Unlife
The recent conversation about Pop's possible undead status (this particular bout of thought kicked off, as far as I can see, with this post at k-punk and followed through there, over at blissblog and Mike's place (and onwards, obviously) has been interesting, but I didn't feel like I have much to add. And still don't, actually, but oddly enough just after making the round tonight what should I come upon in V. but this:
So much for Art. What of Thought? The Crew had developed a kind of shorthand whereby they could set forth any visions that might come their way. Conversations at the Spoon had become little more than proper nouns, literary allusions, critical or philosophical terms linked in certain ways. Depending on how you arranged the building blocks at your disposal, you were smart or stupid. Depending on how others reacted they were In or Out. The number of blocks, however, was finite.
"Mathematically, boy," he told himself, "if nobody else original comes along, they're bound to run out of arrangements someday. What then?" What indeed. This sort of arranging and rearranging was Decadence, but the exhaustion of all possible permutations and combinations was death.
This, incidentally, is why I have so little use for the variations of Postmodernism (or whatever it's calling itself this week) that reduce everything to these sorts of language games, especially ones that deny the possibility of anything else, anything political or artistic or philosophical or prosiac or what have you.
So much for Art. What of Thought? The Crew had developed a kind of shorthand whereby they could set forth any visions that might come their way. Conversations at the Spoon had become little more than proper nouns, literary allusions, critical or philosophical terms linked in certain ways. Depending on how you arranged the building blocks at your disposal, you were smart or stupid. Depending on how others reacted they were In or Out. The number of blocks, however, was finite.
"Mathematically, boy," he told himself, "if nobody else original comes along, they're bound to run out of arrangements someday. What then?" What indeed. This sort of arranging and rearranging was Decadence, but the exhaustion of all possible permutations and combinations was death.
This, incidentally, is why I have so little use for the variations of Postmodernism (or whatever it's calling itself this week) that reduce everything to these sorts of language games, especially ones that deny the possibility of anything else, anything political or artistic or philosophical or prosiac or what have you.
