(no subject)
Hello again. I'm alive and well again. Staying up late in the man's house enjoying my liberty while it lasts. I am fully recovered from my downward swing last month and am generally reasonably happy at the moment.
A couple of weeks ago, the man had a few artistic friends over staying, and I found myself getting tagged along to the National Review of Live Art at the Tramway Gallery/Theatre in Glasgow. I didn't know what the fuck it was about intitially myself, either. It was all about "performance art" - which is like art, performed by people. Performance artists, as I discovered, range from egotistical attention whores and genuine geniuses.
I spent the first two days generally being the heretic at the art festival - blurting out a few crass jokes during some short films and sneering at some the acts as "a bunch middle class baby-boomers being pretentious... they thrive on being obfuscatious - coming out with a load of cryptic drivel in the confidence that the audience will find some allegory in it that even they don't know is there."
I also had very high-brow, yet wreaking-of-remnant-teen-angst, intellectually charged discussion about the nature of art with the man's artist friend.
At one point a rather obnoxious fellow came and practically spat in my face for touching his "exhibition" - as though it were some holy relic. He asked me specifically: "Do you realise this is art?"
And I wish I could have thought quicker on my feet - to say something like: "Well no, how would I tell if this (piece of piss) was art?"
He made a point about how I wouldn't go touching an exhibit in a museum (even though I would). And to be quite frank, my response to that is - I don't fucking care if you spent "10 hours" arranging some props - and just so you know, I wasn't intending to transgress the limits with your work - but don't dare to have the nerve to demand your work get the same treatment as that well-established in art galleries around the globe until it is even a fraction as good as theirs. I added at this point that some of the art was about "making tripe seem profound".
Fortunately, not all the performances were as uninspired, and I had a road-to-Damascus conversion to the whole idea in one 90 minute performance that seemed to last all of 5 minutes. It took ne about a day to say it right, and I won't spell it right as I never saw it written - but it sounded like "poco nostra". It was all strobe-lights, stark imagery, mixing religion with irreligion, and politics, and ethics - wordlessly, with performers on three separate stages playing out their acts. It included a depiction of Jesus by way of removing leeches that were placed on the chest earlier in the act, and standing wearing nothing but a bloody loin cloth, with a long plank of wood held behind the back, across the shoulders. And a female having the audience pull on what vaguely resembled a burqa. This woman also managed to seduce a young man from the audience to come up on stage and drop his trousers and boxers, to inject vitamin B into his arse... This stood out too. Though I could never put across, particularly with my sketchy memory of it now, just how rapt it all held me for the best part of the duration.
The guy who did the Christ emulation was an absolute hunk. I got into conversation with him after the event and he told me his name was Roberto- rolling the Rrrr, for good measure, and he wasn't gay, either ("I only let women and leeches attach themselves to me"). While drunk on the last night I blurted out: "You're a very sexy man, Roberto... But you know it! You know it!" ("Thank you... Thanks... You're sweet..." etc.) - "And I just wish you well with whichever lady-friend you're going home with tonight... Another time, another place, doll. Goodnight."
Good times, good times...
Beyond that, I haven't done much productive these past few weeks. I still need to get that apology thing done now that I'm reasonably level-headed again, and need to get a new passport, and some other annoyances. And so on and so forth.
In other news - science has advanced a little. In spite of implying that he doesn't suffer critics well - Desmond Morris has changed his tune remarkably on an issue in the space of a couple of months from:
"From a purely evolutionary standpoint, exclusive heterosexuality is the only biologically valid lifestyle"
To something like:
"Ok, fair enough, plenty of animals do it... though, I mean, I did obviously already know that, what with having written a paper on sexually frustrated pseudofemale behaviour in ten spined sticklebacks and all... So yes, perhaps we can account for some human homosexuality after all. It's just the ones who are just never engaged with the opposite sex, ever, that need an extra special explanation. But until then - here's some completely unfounded quack conjecture that I just plucked out of Clive Bromhall's bumhole."
It's a step in the right direction to him seeing the hypothesis for the steaming pile of crap that it is. (He is incorrect on several counts that I can't be bothered listing here - I'm not just rejecting the idea out of hand.) Plugging a gap in knowledge with some flimsy hypothesis, because that gap in knowledge cries out to be plugged, is the wellspring of religion and superstition, as well as forming the main architecture of a lot of pseudoscience. If you don't like it, don't do it yourself. This isn't a dictum against your mind's right to meander, or the right to bring forth new ideas - but is a harsh word about trying to foist it as scientific fact to the lay public: my main gripe.
He also mentions a book in the interview linked in the above quote. I have good reason to believe he is referring to Bruce Bagemihl's "Biological Exuberance". And I also have some reason to believe that he hasn't actually read all of what Bagemihl has to say, and is just being a lazy critic. (Pot, kettle, black.)
For a start, the book is about so much more than getting across that human homosexuality isn't unnatural - it's about communicating that homosexuality (of any sort) is far from unnatural, point blank, to the kinds of neo-Darwinists who think it jars with their ideas. And beyond that, it also covers several other, beautifully referenced facets of non-reproductive behaviour. (On a side note, I don't suppose Morris thinks that beta wolves - who don't breed, only alpha male and female in the pack do - are "reproductively challenged"?)
In short, though Bagemihl focusses particularly on homosexuality as a point of study, the general outline he's trying to make is a rebellion against the mindset that sees all of life on earth engaged almost solely in the seductive eternal slavery of replicating itself - as existing purely as a means of replenishing itself. When life has so much more to it - so much more waste and inefficiency, so much more grandeur, so much more pointlessness. But it isn't A nihilstic pointlessness, is is an effervescent exuberance to be enjoyed in many ways. Yes, reproduction is the means by which life sustains itself (as a consequence of death, of course), or keeps the species going, or the Selfish Gene exerts its right to another generation - or however you like to assemble it in your mind. But reproduction is the sideline, not the main show, when it comes to life - and perhaps if I could but do away with both mortality and reproduction, I could make some biologists see this view. Life for the sake of life...
Morris also says something about reproduction being a "genetic instruction". I wonder what he means and wish he would elaborate. Does he mean that all sexual animals are "genetically instructed" to copulate heterosexually? Or to nurture their young? Or just to have a vague profound desire to have offspring? I'm afraid that statement really needs elaborating on. And while you're all musing on that - check this nice article out and be amused.
I have many more points to make up my sleeves, but they'll just have to stay up my sleeves until next time - because it's almost fucking 7am now, and I am so tired I could fall asleep any moment now.
Bonne journée.
A couple of weeks ago, the man had a few artistic friends over staying, and I found myself getting tagged along to the National Review of Live Art at the Tramway Gallery/Theatre in Glasgow. I didn't know what the fuck it was about intitially myself, either. It was all about "performance art" - which is like art, performed by people. Performance artists, as I discovered, range from egotistical attention whores and genuine geniuses.
I spent the first two days generally being the heretic at the art festival - blurting out a few crass jokes during some short films and sneering at some the acts as "a bunch middle class baby-boomers being pretentious... they thrive on being obfuscatious - coming out with a load of cryptic drivel in the confidence that the audience will find some allegory in it that even they don't know is there."
I also had very high-brow, yet wreaking-of-remnant-teen-angst, intellectually charged discussion about the nature of art with the man's artist friend.
At one point a rather obnoxious fellow came and practically spat in my face for touching his "exhibition" - as though it were some holy relic. He asked me specifically: "Do you realise this is art?"
And I wish I could have thought quicker on my feet - to say something like: "Well no, how would I tell if this (piece of piss) was art?"
He made a point about how I wouldn't go touching an exhibit in a museum (even though I would). And to be quite frank, my response to that is - I don't fucking care if you spent "10 hours" arranging some props - and just so you know, I wasn't intending to transgress the limits with your work - but don't dare to have the nerve to demand your work get the same treatment as that well-established in art galleries around the globe until it is even a fraction as good as theirs. I added at this point that some of the art was about "making tripe seem profound".
Fortunately, not all the performances were as uninspired, and I had a road-to-Damascus conversion to the whole idea in one 90 minute performance that seemed to last all of 5 minutes. It took ne about a day to say it right, and I won't spell it right as I never saw it written - but it sounded like "poco nostra". It was all strobe-lights, stark imagery, mixing religion with irreligion, and politics, and ethics - wordlessly, with performers on three separate stages playing out their acts. It included a depiction of Jesus by way of removing leeches that were placed on the chest earlier in the act, and standing wearing nothing but a bloody loin cloth, with a long plank of wood held behind the back, across the shoulders. And a female having the audience pull on what vaguely resembled a burqa. This woman also managed to seduce a young man from the audience to come up on stage and drop his trousers and boxers, to inject vitamin B into his arse... This stood out too. Though I could never put across, particularly with my sketchy memory of it now, just how rapt it all held me for the best part of the duration.
The guy who did the Christ emulation was an absolute hunk. I got into conversation with him after the event and he told me his name was Roberto- rolling the Rrrr, for good measure, and he wasn't gay, either ("I only let women and leeches attach themselves to me"). While drunk on the last night I blurted out: "You're a very sexy man, Roberto... But you know it! You know it!" ("Thank you... Thanks... You're sweet..." etc.) - "And I just wish you well with whichever lady-friend you're going home with tonight... Another time, another place, doll. Goodnight."
Good times, good times...
Beyond that, I haven't done much productive these past few weeks. I still need to get that apology thing done now that I'm reasonably level-headed again, and need to get a new passport, and some other annoyances. And so on and so forth.
In other news - science has advanced a little. In spite of implying that he doesn't suffer critics well - Desmond Morris has changed his tune remarkably on an issue in the space of a couple of months from:
"From a purely evolutionary standpoint, exclusive heterosexuality is the only biologically valid lifestyle"
To something like:
"Ok, fair enough, plenty of animals do it... though, I mean, I did obviously already know that, what with having written a paper on sexually frustrated pseudofemale behaviour in ten spined sticklebacks and all... So yes, perhaps we can account for some human homosexuality after all. It's just the ones who are just never engaged with the opposite sex, ever, that need an extra special explanation. But until then - here's some completely unfounded quack conjecture that I just plucked out of Clive Bromhall's bumhole."
It's a step in the right direction to him seeing the hypothesis for the steaming pile of crap that it is. (He is incorrect on several counts that I can't be bothered listing here - I'm not just rejecting the idea out of hand.) Plugging a gap in knowledge with some flimsy hypothesis, because that gap in knowledge cries out to be plugged, is the wellspring of religion and superstition, as well as forming the main architecture of a lot of pseudoscience. If you don't like it, don't do it yourself. This isn't a dictum against your mind's right to meander, or the right to bring forth new ideas - but is a harsh word about trying to foist it as scientific fact to the lay public: my main gripe.
He also mentions a book in the interview linked in the above quote. I have good reason to believe he is referring to Bruce Bagemihl's "Biological Exuberance". And I also have some reason to believe that he hasn't actually read all of what Bagemihl has to say, and is just being a lazy critic. (Pot, kettle, black.)
For a start, the book is about so much more than getting across that human homosexuality isn't unnatural - it's about communicating that homosexuality (of any sort) is far from unnatural, point blank, to the kinds of neo-Darwinists who think it jars with their ideas. And beyond that, it also covers several other, beautifully referenced facets of non-reproductive behaviour. (On a side note, I don't suppose Morris thinks that beta wolves - who don't breed, only alpha male and female in the pack do - are "reproductively challenged"?)
In short, though Bagemihl focusses particularly on homosexuality as a point of study, the general outline he's trying to make is a rebellion against the mindset that sees all of life on earth engaged almost solely in the seductive eternal slavery of replicating itself - as existing purely as a means of replenishing itself. When life has so much more to it - so much more waste and inefficiency, so much more grandeur, so much more pointlessness. But it isn't A nihilstic pointlessness, is is an effervescent exuberance to be enjoyed in many ways. Yes, reproduction is the means by which life sustains itself (as a consequence of death, of course), or keeps the species going, or the Selfish Gene exerts its right to another generation - or however you like to assemble it in your mind. But reproduction is the sideline, not the main show, when it comes to life - and perhaps if I could but do away with both mortality and reproduction, I could make some biologists see this view. Life for the sake of life...
Morris also says something about reproduction being a "genetic instruction". I wonder what he means and wish he would elaborate. Does he mean that all sexual animals are "genetically instructed" to copulate heterosexually? Or to nurture their young? Or just to have a vague profound desire to have offspring? I'm afraid that statement really needs elaborating on. And while you're all musing on that - check this nice article out and be amused.
I have many more points to make up my sleeves, but they'll just have to stay up my sleeves until next time - because it's almost fucking 7am now, and I am so tired I could fall asleep any moment now.
Bonne journée.