RS interview w Louis C.K.

by Brian Hiatt:


"Laughing at things that are scary is a positive thing.What most people do with these events that happen, the violence in our country, is really disgusting, which is to pore over it. Everyone congratulates each other about how upset they are. There's a lot of ghoulish behavior.
Every time there's a tragedy in America, there's all this gawky fascination and a lot of fucking exploitation....I don't think any of us are doing healthy discourse. The way we chew up what's going on in the world...--it's weird....There's so much meanness slung on people, people that are victims...we all just fucking yap and speculate with quote-unquote outrage, tragic sadness. I don't think anybody's doing a great job with this stuff."



MY RESPONSE:
I agree that our fellow citizens express a "disgusting" "goulish" behavior in response to violence and express meanness in general. However, I think that it is more of a passive symptom of a form of PTSD--perhaps a "collective" form of PTSD.

This country has lost those characteristics that seemed to serve as catch-all "saviours" for the tragedies and suffering that occur. Police no longer "serve the community" but "fight terrorists", big government no longer serves constituents but corporations (when is the last time you saw a campaign run on the language "consituents" rather than on "I am, I believe, I did"?), public officials no longer seek to maximize public health, safety, and welfare but to maximize personal success and financial security.

The theme is that bullying has replaced entrepeneurial zeal and neighborliness, with all levels and forms of government as the enabler and the "guarantor", creating this all-encompassing "substrate" that weighs on us and looms over us and our prized possessions. We can feel the darkness, but we can't see it, and its always there. And just because we can't put words to describe it, we still live our lives in response to this suffocation and threat. Collectively, we FEEL strangled and attacked, and, individually, respond with a constant vigilant and defensive posture. This competitive goulishness and meanness is a part of appearing compliant while simultaneously allowing us to experience some relief via these competitive. mean, and goulish responses.

Just look at the higher education finance industry, mortgage industry, pension and banking industry, big tobacco, lottery commissions/gambling industry, telecommunications industry, mass ag. industry, health care (and insurance) industry, and even down to the eyeglass industry: government works diligently to protect these corporations' ability to reach as far and deep into the pockets and lives of the "masses", rather than to protect us from price fixing, mortgage fraud, securities fraud, poor health care, un-accessible higher education, insurance fraud, etc. And if we try to object and to protect ourselves, we are made to be misfits, pariahs, and even criminals.

Let me give you an example of how insidious this "foot on our necks" is--and how "unidentifiable" it is to the layperson. Back in the late 90's, I worked reviewing telecommunications' marketing and pricing documents for the DOJ during a merger of two wireless companies, and found document after document that showed that it costs big-tele only about one one hundreths of a penny to provide its customer(s) with the service of handling a text message, AND that all providers--from the advent of "texting", could provide customers with roll-over plans, but they, AS AN INDUSTRY, collectively failed to offer roll-over until such time as their marketing experts had identified that the risk of lawsuit/regulation would likely exceed the profits from the excessive charges for their "texting plans". Their marketing plan was NOT to price the texting service at some reasonable percentage above their actual cost, but rather to determine our tolerance level for being ripped off and to shoot for just below that threshold. (By the way, this seems to be their marketing strategy for a lot of their "products".)

Now, I suspect that you are rehashing all those "overage" "fines" that you paid early on in your wireless days, but I want to bring you back to the point: the government KNEW about the telecommunications price-fixing and engorgement shenanigans--remember, I was working on a Dept. of Justice project. This is a classic example of how insidious the "foot on our necks" has become, and physiologically, all these things add up to trigger a stress response from us, just about all of us. I see that the majority of us are living in a constant state of fear and stress even though we don't acknowledge it or are unable or haven't identified the stressors.
Regardless, our response is defensive-- and like any abuse victim or victim or repeated or sustained trauma, we emotionally distance our selves from the triggers. In short, we see violence (or people after our money, corruption, or bullying) and we immediately also feel fear, only we haven't identify the true source of the fear and instead we try to compartmentalize it, to contain it and carry on with our lives. Since we can't really argue with the DOJ, or the IRS, or with City Hall, or with whatever the real source of our fear is, we grab onto seemingly random violent acts that happen to others, respond with a controlled (logic-based, rather than emotionally based) expression or analysis. And in that brief yet constructed response, we may feel a fleeting moment of release. The more intense the "act", the increased chances for some relief.

Another reason for the abhorrent behavioral responses to other people's pain is that we also have succumbed to excessive "programming": you must get cable t.v., you must get new car, you must wear deodorant, you must pay your taxes, you must profess a belief in God. Almost all of our non-fight or flight responses are the product of a repeated and bombastic barrage of pre-conclusive "programming" by marketing, government, and other social institutions. So, most persons' responses to violence, for example, is thoughtless, mindless (at least in terms of not being based on the individual's true emotional response to a specific and new event), programmed response.

 Let me give you another real life example:
Decades ago, I put myself through undergrad school by working nights in a local hospital's ICU. This unit had about 6 beds situated around a long and low desk area with entrances on either end of the unit. the beds were in "rooms" that had their own wall mounted tv's, and were separated from each other by drywall, but from the unit by large sliding glass picture-doors. The unit had a tv on a wheeled stand, too, which I think was really only there because it was often used for training sessions. Oh, and I had received a ROTC scholarship and was drilling with a ground ambulance unit on the weekends.

Anyway, the Gulf War started---as well as the invention of the 24 hour news cycle, and a lot of my sister units had already been called up and we anticipated being next. So you can imagine the stress I was under--work in the ICU almost seemed like a god-send because there were no tv's at the desk and patients were usually too sick to watch tv, so there was none of this incessant reporting from "embedded" reporters and visual images from a war zone. Except....some brilliant, yet beautifully coiffed and compliant nurse--compliant in that her major life stressors appeared to be where to take her vacations and what new frock to shop for, decided to keep the tv in middle of the unit and tuned to "the war." Her reasoning was that we needed to keep informed of the tragedy that was going on there, professing a deep concern for all these complete strangers to her.

After one hour of this, I was nearly going to explode from anxiety. As I "reconn'ed" why I felt so bad at work, I realized that if a person was really concerned about and sensitive to the war activities going on, then you absolutely could NOT be constantly subjected to its visual and audio "images" without being completely emotionally stressed and traumatized. And to do that to your coworkers really is a form of bullying. So, when no one was around, I unplugged the tv and hid it away somewhere, and crossed my fingers that the uncaring bitch that started this thing was too busy with her two patients to notice that it was even gone.

My take away from this event was that there are many of us who "fake it 'til we make it" emotionally, because to let even one iota of real emotion at our current social situation poke through may require work--work to process, work to reel back in, and work to "save face" later on after you have risked looking vulnerable and emotional to your peers and others. Its much easier, so they passively conclude, to join the group and receive some sort of boost in your self-esteem from their acceptance of you and your recitation of the group mantra.

_________________________
Comedian as a Brand:
stand up tour; HBO specials, movies, series (FX, etc)

Comedy as acting:
focusing on the intent and not on the mechanics--"...they're getting kind of crusty, so I go, "Forget how you say this bit, go back to the wordless idea, and express it as if you never said it before." If you do that joke five of six times and then mix the five versions, you get this amazing thing."

"you have a very loud clock ticking in your head. Sometimes I get disjointed and it's great. I get outside of the act and I'm able to just talk, and that feels good. Sometimes you get outside of your act and there's nothing there, there's no other thoughts, and you just go, "Tick, tick." Then your brain supplies you with whatever it wants, and if you're greased up enough and oiled up from a long tour, like I am, you probably get to the next bit."

On highbrow v. lowbrow, artsy v. full of shit:
"If Andrew Dice Clay has some really unique timing skills and things inside of his act that are lovable, I'm going to enjoy them without thinking about what label he's supposed to have. [..] It's so much more interesting to look at art of any kind and say, "Why did they do this this way, what's their tradition, where did they come from, what were they influenced by and why are you doing this?" [He references Godard and states: "By the way, Godard is just as full of shit as Andrew Dice Clay....he's a fucking artsy, French, crazy filmmaker who doesn't give a shit what anybody understands about the story, which is very exciting to me, but there's a little bit of "full of shit" to that."

Writing comedy:
"So if you put a couple of moves between you and [the distraction of the internet], you've got a fighting chance. When I hit a stopping moment in what I'm writing, a moment of agitation - that itch always leads to a brand new thing, to inspiration. But if you bail out and buy a product online, you're robbing yourself."

___________

"Sadness is a lucky thing to feel. ...I think that looking at how random and punishing life can be, it's a privilege. There's so much to look at, there's so much to observe, and there's a lot of humor in it."

"I try to observe and report, and the more purely and without editorial I can do that, the better...Then what comes out, ifyou just show everything, all sides, is that everything is sad and happy and hilarious and depressing.
Do you fear death?
I don't care about it. It's got nothing to do with me. Somebody once asked me "What happens after you die?" and I said "Other people keep you alive."

William Morris

William Morris

textiles
interior design
stained glass
liberal-socialist

Ai Weiwei

This Chinese artist has a lot of passion and covers a wide range of media. It is worth you discovering him and his work for yourself.

Antiquities Loot and Humanity

Here is my solution to the current antagonism in the art/antiquities world:

Unless a country can show an outright theft of an item after it has been un-earthed and was clearly in someone's posession, stop demanding its "return." You can't have it both ways. You can't demand its return because of the loss of your nation's history that is intrinsically represented by this or that artifact that is no longer within your nation's current boundaries AND simultaneously ignore it's intellectual property value to humanity and treat it like it was an improperly mined mineral resource. Let me simplify that: you can't simultaneously argue that its intrinsic value in revealing humanity's history, or even just in revealing your geographic location's humanity's history has no value to humanity, and, thereby, belongs back in, say, Turkey, Egypt, or even Italy.

We don't even have to split the baby here. We just have to split the bundle of property rights associated with this item into an intellectual property right "stick" and a possessory stick. Here's what that may look like:

1. Nation-you provide clear and convincing evidence that the antiquity was un-earthed in an area that is today situated within your nation's boundaries and that it was surreptitiously unearthed (or dug up outside the established protocols in place at the time that it was unearthed);

2. The last entity to have made any profit from a transaction involving the antiquity will share a percentage of that profit.

3. In perpetuity, any current and future possessor will share with you a percentage of any profits that it makes from the antiquity, and that percentage may reflect your willingness to participate in the maintenance of the antiquity (a cost that may be calculated by neutral third parties).

4. The antiquity's provenance will state that the item is "on permanent loan from [your nation] and was unearthed on [date] in [location of item's "reintroduction" to humanity] by [name of excavator and his/her "boss"." The description should also clearly state how the current possessor came into possession of the object.

This is clearly a contractual arrangement, which I think all parties would prefer (as opposed to litigation). Contractual negotiations provide all parties with much greater control over the process and the subject matter. It also provides for other terms, such as reacquisition by the country of origin.

Again, I would like to re-emphasize that the more value that you claim that an antiquity intrinsically possess', the more you are admitting its value to ALL of humanity.

Let me demonstrate this in an even more esoteric way: Egypt claims the Nefertiti bust should be returned to Egypt because it represents a massively poignant part of their--Egypt's, cultural history. Well, what is this thing that we call Egypt? How do we define ancient Egypt? Did Egypt exist in a vaccuum? Is it possible to define Egypt, and its history without using any comparative terminology? By simply using the word "Egypt", aren't we necessarily relying on what the word does AND DOES NOT conjure up, represent, describe? When we say "Egypt", aren't we also saying "not Greece, not Turkey, not Africa"?

The fact is that Egypt did not/does not exist except in a context, a real and a conceptual and a cultural context. What the bust of Nefertiti may say affirmatively about Egypt it also says dispositively about all things NOT Egypt, thereby revealing much more than just what Egypt's "position" on humanity was at the time the bust was created. Nefertiti's value is elementally based on the knowledge that this type of culture and artistry and expression DID NOT EXIST ELSEWHERE, whether in time or in location. In other words, its value is based on its context--its context within all of humanity, not just Egypt's.

And, I haven't even broached the issue of legal title: who commissioned the piece, who was the original owner, how was that title transferred through to today's claimants....It strikes me as compounding the problem today if antiquities are treated simply as a national resource, like fossil fuel, forests, or minerals. The first logical problem is that this conceptual approach leads us right back to the situation described above: if it is a resource, then what is its "resource" value derived from? Well, if its from its representative historical value, then the position really brings up the idea that more than just one group of people derive value from the item. All of humanity derives value from the item, and it owes its value to the history of all of humanity.

Is this conflict just another pitting of tribal mentality against humanitarian mentality? And, if so, how is that working out for these countries, for their women, for their progeny, for their environment? Better yet, how is it working out for antiquities that are currently located within their national boundaries?




Post script: The position that Nefertiti and her husband played in humanity's development of monotheism is profound and interesting. And, early monotheistic cult members were responsble for much destruction of early artifacts by, for example, ripping the noses off of any other belief system's statues of gods/goddesses. Thus, the violence, self-righteousness, and narcissism of early monotheists seemed to be foundational characteristics of the monotheistic cult.

Original Sin

This weekend, I read about the Aztec and the Mayan story about a goddess that was in charge of a beautiful and bountiful garden. She partook of one of the red fruits of the garden and was banished, by the creator of the garden, to live with the humans. Sound familiar?

Its coincidental that I learned of historic original sin stories during the easter holiday, when I also learned that there is an historic ressurection story. In other words, its not surprising to think that monotheism's "Great Stories" are really just plagiarisms.

Its also not far-fetched to restate the intended meaning behind these stories. For example, banishment to live among the human animals for an act of consumption makes a lot more sense, especially to persons living 3000 years ago, when the moral of the story is "Nature provides for you, but don't overdo the consuming of it."

Some "rules" are easy to agree exist and to live by. The sun comes up in the east, it sets in the west. Humans can't breathe immersed in water. Trees make good shade. Birds can fly long distances. Humans can't fly at all. It seems that we have no need to revamp the stories educating us about those facts of existence.

But, with the more complicated or esoteric rules, human's early stories survived the centuries as they continued to prove useful to new peoples, to demonstrate rules that had difficult meaning to teach our youth. There is little doubt that Aztecs and Mayans and Jews had found ways to provide their vessels with nutrition. Techniques, tools, and rituals to provide and to give thanks were apparent. It could not have been that difficult to agree that overconsumption or rampant consumption, or just plain unthoughtful consumption, would prove to be incompatible or unsustainable. So, how to  press that point? You remind your people that this nature is a garden of abundance and beauty and that consumption of it must be thoughtful, at a minimum. Some types of consumption are sustainable and are compatible with natural processes, some types are not. Therefore, some types of consumption of nature are allowed, and some types are not.

And what is the consequence of violating this rule? Well, its the old "you get what you ask for" dilemma: if you treat nature as if its all a commodity or consumable, that's what you'll get. You will get a living situation that is more like a market than a natural environment. You will get a place where abundance and beauty is foregone, threatened, etc.  Thus, the punishment of banishment from the beauty and abundance to live with the humans is the demonstration of the creation of and immersion in a community or environment in which suffering and struggle--the fight against the failure of abundance and beauty, is the theme.

This historic story has little, if anything, to do with the concept of original sin and the alleged need for us all, as individuals, to repent, to be reborn, or to recognize that any other human has sacrificed himself for any of us. It is a creative reminder that we are but one type of animal in a complicated but satisfying beauty that has the power to deny us a satisfying existence.

Art

Michael Heizer
Earth Art
Levitated Mass, a 340-ton granite boulder.
His life long project, City, may be the largest piece of contemporary art.


Tate Women Artists
Alicia Foster
2004

Art

Albrecht Durer, Nuremberg, early 1500's. Made and sold copies of prints from woodcuts and engravings.
"Praying Hands"
He imposed himself into the essence of the work, inscribing his trademark, for example, on the nail heads depicted in a croosyfikshun.
Engravings included marble tablets with his explanation of his genius.