Contrary to popular belief, Stockhausen did not call the WTC attacks a great work of art in the way that the NYT and the other 4 media outlets reported. He mentions the actual quote in this interview. However, his recollection does not quite fit mine. Just after the NYT mis-quoted Stockhausen, the Stockhausen Verlag had a stream up of the actual interview. I recall him saying something along the lines of, "the greatest work of art of the devil." I was sure he had used 'Teufel' not 'Luzifer.' If you can't be bothered to read the interview, he says:

"The journalists did not report what I said. When I was asked after the attacks in America of Sept. 11th 2001 if the protagonists MICHAEL, EVA, LUZIFER of my 7 operas were mythological figures, I answered "No, they exist now, for example LUCIFER in New York, he performed the greatest work of art of destruction." Until now the intellectuals worldwide deny the existence of LUCIFER."

Just thought I'd clear that up even though I find Stockhausen's religionism troubling.

Might want to have a look at Silliman's blog. Some miserly fellow called Franz Wright has been poo-pooing the comments box. Of course, one should take Silliman with a pinch of salt, but that's not to say he's not valuable. I find myself irritated only 60% of the time at his blog - less so since the wellbutrin kicked in. - Hi Ron. Coming up in the next week: critique and praise of Brian Kim Stefans' Fashionable Noise. Then a review of Factorial 4. Plus other stuff. Finally, my birthday today! Had Indian buffet for lunch (ok for Iowa City standards, but prefer to cook my own), then a very heavy bitter dark chocolate cake with dark roast Columbian coffee (organic/fair trade=tastes much better than starbucks crap) at home after dinner. - Also got to watch a good deal of the Colts/ Seahawks game... I hate this time of the season, no one is really trying anymore. Presents: Collected Poems of Frank O'hara Under Three Flags: Anarchism and the Anti-Colonial Imagination (Benedict Anderson's latest book) Species of Spaces and other Pieces - Perec Fox and His Friends - Fassbinder (DVD - Fantastic movie, btw) Stay tuned.

Jessica Smith's prognosis: L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry is dead. Though with all the hoopla about its death over the last few years, you'd think it's really just living a second life. Though in all honesty, if you watched Fox News often enough, you might think it consequential. Same if you read Ron Silliman's blog... same if you read luminations. snore -

so I lived outside of the US for seventeen years. from afar, it looked like an intolerant fascistic state, but friends insisted that was the view from the outside. “once you go back, you’ll see that the foreign media doesn’t understand the relationship between us domestic and foreign policy..” etc. i signed petitions against helms-burton (organized by the communist party of great britain), protested several wars, etc. anyway, despite assurances it wasn’t that bad. i was the american. i did detention for being american. i was bullied because i was american. i lost grades for being the american. even though the connection between me and american was ... questionable ... semaphoric me didn’t mind so much this imaginary american occasionally causing some trouble. as a teenager, i was hardly a superpower. so america is not such an intolerant fascistic state, it’s just that it hosts two fascistic intolerant political parties. host and parasite. as if there is some agency there. unconscionable that a parasite would drain the only host’s resources. so anyway it’s not. but don’t be ungodly even if it means science. {more}

White men who save brown women from brown men

Perhaps my title today is a little obscure. It is from Spivak’s “Can the Subaltern Speak?” and relates specifically to her critique of the colonial outlawing of sati (self-immolation) and the nationalist reclamation of the practice. To spare the intricacies of Spivak’s critical thinking, I am reminded of the phrase because of what appears to be a phenomenal female presence at the WTO protests in Hong Kong and the continuing tendency of the media and politicians in the US to use ‘the freedom of women’ as a marker of success in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Of course, those making the claims for the 'brown women' are white men, such as Bill O’Reilly (who isn’t a good example of a human being by any means) who used the ‘freedom of women in Afghanistan’ argument yesterday in an interview with George Galloway (admittedly, it's because of the Galloway interview that the old curmudgeon entered my mind at all). But of some concern in my opinion is also the claiming of women as a symbol for some peasant collectivities. In this regard, I found the Guernica -like image below especially revealing. In the first instance, the USAmerican foot-soldiers for the WTO taking aim at women and children is especially evocative of the effects of globalization on women . That while policies are deeply effecting peasant communities generally in liberalizing countries, the effects of liberalization further marginalize women (regardless of their voting status) and put them at risk. However, the absence of men is unusual in a poster trying, apparently, to draw attention to the plight of farmers (in Korea, in this case). Is this a case again of women being used to signify/define a whole community? Nationality of the soldiers aside, the image here is of aggressive men taking aim at passive women and that by destroying women, they are, in effect, destroying all peasants. I am troubled a bit by this use of women as collective signifiers. Though the motives are different, one as a form of activism, the other as a form of national braggadocio, the representation of women in this poster and the O’Reilly Factor is disturbingly similar. Both are the objects of men and symbols of the nation. For O’Reilly, having female candidates and allowing women to vote in Afghanistan is both a sign of the strength of the American nation and the ‘blossoming’ Afghani nation (will American Imperialists create better nations than British colonials?). In this poster, women are also the symbol of a collectivity (or, in the loosest sense, a nation), though this time a nation in danger, and as child-bearers. I am not noting anything new in seeing the discrepancy here between the women as symbols of a nation and the violence involved in the act of representing them as child bearers. It bodes not well for a nation. But while in the poster women are the bearers of the nation, for O’Reilly, Afghan women again are the symbol of the nation or, more specifically, of the ‘freedom’ granted to the nation of Afghanistan by the USAmericans - USAmerican ‘heroes’ rescuing brown women from brown Taliban men... I know I’m not connecting the dots clearly here, but hopefully my logic is visible enough. While I think that the protests are apt and prudent, I am suspicious still of the nationalist fervor with which arguments are made. "Our’ country should... " for me, words that merit suspicion... This poster (below) is much more the line to be taken. Of the other images I’ve found, mainly through the indymedia reporting, I was most surprised and impressed to see that a group of dalit women had come all the way to Hong Kong to protest the WTO. Also, sex workers have made their presence felt these protests. I’m not sure what their agenda is.

As you can see, I am currently redesigning Luminations. If you would like your blog or website linked from here, send me an email.

It’s been over a year since I regularly contributed to this blog. A year since I left my job in Tokyo, not to mention friends that I still sorely miss, to move to Iowa City to work on a Ph.D. out of the English department (is it really a degree in Eng Lit?) at the University of Iowa. A year since my last real (big?) paycheck. etc. Moving is always a fairly traumatic experience - even those of us who like moving, don’t always enjoy the process - but moving overseas from a massive metropolis to a backwater midwestern town (the “city” in Iowa City is just aspiration after the fact) is murder. I have found myself alone in loving overcrowded trains, noisy intersections, random encounters with all sorts of strangers, all night restauranting in the bar below your apartment, and all the other trappings of city life. Anyhow, I miss that. By 10 pm here, you can run red lights and no one is going to notice. Personally, I’m startled whenever I leave the house after dark. At least I don’t hear cows and chickens. On the plus side, the University does attract some fabulous people, students and faculty alike, and has given me all sorts of interesting jobs. I had the pleasure of meeting, among others, Brian Kim Stefans last October, the day before the Presidential elections. Also, gave a paper on Stefans and Goldsmith just recently at the Collage as Cultural Practice conference here - at which I also met mIEKAL aND and his incredibly intelligent wife Camille Bacos (and his son whose name, I’m embarrassed, to say, I forgot) and Doug Kahn, Craig Baldwin, and bunch of other people (as one does, I’m informed, at conferences). etc etc. Anyway, this is a round-about way to explain why I have not been blogging. Since my name is off of most blogs now (I suppose Luminations was just too inactive), it’s likely no one is reading this right now. Still, it’s a psychological barrier I need to surpass in order to resume blogging proper. It’s also a way of buying time while I work out what I’ve missed. Universities are good for many things, but keeping abreast of current (meaning right now, not ‘in the last few years’ - the latter being a phrase denoting something one found out during the summer break) poetry, art, etc they are not.