Images Work

A comment I made to my friend Oppermann in a telephone call last night: "Yes, but you realize that we have in fact worked on something together." And this makes a moment of a shared weekend of experiences all the more important: we have worked on our images. We have worked on images, yes indeed with an aspect of nostalgia and incest, in the images of Arcadia. We have also worked on what was compelling in those images: the sulphrous element of compulsion that might be identified in the way adolescence smoldered. Of course such an element is now a warming fire, now a raging inferno, and one ought to be careful playing with such an element.

But we were not merely playing, this is not play that has no intent or meaning: the effort here is to attempt to bring some closure to the discussion of 20 years, and to open up the next 20 years of discourse. As we know "20 years" is often our expression for a condemnation, a sentencing: but all sentences have their finitude and their singularity, even if there is no singularity that can withstand the tug and pull of eternity, that same eternity that turn's anyone's voice as cold as ice, because it is the chemical rending in the furnace.

But somehow the playing with images here has blackened me in a pleasing manner, patina'd, deepened, charred. For what is there that is worth writing about if it is not the real immediate quality of this friend and I: I don't know if there is any other reason to go out at all into the world except to survive and make friends. The rest is all bullshit: manure and cannon fodder that we have to build on to make a better world.

I feel in a sense older with my friend, and in a meaningful way closer to him. I know we could say that we were "so much older then," that we are "younger than that now," to quote the words of our prophet, Bob Dylan. But I would say that we are both older and younger: we may be growing younger towards our images: younger, increasingly open. We may be older if older means that the threshold of consciousness has grown worn with age and the passage and tread of so many feet, that our lives are not some stark bare newness, but places where many have dwellt and many will continue to dwell: large women and screaming babes, steppenwolves, yes, and many others, wanderers, vagrants, immigrants, medicine men, accountants, saints, promoters, academics even.... the list goes on with the expansiveness of the dwelling in time not in mere physical space. The dwelling abides.

I may even more carefully say that we are growing "younger towards death," as the poet David Whyte might say, knowing such words are precarious without real circumspection, knowing that they are words of courage, telling us to be not afraid of fear or age. So for all we can say about the, yes, indeed, hopeless technological condition of the web log, the images thank us for this intensive dialogical work. I believe they thank us, I believe they really do, by virtue of a certain sense of gladness in my soul.

I kept thinking on my morning walk about the idea of opening a kitchen. I wanted to open a "soul kitchen" underneath which I would write the words "If you don't like the heat, get out of the kitchen!" I was thinking of a man I regard as being a really stupid fellow, who had said that he was once a psychotherapist, but then he switched careers because all that is required is definitely easy to burn out on; he told Deborah to be prepared if I needed to switch careers. I took umbridge at his smugness. I kept thinking, "Get out of the kitchen if you don't like the heat!"

In this reverie of a dream kitchen we (Deborah and I) would sell both soul food and vegitarian, and we would have a front counter where we would sell small golden birds and hearts. I dream to myself that Oppermann would visit this kitchen: and he would sit in a rustic wooden chair on the Northern California coast and look out at the sunlight on the not too distant oaks or pine trees, and we would pass yet another day in conversation.

Once Again, the Dude... Definitively

"The dude abides": the collision of Oppermann's consciousness with a tribute to a lack of success. The paralyzing humor of abandoning all cliche: the confrontation with meaning.

"Smokey, you mark that frame in 8, you're entering a world of pain!!"

Oppermann even had a dream where he was speaking with this other German fellow about the Dude in German: der Geck! There is hope for some region of translation here across the atlantic. Maybe there is some possible export of American culture possible in the image of a man... well, sometimes there is this man. And this is how I must begin with Sam Elliot's monologue:


"Now this here story I'm about to unfold took place in the early '90s - just about the time of our conflict with Sad'm and the I-raqis. I only mention it because sometimes there's a man... I won't say a hero, 'cause, what's a hero? Sometimes, there's a man. And I'm talkin' about the Dude here - the Dude from Los Angeles. Sometimes, there's a man, well, he's the man for his time and place. He fits right in there. And that's the Dude. The Dude, from Los Angeles. And even if he's a lazy man - and the Dude was most certainly that. Quite possibly the laziest in all of Los Angeles County, which would place him high in the runnin' for laziest worldwide. Sometimes there's a man, sometimes, there's a man. Well, I lost my train of thought here. But... aw, hell. I've done introduced it enough."

Nothing could be more patently "busted" than the first Iraqui war. We came out it with images of American G.I.'s looting Iraqi bunkers full of Kuwaiti loot. And this is where we get the first voiceover of the first version of George bush, the wimp who would push the pencils or the pens but would just as soon drop the bomb on you as stare at you cross-eyed another moment. And he wouldn't think nothin' on it. It was just business.

"This aggression will not stand!"

Famous words, perhaps the most famous words of president George Bush the first of our country. A single term. Looking back on the rather ugly play of Clinton into Bush the II I would be tempted to wonder if it would not have been better to have given him a successful guy, a second term would have really given us a taste of exactly what sort of a fellow this first Bush was. I could only hope that that would have meant we would not have had the second installment of Bush.

Now I apologize for this commentary into the contemporary political realm of the United States. But it is part of this political commentary that has driven Oppermann of the last 16 to 20 years, from the days immediately Post-Arcadia all the way until the present.

The situation of The Big Lebowski takes place during the reign of the first George Bush during the first Iraqi expedition. Oppermann was in Harvard dealing with idiots that actually believe in what Leo Strauss said. These are not the friendly sort of idiots, no, these were the heart of the neo-conservative strand of ideology for the current machine of the American Empire. These idiots were not nice idiots. We could say that Oppermann had the opportunity during this period to watch the really dangerous people who bought the neo-conservative ideology to actually ascend to the first stages of power. By the time they have reached our age they are the young but mature administrators of the power in the executive branch of government (a legitimate candidate for major public office is about 10 to 15 years ahead of Oppermann and myself).

Jeff Lebowski, the Dude, is a forty-something. This is an important comment because both Oppermann and I are not yet forty. The Dude's mythos happens to a fully mature middle aged man, not quite at the threshold of late middle age, nor at the level of Bush the first who was probably entering into late age in his presidency (just as Regan before him had always been in the late age of his life, and even into senility). Well all this happens to the Dude, who is middle aged, and it is not certain if he is the age of Joel and Ethan Cohen or not.

The Dude stands at the current Zenith of a man's power, and very much like Ulrich from Robert Musil's "Man Without Qualities," he has little or nothing to show for it. He made a couple of screenplays with about six other guys: he actually tries to impress Maude Lebowski with his history of being some kind of a "writer!" Now that is really the height of the pathetic, man.

The Dude's range of affect is very important here: the Dude operates by stealth as a kind of mood ninja who travels the entire galaxy of emotion, almost with a single word: "Fuck."

The mood of the Dude is never indifferent: even when he says to "The Stranger," "I don't know what the fuck you're talking about!" It is coming from his rebellious teenager side, lashed out in full force at the one man who seems to actually "get" the Dude in the entire movie, at least Sam Elliot is in his corner, and that is everything a good old cowboy could be: right down to the song of the coyotes in Werner Herzog's "Grizzly Man." Did you notice the striking resemblance between Sam Elliot and the gentleman who is the airplane pilot in Alaska: the one who sings the song about:

"The only darn thing that's left
Is those darned old cay-yotes and me." (Bob McDill/Richard Thompson)

Well this little wimp of a man was the head of the CIA and God knows what else. Whatever you do, you don't fuck with George Bush, older or younger, because in his wry way he will get you and have your nads.

One could say that these humorless U.S. presidents can be known best for their lack of humor.

Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus: Chapter X (fin)

(Ayres photographed by his partner Deborah May 3rd 2008 at the studio of S. Brown discussing the issue of light in painting)


As a matter of (or perhaps "in light of") dealing with the fact that we are going to hell for writing this sort of thing: each for our own interest, I thought that this little passage from Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus would be excellent: I will remind you that you sent this book during a period of writing a dissertation on research, where I stated that the best thing you could hope for research is that you are in some manner going to hell (the example of Dimitri from Brothers Karamazov, the example of Dante from La Commedia Divina, and the example of anyone from Robert Musil's "Mensch ohne Eigenshaften"):

We kept looking for additional references and found them everywhere: Murakami's wind up bird, constituted a whole unpublished chapter, and my phenomenological comparison of Augustine and Rousseau (please remember that you Oppermann are very much like Augustine: you "set them idiots straight!" and so does Augustine stand in his dream on a "rule" with his mother Monica. But I have already spoken about the problem of walking with your mother and having the insight about that woman you see approaching: "I knew that very moment she meant to do me harm:" This is the Tom Paine formula as the Lord of Music would say. The question with this woman who means to do you harm and the formula of the small animal of your body is another mephistophelean question that I am asking here: in other words you are screwed either way, it's another 20 years for you):

"Aescetic, Kretschmar would say," he answered, "the ascetic cooling off. In that Father Beissel was very genuine. Music always does penance in advance for her retreat into the sensual. The old Dutchmen make her do the rummest sort of tricks, to the glory of God; and it went harder and harder on her from all one hears, with no sense appeal, excogitated by pure calculation. But then they had these penitential practices sung, delivered over the sounding breath of the human voice, which is certainly the most stable-warm imaginable thing in the world of sound..."
"You think so?"
"Why not? No unorganic instrumental sound can be compared with it. Abstract it may be, the human voice - the abstract human being, if you like. But that is a kind of abstraction more like that of the naked body - it is after all more a pudendum." I was silent, confounded. My thoughts took me far back in our, in his past.
"There you have it," said he, "your music." I was annoyed at the way he put it, it sounded like shoving music off on me. as though it were more my affair than his. "There you have the whole thing, she was always like that. Her strictness, or whatever you liek to call the moralism of her form. must stand for an excuse for the ravishments of her actual sounds."
For a moment I felt myself the older, more mature.
"A gift of life like music," I responded, "not to say a gift of God, one ought not to explain by mocking antinomies, which only bear witness to the fullness of her nature. One must love her."
"Do you consider love the strongest emotion?" he asked.
"Do you know a stronger?"
"Yes, interest."
"By which you presumably mean a love from which the animal warmth has been withdrawn."
"Let us agree on the definition!" he laughed. "Good night!"
We had got back to the Leverkühn house, and he opened his door.

(Dore's Black Prussian Eagle is perhaps a little too heavy handed in this context: the black eagle may be seen however as a precursor of the phoenix itself: the blackening being an important counterpoint: its dire solicitation without succor makes the dangerous moment when the bird enters the flames and nears death, or death's lack of mystery: the phoenix behind the black eagle presumably is the universal medicine, but again Hölderlin warns correctly in Patmos: "Wo aber Gefahr ist das Rettende auch." And perhaps this line is too easily spoken, so that it forgets its own danger. I will wait a little longer, that is all)

(An irritating national symbol, predatory nationalism is its gross threat, my own patina added to some degree of success, however it's blackness is not to be under-rated)

You should accept this as your rebuke for lavishing only interest in the music of Bach. You may be right though: I believe that Bach leaves place for the fragile animal fragments of the human soul, as well as marching in the direction of the spiritual. But these barely passable pop songs: you might do well to review the first meeting between Hermine and Harry Haller in Steppenwolf: at the "Black Eagle:" Here we see the blackened eagle as opposed to the golden music of Bach or perhaps its transparent luminosity... the black eagle still soars heavenward, seeking out of its poor substance something: perhaps a place where it bursts into blood and feathers in the midst of a turbulent cloud filled evening sky.

(This image came from the 26th of January or thereabouts.)

I believe that the substance of any attempt to create a great work is that one is going to hell. We might also point to Thomas Bernhard's "Beton/Concrete" as bringing up the issue of "concrete relationship" (as well as Hegel, Marx and the history of western philosophy, and then we would really be going to hell). The problem here, with this kind of text, which to me is tremendously compelling, the one I am forced to write here: that it always takes the Faustian initiative and does the deed with the devil. One can only hope that this form of text writing is some manner more conscious of the devil in the text than say George Bush and Tony Blair signing some stupid arms accord. There they are signing a treaty so that everyone can go to the devil, and the devil is glad because --- he never gets talked about.)

Now I do not know which one of us, Oppermann or I, would best qualify as a Leverkühn, or which of us qualifies as his feeverishly writing friend: who is implicated by his own feeverish fascination to document and contemplate the whole affair: everyone gets to go to the devil, and it is only the frailest refrain of the soul that somehow still begs for the redemptions (and there must be many of them) from the kindness of God.

Or... perhaps an Oppermann or just an Ayres?

Listening to Variation XV Canone Alla Quinta: Andante A 1 Clavi from the 1955 Goldberg Variations by Bach as interpreted by Glenn Gould....

There is always this

Confronted of course with the option of abandoning the small animal of the body, and thus one's soul and prospects for any redemption. I consider these endless web-logs as a potentially mephistophelean exchange: I will give up my best friend so that I may write about him in a web log, and make of this relationship a perfect work of art. He may have made the same bargain on his side: but what is this not but another setting forth? Well we all have to set forth for another 20 years or so, and then take another 20 years or so getting back. And when we get back there, wherever it is, we found of course that life has changed us, that we are something else, and that is no big news in some way: but this is what 20 years does: it changes us.

So I go on writing web-logs. In part because it is the only thing I can do. And with each keystroke I lose the animal of my old friend, and perhaps I gain some fragment of a spirit that will last forever, but what is a spirit, my friend, but a ghost, and what are ghosts for the living. Live well my friend, and don't be a ghost whatever you do.