The Line from Leonard Cohen keeps moving through my mind: "I have seen the future and it is murder" The question is of how to deal with it all with some kind of willingness to love.
The following image was taken from the web athttp://www.internetvibes.net/gallery/old-soviet-cars-cemetery/
The image has a certain portion of it that is too "lanky"
And involves too much of the bloody mess
But the essence is really in the comparison of the female
And the tremendous patina on the soviet "junkyard" of cars
The following is an electronic correspondence of a conversation between Oppermann and me:
Thank you Oppermann. I added some additional lines to the most recent web log about Kiarostami's "Taste of Cherry": I was thinking about the ominous quality of the lines:
"I think I would now be disinclined to have my evening disturbed, so I probably won't answer the phone when it rings. Nor check my e-mail. Let the snow envelope all techne: τέχνη--
What you have responded to in words here is fairly complex:
your sense of the american dream of possibility seems denied by time itself, and by what patina adds to time and its event (and thus what no-longer is, in america, which has not been allowed to grow old). this is lost in the american consideration of the capitalist avantgarde and its bulging productivity.
The question of time I feel taken aback by, and rather unprepared for? What is time?
The thought is complex here:
1) has america in some manner been denied the possibility of becomming older by some sord of "bigger, faster, stronger, newer," fascist mentality that sweeps "oldness" away?
2) Would becomming older mean that one actually has dreams?
3) Does Europe have any dreams/"possibility" in its old-ness? Or is culture and society very rigid: does it take a great deal to ascend through the eschelons of status and power: most find themselves living in the same old rut of a dream, prevented from ascending or liberating from that dream...? People speak of the social structure of Europe as rigid/strangling... but maybe they are just social "climbers" and don't know how to just sit and allow/let/be on a single rung..,.
4) Is there part of a patina that actually would have more "possibility" than newer, flashier, and more optimistic? As a rule yes. But one could either hurtle into the future and see if "high fidelity" ultimately must unite with the "patina": this is the hope of technology and representation: that it will be capable of being both new and allowing the patina as well in its elegant and perfect decay: "Wabi-sabi" is a condition that acknowledges not only impermanence but imperfection: things must be patina'd to become complete, not just technically perfect. The example of the cracked cup that has had its fissure lined with gold becomes exquisite. Anyway, technology and representation are working toward wabi-sabi. It is the only way something can become truly beautiful.
5) would it be acceptable to you if I include this discussion in a web log: (without email addresses)?
6) no questions about paideia: your terms seem to all check out.
Gracias,
Ayres
Oppermann's response proceeds as follows:
well, as for time, please refer to ayres' essay on time. he (ayres) is, after all, the second-greatest living thinker.
one can always infer kiarostami's presence in this discourse, whatever the discourse may be. i still want more soviet cars!
concerning your questions, my first impulse is to defer them, and perhaps work through some of them in a future discussion of goethe. i feel inclined to defer everything profound to 2009 or so, not because george bush may be out of office then (my fear is that even then, things will get worse, because - as vasko popa says, the real dark has not come yet) but because i might no longer be so enmeshed in this weird decay of american discourse and reality that i felt so strongly once again this afternoon while spending an hour on some errands in the university district.
i will say, in relation to your questions, that america must be understood in terms of its addiction to Kapital only. thus the american decay is itself a kind of decay of Kapital into itself, its rendering as plastic world. this is neither a new thought, nor particularly interesting in itself. it has nothing to do with fascism which is foreign to the american experience. it must be emphasized that the problem with america is not political, or not primarily political (i remain fundamentally heideggerian there). one's response to american Kapitalism cannot be emotional (which is the case when the word "fascism" is even mentioned) because Kapital has already absorbed the emotion. there is no response to Kapital, other than refusal. but in refusing, the refuse itself becomes accumulated, and that is the problem. for more on this, simply read the poems of bukowski who understood this extremely well.
becoming older is what Kapital fears. this is because Kapital promises the eternally new. we can rebel with patina, but we must be aware that patina is also refuse, and we will thus become more depressed. not to be depressed is to be beholden to the terror, and being a terrorist on top of it. optimism is terrorism. i am saying nothing new here.
my fear is that kiarostami has not yet worked through the problem of a certain kind of optimism, as an alternative to "hollywood" (which is Kapital). i do not share the technological image of the future, but on that we must defer the discussion as well. if we must choose between technological freedom and sentimentalist enslavement to history, i personally choose the latter. this must itself be understood in terms of one's own patina, just as it must be understood in terms of one's own dreams. "freedom" as it exists in the context of Kapitalist discourse is itself a black dog.
you can take this as a post card and put it on your blog.
please understand that i am still in the middle of an enormous workload, and will be for the rest of the week.
more later,
J
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