politics

Situation Normal: All Fucked Up

“The only triumph the bureaucrats can claim for their invention of the cost of identity is the truth in their assertion that no synchronal force is binding. But their victory is hollow. Neither sleep nor death offer any escape.” — Stravo Kellarman, Enemies of Life

I dedicated my research to infinity and infinity for finite ends. My job was to unlock and enchant, delight, and unburden, and return the feedback loops to mystery. Like a botanist of the slightest gesture, I would exact the cause, and unravel and blossom.

In a fevered orison at night I confessed nothing written here was binding. Nothing written here would apply two weeks later, but for the duration of the sampling of this voice the reader became both ventriloquist and oracle. Captivated by the synthesiser, the name of our fad would be “Histrionic”. Our words were sung from behind the sofa. We resided there with the racoons and coyotes, like ambassadors of scorn, prevailing over the followers, non-ironic and fake, hypnotised by the synthesiser: supersonic, electronic, perfunctory.

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Equipole

“I am not dead because I was never born. I did not live, and I never died. I am the living death that resides at the center of the world.” — Master Qiang Myeong-Suk, The Unvanquished

If the language of the “novel” was to function at optimal level, this alone would be insufficient proof that words are sounds represented by artificial symbols rather than units of communication.

They could be both, Nasrul figured. Words were noises, grunts and tribal signs that masqueraded as communication and this meant that they must be under the control of certain shady operators for the prophet. Naturally, this implied that another form of justice would have to be enacted so that the illusion of power would be removed from the repressive order of the written and spoken. (more…)

The Image is Dead

“As contradictions may be considered true and false at once, those closest to fiction usually tend to be the more precise, fiction being the prima mobile encompassing all that is factual in the naming of images and ideas.” — Mileva Martin, Clandestine Misdemeanors

To you the image was not dead. You saw literal forms in colours and structures as if their designs were of matchless purity. But the imagistic reproduction of a humanistic aesthetic profile which you fancied had social or political meaning was null and void.

The image was dead but to you the image was not dead.
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