| On the surface, Table Fighting is a "sport" in which mechanically enhanced tables (as in, the furniture) do battle for the favor of judges in timed rounds.
Jowett and I went to see a table fighting competition behind a deli in Chelsea a couple weeks ago.
( Read more... ) | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment   |
| This week I rediscovered (again...) the joy of making art. I warmed up earlier with a late evening of pen/brush and ink before launching into a big Halloween costume project involving chicken wire and cloth.
I have had a fitful history with respect to creative manual work. Distraction and something like humility prevents me from trying it very frequently, but the combination of the (often prolonged) intensity of the creative act itself and the affirmation that often follows it is enough to tilt my universe a few degrees. "Maybe," I think to myself, "I could be an artist."
About a week ago I met with a friend in Providence who revealed to me that his idiosyncrasies--which had always been forgiven--we due to his suffering from OCD but that he had recently become essentially cured of it through EEG biofeedback therapy. Under this treatment, patients recondition themselves by "playing a game" that rewards them for particular kinds of brainwave activity that, for example, accompanies a normally-functioning corpus callosum or whatever. The result is a kind of direct intervention of the patient on their own neural plasticity for the purpose of altering psychological symptoms over which they would otherwise have little or no control.
This was exciting for me for a few reasons. First, I was obviously overjoyed that my friend was doing so well--he was a changed man. Second, I've had a lot of people close to me with OCD in the past, and the news of a successful treatment that didn't involve what amounts to psychological shock therapy was awesome.
I was also happy to see such a potent vindication of the reductionist program in psychology. Any misgivings about the pollution of psychological discourse and methodology has to answer to the efficacy of intervention on the neural level for causing psychological change. Pharmaceutical therapy has always been a little sketchy for a lot of reasons, but this is a case of an agent being empowered to literally transform themselves through a technical understanding of their own mind. That is awesome. | | comments: 9 comments or Leave a comment |
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"The individual can never become the measure of all things. For when the individual confronts objective reality he is faced by a complex of ready-made and unalterable objects which allow him only the subjective responses of recognition or rejection. Only the class can relate to the whole of reality in a practical revolutionary way. ... For the individual, reification and hence determinism (determinism being the idea that things are necessarily connected) are irremovable. Every attempt to achieve 'freedom' from such premises must fail, for 'inner freedom' presupposes that the world cannot be changed."
- Georg Lukacs
"I have forced myself to contradict myself in order to avoid conforming to my own taste."
- Marcel Duchamp ( Read more... ) | | comments: 4 comments or Leave a comment |
| Joshua the Poet, with whom I had a long conversation last night, represents for me a particular kind of world view that I think might be dying out. On the one hand, he identifies himself without flinching as an artist. This in itself isn't really rare--I think a lot of people in my generation would probably call themselves artists. They would probably include this in a list of a lot of other things they think they are. It means, in this context, somebody who likes to make art. I don't think that's how Joshua means it. He is, he would say, entirely and foremost an artist. Or maybe Artist, with a capital 'A', since he is somebody who has devoted his life to making Art, with a capital 'A'.
( Read more... ) | | comments: 3 comments or Leave a comment |
| | Tags: | alan 50's, art, balance, beast, coldness, enrique pretense, fiction, fire, fruit, hunters, interest, joshua the poet, jungle, knife, light, lr21, motion, pilgrim, pit, pragmatism, reflection, robots, truth | | Current Music: | "Corcovado," Stan Getz & Joao Gilberto | | Subject: | Life and fiction | | Time: | 11:27 pm | | Current Mood: | reflective at last |
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| I've had the impression of being constantly in motion for over a week now--no time to rest and reflect. This is a healthy change for me, I think, since a static life often feels like no life at all. However, they also say that the unexamined life is not worth living either--I need a balance. Right now, I'm feeling exhausted.
( Three people. Me being judgmental )
I mention these guys because they are playing a role in my reintroduction to "art" this semester. I'm feel that my classes this term are showing a lot of overspecialization due to my requirements (two or three Cog Sci classes, plus Philosophy of Mind), but I'm breaking free from it by taking
LR0021 Fiction II
As in, like, creative writing. You might be surprised, not thinking its not very me. Well, fooey on you--don't put me in a box! I've spent my life making moves to defy your expectations.
( Read more... )
But for now, I'm going to answer the question of "Why are you taking this course in fiction/why deal with fiction at all?" in a way that isn't very analytic at all. (Wow, there were a lot of other things I was going to say! But this is already crazy long. I'll say more later, maybe)
( The Pragmatic Emergence of Truth and Fictions ) | | comments: Leave a comment |
| | Tags: | aesthetic relativism, aesthetics, arguments for theism, art, baudrillard, beauty, christmas, christmas spirit, criticism, dada, diplomacy, fluxus, hal, narcotics, religion, santa claus, simulacra, twenty-dollar words | | Subject: | Christmas Spirit, part 2 | | Time: | 06:01 pm |
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| First, I want to say that I feel perfectly at ease right now. I spent all morning adjudicating Diplomacy orders, which induces a sort of meditative state. I'm worry-less.
( So let's talk about Christmas ) | | comments: 8 comments or Leave a comment |
| | Tags: | ambition, amygdala, art, beards, civilization, dactyllic verse, exercise, family, harmonica, high school achievement gods, humility, introversion, plasma, praise, quote, respect, right brain, sublimation, tempo, text, vow renewal, whitehead | | Subject: | Random antsiness etc. | | Time: | 08:25 pm | | Current Mood: | antsy |
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| As irritating as I'm sure it is for many of you, I'm compulsively writing lots of gibberish to this journal (going crazy) again. For your sake, I'll try to keep things...what's the word...holy cow, thesaurus.com can't be down now. I don't think "elliptic" or "telegraphic" is quite right. Better yet, I'll
( cut it out. ) | | comments: 8 comments or Leave a comment |
| "The folly of mistaking a paradox for a discovery, a metaphor for a proof, a torrent of verbiage for a spring of capital truths, and oneself for an oracle, is inborn in us."
-- Paul Valéry
Jack Xman, the Harvard Div. School chaplaincy intern, is a great guy, and not at all squirrely. By which I mean he doesn't sneak away when pinned. Unfortunately, he doesn't have the sort of insight I'd hoped, although he does at least appreciate my dilemma (wanting a metaethics that doesn't blow.)
Here's a funky link if you like absurdist poetry. Personally, this may be my favorite type of art. | | comments: 3 comments or Leave a comment |
| So I do believe in some intelligent design, despite my knowing fully that such things are ridiculous. When my life seems twisted by so much irony-laden circumstance, and strange patterns inexplicably repeat themselves in my life, I explain them to myself by attributing them to the work of some Divine Prankster pulling the strings, artfully teasing and tripping me up either as punishment for my blasphemies or to add tension and dramatic themes to my life story, so as to make one of His thousands of masterpieces of creation.
Still having some trouble readjusting to life here. I really have no idea what's in store for me this year. | | comments: Leave a comment |
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paulhope's journal