Duane Michals once said something that I recall when I view nearly any photograph: Photographers never photograph what they can’t see, and of course the most important things are what you can’t see. It’s what you feel. What you feel is much more important than what you can see. And so that is why I had to write—why I had […]
Tag: Identity
Kafka-Kandinsky
A Kafka Metamorphosis— One morning, when I woke from troubled dreams, I found myself transformed in my bed into a Kandinsky painting. I lay on my scratchy canvas-like back, and if I lifted my head a little I could see my red and yellow torso, slightly domed and divided by arches—as if Wassily had been up all night turning me […]
Nietzsche’s Mustache
My Dearest Freddy— On a completely different subject, I’ve been wondering about your mustache. It gives me so much joy. It’s huge. It’s consummately badass, a Mensch Mustache. When I’m an older man, I will most definitely be sprouting a Ntzsch Mstch. Does it require maniacal care? Does food get stuck in it? I mean, heck, all the world’s pestering […]
My Cousin Joseph K. Faces Off with AI
According to his Memorial Record, my cousin, Joesph K. (I wonder if he knew Kafka) died on June 4, 1912, at the age of 37 years, 6 months, and 24 days, at 9pm. No cause of death is stated, but the young age of 37 has me speculating. He just returned from the dead for a face-off with AI. I […]
Koan: There is no place where nothing is born and nothing dies
Where to Meet after Death Dogo paid a visit to his sick fellow monk, Ungan. “Where can I see you again if you die and leave only your corpse?” Dogo asked. “I will meet you where nothing dies,” Ungan replied. Dogo criticized his response saying, “What you should have said is that there is no place where nothing is born […]
The Union Case Photographs of Bill Travis
Artist Bill Travis has been creating a remarkable series of photographs entitled “Poems of the Body”: Enchantingly illuminated male subjects framed in 19th-century union cases. At a root level, these pieces are intensely physical. They have power sexually, erotically. The men are stunning. What I greatly admire is how this “root sexuality” begins to expand, like a drop of ink […]
Ghosts on the Fifth of November
The Fifth of November: Guy Fawkes, V for Vendetta, Anonymous, Subversive Resistance, Masks, Identity, Visibility, Invisibility. Imagine all of that November Fifth intensity bursting out of your soul? An interior Gunpowder Treason and Plot? The “ghost within,” who might be a twin or alter ego, friend and foe, Cain and Abel, Self/Other, one’s own object of desire. What occurs exactly […]
Bruce Chatwin Dissolves
Bruce Chatwin: Traveling, unfixed, nomadic, dissolving. Identity that spreads far and wide but nearly imperceptibly… underground. The way Deleuze and Guattari speak of identity as rhizomatic in A Thousand Plateaus… each of us growing outward rather than upward. This puts the emphasis less on power and hierarchy, and more on a plurality of equally empowered humans. Chatwin travelled and with each […]
Christopher Nolan: Up Close and Distant
With all the anticipation surrounding Tenet, here’s a reversed way of looking at Christopher Nolan: There is something hypnotic about watching these characters live and breathe so far away from the camera. In the midst and fog and crowds, they seem to lose all individuality. But perhaps something quite different is taking place. Seen a different way, in these long […]
Lopsided Matt Damon
Matt Damon has always had a fascinating kind of sex appeal. Amazingly handsome, and yet there is the goofball quality that is disarming, alluring. When I saw this photo, I realized there is a certain lopsidedness to, well, all of him: his smile, his posture, and in some ways even his acting. I suppose some might criticize this — the […]
Mr. Robot: Maybe I should give you a name.
Elliot. Mr. Robot. Who Am I? For all the hacking allure (and this allure is strong in the show), one of the major driving forces behind Mr. Robot is the whole fragility of his self. Season One is so awesome because for all the mysteries, the biggest one is the big Who? Drugs and Coding, Memory and Language, or just a […]
Turning Identity into Gold
If there is one academic book out there truly inspired by Whitman’s famous “I am large, I contain multitudes,” then this is it: Authorship as Alchemy by David Glenn Kropf. A brutal lit-crit read, but the concept is simple: What if writers (what if each one of us) were not just a mere single person, but multitudes? Not just woman […]
