in another life...

in another life i am now a professional blogger, which means i get paid to research inane topics, write about them and read at least some blogs about blogs. I sometimes write about things that i have never done nor do I ever have any intention of doing, like swimming with dolphins and it occurred to me that maybe I could pass some of these new found skills at blather back here and have it kick this blog back into shape.


Then I think, eh, speaking of ashes was always being resurrected from something else. It never wanted to be original, just burned over. I remember once, when I was a kid we put wood-ash down with the potato sprouts and in a few months we pulled out huge potatoes the size of footballs. I don't remember those potatoes tasting particularly good, but they were something. So, speaking of ashes is today re-dedicated; the burned-over, the seared, the charred, the unrecognizable. I remember the Great Brain once got a cinder in his eye on the train to Salt Lake City. May that serve as a warning to us all.

Testigos

For whatever reason, I started thinking about why I titled this series "Witnesses," ("Testigos" in Spanish.) It led me to believe that there is a pathology to power, that we come to a certain disdain for those we victimize. We deplore the fact that they witness our aggression, that they survive with their innocence intact. I believe we grow to hate the people we victimize because they hold the power, be it of forgiveness, or merely
of being victims --of gaining sympathy when we should have none, and this leads us further into the mire of the aggression we've created.

I get a lot of shit because these are Jews and I'm in a Catholic country, that the holocaust is to grave and deep a subject, that I'm too Catholic myself to begin with. It seems a little odd to say I'm proud to be on a path to understanding something this monumental in human history, but I think I am. I thought also, once, of titling this series, Stripes, and I think about stripes sometimes too. In fact quite a lot. And as I take up my new series, perhaps it is the stripe of power that emblazons as much our misery as our victory.

MFA faculties understood at last

That's because they believe in nothing. They have no passion about anything. And they thus assume that everyone else suffers from the same emptiness of character and ossified cynicism that plagues them. And all of their punditry and analysis and political strategizing flows from this corrupt root.

Not only do they believe in nothing, they think that a Belief in Nothing is a mark of sophistication and wisdom. Those who believe in things too muchexcept for deeply held political beliefs -- the only part that really matters or that has any real worth. -- who display political passion or who take their convictions and ideals seriously (Feingold, Howard Dean) -- are either naive or, worse, are the crazy, irrational, loudmouth masses and radicals who disrupt the elevated, measured world of the high-level, dispassionate Beltway sophisticates (James Carville, David Broder, Fred Hiatt). They are interested in, even obsessed with, every aspect of the political process except for deeply held political beliefs -- the only part that really matters or that has any real worth.

Oh darn, Glenn Greenwald was talking about Beltway Insiders not insitutional artists, how could i make that mistake ?

on having utterly nothing to say

I remember an editor I once worked for responded to an interview request with the simple words, "I really have nothing to say." I suppose that sums up my attitude toward blogging lately.

I have thoughts about which I care very little, and some others that manifest themselves in fotos like the one below. A thought about robots. I get depressed when I think about art blogging because really, what needs to be said. A lot of people I know are going to Venice and Germany next summer for all that art, and I am just like, "didn't they just do that stupid thing?" But I am not depressed, just busy. New art coming soon. GOOD ART.

at the north bus station, 2

at the north bus station

pantitlan, in the evening

oceania, in the evening