Seikilos Blog

Given my limitations on the English language and on my free time, as of today I won't translate my posts anymore. I will only post in the Spanish blog.

Roger Waters recently released two new songs on Internet. One of them ("To kill the child") is, once again, a perfect reflex of the times. It can be considered a follow-up to Radio Kaos' "Home" or Amused to Death's "What God Wants":

The child lay

In the starlit night

Safe in the glow of his Donald Duck light

How strange to choose to take a life

How strange to choose to kill a child

Hoover, Blaupunkt, Nissan Jeep

Nike, Addidas, Lacoste and cheaper brands

Cadillac, Amtrak, gasoline, diesel

Our standard of living, could this be a reason

That we would choose to kill the child

That we would choose to kill the child



		__________





Allah, Jehovah, Buddah, Christ

Confucius and Kali and reds, beans and rice

Goujons of sole, ris de veau, ham hocks

Lox bagels and bones and commandments in stone

The Bible, Koran, Shinto, Islam

Prosciutto, risotto, falafel and ham

Is it dogma, doughnuts, ridicule faith

Fear of the dark, or shame or disgrace

That we would choose to kill the child

That we would choose to kill the child



		__________



It's cold in the desert

And the space is too big

The rope is too short

And the walls are too thick

I will show you no weakness

I will mock you in song

Berate and deride you

Belittle and chide you

Beat you with sticks

And bulldoze your home

You can watch my triumphant procession to Rome

Best seat in the house

Up there on the cross

Is it anger or envy, profit or loss

That we would choose to kill the child

That we would choose to kill the child

		__________



Take this child and hold him closely

Keep him safe from the holy reign of terror

Take this child hold him closely

Take this child to the moral high ground

Where he can look down on the bigots and bully boys

Slugging it out in the yard

When I was younger, I believed in fundamentalism in arts. I believed that reading certain books would exclude to read some others, that certain music was the essential truth, and the others, mere hallucinations or misrepresentations, that certain cinema school had told forever what the others tried in vain to say. I saw art as something linear, where everything could be compared, in terms of worse or better. Then I realized that to receive art is simply to receive happiness, in one way or another. That such happiness could be waiting at the turn of the next corner: yes, even in the page of a minor writer or in a simple song.
As some forms of popular art (music, cinema, books) got comfortable inside the capitalist system, the perception of art turned into a fragmentation in terms of "for/against". A bit like political parties, left and right. On the one hand, massive art: in cinema, Hollywood; in music, ready-made pop; in books, bestsellers (I'm aware that I'm oversimplifying). On the other hand, those who are against such products because "they're obviously produced with the urge to earn money". Then our second fraction (let's call it "left") will endorse unconditionally European movies or those that are against capitalism, the music that consciously searches for innovation and the explicit opposite way of mainstream, books by selected and cultivated writers, or those who have certain lingustic sophistication. This actually is a much more complex phenomenon; there's also the formal or historic structuration: classical music, Godard or Orson Welles' cinema, Greek tragedy, just to name a few examples that are also opposed to the "right wing of arts". Just as in politics, the right wing is much more pragmatic than left, and they don't hesitate on capitalize on the profits of leftist experimentation, if this can help to sell more. They don't have a religious sense about what is art and what not, if it's art or not. They just want to entertain their public. This goal is what offends the most to leftists: the very idea of demean art to a mere entertainment. But I come back to my original idea: art should be a source of happiness; for the right wing, a momentary and rich happiness, for the left wing, a trascendental experience.
These two establishments that are opposed to each other produce the idea of a competition, but that is a false idea. Right winged art only wants the biggest crowd to enjoy the artwork (naturally, to get the most profit), and is not looking to be opposed to left wing by philosophy. They are not interested on this. By contrast, left wing wants to differ. This differentiation produces the institutionalization of art perception: who goes to the pantheon and who doesn't. In this way, certain classical pieces are to be kept as museum objects, and it's the duty of leftists to admire them accordingly, to study consciously to reach that sublime moment when one takes posession of one more sacred artwork. While he doesn't understand Joyce, he will say Ulysses is excellent, and will search secretly the intellectual reasons to like the author. Privately, he will fall asleep while listening to Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring", but will repeat the CD booklet's words of praise. It's clear that this new form of fundamentalism produces critics as well, y there's an even smaller fraction that is opposed to opposition. The "left of the left" will search fervently for the what was not institutionalized, be it by left or by right. In this way, they will rescue bizarre heroes from ancient times, or an eminent catalogue of unknown people. The leftwing of the leftwing is characterized by the lack of a theoretical basis (as opposed to pure left): it's just the joy to belong to a selected group that disdains what it's accepted. In the musical field, they will hear My Bloody Valentine or Mercury Rev, to be opposed to Radiohead or Massive Attack, who on turn were meant to be opposed to, say, Backstreet Boys or Madonna. The modus operandi of each faction is different. Madonna will try to listen to everything and rescue what can be the source of something innovative to the average ear and at the same time as massive as possible. Normally this will imply to drink from (to copy from, to be inspired by, to hire) the waters of innovators: enter the left again. On the left side, things are much slower; there are some creative bubbles: a context that takes years to be mature, that normally includes a lot of artists. From these bubbles, one or two see the light and are those who impose the standard, those who finally formalize the product. Those who got to be the referrers are most of the times the best samples of each movement; then we have the sublevel, where left of the left gets its food. If Radiohead's Kid A was a novelty and norm and pattern of what was to come, such innovation was actually the result of years of bubbling, and left of the left will always be able to say "this was being done years and years ago, I don't know what you think you discovered". Naturally, they will allege names that nobody bu them know, and they will be delighted on being part of this selected group. There's a difference, nevertheless: the left wing needs a theoretical basis, while the left of the left ignores that, because theory is also institution, and they have to despise it. If Radiohead works with complex rhytmic patterns out of the reach of their peers who can't think out of 4/4, if they search actively for new harminic forms that requiere certain formal study (see the fascination that Radiohead produces on classical music listeners), if they integrate technological innovations in a structured fashion, the left of the left will prefer to ignore all of this to say "but this noise thingy was already heard before". They will prefer to pass over anything formal (odd measures, harmony) just to dislike Radiohead, because they are already consecrated in the leftist pantheon, thus, there's something bad about them. Radiohead will seem too popular for them to enjoy it, or they will say "only when they were an unknown group they would produce listenable music". They will boast to have listened to them when nobody payed attention, they will pretend that the less mature records are the only valid, they will despise them because they were "sold to the system" (on Radiohead's fans point of view, it's them who are innovative without paying attention to commercial trends, and thus they are everything but "sold", naturally). The other aspect of the left of the left is even more reactionary: to vindicate old artists that are already unpresentable. In this way, they will want Robert Englund to be a great actor, and "Nightmare on Elm Street" series, classics. They will rescue ABBA or the Beach Boys, because it's mandatory for artists to be at the same time popular in their time, and no longer valid today. Useless is to warn that in this procedure takes priority, again, the systematic opposition to instutionalization in any form. The products they rescue are, precisely, right wing thrash: commercial products that were discarded by time, because the right wing has no formal memory as left wing has. There will be a time when Madonna or Michael Jackson will be food for the future leftwing of the leftwing. Right wing never feared ridicule in order to get more money, and with time fashion trends are seen coldly with a simle. Michael Jackson's white glove, Kiss' makeup, extravagant hairs and lycra pants in 80s rock... those things, that are so funny today, are restored (because they are bizarre) once they passed certain limits, through the left of the left.
So, the circle closes: the creative bubble produces a group of artists, and from there left wing chooses a few to turn them into leading men. The garbage is used by the left of the left, and what is worth to be learned, by the right. When fruit putrefies and stays in the past, there will always be the left of the left to rescue it under a layer of irony and sarcasm: please don't believe they mean it. To differ from, to belong to, to be unconscious part of a pattern, many individuals lose sight of the essential purpose of art: to produce happiness. While excluding through ideology a huge set of works, those individuals don't know that, in the end, they are excluded to get more "esthetical moments", those moments where an artwork moves us internally in some aspect of our humanity.

Well, it's been a long time since I don't update the blog, but among many reasonable excuses I have this one: Mozilla no longer works with Blogger, and they're trying to find out who's to blame. It's been two months now.

My friend Adrian Clark was again an influence to me and my blog. Here's the map of the countries I visited so far:





And the European details:



Ah, the world is big, isn't it?

After hearing all about Janet Jackson case, and thinking on and on again about how "family values" destroyed the American freedom (one of their favourite words), I thought on writing about that, but as many other already people did, I only will have some fun and copy what Elaine from Seinfeld once said, in a different context, but that fits perfectly here:

"I did not bare myself deliberately, but I tell you: I wish now that I had, because it is not me that has been exposed, but you! For I have seen the nipple on your soul!"

Well, I suppose I have to comment about Orkut, as every blogger has done in the last weeks. I guess the best I can do is a brief of what the others already said, and then contrast some data I found myself. So, on the one hand the critics: there's a huge concern about privacy, about what Orkut (Google) wants about your profile and what they can do with it. We read in Orkut's privacy policy:

By submitting, posting or displaying any Materials on or through the orkut.com service, you automatically grant to us a worldwide, non-exclusive, sublicenseable, transferable, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable right to copy, distribute, create derivative works of, publicly perform and display such Materials.

This means they can do whatever they want to with your personal data. There's a lot of information you submit to Orkut on registration, and as you enter Orkut only if you've been invited, everone wants to be invited. What could Google possible do with your profile? Some people suggested Google will keep track of what you search, to later associate those queries to your profile, and sell that information to marketing companies, in the shape of "white, Caucasian males between 20 and 30 searched for the term 'britney spears' a hundred times a day", or worse: "this is the list of people that searched for the name of your company this month: here you have their names, e-mails, addresses, telephone numbers... even there's some interesting chick here among them that's looking for a date: he has to be 30, no smoker, good looking...".
All of that sounds reasonable enough, it's pretty clear that Google has some strong commercial intentions behind Orkut, and that those intentions are in the data mining field. However, I still use Orkut. Living in the third world has its advantages: no big, American company is interested in a distant person living in Argentina who has no first world money to spend. I met interesting people there, so being in Orkut for a week wasn't a waste of time. What strikes me about the privacy worries is that I found several Open Source gurus inside: Asa Dotzler (from the Mozilla team), Miguel de Icaza (creator of Gnome, now cloning Microsoft's .NET for Linux), people that are regarded as leaders, and that can be easily seen in their friends' list (huge, with three figure numbers). If Orkut's so bad, what are they doing inside Orkut? If they advocate to Free Software, why do they use a proprietary system that will use you to earn money?
Anothing interesting thing: in Orkut, just like in Kafka's Oklahoma Circus or in John Wilkins' analytical language, you have to "catalog" yourself in categories. So I put me among the musicians, in particular with the cellists, those who look for other musicians to compose music through internet, those who use computers to compose music. Besides composing music, I listen to it, so you'll find me there among those who listen to Beethoven, Bartók, Pink Floyd, Mahler, Portishead... I like to read as well, so I created the Borges category, while I am among those who like Kafka. I also like humour, so there I am with the Monty Python lovers and with the Les Luthiers lovers. In the cinema field I created the Greenaway lobby, but I am also listed with those who love the so called "Foreign Cinema", and Herzog. As I am a programmer, I love "vi" and Open Source and Mozilla. Geographically speaking I also can be categorized inside those who live in Buenos Aires (we were the first Argentineans to enter Orkut), those who love Bulgaria, those who listen to European folklore... You see that such categorization (and the list of your friends) can define more your personality than all what Google asks you to fill in the profile card. When you meet a new person there, such heterogeneous list of "I belong to" can give you an immediate idea of who's he/she. As people can create categories themselves (as I did with Borges and Greenaway), some they don't look for a previous entry, and often there are several "communities" (as they are called inside Orkut) about the same topic: there are, for example, two about Monty Python, with the same title. As Orkut is still very young, today the "community system" is not a chaos yet, but soon it will be. There's no big deal happening inside the communities, as Orkut intended, but people use those just to attach themselves yet another label to describe them.