The Nieu Blabla

I have long considered - thirty-three years, at the least - that Dada is a thing that should be brought back. However, one could not call it Dada, for there is but one Dada and that Dada reigns Dada, and one should not call it neo- or post- for those things make me want to do violent and obscene things to persons and objects. Therefore, I propose The Nieu Blabla.

In the spirit of the Nieu Blabla, here is a citation from a famous and fabulous document of the (old) Dada:

To launch a manifesto you have to want: A.B. & C., and fulminate against 1, 2, & 3,

work yourself up and sharpen your wings to conquer and circulate lower and upper case As, Bs & Cs, sign, shout, swear, organise prose into a form that is absolutely and irrefutably obvious, prove its ne plus ultra and maintain that novelty resembles life in the same way as the latest apparition of a harlot proves the essence of God. His existence had already been proved by the accordion, the landscape and soft words. * To impose one's A.B.C. is only natural - and therefore regrettable. Everyone does it in the form of a crystalbluff-madonna, or a monetary system, or pharmaceutical preparations, a naked leg being the invitation to an ardent and sterile Spring. The love of novelty is a pleasant sort of cross, it's evidence of a naive don't-give-a-damn attitude, a passing, positive, sign without rhyme or reason. But this need is out of date, too. By giving art the impetus of supreme simplicity - novelty - we are being human and true in relation to innocent pleasures; impulsive and vibrant in order to crucify boredom. At the lighted crossroads, alert, attentive, lying in wait for years, in the forest. * I am writing a manifesto and there's nothing I want, and yet I'm saying certain things, and in principle I am against manifestos, as I am against principles (quantifying measures of the moral value of every phrase - too easy; approximation was invested by the impressionists). *

I'm writing this manifesto to show that you can perform contrary actions at the same time, in one single, fresh breath; I am against action; as for continual contradiction, and affirmation too, I am neither for nor against them, and I won't explain myself because I hate common sense.

I agree that to impose one's ABC is terribly regrettable, although I am quite intent that zoot should be taken on by all as the way and the light.

In principle I am also against manifestos, but I have decided to love them too, for I love to fulminate and I think fulminate is a lovely word as well. Most certainly I am against principles and when I organise the revolution it will be the first thing I knock down.

Furthermore, I refuse to explain myself ever.

A very important meditation about chick-pea fudge

Now, chick-pea fudge is not really chick-pea fudge if we understand fudge in its strictest sense to entail a sweet that involves sugar that is cooked with some sort of fatcontaining substance such as milk or cream or butter or of course peanut butter until a certain stage of sugarcookedness (I think the softball stage but you will have to correct me). Americans do not even understand fudge in this sense because to americans fudge is something involving superrich chocolateness as in hotfudge sauce or triplechocolatefudge brownies. But in that sense chick-pea fudge is not fudge either because I do not think chick-peas and chocolate would go together - it would be like wearing a tartan shirt with a pair of paisley trousers and striped boots and a tie-dyed hat.

I shall digress from this narrative a little to talk some more about chick-peas. Now chick-peas look like little miniature testicles (on friday I went to the superlative Shuria Ye's post-wedding party [which is distinct from a post-marriage party which would either be a divorce party or when humansociety becomes so reasonable as to eliminate marriage] and to my astonishment and delight I discovered that she had made a dish of black [or more precisely, darkgreenishbrown] chick-peas! It was delicious apart from the coriander leaves which americans call cilantro, but my digestive system did not agree and I had some diarhea the next day which was not a consequence of the dish but rather of my bowel]) and if you sprout them which is something my mother Minxie Jae Fanon always likes to do they look like a full set of miniature male genitalia including the little testicles and their little penis. Very cute.

Returning to chick-pea fudge which should not really have the fudge part in its name unless by fudge we mean a sort of sweet that involves sugar diluted with fat and some other flavourings. I do not think any of the Indian socalled fudges involve the cooked sugar that characterises fudge in its strictest sense but you will have to correct me if I am wrong.

So chick-pea fudge is not strictly fudge but rather another sort of deliciousness and it is not made of whole chickpeas that look like miniature testicles, but rather with chick-peas ground up into chick-pea flour which is called besan flour or garbanzobean flour.

I shall use the term garbanzobean rather because it sounds nicer and has an additional syllable. Now I have looked at several recipes and it seems to me that there are many variations on garbanzobean fudge which I shall call garbanzobean futch to distinguish from the strict sense of fudge. What characterises garbanzobean futch (and thus constitutes the necessary although not sufficient condition there-for) is that the garbanzobean flour is cooked in ghee in the ratio of one-part volume ghee to two-parts volume garbanzobean flour until the mixture obtains its distinctive nutty cooked aroma.

Now you must be very careful when you do this especially if you have a gas stove as I do or the mixture may burn as mine did. This cooking process takes approximately twenty minutes and you should stir it rapidly all the time so that you are panting and possibly approaching an orgasm if you have an erogenouszone in your armpit which sadly I do not. At least, not that erogenous.

In any event, when the mixture has reached the pinnacle of its cookedness you should remove it from the stove, and it is at this stage that you should add the other things that you should add. The most basic thing to add for the most basic garbanzobean futch is some icingsugar. In that case you would mix in the quantity of icingsugar that you should mix in to make it perfectly sweet for your preference. Some other things that you can mix in are: milk powder, ground or chopped nuts, some ground up cardamom or nutmeg or cinnamon or dust, a little paste, a little milk if it is too dry. When everything is all mixed you press the futch into a pan and leave it to cool and harden and after that it will be delicious.

More Munificent Manifesting

I should like to discuss and expand the "manifesto" for which I began to make some headings in November last year (click title for link), as I have been reading a very nice book about ((avant-garde) art) manifestos. There may be some things that I might disagree with in this book, but I do not yet know enough to know this yet (this might be a thing that might also be added to a manifesto: that one should have Information before one has an Opinion), and so all I shall say now is that it is a nice little history of manifestos, arguing for their roots in the Communist Manifesto, which is certainly an awesome manifesto. In this context, I looked up one of the manifestos that is discussed - not exactly an art manifesto, but certainly deliciously crazy, and also with some good points - the SCUM Manifesto: that is, the manifesto of the Society for Cutting Up Men. Now, I don't personally believe in Cutting Up Men. I believe men can be rather nice: for conversation as well as for other sorts of delight. And I believe that women can sometimes be just as bad as bad men. However, it should be remembered that men rape, and I believe that very few women rape, and also there is something suspect about how masculinity very often works everywhere, and how the family is made out of it. I would not go so far as to say that a "female" organisation of Things In General would necessarily be better because I do not have any information and am unlikely to get it; however, I find Solanas's argument about how men and capitalism are all tied up together somewhat or rather compelling.

I also like that Solanas with her SCUM is a one-man band, not unlike Kurt Schwitters, who is another avante-gardey folk I have lately delighted to discover. I like it very much, the one-man band thing, but I feel a bit guilty about my liking for how too much individualism can be dangerous to the point of despotism or fascism or other things of which I as yet have limited information. I am working, however, on the hypothesis that every radical has an inner fascist (and by this I mean fascist in the broad sense).

Anyhow, getting back to my manifesto (which I say a little sheepishly, in super-small letters, as it were), I shall now discuss the first point, which is as follows:

1. "Dare to be reductive"... crystalise, baby, rarefy.

I came across the phrase in inverted commas in a seminar in pedagogy which I took last semester; it comes from a book called Clueless in Academe by Gerald Graff of which I have only read the first chapter, so I shall not discuss very much. But in this first chapter Gerald Graff talks about several things that make academia seem strange to non-academic people, and also what might be wrong with it. By academia it looks like he means the humanities - even, I suspect, only parts of the humanities, since (analytic) philosophy, for instance, knows of the value of reduction and calls it Occam's razor. Anyhow, this is just to say I wish my colleagues would shave with Occam's razor more often because they are all much too hairy.

What I am talking about, to be precise, is the fashion (and I mean fashion) in complicating everything in the academy or the english department or whatever it is. (I shall pause now to say that my manifesto is about several different things and one of them is how I believe one ought to conduct oneself in one's scholarship.) Now, to be a little bit more generous than I have been, very often I find my colleagues use the verb "to complicate". Now, if they meant that literally, I would say that one may as well replace it with "to masturbate in public", but very often (although not always) what they mean is "to see the latent complexity that you have been neglecting". This, I would like to say is a very useful act, and therefore I would like to replace the verb "to complicate" with "to subtlify" or "to note subtlety". What is wrong, however, is when, under the guise of understanding or exploration or whatever, that crackademic does not pursue an understanding, but instead an obfuscity: in short, instead of finding something out and becoming more advanced in his mind, he becomes all tangled up in a mess of words and concepts, so demonstrating how clever he is. He then denies his tangled-upness by using the fashionable terminology, some of which I have listed under point 23, "some McIntellectual words".

So, in saying "dare to be reductive", I side with this Graff person in saying that it is very valuable to notice the points in an argument or an idea or - to use a McIntellectual Term - a discourse, at which you are learning/clarifying/elucidating by reducing the thing to its crystaline parts.

Thank you very much and please come again.

Ball's Dada

a link to hugo ball's dada manifesto.

I am not entirely sure how I feel about this.

3 paragraphs from a story I have written

These are three paragraphs from a story I have written:

Anyhow, to continue with the problem of what to do: sometimes one may feel enormously compelled to think of what to do when there are few ways of doing anything or more particularly few ways of doing anything quickly because very often the best things must be done gradually and also carefully because if one were to do something quickly and immediately it might be especially dramatic. I am never quite sure about dramatic. Some people do things which are dramatic and perhaps it turns out well and perhaps it turns out badly. Personally I am a person who has a difficulty with things changing so if things changed dramatically it would probably be very dramatic. And I really don’t know, in the end, whether this might be very difficult in the moment of being dramatic but possibly have positive effects in the end by shocking one out of the old way in which one was into the new way in which one is. I also know that some people in the world are skeptical about things which occur dramatically like that and I do not know whether I am one of those people. On the one hand I think it is perhaps conservative and reactionary to resist very extreme forms of change and on the other hand I think maybe there are many circumstances in which skepticism of various things is a virtue. In conclusion I can come to no conclusion and it is usually my habit when I can come to no conclusion to eat something.

Remaining with the difficulties of what to do I certainly think it is quietism to do nothing although doing nothing is not the same as wait-and-seeing or at least wait-and-seeing for a period because wait-and-seeing for too long would be a little bit backward, such as insisting that all the things one consumes must only be white, or some shade of white. In this case one could eat the following things: peeled potatoes, parsnips, mozzarella cheese, cauliflower, chicken breast, paper, ricotta, wall paint, toilet paper, béarnaise sauce, vanilla ice-cream, lemon sorbet, paste, bed sheets, hake. Thinking about this matter I must say that a white diet is not quite as restrictive as I had supposed, unless one is a vegan, which I am not. One could have vegetables and animal protein matter and several starches and a range of deserts.

One could also consume snow, which is vegan and also very soothing to consume. And one could also press a handful of fluffy snow against one’s forehead or someone else’s cheek. But perhaps the key to the problem of what to do should be maintaining a balance between wait-and-seeing and acting in a manner that is dramatic. I am not the sort of person, however, to urge caution upon one, for caution, methinks, is a rather crotchety device, and I have come in recent times to regard myself as a radical. Being a radical, I have not solved the problem of what to do, but I know this: one should do some things and one should not do other things.

A part I particularly like

First of all, I would like to note that the comment on my last post is a span porn link in asian writing. Very curious, and curiouser.

Second of all, I would like to note that while it doesn't have much to do with Gertrude Stein, I am rereading Moby Dick, and I would like to state the obvious that it is a fantastic, fantastic book, and you should reread it too.

Here is a part I particularly like about squeezing sperm:

As I sat there at my ease, cross-legged on the deck; after the bitter exertion at the wondlass; under a blue tranquil sky; the ship under indolent sail, and gliding so serenely along; as I bathed my hands among those soft, gentle globules of infiltrated tissues, woven almost within the hour; as they richly broke to my fingers, and discharged all their opulence, like fully ripe grapes their wine; as I snuffed up that uncontaminated aroma, - literally and truly, like the smell of spring violets; I declare to you, that for the time I lived as in a musky meadow; I forgot all about our horrible oath; in that inexpressible sperm, I washed my hands and my heart of it; I almost began to credit the old Paracelsan superstition that sperm is of rare virtue in allaying the heat of anger: while bathing in that bath, I felt divinely free from all ill-will, or petulance, or malice, of any sort whatsoever.

Squeeze! Squeeze! Squeeze! all morning long; I squeezed that sperm till I myself almost melted into it; I squeezed that sperm till a strange sort of insanity came over me; and I found myself unwittingly squeezing my co-laborer's hands in it, mistaking their hands for the gentle globules. Such an abounding, affectionate, friendly, loving feeling did this avocation beget; that at last I was continually squeezing their hands, and looking up into their eyes sentimentally; as much as to say - Oh! my dear fellow beings, why should we longer cherish any social acerbities, or know the slightest ill-humor or envy! Come; let us squeeze hands all round; nay, let us all squeeze ourselves into each other; let us squeeze ourselves universally into the very milk and sperm of kindness.

... taking the manner for the matter ... is the way of vulgarisers

The title comes from Gertrude Stein's fabulous and amazing The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, which is definitely one of the most fabulous and amazing books ever created in the whole universe, and I strongly urge you to read it.

She also says this in her book:

Eliot and Gertrude Stein had a solemn conversation, mostly about split infinitives and other grammatical solecisms and why Gertrude Stein used them. Finally Lady Rothermere and Eliot rose to go and Eliot said that if he printed anything of Gertrude Stein's in the Criterion it would have to be her very latest thing. They left and Gertrude Stein said, don't bother to finish your dress, now we don't have to go, and she began to write a portrait of T. S. Eliot and called it the fifteenth of November, that being this day and so there could be no doubt but that it was her latest thing. It was all about wool is wool and silk is silk or wool is woollen and silk is silken. She sent it to T. S. Eliot and he accepted it but naturally he did not print it.

Then began a long correspondence, not between Gertrude Stein and T. S. Eliot, but between T. S. Eliot's secretary and myself. We addressed each other as Sir, I signing myself A. B. Toklas and she signing initials. It was only considerably afterwards that I found out his secretary was not a young man. I don't know whether she ever found out that I was not.

In spite of all this correspondence nothing happened and Gertrude Stein Mischievously told the story to all the english people coming to the house and at that moment there were a great many english people coming in and out. At any rate finally there was a note, it was now early spring, from the Criterion asking would Miss Stein mind if her contribution appeared in the October number. She replied that nothing could be more suitable than the fifteenth of November on the fifteenth of October.

Once more a long silence and then this time came proof of the article. We were surprised but returned the proof promptly. Apparently a young man had sent it without authority because very shortly came an apologetic letter saying that there had been a mistake, the article was not to be printed just yet. This was also told to the passing english with the result that after all it was printed. Thereafter it was reprinted in the Georgian stories. Gertrude Stein was delighted when later she was told that Eliot had said in Cambridge that the work of Gertrude Stein was very fine but not for us.

In this quotation, I particularly like the part where she says very fine but not for us; this is quite beautiful, I think. On an entirely different note I shall say that as an anti-capitalist "jewish" atheist I am not only obliged to not celebrate shitsmas, but to do so pleasantly. Also, every body has gone away from the Borgh and I am broke. Happy Shitsmas, then.