Spike

We Met Jasper Fforde

2006-09-23T04:31:12Z

We um, met Jasper Fforde.

Oh yeah and I reviewed Donald Barthelme and shit. And the j-music keeps on coming. We're fucking wota or some shit. Peace.

J-music: The Reviews to Date

2006-09-05T06:13:28Z

My best writing in ages

Ai Otsuka

Puffy

Kana (linked on fanboy.com)

Nanase Aikawa

COMING SOON: Malice Mizer and Morning Musume!!!!!!!

If you're my friend you have to read them all

On the Bourgeois Novel

2006-08-16T06:49:18Z

(original quote that started the discussion)
J.G. Ballard:"The bourgeois novel is the greatest enemy of truth and honesty that was ever invented. It's a vast, sentimentalizing structure that reassures the reader, and at every point, offers the comfort of secure moral frameworks and recognizable characters. This whole notion was advanced by Mary McCarthy and many others years ago, that the main function of the novel was to carry out a kind of moral criticism of life. But the writer has no business making moral judgments or trying to set himself up as a one-man or one-woman magistrate's court."

:

The bourgeouis novel often adopts a 'godlike' or 'compassionate' narrative stance (I believe it to be neither, but...). Now, the interesting thing is that a writer like Mishima often used the 'godlike' narrative stance, but the result was entirely different from anything that had gone before. In something like 'The Sea of Fertility', which at 1500 pages rivals the size of 19th century novels, the characters begin as beautiful and noble and are then progressively degraded as the history of the 20th century is subtly detailed in the background, culminating in, as Mishima saw it, the death of Japan in the post-war period.

Similarly; if you read any books by the great French writer Michel Houellebecq you will get a great social-novel perspective on the decay of Europe. Houellebecq understands that secularized Europe is coming to nothing, but his message is of great instability...Houellebecq (rather prematurely, I think) tends to equate the death of Europe with the decline of humanity in general, but Houellebecq is offering answers, considering alternatives, the only way out as he sees it is if human life is replaced with something else. Interestingly, though, Houellebecq's approach in his novels is very 'external', he is constantly explaining his characters' actions in terms of movies they watched, books their parents read, social movements, etc...in fact the internal world is almost entirely done away with. But at the same time Houellebecq's stance is oppositional; in many of his novels he destroys humanity completely by the end or replaces them with something...clearly the decline of Europe allows him no hope for the future; Houellebecq is not pretending he can stand outside of society or comment objectively; he is present and complicit.

To my mind American minimalism fails in this regard most often; writers curated by Gordon Lish such as Amy Hempel, Chuck Pahlanuik, (sometimes) Raymond Carver, etc, because their minimalism becomes ponderous too quickly...I find myself completely unaffected by their work. In other words they fail to successfully use great eloquence to point out its own futility...in fact I feel that minimalism is almost always a self-parody.

Basically my criteria for uplifting or great writing:
1) It should confront existence with detachment, but also complete involvement (I can't explain this as well)
2) It should be technically precise and accomplished
3) It should be filled with humor
4) It should portray or else portray through absence complete freedom and invention

When I say language should be used precisely I do not mean minimalistically; in fact quite the contrary.

What Ballard is talking about then...this other kind of writing is not necessarily 'confessional', except that it presents other possibilities or potentials...I do not mean this politically. This is the very crude sense of something like Orwell. I am not interested in that kind of writing; I mean these potentials in the mental sense of that which gives rise to external manifestations such as politics...bourgeois writing attempts to block out death or else gild it; the writing Ballard speaks of does not do this. I think what Ballard really means is the freedom to describe everything as it strikes the nervous system without having to flash it into context or 'explain' anything, i.e. the bourgeous novel retains the 18th century 'godlike' narration of writing from without, from outside, 'objectively', whereas honesty entails complicity. This does not mean that only confessional writing is possible so much as it means that the perspectives generated are internal and not accepting of a generic shared framework of expression.

Yumiko Kurahashi does this, her writing comes from deep inside and is almost alien, glistening and beautiful. Yumiko Kurahashi's writing is profoundly anti-bourgeous; from her writing you would never even get the sense for example that human beings and animals are separate, that incest is 'wrong', or that there are even such things as countries.Yumiko Kurahashi writes as if she lives on a parallel Earth in which only the nervous system is reporting, the same way it reports in a dream, because in a dream you might kill someone and then immediately eat a sandwich and then feel an emotion which cannot be verbalized while conscious; this happens also in her stories. William S. Burroughs writes the same way; in fact in that original quote Ballard was writing about Burroughs.

Now, John Updike criticizes Houellebecq as follows:

""A fulfilled death wish may be the best, all orgies past, that Houellebecq can provide...But how honest, really, is a world picture that excludes the pleasures of parenting, the comforts of communal belonging, the exercise of daily curiosity, and the widely met moral responsibility to make the best of each stage of life, including the last? The island possible to this airless, oppressive imagination has too few resources. The final edition of Daniel has sunk to the condition of a mollusk: “I bathed for a long time under the sun and the starlight, and I felt nothing other than a slightly obscure and nutritive sensation.” The sensations that Houellebecq gives us are not nutritive."

Now...politically I disagree with both Houellebecq and Mishima...they are both more conservative than I am. But, yet again, Houellebecq's 'godlike' stance within this narration betrays the fact that he too is caught within the decaying structure of European culture in the 21st century and is not exempt...just as Baudelaire included himself and the reader in the prologue to Fleurs du Mal:

"Folly, error, sin, avarice
Occupy our minds and labor our bodies,
And we feed our pleasant remorse
As beggars nourish their vermin.

Our sins are stubborn, craven our repentance.
For our weak vows we ask excessive prices.
Trusting our tears will wash away the sentence,
We sneak off where the muddy road entices.

Cradled in evil, Thrice-Great Satan,
The Devil, rocks our souls, that can't resist;
And the rich metal of our own volition
Is vaporised by that sage alchemist.

The Devil pulls the strings by which we're worked:
By all revolting objects lured, we slink
Hellwards; each day down one more step we're jerked
Feeling no horror, through the shades that stink.

Just as a lustful pauper bites and kisses
The scarred and shrivelled breast of an old whore,
We steal, along the roadside, furtive blisses,
Squeezing them, like stale oranges, for more.

Packed tight, like hives of maggots, thickly seething
Within our brains a host of demons surges.
Deep down into our lungs at every breathing,
Death flows, an unseen river, moaning dirges.

If rape or arson, poison, or the knife
Has wove no pleasing patterns in the stuff
Of this drab canvas we accept as life —
It is because we are not bold enough!

Amongst the jackals, leopards, mongrels, apes,
Snakes, scorpions, vultures, that with hellish din,
Squeal, roar, writhe, gambol, crawl, with monstrous shapes,
In each man's foul menagerie of sin —

There's one more damned than all. He never gambols,
Nor crawls, nor roars, but, from the rest withdrawn,
Gladly of this whole earth would make a shambles
And swallow up existence with a yawn...

Boredom! He smokes his hookah, while he dreams
Of gibbets, weeping tears he cannot smother.
You know this dainty monster, too, it seems —
Hypocrite reader! - You! - My twin! - My brother!"

In contrast to Houellebecq, Updike doesn't have imagination; his writing is staid, same thing with John Cheever. In fact most writers from New England, I feel, have internalized this conservative ethic in their writing, all the way back to Hawthorne, who again, I feel suffers from the Edith Wharton syndrome of not sufficiently embracing an alternative...this is why The Scarlet Letter for example is depressing to read without any uplift. When I look at the influence that eventually led to this kind of scene, even down to the present day, I see the influence of Calvin, Erasmus, etc...all of these figures to my mind hated life...

The novels of Henry James, Jane Austen, and Edith Wharton prompt despair but not in an uplifting way. The novels of Mishima or Flaubert evoke despair but it is uplifting, they make you want to live while those of the aforementioned writers evoke only closeted despair and impotence. It's like they didn't have the imagination to be completely nuts so their work reflects this...they can't think outside of convention or present alternatives. Consider Mishima's 'Temple of the Golden Pavilion' where the protagonist burns down a temple in Kyoto because he felt it was holding him back...the last sentence of this novel, after the ancient and beautiful temple has been reduced to rubble, is "I wanted to live." Again burning temples is not necessarily the point, even if that is not a good idea or whatever, the idea has still been proposed that change is possible.

In Edith Wharton you can't burn things down...there is no way out...in a book like 'Ethan Frome', you can't escape from anything...even if you try to kill yourself you will just fail...now...that may have 'reflected society'...but the thing is THE WRITER should be the one to propose a way out or invent something...even if obliquely...

In 19th century novels this change is often artificial or external or something...in Dickens, the lead characters are passive...things just happen to them and if they turn out well it's not necessarily through their own actions or anything...this is not true of some books like 'A Tale of Two Cities' but it is true of many of them...in contrast to the French, In 'Madame Bovary' the antagonist explicitly wins, this is the final paragraph:

"Since Bovary's death, three different doctors have worked in Yonville without success, such has been the force of Monsieur Homais's immediate onslaught. He is doing infernally well; the authorities handle him carefully and public opinion is on his side.
He has just received the Legion of Honor."

Again this would seem to be depressing but rather Flaubert has shown the effects of the bourgeoisie upon the individual experiencing consciousness...the success of the middle class in constraining imagination has been utter, but at the same time, the ending paradoxically impels the reader towards life through its sense of disgust...
Similarly F.T. Marinetti constantly recommends the complete destruction of Italian culture, but again his writing feels optimistic and uplifting, in that change is proposed. Vincenzo Fani writes about clothing:

"The new forms will not hide but accentuate, develop, and exaggerate the gulfs and promontories of the female peninsula. Art exaggeration. Upon the feminine profile we will graft the most aggressive lines and garish colors of our Futurist pictures. We will exalt the female flesh in a frenzy of spirals and triangles. We will succeed in sculpting the astral body of woman with the chisel of an exasperated geometry...one hundred new revolutionary materials riot in the piazza, demanding to be admitted into the making of womanly clothes. We fling open wide the doors of the fashion ateliers to paper, cardboard, glass, tinfoil, aluminum, ceramic, rubber, fish skin, burlap, oakum, hemp, gas, growing plants, and living animals...every woman will be a walking synthesis of the universe."

Young Japanese women now have done this...ganguro fashion is obscene to the conventional eye, it consists of near-cancerous tans and bleaching, green or yellow eyes, blonde or purple hair, and conventionally incompatible accessories...but to me gyaru is the supreme achievement of beauty of the 21st century. When I spent time with gyaru in takeshita-dori in Ikebukuro last month, I thought, perhaps only Malcolm McLaren has attempted anything like this...the flowering of kogaru and ganguro has produced (to my mind) the highest beauty of the still-nascent millennium. (the Gothic/Lolita movement also does this)

But if we examine the Lolita movement further, we see that:

"Nearly all of the (gosurori) kids I've met are serious students who attend school regularly. But the common thread in their characters is their inability to gain joy from real life. They may be good students, but they're only top students because they are forced to be," he tells Weekly Playboy. "Poor parental relationships stand out, but there's also something cold and barren about them. They can't find anything to be happy about in life, so they go off into their own world and then hang out with like-minded people who are doing the same."
-Hirokazu Hasegawa

Similarly, with regards to gyaru:

"From the data we took about the gyaru occupation, the majority of the people are university students. In addition, although Group N includes people that are full time workers, in Group Y there are none. In contrast to this, Group Y includes vocational school students, but Group N includes none. Perhaps, the main reason why many gyaru are university students is that they have a lot more freedom (compared with other students--for example, junior high and high school students). High school students have many school rules that they have to follow. People who have a job also have rules that they have to keep as being a member of the Japanese society or a worker of the company. However, vocational school students have the same freedom as the university students. In Japan there is this word, "university debut". Becoming a university students means that one have no more strict rules that they have to follow (especially about one's appearance). Thus, people tend to change their image drastically. This 'image changing' may be a change of their fashion. This can be a possible reason of the numerous university gyarus. But we can see differences between the two groups emerge. Group N's answers to the question, "where do you usually shop?", varied. However, Group Y's answers were only Shibuya and Shinjuku. Shibuya and Shinjyuku are the place that "gyaru" fashion is born. Therefore, shopping in these areas is natural for gyarus because they want to be in the center of the trend. It is predictable that Group Y, people claiming to be gyaru , shop mainly in Shibuya. Plus, these three cities are places that you can easily find gyaru clothing. Gyaru fashion or the gyaru clothing stores, we can not confidently say which one comes first. It is like saying, "which comes first, chicken or the egg?"

So, the real expression here is not necessarily one of freedom...the existing structure is not critiqued or even dealt with, just as it continues to lose relevance and young people continue to lose interest in maintaining traditional ideals. Again there is the failure of imagination and communication, although in a different context.

Important News

2006-08-10T16:24:25Z

Matters of great import are discussed over at Swifty Site, Here.

If you have any interest in remaining involved in contemporary life, it behooves you to go and read and watch everything discussed. The content of these reviews is of a more serious and urgent character than my usual posts, and I trust that, after reviewing the relevant material, its true import will soon be understood. If you have never listened to me before, take heed now and thank me later for changing your life with goodness.

Verse

2006-08-07T15:07:04Z

In the palm flowers, among the bamboo,
Buddha long went fast asleep

With the withered fig tree by the roadside,
Christ, too, is already dead.

But we all need our rest-
Even in front of the stage set.

When you look behind the set,
You find only patched canvas.

-Akutagawa Ryunosuke, 'Kappa'

MOBU NORIO

2006-08-05T06:54:25Z

"The members of the selection committee devoted most of their comments on the story to its social message and its colloquial style. Furui Yoshikichi held it up as a something of an exemplary tale for contemporary youth, while Kôno Taeko found the characters to be mere puppets operating at the whim of the author. Ishihara Shintarô, deriding the lack of a complicating irony in the guidelines formulated by the narrator, also complained of a mismatch between the seriousness of the theme and the narrator's hip-hop stylistic affectations, particularly the constant use of "Yo, nigger!" (in Japanese the phrase is written "YO hôhai," with the reading nigâ attached to the kanji for hôhai). His concern over the story's style was shared by Miyamoto Teru. Takagi Nobuko, rather more tone-deaf than Ishihara to the phrase's racial implications, in contrast found the content and style to be well matched, and a similarly positive view was expressed by Kuroi Senji. Personally, the use of the phrase struck me as the work of a hip-hop wannabe (inauthentic, if you will), and Yamada Eimi was naturally the one to point this out most clearly, chiding Mobu for his pseudo-rap style and calling him inaka-kusai for using nigâ as the furigana for hôhai. The story appears to have won the prize largely on the basis of two or three strong recommendations and the lack of strong support for any single rival (it may also have benefitted from the absence of two regular members of the selection committee, including Murakami Ryû). It was rightly recognized as being, below its faux-contemporary surface, a "serious" story about a pressing contemporary issue. But one also suspects that the doubts expressed by some committee members about Mobu's future potential are also on target."
-http://www.f.waseda.jp/mjewel/jlit/reviews/akutagawa/akutagawa_2004.html

YO NIGGER

GUITARS

2006-08-03T18:07:28Z

Nothing, nothing can beat the consolation of guitars. It's all there is.

Returned

2006-07-19T09:12:55Z

I had to return to Australia for business reasons unfortunately, and some other things.

I have the new Utada Hikaru CD, Ultra Blue. I'll probably write about it at the other site soon.

I also have the new Gothic & Lolita Bible.

I also found a phenomenal and insane article about Morning Musume, which I will probably be putting up here soon.

My Problem with the new Doctor Who

2006-07-04T06:26:16Z

They don't take shit seriously enough.

This may seem ridiculous in a show like this, but think about it, think about the reason the old show was so great and often so hilarious, because actors were performing nonsensical actions and delivering nonsensical dialogue with complete conviction. If they're in on the joke it ruins it completely. In the new show they are in on the joke so it's become ironic and so I don't like it as much. Watch a story like 'The Time Monster' from the old series which is completely avant-garde and deranged. The concepts used in that story are logically meaningless but sound entirely convincing; the new series does not do this and relies almost exclusively on fantasy elements. They are trying to make it like U.S. science fiction shows. The reason Doctor Who was originally good was because of this ability to apply severe logic to illogical situations, resulting in hilarity and a strange sense of daring.

Watch anything from the Troughton or Pertwee eras and everyone takes everything completely seriously. If you watch the story 'The War Games', when the Time Lords execute him at the end, Philip Madoc's acting is ridiculously over-qualified; he is a far better actor than he needs to be and he isn't aware that he's in a children's show or whatever it is classified as; in that story the actors take everything so seriously that it becomes awesome; in other stories the same thing happens or else it becomes ridiculous and deranged but daring. Russell T. Davies doesn't know how to do this; he always has irony and camp. Whenever the new show is in danger of becoming awesome or genuinely deranged he will pull back and prevent this from happening. If you watch the Hartnell and Troughton eras the show is often serious and makes you think 'Holy shit'. Then later with Pertwee or Tom Baker it still makes you think 'Holy shit' because they are doing logically daring stories. The McCoy era also became good with this. But the new show is neither serious nor funny/daring.

You might say that in the old show this only worked fifty percent of the time; from an objective standpoint fifty percent of the show is unwatchable. But that's still fifty percent good. Maybe ten percent of that fifty percent is genuinely 'Holy shit' awesome or deranged. The new show doesn't have this; although the second season is better than the first. The first season had maybe one or two moments that pushed or were awesome; the second has a few more. They still need to find their feet and get more deranged writing; they need to stop being generic with shit.

Example: Tom Baker was deranged; he was always in character and confused the show with real life, marrying Lalla Ward (now married to geneticist Richard Dawkins whom she met through Douglas Adams), walking into people's houses unannounced and watching the show with people's children, having sex while wearing the costume (mentioned in one of his autobiographies), etc. The writers they had in the 80's were also deranged; they actually thought that plots about recursive occlusion and molecular Buddhist crystals were scientifically accurate. Or in the Hartnell era; the producers thought the show was supposed to be educational. They thought this show with dancing butterfly men and time travel was supposed to be educational. But the new writers and personnel are not deranged so the show is not good. If you handed the show over to me and my friends it would become deranged and good again. I should be writing the new Doctor Who.

Japan

2006-07-04T05:53:08Z

I have been in Japan for the past week.

Regular updates and photos of my progress are available here:
http://www.swiftywriting.blogspot.com

Mostly I am just trying to buy music and take photos of kogaru. If anyone wants anything bought or otherwise investigated let me know.

Why I don't use pop-cultural references in my writing:

2006-06-13T15:55:08Z

Because if I mention a band like Orange 9MM, if you haven't heard of them you feel left out, if you've heard of them you think "This guy must also like ___" and then the reader's conception of me is automatically limited, and if you know them and don't like them you feel vaguely bored and your connection to me is even more limited or even destroyed.

The same goes for all television shows, movies, books, comic books, and brand names.

They will not always exist, but testicles will probably always exist as long as there is human life and the mind will probably also exist. I can't understand why anyone would write something and put in pop-cultural references but not refer to testicles or the mind. But then my favorite book of all time (Akutagawa - A Fool's Life) isn't even in print, so what I think means fuck all.

I challenge anyone to explain how pop-cultural references make for better writing

"It has more verisimilitude"

Yeah, for about two months. Then it becomes dated.

The reason pop-cultural references in writing always detract from the work is because culture is no longer unitary; we do not live in a world in which you can reference the Oddyssey or something and everyone will get it; there are instead subcultures, and therefore any kind of pop-cultural reference automatically limits the work to one of them. I have never seen pop-cultural references make anything better; but have often seen them detract from the work.

sirspike @ 2006-06-08T03:12:00

2006-06-07T19:13:18Z

I am writing my most beautiful and terrible story

It shows you that you can live, you can be a Libra, you can live according to the world and still exist, you can tie cords around your beliefs until they wither and fall off; you don't have to die, you can be two people, as many people as you want

You can subsist off of torture.

I couldn't have written this without having read Jun'ichiro Tanizaki.

Tanizaki showed me that you could do this

He wrote Naomi, The Key, and Diary of a Mad Old Man.

Nabokov is a coward compared to Tanizaki.

Tanizaki, Akutagawa, Kawabata, Mishima

I've learned from these men.

I feel like I know what I can do, now.

Shin'ichi Hoshi

2006-06-04T14:38:50Z

I have discovered the ULTIMATE writer. His name is Shin'ichi Hoshi.
I could talk about Hoshi's work, his place in the 60's Japanese SF scene, or his (scant) English language publication history. Instead, I will allow his work to speak for itself. This is his story, "The Negotiations."

"The Negotiations"

The devil appeared silently in a puff of smoke. His mission was to visit the world from time to time and sow evil among men.
He looked around. It was a quiet night, and there was a small house nearby where a man lived on his own. Hiding his tail, the devil knocked on the front door.
"Good evening," he said in as gentle a voice as possible to avoid alarm, which would have defeated his purpose. The occupant came to the doorway.
"What do you want? I'm just the night watchman." he said.
"I've come to give you a wonderful present."
"If that's what you've come for, I think you're wasting your time. I don't want anything."
So the offer was declined, but the devil carried on politely.
"You're the retiring sort, aren't you? You're just the sort of person for the present I want to give."
"What is it?"
"The power to win any game or contest you enter."
"I don't want that sort of power."
"But you have nothing to lose by it. Please accept it."
"If that's an order, I'll do as you say."
"It is. Right, then..."
The devil pointed a finger at the watchman's chest and mumbled some sort of spell.
"That's it. It's done. Just try throwing a dice. If you want the number one, you'll get it."
"Certainly. I'll try."
He rolled the dice ten times in succession and got the one every time.
"How's that? Are you pleased?"
"Not particularly."
"You'll be thankful soon enough. If you make good use of your power you'll be able to make as much money as you want..."
The devil beamed. No matter how serious a man might be, he would want to use this sort of power, and money easily earned is money easily spent. And when other people saw this they would come to regard honest toil as foolish. In other words, evil would spread.
"Now that I've given you something as good as this, " the devil continued, "I want you to grant me a request."
"What is it? Say what you want."
"I want you to promise me your soul when you die."
"I haven't got a soul," replied the watchman sorrowfully.
"You only think you haven't. Please, promise me."
"Since you say so, I'll do what pleases you."
"Then it's agreed. I'll see you later."
The devil disappeared in a flash and returned to his kingdom before the man could change his mind.
The next morning Dr. F returned to the house with a friend.
""This is the robot I've made. It obeys all my instructions and it makes a good watchman."
"It looks just like a human." replied the friend in admiration.
"Would you like a game of cards with it?" suggested the doctor.
"No. I'd be sure to lose if I played against a robot with such a fine electronic brain. Nobody would want to take it on."
The devil would have been chagrined had he known. No evil would be spread by the robot's winning its games. And what was more, no matter how long the devil waited to take possession of its soul, it would not die. And even if it did, it had no soul to give.

USING ROBOTS TO TRICK SATAN.

Osamu Dazai - "The Setting Sun"

2006-06-01T13:36:51Z

Osamu Dazai Osamu Dazai Osamu Dazai

"The older and wiser heads of the world have always described revolution and love to us as the two most foolish and loathsome of human activities. Before the war, even during the war, we were convinced of it. Since the defeat, however, we no longer trust the older and wiser heads and have come to feel that the opposite of whatever they say is the real truth about life...this I want to believe implicitly: man was born for love and revolution."

Osamu...Dazai

"Any man who criticizes my suicide and passes judgment on me with an expression of superiority, declaring (without offering the least help) that I should have gone on living my full complement of days, is assuredly a prodigy among men quite capable of tranquilly urging the Emperor to open a fruit shop."

Osamu fucking Dazai

Synchronicity

2006-05-28T12:52:43Z

Earlier today I was planning on writing one of my final essays now for Critical Metaphysics, and one of the topics I was considering was a comparison between the ideas of George Berkeley (believes matter does not exist) and G.W. Leibniz.

Anyway one of Leibniz's major ideas is that the world is a kind of program unfolded by monads or 'spiritual atoms' which are set in motion by God, in a system called 'pre-established harmony'.

While I was considering this, I was reading a book at the same time. I looked down again at the book I was reading, 'Innocent World' by Ami Sakurai and read this paragraph:

"Stepping on dry, yellow leaves, Takuya and I walked down Omotesando along a row of gingko trees that stuck their sad, thin naked branches high into the sky. I wouldn't be seventeen much longer. I'd completely annihilated the world of pre-established harmony that I'd been living in. A month before, I'd send my parents a short letter."

More excerpts from my correspondence

2006-05-27T07:23:32Z

...to me manipulating text is bullshit; I can manipulate text; I could write an essay that logically demonstrated that Hitler was the best German leader of all time and all his political moves were awesome and that the Axis should have won; it is easy to provide 'logical principles' and 'theses' for this...if someone said "Research and write an essay demonstrating why Hitler was good and the Axis should have won," that, to me, is no different than writing an essay on colonial themes in the work of Chinua Achebe or the metaphysical beliefs of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz or something like that...when Ai was here I would steal her assignments and write essays she was supposed to write; I wrote essays for classes I wasn't even enrolled in and knew nothing about; I wrote essays about tourism and business management and received high distinctions even though I know nothing about tourism or business management. Essays are mechanical; a computer could be programmed to structure, rearrange, and rephrase information in essay format, so essays are meaningless, the manipulation of text is mainly used to gain power; example all the speeches given by presidents now, are not actually written by presidents...they are just manipulating text to deceive people; I examined this in my earlier articles I sent you, this is the same with capitalism, religion, the media, etc; there is a reason the publishing industry for example is structured the way it is, capitalism has absorbed this, it is to reinforce what exists...if you want to get more freedom in this area consider any book and attach "This is a work of fiction" before it. If you read the Koran, which is the word of God handed to Mohammed, keep "This is a work of fiction" in mind while reading it. If you read the Constitution of the United States of America, repeat "This is a work of fiction" after each passage. If you read an autobiography repeat "This is a work of fiction." If you read your own birth certificate repeat "This is a work of fiction."

I am not fundamentally different from a priest or a lawyer. James Joyce says this; if you read James Joyce he understands in "Portrait of the Artist" that a priest and a poet are not different.

What if I told you that God had spoken to me...or the Virgin Mary had appeared to me and imparted a message. This is not generally considered to happen, but it has been reported before. What if I told you this with complete conviction, all of my facial expressions and voice modulations connoted "truth" and "sincerity" to you, and I continued to behave normally in every other respect except insisting on the factual occurrence of the Virgin Mary appearing to me, objectively. Would you then believe this? What if people profited from this or claimed to be healed? What if instead of the Virgin Mary it was the Hindu goddess Lakshmi, and people were still healed? What if it was someone mentioning flying saucers instead? I am trying to show that we do not live in a world where 'objective truth' and 'fiction' or 'belief' are separate; they are not separate. Language and magic and law are not separate. So by saying that things are fictional I am NOT saying they are not "real".

This is why I tried to learn Japanese; I realized the world hates magicians because it is run by magicians; if you are a magician that wants power you will try to destroy other magicians, or prevent them from doing anything, prevent them from reaching anyone.

I used to not understand this; I used to live with a strong distinction between "fiction" and "nonfiction" and I could categorize or classify or criticize things with great sincerity; personal experience has changed that. Those distinctions are the result of magic, very successful magic. Civilization cannot exist without this kind of magic.

Artistically, all I am interested in now is insincerity. If I can recommend anything to writers in the future it is that they be more insincere. As Oscar Wilde said "All bad poetry is sincere."

Whatever you want to call this, priest/poet/lawyer/artist/magician, I don't want to use this to gain power, I used to, but that will not help, Tung-shan said:

"How could it be permissible to form a cult, gather followers and cronies, dash off writings, and toil in pursuit of objects for love of honor and advantage?"

This is a great temptation; it is a great temptation, but the first person you must affect with this is yourself; the first person a conman convinces is himself; sooner or later you will become a victim of your own magick.

About love:

Jean Renoir: "Love is the exchange of two fantasies"

Love is the same thing as this; it is behavioral magic; people that have a great capacity for love are this same kind of magician.

Again animals cannot do this.

All of this, by the way, everything I say is completely apparent if you compare humans to animals. I sometimes think the purpose of animals is to demonstrate these things. Probably if human beings were the only species in existence these things would be harder to figure out. Maybe this is why many deeply religious people draw close to animals - although possibly not. But if you look at a cow or a horse you will see what life is like without fiction. All animals are automatically Buddhas already. This doesn't mean that is anything special.

But there is the troubling story:

Question: Does a dog have the buddha-nature?
Answer: Mu (meaning in Japanese: nothing/nonbeing)

If you answer yes or no to this you lose your own buddha-nature, according to Chao-chou. But respecting Chao-chou is pointless; if you obey things Chao-chou says in words he will probably try to kill you.

Don't worry about bodhisattvas or anything; no one is helped by them...anyone that 'becomes' a Buddhist is automatically making an ass of themselves; anyone that would identify themselves as such, probably Chao-chou would laugh at them. Chao-chou is nothing special; he was just a collection of atoms and fluid. In Islam they tell you not to depict images of Mohammed. But a child with a crayon can draw Mohammed, can draw pictures of Allah. So which is greater - Mohammed, or a child with a crayon?

Don't believe any of this, it's all fictional.

Osamu Dazai

2006-05-26T15:02:13Z

OSAMU DAZAI

"We began a guessing game of tragic and comic nouns. This game, which I myself had invented, was based on the proposition that just as nouns could be divided into masculine, feminine, and neuter, so there was a distinction between tragic and comic nouns. For example, this system decreed that steamship and steam engine were both tragic nouns, while streetcar and bus were comic. Persons who failed to see why this was true were obviously unqualified to discuss art, and a playwright who included even a single tragic noun in a comedy showed himself a failure if for no other reason. The same held equally true of comic nouns in tragedies.
I began the questioning. "Are you ready? What is tobacco?"
"Tragic," Horiki answered promptly.
"What about medicine?"
"Powder or pills?"
"Injection."
"Tragic."
"I wonder. Don't forget, there are hormone injections too."
"No, there's no question but it's tragic.First of all, there's a needle - what could be more tragic than a needle?"
"You win. But you know, medicines and doctors are, surprisingly enough, comic. What about death?"
"Comic. And that goes for Christian ministers and Buddhist priests, too."
"Bravo! Then life must be tragic?"
"Wrong. It's comic too."
"In that case everything becomes comic. Here's one more for you. What about cartoonist? You couldn't possibly call it a comic noun, could you?"
"Tragic. An extremely tragic noun."

-from his novel "Disqualified from Being Human"

Shimotsuma Monogatari is not an example

2006-05-24T01:06:18Z

"Nearly all of the (gosurori) kids I've met are serious students who attend school regularly. But the common thread in their characters is their inability to gain joy from real life. They may be good students, but they're only top students because they are forced to be," he tells Weekly Playboy. "Poor parental relationships stand out, but there's also something cold and barren about them. They can't find anything to be happy about in life, so they go off into their own world and then hang out with like-minded people who are doing the same."
-here

All the Books I Like

2006-05-23T08:30:50Z

Philip K. Dick – VALIS
Yukio Mishima – The Sea of Fertility
Yasunari Kawabata – Beauty and Sadness
Gustave Flaubert – Madame Bovary
Ryunosuke Akutagawa – A Fool’s Life
H.P. Lovecraft – all of his writing
John Bellairs – all of his writing
Bret Easton Ellis – American Psycho
Clive Barker – The Damnation Game
Haruki Murakami – Norwegian Wood
Italo Calvino – Invisible Cities
Daniel O’Mahony – The Man in the Velvet Mask
Italo Calvino – If On a Winter’s Night a Traveller…
Robert Anton Wilson + Robert Shea – The Illuminatus! Trilogy

These are the only books I really like. At least one of them is technically considered ‘fan fiction’; the Japanese stuff is not taken seriously either. (the science fiction is taken more seriously than it)

sirspike @ 2006-05-21T15:03:00

2006-05-21T07:03:44Z

Ai: Im doing folding lundry now ne!!
Spike: Huh
Spike: I miss your folding
Spike: It was awesome
Ai: arigatou!! I want to fold your clothes!!

Response to Previous Post

2006-05-20T12:56:51Z

(my reply to an e-mail response)

The practice described in the article does not apply specifically to old people; it applies to everyone. It would be a mistake to assume that young people are any less applicable. Actually the practices described apply to everyone.
You said
"Putting major emphasis on a set physical form is perhaps a sad characteristic of to-day's modern pop culture. "
That is exactly the point of the practice. An artist that cares anything about their work cannot ignore any aspect of it; this includes the possibility of it being attributed to them. To reiterate anyone can assume anything, any property; age is not necessarily relevant, but that example arose out of a specific response to the environment and is thus conditional. Depending on the situation, the image of an old man could be more effective than that of a young one. I am just relating a single use of the practice. (this was stated specifically in the original article). Obviously I am opposed to denying anyone anything and I do not feel that being young is 'better' than being old. This is all quite clear in the article. All I am talking about is representation. I am encouraging all not to accept any representation unthinkingly.

I deny everyone their identity; I do not recognize 'personal identity' as being separate from empty space. I do not actually understand the term 'personal identity.' When I think about this term I can't imagine anything meaningful. Is a name personal identity? A name seems to me to be just fiction, an idea. What about a physical body? That seems to me like a collection of atoms. What about memory or will? These would seem to be the closest, but what do they mean? Even if you accept personal identity as a brain, that does not seem to change anything, because a brain is a collection of atoms. What about a will or awareness? Even if reduced to this I do not see how awarenesses essentially differ. To me "personal identity" is like a circle or ring: there is nothing inside, but a seamless ring surrounds it. This ring is "awareness" or "will", and the outer edges of it are 'memory', 'beliefs', 'opinions', 'name', etc. In short the outer edges of the ring are fiction. Animals have this ring too but it doesn't have as many layers; it doesn't extend to fiction. There is an idea that will or awareness is either 'on' or 'off' and that it can be characterized in essentialist terms; this is the concept of 'soul'. To think of this ring another way, being is a kind of drain or hole and 'awareness' is the thickened layer of scum which has built up in a circle around the drain.

Don't look at the above paragraph as being 'true' or 'untrue'; it is just a set of metaphors. I am dubious as to what extent language can 'represent' or 'model' any of this. To me the words "lawyer", "priest", "poet" and "sorcerer" are synonymous; they describe the exact same occupation. I can't recognize a poet as being any different from a lawyer except in further fictional terms; whether something is a legal document or a poem depends on the context. 'doctor' would seem to be different in that it deals exclusively with the 'organism' dualism. Bt what about 'architect'? An architect functions both 'fictionally' (artwork, conceptualization) and 'nonfictionally' (physically building the structure). So you can see that the distinction is not clear; it is not a 'real' distinction.

Distinctions and categorical thinking are the cause of happiness and suffering or 'death and rebirth' as Buddhists have it. I see art as throwing one's self into this realm as into a burning building. The Buddha describes this as 'life.'

Art/Magic

2006-05-17T17:18:08Z

Many accomplished individuals are old...they may make great advances, achievements in science, literature, and art, but the proportional greatness of these achievements only makes them seem the more embarassing for actually being physical humans...the human body is quite ridiculous. If you read a great book and then look at a photo and see an old man, you feel incredibly depressed, because after the greatness of what you've read, you're confronted with what is essentially a decaying animal...this immediate reaction is not 'natural'; and I will explain why this is so, how it came about. But, first:

The fictional realm or world of ideas functions best with deception; actually showing the pathetic quality of old age is like a magician explaining his trick. How much better if instead of the photo of pathetic old age, there was instead a photo of a young girl, full of youth and vitality. These combined impressions of artistic greatness and youth and vitality would make the artwork seem more perfect and unassailable, because it would have no windows. So everyone should be replaced with actors. Young people can then take credit for things they didn't do, while old people can become unassailable, like sorcerors or ghosts. To my mind an artist should aspire to be a ghost, to not exist. Not existing publicly will gradually strengthen your mind to not exist privately either. This is the ideal position.

The world as it exists now is based entirely on images. Capitalist market structure does best when people are insecure and have more problems because of the concept of paying for improvement. So all kinds of anxiety arises because of not feeling able to keep up or getting old or left behind. But nonbeing immediately destroys this issue and places the artist or magician far beyond the reach of this. This is part of the meeting with Choronzon described by Aleister Crowley. It seems scary to not have personal identity or to lose your name, but simultaneously the artist or magician becomes quite impervious to time. This is quite different from the practice of a hoax. A hoax will try to convince the public that something 'not true' is 'true'. But the artist magician proceeds from the premise that there is no originality, self, or starting point. The deception therefore is not really a deception but honesty with greater sincerity. The artist magician is not susceptible to images because he has no real face. This cannot be 'improved' because it is not separate from the basic condition of existence.

This is principally a response to the economic structure of the world at present. This form of artist magician does not have to use this practice but does so as a response to external circumstances. The artist magician sees that the world-wide capitalist economic structure is invincible and extending beyond time; it cannot be directly challenged on its own principles. The ideology here is the elevation of money above human life. But money is a fictional concept created by human life. Human life is (apparent but not actual dichotomy):

1) Organism (semen, menstruation, cancer, organelles, fetuses)
2) Fiction (money, religion, language, law, family names, countries)

The difference between human life and the animal kingdom is that the animal kingdom does not have a fictional component.

The capitalist economic structure is based on competition and exploits the organism elements of human life. Capitalism is a kind of magical use of the fictional realm (money is fictional, ownership is fictional) which leads to the suffering of the organism. Even in wealthy countries, contentment is discouraged because a lack of desire will mean a lack of desire to buy products and prop up the structure. Money and private property are not necessarily negative. But here is also the reason for the emphasis on youth. Under this system older certainties such as religion or traditional respect for ancestors have been destroyed. The emphasis then shifts to attaining what is seen as desirable: hence, youth, beauty, physical enjoyment, more possessions. But this produces only diminishing returns and constant escalation. Furthermore, as of the present moment human life tends inexorably towards death. Therefore more money is constantly expended towards plastic surgery, more possessions, etc. to try to return to a period of youth. It can be seen that the desires exploited are exploited fictionally, and exploit the fictional premise of the self.

The artist magician does not attempt to resist these premises but takes them to their logical conclusion by removing the self and functioning entirely through fiction. The artist magician is not fixed to a name or an image but can use an infinite set of names and an infinite set of images if necessary. The artist magician exploits the artificial divide between organism and fiction engendered by capitalism by removing the organism entirely. The world of the functioning of the organism is thus relegated to a kind of shadow. The artist magician is able to do this by recognizing the separation is arbitrary; whereas capitalism exploits the failure of individuals to recognize this arbitrariness. The artist magician and capitalism are thus using the same form of magic; with the difference that the artist magician is not trying to exploit other individuals for personal profit, but to free them to practice their own magic. Thus, while the artist magician's magic is more 'seamless', it is seamless as a result of essentially pointing to its own trick. The artist magician is deceptive but entirely sincere and straightforward; seamless and convincing while simultaneously explaining the practice in plain view. Thus it can be seen that the artist magician's practice in its very being embodies the foregrounding of the arbitrariness of distinction and the abuses of the fictional realm; there is no 'contradiction'.

The premises described here are already quite present in Europe. The populace has been exposed to the vast magic of capitalism for a long time and has become quite caught up in the sense of escalation mentioned above. The elements of European culture included the combination of Christianity with Rationalist and Empiricist philosophy, which led on from the tradition of the Greeks. Here 'mind' and 'body' were taken to be dualistic (Descartes), an idea supported by 'body' and 'spirit' (Christianity). The emphasis is on mind/spirit while 'body' is relegated to a lesser vessel or substrate position (the body as a 'temple of the Holy Spirit'). Therefore fiction is seen as better than hair or menstruation. This prepares the way for the fictional magic of capitalism which rushed to fill the void as Christianity in Europe receded. Here the use of fictional magic emphasizes materials/body as a means of exploitation. The stage is set for the entrance of Islam, another fictional concept practiced and enforced by fictional sorcerors.
General means of exploitation:

1) Reinforcement of self
2) Fear of death
3) Individual/Community
4) Possessions
5) Not teaching anyone about the fictional realm or how to use it

In contrast the artist magician has no self, does not fear death, can work both alone or in community, does not depend on possessions, and constantly uses the fictional realm.

"To enter the Kingdom of God you must have the heart of a child."

But a child's heart is not necessarily to be envied. A child often does not understand the nature of the fictional realm or the self. Not should it be assumed that a child's use of the fictional realm is more adept than an adult's use. All that can really be said is that children are affected by adults' use of the fictional realm. At the same time, elders should not be respected simply because of age. Age is not an indicator of wisdom; neither is social status or gender.

Language

2006-05-09T12:53:18Z

As I mentioned before my grandmother just died, about a week ago
This woman spoke no English from birth to death, only Italian
Consequently I could not have any real conversations with her.
I remember being a little kid and saying random nonsense to her, which she couldn't tell from anything else.
I couldn't tell what she was saying either.
I doubt we even existed as people for each other, apart from some kind of concept.

I gather she had a pretty shitty personality though.
I heard this from my father

I don't really like my personality either. Really I'm just descended from a bunch of European assholes. I speak a different language and have more irony but that's about it.

My grandmother (dead) used knives to attack people in the nursing home before she died.
My grandfather hated everything and didn't allow my father to have friends (he still doesn't have any).
Some uncle in there way back was considered a 'sorceror', and avoided by most people

Actually my girlfriend doesn't really speak English to much of an extent either

If my girlfriend said things like "Paul Giamatti's character acting in Sideways was a really nuanced portrayal, a really nuanced portrait of this kind of self-reflexive self-deprecation," I would have to kill her.

Actually my girlfriend says things like "Sweater is made of...knit!"

I don't approve of the English language
It is damnably blasphemous

The Human Body

2006-05-07T13:27:41Z

I'm getting tired of the human body

A month or so ago I had gastroenteritis
This meant that I felt like I constantly had to take a shit
Imagine the moment right before you take a huge shit, when your stomach tenses
Then imagine you do not have the relief of actually taking that shit
Your stomach continues to rumble
You feel pain in your stomach
Walking is a pain in the ass
You just want to sit or lie down
Sex is also a pain in the ass
This happened while my girlfriend was here, I had to try to force myself to ignore it

Now I'm pretty sure I have epididymitis
My dick hurts
My dick feels internally swollen
Pissing hurts

I think it's because I wanked too much
I joke about this shit, but I seriously do wank a lot

I'm going to the doctor tomorrow about this

Oh yeah, my grandmother died yesterday; I received a phonecall about this

My father is also in the hospital
His blood pressure is fucked up and he has to have bypass surgery
He had internal bleeding in his eye
He claimed he could see 'psychedelic colours' before his eye clouded out
The eye is better now but his arteries are still fucked up.

To me, the human body is ridiculous...I don't understand how anyone can possibly take the human body to be a sign of some kind of intelligent design. To me that idea is ridiculous. You only need to look at the ridiculous amount of things which constantly go wrong with the human body to know this. You don't even have to be old...I am a young person and I have ridiculous shit happen to me; I can't half wank or piss straight because of some shit.

To me death is not so bad. The human body is pretty bad and old age is pretty bad but death isn't so bad. To me death is not really separate from life. I don't see death as being inconsistent with love or enjoyment. I don't see death as somehow cancelling these things. To me, consciousness and ego concentration being for a limited time only is not a bad thing.

In my writing I often highlight the human body.
It makes no sense to me if someone writes about wars or politics or relationships and they don't take into account the possibility that people have to menstruate, or defecate, or the possibility of them getting eye infections or herpes or ringworm

To me those things are not separate from life
To me, even if you take precautions or are beautiful or talented or rich there is still the possibility that these things will happen
There is still the possibility of a spontaneous embolism that will kill you suddenly and randomly.

Monastic

2006-05-04T16:02:08Z

I will establish a monastic routine of only constructive activities:

1) Fictional Writing
2) Foreign Language Study
3) Reading

I am abandoning criticism. I have tried to do this before but henceforth I will not write literary criticism anymore.

In foreign language study I will try to avoid dilettantism.