This addendum to a previous post seems most pressing though (and less research-oriented and now that I've typed those three gists I'll probably never get around to realizing them anyway...).
When I wrote about Tavi Gevinson last week (or the one before that?), I didn't feel great. I felt worse when I pushed through/out those paragraphs on Lady Gaga.
I've never been deft at (capital P)Philosophy, asking 'why,' or charting others' courses, questions, answers. I have a way of wearing a blithe, religious cloud. How I ignore people I know in restaurants, drop classes, wake up and board a train. That's not really it it's that....
my first and last degree of inquiry are
our emotional life and cultural life and how to read events, phenomena through them.
I always thought, "There's enough over and on top, enough that's decorative or enough that's mystical, narrative or good to eat or funny or tragic. I'll never need to note the mechanics of things, draw out workable theorems, order." I liked Venn diagrams for jokes.
And it still holds. But I've begun to wonder, with the tremor of faith-crisis:
"Why do we criticize?"
The answer, for me, I think, lies in emotional life and cultural life, no deeper (if there is a deeper depth?); so maybe the line of inquiry isn't so shattering and strange after all, doesn't demand new and better Philosophical discipline?
Except that it's a nervous and looming question, a schmaltz-ily general one too. It sounds like Philosophy.*
I've never been deft at (capital P)Philosophy, asking 'why,' or charting others' courses, questions, answers. I have a way of wearing a blithe, religious cloud. How I ignore people I know in restaurants, drop classes, wake up and board a train. That's not really it it's that....
my first and last degree of inquiry are
our emotional life and cultural life and how to read events, phenomena through them.
I always thought, "There's enough over and on top, enough that's decorative or enough that's mystical, narrative or good to eat or funny or tragic. I'll never need to note the mechanics of things, draw out workable theorems, order." I liked Venn diagrams for jokes.
And it still holds. But I've begun to wonder, with the tremor of faith-crisis:
"Why do we criticize?"
The answer, for me, I think, lies in emotional life and cultural life, no deeper (if there is a deeper depth?); so maybe the line of inquiry isn't so shattering and strange after all, doesn't demand new and better Philosophical discipline?
Except that it's a nervous and looming question, a schmaltz-ily general one too. It sounds like Philosophy.*
I probably criticized Tavi, because I'm afraid of her, also because I feel not-unrelated to her.
I'm turning 25 in April and I'm spooked. I was 23 (not 22) when I graduated art school in May 2008, but it doesn't really matter either way. Time has both seeped costively and run away from me since. It hasn't felt like much has happened/is happening, or not much more than a sealing in and a series of limits met and an actual grinding of the days (even on weekends). Pillow has called this period an 'adolescence,' but worse (smarter). Social life is confusing, but also boring. One seems to not know what one can do, should do, what one is capable of. I suppose I do a lot that nobody knows about. I feel secret. But it's not...sexy? I feel like I'm turning into a character in a play or a novel about work and morality. I feel like I am missing the boat--several boats, several a day. I feel like there's a gamer and sunnier self I ought to be and am not being, that that self might be successful, while I am not. Success is a great issue.
******
I'm turning 25 in April and I'm spooked. I was 23 (not 22) when I graduated art school in May 2008, but it doesn't really matter either way. Time has both seeped costively and run away from me since. It hasn't felt like much has happened/is happening, or not much more than a sealing in and a series of limits met and an actual grinding of the days (even on weekends). Pillow has called this period an 'adolescence,' but worse (smarter). Social life is confusing, but also boring. One seems to not know what one can do, should do, what one is capable of. I suppose I do a lot that nobody knows about. I feel secret. But it's not...sexy? I feel like I'm turning into a character in a play or a novel about work and morality. I feel like I am missing the boat--several boats, several a day. I feel like there's a gamer and sunnier self I ought to be and am not being, that that self might be successful, while I am not. Success is a great issue.
******
As you read (I, me, to me, for me, in a personal way), when I blog, I'm talking about myself. So perhaps none of what I've posted to A&P is actual (capital C)Criticism; I don't pretend distance. But does "distance," "critical distance" even exist?
I don't know what it's like for other people, but I'm full of prejudices. Not necessarily ugly ones, but I see how I see and nobody else does, just so.
******
A kind of blundering stagnation must be somewhat normal for 24to25 year-olds. I think. But--and forgive me because I haven't mentioned it in a long time--the Recession, the Job Crisis.
Tavi Gevinson sends me into slow panic,
seeds a ranging fear that ours is a Lost Generation professionally,
that as we plod and pluck and try to do regular things
(pay rent, give Thanks),
babies, bona fide children, are jumping queue with adorable YouTube videos and creditcredit, audiences, opportunities, attention, co-opting relevance every minute.
This kind of paranoia is dumb and dangerous and lazy.
But I thought I might get honest about the whole thing. And source, as I write, some balance and wisdom and will (We have will!).
Over the weekend, I watched The September Issue, which was great. The film's position chronologically is perfect, the total footage taken during the publication of 2007's Fall volume, the largest (ad-sales-iest) in Conde Nast's history. I imagine 2008's was the real era-ender, arriving a week or so before the Banks failed and publishing doom got writ bolder and bolder and luxury got universally depressing, ghostly. But this view in/of 2007, Manhattan in summer, a place I was
a season-off college student lolling around, eating, drinking and crying about my boyfriend with
**dramatic irony in hindsight**
no idea what was going to happen, how credit was so thin and impossible, how I'd break-up and get my bubble burst too, and how maybe, nothing would really happen, the system would fry.
It's beautiful. Anna Wintour and Grace Coddington, the English, female leads (as the men seem to pose [Talley] and bluster [Testino] and worry [Newhouse]), are beautiful. Anna is an economist. Grace is an artist. They both go to work everyday. There's a lot happening (like, how incredible that Anna's house looks the way it does), but this thread of DAILY WORKING LIFE--how life is long and how the very start of employment eventually recedes with a ribbon of labor--is the stuff.
Even Tavi, with her crazy-precocious success, will have to show up, over and over; she'll have to have a 20s and a 30s and a 40s and a 50s. I will too. One's career is never actually a matter of sublimation...
And maybe (Oh G-d), we(I) can learn something from Tavi and her currently forming generation.
The power and sense of possibility they draw from the Internet, the way it makes them feel capable of participation, or at least, publication with/into the large World is exciting.
We'll need to feel their hope and thrill and luck
if we're ever to make it through our long lives of work.
*In general here, I'm afraid I don't make it so clear what the meanings of "religious cloud" and "Philosophy" and "faith-crisis" are. I don't really know.
I don't know what it's like for other people, but I'm full of prejudices. Not necessarily ugly ones, but I see how I see and nobody else does, just so.
******
A kind of blundering stagnation must be somewhat normal for 24to25 year-olds. I think. But--and forgive me because I haven't mentioned it in a long time--the Recession, the Job Crisis.
Tavi Gevinson sends me into slow panic,
seeds a ranging fear that ours is a Lost Generation professionally,
that as we plod and pluck and try to do regular things
(pay rent, give Thanks),
babies, bona fide children, are jumping queue with adorable YouTube videos and creditcredit, audiences, opportunities, attention, co-opting relevance every minute.
This kind of paranoia is dumb and dangerous and lazy.
But I thought I might get honest about the whole thing. And source, as I write, some balance and wisdom and will (We have will!).
Over the weekend, I watched The September Issue, which was great. The film's position chronologically is perfect, the total footage taken during the publication of 2007's Fall volume, the largest (ad-sales-iest) in Conde Nast's history. I imagine 2008's was the real era-ender, arriving a week or so before the Banks failed and publishing doom got writ bolder and bolder and luxury got universally depressing, ghostly. But this view in/of 2007, Manhattan in summer, a place I was
a season-off college student lolling around, eating, drinking and crying about my boyfriend with
**dramatic irony in hindsight**
no idea what was going to happen, how credit was so thin and impossible, how I'd break-up and get my bubble burst too, and how maybe, nothing would really happen, the system would fry.
It's beautiful. Anna Wintour and Grace Coddington, the English, female leads (as the men seem to pose [Talley] and bluster [Testino] and worry [Newhouse]), are beautiful. Anna is an economist. Grace is an artist. They both go to work everyday. There's a lot happening (like, how incredible that Anna's house looks the way it does), but this thread of DAILY WORKING LIFE--how life is long and how the very start of employment eventually recedes with a ribbon of labor--is the stuff.
Even Tavi, with her crazy-precocious success, will have to show up, over and over; she'll have to have a 20s and a 30s and a 40s and a 50s. I will too. One's career is never actually a matter of sublimation...
And maybe (Oh G-d), we(I) can learn something from Tavi and her currently forming generation.
The power and sense of possibility they draw from the Internet, the way it makes them feel capable of participation, or at least, publication with/into the large World is exciting.
We'll need to feel their hope and thrill and luck
if we're ever to make it through our long lives of work.
*In general here, I'm afraid I don't make it so clear what the meanings of "religious cloud" and "Philosophy" and "faith-crisis" are. I don't really know.
No comments:
Post a Comment