#i feel like the american revolution wasn’t so controversial as to have the same effect

[pub-lius]

my biggest problem with a people’s history of the french revolution by eric hazan is that he keeps like. implying that lafayette defected to the enemy (meaning Austria and Prussia), but like. mf was immediately arrested bc he was seen as the cause of the revolution. the only people who saw him as a conservative were in france

[grandhotelabyss]

Defeated by the hype, I watched the new Adam Curtis. I hadn't seen one of his films since 2007 and wasn’t enamored of the celebrated ones back then. I thought he was a more middlebrow Mark Fisher[*]: nostalgia for the welfare state cloaked in avant-garde aesthetics, which I was used to as a longtime reader of British-Invasion comics—the feeling is similar in Moore and Morrison and Milligan and Delano and Ellis (though not the genteel Gaiman)—but couldn’t as an American petit bourgeois quite appreciate. At the time, I was trying out dogmatic Marxism as an intellectual style, so I also took it as obvious that avant-garde aesthetics, for a variety of reasons, inherently degrade the social and conduce to the very fragmentation and alienation being lamented. Which Curtis does analyze as the theme of his work—and the sometimes patronizing voiceovers are like a parody of top-down state-socialist pedagogy—but his visual style, with its debts to Godard and Marker and MTV, enact in form what’s being attacked as content. 

I also thought Curtis also had an air of New-Atheist-type Brit-twit reasonableness that undermines the acuity of his political analyses. He persistently portrays powerful political actors as naive psychological cases, delusive and fearful types who can’t face the facts. As a literary technique developed by Curtis’s English forerunner Shakespeare, this replacement of politics with psychology can be dramatically powerful, as in the new doc’s best thread, the tragedy of Jiang Qing; but it can also impede a more precise sense of the interests in play. 

I'm no longer a dogmatic Marxist, or even a Marxist at all, and no longer think the relation between politics and artistic form is perfectly clear, so some of my objections have dropped away, even reversed—Curtis grieves that the corruptions of socialism and communism have led us to fear changing the world at all, but doesn’t his own persistent discrediting of anarchic ideas because they were co-opted by neoliberalism mirror the nouveaux philosophes?

The power of Can't Get You Out of My Head is in the nuance of the analysis. I am tempted to call it dialectical. Here Curtis does closely attend to economic motivations in recent history. Despite the banal citation of Richard Hofstadter, he also refuses to moralize and psychologize away conspiracy theory; he shows what secret agencies are known to have been doing throughout the second half of the 20th century, a record so egregious that people can be forgiven for suspecting them of more. Some of his own bland reassurances of their bumbling incompetence tripped my own paranoia—isn't that what they want us to think?—and I didn’t find his use of the JFK assassination at all compelling. Whatever you think of Jim Garrison, and I concede I was influenced early in life both aesthetically and politically by Oliver Stone, whose montage style Curtis’s also resembles, I take the Zapruder film as definitive, no-theories-needed, you-can-see-it-with-your-own-eyes evidence (“Back and to the left”) that there were at least two shooters.

Curtis places the most incendiary material in episode four, where he comes close to saying outright what I hesitated even to suggest in my Habermas post—that “humanitarian intervention” is, when we cut through the sentimentality, a mode of militarist imperialism that doesn’t even effect, and whose proponents perhaps don’t intend to effect, its stated humanitarian aims. He draws a line between the bombing of Serbia and the invasion of Iraq, but he nicely balances Bernard Kouchner with Eduard Limonov, two versions of post-political benightedness, to avoid straying into Peter Handke territory. To this he strangely adds the story of Julia Grant, the implications of which, given the rest of the film’s thesis, he mutes by creating sympathy for this person beleaguered by vicious street kids and fascoid NHS psychiatrists. Still, the inclusion of a pioneering trans activist—whose anti-feminist statements are highlighted—in a montage on the delusions of individualism will have some viewers wondering about the message. (Surprisingly, I saw no criticism to this effect on social media.)

There are vertiginous tidbits—the Boole thread connecting the Russian Revolution to managerial western democracy in the Cold War in episode one, for instance, or the fact relayed in episode five, news to me, that the director of Dr. No did western-backed propaganda for Saddam Hussein. Curtis also gives good book and music recommendations as well (but leave the sarcastic music cues—“Lady in Red” played over the radicalization of Abu Zubaydah, etc.—to Zack Snyder): I want to read My Bones and My Flute now, and the song that heads this post, which I'd never heard before, perfectly distills the epoch.

I can forgive much for Curtis’s conclusion, finally, with its exposure of the (I hope delegitimating) replication crisis in psychology and the social sciences; his satire on the squalid, hateful, maddening, and at this point almost genocidal derangement of the western liberal class, an enemy of humanity equal in its horror to its answering populist fervors, or worse because it incites them; and his call to reestablish the sovereignty of the imagination, which credo is the true part of both individualism and communism, not invalidated by what was false in those utopian ambitions, though the falsehoods in seemingly impenetrable combination are all that our present societies, from China to the U.S., currently offer.

_________________________

[*] I’ve effaced traces of this part of my life as much as possible, but I've been hanging around the weird side of cultural politics online for almost two decades now. From 2003 to 2006, I was part of the same circle of leftist blogs as Fisher—to be clear, I was a minnow in this pond—and was a contributor to a group blog that included a number of people in his milieu, notably Nina Power, who is now a member of Justin Murphy’s Salon des Cancelés. Like all left-wing social climates, this was a ruthlessly sectarian and ever-more-micro-fractionated ideological space, and I belonged to the tendency opposite that of Fisher’s. The conflict could perhaps be captioned “anti-humanists vs. radical humanists” or maybe “left-Nietzscheans vs. left-Hegelians.” I was in the camp of another still-controversial online-left microcelebrity, the figure now known on social media as Red Kahina—who was, by the way, whatever people have against her, never anything but the soul of kindness and generosity to me when I was just a 23-year-old nobody writing from a dial-up connection somewhere in Pennsylvania. Here, for instance, is Fisher’s part of one debate (the figure he variously calls with class-and-gender venom “Le Currency Trader” and “Le Opera Goeur” is Kahina). Even then, I was impressed by his characteristically electric prose: “The non-organic product of capital's ‘Frankensteinian surgery of the cities’ (Lyotard), the proletariat emerges from the destruction of all ethnicities, the desolation of all tradition, the destitution of any home.” Red’s long-defunct blog is still for me the model of the form, but Fisher’s is one of the first blogs to enter the annals of literature and will probably be regarded, not at all undeservedly, as a germinal text of our time.

[popwasabi]

“The Matrix Reloaded” deserves a re-watch in 2020

Here’s a burning hot take for, y’all; “The Matrix Reloaded” is not bad actually!

In fact, it’s more than not bad, it’s actually pretty good and perhaps a bit misunderstood by the fans.

Now, I’m not here to tell you it’s the best Matrix film. That honor will remain always and forever with the first movie, as it remains not just one of the best action films of all-time but one of the best science fiction films ever, period. It’s a classic and simply one of my all-time favorite films.

(Not to mention turned me into a Rage Against The Machine fan.)

But somehow, over the course of my lifetime, you know what movie I have watched exponentially more than “The Matrix?” The fucking “Matrix Reloaded!”

I used to think maybe it was an ironic infatuation. To a certain extent, I think it still is, as its overly indulgent action, bad lines at times, cringey new characters, and over the top moments can make it about as comical as many so bad it’s good movies. But growing up time can change perceptions, sometimes for the better, and can help you see things in new ways that you didn’t before and “The Matrix Reloaded,” especially this year, was one of them for me.

(My plans vs 2020)

I could defend the much controversial sequel by going in on its ambitious action film-making (the car chase is still my all-time favorite in any movie), pulse-pounding score, or its eye-popping cinematography that, honestly, holds up even to today’s standards but I think these are all things that even the film’s detractors generally agree on. 

No, I’m going to defend this film by talking about its most controversial scene: The Architect room.

I can hear the groans already and I don’t blame you. I found this scene preposterous and mightily confusing when I first saw it.

“The One is actually a part of the Machines’ system?? WTF!?”

(I remember having a similar feeling after playing Mass Effect 3...)

To be fair, its set up is a bit muddled, given the clunky script and pacing issues of the movie but when you start thinking about the message more deeply, given current events, and its relation to the real world it hits about as hard and fits as neatly as the first film’s more positive message.

The first Matrix film has a pretty dark setup, obviously. Neo finds out that he’s a part of gigantic computer program meant to create the illusion of free will for humanity while they are quite literally eaten for power by the Machines like cattle. Of course, Neo discovers he’s more than just another human connected to The Matrix but a prophesized messiah who has the ability to combat the system beyond its considerable control. By the end of the film he fulfills his destiny by becoming The One and beginning a new revolution against the Machines that control the human race.

(And looking fucking cool and totally 90s while doing it!)

It’s a pretty positive and uplifting story when you really break it down. It shows the viewer the lengths at which power tries to maintain its control and the Machines are a worthy avatar for this metaphor, but it also shows that power can be fought against when someone begins to empower themselves. When Neo says he will “show you a world where anything is possible” at the end its an earned moment of catharsis for not just him but the audience as well. We begin to start to believe in hope and beating the system too.

“The Matrix Reloaded” however goes several steps further showing that power can maintain its control in far more nefarious ways. Throughout the film Neo is told about the illusion of control and choice by characters like The Oracle and the, admittedly cringey, Merovingian. It feels strange at first because Neo is supposedly someone who is above the system but you can tell there is sense of jadedness, with some optimism of course, when The Oracle explains his role in saving Zion, like someone who has seen someone try to do this before, and The Merovingian simply mocks him for being another in a long line of “predecessors” who is completely “out of control.”

But then Neo finally does get to the Architect after being led there by The Key Maker and it’s here he learns his true nature; that he is the sixth in a long line of previous “Ones” in the Matrix and a part of The Machine’s control. He is less a prophet and more just another cog in the machine meant to lead humanity in one direction over and over again in order to create an illusion of free will for the resistance, the same way The Matrix does its human cattle.

Neo was a part of their plan and had been from the start.

(In case y’all need a refresher...)

There were tons of fans, including myself at one point, who couldn’t square with this strange narrative turn. Like Morpheus at the end of the film, there was refusal to believe it. It seemingly rewrote how one could view the first film and Neo’s role in it.

It changed the way a lot of people could see the positivity of the first film and understandably that could, and did, make a lot of people upset. Neo wasn’t sent to save humanity; he was there to keep them in line. It was like saying “actually Emperor Palpatine always wanted Luke Skywalker to blow up the Death Star.”

(I mean he does say this a lot though...)

But “The Matrix” was always about the lengths at which power works to maintain its control over the masses and “Reloaded” asks how can a corrupt and evil system be a part of the solution? How can it be reformed?

It can’t.

Way back in 2008, I cast my first vote as an eligible American for Barack Obama for president. Like many millennials at the time I found his mantra of “hope and change” sincere and uplifting and I truly felt the country was going to take a turn for the better the night he was inaugurated. For a moment it really did feel like things would be different after eight years of Bush.

Fast forward to 2011 however, and things changed dramatically for myself when I found out about the drones.

I’m aware of the fact that in leadership positions hard choices are made but after spending the previous decade vociferously calling out the Bush Administration for what they did in the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars this was a truly rude awakening for me. Combine this with finding out about him continuing Bush era tax cuts, re-upping the Patriot Act, the mass deportations, the major corporate donors, his mishandling of Flint, and The Standing Rock Crisis it became clear Obama was just as much a part of the machine as Bush was.

(Also, no matter how much you hate Trump, DO NOT participate in the the gas-lighting of this man’s record...) 

Now, I can already hear the pitchforks picking up and I’m not here to tell you that the Obama presidency didn’t have its moments or that it was worse than what we have now BUT this does not excuse what would be considered awful behavior by liberals under any conservative president.

Each Democratic presidency or nomination I’ve seen in my lifetime, from Clinton to Obama, has always touted themselves as a chance to “fix America” and bring “hope and change” to a largely corrupt system. But neither of these presidencies really changed much of what the previous conservative administrations did, in fact in some ways they got worse. Minimum wage hasn’t risen in over a decade, we still have the world’s largest prison population by far, the wealth gap has only INCREASED regardless of who held the White House, and need I remind some of you Black Lives Matter started under the Obama administration.

At some point the problem goes beyond just conservative stonewalling and political impasse. You can’t blame everything on Mitch McConnell (though a lot of it can too, admittedly). The system is behaving exactly as its supposed to because corrupt people hold power.

(They’re not laughing with you, they are laughing AT you...)

The extremely cynical Biden-Harris ticket we got going right now is being pitched, more or less, the same way as a "fight to fix everything terrible” that Trump has done. Look, I’m not going to tell you Trump hasn’t been terrible because that should be obvious to EVERYONE at this point, but when you have Wall Street goons actively cheering the announcement of the Democratic party nomination, a DNC that is running more conservative speakers in its first day than Latinx across the entire event, you have to wonder to yourself if they are really “The One.”

(A reminder that “Never Trump” Republicans are not your friends either...)

Again, I’m not saying things can’t be “better” right now under a Democratic White House or that some communities would benefit greatly from a change in leadership BUT the bar is FUCKING LOW and the truth of the matter is people WILL be hurt under the next administration regardless of who it is and framing it as “privileged” to think otherwise is actually quite privileged itself.

There are people who can’t wait for medicare for all. There are people who can’t wait for sentencing and prison reform. There are people who cannot survive another wave of US imperialism overseas.

We are being guided to the same predetermined destination that The Architect gives Neo and its what makes all this so aggravating for many.

“The Matrix Reloaded” shows Neo that he is simply another system of control for the afflicted masses but what makes the final moments of the film important is that he chooses to stop playing its game. When The Architect gives him the choice of the door that guarantees the “salvation” of the human race but in bonded servitude to the Machines and the door to make the supposed “selfish” decision to save Trinity from death but doom humanity to extinction, he does this fully expecting Neo to make the same choice every other One did before him did.

But Neo doesn’t, he goes through the door to save Trinity and for a chance to destroy the system in another way. Neo decides to break the cycle even if it might have catastrophic consequences. He challenges The Architect on whether he would be willing to allow Neo any chance at any other outcome and calls his bluff. It’s what makes him a hero and in a strange way gives “Reloaded” a positive ending as well.

(And again, just looking cool as hell while doing it.)

Now, with the way the next movie ends you could make the argument that the cycle continues and this theme gets contradicted but I would argue it’s a bit more ambiguous than that and with the fourth film supposedly on its way in the coming years there is a chance for a more conclusive and satisfying ending. This write-up is strictly arguing the message of the second film anyways.

What a viewer should get on further review of “The Matrix Reloaded” is that corrupt systems have more insidious ways of maintaining control than we may be able to accept. Wall Street goons wouldn’t allow a consistent formidable opposition party to run against them every year, it’s why they are deep in both red AND blue pockets. It’s why campaign financing is out of control. It’s why ultimately both wings of our government are pro-surveillance, pro-big money donors, pro-US exceptionalism/imperialism and the only real difference comes down to mostly minor minutia between the two to maintain their illusion of choice.

In the end to a certain extent, I still believe in the system, given that I donate money and support various leftist causes, progressive primary challenges, and reelections around the country in hopes they run a real left wing someday. However, each year, and frankly each month at the rate we’re going, I’ve grown more cynical about it. At best it is incremental change and at worst its ultimately empty power against the larger juggernaut of corrupt politics throughout our government.

(Me desperately trying to avoid the relentless bullshit of this year.)

“Reloaded” deposits that in order to break the cycle you have to make a choice not accounted for by the system. That in order to truly change anything, as silly and as obvious as it sounds, you have to do something different. Voting for people who better represent your beliefs much more fully and refusing to vote for ones who don’t is one way but as I stated in my “Black Sails” write-up the more active third option should never be off the table.

Changing the world shouldn’t come down to a false binary choice like the ones the Machines gave Neo at the end of “Reloaded.” And while, for the record, I’m not necessarily against people making the lesser of two evils choice again, people need to stop ignoring the ways in which corruption keeps its power and start having honest looks at those who call themselves “The One” who will make things right.

If this entire year hasn’t convinced you of that yet, I don’t know what will and the sooner we understand this the sooner we can start a real “revolution” in this country’s cynical politics.

Until then The Machines will continue to win...

*Me getting away from the liberal bullshit that will likely be tossed at me over this*

[suiciderealestate]

Midnight - June 15, 2020

What a strange time and what a wonderful thing to be alive to see it. What started as something so incredibly dark is now transforming into a cleansing fire. I’m only disappointed that I’m not in New York to be more a part of it. Still, being home has been oddly good for me. I dreaded coming back to Nashville and being inexorably bored, but that hasn’t really happened. I find lately that it has been difficult to be bored when there are so many things to be done. Even when I am doing nothing, knowing that my world is suffused with things to be done has deprived me of the possibility of boredom. To be home again with my friends and family who understand me, to be able to do work in things I enjoy or at least aspire to enjoy, all of it has allowed me to get closer to my center. And yet, I still feel that lingering sensation of missing out. It always feels like the most important things are happening somewhere else, and I’ve never quite been able to shake that. But then I suppose it’s just what goes along with being human, being this atomized lump of agency and desire in a swirling universe of invisible singularity.

Everything is so uncertain right now, but it feels like there is a reckoning. It feels like the conservative forces that have left me feeling less than human all my life are finally being seen for what they are. I admit that I have internalized some of it, that there are biases within me as a southern white male that feel contradictory sometimes. But this racial revolution is so much more than just a demand for actual freedom for black people. It is a demand that we all be seen as human beings, that we are all treated with the dignity and respect owed to everyone. Sure, “All Lives Matter” may be another tone-deaf rightwing trope, but I think it’s the real meaning in “Black Lives Matter.” We are fighting for equality for black people now because we are fighting for equality for us all, and we must start with those who are most vulnerable. Yesterday in New York City there was a peaceful demonstration of solidarity with black trans women, who have proven to be one of the most vulnerable populations in our country. Around 15,000 people were there. All of my friends in New York were there. It feels like something good may yet come of all of this.

When Donald Trump was elected, I remember being vaguely disappointed but slightly amused. I never wanted Trump to win, but the fact that he did win meant something big was going to happening, and I hoped it would be the destruction of the Republican Party as we know it. I still hope for that. His entire presidency was like a game of chicken. Something big would happen and you’d think he would finally be held accountable, and then he wouldn’t be. Against all odds, he won the presidency against Hillary Clinton, even after the “grab ‘em by the pussy” comment and all the nasty, incendiary behavior that kept him and his rallies in the headlines. I mean it was really such a catastrophic political upset that you just knew the wheels of history were about to go into overdrive. Trump survived all the damning books written about him. Trump survived impeachment. Things even began to assume a sense of eerie normalcy for a moment, the feeling that a Trump presidency was a one-way train and that there would be no going back for our country.

When the pandemic landed in the U.S., it just felt like the disastrous culmination we all knew was coming. We floated through Trump’s term with much political turmoil but much less unrest than I would have anticipated. Sure, the news headlines were never-ending until things that were once surprising became mundane, but we didn’t have a 9/11 or a new war, which is the thing I was the most afraid of. No nuclear disaster. No economic collapse. Just a lot of quiet social regression and the unavoidable feeling that now more than ever we are a nation divided. When the pandemic came, that’s when it really happened though. That’s when we knew why a president like Trump is so dangerous, and it’s because he just lives in his own world, the same way that many of us do, but in a way that the president of the United States cannot afford to do. It was a loss for diplomacy. It was a loss for the sanctity and decorum of the office. It was a loss for our national pride, or at least half of the country’s national pride.

When the virus hit I was so afraid. I felt like things really were just going to fall apart. Trump didn’t care about the virus. His response strategy was and still is, effectively, to ignore it, to refuse to wear a mask, to project not strength but the delusion of invincibility. He was so confident the virus would go away, it was almost like he knew something about it that we didn’t. Cases are spiking in Tennessee and several other states where people just don’t care about safety, but it’s mostly poor people of color that are being affected. A factory of minorities falls ill in a factory outbreak and it’s business as usual. Nursing homes all over the country become easy bake morgues and it’s business as usual. And to be quite honest, that kind of apathy easily rubs off.

As the rallies and demonstrations protesting the routine racial violence began to grow and spread like wildfire all over the country, we began to experience a kind of political paradox. The Trumpers are following their messiah’s lead by ignoring the virus, celebrating national holidays en masse, grilling out and thronging together in celebration of summer. At first the liberals criticized the behavior, but now even people on the left seem comfortable to travel in crowds during protests, as long as they wear a mask. To them, that seems to be the distinctive difference, but not every protestor I’ve seen has worn a mask. Neither side agrees with the reason the other side is going outside, and yet are all going outside. When I got home, my friend and I were spraying the ATM with disinfectant. Every trip to the grocer store felt like a dangerous foray into enemy territory. The news coverage of the destruction being caused by the pandemic was constant, and the reports, voices and opinions of the reporters and pundits were always in the back of my mind. Everyone on Instagram was urging people to stay indoors. Proper quarantine etiquette became an online rhetorical trend. But when the riots started and the political fabric of our populous seemed to be ripping apart, the headlines shifted and the attention shifted away with them. Right now in Nashville there are more cases of the virus than there have ever been, and it only promises to keep getting worse. I think it was just yesterday that I saw a picture of a girl’s lung infected by coronavirus that had been taken out during a transplant. It looked like a piece of rotting corned beef covered in pus. The lung belonged to a girl supposedly with no history of smoking.  And yet I am strangely at peace. Still, it’s the same kind of peace I felt when Mary Jane’s car got t-boned and was spinning out of control. I thought I was about to die, and in that moment I was prepared to die. But I didn’t. I can’t help but wonder if this newfound tranquility is just a false sense of security, or anticipation of an inevitable sort of death. All I can really do is hope that fate will smile upon me, and if it doesn’t then I just hope to have the strength to let go of whatever tragedy comes. We are all ready to get back to our lives. We are all ready to return to a world in which this pandemic didn’t exist, but wishful thinking isn’t enough to make this chaos go away. Here we are, a nation on the edge, and we are embroiled in perhaps the most controversial presidency in American history, a deadly global pandemic, and now a revolution. When George Floyd died I was numb.

But it wasn’t because of people like me that the world is changing. To be honest, I am well aware of my complicity in a system that has more or less afforded me a great deal of comfort. Within the context of everything happening, watching black people lose their lives for no reason over and over again to the officers who are sworn to protect us all reminds me that circumstance has not been entirely cruel to me. I am thankful that something is happening. I am thankful that the protests are ongoing. I am thankful that finally our country is being forced to stand still, that the wheels of capitalism are slowing down for just a moment, so that we can evaluate who we actually are, to make necessary changes, and to proceed forward to a higher consciousness of freedom. But I know that there is a greater battle ahead of us. The opposition is rallying its forces, and though I am confident that the worst elements of our nation are their own kind of minority that can be overcome, I know it will not be without a fight.

History is happening every day, and I want to be there to document it. I want to be there to take part in it. If I am going to continue my life as a voyeur then I want to be an active voyeur. I want to tell stories that will result in meaningful change. But these are dangerous times, and I don’t only risk my own life when I attend the demonstrations. Living with my parents has given me a needed sense of comfort, but I know that being here and continuing to live my life more or less is putting them in danger, and if I wasn’t here they wouldn’t be in danger. It would be nice to stay in Nashville for awhile and save some money, to spend some time with my friends and reacquaint myself with the city I was born in as I head out of my youth and into my 30s. I don’t feel as old as I am. At twenty-nine I still feel a lot like a kid. I’ve often said that I got stuck in the mind of a 19-year-old when I did acid on Halloween in 2010. That night has remained the most impactful night of my life, and yet I have always been at a loss regarding what to do with the experience I had. I want to begin my life as an adult, to continue or at least approach with more vigor the essence of what will be my life’s work. I’ve been searching for it, and to be honest I just don’t know if I’ve found what it is.

I’ve become mostly accustomed to a life in which my major depression has left me unmotivated by most everything. I’ve been looking for that motivation everywhere. I searched for it in Kansas. I looked high and low for it in New York. I expected that New York would give me everything I needed to find that buoy of inspiration we assume every great artist has, but if anything New York just confronted me with the hard realities of our vapid, money-driven world. But as everything is dismantled and falls apart, I’ve become more hopeful than ever for a better future for all of us. We might not be able to fix the money-driven part of things just yet, but I really do believe we are taking steps in the right direction toward building a more free world. If this is just the calm before the storm, then let chaos reign. 

[onlovestreetwithjimmorrison]

Frank Lisciandro Interview

Frank Lisciandro was a close friend of Jim Morrison. He worked, traveled and partied with Jim for three years, photographing and filming the Doors at the height of their popularity.

Last year Frank Lisciandro wrote a book about his experiences with Jim Morrison entitled "Jim Morrison, An Hour For Magic, A Photojournal" (Delilah Books)

We take great pride in presenting this very special interview with Frank Lisciandro.

Q. Frank, why haven't we seen more books about the Doors? A. I think it's because the Doors themselves and the estate of Jim Morrison have been rather unapproachable in the past about writing about Jim, and about access to the kinds of material you need. As a matter of fact, the Sugerman, Hopkins book ("No One Here Gets Out Alive"), was not authorized by the estate. The estate wanted to stop its publication because there are a lot of inaccuracies in it.

Q. Why don't Morrison's parents speak out about their son? A. His father is an ex-Navy Admiral, and they tend to be rather conservative, military people. I don't think they've ever realized Jim's greatness, and I think they've always been ashamed that he was busted in Miami, and busted in New Haven. It doesn't fit the image of a military man. In a sense, they would prefer that nothing be written about him. They don't like the way it reflects on them, believe it or not. They don't see the greatness in their son; rather they see the embarrassment it causes them. Because of that, they've been totally uncooperative with everyone. I did hear that they liked my book quite a lot. Although I didn't need their cooperation, it was nice to hear that. But, even his sister hasn't spoken up, or his brother. They would just rather cherish the kind of images they had of him rather than have a publicity thing go out. So they're not very sympathetic to the fans' needs or the people who really idolize Jim even to this day. There are young people and older people even, who find him a great innovator, a great rock singer, lyricist, poet. And these people want more and more information about him. The parents and the family don't see that really. They just don't want the exposure, so, they haven't been generous with their information about Jim. Hopefully, that will change.

Q. Why is Jim Morrison so popular today? A. When Jim wrote, he wrote from a universal standpoint. That is, he dealt with themes that are universal, and they are timeless. He dealt with love, death, sex, breaking away from one's family, mysticism, breaking on through to the other side. To see a new reality, he talked about rebellion and revolution. Those are things that are a lot different than Sixteen Candles, boy meets girl, boy loses girl. Not only were his themes meaningful, but the way he addressed those themes, the way he treated them. He read deeply into philosophy, and psychology. He was a very learned and well-read person and he was able to talk about those things in a way that people responded then, and still respond to. I think people who listen to him are attracted now both by his physical image, his voice, and also the things he wrote and talked about because those subjects are always meaningful to people.

Q. Is there anybody out there today who has picked up where Morrison left off? A. I don't see anybody right now on the horizon that has quite the charisma, the magic, and the influence of Jim. I don't see anybody with the deep philosophical bent that Jim possessed. I think the person who has the most humane kind of lyric; and the most humane kind of outlook is Jackson Browne. But, Jackson Browne is no Jim Morrison.

Q. As a co-producer of the "American Prayer" album, are we to believe that everything Jim said on the album should be taken seriously? Are parts of the album a put on? A. I think that some of the poems are comic, some of the poems are serious, and some of the poems are kind of serious but are meant to be taken comic. Individual poems have different intent. In effect, he was a comic poet. The poem that goes "Curses, Invocations", that's a wonderful set of phrases and images of just weird and surrealistic and wonderful kinds of things that it brings to mind. So, I don't say everything in "American Prayer" is serious, but at the same time, he was serious about the way he used words. It's just at times he used them in a comic sense and other times in a very serious sense.

Q. Towards the end of his life, Jim was asked if he would've lived out the same style of life again, if he had the opportunity. He said no, he'd prefer a quieter, much simpler lifestyle. Was it the legal hassles that caused him to think like that? A. That was a good part of it, but perhaps more was that he had become, his image had become, larger than himself and in some respects, people expected him to live up to his image. He was a very sensitive, and a very gentle kind of human being. He really cherished close friendships and quiet moments. Unfortunately, he couldn't outlive his image.

Q. Did Jim Morrison like to laugh? A. Oh yeah, he had a great sense of humor. He was a great conversationist. We would spend afternoons sitting around talking about everything under the sun, laughing and having a good time. He enjoyed good company. He enjoyed other people's ideas. He encouraged other people's ideas. He elicited them. He was a good listener. He was just a pal.

Q. What was his attitude towards women? How did he treat them? A. He was raised in the South and he had in his background a lot of the manners and style of a Southern gentleman. He would rise up from his seat when a woman entered the room. He would invariably hold a door for a woman. He would always let a woman walk before him. He had all those traits of good manners. And then he was very discreet about the women he dated. He never told macho stories, like boy you should see what I did with her or anything like that. He never even mentioned names. He was so careful about that kind of thing. Virtually any woman who was anywhere near him adored him because he was so kind and considerate. Of course, he looked great too, so women fell head over heels in love with him immediately.

Q. Bill Siddons, who was the Doors road manager, remarked that Jim was "always testing death". He took everything to the extreme. Is that fact or fiction? A. That's probably fairly true. He was a non-stop kind of human being. I don't know how to really explain it, except to say that he lived as fully as he could in the present moment. He wasn't one to think about the future very much.

Q. Jim's death is surrounded by mystery and controversy. No autopsy was done. His death was reported six days after it happened. Many people didn't even see the body. Is there a possibility that Jim Morrison is still alive somewhere, living under an assumed name? A. It would be nice to entertain that illusion. Being a close friend, I would love to think of him as being alive, but my feeling is, that he was such an extraordinary human being, so unlike anyone I'd ever met, he had so many talents, he was such an extrovert, that it would be hard to disguise those talents. Even if he assumed a different name and identity, he would still somehow show up in the media somewhere. We're talking about ten, eleven years now, and in that intervening time, I'm sure there would have been some notice of him, or some way he would have made himself known. I think he died in Paris, that Pamela his girlfriend at the time was so grief-stricken by his death; I don't think she faked that. She did see the body. She was there when he died. I've come to the conclusion that he is dead and buried in Paris.

Q. Pamela died of a heroin overdose in 1974. Is there anybody alive today who saw Jim's body? A. Well, I don't know. I would like to know too. They did have a friend in Paris who was sort of a secretary to both Jim and Pamela, and I don't know what happened to her. Apparently, she would've seen the body. But, I've never known anybody who's known her. There's a Frenchman who lives in Los Angeles who was there in Paris. Whether or not he saw the body, I don't know. I do know he was at the grave when Jim was buried. There's a French film director who was also in Paris and a friend of Jim's at that time. Whether or not she saw the body, I don't know. I did see a death certificate from a French doctor which stated the cause of death, and it was officially stamped. Of course, that could've been forged too. I have not talked to anyone, ever, who saw Jim's body after he had died.

Q. So, the mystery goes on. A. Absolutely. And I think the mystery is cause for a lot of people to cling to the notion that he might still be alive. I don't want to dissuade people from that, if that's what they need. For my own self, I've come to the conclusion that it's more healthy to think of Jim as not being alive, but his work being alive, his poems, his music.

Q. Don't you find it rather strange that Jim's girlfriend, Pamela, should die of a heroin overdose? A. I find it tragic. I think she was so grief-stricken, that she turned to hard drugs as a way to relive some of the grief. I think she got into a very bad crowd in Hollywood and there was nobody there to protect her after Jim died. I'm not trying to condone drug use. I don't condone it at all. In her case, she could've made a new life for herself, but in fact, I don't think she was strong enough.

Q. What did Jim Morrison mean when he said, "Give us an hour for magic"? A. You know other people's poetry is very, very hard to define. I think you limit it when you define it. In a sense it means something different to each of us. I can tell you what it means to me. Somehow, it's saying that life itself is a magical, mystical experience. I mean, you don't have to take drugs. You don't have to get far out. If you can just sit still and realize the complexity of life and the intricacy, mystery, and beauty of life, then that's magic alone. So "Give us an hour of magic", I think he was talking about, extend our life another hour or at least another day, whatever the word hour tends to mean. It can mean a day, a month or a year. But he's talking about having the privilege of being alive, and continuing to do the kind of things he does ...did.

© Gary James All Rights Reserved

http://www.famousinterview.ca/interviews/frank_lisciandro.htm

[aion-rsa]

Bridgerton: Let’s Talk About Sex Education, Baby

https://ift.tt/3n6QZ6O

This Bridgerton article contains MAJOR spoilers for Season 1, including the ending.

If you think our sex education could be better today (which you should), then Bridgerton‘s depiction of Daphne’s pre-marital lack of knowledge around sex may astound you. In the first season of the delightful romance drama, Daphne has to find out about masturbation from Simon and heads into her wedding night knowing next to nothing about what might happen between two adults in lust, aside from the fact that it has something to do with the act of having children. Later, Simon keeps the details of his “inability” to have children from his new wife much longer than he could have if Daphne had a better understanding of procreation.

Elsewhere on the show, Penelope Featherington and Eloise Bridgerton put their considerable minds to the task of finding out how babies are made so they can avoid getting pregnant before marriage—a valid question and concern for women of any era. Unfortunately, the closest they get to answering it is: women get pregnant because of love, which is not very helpful. (Bet you’re feeling pretty lucky to have Google right about now.) Is this level of ignorance historically accurate? Let’s dive into the real history of sex education in Regency-era England to find out.

The first season of Bridgerton is set in early 19th century London, which falls during the Regency sub-period of the Georgian era. While many think of old-time England as a repressive place, that stereotype comes more from the Victorian era, which followed the Georgian era when Bridgerton is set, and was notoriously repressive when it came to matters of sexuality and “morality.” The Georgian era was (generally) less conservative. As historian Faramerz Dabhoiwala puts it in his book Origins of Sex: A History of the First Sexual Revolution (via The American Conservative), the 18th century urbanization of England (by 1800, more than one million people lived in London) led to “more opportunities for sexual adventure,” and an increase in pre-marital and extramarital sex. By 1800, almost 40% of brides getting married were already pregnant, and about 25% of first-born children were born out of wedlock.

“We know that Regency society is a very bawdy society, generally,” Bridgerton historical consultant Hannah Grieg told the Chicago Tribune. “Extramarital sex is no longer illegal, most adult consensual sex is within the law, there’s a very open culture of prostitution in London. We get celebrity courtesans and mistresses.”

That being said, just because society is free for some, doesn’t mean it is free for all. England circa 1813 had its own share of socially-constructed ignorances and, as with today, one’s access to sexual education varied based on things like gender, class, and location. In Bridgerton, this kind of difference is depicted in instances like Marina knowing much more about sex and pregnancy than Daphne does before marriage. Presumably, that is partially because she has already had an affair and become pregnant before she even comes to London, but it is also because her slightly lower class (and childhood on a family farm) has not meant the same degree of social shielding as Daphne. That said, Marina presumably had little education or knowledge about birth control and, as we see later in the season, does not have the necessary knowledge (or access to resources) to effectively terminate her pregnancy.

“There would have been nothing in the way of formal sex education,” Lesley A. Hall, a historian of gender and sexuality, told the Tribune. “Mothers might have given some premarital counsel to daughters, but although it almost certainly wasn’t actually ‘Close your eyes and think of England’ it may not have been much more illuminating.”

And, as with today, most freedoms in Georgian-era England benefitted the white, heterosexual, rich men first, most, and sometimes to the exclusion of all others. In Bridgerton, we see a stark difference between what is socially acceptable for Anthony vs. what is socially acceptable for Daphne. Anthony carries on a sexual affair with Sienna and, though he doesn’t particularly what his family to find out, it would not ruin him. For Daphne, however, merely being alone with a man who is not family could ruin not only her prospects, but the prospects of her sisters, as we see happens with the unmarried Bridgerton girls when Marina’s pre-marital pregnancy is made public.

Obviously, Bridgerton is not going for total historical accuracy. As with all period pieces, the story is as much if not more so about now than it is about the time in which it is set. Modern viewers are not watching Bridgerton for an education about the past (nor would they, on the whole, get one); they are watching it as a cathartic and escapist romp, which also has incredible social value.

So what does Bridgerton‘s treatment of sex have to say about today? That is up for interpretation, of course. For me, it is an exaggerated depiction of some of the struggles and joys of contemporary womanhood, in particular a denouncement of all of the decisions about our bodies and our futures that are still kept from us. Here (and in some more obvious ways), it is represented as various female characters’ ignorance around sex, a subject that is kept from them not only by the men in their lives but, in some cases, by other women upholding the patriarchal norms. Daphne herself realizes she has been one of these women when her own experiences lead her to see Marina in a new light. She finds empathy for Marina, whom she rightfully views as another fierce survivor of a social labyrinth designed for men—a girl punished for seeking out pleasure, in a way that men are not for doing the same.

Read more

TV

The Real History Behind Bridgerton

By Amanda-Rae Prescott

TV

Bridgerton: Will There Be a Season 2?

By Kayti Burt

Bridgerton takes on those gender-driven constraints and, over the course of a season, has its many women characters rail against them, not only pointing out their absurdities but finding ways to work within the patriarchal structure to find power in pleasure. No, I am not talking about the controversial scene in which Daphne forces Simon to release inside of her, which has nothing to do with pleasure and everything to do with power. I am talking about Daphne masturbating for the first time, alone in her bed, with nigh a man in sight (though certainly one in her erotic fantasy), for no one’s pleasure but her own. Or on her early honeymoon with Simon, enjoying all of the sex, depicted as just as eager for the rendezvouses as her husband.

“I refer to this season as ‘the education of Daphne Bridgerton,’” creator Chris Van Dusen told the Chicago Tribune. “She starts out as this young innocent debutante who knows very little of love. And she knows nothing of sex. And over the course of the series we watch her transform entirely.”

Knowledge really is related to power and, in Bridgerton, we see much of that accumulation of knowledge takes place in the bedroom, and much of that accumulation of power represented through sexual pleasure. Season 1 is the story of Daphne learning about her own body and its capacity for pleasure regardless of its service to men. After an adolescence of enforced ignorance, Daphne is finally given the knowledge and space to explore her own sexual desire. The fact that it comes through her relationship with Simon is one of the reasons why their romance is so damn sexy—it’s so much about Daphne’s pleasure, even when it isn’t about her happiness.

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[the-record-briefs]

May 30, 2018: In other news

Sermon given by David Johnson for ChickenFest

Editor’s note: this is the sermon given Sunday, May 27, at The Record Park by Arbor Grove United Methodist Church’s lay leader David Johnson.

 Good morning!  Welcome once again to America…my favorite nation…home to my favorite state, North Carolina…which houses my favorite county, Wilkes….which contains my favorite communities…two of which I am living in simultaneously these days due to family illness…Mulberry and Purlear. It’s great to wake up here. I am very glad that there is a "here" to wake up to.  But for the grace of God and the sacrifices of many men, women, and families, it might be a very different "here"…a different reality that we would be living in.

But for those who willingly went to fight our enemies on foreign battlefields…our salutes and allegiances might be to a flag containing a swastika, a rising sun,  a hammer and sickle, or even an Isis insignia instead of the stars and stripes.  I have read about and seen the effects of these regimes in their heyday, and I thank God that they were not successful in raising those flags over American territory.  In all of our imperfections as a culture, I still prefer our way of life and our creed to those of our political and military enemies.

Let me share a short scripture about these sacrifices:

John 15:13  

…greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends…

It almost seems inevitable that the nation who would have the most personal freedom and become the most desirable goal for those that would leave a land of their birth to relocate in a land of more advantage, would become the nation that would have to fight the hardest for Survival both from outside and also from within.  And that has been the case with the United States.

Over two centuries ago we invoked the name and blessings of God in our very creed and national motto when we said that we considered all men to be created by that God as equals…and then we spent the next century combining enslavement and relocation of two different races of people in our quest to occupy and flourish on the continent.  But by the grace of the Lord, our national conscience eventually changed and his words uttered first to the Hebrews that he had delivered from their own slavery, then uttered to the gentiles (that included Greeks, Romans, Ethiopians, and of course, our ancestors)…those words kept coming up in our national dialog and in our desire to live up to our creed.  Eventually, by God's help, we have progressed closer to that point of true personal freedom for all our citizens than ever before.

Yet all through the years of our efforts to govern ourselves, we still have taken our place on the age old stage of warfare.  Sometimes, we were fighting amongst ourselves while we were fighting other nations. Yet to this point of today, God has seen fit to let us exist and given us the strength to persevere over our enemies both outside…and in.

This survival came and still comes with a price…a price in wealth…war is expensive…but more importantly, and sadly, a great price in human lives.  No one in their right mind who has ever been in a war wants to see another one. Yet many who have fought one battle and survived, have willingly fought again in order to keep our country, our people, and our way of life secure.  And many of these folks paid the price with their own lives.  It is them that we wish to honor today.  Yet how can we do that?

How do you repay someone that has given their life for you?

In Old Testament times, the Hebrews followed the commands of God through Moses…reluctantly sometimes, because they desired to be free from Egypt's slavery. Yet whether they knew it or not, it wasn't just the Egyptian captivity from which they needed to escape, it was the power of sin and their over and over again rejection of god's plan for them that they needed to be freed from.

Their success against their worldly enemies only seemed to make them more dependent upon earthly answers like a human king with a crown and successors.  Earthly idolatry would constantly come between them and God.

Only the hand of God plus the faith of some Israelites would allow them to survive wars with philistines, defeat and captivity by the Babylonians, and occupation by the Romans, plus being exiled and dispensed into the world for centuries.

Yet the faith of some, plus the power of an almighty god brought them back to the land for which they had fought so many times at the cost of countless lives. Their heroes are commemorated in scriptures…Joshua, Gideon, Samson, David, and a man you may have heard of named Jesus, who many of them rejected, plus many others. Their descendants are still there now…not just because of their might, but because god decreed it and allows it.

We are told these histories by songs, by sermons, and by reading the Bible.  It is important that we remember them because their story... Is our story.

In our case, as English subjects in the 16 and 1700’s we felt enslaved by oppressive government.  Men and women desired to live a life of their own choosing, even if in a harsh environment in order to feel free from the hand of a king. Our first war in America was one of decision…are we willing to risk death to be a free people?  Against a superior military force from England, 13 colonies made that choice and fought those battles.  As in all wars, not all the troops came home…but there was no controversy as to the results of the war.  We wanted to be a free nation…and we had paid the price to be one.  And by God's help and only by his help we became one.

Yet less than a century later we would fight the war that not many nations survive…                                       a war amongst ourselves.  Five years later at the end of that war, we started patching things up…but at the cost of over a half million troops and citizens, all Americans…all dead.

 Only the hand of god had kept us from totally disintegrating.  It was actually at the end of this war that our memories of our fallen soldiers began to take on days of commemoration, one state or one town at a time. Decoration days began to form.  Yet warfare continued to be a constant part of our culture.

Just after the industrial revolution, the world tried its hand at a global war, and men marched off to trenches in France, Germany, and other parts of Europe. When it seemed that United States allies or interests were threatened, our troops took their place before the cannons, guns, and mustard gas.  Some of your kinfolks didn't come back.  But they had been willing to go in order to see us survive.

World War Two was just a bigger, wider, more technologically advanced version of world war one…with one striking difference.  This time the enemy had hit us at Pearl Harbor…our land…the home front.

The result was an industrial upheaval…many businesses were converted to wartime efforts.  Gas, clothing and other goods were rationed willingly.  Even housewives gave broken skillets or pots, all scrap metal was collected to be shipped and converted to weaponry.

And almost all families gave up young men and in some instances young women that would not return from the effort.  But it was done with the prayer that God would bless that effort and our land would survive and thrive.

As the years progressed to now, we have not escaped our involvement in war.  There are those who say that our leaders have gotten us into most of the modern day ones willingly for wealth or world domination etc.  I don't know the truth about that.  But I do know many of the people who have fought…I know some who have died….and I know some who are fighting now. The ones that I know or knew either went when called, or volunteered.

And they did it because they loved this land.  And in most instances they loved the lord who allowed us to be in this land.

We know beyond the shadow of a doubt that we do not live in a perfect world.  And as much as I love it, I will be the last to say that America is a perfect nation.  But my hopes and prayers for her survival involve her becoming a more faith-filled nation and a more godly nation. 

Yes, we are in the middle of the opioid crisis, yes we are ridden with moral problems, with school shootings and corruption in high places, (and in low places for that matter), homelessness plus latter generations some of who don't even recognize that there is God, not to mention the terrible war technology with which many nations hold each other and parts of the world hostage.

But these problems are still symptomatic of the same sins that brought us to war before.  The same sin that pits North Korea against the U.S. is from the same source that caused Cain to kill Abel. The genocide that has taken place in Syria and other parts of the world also took place when an early Pharaoh tried to kill all young Hebrew male babies in order to find and eradicate a future Moses…or when Herod tried the same trick to find and kill a baby Jesus. Even in the middle of the slaughter, God's plan prevailed.  Satan is Satan, and the wages of sin is death.  How miserable would we be if there was not a better way?

There is probably no one sitting here that has not been touched directly or indirectly by a death of a family member or friend on a battlefield somewhere sometime.

What makes men and women risk their lives for a cause?

Not just the status quo…not just a national pride…but the hope and prayer of something better.

Soldiers have died from American forces ever since there was an America not just because they wanted America to survive, but because they wanted a better America to survive!

If we could talk to fallen soldiers what would they tell us their desires for us would be?  

How would they want to be honored or remembered?

 They would probably tell us they hoped that the battle they fell in would be the last one…or that our nation would turn itself into a more Godly representation of his love.  

I wonder if they would tell us to be more about the Golden Rule than the golden bank account?

Would they tell us to pray to the God that helped us found this nation that we can stop being so polarized and deathly opposed to each other before we crank up the next Civil War?   With the technology that we possess even locally, who wants to fight that conflict again?

Yet we seem to fight our own personal wars with each other on all the social media sites.  How long until this boils over into the streets?

War is a reality…Satan has seen to that.

God's words from Jesus confirm it.

Matthew 24:6 

 …and ye shall hear of wars and rumors of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet.

    But don't we have a responsibility as well to assure each other that our friends and family members didn't die in vain?

They sacrificed themselves so that we can keep the fight on the home front against sin, both in our lives and in our nation.  It will not be defeated until Christ returns yet what are we supposed to do until he comes?

We witness...we work…….we feed those who can't feed themselves…we house those who have no roof…we testify as to what God has done for us and what he can do for others.

 And we remember those whose lives were given for us to have the opportunity to do these things.

What brought the victory for them?  Sacrifice!

What brought the sacrifice?  Love! Love of God, love of family and love of this country!

It wasn't mercenary payment that made them fight!

It wasn't prestige, nor fear, nor pride…it was the continued survival, comfort, and freedom of those they loved!

This love motivated them to stand in front of otherwise insurmountable odds and still fight on.

Love reminds us of the presence of God within us…for without God there is no love…only a mockery of love.  The gospel of John says that Christ was here from the beginning and went to the battlefield for our own survival. The only mention of motivation in John 3:16 was love.

Our fallen war dead are the David’s and Gideon’s and Joshua’s of our day.  We can remember them with flags, flowers and tombstones…but, the only way to honor them is to perpetuate and improve the imperfections of the nation that they left us in a more Godly way.  To do this we must love God and because of his love we should love others just like we love ourselves.

 In this way we not only honor them and their sacrifice, but we honor the God who made us and Jesus who made the ultimate sacrifice for us in the battle for our souls.

It is only by joining in that struggle that we improve ourselves…improve our nation…and honor our fallen heroes in a way they would approve.

God bless you all.  Fall in behind Jesus….and fight on.

Amen