Not quite sure what to call it…

 

As I was finishing with the last of Walter Benjamin’s 1933 writings (the last was “Experience and Poverty”, which is about, among other things, the poverty of experience that we are/were enduring in our/his modern times), a buttered piece of raisin wheat bread from Mary’s Market and an as yet untitled Irish Coffee variation (unfortunately some bar in the Pacific Northwest has already coined another of their cocktails as Spanish Coffee, which was my first thought).  This one was made with the wonderfully sharp Empress 1908 Elderflower Rose Gin, but I imagine that any gin would sharp up your morning coffee to make for an enjoyable day of leisure.

Next week I start full-time work for the first time in some time, but today I’ll enjoy a bit of the life Ibiza… Afternoons, and coffee spoons. Maybe some T.S. Elliott...

What is it That Must Be Said?

 I've just finished an obscure essay of Walter Benjamin's about art history, and approaches to the study of art (but also the study of literature and also history and even, somehow, botany) that may turn out to be among the most profound, and, at our current moment in history, among the most important of all of his writings.

At first glance, he seems just to be in the weeds of an argument about whether a new 'modern' interpretation of how to do art history has replaced the 'classical approach' of antiquity in the early 20th Century, but I think he is more gesturing toward his eventual theories of conceptualizing history and the great potential of the fragment, which are already in his mind, but he hasn't clearly articulated in 1932 when he's writing this essay.

"So began a train of thought that I am no longer able to pursue.  But its last link was certainly much less banal than its first..."

"..., and led on perhaps to images of animals." (is perhaps less than the conclusion for the pull quote that I was hoping for, but there it is).  This quote is actually not from the essay I was talking about, rather from the subsequent one in the collection I'm reading, "Hashish in Marseilles", but it hits on (or is at least adjacent to) what I am finding here (here in this post, and all around the whole blog generally).  That is, that when I start to write a post that is trying to get across an idea (rather than one that's just a response to something or a compilation), I begin a train of thought that turns in to a (compelling) black hole of ideas that starts to connect to and pull in whole bunches of texts and ideas that I'm reading now or have done in the distant or recent past, and the connections and rhymes and implications become bigger (and yes, less banal), and better, but begin bouncing beyond my basis from back at the beginning of the post.  And so I pull up short in all of these begun, and possibly one day done posts, which I occasionally open up, and ask myself, "what was this one going to be about again, really?"

But maybe not this time - if I just decided to say what I meant to say, instead of going back and being sure I was saying the best way I could or should - 

And so, Walter Benjamin was writing in the early days of an era of crisis, 1932 in Germany, and he was of a generation of artists (and of Artists, if you subscribe to the Strauss-Howe generational theory, which I do for the moment, having recently finished The Fourth Turning is Here, by Neil Howe) who had thought to shake up and change the world with their avant-garde art and politics and thoughts only to watch it all seem to begin to unravel as they were entering middle age and the crisis era was ramping up and threatening to destroy the whole world. 

That generation of, not just artists, but all walks of life, came of age just in time to witness (and largely participate in) the horrors of World War I, and then bask in the wonders of the Roaring Twenties, and seemed to be living through a time that would see things on the upswing and a world forever changed (in this case, cured of war) while at the same time harboring deep divisions and animosities that were being largely glossed over (rural poverty versus Flapper culture; Teetotalers getting Prohibition passed in America... versus Flapper culture {and mobster culture!}; race stuff...).

That era of the 1930s is having a moment, not just because it's the Nazis and World War II, and it's always what our stories turn to.  Rather, Neil Howe would suggest that we are in a parallel historical moment of crisis now, starting with the 2008 Great Recession (he marks that previous crisis era starting with the 1929 Wall Street Crash, and through to the Great Depression, and through the conclusion of WWII).  As Benjamin, a Jew writing in 1932 Germany, he's in the midst of the crisis, but seemingly doesn't know it yet.  So too we, here in 2024, can't tell what the nature of the real disaster we are about to experience will be.

We feel like we know who some of the main characters of the coming disaster might be: Vlad Putin seems a good candidate for a villain on that side of the pond, and we have our own possible seat filler over here, oranger and dumber to be sure, but not that much less menacing.  But we don't have any idea, yet, how this one turns out over the next decade or so... whether it's another world war, like (and very much unlike) the last one that ended the last crisis cycle (for the record, Star Trek future history records World War III {or 3, as we may have progressed beyond a time when we can rely on most people to be able to read Roman Numerals...} as starting in 2026, and 2024 is among the most tumultuous years in all of Star Trek history), or perhaps this cycle will end in another American Civil War of some kind, like the one that ended the cycle prior.  Or perhaps it's something wholly new, that we haven't even considered before that results from improved AI or Quantum Computing or ____________.

But we're here for it, and if history rhyming (or repeating itself) is indeed a thing, better days are ahead (but after a big terrible thing first... sorry.) 

Characterization of the New Generation^

^Ordinarily, I would hide this footnote away at the bottom of the post in tiny print, but in this case, I think we need a bit of opening throat clearing for this post... I came across this brief fragment by Walter Benjamin as I continue my way through volume 2 of his collected writings, and thought, here is a bite-sized (aka RNJ-sized post) work of his that was unpublished during his life that probably hasn't received too much attention over the years, so maybe I'll re-create it, postulate for postulate and sentence for sentence for a modern audience.  He was on the verge of 40 looking at the new generation of writers coming up, and I am starting out on the back 40 seeing what's next for us, but instead of rephrasing his comments, I found as I started to re-read them that they were in fact quite on point, albeit a little out of context, so instead of rephrasing, just a little reframing was what was called for (my comments).

1.  These people (that's seriously how his starts!) make not the slightest attempt to base their activities on any theoretical foundations whatsoever. (OK, yes, I would say this remains true today, although I'm not sure our contemporary sensibilities know quite what this means.  But I will say it seems a common thread that youth tend to assert, and perhaps, act, without taking much time to consider the underlying basis for all activity that came before).  They are not only deaf to the so-called great questions (YES, this feels even more apt than that last), those of politics or world views (young people - and this is probably Millennials or maybe even starting with my generation, which is the youngest of the Gen Xers, LOVE to say how not in to politics they are, although this is probably a result of our recent conflation of the political with practical politics); they are equally innocent of any fundamental reflection on questions of art (yes, again, although what we mean by this today probably resembles something more like, "they don't even like to watch whole movies anymore, just YouTube clips!").
2. They are uneducated. (Well, no, or yes, depending on what we think education is.  They certainly have a whole hell of a lot more degrees than any previous generations have had, but they are for the most part in specific applied fields - I know a guy, for example, who is a professor in Healthcare Communications, which it seems there is a whole degree in.  Anyway, they are certainly uneducated in the sense of having an accurate understanding of the larger world around them.)  Not just in the sense that their (general) knowledge is very limited, but above all because they are incapable of extending their diminishing knowledge in a systematic manner (again, I think this is exactly right, but is a little hard to parse in a modern context.  I would say this is something like being outraged by all the over-woke causes like personal pronouns and land acknowledgements {which are overall good and decent things}, but failing to bank any outrage whatever at current exploitation of the developing world or the underclass by capitalism).  Never has a generation of writers been so oblivious to the need to understand the techniques of scholarly work as this one (I guess so..?).
3. Although these writers stride blithely on from one work to the next (Tik-Tok), it is impossible to discern any sort of development--and above all any consistency--in their work (also Tik-Tok), except at the level of technique (still Tik-Tok).  Their efforts and their ambition seem to exhaust themselves in the acquisition of a new subject or a grateful theme, and this is enough for them (I think Benjamin wrote #3 all about Tik-Tok somehow).
4. Popular literature has always existed--that is to say, a literature that acknowledges no obligations to the age and the ideas that move it, except perhaps the desirability of presenting such ideas in an agreeable, fashionably packaged form for immediate consumption (is all of the rest of this thing about Tik-Tok?).  Such consumer literature of course has the right to exist; in bourgeois society at least, it has its place and its justification.  But never before, in bourgeois or any other society, has this literature of pure consumption and enjoyment ever been identical with the avant-garde at its technically and artistically most advanced.  This is precisely the pass to which the latest school (i.e. Influencer Culture) has now brought us.
5. Give respect to economic necessity where it is due: it may well force the writer to produce much inferior work (click bait is oh so much more profitable than those good, nuanced Tik-Toks).  The nuances of his writing will then show what stuff he is made of.  However dubious much literary journalism may be, there is hardly anything so bad that it cannot be salvaged from the worst excesses by certain aspects of its content and especially its style.  Where a writer succeeds, he owes it to his grasp of technique; where he fails, it is the moral or substantive foundation that is lacking (yeah, this all may seem a bit out of date and out to lunch...).  What is astonishing is how completely alien to members of the new school the salutary, protecting reservations are--not just the moral ones, but even the linguistic ones too (but THIS is definitely a reference to safe spaces, right?).  And how these new writers absolutely take for granted their right to display an infinitely pampered, narcissistic, unscrupulous--in short, journalistic--ego (this feels definitely on point, the world has gotten these last few years to feel a lot more personal).  And how their writing is imbued to the very last detail with the arriviste (arriviste: a pushy upstart - and isn't that what is good about youth culture in the end, is that no matter how exasperating it may be, it does push us forward, we take the good, and eventually {hopefully} cast off the silly fads, and are better--improved--for it) spirit!

Potentialities, or Could Walter and Martin have been friends?

Earlier this year (about a month or so before squirrel* {BS}), I started again to read works by one of my top two "favorite"^ writers, Walter Benjamin, whose first volume of his collected writings in English I finished in toto last July.  To be sure, I've read a lot of these three collections that I own (I have Volumes 3, 2 & 1 in my collection the first {or the 3rd, depending on your perspective} of which I received as a "gift / bribe" from Malynne at the end of the first course I took with her "Cults of Personality: Hitler, Stalin Mao").  

This second volume has begun with quite a lot of short reviews and happenings-related short pieces rather than the deeper philosophical pieces that he's most known for (if Benjamin can be said to be well known in any capacity).  The reason for this is clear, with Benjamin as a young man in is mid-20s he was struggling post university to find work and publishing these short, timely works wherever he could.  Two such articles published just a couple weeks apart in a couple different newspapers were both clearly derived from one single meeting / conversation / interview with André Gide, and another couple were (very) short reviews of a book by Karl Gröber.  What's amazing to me is not the brilliant extent to which he so brazenly double dips (nor the fact that you used to just be able to do book reports and send them to a publication and get paid for it!), rather it's the way that all of it is dripping with intentionality, but so rarely concerns itself with execution.

Por ejemplo, in Benajmin's interview with André Gide, Gide repeatedly discusses the lecture that he had planned to given while he was visiting Berlin (his visit to Berlin being the occasion of Benjamin's meeting with him), but that he has been so distracted by such visits and because of the nature of Berlin life, "the leisure [he] had counted on never arrived," and he never got the chance to write the lecture. And so, instead of giving a lecture, he just vaguely outlines the ideas he had intended to cover to Benjamin, who dutifully laps them up and writes them up for two separate German newspapers, and his (Gide's) work is "complete". 

I love this concept of doing something just by saying it out loud.  Come to think of it, this is rather the same method of work employed by Peter from my time at MPS, a deep underlying faith that if you just talk about what you want to have happen it will come into being (although in this latter case it involved employing an entire staff of people who were basically there to just try and discern his wishes, and then carry out all of these whims as much as possible). In the earlier case of Benjamin and his contemporaries, the focus is much more on the potentiality of having had a great idea, and then thinking about how great it was, and not concerning yourself terribly with the fact that it never came to fruition.

Another thing that I find compelling about Walter Benjamin is that he is a near exact contemporary of my grandfather, Martinus Kvidt.  Born just 9 months apart, Benjamin on the pre-anniversary of my own wedding on 15 July 1892, and Martin on MKE day 14 April 1893, they were both part of The Lost Generation of their respective countries, and while my grandpa was off to Europe to fight in World War 1, Benjamin was a country or two away studying away at university.  

I'm not entirely sure why, but I have always been interested in synchronicities - the phenomenon of things things happening at the same time in different places (and in different worlds, even - fictional and historical and historical fictional or futural historical...).  For years, I have tried to find (or create) a calendar app that would allow for historical events to be created throughout the past (weirdly, google calendar seems to have an odd glitch {or maybe it's actually iCal that has the glitch} where you can create some events in the far distant past and they will sometimes reappear, so I sometimes am able to re-discover that George McFly was murdered on March 15, 1973 {or it possibly could have been early in the morning of the 16th; anyway the same week as when the Watergate break-in guy was being paid off...} while looking through my calendar, but other times not, as the event appears and disappears unpredictably on my Calendar app).

I like to think about contemporaries in history, art, cinema (like, for instance what was going on in 1999 cinema that made it such a spectacular sampling of content while the history of that moment wasn't especially exciting - although we were on the brink of a lot that would happen in just the next few years and ultimately set up much of what we find around us today...), literature and also to consider the generations looking back at their influences from prior generations (a process that I would have thought I could have generalized as a faster and faster process, with TikTokkers citing Taylor Swift as major influence {some 10 years earlier}, whereas Benjamin and many thinkers of his era largely looked back Centuries, and in particular 150 years give or take to the Romantic Era of German literature {your Goethes & your Schillers, etc.}, but I think this tends to over-generalizing the history of cultural influencers {ikr!?}.

Perhaps the greatest of these Influencers of the 19th Century (don't worry, I'm bringing this in for a landing) is the Kurt Cobain or Jim Morrison of his era, John Keats, who died at 25 and then suddenly thereafter became a famous and great poet.  Keats is of course most famous for writing the poem that you read in high school, "Ode to a Grecian Urn" and for aggrandizing the concept of Negative Capability.

 Negative Capability, Keats called when one is “capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after facts and reason.” 

More than anything, this concept seems like the philosophical equivalent of the thinking without necessarily doing life philosophy we were talking about before (rather like the "Harold Hill Think Method" of marching band instruction!, "la-di-da-di-da-di-daaa").

*We had a moment this past spring, where we encountered a full-on squirrel nest in the engine block of our erstwhile Ford Edge, a vehicle that had had (before and after) A LOT of other issues once it was rapidly wandering out of warranty.  It took some help, but we have finally found our way out of that Capitalist death trap, and are generally on to lower and worse things, but at least out of that! 

mind the gaps...

I. Preamble -

This isn't a review - rather an overall critical analysis of ueber-narrative.  I've recently been on a mission to watch the Star Wars oeuvre in chronological order (dedicated readers {I presume they will be there in future, as they aren't currently turning out in significant numbers} will note that I'm also currently on the same project in the Star Trek universe).

I know Disney and J.J. Abrams own my viewership soul, but I frakking love filling in the gaps of mythologies.  I am eager to see the story of the new episodes - VII & VIII - but watching Episode III followed by Rogue One and then A New Hope is fascinating and fulfilling.  The fun fairy tale that I knew as a kid (still has whiny little Luke) has become a robust narrative. 

I'm equally (or perhaps more) excited for the start of the new Star Trek: Discovery series starting this fall, which will bridge the end of Enterprise to the days of ST: TOS (by way of the lost ship at the center of the plot of Star Trek Beyond).

Walter Benjamin has a concept called Jetztzeit (now-time), which he also calls messianic-time. The simplest framing of this concept for me is using the latter term, and imagining the potentiality of all times (of each moment) to contain salvation (or revolution, or clarity).  This concept is fundamental in Benjamin's oeuvre, and is related I think to the concept of hyper-modernity (or supermodernity), which is the idea of the whole being explained or understood or accounted for in every part. This is also a common theme for Benjamin, and in many ways his Arcades Project is the prototypical work of supermodernity.

I have my own (as yet unnamed) theory of reality and being and narrative. The line of thinking goes something like this: the act of literary creation is, in fact, an instance of literal creation. By imagining a thing (or perhaps by writing it down or filming it or publishing it,,, I'm not too clear on all of the specifics), that thing is created in reality. It is evoked. The actuality of the thing is explained scientifically (I use this word loosely) by multiple worlds / realities theory - the idea that every choice or possible outcome exists in parallel realities.

II. Messianic Time / Messianic Space -

The Arcades Project is Benjamin's masterwork.  It is a collection of quotes and fragments focused on a series of subjects relating to the Paris Arcades, which Benjamin works through.  Benjamin is sitting in the mid-20th Century looking back at the 19th Century for meaning.  The work is a strong candidate for bibliomancy; a lot of obscure passages that can be interpreted for a lot of situations. 



III. Container Story

We see ourselves as occupying 'the real' world, and the narratives we create are a part of our world.  The Chronicles of Amber has another, different starting place (actually 2, Amber and the Courts of Chaos), but contains the same conclusion, that there is a real space, which begets all else.

The Dark Tower is


IV. Narratives of scale -

Star Trek is the future narrative of a world much like ours.  Star Wars claims to be in the distant past, far away.  In time, both of these narratives might be found to be in the same universe (that's right, I'm loosely proposing that Wesley Crusher is the next last Jedi).

This weekend, The Dark Tower is being released in cinemas across the country - another new chapter in a long-established narrative.  The tag line on early images teasing the new movie was "The Last Time Around...". 

The narrative of the film (mild-spoiler alert warning) is in some ways an odd reformulation of Stephen King's first novel of the series - The Gunslinger -, but it's a bit hard to recognize as such.  In the novel, Jake Chambers is torn from his native New York (although we don't see this at this point in the series) and pulled into Mid-World.

This new iteration of a decades old story feels a bit out of synch when watched on its own.  Stephen King's Dark Tower universe is a narrative that contains all other narratives - all other realities in fact.  As a reader, familiar with the scope and scale of the Dark Tower universes, the new film feels like a sprinting tour of the whole series of novels.  At the same time, it's a reset button in which Jake Chambers saves Roland's quest, which has been lost to the pursuit of revenge.  The movie finds Roland having forgotten the face of his father.



VI. All of us are 'one of the most important figures' in our own universes, our own narratives


Much like Benjamin's "Capitalism as Religion", I intend this entry to be something robust and interesting... but I want to post (it's been a while!), so there may be a while before the overall outline gets filled in.

On the Dangers of Nostalgia (and Apocalyptic Thinking)

Last night I attended my annual foray into reminiscing musicality and general old time-i-ness at the Badger Chordhawk's annual Barbershop Show in lovely Janesville, Wisconsin.  This year's theme was "remember the good old days" (which is it's theme every year), but this time, on the radio.  Live Radio - See it with your Ears! was a collection of classic Americana tunes interspersed with schlocky vignettes inspired by early radio programs.

This morning, reading Michael Chabon's Maps & Legends, it occurred to me that this mode of nostalgic thinking is the candy-colored cousin of the dystopian fiction of science fiction films, novels and graphic novels.  Chabon examines Howard Chaykin's American Flagg!, which is set in a post-apocalyptic, corporate-ruled world, where anyone who can afford to has relocated to the suburbs, as it were, on the new Mars colony.

His next chapter (about Cormac McCarthy's The Road) and two chapters after that (about Ben Katchor's Julius Knipl: Real Estate Photographer) further explicate Chabon's theories of dystopic and nostalgic thinking.  He never says so (and may not realize), but these two modes of thinking are the

Source: ComicsAlliance.com

same.  The nostalgia packed into the Chordhawk's erstwhility is an effort to ignore the present by idealizing the past.  The "good old songs" (some of which are great songs and others that are best forgotten) essentialize and simplify the era they come from just like songs today do.  The function of this nostalgic thinking is to focus attention on the non-existent past rather than the all-too-real present.

So too, post-apocalyptic stories (stories about how the future is so bleak and we are so doomed that we may as well just accept the present as is and distract ourselves while we wait for the inevitable collapse) are arguments for stasis, for inaction.  On the surface, dystopian stories (zombie narratives, say) might be read as warnings of what might come to pass if we do not take some course of action or do take another, but on further examination they are typically peopled with future nostalgialytes, pining for what's been lost.  In these narratives, characters re-enact the pre-apocalyptic traits and activities responsible for the blindness that causes the fall in the first place: empty bourgeois sentimentality (as in Terra Nova), rampant (also empty) consumerism (as in Dawn of the Dead), misplaced loyalty to institutions that lose their meaning once the world changes (as in The Postman or Jericho).

Nostalgia is a mode of remembering as we want to, with little attention paid to actualities.  There's a comfort in the past because it is untouchable.  The now (jetzt-Zeit) is hard, because of its potentiality and the future daunting because of its uncertainty and fluidity.  Then is easy because it can't come back and contradict you.  Apocalyptic thinking also negates the present by forsaking it, giving up on it.  If the future is certain (not necessarily defined, but certainly lost) then the now is drained of its revolutionary potential.  It is jetzt without jetzt-Zeit. 

A Renewal of Vows

It's been nearly five months since my last published entry.  Since that time I've become a "dissertator", seen a few of my best friends in the world who I'd lost track of, come to understand the nature of the universe, and  adjusted my Netflix membership plan.

As such, I feel a renewed responsibility to account for the world around us (that's right, I can explain it to you... just keep reading).  So it is, I will re-purpose Roman Numeral J as an outlet for not only (though still) an anachronistic chronology of my own life, but also a regular, reliable commentary on the culture and society which impacts said chronology.  Therefore, it is my intention to write substantive, complex, confusing, and constructive criticism and commentary on any (random) collections of cultural artifacts.

My goal, then, is to write on a variety of topics (unfinished entries over the last five months include "Did The Secret cause the Recession?" and "Bitter Salt" {an article about Angelina Jolie's summer blockbuster}.  I'll do this at least once a week for as long as this blog continues.  Which means, the purpose and regularity of this blog will be changing.  I'm never quite sure what it will be about, but it will now be about something (again?).

I think what is most compelling me to this change is something I've noticed during my last year and a half of academic work, namely the idea of the proprietarianship of academic ideas.  At my preliminary exam defense, it was suggested to me that I'd naively misunderstood the thinking of an intellectual hero of mine.  I disagreed, but more so, I was offended by the proprietary way a thinker was being talked about.  Furthermore, in discussing various projects I've been working on over the last couple years I've been told alternately that what I was doing had already been done (or was being done) or that someone else wished they'd done what I was planning to do... it gets me to questioning what the point of all this work is exactly.  So, Roman Numeral J will serve, henceforth as a sort of open source theory.  I welcome all contributors, comments, dialogue.  Let's get to work.

I was shot with a nail-gun, and it wasn't that bad

Today, as i was continuing to assist in the clintonSeeger's basement project, i was unexpectedly shot in the back. It had little to do with my aces over eights, Russ (my Jedi-Master-Contractor) assured me it was an accident. It hurt for a moment, didn't break the skin (it hit me flat - i was 5 yards away, or so). After being shot, verifying that the nail, in fact, didn't go in, and deciding i was alright, i started reflecting on my summer a bit.

During the past four weeks I have forgone (for the most part, sorry Lane, sorry Peter) my life of the mind in favor of a life of the hand... of the back. Familial obligation has dictated my summer, thus far, in a direction of hard labor... After flooding for the first time in 25 years, my parents' basement is going through a fundamental remodel. After installing a couple of sump pumps and a tile drainage system, the whole space is being re-created and I've been allowed to play along. I've framed walls (almost shooting a nail through my finger in the process), built soffits, and installed wiring. The day Rick shot a nail through Russ' finger (i know, it seems like a theme) i stood amazed as we neglected to call an ambulance or bring someone to the Emergency Room, and instead watched Russ tape paper towels around his finger with electrical tape and "call it good" (that night, he hit 4 home runs in his softball league).

This series of events got me to thinking about relative genetic makeups... (which might have brought me to a reminiscence of a certain trip to Alabama {not to mention a certain day of SeegerOlympic Events, which inexplicably occurred}, but that's the story for another day). I am, decidedly, not of 'tough breeding', but i think there is something to me that makes me a good sufferer (historically, some of the best sufferers i can think of {people who really don't seem to take it too bad when things go wrong} are Dave Wake, Walter Benjamin, and, well, i dunno, someone else.)

Clearly, my breed are not good sufferers, but somehow, i feel myself to be an adequate sufferer... not only in terms of actual suck-i-ness endured, but also the idea of physical pain... I'm not sure, but somehow, i feel myself 'greater than the sum of my parts.' I don't want it to seem arrogant, and i'm sure there are 'pain-factors' that will equalize this thinking, but just generally, when i picture myself in a time of true calling (any time other than now, other than a time of true reclination is a time of 'calling')...

I guess what i'm seeing is a lack of 'now' in anyone's time. Before now... there was always a possibility of something else... something that meant something... Nazis or Racists or... well... Communists... Now there are Terrorists... but they look like anyone (except they don't, right), but no longer are there real terrorists... as we know...

the era of the mini-pundit

So, i know i don't often wax (wane?) politico on this blog, but with a bit of inspiration from my new e-stalkee & a quick 4-minute segment on CNN this morning i have something to get off my chest...

Just before i left the house this morning CNN's "American Morning" was interviewing the youngest superDelegate for the 2008 Democratic Primary & a slightly hot, exceedingly severe College Republican... They were talking, purportedly (which i think is the snider way to say supposedly), about the "youth" vote & the "issues important for young people today"...

What they really showed, though, were a couple of prematurely 50-year-old Talking Heads using strict partyline talking points to "debate" Obama's help kids pay for school plan. First of all, the idea that the driving issue for 'young people' (which i'm starting to realize no longer really includes me) is how to pay for college is belittling & an oversimplification. This, of course, is not surprising for cable news (it's remarkable how little insight or information you can pack into 1 hour of cable news coverage), but it speaks to a larger issue i've been thinking about lately, namely old people.

The impetus for my discussion of this rampant problem is the crotchety senior citizens hired at Miller Park to walk through sections harrassing young people during poorly attended midweek games. Brooke & i had $6 nosebleeds (sponsored by Miller High Life - which, miller high life, if you'd like to sponsor this blog i'd be more than happy to sing your praises as often as necessary) and being a dead Wednesday nite (this is a subltle Miller plug) game, we found some better seats available on the Loge level. We sat down alongside a large contingent of other seat jumpers and made the classic seat jumper blunder of sitting a few rows back from the filled in seats (for those wishing to get better seats, the secret is 1) enter a section that is not currently being watched by old people & 2) choose seats that are in the row directly behind (or even better in front of) established sitters... They likely won't check tickets for large numbers of folks, but this system can still fail if - you're young-ish looking.

That's right, agial profiling is going on at Brewer's Games. I personally observed crotchety old people check tickets of several groups of youngFolks, but bypass an older couple of men in windbreakers who obviously didn't have tickets for that section (they were seated several rows behind the end of the sold tickets, but weren't checked because they were old).

Most disturbingly was the way we were addressed when the old man confronted us. He said "Sir, do you have tickets for this section?"

"No," i said, which momentarily confused him. I suspect he was waiting for a 'i can't find my ticket ploy', but he recovered and said "Do you have tickets on the Terrace Level, sir." His insinuation was that we clearly did not belong here, among the over-priced seats, but we clearly belonged 'up there'. Add this to our experience of a few nights prior when our Beer Pen seats were otherwise occupied and when we told the usher this she said, "aw, go find some other seats." (Admittedly this was later in a blowout, but the section, while having some empty seats, was significantly fuller than the Loge level seats we were occupying). I really wonder, though, if we'd been doddering old folks would we have gotten our seats...

This all points to, i think, a larger issue we're really facing, that of a true cultural divide between young & old. Walter Benjamin talks about this a lot in his early writing, the idea that the youth must revolt & drive social agenda, but the problem we have with American culture is that the youth pretty much has to rally behind an old person... No matter where you draw the line of 'old guy' & youth the average age of national leaders is telling... I'm not necessarily calling for a Logan's Run style abolition of old folks (i'd be finished in both the film & book versions), but there's something here and i'm not sure what it is.

Obviously, youth grow up & become older. For a while they're an 'in-between' stage, where i think i find myself now. Not sure i want to buy in totally to the Programme of american commerce/democracy (commocracy?), but also pretty sure that if i don't soon i will "be in trouble later"... Get your pension in order, workworkwork while you still can, maintain your health benefits (by never quitting your job or making sure you always have another one waiting) so you can stay healthy...
But what i wonder is, is there a way to maintain youth when you grow older. To continue to believe in the things you believed in before. Old white guys on the radio (i'm looking at you AM 620 - WTMJ in Milwaukee) will tell you that when you get older & "wiser" you realized you were confused when you were younger, that you just didn't realize how things worked, but what it really is is that you get scared by the Programme and then have to start telling everyone else to 'get with it' so you feel ok for joining up... (it's a lot like the housing market & how i tell everyone that it's really starting to come back & look good now that i own a house).

If we look at the art historical tradition of (??? early 1800/victorian/1600s? Art Historians help me out here) painting children as if they were miniature adults alongside this morning's CNN "youth minute" and even our entire educational system, which trains children, adolescents, and young adults to fill out forms - to complete strictly defined tasks, essentially to be middle-management we see that this Programme (yeah, i've taken a liking to that term) isn't what we want, isn't useful, and is infectious (spreading both in strength & geography). Perhaps the only solution is to turn the world's keys over to it's new drivers as soon as possible. It's better than being stuck behind a Cadillac that's had its left turn signal on for 15 miles and going 42 in a 55.

An Intelligently Designed Argument

Just think of how different things might be today if William Shakespeare had won, when he ran for king in 1604. Just imagine that world. There would have been no Hitler, the French Revolution would have happened gradually, but sooner, and with less bloodshed. The world would today be a vastly different place had the powers that were not stolen that election.

It is a well documented and indisputable fact, that Adolf Hitler descended from the lineage of Will Shakespeare. William’s eldest son, Ronfrey, married late in life & he and his wife Jane had a daughter who was forced to leave the country in her middle-teens. The daughter, Lizzy, was thought to stay with family in France, but recently discovered evidence now shows, clearly, that Lizzy moved on to Vienna and lived there to the end of her days with a child she had out of wedlock. The child grew up to be a servant in a wealthy house and bore the master of the house two children, one of whom would go on to be an ancestor of Adolf Hitler, and the other an ancestor of Walter Benjamin.

It is a truly harsh historical irony that the great thinker Walter Benjamin was separated only by a few generations from the man who not only made his life so difficult but to whom he (Benjamin) dedicated his life’s work to combating.

This fact of Hitler’s heritage is not in dispute. The only interesting, and worthwhile question, is what would have been different had Shakespeare won that election? To be sure, the family would not have returned to Stratford on Avon, so Ronfrey would likely have married earlier and to a more stately woman, but this change is not the least of what would have been different. Although Shakespeare’s success in his writing career afforded his family some comfort in Stratford, the family was somewhat outcast by locals because of the social oddity that accompanied Shakespeare’s ‘artistic nature’ (not least of which the insistence on being called “Shakespeare” all the time). As a duly elected king, these ‘social oddities’ would have been taken as kingly discretion, the right to behave as one will, but with the disputed Tudor victory, Will was forced to stay in his lifely station and pretend that he hadn’t even run for king. The loss was hard on Shakespeare, particularly because it was so disputed and the outcome questioned.

Shakespeare’s concession speech, recorded only in personal journals and writings of the time (since newspapers would not be invented for another 73 years!) was succinct and not malicious (though it was surely full of irony): “Although I strongly disagree with the decision reached by the powers that be, concerning the election, I will not fight the decision and split this population and declare myself the (il)legitimate leader… rather, I concede to the decision and will move on, as we all must move on.” (No blank verse for this soliloquy).

Sadly we will never know how history might have turned out differently had Shakespeare won in his effort, but we too, must accept the decisions of history, and live with it’s consequences.