Joy Division documentary. He was 23 when he died. He was my age when he was writing and singing. How do these things just start with a bunch of bored kids?
I was watching Control again last night after a long time and found this doc. Gotta give credit to Corbijn and the actors, specially Sam Riley. The documentary is brilliant as well. It's like reading a really engaging historian's work, it's not just about Curtis or Joy Division but about Manchester, England and the world in general at the time, offering larger insights but told from a deeply personal perspective.
Fuck ever being brilliant myself, I just want to bear witness to something great, searing, surprising.Why is it that I feel that might never happen in today's world? Is it because I live in a Midnight in Paris of my own head?
When I was a child, I was very quick to learn new things (except Mathematics, which I attribute to terrible tutors, my mother being herself an epic fail and the trauma of having my father try to hammer it into my head on his visits home like I was a jawan. I'm going to sound like Philip Larkin here but parent's can never teach their children anything) but along the road I became somehow anxious to the point of inaction about doing things absolutely new to me because I would inevitably, as I am human, make mistakes. You would say that's a sign of growing up, you are no longer a child when you care about looking stupid. I was mostly fearing my own self deprecating remarks rather than anyone elses. And it's not just about looking stupid, it's the effort of trying (this applies to interpersonal interactions. By god if you've ever seen me conduct a conversation with a total stranger - sober, it's excruciating. And don't even ask me to call anyone on the phone) investing a part of yourself into something new and realizing that you're not born naturally to do it, that you might not be any good at the moment. My mother in one of her motivational speeches (apart from my brother's favourite - "Na kaam ki na kaaj ki, dushman anaj ki") told me that I'll never be truly creative if (/because) I'm too scared of making mistakes. Now all this must sound dramatic, written out like this, you're probably thinking this must have a context or be coming from somewhere, but I promise this is not one of those "I suck" things, nor is it fueled by anything in particular. Let's just say it's me shouting this to myself.
There's something that Stephen Fry said that was just exactly what I think all the time, what my big complex is. (note: He's talking about his influences here)
It's to tell myself that it might be 2012 AD but it's not my time for a quarter life crisis yet. Till such a time as I decide to take big leaps of self discovery or am allowed into the secret club of those who know how to live and be creative and stupid and make mistakes, I'll just let everyone else be stupid and learn from their mistakes and make snide remarks from inside my little cave. We have Siouxsie here. Good night.
"Sooner or later someone was going to want to say more than 'fuck you', someone was gonna want to say 'I'm fucked'".Punk poets from grey concrete buildings all over the world.
I was watching Control again last night after a long time and found this doc. Gotta give credit to Corbijn and the actors, specially Sam Riley. The documentary is brilliant as well. It's like reading a really engaging historian's work, it's not just about Curtis or Joy Division but about Manchester, England and the world in general at the time, offering larger insights but told from a deeply personal perspective.
Fuck ever being brilliant myself, I just want to bear witness to something great, searing, surprising.Why is it that I feel that might never happen in today's world? Is it because I live in a Midnight in Paris of my own head?
When I was a child, I was very quick to learn new things (except Mathematics, which I attribute to terrible tutors, my mother being herself an epic fail and the trauma of having my father try to hammer it into my head on his visits home like I was a jawan. I'm going to sound like Philip Larkin here but parent's can never teach their children anything) but along the road I became somehow anxious to the point of inaction about doing things absolutely new to me because I would inevitably, as I am human, make mistakes. You would say that's a sign of growing up, you are no longer a child when you care about looking stupid. I was mostly fearing my own self deprecating remarks rather than anyone elses. And it's not just about looking stupid, it's the effort of trying (this applies to interpersonal interactions. By god if you've ever seen me conduct a conversation with a total stranger - sober, it's excruciating. And don't even ask me to call anyone on the phone) investing a part of yourself into something new and realizing that you're not born naturally to do it, that you might not be any good at the moment. My mother in one of her motivational speeches (apart from my brother's favourite - "Na kaam ki na kaaj ki, dushman anaj ki") told me that I'll never be truly creative if (/because) I'm too scared of making mistakes. Now all this must sound dramatic, written out like this, you're probably thinking this must have a context or be coming from somewhere, but I promise this is not one of those "I suck" things, nor is it fueled by anything in particular. Let's just say it's me shouting this to myself.
There's something that Stephen Fry said that was just exactly what I think all the time, what my big complex is. (note: He's talking about his influences here)
The fact that you (Oscar Wilde) could be such a towering intellect, such a lord of language and be charming and graceful, kind, good natured, but also unhappy and unlucky was a great discovery for an adolescent because One of the traps of adolescence is the sort of paranoid resentment that somehow you’re never going to match up and that everybody else's life is going to be better and finer and fuller. That everyone else attended some secret lesson in which how to live was taught and you had a dental appointment that day or you were somehow not invited and the point of great writers like Wilde is that they make that invitation to you.
It's to tell myself that it might be 2012 AD but it's not my time for a quarter life crisis yet. Till such a time as I decide to take big leaps of self discovery or am allowed into the secret club of those who know how to live and be creative and stupid and make mistakes, I'll just let everyone else be stupid and learn from their mistakes and make snide remarks from inside my little cave. We have Siouxsie here. Good night.
12 comments:
Didn't wanna break my own flow there, but was having a smoke right now, what a nice night, it's not too cold, just a flannel shirt and shawl is good enough, the sky looks beautiful and clear with just a few wisps of clouds here and there and the wind through the trees makes that sound. Of course there's the other sound which was that of my neighbour's elderly ailing mother who has some sort of terminal(?) illness I think that makes her scream and moan in pain at all hours of the day. Just in case you thought you had problems. It's quite sad actually but sad in a way that you know you can do nothing about it.
I like that Stephen Fry thing you quoted. I guess for me, the flawed bit is true for any famous person whom I'm drawn to.
Don't you think the actor who played Ian Curtis looks a lot like Pete Doherty? :D
And good plan! That's why people like you, me and Foucault become theorists. We don't have to posit a plan, a roadmap or defend anything. If the post-modernists could pull it off, so can you or I. Making actual things is so 80s. I mean, really now.
Foucault wasn't the kind to make snide remarks. He was humble, hardworking and didn't consider himself a post modernist? post modernism is like an intelligent religion gone wrong. it guises itself along the lines of eclecticism and disobedience of normative structure actually putting an end to all experimentation. there's a close line between a post modernist and a lazy idiot so please re think your path. i really don't want to discuss any of this further but I hardly think Foucault was trying to create a theory that didn't apply to real things. He was directly in contempt of the left and talked about the productive branching of power in actual institutions. I think that's as real as it gets. I haven't read much but I understand what I have and I would NEVER dare to compare him with myself and i didn't know you were a theorist? if that is true, please rid yourself of the apathetic apparent post-modernism. This is all because I didn't understand how V's plan translates to her being a theorist. (Sorry bro, I love you more than I do Foucault though.) I thought I was being rude so I removed it but what the hell, all is fair in love and academics.
Sorry to have started an academic debate here, though I'm enjoying it highly from the sidelines. I don't speak Foucault-ese, meaning I've never read the man or know what he's about. To clear up any confusion, my plan was to hide under my covers and watch TV and not do or feel or learn anything ever like I have done all week.
Luckily, we're getting out of here in a few hours but bro I'm still hiding in my room, there are blood relatives of the large nosed variety on my balcony. The bald one is talking about his bahu's shitty kavitaen and my mum is talking about how I'm shy and don't like any attention on myself. Hahahahah
"Sorry to have started an academic debate here, though I'm enjoying it highly from the sidelines."
- that's something Foucault would probably say (well, in my psychic universe, anyway).
Pink Moon, i don't know if Foucault was trying to create theory that applied to the real world. I think by and large, he was anti-marxist in the sense that he realized that life was way too complicated to be lived according to manifestoes (see Biopower; David Graeber's fantastic piece on Power/Knowledge and Bureaucracy). This, in part, is why he became so big in the communist scourge era USA post 1950s.
Re post modernism being an intelligent religion gone wrong (nice one!), yeah sure, I agree with that. That's true for most ideologies, -isms, the enlightenment, what have you. I was talking out of my ass anyway, re post-modernism. I guess, foucault is what, post-structuralist? equally an "intelligent religon gone wrong". the key thing here is that the present era where capitalism is king and everything else is subservient to it, is merely a snapshot in time. Some other ideology will come along to replace it at some point, either in our lifetimes or not. Theorists are always careful to distance themselves from manifestoes, and ideologies. Things have always been in flux - that's my foucauldian takeaway (the wisest people have always been vague, think buddhist koans). Mercantile capitalism, like pop music has just had a really good run, to a point that people mistake it for permanence. There's no corporeal point in theorizing it, or critiquing it, because the world isn't exactly waiting to take its marching orders from philosophers or critical theorists, since that's about the only thing that's always been true. Even theorists will privately admit, that it's all a bunch of posturing and arm waving. Marx himself, in his final years, was studying soil science, to ground his theory of labor/value vis a vis natural capital.
And in that regard, sure i'm a theorist. I use marxist analyses all the time, but I don't want the revolution to happen (cf. Hitchens's excellent essay in Atlantic Monthly titled The Revenge of Marx").
The reason i even brought foucault up, is, I should clarify, that V's Stephen Fry quote reminded me of him. He was a mediocre student, and had a pretty shitty life for a really long time, like into his thirties even, and suddenly he just blossomed. Here, I must quote wikipedia:
"His early education was a mix of success and mediocrity until he attended the Jesuit Collège Saint-Stanislas, where he excelled."
"Foucault's personal life during the École Normale was difficult — he suffered from acute depression[7] due to distress over his homosexuality and made several suicide attempts."
"Foucault failed at the agrégation in 1950 but took it again and succeeded the following year."
And right after that he caught on fire. This sort of thing is comforting (perversely, or not)to a mere mortal like me.
Just as an addendum - I was also reacting to V's brother saying - "Na kaam ki na kaaj ki, dushman anaj ki"
I think that's messed up. I mean peace and love to the Tripathi sibling, but I get so pissed off when people say stuff whose subtext is essentially - "why don't you DO something?". Like, my dad, for instance. People who studied science in general, as opposed to 'art' or whatever, who think life is about generating product, and not process.
To respond (again) to your point, Pink Moon about Foucault being a hard worker, yeah sure, he was a prolific writer and everything. But he spent countless hours in roman baths, Berkeley saunas, gay clubs, seminars, conversation, hours and literally days pontificating.
The only way you can do that is if you sit on your keister and think. Thinking is hard work but it has no real end product, if you're in the arts/theory. And it is usually poorly valued by a market economy (i have written an entire thesis on this already, so i figure i know a little bit about it).
I figure, V is doing or intends to do a lot of that (travel, read, sit and think) , and even if she is not "kaam ki na kaaj ki" at present, I'm totally sure she isn't "dushman anaj ki". It's all a process. It'll come out in the wash.
My brother is my parent, he can say whatever the fuck he wants. He's also probably one of the most sorted, intelligent, responsible and the coolest people I know so I respect his opinion over anyone elses, sometimes even our parent's. As for the statement, I don't think you get the context and humor of it, it's just something we say in my family. He also says "tu toh paraya dhan hai", which doesn't mean he wants to send me off to get married. Now don't start apologizing profusely for stepping on my toes or offending me because you didn't and it doesn't matter to me but I hate having to explain jokes and how my family works to people. What he meant by that statement is he wishes that I go out and learn all the things I complain about not being able to learn (languages, guitar etc) instead of sitting and home and wasting the "Best Years of My Life". He wishes I would do all the things that he didn't have the time to learn because he was out in med school since he was 18 and then working all his life. And he has a point. Even if I don't act on his advice right away I know that that's what I have to do. And also, what I'm doing at home is not thinking, it's avoiding thinking of anything at all by watching TV and numbing myself, but it's good you have such a high opinion of me and my slack.
And as for science people who value product more than thinking, you don't know him so you're excused if you don't know how much of what I am is him.
(continue the debate if you like, I'll watch the gladiatorial match from the sidelines)
Yes, yes, I realize that I took his words out of context, but I was reacting more to the sentiment that sort of exists in a platonic sense. People DO think that, in real life. Like my father does, and lots of shitty people do who essentially run the world, to repeat myself. Which is not to say my father is shitty people.
I'm sure your brother is all kinds of awesome. it's hard to convey tone with the written word, but I mean that sincerely. :)
Your angst and my angst are different, they come from different places.
(Over and out)
Ouch! colddd.
WOOHOO. my turn to enjoy from the sidelines.
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