Part Two: Re-memory
November 4th, 2005 by 
bacchuswasted
John Hinckley Jr. wasn’t much of an assassin.
On the 30th of March 1981 John managed to pump six shots in the direction of the president. Six shots, and not a single one hit the target. However, Karma would intervene and one of John’s bullets ricocheted off the amour plated presidential limo finding a path into Reagan’s chest, just missing his heart. The bullet might have actually done more damaged had John not decided to use the terribly unsuited .22 pistol (the pea shooter of hand guns) for the job.
John Hinkley Jr. tried to impress a girl by killing the president, and botched it horribly.
Dionysus_Stoned wasn’t much of a blogger. He ‘re-members’ some fifty posts, and now, almost all of them are gone.
In the novel Beloved, the characters use the term re-memory to highlight the ways in which history and narrative inaugurate the truths and realties of our world. Re-memory always implies specific choices, ommisions, styles basically everything that goes into the fictioning of an-other history.
But then what kind of a history was DS fictioning? He thought it would be more difficult to delete them, but once he got started it was easy. He felt nothing for those words - mainly about smoking ganja- all of them shit.All of them accept one.
He couldn’t delete one blog, the attachment was too strong. So he saved it. It wasn’t that it was particularly clever (in fact it was more then a little silly) or even well written. Maybe it was just a ricochet effect; a bullet that found a path into his chest by the intervention of the forces of coincidence. Still it seemed to him that behind the pretentious ‘fucking up’ of other people’s ideas, there was something worth re-membering. Something to make an-other history with.
For some folks, re-memory is means through which the silences and omissions of the dominant order are animated for the living present. It is a revolutionary process through which affect, emotion and subjectivity become central to the ways in which meaning is constituted in the world. A way for subjugated knowledge’s to come alive in/for the here and now.
He started a blog in order to make Raj Patel’s blog roll, but botched it horribly. He re-membered some fifty post by deleting them, all, except one-
Schizoid Writing: The Ricochet Effect
Distracted. Bored. I wonder about the voice Bacchus_Wasted - or rather the box it operates.
There are always at least three-and a function. The first is a legal identity, the second, a public representative, and the third is desire. Each is a separate identity and yet it is impossible to separate them. Their names are convenience… the mark of a conditional independence. Like a Deleuzian machine, it ‘works only by breaking down’-breaking apart! a unity-me .
Convenience: The function f(x), where x is the Name
You already know the second - he is our hero DionysusStoned (DS) and is the facility that mangers the machines relations with world (an ambassador, or an ego in psychoanalytic terms). The third is Bacchus_Wasted (BW) - the creation that creates-Bacchus_Wasted is desire. The first, the legal identity is the name for the world, here y.
These names are a convenience and an experiment. For other places and times, others are used, or when WE are lucky, no name at all. DS and BW (and occasionally the legal identity y, are inserted into f(x) such that we have variously, f(BW), f(DS) and f(y).
f(y): The recluse. Sometimes works. The name that can be blamed (which is the reason the ancients came up with it in first place). It is the public name and therefore also the most private. The voice(box) is the one reserved for the bank.
The “name of the father” relates f(y) to f(DS), to steal a formula from Freud’s pupil.
f(DS): f(DS) is almighty. f(DS) is the one who gets insecure. f(DS) is the lie who lies. f(DS) is the one who believes. The voice(box) is the one reserved for the charming of the world-If I were a rapper-I would say, that which ‘represents’ ( as in, “u got to represent”).-If i was going to be lacanian about it, its the voice that organisers the representatives (or signifiers)
f(BW): desire-desire which lacks nothing -’desire doesn’t lack it object’ (philosophical frogs). f(BW) is the creative ‘force giving fire’ (to steal a phrase) that animates and moves f(x)-in general. f(BW) is both the furnace and the metal forged-both product and the process-producing. f(BW) was best described by a French guy with long finger nails as desiring-production. Its voice(box), never more then a whisper, is for his lover - his other in the world of things.
F(BW) writes/creates-f(DS) packages (inserts stuff in brackets) and claims the credit….f(y) is blamed-.
Of the three the f(DS) has dominion. In psychoanalytic terms we call this the repression of f(BW). But every now and again f(BW) takes over and we don’t care-anyway the ‘I’ is better for it. -or rather, the ‘I’ is lost in the fact of creation-
I add that this is all playful-reckless rubbish that collapses under the weight of the masters that it invokes (deleuze, marx, lacan-) - one or two philosophers are tuning white in terror at sight of my blasphemous-far fetched fucking up of their ideas, albeit it in their graves. Still, in the FICTIONING of an identity, anything/everything is possible-so fuck them-
This was written in the voice of f(BW) so that f(DS) can post something on Baccus_Wasted’s blog to make clear to all, that both are full of shit-.however only f(y) can be blamed-
look out for part three: Re-membering Blogmark(provisional title)
Posted in Uncategorized | 
November 4th, 2005 at 7:19 am
It reminded me of one I’d done, an early draft of which I’d posted here as a kind of an intro piece. I’ve added to it subsequently, so posting again won’t be pure indulgenge; part indulgence, yes, but not pure… and it’s in respect of you too, DS, you crazy fuck!
An attempt at what I meant when asked what was the matter
By Jack Tonsil
An offering at the feet of my guru, Sri Swami Ishvaramayananda Mararaj; and in respect of my father, Alfred Lord Tennyson and the Bard (and with apologies to Steven Hawking.)
Preamble…
This is meant more as a play with words than as any serious exploration into a scientific principle; hence the interjections. While it is written with respect to the considerations of the argument, it does, however, operate at the very edges of my understanding, and so at times will have a tendency to cross the line. If you’re still reading, welcome! And if I haven’t lost you by the end, then look me up, because to have followed THESE convolutions would have been a rare thing indeed.
I’m increasingly of the opinion that the construction of literature, in English form anyway, should have applied to it the same unwavering principles as, say, mathematics, music or any such endeavor that finds result at the end (or in part) of a logical progression. Not that I’m a student of any of these disciplines — the culmination of 12 years of mathematics, a miserable 13%; and I was one who, faced with the choice of physics, chemistry or biology, chose the latter (at the time I’d far rather have dissected a frog than cause a big bang); I don’t know a particle from a participle; and as for music, well, my aptitude for holding a tune is commensurate with my ability to hold down a relationship. At the age of 16, the one was the means, the other the end. I’m 38 now, it’s a Saturday night and I’m writing an article. Needless to say, the piano lessons came to nothing.
Fortunately, however, there are those who were, and are, students of the above, who could undoubtedly cast a clearer light on what I will try to explain.
But music is art, I hear you cry. It is, and so is literature. Just semantics, though. Art, science, sport – call them what you will – all have as common the conscious manipulation of energy/substance into recognisable patterns.
Vedic philosophy holds to the concept of maya, by which Yogis mean, that which has dimension and can be measured. Through the interpenetration of maya, primordial substance, let’s say consciousness, is separated out into the infinite spectrum of names and forms that we call Creation, or manifestation (better) seeing as the existent is not created but has always been there. And everything’s maya, according to them, including our thoughts, emotions and the stuff we take as meaning.
An aside…
Consciousness is homogenous, but maya is not; and the distinctions we make (in error) give rise to the term’s other implication: maya = illusion. (Debate, perhaps, for a different article.)
Okay, here’s where I part company with the Yogis and launch into the minefield of my own reasoning. So if you’re still with me, buckle your seatbelts…
A proposition…
Art and science strive to distinguish the energy pattern (truth) that is the Universe, thus making it tangible and so appreciable to our mental/sensory faculties.
——And if you buy that then… Anyway, we digress…
Another proposition…
The Universe is a perfect construction. And we are built from that same blueprint. So, the Universal energy pattern is our own.
There is only the one pattern; it recurs and recurs and recurs, like a fractal. And over this, for amusement, perhaps, is the veil (maya), like a sheet to a ghost, bringing with it the measure of us. Yet, in essence, we remain that perfect pattern, which is why the correctness of painting, or poetry, or 1 + 1 = 2 resonates.
Like attracts like (to quickly steal another aphorism from the Yogis) and in a relationship between two such particles, change in one will simultaneously result in change to the other, irrespective of distance or time (a refutation, by the way, of Einstein’s assertion that nothing travels faster than the speed of light; which, in turn, must lead us into enquiry about a Power beyond the mechanical).
There are, of course, other kinds of binary systems governed by other forces: gravity, polarity, magnetism, etc. All of them rhythmical – sometimes there, sometimes not – just like us.
——Yip, it’s easy come, easy go…
This, then, the sum of my understanding of quantum theory, given to me by, yes, you guessed it… the Yogis. Although I doubt that by now the Yogis would recognise this as anything like what they imparted.
——And just what it has to do with the original premise, God alone knows!
Sorry about that… Why, then, should all of this have bearing on an empirical examination of literature? My layman’s answer is simply… balance; cause and effect; as we sow, so we reap.
And so to the constituent parts of the literature equation, or ensemble (to be truer to the following metaphor).
On one side, the sentence (for these purposes, this is the unit, not the word); nouns and verbs, supported by a company of bit players: prepositions, adjectives, adverbs, conjunctions, pronouns, punctuation, etc.
——Not forgetting the interjection!
Nouns and verbs are the star performers here, the cause of all the effects, the heavy hitters; carrying in them that singular energy which, on the other side of the equation, finds expression as meaning and emotion. Yes! It is in us that these equations have their solutions, exactly the sum of their parts; in us they talk to their respective halves in the tongue of quantum theory.
——Mind your step, boy.
Well, that’s one reaction, what’s yours? Literature is governed by the laws of physics! If the Yogis are to be believed, and all is indeed maya, then on this plane of life everything has measure, everything is quantifiable. As long as we choose to operate at this level, then we must accept that even the subtlest and briefest flash of energy, by comparision to the Yogis’ silent reality, is base matter. And, just as the physicist examines the universe, from its vastness down to its tiniest part, seeking out the nature of matter, there we writers must also search for the bones on which to lay our craft. This requires that we full understand the emotional index of nouns and verbs, and that we order them (with the help of our supporting cast) in such a way so as to get our timing right, to strike in harmony with the song celestial. The emotional values will change depending on context, that much is axiomatic, but, with patience, trial, error,
——and just a little bit of grace
correct syntax will resonate. Everything we know for truth is known because it has found its place in the finder’s same perfectness. Every part of every atom is half a grain of conscious truth, and somewhere out in sea or space exists the other half, dancing with its partner to the music of scientific art. Write to that rhythm and your words will be exactly right. And maybe the rules of language are the markers on that rhythm’s trodden paths? At the end of it, irrespective of the language we choose, we are but quantum mechanics, and our measure will be known by how we manipulate the substance of our trade.
But ours is a most forgiving science, she is patient — a living treasure wanting to be found. And how beautiful, how rewarding…
“…Tho’ we are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.â€
Tennyson
——The rest, as they say, is silence.
November 4th, 2005 at 12:11 pm
very cool. i really like Ulysses as well (one of the few tennyson poems that i know)
i wonder if you have ever read spinoza. something tells me that u might enjoy him.
I have also just realised that this must have been where the thread that saw Andreas and i cross swords started…re-memory bru. strange force that. later
ds
i write what i like
January 6th, 2009 at 1:15 am
Bite my shiny metal ass, assholes, [url=http://justnkldkhsjvd.com/]you were joked![/url]