The Bewitched Mill (Franz Marc, 1913)

HyperNormalisation - Adam Curtis #covid19 #quarantine

HyperNormalisation is a word that was coined by a brilliant Russain historian who was writing about what it was like to live in the last years of the Soviet Union. What he said, which I thought was absolutely fascinating, was that in the 80s everyone from the top to the bottom of Soviet society knew it wasn't working, knew that it was corrupt, knew that the bosses were looting the system, knew that the politicians had no alternative vision. And they knew that the bosses knew they knew that. Everyone knew it was fake, but because no had any alternative vision for a different kind of society, they just accepted this sense of total fairness as normal. And this historian, Alexei Yurchak, coined the phrase "HyperNormalisation" to describe that feeling.

I thought "that's a brilliant title" because, although we are not in any way really like the Soviet Union, there is a similar feeling in our present day. Everyone in my country and in America and throughout Europe knows that the system that they are living under isn't working as it is supposed to; that there is a lot of corruption at the top. But whenever the journalists point it out, everyone goes "Wow that's terrible!" and then nothing happens the system remains the same.

There is a sense of everything being slightly unreal; that you fight a war that seems to cost you nothing and it has no consequences at home; that money seems to grow on trees; that goods come from China and don't seem to cost you anything; that phones make you feel liberated but that maybe they're manipulating you but you're not quite sure. It's all slightly odd and slightly corrupt.

Tree of Paradise (Séraphine Louis, 1928)

David Lemieux on Jai Alai Fronton, 6.23.74

To my ears, the best Dead shows are those that not only fit the criteria that make them amongst the best of a year, but that are also completely unique for their era - - shows that fit perfectly into their year of performance, but also fall somewhat outside of the norm for that year. Harpur College, Veneta, Cornell, Cape Cod, and Augusta are all shows that are objectively excellent, and if they are not the best from their respective years of performance, they are certainly unique. Miami 6/23/74 falls into that category: not only one of the very best shows this outstanding year, but also one of the most interesting and unique. It's certainly worthy  of many, many deep listens.

(**I'd add Orpheum 7.17.76 onto this list)

The Overstory #april20th #covid19

April 20th #covid19

6:34pm

Throne of Blood (1957)

Almodovar in Quarantine Pt. 3

These last few days I've woken up lacking energy. It seems the confinement will stay in place for several more weeks. The novelty feeling of the first few days, where one would experience new sensations, has already disappeared. I suppose that is one of the dangers, to give yourself to routine as  one day follows another, and so on. 

American Dharma (dir. Errol Morris) #covid #quarantine

I believe that you need some fairly radical restructuring of this, and rethinking of this.

The permanent political class that controls our country is going to stay exactly like it is, until you have true disruption. 

It’s a tough story to tell…The West Point girls’ volleyball team was going to get new uniforms, and they bring the uniforms in boxes off to the side, and the girls are practicin’ in this huge old dirigible hangar, where the volleyball team plays — from the 1920s. Looking at this, looking at the West Point girls, and I look over at the boxes. I just kind of go over and look at the new uniforms. They’re sealed. ‘Made in Vietnam.’ ‘Made in Vietnam.’ I lost it. ‘Made in Vietnam.’ Fifty thousand dead, you know, a hundred thousand wounded, families torn apart, the whole of Southeast Asia, what, 10, 20, 30 million people murdered? Right? What was it all for? What was Monaghan’s kid, what was that for? ‘Made in Vietnam.’ 

With all the jobs lost to globalization. It was an incredibly clarifying moment for me.

It wasn’t the common man that got us into WW I, and in WW II, and in Vietnam, and all the other wars that have been fought. It’s Monaghan’s son that’s always the recipient of all that crap. When you say, these ‘nation states,’ it’s the elites that got us into that mess, and then they came up with some sort of supranational apparatus that’s gonna take care of it. I disagree 100%. They are the ones that drove the destruction of the 20th century. 

Morris: What good does it do to allow corporations to pollute the environment? Is this populism? Or is this something much uglier?

Bannon: Uglier being what?

Morris: Serving big business and the rich. It’s anti-populism. That’s what bothers me. That’s what makes me think you’re crazy. 

Bannon: And why?

Morris: Why? Because I think there’s an inherent contradiction in the views that you hold.

If [Hillary Clinton’s] going to preach identity politics, and we preach populism and jobs and bringing manufacturing jobs back, we got it. For all their brilliance and all their money and all their professionalism, they don’t have an understanding of what this election’s about, and that’s when I knew we had her. 

The 16 candidates the Republicans had, all of them combined, could not have beaten Hillary Clinton. It took a blunt force instrument. He understands that the modern world, particularly the modern political world, has become media. The medium is the message and he understands that. That’s why he can speak in a very plainspoken vernacular, not in political speak. He’s an armor-piercing shell. From the first day he came on the campaign in June of 2015 until today, the news cycle’s Trump.  

[Trump] actually said, ‘I thought it’d be different. I thought the NY Times would be wishing me well and everything like that.’ And I said, ‘You do understand they hate you. They literally detest you. Everything you ran on, everything you stand for…everything you won on. And the people that support you they detest. This is gonna be trench warfare every day.’ And by the way, I’m the enabler and I take great pride in it, that just, ‘Here’s what we ran on, here’s what we said we’re gonna do. Let’s just do it. You’re not a politician. You’re a leader. Don’t act like a politician. Just do it. Build the wall. Eradicate ISIS, right? Get manufacturing jobs back here. Confront China. Get us out of Afghanistan. Get us out of Iraq. Just do what you said you’re gonna do. 

What Have I Done? (Col. Nicholson from The Bridge on the River Kwai)

Paths of Glory is based upon the beginnings of the mutiny, when the French soldiers said, ‘We’re not going to do this anymore.’ They couldn’t take being treated like animals. That’s the Deplorables right there. The officers and the politicians are all in these chateaus. They’re having balls — It’s the Deplorables that are in the trenches. I’d like to have those guys in the trenches make decisions. But that’s the problem, it’s the elites making the decisions. Think of all the bad decisions that have been made on globalism by this kind of scientific engineering-managerial-financial elite. Look at where the country is. Look at where working class people are. Look where the middle class is, particularly from the financial crisis. People have been getting fucked. We have a consolidation of power. We have a consolidation of wealth. You have to tell the establishment, ‘Go fuck yourself.’ You just have to. What the little guy wants is to fuck you to the establishment. I’m on a mission to try to remake the Republican Party into more of a workers’ party. 

You may be better fed, better clothed, in better shape than 18th century Russian serfs, but you’re nothing but serfs. You’re not gonna own anything. They’ve got you in this consumer environment where you’re always paying off your credit cards. They’ve destroyed thrifts, so you can’t save anything. Saving doesn’t make any difference. And then digitally they’ve taken all your rights, they’ve taken all your personhood, and they’ve written these algorithms that treat you like — like a hamster.  

You’re totally controlled, absolutely totally controlled. You can’t fulfill your destiny. You can’t fulfill your dharma. You can’t do it. You’re nothing but a serf. You voted for that (i.e.Hillary)…There’s going to be a revolution in this country. It’s coming. We can’t kick the can down the road like this. We can’t. We’re gonna have another financial crisis, that everybody that’s smart sees is coming. 

A complete rejection of the system. It is coming. 

Almodovar in Quarantine Pt. 2

That night, I knew I was going to try to go out the following day; I felt as if I was going to commit a premeditated crime. As if giving yourself to a forbidden pleasure and you cannot do anything to avoid it. So that Tuesday morning I got dressed to go out and I felt like I was doing something exceptional: dressing! It's been 17 days since I last did it, and I've always experienced getting dressed as something intimate and very special.

The morning after the ceremony, I received a phone call at the hotel, a woman's voice. She tells me, as if she were not conscious of its impact, but confident that her voice was going to have an impact on me: 'Hello, it's Madonna, I'm filming Dick Tracy and I would love to show you the set. I'm not filming today and I can dedicate the day to you.'

Almodovar in Quarantine

Today is my 11th day in isolation; I started on Friday 13th March. Since then I organize myself in order to face up to the night, the darkness, because I live as if I were in the wild, following the rhythm marked by the light coming through the windows and the balcony. It's spring and the weather is truly spring-like! It is one of those wonderful everyday feelings, something I'd forgotten existed. Daylight and its wide-ranging voyage till night-time. The long journey to the night, not as something terrible, but joyful instead.

The good thing about not having a timetable during the confinement is that rushing disappears. 

Do You Consider Writing to be Therapeutic? by Andrew Grace

After my father died
I should have gone to therapy.
I tried instead to solve my grief
with alcohol and poems.
Now I am almost 40
and all I can tell you about grief
is that when I found my father
on the floor of the machine shed
the radio was on and wind
pushed against corrugated metal.
Of course I still hear it.
I should have talked
to someone before now
and not you. Poetry is not talking.
This is just art
and therefore could never
cover my ears when I, suddenly,
am back in the shed
and I learn again that my father
has died every day
since he died.

For Dad (April 9, 2020)

80/20

Narrator: 

On Wednesday, September 28th, 1960, at Fenway Park in Boston, forty-two year old Ted Williams — the last man to hit .400 — came to bat for the last time in his career.

Injuries the season before had brought his batting average below .300 for the first time, and he had felt so bad about it that he had volunteered for a cut in pay. 

Despite steady pain from a pinched nerve in his neck, he had brought his average back up again to .316 in 1960, and despite having missed four seasons in the military, had a lifetime total of 520 home runs and had compiled the highest career batting average since Rogers Hornsby — .344. 

Now he had finally had enough. 10,454 loyal fans came out to say goodbye.

Ted Williams:

Lousy day — damp, drizzly, heavy. And I hit two balls that I think some days would have gone out for sure, but this day they didn’t, caught ‘em up against the fence. 

But the last time up, I got the count 2-0 on Fisher, and I missed a ball…I don’t know yet how I missed that ball. And I know he thought he threw it by me, he thought he threw it by me. And he couldn’t wait now, there is an experience thought there, because I could just sense he said, “Gee, give me that ball, I’ll throw another one by him.” And I could just see all of that developing in his own mind.

Sure enough, he came back with the same pitch, and I hit it good, and it went for a home run, which is kind of a storybook finish. 

Narrator:

Williams hit it into the Red Sox bullpen scattering his teammates. Then he circled the bases for the last time. His long career of feuding with the fans and the press was over. Some hoped he might finally tip his cap, something he had not done since his rookie year. 

Ted Williams:

I just — I just couldn’t do it. I even thought about it going around the bases knowing this is my last time there, but… It was 80/20 of not doing it. There was just a little thought.

Narrator:

“I had a really warm feeling,” he said later, “but it just wouldn’t have been me.” 

Bob Costas:

For my money, Ted Williams is the greatest hitter of all time. I’d take him over Ruth. I’d take him over Cobb. I’d take him over Cobb because of the combination of power and average. I’d take him over Ruth because with Ruth you can only speculate about what he would have done in the modern era. Ted Williams hit .388 at the age of thirty nine in 1957. 

He was what few of us ever become. He was exactly what he set out to be. He said he wanted to be able to walk down the street some day and have people say, “There goes the greatest hitter who ever lived.” 

And if they don’t say that, it’s only because they don’t know what they’re talking about. 

china, covid bureaucratic/political failures, radical reconstruction, aldo raine, and kayfabe

•who are the "break glass in case of emergency" people
•the gated institutional narrative //the guy who is willing to dance with them who is joe biden//"steady hands"//legacy media
•the rebel end of corporate, the corporate end of rebel - lt. aldo raine is this interface between regular army and the psychotic jews who'll kill nazis. you need people who'll interface between the bad boys and the regular units. important nexus, rebel end of corporate//kayfabe (carnival speak for fake)

dispatch from dr. mert erogul (brooklyn's maimonides medical center)

So today in the middle of all the madness there was a one hundred year old Hasidic lady with Covid pneumonia and I was desperate to send her home so she wouldn't die in the hospital, but she dropped her blood pressure and we had to keep her. And then for an hour her son kept calling me to find out how she was and I finally told him look, she's a hundred years old with pneumonia in both lungs. She's not good. She's not going to do well. And then he wanted to talk to her and I said you can't, I'm too busy, and he called back ten minutes later and I said, listen sir, your mother is not conscious anymore. And he said that's okay, it's very important that I do a prayer for her, could you hold the speaker to her ear. I had ten other pressing things to do. But I stopped what I was doing out of respect for this 100 year old woman and put the cell on speakerphone and told him to talk. He started the prayer of the dead and he began to cry and could barely get the words out. And I saw she had numbers tattooed on her arm. He was crying for his mother and praying the schema, the verses of unity and it woke up some emotion in me that I had forgotten about. Time slowed down and I felt restored to myself. When he was done he thanked me and blessed me and I said thank you to him.