Linh Dinh's Detainees blog links to some of the best sources available on the troubles in oil and finance (the two of course are symbiotically linked). He's providing a tremendous service by creating a context for the current power manipulations in DC/Wall Street.
My goal here, by contrast, is to try and bring some reflection to these events through the limited field of communications and poetry. Joe Safdie entered some good comments yesterday to a previous post, and I like what he said about Slow Poetry--though at this point I'm worried about the lid blowing off of the American "way of life." (Poetry will have to become a part of our every moment, at that point--every word we speak--every gesture we perform. We will have to relearn how to inspire trust in word and deed at all levels of life--something cynically checked at present with the nomination of Palin as Veep. The images at play in national life and in the campaign contribute to a poetics--one that, of course, Slo Poetry resists--but at a scale much less immediately available to the cameras--duh.)
Now American "life" has needed a change for a long time, but we've had leaders invested in maintaining the same old bullshit and not offering strategies for re-integrating "life" into local landscapes. We have needed investment in trains, organic farming, and other necessary infrastructure for years, and yet instead we face a world of resource scarcity with big trucks and cars in our drives and a potentially cold and fuelless winter ahead. Ike knocked refineries in Texas offline to give the Southeast a taste of life without petrol while billions currently flow out of the Fed Reserve to prop up banks we are all forced to rely on--or else.
This can all play out in several ways. I wonder, with marines coming home to train in Indiana for domestic patrols if the gov't doesn't already have some indication of what's to come. I wonder if they're prepared to pass out bags of grain and to maintain order in portions of the country where our "way of life" stops functioning. I wonder how the one fifth of the world's economy that is driven by organized crime will respond to such a resource crisis. I wonder how labor will be re-distributed in a nation that can't drive to work. I wonder how poets will absorb the suffering that is sure to come? I wonder what deals with power will be opposed or absorbed out of necessity--and how unconscious disgust may manifest from the many compromises that are sure to come.
At least this clueless, flippant, easily provoked nation will no longer have its security blanket to wrap up in at night. The cold wind will howl and we'll have to huddle against it just as if we were Rwandan or Yemeni or Bangladeshi or whatever. But isn’t this what the radical poets have wanted all along? Change? A radical transformation of the conditions of capital and power? Get ready then.
I wonder about the spiritual narratives of the wilderness. How de Soto and La Salle were absorbed by it, their bodies consumed in the wet thick of red dirt and bark and weeds. I wonder about Cabeza de Vaca, naked, washed ashore on Galveston island, to wander a decade and return home. I wonder about the grand schemes of amazing men and women who transformed the raw environment into symbolic signatures of extraordinary fortune. I wonder about the psychic sicknesses in the mansions of the wealthy and in the McMansions of the aspiring mid-managers and the apartments and shit holes of all of us looking for something better than where we came from. I wonder about Paul Newman floating away from his body into the unknown and how his face is pixilated all over my screen today. I wonder about a real America--a vision--or dream--arriving in this mess. I wonder if America carries a big knife or healing elixirs? I wonder about others who think these things too. I wonder what's coming and how we'll get there.
Saturday, September 27, 2008
Thursday, September 25, 2008
WaMu Wha?
The biggest bank failure in U. S. history went down today amidst the see-saw of bailout negotiations in Washington. How fucked out is it when both prez candidates meet with the incumbent to discuss deals? The failure to reach a decision sent Asian stocks down and shivers up Wall Street's spine, despite its gain at today's market close.
Why is this so important? Why did Bush last night have that same look of autumn '01.
Here's why: every day transactions—everything from filling cars up with gas to moving produce to local grocers to using a credit card to offset those inevitable moments of need and desire—are going to become increasingly difficult, if not impossible to obtain. That's something Washington and Wall Street want to avoid, but it's more and more difficult for them to do so, and the WaMu failure today really makes all of this much worse. Also, there are a number of powerful global players with mucho investments in these finance systems, and they want to see some returns down the road. What happens if Russia, China, and Japan decide to go after U. S. assets around the globe to compensate for stalled debt payments?
In the thirties it was possible to imagine the collapse of capital. Only a few decades prior striking IWW anarchists managed to run the city of Seattle on their own until the Navy arrived to restore "order." Food and other daily necessities were produced locally or regionally, and were therefore readily available regardless of how transactions would take place. Today, with all of our lives intermingled in the rapid movement of goods globally, it's like we have a gun to our head. Keep this system afloat or suffer the consequences. Congress wants to keep this afloat, but they don't seem to have any ideas about how to keep the moolah and power out of the cap fascist hands (because, duh, cap fascists compose Congress too). Anyway, here's the article on Washington Mutual I just read.
Why is this so important? Why did Bush last night have that same look of autumn '01.
Here's why: every day transactions—everything from filling cars up with gas to moving produce to local grocers to using a credit card to offset those inevitable moments of need and desire—are going to become increasingly difficult, if not impossible to obtain. That's something Washington and Wall Street want to avoid, but it's more and more difficult for them to do so, and the WaMu failure today really makes all of this much worse. Also, there are a number of powerful global players with mucho investments in these finance systems, and they want to see some returns down the road. What happens if Russia, China, and Japan decide to go after U. S. assets around the globe to compensate for stalled debt payments?
In the thirties it was possible to imagine the collapse of capital. Only a few decades prior striking IWW anarchists managed to run the city of Seattle on their own until the Navy arrived to restore "order." Food and other daily necessities were produced locally or regionally, and were therefore readily available regardless of how transactions would take place. Today, with all of our lives intermingled in the rapid movement of goods globally, it's like we have a gun to our head. Keep this system afloat or suffer the consequences. Congress wants to keep this afloat, but they don't seem to have any ideas about how to keep the moolah and power out of the cap fascist hands (because, duh, cap fascists compose Congress too). Anyway, here's the article on Washington Mutual I just read.
Resilience in Emergency: Get Ready
Ever since coming back from their August break in the Hamptons, key players in the current financial meltdown have counted on Bernanke, Paulson, et al, to bailout sinking institutions.
The catastrophe of our current banking crisis is terrifying. With more than a year to observe the fundamental weakness in mortgage and investment institutions—not to mention the global over-extension of credit lines—the Feds did nothing but move paper around as if googling a poem of substance into being. And now, with the threat of banks failing utterly and thus putting our entire lame ass way of life in jeopardy, the Treasury Department claims we face an emergency. And we do—we’ve been in one the entire year—but only now does anyone act.
The Bush administration has contributed significantly to the erosion of the nation’s credibility as a state. The current crisis will probably create a permanent “hollow state” scenario. Basic components of daily life essential to a democracy won’t function. There will be increasing distrust in national institutions to the point of complete disregard. Instead corporations and other private entities (“resilient communities,” gangs, etc) will exert regional influence. Or, if the Bush administration gets its way, there might be some kind of consolidation of power that enforces a fascist order of some kind, though I imagine the folk in Washington and Wall Street are more concerned with getting the money and getting out to their bunkers in Paraguay or wherever they keep them.
Right now, to borrow a metaphor from the old world, a little boy has his thumb in the hole in the dyke. When he pulls out (yes, that does sound sexual, sorry) what we’ve witnessed these last weeks on Wall Street will flood into other facets of the economy. NPR liberalism hasn’t prepared anyone for this horrific scenario. Fox News redneck jockeys also fail to apprehend the waves of grief that will pour over everything. The black swans are accumulating so rapidly that our old transactions with social and material resources are dissolving.
I’m not sure what poetry can accomplish in the face of this right now.
Poets should at least possess themselves of a knowledge of reality—and be prepared psychologically to absorb the grief that is sure to come. Beyond that, since we are all involved with networks of other poets and artists in diverse regions of the nation, we should facilitate conversation about what’s going on and exchange news and other information resources as we can.
We need to speak with artisans, farmers, carpenters, and other local laborers to learn how to re-imagine our relations to our environments, and we’d better develop new networks of exchange. More than anything, writers should provide models of thinking that others can turn for understanding the situation we face.
Without some perspective, we're fucked. There could be a lot more hate talk and violence—or submissive fear and a refusal to speak out about the sudden collapse of economies. If we’re lucky, resilient communities will be able to work within existing, though decayed, structures—and hopefully the landing will be soft. The next few weeks should tell us a lot. But something’s definitely going on. With one presidential candidate leaving his campaign and a current president whipping up an emergency that many of us have shown for years to be preventable, our way life is about to come under considerable economic pressure and social scrutiny.
The catastrophe of our current banking crisis is terrifying. With more than a year to observe the fundamental weakness in mortgage and investment institutions—not to mention the global over-extension of credit lines—the Feds did nothing but move paper around as if googling a poem of substance into being. And now, with the threat of banks failing utterly and thus putting our entire lame ass way of life in jeopardy, the Treasury Department claims we face an emergency. And we do—we’ve been in one the entire year—but only now does anyone act.
The Bush administration has contributed significantly to the erosion of the nation’s credibility as a state. The current crisis will probably create a permanent “hollow state” scenario. Basic components of daily life essential to a democracy won’t function. There will be increasing distrust in national institutions to the point of complete disregard. Instead corporations and other private entities (“resilient communities,” gangs, etc) will exert regional influence. Or, if the Bush administration gets its way, there might be some kind of consolidation of power that enforces a fascist order of some kind, though I imagine the folk in Washington and Wall Street are more concerned with getting the money and getting out to their bunkers in Paraguay or wherever they keep them.
Right now, to borrow a metaphor from the old world, a little boy has his thumb in the hole in the dyke. When he pulls out (yes, that does sound sexual, sorry) what we’ve witnessed these last weeks on Wall Street will flood into other facets of the economy. NPR liberalism hasn’t prepared anyone for this horrific scenario. Fox News redneck jockeys also fail to apprehend the waves of grief that will pour over everything. The black swans are accumulating so rapidly that our old transactions with social and material resources are dissolving.
I’m not sure what poetry can accomplish in the face of this right now.
Poets should at least possess themselves of a knowledge of reality—and be prepared psychologically to absorb the grief that is sure to come. Beyond that, since we are all involved with networks of other poets and artists in diverse regions of the nation, we should facilitate conversation about what’s going on and exchange news and other information resources as we can.
We need to speak with artisans, farmers, carpenters, and other local laborers to learn how to re-imagine our relations to our environments, and we’d better develop new networks of exchange. More than anything, writers should provide models of thinking that others can turn for understanding the situation we face.
Without some perspective, we're fucked. There could be a lot more hate talk and violence—or submissive fear and a refusal to speak out about the sudden collapse of economies. If we’re lucky, resilient communities will be able to work within existing, though decayed, structures—and hopefully the landing will be soft. The next few weeks should tell us a lot. But something’s definitely going on. With one presidential candidate leaving his campaign and a current president whipping up an emergency that many of us have shown for years to be preventable, our way life is about to come under considerable economic pressure and social scrutiny.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Century 21
Note: for the next few months I'll be a contributing blogger to Viz., a site sponsored through the University of Texas' Department of Rhetoric and Writing. This is the first piece I've posted there.
Jeremy Blake’s Century 21 (2004)—the final installment in a trilogy inspired by the narrative of eccentric firearm heir, Sarah Winchester—digs into the psychic tableau of the American West. It’s gorgeous—and horrific.
The frames of Blake’s image montage are layered with different media, including gouache, ink, still photography, CG graphics, and 16mm film. Such image density creates a striking vividness of form that is part acid trip, part interlinear homage to the haunted legacy of Winchester’s eccentric "mystery" mansion, constructed in San Jose, California, from 1884 to 1922. The trilogy was screened for the first time in the U. S. in 2004 at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Through these haunted surfaces and images—cartoon cowboys, iconic silhouettes of gunfighters, the tongue-like extensions of succulent plants—viewers observe the formation of narrative around the slowly paced repetition of key figures. Using these elements, Blake is able to address our attitudes toward property, freedom, and, to quote Robert Plant, the “deep and meaningless” contexts of daily life. He also asks viewers to reflect on the paranoia extant in the surfaces of objects and figures that populate the national narratives of individualism, ownership, and deal making.
In a frame that repeats throughout the film, the silhouette of a lone man on horseback arrives, head down, to be overtaken by images of geodesic domes and signage for Century 21, Century 22, and Century 23—forlorn but suggestive sites in Blake’s western geography. The accompanying Aaron Copland soundtrack is layered with the sounds of strong wind and other digitally enhanced elements to deliver a feeling of anxious vacancy.
Compare this with last Thursday’s image of Nancy Pelosi, Ben Bernanke, and Henry Paulson, who met to reaffirm world financial markets that they had a plan for handling the current mortgage/credit crisis. The tension in their faces betrayed the hopeful content of their message. I can’t help but wonder if Sarah Winchester’s paranoid legacy isn’t being carried over into Washington and Wall Street—the ghosts of bad decisions and short-term greed returning to make claims on the conduct of the “American Way of Life”—something that, as Dick Cheney once said, is “non-negotiable.”
As the media and politicians continue to blame faulty mortgages and risky decisions by Wall Street bankers in an attempt to scapegoat the nearest and most exposed playerz of the current financial meltdown, Blake’s visionary tableau of angst argues that national narratives of acquisition, confrontation, and macho individualism influence our ability to make decisions and act within the environments we inhabit. Heroism is outpaced by tragic misfortune and violent contradictions of desire. Our manipulation of the material world, Blake seems to argue, backfires as paranoia and fear catch up with us—and the ol’ homestead awaits foreclosure.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Slow Poetry and Resilient Communities
John Robb has more on resilient communities and the current economic shakedown. I like his argument about "networked tribes," "decentralized platforms," and "self-organizing futures." These ideas aren't new to those of us who have worked in small press communities, though he's applying these ideas to broader issues, such as food production, security, and decision making.
I tend to think of slow poetry as an extended resilient community, one in which participants relate the particulars of their situations to others. This reinforces our faith in daily life, and provides company for the hard work that goes on locally: the day job, family demands, attention to the day-to-day--not to mention the general stress or, "psychic torture," as Dorn put it, of American life. I think it's becoming more clear not just among poets but others that we have to find new ways to organize our lives in spaces that are radically transforming. Poetry, as I imagine it, becomes less about words on a page. It becomes a kind of organizing practice--a guide for attention to the vast networks and lines of thought that cut through time and space to influence us now. Poetry is a verb--doing--not the 6X9 coordinate of the page. As I reminded a friend recently who was adjusting to life with a newborn, daily life is productive.
I tend to think of slow poetry as an extended resilient community, one in which participants relate the particulars of their situations to others. This reinforces our faith in daily life, and provides company for the hard work that goes on locally: the day job, family demands, attention to the day-to-day--not to mention the general stress or, "psychic torture," as Dorn put it, of American life. I think it's becoming more clear not just among poets but others that we have to find new ways to organize our lives in spaces that are radically transforming. Poetry, as I imagine it, becomes less about words on a page. It becomes a kind of organizing practice--a guide for attention to the vast networks and lines of thought that cut through time and space to influence us now. Poetry is a verb--doing--not the 6X9 coordinate of the page. As I reminded a friend recently who was adjusting to life with a newborn, daily life is productive.
Monday, September 08, 2008
My September Bookslut Column: Poetry of Dissent
My new Bookslut column looks at Jules Boykoff and Kaia Sand's Landscapes of Dissent.
Gina Myers also reviews John Godrey's City of Corners.
Please visit the site to read more.
Wednesday, September 03, 2008
Arresting journalists at the Republican Convention
Besides the arrest of "anarchists" at the GOP convention, Amy Goodman and other journalists have also been detained. Some links below:
Watch the video of Goodman's arrest.
See other journalists being arrested as reported by UpTake.
News of the AP arrest.
Learn more about the arrest of an ABC News producer during the Democratic Convention in Denver.
Watch the video of the police raid of I-Witness journalists (Caution: strong language).
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