Wednesday, June 3, 2015

Sadder Sad Joy





New Yo La Tengo! New album out on my birthday!

This is true: DC United plays Chicago tonight at RFK. I had season tickets from 2003 through last year and until last year rarely missed a game and those only for extraordinary reasons (Hamster's 50th birthday party in Baltimore) and an acquaintance of mine who I used to meet at halftime at home games for a beer has an extra ticket for tonight and asked me if I wanted to go.

Quick: While DCU contributed to my fall from love - primarily their refusal to promise LOUD SIDE! would get equal seating at a new stadium as currently at RFK  - my fall from love was, as is everything, about me. I no longer wanted to dress in tribal colors and stand and chant tribal lyrics at Corporate mercenaries. The yodeling of the past few weeks here about sports and tribalism and Corporate apply. I was delighted that United had a wildly successful 2014 season so I could quit while they were good rather than bad for a recovering zealot's self-congratulatory reasons.

I considered going for old time's sake plus to hang with a friend. Yesterday, just as I was about to decide whether to go or not, news that DC United is considering reneging on a deal with the District on a new soccer stadium at Sparrows Point. Look, I realize this is DC United seeking leverage on the final deal with the District, and I acknowledge it's entirely possible - probable, even - that District government weaseling on the deal's fringes forced United to go public with threats to move to Loudoun County. Long-timers here remember my promise of a Fuck-You-Jig: I've never thought there would be a new stadium in the District and promised to video record me dancing in front of my new seat in a new stadium if I was wrong, and that sentiment was based on the asshats who run the District, not the assholes that run United.

Imagine how unsurprised and delighted I unthinkingly was at the delicious waves of fury pulsing through me at United for the transparent stunt. I impulsively tweeted anti-United angrily, recklessly, was fun! cathartic! (If only temporarily, and left me with this guilty - but not too guilty - hangover.) Yes, it's just Corporate that United dicks with the emotions of its zealots, but it pissed me off, I loved it! I loved it. Hate: the reason I don't believe in apostasies as much I claim to have them. Transferring hate from one object to another doesn't dissipate the hate, it redirects it. Consider my anger at Democrats and professional Liberals, it's the same hate I happily stoked for decades at Republicans and professional Conservatives. Silly stupid pointless hate. I love it. Love love love hate. Time for this extrapolation reduction formula: Fine metaphors abound. Time for this extrapolation reduction formula: Fuck me. Time for this Delgados song again:














I HATE

C.K. Williams

I hate how this unsummoned sigh-sound, sob-sound,
not sound really, feeling, sigh-feeling, sob-feeling,
keeps rising in me, rasping in me, not in its old disguise
as nostalgia, sweet crazed call of the blackbird;

not as remembrance, grief for so many gone,
nor either that other tangle of recall, regret   
for unredeemed wrongs, errors, omissions,
petrified roots too deep to ever excise;

a mingling rather, a melding, inextricable mesh   
of delight in astonishing being, of being in being,
with a fear of and fear for I can barely think what,
not non-existence, of self, loved ones, love;

not even war, fuck war, sighing for war,
sobbing for war, for no war, peace, surcease;
more than all that, some ground-sound, ground-note,   
sown in us now, that swells in us, all of us,   

echo of love we had, have, for world, for our world,
on which we seem finally mere swarm, mere deluge,
mere matter self-altered to tumult, to noise,
cacophonous blitz of destruction, despoilment,

din from which every emotion henceforth emerges,
and into which falters, slides, sinks, and subsides:
sigh-sound of lament, of remorse; sob-sound of rue,   
of, still, always, ever sadder and sadder sad joy.



3 comments:

  1. you state that there's a new Sun Kil Moon EP, and ask if it matters if Kozelek is an asshole

    in terms of listening to the music, i would say - probably not - everyone is a multiplicity - as whitman said, accepting his contradictions, 'i am large, i contain multitudes' - certainly an asshole can make interesting music

    "Use every man after his desert, and who should ’scape whipping?" - hamlet, act 2, scene 2

    yesterday i was websurfing, as i so often do, led by chance and circumstance and fragments of memory and the invisible hand of the noetic fields that concern themselves with my destiny, and i came across remembrances of pattie boyd, inspirer of famous songs by her quondam husbands george harrison and eric clapton

    they treated her badly, it was asserted, and i believe it - my local public library has her autobiography, should i care to delve into the details

    the music lasts, even if the marriages came apart

    Eric Clapton y Paul McCartney - Something - Concert For George Harrison
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2wP6tbVakU

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    Replies
    1. the above comment was written prior to reading the entry on c.k. williams in wikipedia

      our friends at wikipedia note, "He has written a...critical study of Walt Whitman, On Whitman, 2010."

      chance

      circumstance

      fragments of memory

      the invisible hands of the noetic fields that concern themselves with our destinies (if any)






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  2. speaking of the joy of hate - i am reminded of something i posted in this comments column last year

    a 6 minute video by ted nottingham is relevant -

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikrPaw6DcXY

    he says, in part:

    This video is intended to offer you introductory teachings so that you may begin on this path through the methodologies that we are working with here in this group, methodologies based on the 4th way teachings which are rooted in Eastern Christian mysticism and other universal teachings of humanity.

    The first step to initiate you into what can be discovered here is what we call self-observation—and that is the discipline of will and attention to become aware of your inner activities. That is to say, when you get impatient, or irritated—be AWARE of that occurring, don't just BE the negative emotion that you're feeling. So that you begin by this simple focus of attention to SEE what is going on within you more objectively. And in so doing you begin to create an inner space, an inner separation, where something within you, some higher quality of awareness which we name Observing I, as in 'I am', the Observing I is watching the habitual reactions that each of us has in life and has developed unconsciously, in the lower state of consciousness that we take for granted and which is called, in this system of thought, 'sleep'. So—simply begin to become aware of yourself.

    And in doing that you'll find that you have to divide your attention. You have to be aware of the world outside of you, the people, the circumstances, AND be aware internally. So, as you're listening to this video, you are aware of yourself sitting in a chair. You're aware of your state of mind, of your mood, AND you are listening to these words.

    We are able to split our attention. Imagine one arrow going out, and one arrow going in.

    So you have self-observation, divided attention, inner separation.

    These initial steps, these 'baby steps' actually have tremendous power, because they begin to make possible the awakening process, the expansion of consciousness into a higher state of consciousness, where the more authentic Self resides ...

    ReplyDelete