Hello blog,

I feel kinda washed-out at the moment. A large part of it is this, part of it was this:


At least this is positive. Although the bit about Family First is really horribly depressing. This lengthy and informative bit from Crikey.com is really depressing - how to let the Christian right irrevocably into Australian Federal politics in one critical failure of voter judgment.
One lapse? I diagnose a concerted outbreak of stupidity and intellectual violence over a period of years that can only be cured by a program of medication combining radical socialism, conservation & terrorism, terrorism, terrorism. I bet that made the ASIO web-monitors sit up and take notice. Although with Howard's mandate to put the boot to all the shady, fuzzy-wuzzy, foreign types, they should soon have an even greater conspiration of activity to get all clandestine about.
Ah sod 'em. I have had several funny emotional reactions to the election result. 1st off I've been wishing I'd been distinctly less civil to the Family First & Coalition how-to-vote (for evil) people; another is that I catch myself staring at those I suspect of being ultra-right and wondering what makes them tick (and also wondering how many of them there are, elsewhere, those terrifying hordes that I haven't seen). I had to sing in Church on Sunday night (for money alright? geesh) and I was always losing concentration, doing this. None of this is really relevant, but I'd actually been feeling quite positive, pre-election and now I feel as if there isn't room for me, in this country, that I don't know these people who would welcome yet again a government that cheats the poor, that spits on non-whites that believes the cure for violence is greater violence.
Within the hallowed walls of our educational institution I thought I could expect some respite & I was having a whine with some first years about the Labor loss & then the topic changed to how positive they thought voluntary student unionism would be - do I know anyone at all!?
I am really beginning to hate human life - I think we should call it off. Finally we should 'win-the-peace' in a great and at-last-humbling holocaust: Nothing else beats our arrogance. Purely coincidentally (honestly) I've been absorbing a lot of 'holocaust-art' lately. I've been reading Art Spiegelman's Maus, the well-known, pulitzer-prize winning comic-book on the Holocaust.
The link is to an essay on Maus and analysing the agony expressed in Holocaust art.
I found this passage interesting:

In much of what has been written about the Holocaust in recent years, one can notice a tendency to discuss the Holocaust and the responses to it in terms borrowed from the description of Melancholia. One of the most obvious instances of this can be seen in Lyotard's connection of Auschwitz and the unrepresentable in The Differend. Here, the sublime, which since Kant has been the singular individual's struggle of the Idea in the face of overwhelming experiences, is utilized to characterize the sense of the Shoah: the individual is to "bear witness" to the unpresentable and inexpressible loss, for no language, no vocabulary can even approach the horror of Auschwitz. Auschwitz becomes a limit that defies phrasing.

I don't know that I actually agree with the 'unrepresentable' nature of the Holocaust, isn't Maus a direct contradiction of that (a Holocaust comic book?) - but maybe I'm missing the point.
After long periods of resistance I do accept at least as a description, if not a political programme Lyotard's Differend and the catharsis that spews forth art in the face of overwhelming horror. I feel strong empathetic pangs when I read something like Maus - mining somebody else's catharsis - I am spurred on by the breakdown of humanity, seeing what is really at the base of us and how seriously it needs to be taken. I don't suppose that means you necessarily become a raving socialist, but it does fuel my resolve.
Actually, Spiegelman himself, in a candid couple of frames, which I think might be the source of my above outburst, wonders whether the Holocaust was a strong enough message - whether the relentless cynical self-interest and stupidity of all people needs a much more stringent lesson. I'm beginning to feel very uncomfortable, saying this in a public arena...but some days I wonder.
I've been getting into other holocausts as well. On Saturday morning I watched Welcome to Sarajevo. I think the viewer review at the bottom of the imdb listing misses the point, or maybe I liked this more than its due, I dunno. I thought it displayed typical Michael Winterbottom subtlety in its complex storyline. I think he did the right thing focusing on the journos covering the conflict - in a way acknowledging his own lack of connection to this place and these people. I also like the looseness of the plot, its unanswered questions and uncertain path, which eventually coalesces into twin stories, one of the journalist and the other of the people and their country - I found particularly evocative the final sacrifice of one character especially, one who had already lost very much gave even further so that another might have hope, something that wasn't registered by the main character, although it was implicated that it should have been - & in this sacrifice there was a very moving hope.
I'd be interested to see what the above-mentioned reviewer thought of Winterbottom's film In this world, an 'ultra-realist' account of illegal-immigrants traveling from Afghanistan to the UK - it's kinda like the director read the comments then made a film addressing all of them - anyway, I like them both.
I've also been reading Empire of the sun.
I didn't realise till I found it second hand that it was a JG Ballard novel, & um, I didn't realise till I read the link, above, that it is an account of Ballard's childhood experieces as a Japanese internee in 2nd world war Shanghai. No wonder Ballard writes such bizarre stuff.
The book is so much darker than the movie and, despite Tom Stoppard's efforts, more effective (strange that I knew that Stoppard wrote the screenplay, but not that Ballard wrote the novel). The film turns into more of an adventure story, because it lacks the ability to really stop you in your tracks, whereas the book does that at every turn. It reveals a really aberrant psychology in its characters - interestingly this is a situation that the wealthy British inhabitants of Shanghai are thrown into, while the Chinese locals seem to have been living that way beforehand. The story eerily presents, especially leaking through in the view of the protagonist, a 'normality' which peels back the comfortable notions of the affluent West & fills the reader with unease.

So, anyway, I wonder why I've been feeling down, lately.
I read the articles on rave & revolution. For a long time I've been quite skeptical about bringing those two together. I don't know how effective it is; John Jordan talks about Claremont Road:

No sign, relic or trace of Claremont Road remains. We always knew that one day all this would be rubble, and this awareness of impermanence gave us immense strength - the impossibility of failure - the strength to move this Temporary Autonomous Zone on to somewhere else. Our festival of resistance could never be evicted.

Um, well, no, actually you can, were and will be evicted - failure does not equal success. Then again most protest doesn't work right away, the object of protest is rarely achieved - in the short term. Maybe fewer roads will be built in years to come.
I guess, mostly, I'm just not a big fan of doof music and the culture that surrounds it. All the repetitive beats, chai drinking, drug taking, cheese-cloth wearing - & pretending that it's somehow profound. Show us your jouissance! I especially can't stand the academic/mystical language these articles talk in:

The doof thus approximates the anarcho-liminal TAZ, which Bey likens to 'an uprising which does not engage directly with the State, a guerilla operation which liberates an area (of land, of time, of imagination) and then dissolves itself to re-form elsewhere/elsewhen, before the state can crush it.

It's like their words need to be as magical as their doofs. Despite harboring the suspicion that a large number of reguarly doofing ferals have credentials that are just as bad as any middle-manager/weekenend feral, there are definitely some I respect: The Combat-wombat folks (mentioned in Graham St. John's article) have had a long association with Triple-Zed (they were one of the headliners at our last Market-Day). I like their music (I hunted for the album for a long time to get it for our library) & in terms of protest, they are the real thing.
Actually, that article mentions quite a lot of the more interesting artists in this scene: Like Clan Analogue & the hardcore terrorists at System Corrupt (they headlined the same Market Day - Mark N is their label-head he's in that above link). Not all these folks are really very political tho. I also thought it was a good thing St. John noticed how apolitical & in fact, gangsterish the sound-systems of Jamaica were.
Take your protest in what ever form you can get it - I suppose - I'm really being a bit 'glass-half-empty' at the moment (I think this post is adequate evidence) & you happy-little-doofers are only too joyful to express how overflowingly full your glass is. I am in solidarity with you, but I may throw up on you.
I wonder if I should say a little more about these articles. I just really don't gel with the ideas. These guys are much more my speed - & they were so good at what they did - it's no wonder you don't hear much about them - too embarrassing for the US government.

I go now,

Bye.