why does it seem all plausible theses are about the failure of a concept, novel, idea and any positive interpolation is deemed naive? guess that's the nature of the academy. personally, i have little time for broke shit. how do we make things better?
posted by z.a.k. @ 4:00 AM
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not much to report on. spring advances, then retreats. thats okay, learning not to depend too much on other things. attempting to stop smoking.. did 4 days. relapsed last night, but i am determined. professor has nominated me for a summer institute - 3 weeks in an abbey in the austrian alps. looks seriously like sound of music. it's on western thought. like i need more of that or to have nazis (real ones, not neos) as neighbors. we'll see. it is pretty though.
posted by z.a.k. @ 4:38 AM
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i'm present, present, present in den haag. studying, dancing, reading, making jewelry, riding my bike (in the rain, on the phone), going to dinner parties, having bday parties.. the whole fucking nine. its nice. though its felt lately like getting settled in one place at this point in my life means severing a bond with another. cant i be present here there and everywhere? not if i want to maintain my sanity. i am therefore getting some shit straight. I am choosing to be in school in amsterdam. i am choosing to call new york my home. i am choosing to call bermuda a birthright, i am choosing happiness always and i am coming home over the summer break. it isnt a choice, its a neccessity.
r.i.p. the recent victims of violence on the block.
posted by z.a.k. @ 5:07 PM
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so on saturday night i dreamt i was working with some folks from cornerstone in a funeral parlour. the funeral parlour was in a house ala six feet under, and was meant to feel very homey. maseo from de la was djing, there were dogs running around, and my job was to make sure folks were ushered from one room to another or something like that. i was amazed to find out that cornerstone had been running this funeral parlour for years. it was odd but not disturbing. this girl here said that it meant a new beginning for me - but i wasnt the one who died - i only worked there.. who knows what it meant. but since then, the pope, johnnie cochran, and saul bellow have passed. bizarro. and i just happened to be reading bellow's "the victim" for my jewish lit class (its the 300 pager i complained to some of you about..), crazy cuz i was reading miller's "focus" when he passed earlier this year.. can someone tell phillip roth he's next on the syllabus. ok so i shouldnt joke bout death - but it's a little wierd, huh?
posted by z.a.k. @ 4:39 AM
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so the conference - folks from allover the world. brilliant peruvian woman scholar on the failure of prose, a harvard fellow presented on ursula ruckers "the unlocking". she contended that the poem failed in its admittance that there is no place for women in hip hop. more interesting was the underlying contention that women were not "cool" and could not be within the genre, and the keynote was on silence.
a turkish professor presented a paper on the "recitation and repition of the Other" leading to belief. he spoke in relation to islam and the primacy of recitation of the Quran (the word of God), God being "the Other". authorship is therefeore denied the subject. i contended that this recitation and repition not only leads to belief in the other - but by internalizing the words, producing sound through our bodies, we actually BECOME the other. dont mean to sound like a god, or rather earth:).
anyhoo, using this model, the implications for hip hop, its influence etc. are telling. folks all over the world are repeating "the other" - this time "the other" being inner city black youth - becoming the other (like qano's ghanaian homeboy/mc "snoop") and given the storytelling capabilities of the genre the subject is then able to author his (cuz girls dont rhyme:-) own stories, becoming, well becoming himself... but got me thinking. what is it that ive been reciting, repeating. rap? rock? the quran? parents? friends? lovers? marketing campaigns? astrology? french philosophers? black nationalists? nothing in particular, thats for sure. so am i becoming nothing? or everything? what will i author?
ps. pick up/download some jean grae. she's cool as shit.
posted by z.a.k. @ 5:36 AM
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