So I ran into a friend today. It was nice, and also novel, because I do relatively little social interaction these days and seem to avoid it more than I ever did (case in point: I had seen another friend earlier in the day and I walked past quickly in a panic that she might see me and I might have to talk to her and I was scared I wouldn’t know how to do it without (a) offering to buy her a drink/clean her house/carry her children by way of pre-meditated over-compensation for my social ineptitude or (b) using the word ’subaltern’). Anyway, I was so overwhelmed by the niceness and novelty of seeing this friend that I leaned in to give said friend a hug and a kiss, then realised he hadn’t assumed the hug and the kiss, so I pulled back, by which point he realised I was going for the hug and the kiss, so he leaned in and had to stretch twice as far to deliver an awkward kiss as I gigglingly hugged him.
CHRIST SIMON.
I have become socially illiterate. HELP.
Today’s (recurring) crisis is the discomfiting sense that I have lost my creative voice,that sociology has trained me out of it. In such moments it has helped somewhat to recall sociology’s interpretative, ethnological and narrative tradition, as highlighted by Zygmunt Bauman, Scott Lash and Fuyuki Kurosawa; also its early intention to provide accounts of social life richer and more inflected than those provided by coldhardscience(tm). Reading lectures from The College of Sociology has given me further confirmation of this intention, even C. Wright Mills has reminded me that imagination is allowed, if a bit dangerous. “Science … tends to reduce sensibility to a minimum” said Georges Bataille at a Saturday COS lecture on February 5 1938. “The phenomena I attempt to descibe are lived by us…I am obviously distancing myself from what I gladly refer to as science’s deep slumber…”.
Still, I am currently stalking-with-a-view-to-seducing a supervisor in cultural studies, and today I joined the Centre for New Writing.
Now excuse me while I actually go and do some work on my PhD.
I’ve been the sleepy kind for as long as I can remember (all the evidence can be found here), or possibly just since I swapped a glittering career in the non-government community sector (official term - brilliant, isn’t it) for at least 10 more years of studying.
The sleepiness is apparently, in part, due to my psychotropic of choice, paroxetine, which I have been taking for about 3 years. However, I have had an impromptu break from it (you wouldn’t think forgetfulness was a side-effect, would you) these past few days and still had trouble staying awake for more than about six hours at a time. I also managed to cry my eyes out last night over the final episode of Vincent: the full story (he died in Theo’s arms! Theo died six months later! And the ivy … oh, the IVY! I’ve seen that ivy! et cetera), and develop an unhealthy TV crush on Waldemar Januszczak (pictured).
Sadly though (?!), my rampaging emotions are now back under the watchful eye of above mentioned daily chemical constellation, meaning I have to face the horrific reality that my sleepiness is not due to burgeoning narcolepsy (glamorous) but to a high-carb, low-iron diet combined with regular caffeine peaking and troughing (unfathomable). Perhaps I should join a gym.
The end.
PS I’m writing all this from my bedroom, as the beautiful strains of Holly and Jens rehearsing their beautiful music wafts down the stairs. I am roasting tomatoes, eggplant, garlic and capsicum for a pasta sauce in the kitchen. Really - I’m utterly blessed.
Hot?: Renata Salecl, author of such gems as The Spoils of Freedom (incidentally, she was previously married to Slavoj Zizek).
Not?: Slavoj Zizek with new wife (incidentally, she is a former underwear model).
Has he joined the Sartrean ranks of old men who are intellectually brilliant but emotionally retarded, getting with hot chicks half their age because of their apparent hotness and compliant, adoring nature? YOU DECIDE.
“Aesthetic production today has become integrated into commodity production generally: the frantic economic urgency of producing fresh waves of ever more novel-seeming goods (from clothing to airplanes), at ever greater rates of turnover, now assigns an increasingly essential structural function and position to aesthetic innovation and experimentation. Such economic necessities then find recognition in the varied kinds of institutional support available for the newer art, from foundations and grants to museums and other forms of patronage (…)
I must remind the reader of the obvious; namely that this whole global; yet American, postmodern culture is the internal and superstructural expression of a whole new wave of American military and economic domination throughout the world: in this sense, as throughout class history, the underside of culture is blood, torture, death, and terror.”
Jameson, Postmodernism Or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism
1991: 4-5
Dear Legitimate Commenters
To help me in my War Against Terrorspam, could you please refrain from using the following words in your comments from now on:
credit
mortgage
xanax
bumfuck
loan
pussy
porn
lesbian
donkey
wall fountain
flower
texas hold em
poker
tramadol
phentermine
download
turnip
granny
internet
pronoix
pharmacy
panda
diazepam
diet pills
pills
casino
online
And all possible variants on the above. List being updated constantly. Mouse hand going into spasms. Beginning to Wonder if This Is All Worth It.
Sincerely yours
Ann.
Just spent a few days under mellow Melbourne light with the adorable Martini. Here be the wrap:
Spooned at: The Nunnery
Stalked: Ms Fits, Julian Burnside
Drank gin based beverages with: The Duke
Drank coffee at: Degraves Street
Purchased: shoes with birds on them and a fuck-off pink birdcage umbrella
Viewed: digital storytelling at ACMI, the work of The Kingpins, a guy who looked like a platinum-blonde version of Krusty the Klown
Ate: pasta (mostly with pesto)
Celebrated: the return of vee.net to virtuality.