Notes from the Dale Martin Symposium last wek

The questions about what love is should change:

what is ethical love
is ethical love always situational
does xian identity construct itself around these ideas of ethical love
can harm be loving
when is harm love (ie how and when is it ethical for me to hurt someone, when does the hurting help)

Paul leaves out the first commandment and says only the second is vital.

the ethical requirement of the centrality of self

Christanity--who is xian and how it is defined, could be seen as a kind of ramily reseemblence, or poitns of family resemblece (cf wittgenstein)--in this way, the idea becomes that good scholars dont draw liens

the tension b/w religious work and theological work:
in theological work, the body of christ is a real, imperial thing in the world, encompassing not only everything in the world, but everyone who has ever been a xian

We all change, and where you end up changing cannot be seen from the beginning

Self deined as a William James style american Prgamistist
Religion becomes a question of what do people actually do. (which leads to a devolped common sense/habitus, and notes what makes this xian)

Hauwerwas:
He has railed against the sticky liberal ethics of love, seeking to replace it with McIntyre's ethics of virture, construct this ethic of love, but you cannot prescrbe virture either.

sometimes the loving thing to do is to move beyond justice.

train audience in hearing agape eros philos, but those terms are not that neat.

ie in the passage about Peter Do You Love Me, the switch b/w agape and philos--little difference there.

how do we make these dsciourses female, transgender, queer

Maureen Tilley

The erotics of male friendship in augustine

the idea of erotic and platonic love are less of two solitidues, texts that do not cross the stream, and more of a specturum.

calling a body ensouled meant it was alive

the homosocial nature of beranrd of clarvieuxs discussion of song of songs--accounts etc

i don't understand exactly how this works  but apparently manipulating milliseconds of time allowed someone to steal a huge amount of money from the federal reserve.

nice little radio peice on the 50th anniversary of Ruscha's 26 Gas Stations. (He talks about showing it to people who worked in gas stations versus art world conversation)

the best thing about this flickr collection of match books is how they are shot.

private currency  made in Weimar Germany.

Stan Bitters cermaics are kind of delightfully ugly, great vintage photos (they are also huge, and the colours just don't work, and thus work)


Sacred Harp Singers sing the Mercy Seat.

scan of evangelical document against D and D from the 80s.

this anthology of american religious writing, starting with whitman and ending with francine prose reading whitman, seems interesting.

the mountain goats  live at this years newport folk fest.

haunting essay on amy grant.

early industrial design possibilities for bell's telephone keypad designs.

chris piuam's poem  based on a text by me

text and photos  of Dom Hans Van Der Laan, modernist architecht of religious spaces in Holland.

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P1010387, a photo by PinkMoose on Flickr.

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P1010291, a photo by PinkMoose on Flickr.

So I went to the Dale Martin lecture (Sex and the Single Saviour, The Cornithan body; now at Yale time at Rose and Duke)

We've been sort of talking around this idea of celibacy and xian identity for a while, and i think that Martin really pushed the idea logically forward--and he worked pretty heavily in the bible as well. I have five or six thots below. (Spencer you can mock my spelling of the word thot)

1. The idea that the body in the two origin myths in Genesis did not suggest two complimentary selves, but an ideal androgynous body. Christ and Paul, in their discussions of the return of the flesh, was talking about this perfectible body. (see also Wayne Meeks The Myth of the Androgyne) 
2. That Paul, borrowing from the stoics, not only prioritized celibacy over marriage.But it is impt to remember the Stoic Philosophy suggested that people should be married, that the philosopher should fuck his wife, and that he should not have pleasure in fucking his wife. So, the Pauline ideal is not a love marriage that will provide a steam valve for stray erotic or romantic feelings but that a marriage should be emotionless and sexless. 
3. That the problem then with feelings of sexuality that burns (i,e if it is better to marry than burn, what are the implications of this burning....) If Paul is inheriting a levite concern about the connections between a geographic space and a personal space--that the defilement of the body is defiling of the people which is defiling of the land (cf the overlap b/w Romans and Leviticus)--you can see this esp. in 1 Cor 6, where xian men who penetrate a prostitute plunges the member of Christ into a polluted world--where Christs body is penetrated by the world, where fornication causes Christ to be penetrated. 
4. This continual discussion of the word penetrated, on the idea of the defiling of Christ, is thruout jewish and xian scripture--all of this suggests that the passages which forbid sexual acts discuss the degrading of bodies, which mirrors the failures of patriarchy. ..
5. in this sense, the reinforcement of patriarchy has a numbers of odd off shoots-for example, in Pseudo_Pauline texts, superiors are told to love there inferiors, but not vice versa, and in early  xian texts, that were way beyond even being deutrocannonical, the more a text encourages women the more it is aestetic, and vice versa. 
6. which  is slightly different then the holiness codes of the OT--(i mean the idea that same sex behavior disrupts hierarchy is still there)--so the sexual ethics where men having multiple wives and concubines has been placed aside for example, which suggests that even w/i the xian corpus the meaning of sexuality evolves and changes thru-out a text t hat is not supposed to. 

So I have questions: 

1. Do  men who have sex with women in the prioritized space of the marriage bed, deny themselves pleasure. If they commit explicit acts that Paul guides against--then are they not committing queer acts, and in this queerness, denying their marriage rites, and by queer acts i mean everything from sex for pleasure, women on top, to masturbation, to oral sex, to anal sex to etc etc. Does the possibility of sanctified christian blow job exist? 
2.  If the perfect body is an androgynous body, how does that complete against the idea of complimentary philosophy? How does it argue against the obsession with fecundity? 
3. If queer sex is marked not by act, but by profligacy, which is something Paul hints at, in his discussion of fouling Christ's body, then is non profligate msm possible? 
4. Is there a possibility for a female sexuality to emerge from the dialectical pattern found in the early tradition
5. If we think of the scripture has having a kind of fluidity within a tightly revealed social context, how far can this script move and stay within that tradition? 
6. The more and more I get out of radical queer attempts to push forward this agenda, is not an inclusion, but the idea that all kinds of sexuality that we hold post-enlightenment as morally good, and perhaps even healthy and necessary are profoundly different than the expectations that are given for our traditions and scripture... unless you look at the men of the old testament, which you know, doesn't leave women any place...
7. Which suggests a neo-liberal, heavily codified, state sanctioned gay sexuality, allows for a mainstreaming of queer sex, but will eventually abut the problem put forth by 1. 

it's a mess. 

even tho it was his birthday, owen pallet bought me champagne.

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P1010268, a photo by PinkMoose on Flickr.

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P1010831, a photo by PinkMoose on Flickr.

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P1010384, a photo by PinkMoose on Flickr.

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P1010053, a photo by PinkMoose on Flickr.

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P1010359, a photo by PinkMoose on Flickr.

Jimmy Buffet is kind of genius. He parlayed the same kind of music for decades, made a fortune slinging it on tour, had a bit of a cult following, set up a batch of restaurants, made the brand perfect and seamless and middle American. When he figured out he was getting a bit stale, he went knocking to Nashville. Or Nashville figured out that they needed to preserve an aging A-List while trying to convince us a B List could come up from the minor leagues. So he talked to Kenny, and Kenny figured out how to work out making money on a set of side businesses (the specific nature of the Tequila came from Sammy Hagar, and if you were a mathematician, Country's Taste could be straight in the middle of a Venn Diagram between Kenny. Sammy and Jimmy). Zac Brown Band realized that if they were doing a beach album, they would have to play the same game, and they went off and talked to the Sybil of the Keys. They kept playing back and forth--kept recording together, kept working it out. They couldn't quite do the tropical thing, because Keith has been running on creative fumes since Toby did Stay in Mexico in 2009. So, they looked at what was playing--saw how much Brantley Gilbert's Country Must be Country Wide cribbed from I Love This Bar, noticed that they both had a restaurant that needed to be propped up, thought about some excellent cross marketing, stuff that could be played on Wednesday nights at Jimmy Buffet's Cheeseburger's In Paradise or Toby Keith's I Love This Bar and Grill, and make some money on the up-sold margaritas, and put something out that was just gorgeous in it's cynical reserve. Jay Z should bow down.The best thing about all of this--is how ingrained Buffet is in Nashville--he was a song writer in the 60s, and he has been in and out of the market for a long time, and really set the whole thing off with Alan Jackson in 2004. Toby's 2009 song is a five year old attempt at reclaiming something from 2004. The 2013 song is an attempt to reclaim something from 2009 which tried to reclaim something from 2004. But Because Buffet (and really Toby) are so damn good at playing the markets, noting were the demographics are, and making product for a fairly tight niche audience--and are realizing that country, because of it's regional and social cachet, is one of the last few niche markets left, and because that niche market depends both on touring and on localized spaces where those communities can get together between touring--and also knowing that in the suburbs those spaces are usually chain restaurants--and chain restaurants depend on theme and brand...and lastly, that they are brands. It is a perfect circle of working out the product for the money. The song's production, its "fun", its elegance in how it knows its market--it is more a Warholian artifact of working class realism ("What’s great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking" except a blended margarita during singing Karaoke at either of those places has this glamor and anti-glamor--it is Toby or Jimmy, but Toby and Jimmy are just like us, and maybe one day we can have this lux leisure time, and to do that, what we need is another round.  That kind of work can only be done if you spend as much and as much effort in figuring out which way the business is going, and if you have enough wisdom to know where it has been. The hamburgers might not be Edenic in Cheeseburgers in Paradise, but that shit is fun. You might not Love This Bar and Grill, but you damn well know that if you go in on Mondays and you are in the miltary, you get 20 per cent off. That is more than enough. (The song is for the marketing, the text itself doesn't matter much)

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"Instead of intersectional wedges, or islands, then, come situated moments of unity and divergence as we examine the lines that are drawnbetween andaround people, the points at which ‘personal experiences’ come together and split apart. The material, relational and embodied consequences of these shifts through time can take centre stage, and affiliations become more than an empathetic gesture. "

Margaret Gibson"Intersecting Deviance: Social Work, Difference and the Legacy of Eugenics"

Trauma and joy abstraction the self from the idea of the self. Both reflect though absences--in not knowing where one’s body is, in aphasia or aphonia, to feel physically separated from the corporeal. The absence or negation from “the real” marks their most explicit similarities.

Two of the most obvious examples of this negation, are Ida Bauer’s discussion of her traumatic history, to Freud who later canonized it in the case study Dora, and the 15rh century mystic Teresa De Avila Autobiography. These two texts are useful, in that they provide a chronological spectrum between early modernity and late modernity.

As Helene Cixious argues in her play Portrait of Dora, the creation of Dora as a narrative of trauma was the creation of a separate selfhood. This mark of isolating the self, could be found in how trauma followed systems like melancholy--moving from moods to states to problems elucidated by medicine, to biological systems.

If how trauma and melancholy have a remarkable similarities, then joy must have a similar narrative. But Joy is still considered strange, and it’s relationship to the body is still marked by a different kind of rupture. Comparing these two authors, centuries apart, becomes a way of noting both how the ruptures of joy and trauma can have similar shapes, but how that shape has been molded differently, and how joy’s linguistic presence might displace trauma and melancholy’s prioritized place in the depictions of the lived experiences of modernity.

:  also, can we talk about lucite

 Sent at 12:04 PM on Sunday

 me:  and how much io love mucite

or the luke bryan in nytimes

 Sent at 12:10 PM on Sunday

 Josh:  what's he doing there?

 Sent at 12:19 PM on Sunday

 me:  its an epic  takedown of him and country music in general

i think they are w rong

but its a br illiant peice

 Sent at 12:20 PM on Sunday

 Josh:  who wrote it?

 me:  http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/17/arts/music/luke-bryan-the-leading-gentleman-of-country.html

curracama

 Josh:  thanks

 me:  i think its much better than he does

 Josh:  i agree with his general negativity toward luke bryan

that spring break album was terrible

but i read on

 me:  i kind of loved it

 Josh:  HE WON FUCKING ENTERTAINER OF THE FUCKING YEAR?????

 me:  but it has a v. spec purpose

and that purpose is fulfilled

hes not justin moore

 Josh:  "there is perilously little to say about Mr. Bryan"

Caramanica is SO GOOD

 me:  he has three problems

a) he doesn't think that country ever had a pleasure principle

b) he thinks that Bryan should be doing something more than he is

c)  that Bryan is v. good at his limited range

d) he has a large, juicy ass

 Josh:  wait, are these caramanica's problems?

 Sent at 12:28 PM on Sunday

 me:  i think so

 Josh:  yeah, i guess suburban country's nothing new

but shouldn't Bryan be doing more than he is?

 me:  why

there are other people doing other things

 Josh:  like, picking songs his drummer might enjoy playing?

 me:  do you expect justin townes earles or jason isbelle to write about fucking soriroty girls

?

 Josh:  kenny chesney has written well about that

and sung well about htat

and luke bryan hasn't

i mean, his songs just sound thin and dead

 me:  define thin

 Josh:  the sound of the Spring Break songs seemed really tossed off

not tossed off in a rowdy garage rock way

just like everyone got into the studio and did the bare minimum

demo quality

(bear in mind, i listened to this once and grimaced and returned it to the library)

 me:  i dont know

 Josh:  the lyrical signifiers contained nothing new

 me:  its young, dumb, and full of cum

thats a legit market

and for a genre that has always been tense about explcit sexuality

i welcome that

he has a great voice

and the skeletal quality has a kind of solid quality

i mean its not genius

its often too easy

but ...

 Sent at 12:35 PM on Sunday

 Josh:  i mean, i was impressed by the significance that a Luke Bryan Spring Break album even exists

and he does have an appealing warmth to his voice

but the warmth just seems to sit there

i don't sense he can do anything outside a very narrow range

 me:  i think that blankness works as a channel for the audience

and the range is intended to function as a conduit

and i think the rship b/w the audience and the performer

is something new

 Josh:  really?

 me:  it foregrounds the audience

it tears down the fourth wall

 Josh:  what's different than kenny chesney's relationship to his audience?

oh, i see

 me:  chesney still maintians its authority as performer

i mean i think t hat what people read as blankness or thinness

is really a pulling back

to foreground the audience

to allow for the audience to have a live expereince

 Josh:  but

 me:  which sells records in a time when records arent selling

 Josh:  but

why can't you have a "live experience" with someone who's actually a good singer?

the spring break eps and album struck me as souvenirs

the kind of thing you'd buy to remember your hedonistic weekend where you saw the one third-rate country singer whose name you can't remember

 me:  but they remember his name

the artist of the year is votedo n by fans

 Josh:  because they bought the ep!

 me:  but the fan culture of luke bryan is strong

they love HIM

 Josh:  but why?

and wasn't your argument that they love themselves loving him?

 Sent at 12:42 PM on Sunday

 me:  my arguement

is that luke bryan's warm, congenial

quite smart perfomative quality

suggests a new kind of realtional aesthetic

that country has tried to foster and failed

do you want to pitch this somewhere?

 Josh:  i wanna pitch luke bryan into the roiling sea

no, but

and is his relational aesthetic defined by being warm, congenial, and smart?

(which, i don't get "smart" from him, but let's set that aside)

 me:  his metagame is hella smart

his game game is dumb

hes the judy holiday of country music

 Josh:  yeah, that's what i thought

black and white actresses are where you go over my head

but i'll trust you on that

 me:  born yesterday

 Josh:  but are you saying that country has tried and failed to develop a warm and congenial relational aesthetic with its audience?

and luke bryan has finally succeeded?

 Sent at 12:49 PM on Sunday

 Josh:  because dolly parton

 Sent at 12:50 PM on Sunday

 me:  dolly parton had tragedy

and no one every thot that they were dolly parton

except dolly

 Sent at 12:51 PM on Sunday

 Josh:  so are you saying luke bryan is the first country star onto whom an audience can project themselves?

by which you mean, "think they're as good as"?

 me:  http://www.metmuseum.org/Collections/search-the-collections/435617?rpp=20&pg=1&rndkey=20130812&ft=*&deptids=11&when=A.D.+1400-1600&who=Bartolomeo+degli+Erri&pos=1

exact opposite

no project

ion

(this is a ne w thesis i am still working thru

)

let me restart

four thots

a) country has always pretended to have this down home roots aesthtic

b) it held in tension t his need to be a performer

and a need to be part of the audience

c) for a bunch of reasons, countrys suburban roots right now have placed most of the money in audience participation venues that reward tailgating, and big auadiences, and partying and

etc

its a difft kind of work

d) so a few years ago a bunch of people asked questions--how do we rework this balance. i mean you see things like fanfair from the 60s that this balance always occured

but the fans now have all the power

and so, chesney, mcgraw etc

had pushed the balance a bit

but were still pretty heavily in favour of boundries

five thots

e) bryan and his ilk gave up on the boundries.

in that his work is entirely constructed to play w/ the fan culture

which i think might be new

and this might be pitchable

and i mean its obv. false--see erick church playboy fiasco

 Josh:  yeah, this is good stuff

 me:  but ITS FUCKING FASCINATING

 Sent at 1:00 PM on Sunday

 Josh:  but still, there's a difference between analyzing how Luke Bryan works

(and the inexplicable phenomenon of why people buy his albums)

and calling his music good

i can't fault caramanica for thinking he's boring to listen to

 me:  i do think hes good

 Josh:  and caramanica's no traditionalist

 me:  in the sense that he does what i need him to do

he makes me dance, he turns me on,

i mean do we get angry at pitbull for making fuck and dance music

why are we angry at bryan

 Josh:  PITBULL HAS A PERSONALITY!

(i do like "country girl shake it for me" -- THAT seems new, absolutely modern, etc.)

 Sent at 1:04 PM on Sunday

 me:  and it took me a long long way to get there

also, do you know

he respects the womens autonomy

this kind of libertine personae is hella more interesting and less dangerous than lets say justin moores new one or kip moores hey pretty girl

 Josh:  "hey pretty girl" is worse than "crash my party", it's true

ok, i should turn in

it's been a pleasure