And did you really come here expecting a measured and considered opinion on the future of digital media and society? Or did you perhaps suspect, as I do, the test of efficacy is long past – thousands upon thousands of massively parallel Internet drones have pounded their keys in a cloud of reasonable, sensible, argued and commented (oh yes commented) crap – if that crap was going to lead anywhere it would have done so by now? Stupidity! All of this is pulling in the wrong direction. All these opinions are reflecting each other in a polite little flower arrangement. The walls of a cage, they’re marking boundaries on your mind. Smash them.
I don’t write piffle because I can’t think of something intelligent to say. I write piffle because only it will lead us out of the box. The more nonsense I write, the closer I feel to the exit. I am not interested in being shocking, that’s a young man’s game and besides, I can shock people around my neighbourhood by hanging out my washing – instant punk in a land of electric clothes dryers. Shock is a momentary device, what we need is long term.
Responding to a complaint made by the previous year’s student body at KUNST KAMP I scheduled a lecture around comedy. Last year they got not enough, this year I made sure they got too much. We had Buster Keaton, The Three Stooges, Abbott and Costello, Daffy Duck VS Hitler, Jerry Lewis, The Beverly Hillbillies, Spike Milligan’s The Bed Sitting Room, The Monkees, Dr. Strangelove, Terry Gilliam, some others fit in there before the bell rang. In between I felt compelled to say some scholarly things about film making until I recalled that student souls are predestined as saved or not saved. Those who are saved don’t need to me to explain. The Three Stooges will explain all they need to know. Those that need a different angle have Terry Gilliam. But if they sat through two hours of this and didn’t understand, then they were not to be redeemed by my ant like prowess.
Such it is with all people who would have me be more sensible.
Q: Do you feel your horizons growing or diminishing as this sewer of information pours into your mind? I saw more when I knew less.
The Chinese (I read in Wild Swans) have a tradition where, when a person is placed in an impossible position, they will drop work and go fishing. This is seen as a snub to the authority that placed them in that position. This blog refuses to acknowledge the authority of the so called blogosphere and will continue to fish.
I think I neglected to mention that Peter King is the finest man that ever lived in New Zealand for finishing my thesis records a full month ahead of schedule. Allow Peter King to have your money, copiously and with joy. Sad for me these cuts don’t support my compositional ideas – instead of the quality decreasing over the cut, it starts bad at the edge, with certain frequencies even wildly resonating the material of the disc. I think I know what went wrong and how to fix it. More later.