions of the self had very little to do with reality. On this note compare Blake's The Book of Thel with the passage above.

Charles Sheeler: American Precisionist

Sheeler made his living as a photographer but was also an notable painter and a central member of the Precisionist movement. Precisionism was a strictly American Modernist spin-off that is often compared to cubism or futurism. None of that is as interesting as some of Sheeler's works and the precision which they convey.

Two Cultures?

In 1959 C.P. Snow announced that there are "Two Cultures" of the modern world: one of the Sciences and one of the Humanities. This division shapes what we study in school, the sorts of things we feel comfortable working on, and is crystallized in the undying notion that a scientist is some socially awkward nerd obsessed with frigid objectivity and that the humanist is some champion of sensuality, justice, and self-expression. While my characterization is hard and fast, it is not bullshit. What is bullshit is the way we tow lines as if they were set in stone.

This summer I have set out to learn as much as I can about the history of science. If I take the shallow vision of the modern academy the scientists are raiding the humanist's tower, but the shallow vision is, well shallow. I need not fear that other culture of the scientist, I need to fear not knowing about the world in which I live. I know that Jesse Brown has done some reading on artists who got involved with hard-sciences at MIT (I think) and hopefully he can hip me to the stuff that they were up to. Yesterday in the New York Times this article was published. Apparently an English Chemist has figured out how RNA originates, which is a huge breakthrough for figuring out our origins. Check it out.

Struggle for Existence

Here is an intresting passage from Darwin's The Origin of Species:

"Yet unless it be thoroughly engrained in the mind, I am convinced that the whole economy of nature, with every fact of distribution, rarity, abundance, extinction, and variation, will be dimly seen or quite misunderstood. We behold the face of nature bright with gladness, we often see superabundance of food; we do not see, or we forget, that the birds which are idly singing round us mostly live on insects or seeds, and are thus constantly destroying life; or we forget how largely these songsters, or their eggs, or their nestlings, are destroyed by birds and beasts of prey; we do not always bear in mind, that though food may now be superabundant, it is not so at all seasons of each recurring year." Darwin pg. 61

This reminded me in a strange way of these lines from Eliot's Four Quartets:

"Go, go, go said the bird: human kind
Cannot bear very much reality"
T.S. Eliot, Burnt Norton

Limits and Punctuality

Last night I spoke with a good friend Carl Miller. He is currently working on an album and going through some pretty big life changes. For various reasons Carl's time is quite constrained. This means that he only has bursts of time for creative work-- an hour here, two hours there. These restraints have led him to a number of realizations about the creative process. Less time for diddling means that there is a shit-or-get-off-the-pot imperative that is pushing him to make decisions faster. In our conversation I was reminded of many things I have read concerning the importance of limits and the punctuality that follows from working within them. One figure that is certainly an exemplar of this kind of work and of this way of working is William Carlos Williams. Williams was a committed physician and the greatest American Poet. He got his work done in the pockets between delivering babies, saving lives, and sitting beside the sick and dying. I highly recommended reading two of his essays: The Basis of Faith in Art and Against the Weather for more on Williams' view on the nature and relation of Art to reality.

(W.C. Williams)

Another great poet who has written widely about forms, limits, rhythms, and language is Paul Valery. In his book, The Art of Poetry, Valery talks about the limits of form being the only way to get free of the real limits put on the artist: the tired and the ordinary. Carl, in thinking about putting together an album, also talked about the importance of material limitations. In looking back, the great albums of the 60's and 70's were released to vinyl . This material limitation meant that an artist or a band had less time (10-12 songs) and had a necessary division in the overall structure (A-side, B-side). There was a punctual logic to the limits of the materials that made for classic albums. While Carl isn't going analog he is getting in touch with material limits that spring up from the profundity of the day to day. I wish him and his family all the best.

The Beginning

Now that I am without an institutional home I hope to use this blog as a place to air out ideas and start conversations. I am currently reading three books: Homer's The Odyssey, Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species, and Hannah Arendt's The Life of the Mind. As I read through them I will offer commentaries and passages that tickle, excite, or enrage me. Let's start with Arendt:

"Cliches, stock phrases, adherence to conventional, standardized codes of expression and conduct have the socially recognized function of protecting us against reality, that is, against the claim on our thinking attention that all events and facts make by virtue of their existence" The Life of Mind pg. 4