Pater envisions his critical activity under a public gaze, and thereby structures his aesthet- icism through the social forms and psychology that it ostensibly re- pudiates, those of Victorian gentility.

"The world," Newman writes, mistrusts innocence as "craft" because "sobriety, self-restraint, control of word and feeling have about them an air of being artificial, because they are not natural; and of being artful, because artificial." Thus self- restraint, he continues, "is the first thing which makes holy persons seem wanting in openness and manliness.

Georg Simmel points out in "The Sociology of Secrecy and Secret Societies," That which we can see through plainly to its last ground, shows us therewith the limit of its attraction. . If the utmost attractiveness of another person is to be preserved for us, it must be presented to us in part in the form of vagueness or impenetrability. This is the only substitute which the great majority of people can offer for that attractive value which the small minority possess through the inexhaustibility of their inner life and growth

The trope of arcane wisdom thus invites thefin-de- siecle celebration of art as a dangerous influence, as in the trope of "the fatal book." And Pater's rhetoric clearly suggests a calculated affiliation of his aestheticism with homoerotic subcultures that still remain shadowy in recent social and literary histories of Victorian England.3"

But it is important to note that the rhetoric of secrecy is not inevitably the expressive veil of a specifically homoerotic desire. Indeed, to draw this inference would seem to reproduce the very practice that Newman analyzes in his sermon on "Innocence and Wisdom": "the world," disturbed by the secrecy of those who withdraw from its scrutiny, interprets the transgression as a mode of gender deviance. One facet of the burden of Victorian manliness is a deep mistrust of (which is of course inseparable from a fascination with) secrecy:

ritualized devotion as a means of giving shape and solemnity to a life of aesthetic experience -of realizing aestheticism as what Foucault has called a technology of the self.?5

Gentleman, Dandy, Priest: Manliness and Social Authority in Pater's Aestheticism
Author(s): James Eli AdamsSource: ELH, Vol. 59, No. 2 (Summer, 1992), pp. 441-466Published

Polaris List:

Tanya Tagaq Aminism
Wet Secrets Free Candy
Jess Mossaluke Light Up the Night
Fresh Snow I
Rae Spoon My Beautiful Prarie Home

Schlock, at its finest, is where bad taste becomes great art. Schlock is music that subjugates all other values to brute emotional impact; it aims to overwhelm, to body-slam the senses, to deliver catharsis like a linebacker delivers a clothesline tackle. The qualities traditionally prized by music critics and other listeners of discerning taste — sophistication, subtlety, wit, irony, originality, “experimentation” — have no place in schlock. Schlock is extravagant, grandiose, sentimental, with an unshakable faith in the crudest melodrama, the biggest statements, the most timeworn tropes and most overwrought gestures

Jody Rosen

neighbours

it had profound homnophobia

but in ways that were almost closeted

and an anger against women

sort of like women are furniture, or ruin yr adoloscent fun

so the only way to fix that is to spend time with men

which flirts with queerness in a way

that allows for one to pretend for pleasure

and then be punished when the pleasure goes too far

angry, ugly, vicisous movie

profoundly distrubed queer writers are praising it

John Rolfe's book of vintage drawings of logos and signs is kind of a graveyard of pre-tatcher nationalism and is a beautiful example of the haunting of capital in ordinary material culture.

cold war  satelites tell us about ancient mid east historical sites

vintage photos of the 70s  computer labs

The Chronicle of Higher Educaiton tells of how oral history nd other archival work into the troubles in ireland have provided legal consquences, including murder charges against former Sein Fein members who are now part of parliment.

NFB streams the entire Introducing Leonard Cohen, from 1965.


i have watched this man work thru his mug collection on camera for 8 minutes like 10 times, its incredibly southing.

15 unproduced hitchcock flims

more informaiton about jpii and his covering up of the sex abuse crisis

cops still think they have everyones best interest in mind, shocked when agit prop campaigns backfire.

on the problems perserving residental and vernacular modernism, a dallas case study.

Chris Molophany on the charts  is one of the most delightful, tight work on what it music means now, this is his emp talk. and him in conversation with s/fj about how to fix the r and b charts


Elvis Costello in Nashville, a mid 80s bbc doc.

Didion interview  thanks to the believer

as opposed to most abandoned  site porn, Warren Kirks photos of suburban Melbourne, are small intimate, and profoundly respectufl.

Fantastic Obit  for Billy Frank Jr, one of the first legal agitators for native fishing rights, here in Salmon in sattle.

long interview with Thelma Schoonmaker.

From Lynne Cohen's Late work in Venice as an RIP 

five points

a) ongoing western magical tradition and occult socities working in favour of that instinct (Rosy Cross' document Chemical Wedding...from 1616, and the idea of a chemical merriage as an active symbol of this)
b) traditions from the 16th century onward (eg Enochian magic was easily synthesised with other magical elements of the order because it was originally derrived from these same elements...icluding cabala, heremticism, astrology, alchemy and natural magic) being synthetic, so movements like Order of the Golden Dawn became kind of metasyntethtic. (for example, Westcott, one of the founders of the ORder of the Golden DAwn, talked about Securalism, Cabalsitic, Hermetic, Alechemial and Roschian practice) (or the order of the golden dawn a combo of heremticism, neoplat, cabala, demonic/natural)  (see also the translations of the Agrippa ) also perhaps the intersections of pagan and cabalistic texts, not nessc. as christian, but including something else The canon OGD talught to initaites, for example: "before the admission to the Zectau grade, the neophye must learn the names and achlemical symbols and the four elemnets, the names of astrological symbols, and elements atruibuited to them, of the twelve zodiac signs, the names charactersand (ritual purpose) of the 22nd letters of the herbrew alphaet, the ten serphaie, etc) (33) Also the cabalistic replaces of words n xian prayers, use of hindu language in words like aum, also (and this might be a bit more Blavastsqkesque, nthough mentioned in less chapter, the inclusion of yoga) Also all the egyption borrowing--Freeamsonry esp. (see Assman) The possiblity of Masonry as Polythesitc or Pagan.
c) occasionaly more open (see Blavastky or Kingsfold's rship to women, or how common it was in lower and upper classes) See McacEnzie's Royal MAsonic Cycopledia of 1877, which while perhaps a bit debunked as a masonic text, was considered more than useful in how it discussed other groups) Dysons critique of Bretts MAgus
d) spats (about ritual, women, leadership, who they are absorbing) (see the differences in how theophists practiced ritual much less than the hermetists) (westcott less of a ritualist) free vs speculative masons RoX refusal of spiritualism
e) loose boundries (inventon of tradition, inclusion of fiction (see Buwler-Lytton), the cabala/pagan shit) also possiblity of collective


questions
urania
sufferage
h rider haggard
masonry and catholiism
working class
FRazer
crowley and purposeful obsfucation




random thots
caballa makes magic approite (24)


four rituals of the golden danwn
a) official rituals
b) the equavelent of cathchesis ot progress thru levels
c) Mcgregopr, et al's creative work (founder)
d) "extranous exampels of the members activeities (27)

nullifcation of the nesscessity of a second text

Donnie Darko, Bully, Gummo, Mysterious Skin, Blair Witch, Election, Jaw Breaker, Y Tu Mama Tambien, Apt Pupil, Hedwig, Spring Breakers, Funny Games, Happiness, The Rules of Attraction, American Psycho, Boys Don’t Cry, Velvet Goldmine, Fight Club, Bad Santa, Scream, The Ice Storm, Boogie Nights, Igby Goes Down, Rushmore, Die Mommy Die, Last Days of Disco, AI, Lost Highway, 28 Days Later, Pan’s Labyrinth, District 9, Capturing the Friedmans

In his letter to Alig, just now after prision, James St James writes a list of movies he has to say. This is the new cult canon kids. i want to write more about this, but i cannot think of a movie i would subtract to tis list, and only a few i would add. 

twelve things i am thinking about post emp:

a) ccm, mumford, larry norman, xian hipness (thanks Jewly Hight and Josh Langhoff) (thinking maybe a 33.3 on Amy Grant---ever since Rae Spoon I have thot an enourmous amount of Amy Grant as a pop music gateway drug)
b) the mutability of class (thanks well everyone)
c) reutning western to country and western, and who exactly is working class anymore (Thanks Ann Powers, Alfred Soto Tom Smucker)
d) the intersections of rezhop and noretona country (thanks Josh Langhoff and the entire regional panel)
e) Faure's Requiem (Thank Carl Wilson) and whether religious xtc is a useful critical category in pop)
f) What50s style sophistication means as an aesthetic and paedological category (Thanks Barry Shank)
g) The radical potential(s) of pleasure (well everyone)
h) How digital media functions versus analog media vis a vis preservation (ThanksAndy Zax)
h) bro country Jody Rosen, Thomas Inskeep Alfred, Ann, Carl, Josh, and well anyone)
i) How I don't understand straight negotions of adultery (the song Me and Mrs Jones)
j) intersectionality as an aesthetic of overlapping filigrees (Me'Shell at the keynote)
k) boarding schools and failures to form masculinity Dub Dob Dee

also seattle is a paradise of ciders, i had cider like three times a day--a smoked cider, a chery cider, a pear cider, dry ciders, sweet ciders, oh thank you jesus

op ten things i saw at the Seattle art museum

1) Al Held's Last Series from 1964-1966, maybe two dozen, small and medium size paintings, with bright house painted colours, over paintings, awkard shapes, attempting to soften hard edge, and harden lyricism, with its size, and its slight attiude of instiability or formal offness, prefigures heliman and silliman.
2) Remington Bronzes (they swerve and swagger)
3) dozens of objects of messian, and of chinese white ware, the chinese white ware made to look like messian, the messian made to look like work from china, 18th century global trade routes, and the role of the exotic in counissuership, placed together in an incredibly cloer gesture
4) This medium sized persian painting, of interlocking rooms, with a figure in each room, the spaces are at oblique angles, and a dual line of black and gold between them, negotiates the schematics of how to map place in a rigious composition.
5) Noland's Relic from 1969. a painting maybe a meter by two meters, tiny by noland's standars, the top 30 cm and the bottom 30 cms stripes, in jewel tones--gold, cobalt, hot pink, orange, citron, and the middle a dusty apricot. the control of pictoral space seems new. also, in the top 30 cm a line of dunnish brown that i thought was natural canvas, but was actually painted, in an inside baseball guesture of intimate trompe d'oilel.
6) Frankenthaler Hold, 1974. most of this canvas is empty, a large scrabbled line near the middle, and a floatinng rectangle, shading an interior sqaure. underneath all of this, is a unsteady curve. The colours are weird and sort of ugly, but the true genius of Frankenthaler is how to layer paint thru a set of negotions between the oblique and the transparent..this is a paticualrlly good example of this.
7) a coast salish cedar blanket which was just a grid, within a larger grid.
8) two haida skull masks.
9) The white scarf of Leon Delafosse in their only Sergent on view.
10) that much of their (large) african masks were displayed in ritual garments.

three things i liked at the seattle sculpture park
a) tony smith's stinger--large, but lying low on the ground, nestled in a grove, it has this weird, monolithic energy, in a kitsch sf sense, managing to be unnerving and v. much of its time and place.
b) sol lewitts large wall drawings
c) a nevelson that was of welded steal, not the usual assembelege

hooray, hooray, the first of may
outdoor fucking begins today

Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? or who shall stand in his holy place? There is no one but us. There is no one to send, nor a clean hand, nor a pure heart on the face of the earth, nor in the earth, but only us, a generation comforting ourselves with the notion that we have come at an awkward time, that our innocent fathers are all dead—as if innocence had ever been—and our children busy and troubled, and we ourselves unfit, not yet ready, having each of us chosen wrongly, made a false start, failed, yielded to impulse and the tangled comfort of pleasures, and grown exhausted, unable to see the thread, weak, and involved. But there is no one but us. There never has been. There have been generations which remembered, and generations which forgot; there has never been a generation of whole men and women who lived well for even one day. Yet some have imagined well, with honesty and art, the detail of such a life, and have described it with such grace, that we mistake vision for history, dream for description, and fancy that life has devolved.

Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

One of the things that JPII was huge on, and that Benedict pushed him back on, according to scuttlebutt was Marian work. Marian devotion are profoundly populist, and are a ready symbol of the split between the official church and the vernacular church. Benedict's theology was much more christological, and was v. high. Francis is much less of a  theogian, and much lower-but he makes an argument for a vernuclar christology, and against a marian direction. I wonder if Francis' work is to pull the church away from people like the legionaires of christ, from folk devotions, and towards a low christology that maintains high ambitions?

a) pearlstein's late nudes are bonkers, b) i enjoy the habs during playoff seasons c) i am behind on work d) i think that the his hidden cameras album is kind of too ambitious for its stated themes e) i got an extension on the madpride thing but now i have to write about it f) what am i going to do about this circumcision review g) i am annoyed at the video for the new blake, h) i am scared about odsp paperwork i) do i want to do the guided research paper this summer j() i am glad that i got the other paperwork done k) is the check going to come in l) am i going to have a camera in time m) why am i so horny n) why does no one want to sleep with me o) will i have enough time to go to toys in babeland in seattle p) is olympia the best courtney love album q) how over rated is silencce of the lambs

tumblr of ibm designs

expansive, eccentric essay on the influence of dylan's 80s work, including discussions of contrain critics, the problem of 60s artists and 80s aesthetics, the irrascible nature of dylan, and the general problems of aesthetic change. doesn't spend much time working thru jesus though.

dozens of vintage images of tubas.

i think that kandida crazy horses shift from critic to musician, or her working both fields, is the smartest thing she could have done, but i do miss her writing.

chumbawumba's history as one example of how the interior/exterior system working, and the problems of ancharist collectivism can be constructed as an aesthetic issue.

Durer 6 Pillows, 1493 (this is just a tiny little bit of a larger sheet, this was his fucking practice scratch work, sigh)

charles taylor's brilliant take down  on meryl streep.

men are terrible at writing about women, men are even worse at talking about mary gaitskill.

link between  eva hesse, sol lewitt, and lucy lippard thru postcards...including this brilliant setence from lippard to hesse: the book has fallen into place (or allen into peices).

i think the reason why frankie knuckles was so impt to me was that he was so good at priotizing the paratext over the text; i think the reason why frankie knuckles was so impt to me was that he realized the taxonomic was an act of creation; i think the reason why frankie knuckles was impt to me was that he knew that queer music required the careful carving of discourses, that the idea of that razor blade and that reel to reel was an act of discourse creation as self fashioning; i think why frankie knuckles was so impt to me was because all of those remixes he did, did not overwhelm or frustrate the voice of the original musician; i think why frankie knuckles was so impt to me was that he was such a master of the raw and the cooked, the smooth and the rough; i think the reason why frankie knuckles was so impt to me, was that he was a poet of the multiphasic potential of pleasure; i think the reason why frankie knuckles was impt to me was that he gave birth to house and house gave birth to the world; i think the reason why frankie knuckles was impt to me was because he taught an awkard white boy in suburban alberta how to impertinently shake his ass.

My Ten Favourite, from the inside:

1) The zipless fuck is absolutely pure. Erica Jong Fear of Flying
2) Long flowering branches of beautifully coloured wistaria entwined about a pine tree. The Pillow Book of Shei Shonegran
3) The sitting room is subdued, symmetrical; it’s one of the shapes money takes when it freezes. Atwood, Handmaidens Tale.
4) California is a tragic country — like Palestine, like every Promised Land. Its short history is a fever-chart of migrations — the land rush, the gold rush, the oil rush, the movie rush, the Okie fruit-picking rush, the wartime rush to the aircraft factories — followed, in each instance, by counter-migrations of the disappointed and unsuccessful, moving sorrowfully homeward. Isherwood
"Los Angeles" from Exhumations
5) His designs were strictly honorable, as the phrase is; that is, to rob a lady of her fortune by way of marriage. Fielding, Tom Jones
6) When I put my hands on your body on your flesh I feel the history of that body. David Wojnarowicz
7) A place belongs forever to whoever claims it hardest, remembers it most obsessively, wrenches it from itself, shapes it, renders it, loves it so radically that he remakes it in his image.”
― Joan Didion, The White Album
8) “The first thing a proprietor learns, and painfully at that, is: Trust is fine, but control is better.”
― Elfriede Jelinek, The Piano Teacher
9)The deliberate punctuated weakening of paper and cardboard so that it will tear along an intended path, leaving a row of fine-haired pills or tuftlets on each new edge Nicholoson Baker, Mezzaine
10) “ABSTRACT THOUGHTS in a blue room; Nominative, genitive, etative, accusative one, accusative two, ablative, partitive, illative, instructive, abessive, adessive, inessive, essive, allative, translative, comitative. Delaney, Babel 17.

Rachel and I have started a Kickstarter to fund materials for a show at Xspace in January. Link here


What I am most proud of, is the amazing images Rachel has made to fund raise Here are three:

Anthony

Incredulity problem , those who make reports
hasten to yr piety

arguing in favour of their own truth, their own beliefs

pleasures associated with food

disciplined himself

let him who is idol, let him not eat (anthony)

thjis idea that working w/ hands, the physical, leads to appettites being absorbed

that moving passage 12-13, where it notes how much Anthon noticd his community--that he was not isolated, but h noticd the virutie, the piety of those around him, and how that community building was resoponisble for the demonic?

the devil..."first attempted to lead him away from the discipline, suggesting memories of his possesion, the gaurdianship of his sister, the bounds of kinship, love of money, and of glory, the manniforld pleasures of food, the relaxation of life, and finally the rigiours of virture" (33)

disturbing slep, restricting appetite,

 from thots to actual human voice
from dragon to human
from narrative to flesh? (section 12, where h talks about actual gold)

see how it starts from phantasm, from "conspicious and filthy pleasures" to pretend to frighten him, phantasms,

angel coming at you in the night are not actually angles: "so when they come at you at night, and they wish to tell you what the future holds, or they say, we are the angels, disregard them, for they are lying. And should they commend your aescetism and call you blessed. ignore them and have nothing to do with them..." (35)

they then become invisbile at the sign of the lords cross.

the anecdote about the very tall demon saying that he is providence, and he will of the lord, and it is the will of the ord for Anthony to rest, and eat bread, but Anthony knows whats going on, puffs at him, speaks to him, says the word of god, and the fucker goes all immaterial (40)

"the antics of demons like smoke"





what are these, ghosts, vampires, sodomy demons.

i bet they are sodomy demons

the question of fear, but also spch acts

can you tell the difference /w an angel and some non angel like creature via them saying "be not afraid"
qoutes gabrieal



(work thir fraud by being transfigurd) (28)

prophetic speech act
oracle vs prophecy



"the foe had not been powerful enough to beguile him with bodily pleasures"

fasting
once a day
once very two days
once every four days

and then just bread and salt

list structure

the souls intensity is strong when the pleasures of the body are weakened

"long fill the desert w/ his discipline

the enclosed tomb. the starving almost death, the seeing him again, the revivng him again, obvs x, but also perhaps jeromes sealed founation body asd tomb

also, the passage where mor than one of his friends com, and seek Anthonty,  thinking he might be dead, and he comes out singing

this weird tension b/w the bodily denail, th sealing away, the acetic, and the community building, the reconciling and the like (all the monks came to him, asking to hear a discourse)

list of animals--each of these animals moved w/ the accordance of his forms--natural and unnatural?
crocodiels

lots of hyenas, sent in the night, which is like, if you live in the fucking desrt, isnt there a god damned hynea hanging out w/ it being sent by a demon


"putting off the body then, which is corruiptle, we return it back, which is incorruptible" (16)
soul as a trust, to keep oure, to work agaisnt "sordid things"

demons who see monks "labouring gladly and  advancing" in work put stumbling blocks in the way (23)

anthony as a t heological text about job


preparing hospitality
turning back, and feeling the things of the world
the anecdote about the father and the daughter, th call to preach to all those he encountered


the lord silncing the demnos thru the act of quaiting scrpture,
interested in this problem of bdily speech or the advancing of bodily speech
(Therefore the Lord thy God, silenced the demons. but it is fitting for us, since we have learned from the holy ones to act as they acted and to emulate their courage.(27)
\
that weird passage that argues against herssey
also what is worse--christ as chriminal, christ as human body, even christ as one of the crawling things, vs "pederasts and adulterers"

also not greek wisdom , not hllenic, not constructed thru argments direct thru jesus christ

protect the mind frmo foul thots
he didnt cacall the meletians evil or discourdant, just not wrong


daily martyrd y his conciousn

people rapping on doors



questions:
bear to learn letters vs the piety of written texts
just outside his own villag, isoaltion, monastaries as another kind of mailies
trading kinship
actual real life devil or
thebans wtf?
what does it mean when the demon is departed

The reviews of the new De Mann Bio and Hedigger's recently published black notebooks, it is not a good day to be a Theoretically minded worker.

four things:

a) i think that De Man was a psychopath and a fascist. I think that Althusser killed his wife. I find Foucault sexual ethics deeply problematic, as is his misogyny. I think that stating these things is necessary. They do not get a free pass from the rigours of their own methodology.
b) i have spent a lot of time trying to work out the implications of what this means. I think on my darkest days, the idea that this was an obfuscating technique, startlingly anti-democratic. But I think lots of things--i think that it is useful to see how texts work, i think that new ideas require new language, i have no problem with the technical and sometimes it aids precision, and sometimes a cant is useful. i think that obscurity is not evil, i think that not everyone needs to understand everything, i think that what appears to be clear writing refuses discourse, i think that the polysemic is often a moral good, i think that aesthetic writing, important writing, can come from places that are dark or evil. I also think we have to have a serious chat about why fascism, and antisemitism was such a useful category for european thinkers in the first half of the 20th century--why it was so seductive. Even after the discovery of the camps, I wonder if it has even gone away.
c) I think that often writers lives are messy, and not very complete. I also like that he pushed his way into the academy when the academy would not let him in. I find that post 1970s North American insituites are often for many reasons, more willing to provide refuge for thinkers that might be too toxic elsewhere. Sometimes this is a vice, but more often it is a virtue. (see Said, Bhaba, Derrida, even Strauss)
d) de Man makes me reconsider if the work I do is worth doing. I think there are very few excuses for him. I also find his work less impt than others. The beginning of that Menad essay, when he talks about the work happening elsewhere, or it would have worked elsewhere is a comfort, but he does provide some excellent ammunition.

i haven't read the biography.

twelve for shrove--only one from the department, and lots from out of town, but slowly working out a community here.