David Lynch, amazingly, says that he will never go back to using film. He admits that film looks better than digital but insists that the highest importance should be placed on the capturing of ideas, for which a giving in to rhythm is required. Digital cameras, he says, allow the director to, first of all, shoot with a minimum amount of people and therefore allow connections to manifest themselves that would not do so in a busier environment and, secondly, to shoot long takes without interruption and allowing one to mess things up without worrying, to talk to the actors while filming, and therefore capture any ideas that might come up in the moment.
My love, still, for all things smacking of Blanchot, nearly forces me to agree with him. However, just as profoundly I carry a strong mistrust of all allusions to immediacy, particularly from artists. Yet Lynch can’t be dismissed as a mere artistic romantic just as the lovers of film cannot be branded mere nostalgic purists. Lynch recognises the beauty of film, but he is willing to sacrifice it. Has he lost something, though? Is it just a coincidence that Inland Empire is my least favourite Lynch movie? It does feel to me as though Lynch had lost some focus with that film rather than gained it through the uninterrupted technique of shooting in DV. He is too free. He needs restraint if he is to produce something truly great again.
Friday 24 December 2010
Monday 12 July 2010
19.6.10
- I had a very interesting walk home last weekend after Road to Rimini; let’s see if I can remember it. I took a pill that didn’t quite get the chance to spend itself in a positive manner, and so, as is often the case in these instances, triggered an unpleasant and somewhat schizophrenic trail of thought in my head, albeit a highly lucid one, which is almost always the case. In fact, I find the lucidity of my thinking when taking pills overwhelming, and perhaps it is this that is partially responsible for what we term a ‘comedown’. Some say, of course, that the drugs are to blame for my experience, but that is a gross over-simplification and misunderstanding of the experience.
It’s very important that we understand, first of all, that it is a mistake to divide this experience into independent factors such as ‘the drug’ and ‘the individual’. What occurs at such an intensification of self-reflective thinking is not made up of separate factors, but is in fact one experience, and whatever factors might be said to be present in the experience operate together and off the back of one another. The pill does not trigger an effect that is in some way contained within the pill and operates on the subject. Rather, the process that can be observed during the experience is one which is always already occuring within the subject as an inextricable part of the very fact of being a subject, or of the process of subject-formation, which is in itself a never ending process, but a continual process of layering, holding together, and breaking up of multitudes. There is always, at the same time as - and as part of – the will to stability, also present an undermining process of disintegration. This process, we understand from Nietzsche, Deleuze, and many other thinkers, must not be seen as a negativity, but as a crucial drive in a healthy psyche. Any identity can only maintain itself as identity, paradoxically, precisely through its capacity for disintegration and reorganisation. Too strong a tipping of the balance in the direction of this drive, however, can be dangerous, and it is perhaps true that only certain souls are fortunate to be strong enough to withstand such trials (although I’m wary of siding with Nietzsche’s opinion that these characters are in some way ‘stronger’ or higher individuals, or rather, some people’s interpretation of Nietzsche to this effect. One must ask ‘stronger for what?’ But we shan’t dwell on this point here). What occurs during the comedown is one experiencing the removal of the defence mechanisms that occult from view the fact of drives balancing off one another, and are exposed to the lie that is our life (this experience is necessary for one to learn the secrets of acting). Walking past a group of lads I heard one of them talking about Jermaine Defoe. Defoe, of course! England had played that evening the opening match of their world cup campaign and got off to a demoralising and disillusioning performance, drawing 1-1 with the U.S. Months and months, nearly two years of the most meticulous preparations, both mental and physical; the expectations of millions and the instilling of self-belief, cultivating an unshakeable faith, a strength, the strength to believe that they are, in fact, world class players capable of the ultimate feat in football – winning the world cup. All of these beliefs explode in one night of doubt. A few minutes where things don’t go their way during the game might trigger a chain reaction of self-doubt: “what if we lose this game? What if we fail to achieve our goals? What if we’re not good enough, not as good as what we’ve led everyone to believe?” And suddenly they find that they can’t answer those questions other than by forcing themselves to believe them, which they no longer can. How will they recover the belief in their stability and unshakeability? How do you do this once you’ve been exposed to the fragility of quotidian efforts for sanity? This is a call of conscience. I believe that most players might experience an instance of anxiety, in a Heideggerian sense, and hear the call of conscience, yet the majority must overcome this precisely by ignoring the call and reassemble their strength again around their identity as per its role within the sport of football. It must be this ability, after all, that makes them champions and others losers. They sacrifice a certain questionning in favour of social achievements, and I don’t intend this as a criticism. There is something awe-inspiringly impressive and strong about this, but it is a strength driven by fear – fear of disintegration – a fear of death. I wish to desire a stronger, truer strength. I wish to know what desiring that strength feels like. I wish to know what that strength is so that I may even begin to desire it. What would this strength be, this strength born from the embracing of death?
I kept walking past towering buildings in the sobering light of dawn that seemed to reflect the gradual awakening of my soul, its attention pointed towards its own frailty. A new Generator Studios building, not even finished yet, the product of Labour investment in this area and of so much waste. What will become of this building now that we have a Conservative government? What will happen to this city? It will be opened up to the folly of its own existence, the façade that Labour had managed to put up here for such a long time, the image of sustainable prosperity.
It’s very important that we understand, first of all, that it is a mistake to divide this experience into independent factors such as ‘the drug’ and ‘the individual’. What occurs at such an intensification of self-reflective thinking is not made up of separate factors, but is in fact one experience, and whatever factors might be said to be present in the experience operate together and off the back of one another. The pill does not trigger an effect that is in some way contained within the pill and operates on the subject. Rather, the process that can be observed during the experience is one which is always already occuring within the subject as an inextricable part of the very fact of being a subject, or of the process of subject-formation, which is in itself a never ending process, but a continual process of layering, holding together, and breaking up of multitudes. There is always, at the same time as - and as part of – the will to stability, also present an undermining process of disintegration. This process, we understand from Nietzsche, Deleuze, and many other thinkers, must not be seen as a negativity, but as a crucial drive in a healthy psyche. Any identity can only maintain itself as identity, paradoxically, precisely through its capacity for disintegration and reorganisation. Too strong a tipping of the balance in the direction of this drive, however, can be dangerous, and it is perhaps true that only certain souls are fortunate to be strong enough to withstand such trials (although I’m wary of siding with Nietzsche’s opinion that these characters are in some way ‘stronger’ or higher individuals, or rather, some people’s interpretation of Nietzsche to this effect. One must ask ‘stronger for what?’ But we shan’t dwell on this point here). What occurs during the comedown is one experiencing the removal of the defence mechanisms that occult from view the fact of drives balancing off one another, and are exposed to the lie that is our life (this experience is necessary for one to learn the secrets of acting). Walking past a group of lads I heard one of them talking about Jermaine Defoe. Defoe, of course! England had played that evening the opening match of their world cup campaign and got off to a demoralising and disillusioning performance, drawing 1-1 with the U.S. Months and months, nearly two years of the most meticulous preparations, both mental and physical; the expectations of millions and the instilling of self-belief, cultivating an unshakeable faith, a strength, the strength to believe that they are, in fact, world class players capable of the ultimate feat in football – winning the world cup. All of these beliefs explode in one night of doubt. A few minutes where things don’t go their way during the game might trigger a chain reaction of self-doubt: “what if we lose this game? What if we fail to achieve our goals? What if we’re not good enough, not as good as what we’ve led everyone to believe?” And suddenly they find that they can’t answer those questions other than by forcing themselves to believe them, which they no longer can. How will they recover the belief in their stability and unshakeability? How do you do this once you’ve been exposed to the fragility of quotidian efforts for sanity? This is a call of conscience. I believe that most players might experience an instance of anxiety, in a Heideggerian sense, and hear the call of conscience, yet the majority must overcome this precisely by ignoring the call and reassemble their strength again around their identity as per its role within the sport of football. It must be this ability, after all, that makes them champions and others losers. They sacrifice a certain questionning in favour of social achievements, and I don’t intend this as a criticism. There is something awe-inspiringly impressive and strong about this, but it is a strength driven by fear – fear of disintegration – a fear of death. I wish to desire a stronger, truer strength. I wish to know what desiring that strength feels like. I wish to know what that strength is so that I may even begin to desire it. What would this strength be, this strength born from the embracing of death?
I kept walking past towering buildings in the sobering light of dawn that seemed to reflect the gradual awakening of my soul, its attention pointed towards its own frailty. A new Generator Studios building, not even finished yet, the product of Labour investment in this area and of so much waste. What will become of this building now that we have a Conservative government? What will happen to this city? It will be opened up to the folly of its own existence, the façade that Labour had managed to put up here for such a long time, the image of sustainable prosperity.
Tuesday 6 April 2010
Nietzsche, "Beyond Good and Evil", 261
“Among the things which a noble human being perhaps finds hardest to understand is vanity: he will be tempted to deny its existence where a different type of human being will thing it palpably evident. For him the problem is to imagine creatures who try to awaken a good opinion of themselves which they themselves do not hold – and thus do not ‘deserve’ either – and yet subsequently come to believe this good opinion themselves. This seems to him in part so tasteless and lacking in self-respect and in part so baroquely irrational that he would prefer to consider vanity exceptional and in most cases where it is spoken of he doubts its existence…. The vain man takes pleasure in every good opinion he hears about himself (quite apart from any point of view of utility and likewise regardless of truth or falsehood), just as he suffers from every bad opinion: for he submits to both, he feels subject to them from that oldest instinct of subjection which breaks out in him. – It is ‘the slave# in the vain man’s blood, a remnant of the craftiness of the slave – and how much ‘slave’ still remains I woman, for example! – which seeks to seduce him to good opinions about himself; it is likewise the slave who immediately afterwards falls down before these opinions as if he himself had not called them forth. – And to say it again: vanity is an atavism.”
Monday 1 March 2010
11.6.08
- What? What the fuck is life about?! The kind of thoughts that go through my head, I can’t make any sense of them. I feel stuffed after my dinner, and I feel my bloated belly and think about my dad; I think about his slight stature, his bald scalp and his droopy belly. What kind of physique did he have when he was my age? Am I doing well compared to him? I’d like to be fitter than he is when I’m his age. It’s hard to get fit though; I’m not a naturally athletic guy. Or at least, I didn’t have the right habits instilled in me to be more athletic and have more of a tendency towards it. Because potential, that may be in almost anyone, but potential means nothing without the right habits, and without the desire and dedication to achieve something. But first habits, mostly habits.
I think about my dad, and how he didn’t instil the right habits in me. And why not? Because he didn’t have those habits himself, and it seemed he never learnt their importance, or if he did, then he never managed to instil them in himself. Was it a question of strength? Was my dad just not strong enough to overcome himself? Would I be strong enough to overcome myself? Oh, but that’s surely not all it comes down to. To say that a man is or is not strong enough to overcome himself – is that not to answer the question with its own presuppositions? If we say a man is strong enough to change himself, then we are not talking about true overcoming, but about a gift he’d been endowed with by nature. Overcoming always appeared to me to consist of cultivating strength in oneself. How, then, may we ask whether a man can be strong enough to make himself strong? How are we to even phrase the question? Where are we to find this strength that precedes strength?
Then I think about my future children. Do I have the right habits to instil in them? God, no, I’m a mess. What kind of person thinks they’re ready to have kids? People who don’t feel any trepidation about the possibility of offspring horrify me; to become a parent is to be guilty of the greatest arrogance, and the greatest harm towards one’s children. Our original sin was against our Father, when we ate from the tree of knowledge. But we commit another original sin, an original sin against our children the moment we bring them to life; did not God himself commit the original sin when he planted the tree’s seed in the ground?
To return to your question, no, I do not have what it takes to be a good parent. When will I get there? Have I not been striving for this my whole life? To reach that point where I can finally say – I am fine, I am complete, I don’t need to change anymore. But that point will never come, and I’ve accepted it long ago; so why can’t I just live with it? Why do I keep racking my brains about what it is I’m doing with my life? My life, my life; what does it come down to? Philosophy is great, but sometimes I wonder if my life goes beyond these kinds of meaningless, sporadic thoughts, these little niggling anxieties and uncertainties that go almost unnoticed through my mind in never-ending loops, unable to break out of their own vicious cycles; breakthroughs come when these cycles exhaust and spend themselves. And I wonder if my preoccupation with philosophy doesn’t miss the point sometimes? Is there not something behind philosophical questions which is obscured by those very questions? Does my life not consist in precisely those little anxieties and niggling uncertainties, regrets and accusations, that are so common-place we do not even bother to consign them to our memory? I will sooner remember a trip to the local corner shop than give a second thought to the thought I had about my dad earlier.
If this was a story, a ‘proper’ narrative, would I not be recounting to you my trip to the shop, how I bought a pack of tobacco and the huge Asian man behind the till who looked ready to crush me for interrupting while a game of football was being shown on television? Some people call this kind of story ‘stories about nothing’, and tell us that those stories are about real life, as though the role of literature was to be as true to real life as possible, and as though life could be ascertained or pinned down to one quality or tendency, as though is was the tendency of life? So is life about nothing? It seems to me that this nothing, even in the most banal and repetitive of daily tasks, is a loud, noisy grind, an endless stream of thoughts and struggles, always taking form, shaping up, looking like culminating, but always disappointing, always failing.
So what is potential? Potential is nothing without actualisation. Potential can only be claimed in retrospect, after one has exerted one’s potential.
I think about my dad, and how he didn’t instil the right habits in me. And why not? Because he didn’t have those habits himself, and it seemed he never learnt their importance, or if he did, then he never managed to instil them in himself. Was it a question of strength? Was my dad just not strong enough to overcome himself? Would I be strong enough to overcome myself? Oh, but that’s surely not all it comes down to. To say that a man is or is not strong enough to overcome himself – is that not to answer the question with its own presuppositions? If we say a man is strong enough to change himself, then we are not talking about true overcoming, but about a gift he’d been endowed with by nature. Overcoming always appeared to me to consist of cultivating strength in oneself. How, then, may we ask whether a man can be strong enough to make himself strong? How are we to even phrase the question? Where are we to find this strength that precedes strength?
Then I think about my future children. Do I have the right habits to instil in them? God, no, I’m a mess. What kind of person thinks they’re ready to have kids? People who don’t feel any trepidation about the possibility of offspring horrify me; to become a parent is to be guilty of the greatest arrogance, and the greatest harm towards one’s children. Our original sin was against our Father, when we ate from the tree of knowledge. But we commit another original sin, an original sin against our children the moment we bring them to life; did not God himself commit the original sin when he planted the tree’s seed in the ground?
To return to your question, no, I do not have what it takes to be a good parent. When will I get there? Have I not been striving for this my whole life? To reach that point where I can finally say – I am fine, I am complete, I don’t need to change anymore. But that point will never come, and I’ve accepted it long ago; so why can’t I just live with it? Why do I keep racking my brains about what it is I’m doing with my life? My life, my life; what does it come down to? Philosophy is great, but sometimes I wonder if my life goes beyond these kinds of meaningless, sporadic thoughts, these little niggling anxieties and uncertainties that go almost unnoticed through my mind in never-ending loops, unable to break out of their own vicious cycles; breakthroughs come when these cycles exhaust and spend themselves. And I wonder if my preoccupation with philosophy doesn’t miss the point sometimes? Is there not something behind philosophical questions which is obscured by those very questions? Does my life not consist in precisely those little anxieties and niggling uncertainties, regrets and accusations, that are so common-place we do not even bother to consign them to our memory? I will sooner remember a trip to the local corner shop than give a second thought to the thought I had about my dad earlier.
If this was a story, a ‘proper’ narrative, would I not be recounting to you my trip to the shop, how I bought a pack of tobacco and the huge Asian man behind the till who looked ready to crush me for interrupting while a game of football was being shown on television? Some people call this kind of story ‘stories about nothing’, and tell us that those stories are about real life, as though the role of literature was to be as true to real life as possible, and as though life could be ascertained or pinned down to one quality or tendency, as though is was the tendency of life? So is life about nothing? It seems to me that this nothing, even in the most banal and repetitive of daily tasks, is a loud, noisy grind, an endless stream of thoughts and struggles, always taking form, shaping up, looking like culminating, but always disappointing, always failing.
So what is potential? Potential is nothing without actualisation. Potential can only be claimed in retrospect, after one has exerted one’s potential.
Friday 26 February 2010
Being-Towards-Death
I see why so many people stick with 9 to 5 jobs – it’s the easiest thing in the world. Running your own life, your own career and trying to direct your own productivity is crippling and takes much trial and error. There are so many possibilities at any given moment that one loses sight of any clear future (and therefore any clear present) and becomes paralysed with the weight of abundant choice. I don’t know what I should be doing, I don’t know where I want to go, and I also don’t know when to just give myself a break, when to say to myself “You’ve worked enough, now rest”, and therefore I just burn myself out.
A person in a 9 to 5 job doesn’t have to worry about the future, about where they wish to steer it – they allow it to come to them. No, not even that. They drag it alongside their present, limply and straight ahead, almost hovering forward through space in undisturbed inertia (Wait, this is pure Heidegger, isn’t it? An authentic Dasein, in that case, would be one that opened its own future possibilities, even without knowing what it is that’s being opened. There is a link here between Heidegger and Deleuze).
They go to their jobs, work their hours, have their breaks, and when the day is done they are left with a few entertainment-designated hours – time in which they are free to forget about work completely. They can actually enjoy their free time, because it is truly freed by dint of the structured sacrifice of the rest of their time to work.
Herzog’s films are full of individuals who live truly solitary lives. Why is it that whenever I think about my life in terms of qualitative worth I think about its benefit to others? Why does something in me instinctively berate some weirdo who’s dedicated his life to living on the edge of the Sahara desert and study an elusive species of lizard for not taking an interest in the world? After all, perhaps in doing so he takes more interest in life. If life isn’t actually about or for anything, then what harm is there in exploring its oddest, most unusual, and even seemingly inconsequential paths? It is the sick, Judaeo-Christian gregarious instinct in me that reacts to this refuser of common sense.
A person in a 9 to 5 job doesn’t have to worry about the future, about where they wish to steer it – they allow it to come to them. No, not even that. They drag it alongside their present, limply and straight ahead, almost hovering forward through space in undisturbed inertia (Wait, this is pure Heidegger, isn’t it? An authentic Dasein, in that case, would be one that opened its own future possibilities, even without knowing what it is that’s being opened. There is a link here between Heidegger and Deleuze).
They go to their jobs, work their hours, have their breaks, and when the day is done they are left with a few entertainment-designated hours – time in which they are free to forget about work completely. They can actually enjoy their free time, because it is truly freed by dint of the structured sacrifice of the rest of their time to work.
Herzog’s films are full of individuals who live truly solitary lives. Why is it that whenever I think about my life in terms of qualitative worth I think about its benefit to others? Why does something in me instinctively berate some weirdo who’s dedicated his life to living on the edge of the Sahara desert and study an elusive species of lizard for not taking an interest in the world? After all, perhaps in doing so he takes more interest in life. If life isn’t actually about or for anything, then what harm is there in exploring its oddest, most unusual, and even seemingly inconsequential paths? It is the sick, Judaeo-Christian gregarious instinct in me that reacts to this refuser of common sense.
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