Yesterday, I cleaned up my flat and sat around for a while, a sudden calm after a hectic week.Very hectic. Once I realized that the train wasn't going to catch me, I trudged down to the station to catch it. Never before did it seem to linger so long until parting. Nearly at home, it dawned on me that I would have to figure out what to do next. Everything seems to have become complicated. Letting myself fall back into obliviousness seems just as despicable as the prospect of salvation seems out of sight. Eventually, however, a path will have to be chosen for hopes to be made. Though this path now seems dark, the idea of some impending happyness is what drives me onwards. Some impending arrangement, one with which I can live. Given what I have already seen and experienced, my heart fears that compromises will have to be made.
Or am I being too harsh with my assessment? Too quick with my judgement?
Occasionally, I debate wether a surrender of what I consider virtue would in itself breed better virtue or not. Perhaps, but I also feel that exactly what distinguishes us is that we have not yet surrendered our motivation to the least common denominator. And exactly in this lies a hope for the best possible case that could happen. Radiant it would be, to find out that actually, we had been in full accord all along. It had only been the others getting in the way. Suddenly saved, we would be.
The Golden Wish
The silver glow
that precedes
our death
I call it life
and feel it caress
these lonely days.
One silver glance
sent through the air
I drop my eyes
and call it a stare
her will so opaque.
The silver shadows
of passing clouds
I sense them sometimes
while watching the crowds
from distant place.
A sliver of hope
would see me revel
Bathed here in silver
I drowning rebel! for
No silver moments are ever enough
No silver moon can fill this deep rut
No silver days can ever be bright
I long for the golden
I long for the light.
- August 2004
Monday, September 13, 2004
A problem inherent in the virtualization of thought is the loss of quality control and value hierarchies: everything fed into the internet - from Goethe's Faust to a how-to guide on inline skating - has the same Existenzberechtigung (right to exist) in a completely decontextualised and egalitarian environment, with each word constituting a few bytes of data.
Traditionally, selection and valuation is usually based not just on the material itself but also on signals and sources external to it. The new generation of thought, however, might only exist - and have to be discovered - virtually. However, judging a work rooted solely in a virtual context is much more difficult than before, because of the very nature of a medium characterized by fragmentation, anonymity, availability and selectivity 1. Immersed in a context-averse medium (the internet), knowledge and thought is homogenized and ultimately devalued in a perversely egalitarian quagmire.
1 fragmentation = although "links" serve to connect content, the "whole" is seldom preceivable
2 anonymity = the authorship is per se "invisible", anonymous
3 availability = the internet is accessable around the clock from around the world; everyone can create content with little effort
4 selectivity = a web page is always "virtual", and data is usually restricted to one type of channel: text, video, pictures.
Thursday, September 09, 2004
Here a new version of my essay. still not complete. It is divided into several sub-essays :
From the Impossible to the Intended
The Possible Impossible
"Nothing is impossible" proclaims the gargantuan Adidas poster hung from the ceiling of the Hauptbahnhof hall. The sheer size of the ad seems to verify the statement, its palpable, visual omnipresence providing totalitarian affirmation. On the poster is a whole paragraph of text, unusually long for a target audience taught not to cram more than 5 bullets on a PowerPoint slide. The text on the left attacks those that do not strive for the impossible. The message is that impossible is impossible. On the right a picture of Beckham, celebrating.
The banner still hangs there, after England falls out in the quarter-finals. Perverse a bit, perhaps an unintended effect; Beckham can no longer achieve the impossible. Apparently, the impossible is now possible, after all. Only, not the way the ad intended. A week later, one of the big underdogs of the championships, Greece, shoots the decisive goal in the last minute of play. Impossible is apparently possible, but unfortunately, not in the context intended, for the poster features Beckham, not Charisteas. We see that far from picturing the impossible, the poster has advocated the very possible all along. It had been designed with statistics and probabilities in mind. The TV ad to the poster had featured a grab-bag of Adidas-sponsored top teams (with no sight of the at that time uninspiring Greeks) a carefully-honed balance of the probable. Would anyone have thought possible that the idolised man on the poster would miss the free kick that could have saved his team from embarrassment?
Ironic, really, that the winning team was actually also sponsored by Adidas. Of course, a smart company never puts all its eggs into one, or even two baskets, and it would hardly be "fan" enough to let its profits be wholly dependent on who actually wins. However, this does not change the fact that Beckham would have been a sexier win. A likelier one too, one whose victory Adidas was preparing for. And this is exactly where the souble paradox of the poster is revelaed: it promises the viewer the improbable, but gambles for the likely. Finally, we sense the problem with the boldly proclaimed message: the incompatibility of the message with its intent: it demands the reader dream freedom, but wants him to buy a shoe.
From the Impossible to the Intended
Companies are doing their best to suppress the side effects of a system they had every interest in creating: the urge to achieve a certain extent of freedom, individuality and dignity in a world with a radical trend toward the domination of the possible, the medially willed, and the aesthetically sanctioned. As people realize the growing impossibility of autonomous change and individual freedom in a society entrenched in mass-culture, the desperate hope for alternatives springs up.
In a show of astounding cynicism, firms like Adidas have learnt to harness our restlessness, hijacking and deforming it to work for ends that many are trying to escape. Want the impossible? Then buy it, as a shoe. With the motto "nothing is impossible", a clumsy bridge is erected between the product and a "tamed" escapism. Thus, as financial and social mobility decreases, societal casts become increasingly rigid and pressure to conform to systemic demands weighs upon individuals, business can kill two birds with one stone by repositioning the products of consumerism that are the very cause our insecurity into the locus of our hopes.
Aesthetics for Example
As our attention is artificially diverted to aspects of human existence with frustratigly small degrees of malleability - like aging and appearance (and also: income and celebrity) - solutions are immediately provided (in the form of anti-age lotions, beauty operations and image-enchancing products). By thus insuring the impossibility of ultimate, or even near- satisfaction, saturation is cunningly evaded. Meanwhile, the ever-growing fixation on sexuality is legitimized by branding it a source of (laboriously acquired) freedom, entrapping the subject into a realm of aesthetics with little hope for change and human development. As the quest to fulfil desires based on company scripture is embarked upon, one becomes trapped in a world of centrally-designed objectives. When advertisements in Japan feature caucasian women, the tendency toward one officially sanctioned value system, even in the field of aesthetics, are laid bare. Indeed, the problem of the world created by corporate culture is its totalitarian aspect, its inability to deal with creative diversity.
Standardized Individualism
When overstyled pictures and catchphrases that serve as messages and demands become the blueprints for our aspirations, we let a construct characterized by a worrying degree of homogeneity and inflexibility define our identity. It is exactly in this regard that multinationals labor the hardest to disguise the obvious paradox inherent in building a myth on the mantra of individualism, yet relying on mass production and the economies of homogeneity to maximize profits. "Individualism" in the mass-produced sense can only mean choosing from a palette of think-tank styled, value-optimized, and ready-made identities. Would-be individualists are thus wooed into joining "rebel" groups far easier to manipulate and cater to than individuals with wholly opaque preferences. Sporting a certain logo on a shoe, one is automatically identified with the range of images and values that the brand in question is associated with. These values, however, cannot be those of the individual, unless it chooses to adopt those of the brander. Beside the obvious drawback of having to choose an "image" from a relatively meager selection of homogenized types, this alternative does have one crucial advantage: it is easy. Like being able to choose your cocktail instead of having to mix it yourself, it’s hard to get something wrong. To commit a fauxpas. To not fit in. You don’t have to "tell" or "prove" to anyone that you’re well-to-do if you have Dolce&Gabbana jeans. All you have to accept in return (besides the hefty pricetag) is the baggage of connotations the company has concocted for you, and all other wearers, to carry along.
From the Impossible to the Intended
The Possible Impossible
"Nothing is impossible" proclaims the gargantuan Adidas poster hung from the ceiling of the Hauptbahnhof hall. The sheer size of the ad seems to verify the statement, its palpable, visual omnipresence providing totalitarian affirmation. On the poster is a whole paragraph of text, unusually long for a target audience taught not to cram more than 5 bullets on a PowerPoint slide. The text on the left attacks those that do not strive for the impossible. The message is that impossible is impossible. On the right a picture of Beckham, celebrating.
The banner still hangs there, after England falls out in the quarter-finals. Perverse a bit, perhaps an unintended effect; Beckham can no longer achieve the impossible. Apparently, the impossible is now possible, after all. Only, not the way the ad intended. A week later, one of the big underdogs of the championships, Greece, shoots the decisive goal in the last minute of play. Impossible is apparently possible, but unfortunately, not in the context intended, for the poster features Beckham, not Charisteas. We see that far from picturing the impossible, the poster has advocated the very possible all along. It had been designed with statistics and probabilities in mind. The TV ad to the poster had featured a grab-bag of Adidas-sponsored top teams (with no sight of the at that time uninspiring Greeks) a carefully-honed balance of the probable. Would anyone have thought possible that the idolised man on the poster would miss the free kick that could have saved his team from embarrassment?
Ironic, really, that the winning team was actually also sponsored by Adidas. Of course, a smart company never puts all its eggs into one, or even two baskets, and it would hardly be "fan" enough to let its profits be wholly dependent on who actually wins. However, this does not change the fact that Beckham would have been a sexier win. A likelier one too, one whose victory Adidas was preparing for. And this is exactly where the souble paradox of the poster is revelaed: it promises the viewer the improbable, but gambles for the likely. Finally, we sense the problem with the boldly proclaimed message: the incompatibility of the message with its intent: it demands the reader dream freedom, but wants him to buy a shoe.
From the Impossible to the Intended
Companies are doing their best to suppress the side effects of a system they had every interest in creating: the urge to achieve a certain extent of freedom, individuality and dignity in a world with a radical trend toward the domination of the possible, the medially willed, and the aesthetically sanctioned. As people realize the growing impossibility of autonomous change and individual freedom in a society entrenched in mass-culture, the desperate hope for alternatives springs up.
In a show of astounding cynicism, firms like Adidas have learnt to harness our restlessness, hijacking and deforming it to work for ends that many are trying to escape. Want the impossible? Then buy it, as a shoe. With the motto "nothing is impossible", a clumsy bridge is erected between the product and a "tamed" escapism. Thus, as financial and social mobility decreases, societal casts become increasingly rigid and pressure to conform to systemic demands weighs upon individuals, business can kill two birds with one stone by repositioning the products of consumerism that are the very cause our insecurity into the locus of our hopes.
Aesthetics for Example
As our attention is artificially diverted to aspects of human existence with frustratigly small degrees of malleability - like aging and appearance (and also: income and celebrity) - solutions are immediately provided (in the form of anti-age lotions, beauty operations and image-enchancing products). By thus insuring the impossibility of ultimate, or even near- satisfaction, saturation is cunningly evaded. Meanwhile, the ever-growing fixation on sexuality is legitimized by branding it a source of (laboriously acquired) freedom, entrapping the subject into a realm of aesthetics with little hope for change and human development. As the quest to fulfil desires based on company scripture is embarked upon, one becomes trapped in a world of centrally-designed objectives. When advertisements in Japan feature caucasian women, the tendency toward one officially sanctioned value system, even in the field of aesthetics, are laid bare. Indeed, the problem of the world created by corporate culture is its totalitarian aspect, its inability to deal with creative diversity.
Standardized Individualism
When overstyled pictures and catchphrases that serve as messages and demands become the blueprints for our aspirations, we let a construct characterized by a worrying degree of homogeneity and inflexibility define our identity. It is exactly in this regard that multinationals labor the hardest to disguise the obvious paradox inherent in building a myth on the mantra of individualism, yet relying on mass production and the economies of homogeneity to maximize profits. "Individualism" in the mass-produced sense can only mean choosing from a palette of think-tank styled, value-optimized, and ready-made identities. Would-be individualists are thus wooed into joining "rebel" groups far easier to manipulate and cater to than individuals with wholly opaque preferences. Sporting a certain logo on a shoe, one is automatically identified with the range of images and values that the brand in question is associated with. These values, however, cannot be those of the individual, unless it chooses to adopt those of the brander. Beside the obvious drawback of having to choose an "image" from a relatively meager selection of homogenized types, this alternative does have one crucial advantage: it is easy. Like being able to choose your cocktail instead of having to mix it yourself, it’s hard to get something wrong. To commit a fauxpas. To not fit in. You don’t have to "tell" or "prove" to anyone that you’re well-to-do if you have Dolce&Gabbana jeans. All you have to accept in return (besides the hefty pricetag) is the baggage of connotations the company has concocted for you, and all other wearers, to carry along.
Wednesday, September 08, 2004
I wrote this poem in Szigetszentmiklos, Hungary
Eve on to Night
A spark from the sky
bounced on my floor
it wasn't you
but your name it bore
I read this spark avid
as I often hope
it lit alight fire
where fire ne'er stoked
it lit alight fire
that died all too soon
leaving me evening
without leaving noon
what God has given
God taketh away
but this spark went black
before I could pray
now its dark shadow
grows near my heart
charring me silent
burning in dark
nothing remains
& all stays the same
all hope is gone
except the spark's name
as eve on to night
I sense slipping off
what still remains
worth speaking of ?
I tell of you over
in my charred heart
I write you
all over
my cruelest spark
I sensed it all over
before it began
the night was all over
yet I was no man -
no man to know you
no man to dance
not one to hold you
no man to glance
knew men to kiss you
know men with a chance
I'm not among them
I just can't dance
yet
you come from my pocket
when I'm all alone
your dark light can't guide me
- but it is home.
I know I can't have you
though I simply must
so it seems strange :
in your warmth I trust
I feel you nearby
while I roam this mess
I saviour your words
yet live less and less
I live less and less
with friends & at work
live less and less
with your cruel curse
please fall back upwards
to choke this black fire
that all on its own
just can't seem to die
don't singe me so freely
with all hope so gone
burn me to ashes
& leave me alone.
- B.M. Winter 2005
Eve on to Night
A spark from the sky
bounced on my floor
it wasn't you
but your name it bore
I read this spark avid
as I often hope
it lit alight fire
where fire ne'er stoked
it lit alight fire
that died all too soon
leaving me evening
without leaving noon
what God has given
God taketh away
but this spark went black
before I could pray
now its dark shadow
grows near my heart
charring me silent
burning in dark
nothing remains
& all stays the same
all hope is gone
except the spark's name
as eve on to night
I sense slipping off
what still remains
worth speaking of ?
I tell of you over
in my charred heart
I write you
all over
my cruelest spark
I sensed it all over
before it began
the night was all over
yet I was no man -
no man to know you
no man to dance
not one to hold you
no man to glance
knew men to kiss you
know men with a chance
I'm not among them
I just can't dance
yet
you come from my pocket
when I'm all alone
your dark light can't guide me
- but it is home.
I know I can't have you
though I simply must
so it seems strange :
in your warmth I trust
I feel you nearby
while I roam this mess
I saviour your words
yet live less and less
I live less and less
with friends & at work
live less and less
with your cruel curse
please fall back upwards
to choke this black fire
that all on its own
just can't seem to die
don't singe me so freely
with all hope so gone
burn me to ashes
& leave me alone.
- B.M. Winter 2005
Check out the promised journal entries (in pdf format) by clicking on following link:
Selected Journal Entries from the Green Book
Sunday, September 05, 2004
Friday, April 23, 2004
Here my infamous CNN article published, for those who asked for it
Requiem CNN:
pornography and propaganda
People exhibits strange habits while viewing pornography. I for one sometimes find a slipper in one hand. It was with slippers and shoes that the enraged citizens of Fallujah beat at the charred remains of american contractors before hanging them like grizly scarecrows from a nearby bridge. It is with a clutched slipper that I sometimes wish I could touch the members of the CNN family while watching. Like Wolf Blitzer, for instance, the incarnation of CNN reporting - as seen on the Last Word on Sunday Talk, or during the more orgasmic Breaking News interruptions. Both features represent a point on CNN's ever - oscillating spectrum between perceived and lauded objectivity and outright "swallow it, you will" porno-propaganda. The former, the Last Word, is somewhere on the more benign end of the scale, with chubby, familiar U.S. senators dishing out their dissenting views on the narrow bandwith of what Noam Chomsky calls accepted opinion. Blitzer, wavering in the wind of world affairs, knows to ask the right questions at the right time. About whether the UN is really irrelevant, before the war. About where the WMDs are, afterwards. Investigative journalism. What the public wants. Then, Breaking News. A whole different ballpark. Offering little time for grooming, some porno might slip through. Like waiting for the bombing of Bagdad with Mr. Blitzer, at the beginning of the war. Behind his back, the live video stream of Bagdad is still silent. The capital does just not want to go to hell, yet. Blitzer promises MOAB, the mother of all bombs, weight measured in tons. But viewers might just be tuning in; in case you missed it, the Army promised awe-insipring, humiliating destruction on a never before-seen scale, Shock and Awe. But the streets of Bagdad are still silent. Blitzer is impatient. Then, the first Bombs light up the screen behind him. He stops talking, urging us to watch. Bombs go off like lava fountains sprouting from the earth. Blitzer is mostly silent, leaving us with the quiet dignity of the images. Finally, Bagdad is literally going to hell.
I for one would express it otherwise: we voyeurs are being taken to hell. For all viewers who believe they have become too cynical to care about the victims, for all those who have stopped shedding tears for those we are supposed to care about - like aforementioned lynched Americans working for Blackwater security - and those we aren't, this is no longer just about pitying the tragedy of others. It's about saving our own souls from a kind of hell.
Because as a network that promises to "take you there", CNN is essentially a portal, connecting your home with world events and talking heads. Like reporters speaking Live from the White House, middle-aged women with a touch of sado-maso allure who elaborate on what Mr. Bremer just said. Take his announcement that the enemies of freedom who perpetrate actions against the coalition wish a return to the Rape Rooms. Here, a sceptical soul loses all traction. What should I care more about: the (no doubt often terrible) realities behind Bremer's alliterating catchphrase, or the fact that the Rape Rooms are being so deliciously instrumentalized to entertain and educate us all at once. The Rape Rooms. Call it CNN's sexually stirring soul-seduction.
When CNN is being subtle, in the benign moments of the oscillatory cycle, the candyman may come. In special reports, pleasant, chubby journalists like Tom Friedman get much air-time to bless us with CNN-objectivity on the most controversial topics, like the wall being built in Israel. Friedman, who is freed from all biases (explicitly: being a Jew reporting on the Arab-Israeli conflict) by being Pulitzer-Prize Winning, winds his way through the arab-israeli streets ("they told us to meet at the car dealership, which is either a Datsun or Toyota, I'm gonna go with Datsun") pants and puffs his way up apartments to interview both sides of the conflict. CNN could actually have spared itself the trouble of hiring an outside journalist, because we get proven CNN blend: Israeli legal experts, angry arab men, pretty palestinian representatives (chosen by the PLO more to please western eyes than ears). Much is discussed, and it is aggreed that the wall separates. As walls tend to do. But silly us, CNN is not primarily a discursive forum! Where is the pornography? The long-awaited catharsys comes in the form of a suicide-bombing, to bring it to the point, to really drive it home. Emotional, Friedman jogs toward ground zero of the explosion. Sirens wail. Debris litters the street. The viewer squints to find human remains in the rapidly-scrolling rubble. The point to be made must come soon now. Friedman pants into the camera, out of breath, because mid-stride. He looks us head-on. He is an angry god. Finally: "You know... if you want to know where the wall starts... it starts.. here". Amid the wailing sirens and misery, truth has been delivered. The crying Israeli soldieress thrown in afterwards is just icing on the cake. She talks about how her comerade always kept his shoes clean, that they were clean even while he was dying. Ironic, really. What a contrast to the angry mobs of Fallujah, who don't seem to mind getting their slippers dirty.
Requiem CNN:
pornography and propaganda
People exhibits strange habits while viewing pornography. I for one sometimes find a slipper in one hand. It was with slippers and shoes that the enraged citizens of Fallujah beat at the charred remains of american contractors before hanging them like grizly scarecrows from a nearby bridge. It is with a clutched slipper that I sometimes wish I could touch the members of the CNN family while watching. Like Wolf Blitzer, for instance, the incarnation of CNN reporting - as seen on the Last Word on Sunday Talk, or during the more orgasmic Breaking News interruptions. Both features represent a point on CNN's ever - oscillating spectrum between perceived and lauded objectivity and outright "swallow it, you will" porno-propaganda. The former, the Last Word, is somewhere on the more benign end of the scale, with chubby, familiar U.S. senators dishing out their dissenting views on the narrow bandwith of what Noam Chomsky calls accepted opinion. Blitzer, wavering in the wind of world affairs, knows to ask the right questions at the right time. About whether the UN is really irrelevant, before the war. About where the WMDs are, afterwards. Investigative journalism. What the public wants. Then, Breaking News. A whole different ballpark. Offering little time for grooming, some porno might slip through. Like waiting for the bombing of Bagdad with Mr. Blitzer, at the beginning of the war. Behind his back, the live video stream of Bagdad is still silent. The capital does just not want to go to hell, yet. Blitzer promises MOAB, the mother of all bombs, weight measured in tons. But viewers might just be tuning in; in case you missed it, the Army promised awe-insipring, humiliating destruction on a never before-seen scale, Shock and Awe. But the streets of Bagdad are still silent. Blitzer is impatient. Then, the first Bombs light up the screen behind him. He stops talking, urging us to watch. Bombs go off like lava fountains sprouting from the earth. Blitzer is mostly silent, leaving us with the quiet dignity of the images. Finally, Bagdad is literally going to hell.
I for one would express it otherwise: we voyeurs are being taken to hell. For all viewers who believe they have become too cynical to care about the victims, for all those who have stopped shedding tears for those we are supposed to care about - like aforementioned lynched Americans working for Blackwater security - and those we aren't, this is no longer just about pitying the tragedy of others. It's about saving our own souls from a kind of hell.
Because as a network that promises to "take you there", CNN is essentially a portal, connecting your home with world events and talking heads. Like reporters speaking Live from the White House, middle-aged women with a touch of sado-maso allure who elaborate on what Mr. Bremer just said. Take his announcement that the enemies of freedom who perpetrate actions against the coalition wish a return to the Rape Rooms. Here, a sceptical soul loses all traction. What should I care more about: the (no doubt often terrible) realities behind Bremer's alliterating catchphrase, or the fact that the Rape Rooms are being so deliciously instrumentalized to entertain and educate us all at once. The Rape Rooms. Call it CNN's sexually stirring soul-seduction.
When CNN is being subtle, in the benign moments of the oscillatory cycle, the candyman may come. In special reports, pleasant, chubby journalists like Tom Friedman get much air-time to bless us with CNN-objectivity on the most controversial topics, like the wall being built in Israel. Friedman, who is freed from all biases (explicitly: being a Jew reporting on the Arab-Israeli conflict) by being Pulitzer-Prize Winning, winds his way through the arab-israeli streets ("they told us to meet at the car dealership, which is either a Datsun or Toyota, I'm gonna go with Datsun") pants and puffs his way up apartments to interview both sides of the conflict. CNN could actually have spared itself the trouble of hiring an outside journalist, because we get proven CNN blend: Israeli legal experts, angry arab men, pretty palestinian representatives (chosen by the PLO more to please western eyes than ears). Much is discussed, and it is aggreed that the wall separates. As walls tend to do. But silly us, CNN is not primarily a discursive forum! Where is the pornography? The long-awaited catharsys comes in the form of a suicide-bombing, to bring it to the point, to really drive it home. Emotional, Friedman jogs toward ground zero of the explosion. Sirens wail. Debris litters the street. The viewer squints to find human remains in the rapidly-scrolling rubble. The point to be made must come soon now. Friedman pants into the camera, out of breath, because mid-stride. He looks us head-on. He is an angry god. Finally: "You know... if you want to know where the wall starts... it starts.. here". Amid the wailing sirens and misery, truth has been delivered. The crying Israeli soldieress thrown in afterwards is just icing on the cake. She talks about how her comerade always kept his shoes clean, that they were clean even while he was dying. Ironic, really. What a contrast to the angry mobs of Fallujah, who don't seem to mind getting their slippers dirty.
Saturday, January 10, 2004
Friday, January 09, 2004
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)