Twinkle, twinkle

Spending all day spacing out in front of a computer inevitably brings on introspection (as well as boredom, fantasy, and delirium). Between spurts of "official" work, I fill pages and pages with ideas about my life, about your life, about our relationship to the Spectacle, about transcendence, about all kinds of shit.... But at the end of the day, these ideas rarely find the urge to jump back into a computer. Introspection transforms into reflection....

Yeah, I occasionally re-read the stuff I write on here. Even more occasionally, I talk about it with others. Think I should clarify a bit the last post ("Strawberry Shortcake..."). The Vaneigem quote is completely accurate, but can also be read out of context (as can everything). Place more emphasis on "We have a common project" than on "They must use me to save themselves just as I use them to save myself." There are two factors working here: my own subjectivity, and its connection to others. They must work together, but - what I'm taking most to heart in all this is - how can I connect to something in others that I haven't developed within myself? The point is: don't depend on others for an authentic connection... work with them to cultivate it together.

Blah blah blah... where does this subjectivity start? I'll bring up Henry Miller again too: he let go - in the most complete and sincere sense of the phrase - of everything, and moved to Paris to actually live the life of the starving artist. And it worked. Just tonight, I was talking to Nate on the phone, and we were batting around cool, potential places to live. Portland, San Francisco, New Orleans, Orlando... sure, it worked for Miller, but for me, I know it would just be a crutch - a mirage that deflects from the innards, the guts of the subject: my subjectivity.

So I go back to this... the writing that articulates these ideas, the reading that encourages the thoughts in the first place, the wandering that concretizes the thoughts in action, and yes, the people that cultivate the thoughts together with me. The Sunday post-SXSW, after breakfast, Tania and I decided to hit the East Side. No plan, but certainly a feeling. Off the bus, across the highway, murals gleam in the sun, 24 ouncers creep out of brown bags. In the cemetery, in the empty softball field, in my favorite vacant yard on Pedernales and E 5th. Like a movie - beginning, middle, and end - we cross paths with the ice cream-cart vendor, and find ourselves at a random party with music, kegs, and inflatable playpens, for the kids (I suppose). Fueled by the Marquis de Sade (we've been reading the intense Philosophy in the Bedroom as a book "group") and sweet tea vodka, we make some friends and end up at Justine's... the French bistro named, of course, after another of de Sade's tales... and with de Sade and our attractive bartenders and Cognac, the night continues, and on and on... until it's 3 in the morning. With the alarm set for 6, because we have to work. No, nothing has changed. But something has deepened, intensified... an awareness of a will to live.....

And we're back where we started. The Minutemen:

"You and me, baby. Twinkle, twinkle. Blah, blah, blah, etc."