Notes from the Overground

I. And there's this thing about the young and the addled, who ask, "Is there a god and what does he think of me?" - treading sidewalks and ghosting over storefronts, what choice is there? - tramping from hotspot to hotspot, places we are allowed to stop and always looking to turn more places into places we can stop, click the clip lights of our bikes and take off our shoes -  we all just want everywhere to be home, so we can doff our PJs anytime.

So, my angels, and here's that ignoble lining - we'd all take the deal now. Lord love us, but somehow the self got severed from the self sometime after the war (or maybe earlier; we've got our best scientists on it, I promise), which means mustering a lot of imaginative force, which means a lot of tired people, which means a lot of bed-worshipping people, which means people who want to put on their PJs, which means people who would take the deal. In the annals of ignobility, the entire generation takes the deal because if others will happily purchase you in your unadulterated form, maybe you can get some peace, you know?

(Positive side effects of fame include using your imaginative powers for everything except living.)
(Or at least, evidence to the contrary, say the Phoenix fam, gets assiduously ignored.)

II. What the fuck is art for if you want to destroy culture?

III. The question remains, who am I doing this for? The question sometimes becomes, why would anyone do this for free? At worst the question is, WHAT IS THIS? And sometimes, there is a horrible tumbling of, how can we pretend to narrativize that which resists narrative so completely, structure the unstructured, enforce logic on the illogical and the vast, maybe we got a few things right but what if our basic assumptions are wrong spinning us out into some sort of weird collective delusion, there are no names for the nameless, action doesn't even mean the same thing it meant three thousand years ago, but really who am i to say because we move so goddamn slow as a whole, what if stories have to change to catch up with the way we think of the self now which has almost nothing to do with what we do, what of Mac Wellman's recidivist, what of quoting scripture for my purpose, what of evil, i can't even begin to imagine a new form, i'll die if i have reinvent the wheel tomorrow, i'm not ready, i'm not ready, when will i ever be ready, amen.

Ya know?

IV. Notes on tone from N+1: "Women’s websites like the Hairpin created unity among their readers by cultivating the sense of membership in an inner circle, where women displayed their intimacy and cemented their belonging by speaking to one another like high school best friends. The Hairpin’s voice, filled with chatty camaraderie, was sometimes cloying and sometimes engaging when it gave me style tips and book recommendations (“I know I made you all go out and get your Villette tramp stamps like my first day here”); but in articles that took on larger topics, that voice read as distracting, condescending, or even anxious at the prospect of alienating readers."

V.  Off to London tonight, don't really know what to do there. Turns out tickets to the Olympics are real complicated to get. Turns out the Olympics are a moral shitfest.

VI.