kurtiss.org | giving is receiving

no hype, just delight.

Perpetually insightful, Nick pinpoints a culture shift that’s moving so swiftly, he proposes, there may be no antidote. This movement is rooted in the instantaneous social feedback provided by friend lists, comments, and status messages–the ways in which social networks connect us. It’s a movement whose adoption has been so viral, so widespread, that it may not be given the time to foster a sensible response. A sensible response, like the irony employed by the punk movement, to counter the impotent revolution of the 60s. Nick argues that this irony was a product of a slower catalyst. A formal, combative pattern, applied systematically, with the luxury of time.

Our social network revolution. This is my generation–this is where I live and work and think. Have we become too human, too connected? Will the response be monstrous and dark? Will we dismiss this monster, validating its violent eruption?

These questions are scary, because in the midst of our participatory revolution, I identify with the rebellion. We know that our form of humanity moves faster than its ancestors. How will irony adapt? In the best case, perhaps the internet will be a vessel for its propagation–capable of responding as quickly and efficiently as our own viral over-humanization. But there are many worst cases. Will it cost us more than our joke of a dream?

Coach Taylor: “When Jason Street went down the first game of the season, everybody wrote us off.  Everybody.

And yet here we are at the championship game.   40000 people out there have also written us off.  And there are a few out there who do still believe in you.  A few will never give up on you.

When you go back out on the field, those are the people I want in your minds.  Those are the people I want in your hearts.  Every man at some point in his life is gonna lose a battle.  He’s gonna fight and he is gonna lose.  But what makes him a man, is that in the midst of that battle, he does not lose himself.

This game is not over.  This battle is not over.  So let’s hear it one more time, together.  Clear eyes, full hearts..”

Team: “Can’t lose!”

at the back of the

dance floor at sadie rene’s

where the rail wraps

in a rusty L around the

crowd of dancers and there

i was facing out, toward the side

where backstage darkness fades

detail and you smell rock bands

from 20 years ago, but back

to now i hold one hand with my

sister who is dancing to diana ross

like a family reunion where brothers

and sisters hold hands and dance, but

back to reality i was searching the darkening

sidelines in desperate fashion to find you but

no face or body or teeth or hands or eyes and

loudly grows the song, “all of my whole life

through, i never loved…” but nobody stops

dancing, even me, if i am dancing cause

it doesn’t feel like it, but my feet are moving

around like they’re painting lyrics on

the floor, the ones you’ve heard a million

times but damn do they need

to mean something now

Good evening to you I pray your heart is cleansing baby
Thinking of you while we keep sense at bay
Counting the days until we chance that breeze again
Fixing this song and hoping that’s okay

Saved you the spot you’ve hewn in hope of seeing one day
A chasm that brims with more than we can say
And we’ll get to show each other for a second time
The things that will scare us both from roaming ’stray

Feels so good…
Let’s take our chance soon!

It’s gonna be good to learn just what you and I could be
Watching the laughter play around your eyes
Come down and fetch you, saved up for the train fare money
Breathe free with me and it will be so nice…

-Meter, rhyme, and some lyrics stolen from The Zombies, Care of Cell 44

two hour glasses.
one whose narrows, hollowed by abrasion,
is powerless to dissuade silicate from its plummet.
one whose delicate chamber compounds layers,
impervious to shrewdest of excavation.
let’s shatter them on the concrete,
and let’s laugh at the barefoot traveller.

past these paling gates
where vines grow, now
thick as paste. there is no
grace in her ascent.

a toothless warrior crowns with cardboard
and souls alight from treachery

past these empty streets
when gold meant something,
now tossing jaundiced hue.
subtract that from forever.

a dirty mob chants garbage, garbage.
there, smoldering particles, ingested.

her heaven is on fire
but it doesn’t burn her, no.
this vision needs forgiven, but
no one’s left to do it

these aren’t the understudies
or evil hosts now glorified,
but a shining,
blotted with fiery trash,

hurled against these sticky walls of mystery.

celebrated in layers, and
made painfully okay, six times.
the seventh and beyond are habit.

her heaven is on fire
and i’m no first responder, no.
but a heart to stay her,
if she wills it, will you?

there will be no grace in our ascent, but
some resonance muted, thick as paste.

because pain spits and mystery swallows
until miracle birth of beulah breaks
a new crown of water on our heads

Nick informs us that Jean Baudrillard has died, and he us points to one of Baudrillard’s incisive aphorisms,

As for ideas, everyone has them. More than they need. What counts is the poetic singularity of the analysis. That alone can justify writing, not the wretched critical objectivity of ideas.

Catalyst For Swiftier Goings On

Disclaimer: my piano is horribly out of tune.

WHO gives himself to solitude, Soon lonely will remain; Each lives, each loves in joyous mood, And leaves him to his pain. Yes! leave me to my grief! Were solitude’s relief E’er granted me, Alone I should not be. A lover steals, on footstep light, To learn if his love’s alone; Thus o’er me steals, by day and night, Anguish before unknown, Thus o’er me steals deep grief. Ah, when I find relief Within the tomb so lonely, Will rest be met with only!

Goethe, Wilhem Meister’s Apprenticeship, ~1795.

That he describes this encounter with loneliness as something to give yourself over to and something from which relief must be granted, I find myself lacking the sympathy I had supposed at it’s outset.