The Mall; two interpretations of a great song; a new art project
Man oh man, ZOMBIE is the perfect book to finish reading before going to the mall. Going to the mall is the perfect activity after reading the book ZOMBIE. Inspired, I bought and ate a giant burger at Applebee's, at the mall. I sat at the bar and coldly watched boys, families. Is the book good? It is competent, and that is enough.
Embarrassing but true: probably about 80% of my fantasy life since age 4 has been in some way about "existential" gay male killers. My interests in philosophy, history, and the visual arts are directly caused by gay killer fantasies. Sometimes I think maybe female writers can be separated into two categories: those who have thought, often and with approval, about gay and/or woman-hating, solipsistic male killers, who have portrayed such killers as having some kind of true power and insight into reality (for example, Flannery O'Connor, Emily Bronte); and those who haven't (no one good, no one to be trusted). And I guess I can't help but like Joyce Carol Oates, the author of ZOMBIE, as she so clearly falls into the former category.
A few days ago, M. Jones played "Country Death Song" by the Violent Femmes on the "jukebox" of a local bar. In this song, a rural man describes how his habit of brooding by himself led him to trouble, as he eventually "started making plans for killing [his] own kind." The song's power lies in its assertion that wanting to kill your kids is simply the natural outcome of thinking about life: this much was agreed on. But why would thinking about life lead to wanting to kill your own kind? Because you'd want to send your kids away from this world while they're still innocent? Or because transgressive violence would begin to seem like the only way to celebrate/justify the feeling of being alive?
My assumption was the latter but I didn't say anything because I was worried that it would make me seem immoral. Or not even immoral, but ignorant of real violence -- I thought that it would betray a privileged aesthete's background. But, upon sober reflection, the two motivations are both about equally fucked up. Why should I feel bad for "identifying" more with one and not the other?
Anyway the only truly cheesy part of ZOMBIE were the drawings, which I could have done much better.
Embarrassing but true: probably about 80% of my fantasy life since age 4 has been in some way about "existential" gay male killers. My interests in philosophy, history, and the visual arts are directly caused by gay killer fantasies. Sometimes I think maybe female writers can be separated into two categories: those who have thought, often and with approval, about gay and/or woman-hating, solipsistic male killers, who have portrayed such killers as having some kind of true power and insight into reality (for example, Flannery O'Connor, Emily Bronte); and those who haven't (no one good, no one to be trusted). And I guess I can't help but like Joyce Carol Oates, the author of ZOMBIE, as she so clearly falls into the former category.
A few days ago, M. Jones played "Country Death Song" by the Violent Femmes on the "jukebox" of a local bar. In this song, a rural man describes how his habit of brooding by himself led him to trouble, as he eventually "started making plans for killing [his] own kind." The song's power lies in its assertion that wanting to kill your kids is simply the natural outcome of thinking about life: this much was agreed on. But why would thinking about life lead to wanting to kill your own kind? Because you'd want to send your kids away from this world while they're still innocent? Or because transgressive violence would begin to seem like the only way to celebrate/justify the feeling of being alive?
My assumption was the latter but I didn't say anything because I was worried that it would make me seem immoral. Or not even immoral, but ignorant of real violence -- I thought that it would betray a privileged aesthete's background. But, upon sober reflection, the two motivations are both about equally fucked up. Why should I feel bad for "identifying" more with one and not the other?
Anyway the only truly cheesy part of ZOMBIE were the drawings, which I could have done much better.