"...a sedimentation of meaning."

I aim to steal more colors from Peter Doig.

I aim to steal more thoughts from Walter Benjamin.
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I have recently begun reading The Cambridge Companion to Walter Benjamin, edited by David S. Ferris. After a few attempts trying to jump into the deep end of critical philosophy, I have decided to start at a reasonably historic point of beginning. By this, I mean that I am not interested, or realistically able, to conduct an entire survey of Western thought by myself, so I am starting at a place that most other (failed) efforts have led me to see as something of a beginning.

Jean Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation is a book I have read twice and understood fully neither of those times. Slavoj Zizek's The Parallax View stumped me about half-way through. (Plus I had to return it to the library) Benjamin it is. And so far, reading this book is akin to someone is explaining to me the things that I already think, but in a much more coherent and comprehensive way. The introduction to the book is more or less a guide to Benjamin's approach to writing and how we as the reader must consider not only his intended meanings but the way in which his 'sober' method of writing not only adds to but is part of the meaning itself. There are plays on the words representing thought (the 'old' fashion of writing) and presenting thought (Benjamin's inteded goal). Writing is broken up into sentances, forcing the reader to pause and reflect, the same way pauses in spoken word can affect a listener.

A favorite quote from the introduction:

"Our knowledge of a subject is the means by which we relate to that which we do not possess."

a few of these for now.

I feel like I'm getting better at the Holga, although I can see how the accidents of the film (especially the blocks of tone shift in the first few) make it more interesting in a way that I can't. I like the alchemy of a Holga photo. It's a somewhat disorienting thing to take a photo without really focusing or metering or timing the exposure. It's always the shots that I'm not looking forward to getting back that are the best; the most surprising at least.

I would like to be able to see in a way more appropriate to a Holga. I think right now I see in a 35mm SLR way. I would like to have an eye with a bit of chaos in it.

I included that last shot (well, a little bit because it's silly) because when I looked at it just now, going through which to post, i had this moment of 'oh, my god. that's me'. And I don't mean my face. I mean, that's me, sort of half-visible and floating. Transparent. I'm moody lately, and homesick, it's true. But even more than that I feel this strange pull between being disgusted by the fact that I don't do anything that I want to do, and this weird stagnation/lack of interest in doing those things.

I feel like that's exactly what I would say to a psychiatrist in order to get a very interesting prescription.

But I'm trying, I guess. It's more accurate to say that I'm trying to try. I'm reading Slavoj Zizek's The Parallax View, and it's re-connecting some neurons. [I always hear the word parallax pronounced in the Russian accent of the girl in my college physics class. pah-rhah-lahx.] It's inspiring me, but I still feel so dwarfed by everything. I also checked out recently a book on German history, which should help me start to contextualize Gerhard Rohlfs a little bit. What I'm doing is sort of like trying to explain to someone the history of Chinese grammar, only I don't speak a word of Chinese.

I like the idea of making a movie that's about him, but simultaneously about my making a movie of him and about that movie. That's the loosest possible way I can explain this, I think.

In the meantime, I've more or less stopped painting. I've been dragging my heels to finish one particular canvas, but I haven't taken the time to stretch any more. It just doesn't feel right right now. I can't honestly say if it ever did/does. I enjoy it, but a life's work...? I don't know. Thinking feels right. That's all I've ever known. And lately I've let myself get out of the habit of even that.

No more.