Cetaceus

I’m moving this here: http://cetaceus.wordpress.com/

I don’t want to pay for the hosting anymore, so adjust accordingly.

The trace is everywhere. I see it now and see it clearly. It’s the amp that sits in my fireplace right now, it’s the towel I put in the laundry today. Indeed, I’ve always seen it, I just didn’t know what to call it. The photo of the cat on my computer desktop is the trace of a trace. The word and the concept are beautiful, and they work to describe what it is they are meant to in the most effective way possible. Thanks Levinas, I guess I owe you one.

At some point in the coming weeks I am going to move this blog elsewhere, probably just over to a regular wordpress blog, spend some time re-organizing it, and probably re-posting some old travel writings, now long out of sync.

There are, in fact, none. I haven’t updated in a while, but other than finding myself on the other side of 30 today, school work has kept me too busy to breath, let alone reflect on anything. Something interesting will happen soon, however, to be sure. In the meantime, I recommend “Ghosts of the Great Highway” to you, again and again.

It was, last night, right in the midst of the man’s talk that I realized, pondering over my own life up until this point and the looming moment ahead of me, what exactly is meant by the concept of the trace.

One of the really important differences between living somewhere completely new — I mean this as a technical term: specifically, where all of your friendships and relationships are new — and living some place for 10 years or your whole life or where there are people you’ve known for those amounts of time, is that when you live somewhere completely new, and something important happens, there is no one around to talk to about it. I don’t mean “no one” in the literal sense, I mean no one who, by virtue of having known you for so long, will “get it.” This is the difference, or at least one of them.

PS: I say this because the importance of yesterday is nothing that anyone in this part of the world can possibly understand.

The conversation went something like this:

“And so, what do you do?”

“I’m an artist.”

“…Right, this is __, everyone here is an ‘artist;’ the question is what do you do, how do you feed yourself?”

“Well I…”

“…”

I had this dream last night that I just remembered. I was in someone’s living room in San Francisco, and one of them was there with me. Actually, we were sitting on the couch together, across from another couch full of a number of people. There were also people standing up, it was some kind of small party, and whoever owned the house was there among them. Then, who pulls up–in the gold Lamborghini her dad had bought for her mom–but the other one. She comes in, and there we all are, this random group of people, me, and the two of them, there in one room, at the same place, at the same time, being really nice to one another. These people have never met, so that was bizarre enough, but I took the image of the two of them smilingly, though of course warily, introducing themselves to one another to mean something about what I should do, some action my subconscious is telling my I should take. Whether or not I should listen to it is another question entirely, but that aside the image was extremely striking, and even more weird. The gold Lamborghini really made me laugh, but seeing those two together, same place, same time, all smiles, it was nothing short of bizarre. It may also be a message that I should be slightly less serious about certain things. Those two in a room together, introducing themselves, and being extremely friendly: I’m not too into moralism, but I could only take it as a message, nothing less than some kind of self-instruction.

Here are two things I don’t believe in, as I just told Ben:

1. That the phrase “the right thing” in the sense of “doing the right thing” means anything, or isn’t completely empty. I do believe this: that there is no such thing as “the right thing” that one can do.

2. That anything ever happens to anyone according to the strict adherence to the rules of some system. More specifically, the concept of “merit” in the sense of “meritocracy” is either also empty, or its true nature is deceptive. You will never get anything or anywhere by “playing by the rules” and “doing things the right way.” I don’t simply mean that you’ll just end up “ok,” “satisfactory” or in some good but not extraordinary position; I don’t mean that you have to “go the extra mile” in order to be “really, really” (as opposed to “plain-old”) successful. I mean that if you don’t play the shadow-game that each set of rules attempts to conceal but always carries with it, you’ll get exactly nowhere at all, not even to plain-old mediocre ok. There is a subtext, hidden clauses, spectral rules and regs–often visible on the surface only as traces, and made the clearest only through given processes by which we are initiated into the “secret knowledge” of a given system by the conscious and purposive intent of others–to everything we do, every system we insert  ourselves into, every game we play. This goes for everything from collecting unemployment to getting into a PhD program to love to being the president of the world. There are no exceptions to the fact that the seemingly exterior non-rules that attend all formal or informal systems are anywhere from equally important to more important than the official line. This is what is meant by “playing the game,” and “the game,” unlike “the right thing” is absolutely real.

I spent the last couple of days in New York again, doing the visitation rounds. Happily, most of it was spent in the always excellent company of Josh, and a good deal of it with the ever-as-excellent company of Mark. I hope it never is said of me that I do not love my friends, and I hope never to give reasons for that to be said. Kate has been back from Japan for some time now and I trained out to Jersey City last night in the absolutely frigid cold and with the beginnings of the illness that completely demolished me today, to see her and catch up. I haven’t spent time in old JC since Josh and Hagar pulled stakes and landed safely in downtown Brooklyn, so it was nice to see one or two old and fleeting haunts in that town. Since the powerhouse art spaces were demolished a few years ago and Uncle Joe’s closed for good, Jersey City has kind of lost the spark that made it the exciting and promising and fun place it was 5 years ago. But, it still has its stalwarts, and just the right locals braved the cold and, when Kate and I left the Merchant and the Majestic to meet Stephan at the Golden Cicada, who was sitting at the bar but Joe D and his brother. This is not only significant because Joe and his crew are just about some of the best people (and most fucking kick-ass musicians) out there, but because precisely the same thing happened the last time I actually went to a bar in JC, two years ago with A and her insufferable brother. This time it was friends all around, but last time (at the Merchant) Joe and company allowed me to get away from the stream of inanities pouring forth from the table. I also relate to Joe because, as we discussed at length, we are kindred spirits in being, at heart and perhaps fundamentally, pissed-off, angry dudes from Jersey. When you are, for whatever reason, someone who both has a temper and is prone to loosing it no matter how hard you try, you do not, ever, meet people who understand what that’s like, let alone why it happens. That is, with the exception of other people with the same personalities. Joe and I spent a minute reviewing for each other some of our more infamous flip-outs (it’s New Years, and top-10 lists are in the air, no?). It’s nice, after all, to talk to other people who understand you, rather than just cast knee-jerk moral aspersions. Frankly, I’ve always believed that most people don’t tell others how they feel out of fear, and the encounter with people who are not afraid to let given thoughts and feelings manifest fully is, understandably, intimidating; but I digress. Brooding over the past aside, it was really good to catch up with Kate, to hear how the entire spectrum of current and former Japan friends are faring (I was going to bring a can of olives with instructions for delivery, but I thought the better of it), the various (and increasingly successful) musical projects both here and in Japan, and all of that. It was just as good to catch up with Joe about current and former musical projects, friend news that I haven’t been up on in a few years, and to just generally shoot the shit over more beers than I normally allow myself.

There are a lot of ten-year marks coming up, and I am always one to import significances into things. It’s New Years tomorrow, and I can’t help but think about where I was New Years eve 1999. But more importantly, I went to the MoMA on the 29th, and remarked to Mark and Joanna that just around the corner from where the bathrooms are, the Duchamp wheel and stool used to stand. 10 years ago: December 30, 1999, at the MoMA. I remember it because it was an amazing day I spent with Donna. Perhaps to certain people she was something of a controversial figure, but god we were all so young and fucked up back then, who can blame or really talk about any of us — especially that crew — in those days. More importantly though, our own strange and circuitous and fundamental history, the oddball points at which our lives crossed in the strangest of places: DK was always someone important, in one way or another, to my life. I remember her only fondly, and with sadness, and with friendship. I remember that day, I remember talking about Duchamp, and telling each other those stories, and New York in winter and being cold and your sister and J and all of it. And I remember how much more shit you used to give me about different girlfriends and how much, absolutely fearless, shit you used to give those people themselves. Perhaps it’s the least someone can do for someone else, right? To remember? I remember it all only with fondness, and I regret that we didn’t get a chance to catch up (god it’d been years) at Jonathan Richman — I saw you across the room, it was dark, I think you were with that guy. I saw you walking a dog once too, on Spring Garden. But, it’d been so long, and maybe I thought too long, or maybe I thought who knows what. The point is, I was at the MoMA, in the spaces we stood, 9 years and 364 days after we stood there together, and if there is nothing else I can ever do now, I will always remember that and so many other days. Donna: August 1995, the Fall of 1999, New York in Winter, December 30th, 1999.

I can only write about important things badly. In such circs, grace escapes us.

There are two things I hate about New York:

1. It is full of fucking fortune-seekers.

2. That all I can think of is what I would do if __________.