liz magor and rachel and i's convo about it.

that last peice, really affected me today
its huge, unusally big
maybe 30 feet long
and 5 feet high
Rachel: (pst, type.. im going pee but will read when I come back)
me: and each of the moth holes
(done)
have been repatred with polymerized gypsum
and then had the wall
pinned out
sorry, the holes reasserted, with a pin o r something like it
the rest of the work, is minimal--a label resewn, or something refolded, or a large seam resewn in a white cross pattern
but the big central work
its a lot like domestic reclaiming of minimal instincts00the navy on blakc like a reinhardt
and its a lot like the modifed readymade
and its an epic epic work
but an epic epic work
made by small gestures repeated intensely
Sent at 12:34 AM on Friday
Rachel: ooh, i like that... but my only problem is, and this might be a kind of weird internalization... I get worried with mending, with small gestures, and with them being misconstrued as feminine
but that might have more to do with a residual hang up from childhood
me: its not domestic at all
because domestic hides seams
and hides repairs
and makes pure
and so this
repairing in obvious ways
and refusing the clean fix
plus she hangs them on drycleaner hangers
so its got this hired labour aspect
its these eye candy peices
that retain and exaggerate flaws
Rachel: You're absolutely right
me: and i think that you do that a lot of the time
so thats my answer to the epic problem
Rachel: Hrm. Im about 45% there with you
I still prefer the big lampooning itself through contrast
thats the only part where I differ.
I prefer to play the ladette...
me: i mean the guy ive been obsessed with lately is
Baltz and his prototype photos
so i keep trying to figure out how to do the v. least
so this might be an aesthetic difference
Rachel: I think so. I also think that there is still a problem, even now, with women and scale
Biggness.
Unrulyness.
And that is also something I want to inhabit.
The role of the hero.
and its not about a drag entirely.
me: i agree with you
which is why those handful of female american calssical sculptors working in rome in the 1890s is so impt
for me, its also why dickinson's reading and reconstructing of herbet is vital
because dickinson takes herberts themes--and herbert is small and personal
and blows them up with great violence
Sent at 12:41 AM on Friday
Rachel: But, and maybe this is my problem with those sculptures... they were still contained and polite,
Large,
but contained.
composed.
Maybe Im viewing them with too much of a contemporarian view..
but the hero, the flawed hero, is both nobel and filthy.
me: yeah
Rachel: Im talking about the stinking Fitzcarraldo
me: i think they may be contained
Rachel: but with tits
me: a little too much
but Dickinson isn't
Rachel: I'll go with you there
me: Fitzcarraldo with Tits
!
Rachel: Yeah, Fitzcarraldo with tits.
Cest Moi.

there is a scene in the new bill cunningham doc that is perhaps one of the holiest things ive seen on screen this year.

we spend the year with the extravagant luxury of his subjects, and the monastic life of cunningham--and we see him be fun, garrulous, even at 80, having this charming good time...no grief, just transient unherichal pleasure.

and then he is asked two questions. one about sex, which he bats away (and the follow up about friendship and intimacy, which he assumes to be code, adn then is charming when he realised it is not) then, he is asked about his religious practice, and for 30 seconds his body falls into itself, he is not present, and the absence stops the movie.

the intimacy of that moment, and the intensity of it, makes everything else so serious.

best line in the sai baba doc: why would god want you to put his penis in yr mouth.
second best line in the sai baba doc: the worship of the linga does not include, what you call the blow job, if that is what you are reffering to.

My mother, when I grew up, did hysterically funny impressions of Kitty Wells until we asked for it a little too much, and she stopped doing it, because she was worried about being cruel to Ms. Wells. Not because of any respect for Ms Wells, but because she spent most of her life being essentially kind to people.

My mother is very smart, and very plain, and very kind. Essentially kind, in the best Christan way, and I learnt about all sort of things about her Kitty Wells impression. I learned not to be cruel for the sake of being cruel, and I learned that making fun of someone for their god earned talent was excessive, and I learnt to sing in church, loud and pure, because G-d didn't really care about quality as much as enthausim.

I was thinking all of this a few weeks ago, when my friend Sholem talked about me having this urbane gay wit, and this old weird America side--and my momma in all of her earnestness, had a wicked wit and righteous anger. She moved on to sarcastically decimating those who deserved it.

All of this sounds cloying, but one of the reasongs why I love country music, deeply, is that it allows for earnestness and sentimentality to be legitmate. I learned to love country music, when my mom sang it to me, as a kid, when I heard my dad's copy of folsolm prison blues, and when the radio played on the way to school, to scouts, on trips to southern alberta for easter or Christmas.

I still listen to Country radio, when I travel more then a few hours. Nostalgia may be toxic, but like any opiate, it makes me feel better in the midst of pain. I am sitting here, in the middle of the biggest city of Canada, on the morning of Easter Sunday, and I yearn to go back home for a couple of weeks. I am tired and frustrated, and worn out and all I wanna do is go home and visit my mother and listen to the radio and play cards, and eat ham and scalloped potatoes for dinner.

The song is pretty much the embodiment of Cole Porter's sharp line about the power of a cheap tune, except my Mother and Ms Well, and Ms Cash were never cheap, and I would never be as thrifty, or virtuous or holy as they are.

so exhausted it is physically painful, but quite happy.

community/parks and recreation are about working thru issues of social
cohesion and family, devolping a communitarian ethos--almost
literally, on the edge of being didadtci, in an age that is almost
post biological family.

ase
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david.preyde@utoronto.ca to me
show details 11:43 AM (34 minutes ago)
I understood most of those words.
What I'm really curious about is that NBC has managed to create a string of really fantastic shows in the last six years, but they always have these frustrating gaps in their schedule where they plug in complete shit. Perfect Couples? Outsourced? Paul Reiser? And why did they cancel Pushing Daisies?
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Anthony Easton to david.preyde
show details 12:15 PM (2 minutes ago)
thats the thing with outsourced--Mindy Kalig is a fucking genius--a
show about Indian culture clash with Mindy Kallig, an office spin off
with Mindy Kalig--amazing, and they made outsourced.

ase
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david.preyde@utoronto.ca to me
show details 12:17 PM (0 minutes ago)
That, as well as really interesting characters like Abed, and Tom Haverford. And the same network that has shows with these characters decided Outsourced was a good idea?
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Anthony Easton to david.preyde
show details 12:18 PM (0 minutes ago)
also, about parks and rec--

its a really conserative show, a horribly cheesy, frank capra type
show, with the swears and the sex and everything else, it wouldn't be
out of place in american agit-prop for small town life, and i should
hate that, but for some reason, after the first hour or so, i loved
the characters, and i loved the writing, and for some reason, the
capra shit worked on me.

ase
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Anthony Easton to david.preyde
show details 12:19 PM (0 minutes ago)
Exactly--and Haverford is a strangely vulnerable, weirdly well
constructed, round character.

Piss Christ
—————–
If we did not know it was cow’s blood and urine,
if we did not know that Serrano had for weeks
hoarded his urine in a plastic vat,
if we did not know the cross was gimcrack plastic,
we would assume it was too beautiful.
We would assume it was the resurrection,
glory, Christ transformed to light by light
because the blood and urine burn like a halo,
and light, as always, light makes it beautiful.

We are born between the urine and the feces,
Augustine says, and so was Christ, if there was a Christ,
skidding into this world as we do
on a tide of blood and urine. Blood, feces, urine?
what the fallen world is made of, and what we make.
He peed, ejaculated, shat, wept, bled?
bled under Pontius Pilate, and I assume
the mutilated god, the criminal,
humiliated god, voided himself
on the cross and the blood and urine smeared his legs
and he ascended bodily unto heaven,
and on the third day he rose into glory, which
is what we see here, the Piss Christ in glowing blood:
the whole irreducible point of the faith,
God thrown in human waste, submerged and shining.

We have grown used to beauty without horror.

We have grown used to useless beauty.

– Andrew Hudgins, 2000

The story of the monk from Tan-hsia burning a wooden image of the Buddha, an incident in the life of the Ch'an master T'ien-jan Ch'an-shih (738-824), is told in The Record of the Transmission of the Lamp: "Later, when he was staying at the Hui-lin-ssu in very cold weather, the Master took a wooden statue of the Buddha and burned it. When someone criticized him for doing so, the Master said: 'I burned it in order to get the sarira [i.e., the ashes of the Buddha, which were venerated as relics].' The man said: 'But how can you get sarira from an ordinary piece of wood?' The Master replied: 'If it is nothing more than a piece of wood, why should you upbraid me [for burning it]?"

via mefi

The Muppets do Dance Yrself Clean

a devotional poem about the jewish double month of alaph alaph, or as the poet explains:

This poem reflects on Adar Aleph, the "first" Adar (Feb.-March). This year is a leap year in the Jewish calendar, and so two months of Adar occur instead of one. According to some mystical traditions, the twelve months of the year relate to the twelve tribes, while the leap month of Adar is connected to Dinah, Jacob's daughter. In Jewish tradition, a leap year is called "me'uberet," meaning "pregnant."

mark delong makes this small, , purposefully ugly, but elegant, woodrufessque cermaics.

tangletree chinese dragon wall paper is sort of kitsch, and sort of take away, and sort of painted wall paper old school glamour, and just so fucking gorgeous.

great update of DAvid Jamesons 1961 REcord House.

181 photos of Daytona from the 70s and 80s.

nazis graphic standard manual

See more funny videos and TBT at Todays Big Thing.

The Most Illegal Move in Wrestling


the weird thing about these Stasi photos is that they would not be out of place in a conceptual art show somewhere near LA about the same time.

neil gaiman speaks wisdom on internet "piracy"

amanda baggs the autsitic writer and editor, has the best faq like evah.

Paul Thomas Anderson's two new films one on the founding of scinetology, and one an adaptation of Inherent Vice, might have found funding.

Evolution Made Us All from Ben Hillman on Vimeo.

Almost as good a spoof as All Things Dull and Ugly.

VAtholic Bishops in Wisconsin seem to be in favour of labour.

15 pdf copies, of the gorgeously deisgned, full colour, catalogs of the Chianti foundaiton.

first person q and a of a young med student learning how to do abortions.

water, oil and the difficulties of contiuanl growth in NoDak.


Greg Laswell's cover of Girls Just Want to Have fun does the mopey indie kills fun, but his voice is gorgeous, and the gender switch is insteresting.


seiu expalins in a useful infogrpahic what changed with the traingle shirtwaste fire.

its good to know that heretics still exist, even in methodism.

george tooker painted like an anexity attack feels, esp, an urban crushed by beurocratic ennui panic attack, he also was one of the more important, and last major allegorical painter of the 20th century, and he and William Bailey kept Egg Tempera alive as a medium. Didn't know but not suprised that he was queer, and was in the circle of CAdmus.

Brian SChutmatt is a great landscape photographer.


the ndps also blocked the auditor generals report.

one of the best explaniations of the Ai Wei Wei mess right now, they are charging him with Bigamy and Pornography, as well as the political stuff, and claiming that he has pled guilty.



a thwack of capybara videos.

the QUAIA calls Ford and Sue Anne LEvy out for using them as an excuse to shut down any pride that is not heavily corpretizsed.


I dont watch OLTL, or AMC, but it was the first trash text that was written seriously about in academic circles, and it was popular among working class women, and they always had queer stories before anyone in mainstream media, and melodrama is profoundly in the hearts of certain kinds of gay men, and i will deeply miss scenes like the one above.

From Apr 14, 2011

Frat Boy Fucking his gf on the roof at stanford.

the republicans use of the legistlaive branch to get around the free access gaurenteed by roe vs wade, and its use of states rights, is masterful, and the democrats should learn from it.

the last original member of the mattachine society, one of two which did not come from the hard left, has died at the age of 82. Gruber is an interseting case study because of his growing up in des monies, and moving west. as well, his illustrated autobiography, which told his story via media choices, strikes me as one of the lost gay texts.

the joyce scholar carol schloss won a judgement against his estate, which might make further scholarship easier to finish.

love these glassesby west elm

amazing spoken word peice on trans gendered genitalia, with he killer first line my vagina perfers male pronouns--makes the trans pronoun beautiful and life affirming.

david made me win an award

misogyny in the open source community,

this story about DF Wallace and self help lit is one of the strongest and most difficult about how the self contsructs and attempts to correct for depressive behaviour--i have a different set of texts then wallace, and am not as open and am more cynical, but this working out what it means to be extenstially sad, with a book in one hand a pencil in the other is ntense.

the national pigeon fanciers annual awards.

great ashberry interview about his translation of illuminations--which is interesting, an elderly gay man at the end of a conserative and stable life, working thru a text by a radical sexual dissident at the v. beginning of a life that would mostly not be about poetry.


roger ebert's righteous indifnation is one of criticims great gifts.

reporters without borders >/a> does a pretty smart arguement, from the liberatrian leftM, about wikileaks, making the arguement that journalism requires curatorial skills.

namazu is a catfish who lives beneath toyko, if he is not appeased, or if he notices that the world is unbalanced, or if the god who is supposed to be looking after him, is away, he wakes and causes massive trouble--the multilayred social and policial implications of this were elucidated by print makers and writers in the edo peroid, after the great toyko earthquake of 1855. Many were made in the two months of the quake, but were later destroyed due to strong censorship. Theese are a collection of that which remained.

james stirling was a birtish architecht who vernacualised corbu style modernism v. early, he also made gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous, models...CCA in montreal has a show of them. go see them like now.

From Apr 14, 2011

me and other marshalls, slut walk

got an a- on apoc theology, quite pleased with that, working thru the last essay of the semester.

ase

My cock is the size of Dustin Hoffman.
And it has also won an Oscar.
In the category of Best Special Effect. David Preyde

i first heard about cobain, when i read the lyrics to litihum someone discarded as i was working garbage duty in sjsa

five things about the sleep clinic


a) even before the putting in of wires and the like--ths questionaires, and the architechture of the hospital, reminded me of grade 9, and also some of the sucide safe rooms i spent some time, making me feel very nervous.
b) the sensory overload, of being touched all over, of being my hair pulled, of tape on hair, the cold liquid of rubbing alcohol, the push of his body close to me, i mean i knew it was medical, but it was overwhelming
c) my glasses were off for most of this. later on, he would tape a plug into my noise, so i could not breathe properly, adding to the sensory problems
d) in the bed, pulling and tugging at my limbs, taping the heart monitor to my hand, reminded me of being taped to the bed at sjsa, of the physical abuse that occured with other students. this was connected to the fear that happens when i am constantly monitored.
e) he tucked my shirt in, because he needed the wires to connect properly, which led me to have some serious shep moments.

tried to calm myself, deep breaths, prayed the psalms, and it just overwhelmed me.

i tore the wires off in a panic, told everyone to fuck off literally, and was just overwhelmed...called ray, i was going to leave, but they wouldnt let me,the nurse encouraged me to have a shower, which helped, and ray came because they wouldnt let me leave without him.

ved
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The Family Proclamation is described as “prophetic council” from those we sustain as “prophets, seers, and revelators,” but it isn’t called canonical, as was implied last Conference session.

from by common consent

mountain goats show, pretty amazing all things considered, including screaming this year at the end, but afterwards even better. hung out with the band backstage, carl wilson, owen pallet, john himself.

a couple of things--- sholem talked about how i had a place in urbane gay land, but applachian old weird america. john talked about how i no longer seemed like i was in peril. owen pallet talked about how much he enjoyed my singles jukebox work.

ride in the car back with everyone, as well.

Source Code was good. It;s narrative construction, with the lacunae, the seeking to narratize, the idea that doing one thing and having that thing being the end of repeating, the obsessiveness, the panic, the strange actions, and its military context, are an excellent representation of trauma, and how it affects the mind.

also quite beautiful. some hollywood touches, esp a love story and the downplaying of politicised elements disappointed a bit.

Bridget Monahan cannot act.

Outline, Notes, and Works Cited for Theological Martyrs Presentation.



Introduction:

Anne Askew.

The presentation will have three parts.

a) A quick sketch biography, noting important dates, and a generalized context about when and where she lived.

Two sections about her relevance to history.
a) A theological history marking her position in the beginning of the Tudor period.
b) A gendered histography, noting the creation of self and construction of a personalized identity.


Quick Sketch Biography :
Born 1521
Hanged, 1526

Some Milestones:

a) Tudor period is a time of increased social mobility, and so Askew was not born of noble lineage, around the time of her birth, her father was knighted he would later work as an MP to Grimsby and a high sheriff in Lincolnshire. )
b) She had a good education which resulted in her being literate in English, Greek and Latin. She also wrote some which became vital to her definitions of self.
This ability to read was unusual but tied into a rising protestant sentiment. To put it in its most crude terms, the rise of literacy, results in the rising numbers of people with the ability to read bible which not only prioritized the importance of the lay, but deprioritzed the role of the priest as mysterious deliverer of sacraments.) She was reading other protestant reformers in her imprisonment, including John Firth's autobiography and response to Moore: “The only personal history written form prison during the reign of Henry VIII that bears resemblance to the Examinations is The Articles Wherefore John Frith died which is annexed to Frith’s answer to Thomas More concerning the sacrament (1533). This is quite possibly the treatise that Askew was reading when Archdeacon John Wymsely warned her that ‘soche books as thys is, hath brought yow to the trouble ye are in’. The articles give some account of the examinations that Frirth underwent, but they are mostly a point-by-point answer to the charges that condemned him. The publication of his system of belief, he himself observes, is sure to purchase him a ‘moste cruell deth’. It is precisely this kind of exposure that Askew’s narrative refuses.” (Coles, Religion, Reform, and Women’s Writing, 20)
c) She was married to Thomas Kyme in 1505 and had at least one child—William Askew (there is thought to perhaps be one more). This marriage was arranged, and because of her father’s social standing, and his social climbing tendencies, it could be assumed that the pairing was mostly about property/dowry/. This abandoning her children and husband for God has precedent in English mystical circles, and is especially prominent in the work of Magarey Kempe.
d) Her husband a devout catholic. Askew converts to the protestant cause, leaves Lincolnshire for London, to go “gospelling” or evangelizing
e) Remained close to the circle of Catherine Parr
f) She was imprisoned in the Tower of London, twice, tortured by the rack once, may have recanted once, eventually executed as part of Henry VIII’s radical wave, in 1546. The charges, revolved around her violations of the Six Articles Act of 1533. (The act was subtitled “Abolishing diversity of Opinions” and maintained points about transubstantiation, and the supremacy of the pope.
g) Her testimony was published as early as late 1546, and definitely by 1547-1548 in Wordal, Germany a Lutheran Stronghold. The examinations were heavily annotated and edited by John Boate, a protestant sympathizer.

There are at least five items around Askew, that suggest that she is important, regardless of her gender.

a) She symbolizes, or at least marks, the rise of literacy among (at least) the nobility
b) Her work becomes about the importance of constructing personal discourses around scripture. (The “gospelling” in London functioned as a way of both translating and disseminating scriptures with a loosely affiliated group. The group might have contained the radical Anabaptist Joan of Kent , executed later under Edward VI, but this is controversial) (If Kent was in the group, and Catherine Parr was thought to have Lutheran sympathies—Askew works as a middle ground between protestant tendencies as well—the interpretive act becomes a set of dialogues about what it means to be this new kind of Christian.) The interpretation of scripture, does not necessarily only mean dissemination, but can also lead to personal prayer: A court functionary named Wadloe from Winchester, moved into the house next to Anne in order to spy on her. He is quoted in her examinations: "at ‘at mydnyght she begynneth to pray, and cessyth not in many howers after, when I and others applye owr sleape or do worse’ (Nichols, Narratives, 40)"
c) Her moving to London, to seek a divorce, and also her general, disobedience. She didn’t take her husband’s last name. She preferred the company of her religious cohorts, and in her second examination, sent back to Lincolnshire, waits 12 days, told to return with Kyme, does, and says Kyme is not her husband)
d) Her connections, however tenuous to the court of Catherine Parr, and less tenuous to Henry's court (brother was cupbearer, half brother gentleman to the privy chamber) in the midst of Henry’s confusion about his own Catholicism seem relevant .
d) The creation of a martyrdom that is not about veneration, that moves away from a roman understanding of that word

There is some gendered context that marks her vitality as well.

a) We must be careful about being anachronistic, and we should recognize that the construction of a martyrs identity is not the same as fashioning an autobiography—but Askew writing her own text (though one mediated by a man) should be noted. Knott: …Yet whatever sense of individuality emerges from Askew’s presentation, she was also consciously playing a role shaped by the representations of martyrdom that I have been describing. The record she created is less a deliberate self-portrait or anything that it makes sense to describe as autobiography in the modern sense of the word, than a recreation of her effort to witness to God’s truth for the instruction and support of the faithful. …Self Justification is less important than contributing to the continuing story of resistance to persecution, given new and painful relevance by the campaign against heresy or Henry VIII’s conservative bishops.”
b) This discussion of the sublimation of Anne’s voice into the general discussion of the general discourse of martyrdom under reports Askew’s style. Often it is plain, stark and unadorned. Her words lack flourish, and sometimes, in the midst of the bluntness, a mocking tone emerges. In this sense, and in the translation between the written, and the read, the oral and the published, we can see Askew as a master ironist. This would suggest that the creation of a female self, perhaps outside of just the martyr’s genre set for her.
b) The idea that her body was taken over by God, and that a masculine force was overtaking her frailty. This is seen in Bale’s introductory notes and marginal comments, and was the general understood opinion of the time. At her execution, a friar who went towards Protestantism and then quickly recanted was made feminine, while Askew in the same context was viewed as masculine. (A witness, Crowley was quoted as saying: “she stood manfully” at her execution. There are suggestions, that there were masculine forces writing her life, she constructed her own identity. In Elaine Belin’s discussion of women writers in the early Renaissance, she makes this point clearly: “…Her assertations in the Examinations are always positive, filled with a sense of her own rectitude, assured of her own virtue. At one point she is careful to record her wish, “that all men knew my conversaycon and lyvviyng in all poyntes, for I am so sure of my selfe thys houre, that there are non able ot prove anye dyshonestie by me. (I, 34v) Writing may have offered Askew a way to create herself as she desired, rather than to be known either a disobedient wife and heretic by one side, or a distant figurehood by the other. By controlling the persona of Anne Askew, and selecting and shaping the events of her own imprisonment, Askew fulfills the role she recognized she was to have for the reformers, but also becomes an autobiographer, who composes the woman. Anne Askew.

Three Conculsions
1) The rise of literacy leads to the rise of a creation of self. This creation of self connects to a new understanding of religious roles.
2) There was a tension between the needs for martyrdom to be reclaimed from the Catholic instincts towards mysticism, and towards a protestant sense of it as an obligation towards the abjection of self. The controversy about Askew’s self fashioning attempts to work through that tension, but it has yet to be solved.
3) This fashioning of self often has a strong gendered component—and Askew’s womanness affects how she wrote the texts, and how we read them.