The Power of Words

Words create the "land beyond nature," i.e. the meta-physical realm. In the ancient world a war was fought for the sole title to the land beyond nature. The importance of this war to its participants was this:

(AXIOM): In the land beyond nature all thought forms expressible in words are at base level of equal value due to their existence alone.

However, in order to uphold a social order in the natural world, the land beyond nature must seem to be monolithic,. i.e. holding to a certain set of acceptable principles upon which the social order is constructed. All who oppose these principles must be condemned as infidels or heretics because they, by their mere existence, attack the very foundation of society. Few indeed have broken through to this fundamental axiom....

Today, however, we have Gaga...

Music from then to now

When I was growing up in the 70s, I listened to Casey Kasem American Top 40 every weekend. This left me with an enduring love of classic rock as well as a treasure trove of lyric phrases to apply to everyday life. However the teachings of 70s lyrics are not a good foundation upon which to base one's views of life and relationships. The Simpsons are much better for that...^^ I liked disco too, but what made the most impression on me was when I first heard the Sex Pistols at my friend Terry's house. It was one of those now THAT is MUSIC moments for me, which in fairness also happened with Violent Femmes in college and with Wagner's Ring and Meistersingers (yes, I like opera too!) After college, I fell out of the music scene, clinging to my oldies stations through the late 80s and 90s, so I missed the Nirvana era. Thanks to Youtube I am now able to catch up and enjoy the 90s and the 60s music which was not a part of my experience. Some 50s is ok. I do like Hank, Hank Jr and even Hank III (yes, Hank III !--check him out!!). I went into a bluegrass phase, and still can be brought to tears by those hymns and sad songs about separation and loss. When Linda Ronstadt went all 40s it was very disappointing. She was best in country with the Stone Poneys and early solo albums. The first album I owned was "The Worst of Jefferson Airplane." Love Ziggy Stardust too!! Anyway, I experienced a contemporary music renaissance in the new century. Gave up my oldies station for more contemporary sounds. Starting with Michele Branch, and traveling to Pink, No Doubt, and now to Gaga, Katy Perry and even Nicki Minaj, I see that there is always something good just around the corner..oh...Ke$ha too, what the heck! At the annual eDance show in Hershey, I not only get to see very talented local dancers, but also I am exposed to new music. Last year it was "Telephone"..how did i miss THAT! There is so much that I didn't mention too. Moral of the story is: Don't stay stuck in your own music era or category! Change the station sometimes and see what's out there!

Edgar Allan Poe: The Cask of Amontillado

This past year, I have been reading some works that high school English class had all but ruined for me. Great Expectations is really a good book (sorry, Mrs. Sutphin, I'm sure you tried your best, but our minds were not fully formed and weighted down with ennui). And...Edgar Allan Poe! He just didn't take with me the first time, but the fact that Baudelaire translated him (in the 1840s!) has lead me back to try again. I picked up a complete tales & poems at Borders for $8, poured myself a half-mug of sherry, and settled down in my library.

The Cask of Amontillado got my attention right away. I'm sure we had to read this in school, it's a see-he's-cool-guy-if-he-writes-this story. The narrator tells us about a little thing he did 50 years ago (yawn)...no, it's that he took his revenge on an adversary by walling him up alive in his basement. Now this story really spoke to me. No, not because I am an angel of vengeance with a long enemies list (I'm really not). It resonated psychologically with some of the things I have been thinking and blogging about. If you want a good analysis, then go here: http://rmmla.wsu.edu/ereview/58.2/articles/baraban.asp
I am giving what I saw in this story, I make no claim to great literary interpretation.

The two characters, Montresor and Fortunato, interact throughout the story. When I first read it years ago, I sympathized with the narrator, Montresor. He has endured the wrong and taken action. But now I see them in a different light. Amontillado is a psychodrama, a duel between two competing aspects of a single personality. Montresor is the serious one, judgemental, religious, hierarchical minded, a calculating, humorless stay-at-home. In Freaks & Geeks terms, he is Lindsay Weir the mathlete. In Hongloumeng, he is Jia Baoyu the Confucian student who passed the National Examinations. Fortunato is the jester, curious, arrogant, spontaneous...lead by his emotions and his pride. Lindsay Weir the freak, Baoyu in the garden, on his way to becoming a wandering Taoist monk. Yes, I know I am stretching Poe's characterizations a bit, but these connections just jumped out at me. Montresor could not endure the Fortunato part of himself, so he buried it deep inside him. Will Lindsay repress her freak side to become a tool of the establishment? Would Baoyu have stayed to be a government functionary like his father? Montresor overcomes Fortunato and lives his adult life through (50 years) without him.

To live in this world we must somehow come to terms with it, and the world perfers the Montresors to the Fortunatos. My Fortunato side is an important part of my identity, yet day after day I must be the Montresor and suppress Fortunato. At least I have not walled him up in an inaccessable place. I write, draw, sing loudly to Lady Gaga (when I am alone in the car^^), visit my favorite tree, let my imagination flow freely (sometimes). But I do not float so far away that I cannot sit in my office becide the morgue and do my work.

So, thank you for a great story, Mr. Poe! (Even if I have twisted it somewhat...) I am sorry that it took me over 30 years to get back to you, and I look forward to reading more!

Charmed and Oddshipping

Watching Charmed episode "Death Becomes Them" on WE. Poor Daryl!! I always felt that he was a part of the Haliwell extended family. but there he is, ignoring an important call from Paige. Well, if is just Paige after all, but still, he should answer and be there for them. Especially Piper. Why do TV couples have to be sooo normal, so vanilla? Even Cole couldn't stay in Balthasar-form. But I don't care about him. Ugh! As a true hearted Hank Williams III/Lady Gaga shipper, I know I am way out there in coupling my favorite media stars. I loved Katy Perry and Moe in the recent Simpsons episode! But my all time favorite TV couple (that I can think of just now) are Kif and Amy from Futurama.

Why do I like weird couples? It's probably hereditary. My Mom likes the human oddities on Discovery Health, and she can't seem to learn enough about Onkel Adi on History Channel. But normal is just so...so normal. Let there be odd and unusual couples, if only to give hope to all of us who reside just outside of normal. And, for the novelty! Most good traditional stories have been written, the archetypal scenes have been exhausted. Let us have something new! And a good Daryl/Piper fanfic!

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Pre-Christmas addendum: I was watching a Christmas themed movie this morning with a blonde Lauren Holly as a defence attorney protecting Santa's son Kris Kringle, Jr., on his first outing. They made a cute couple and I was really rooting for them. But WHO did she end up with? A police detective playel by Judd Nelson. Judd Nelson! The guy from Cabin by the Lake, who 'gardened' his victims... ugh! bah! ptooey! Left me with less holiday spirit than I started with.

Shadow People

All the bits of identity that we claim or reject (for the rejected bits still cling to us), are pulled into a human shape by Lacan's mirror. We get an imago of the "I" that we now come to believe exists. Ah! Someone has even given this "I" a name. So, equipped with this ideal image and name, we procede into life's tempests. Which bits of identity we include in this image/name construct, which I will call analog-I, are determined in each "now" by feedback from interaction with others.

But sometimes stronger forces are at work within us, often related to residual emotional content from out childhood. This content is often raw and pre-verbal, coming from a time when we did not have the mental capacity to process it. How then does this content affect our analog-I? If it is strong enough, or if it receives outside encouragement, other self-images may develope. These at first have the same name as we do, but over time may become self-named, for example Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta became Lady Gaga. But not all alternate analog-I's become so powerful. For the most part, they exist as shadow people, emerging only when the environment is safe for them to do so.

In a virtual world such as Second Life, the bits of our identity can be broken out of their analog-I and shadow people shells more easily than in real life because their are more options and opportunities for us to really "build" ourself. Some people take a safe route and reproduce an idealized version of their real existence; others pick one of their shadow people that they have always wished to display, but for whaterer reason were unable to do so in real. Even those who experiment radically with image and name eventually find the form(s) with which they are most comfortable.

Lacan tells us that the core of identity itself is a falsehood. We are really all the bits of us, but the image we think we are and the name that attaches to that image can only hold a few of those bits. Therefore that analog-I, in whatever form we try to present it to others, is not really "us"--it is just a picture and a word. Perhaps Lacan was right, we can never experience the Real--all those bits of identity that make up a human being. But that should not keep us from experimenting!

Gaga

My great-aunt gave regularly to a televangelist who was later exposed as a greedy fraud. She was very upset about this, so I said that her giving was all about what kind of person she was. What he did with her gift was between him and his god. It had nothing to do with her generous heart.

I believe that what we get from people we admire has little to do with that person and more to do with us. By that I mean in most cases we do not know our designated celebrity personally, rather, we respond to something in them that we also recognize in ourselves. It is in the bringing out of these hidden qualities that we become more truly ourselves.

Which brings me to Lady Gaga. I don't know Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, and I doubt that I ever will. As a public persona, she might live to a Mick Jaggerish old age, flame out like Janis, or even pull a Britney. But that does not matter to me. In her Baba Wawa interview, she spoke about feeling like a freak, an outsider. Then the struggle to be free from that often self-imposed fear and creating a space of ones' own. And she has done that in the most flamboyant style.

When you feel like an outsider, like you don't fit into any of society's imposed categories, you can be hard on yourself. You know no one who shares your interests, your passions, so you learn to keep silent about them. Until someone like Gaga comes along, it never crosses your mind to create your own space, to be yourself, whatever you are, without fear of the judgement of your peers, and most harshly, the judgement of your own inner voices. Some people do get this instinctively...so much the better for them. But for the rest of us, a Gaga speaks like a voice from heaven.