Tomorrow Is Different But It's Still The Same

"That ontological dimension is what is missing from the progressive populist model, in which  the masses cannot but appear as dupes, fooled by the lies of the elite but ready to effectuate change the moment they are made aware of the truth. The reality, of course, is that the 'masses' are under a few illusions about the ruling elite... populist fantasies-- more than that: the duped subject awaiting factual enlightenment is the presupposition on which progressive populism rests. If the most crucial political task is to enlighten the masses about the venality of the ruling class, then the preferred mode of discourse will be denunciation. Yet, this repeats rather than challenges the liberal order; it is no accident that the Mail and the Express favor the same denunciatory mode. Attacks on politicians tend to reinforce the atmosphere of diffuse cynicism upon which capitalist realism feeds. What is needed is not more empirical evidence of the evils of the ruling class but a belief on the part of the subordinate class that what they think or say matters; that they are the only effective agents of change."

"...what is depressing is the implacable poptimism of the official culture, forever exhorting us to be excited about the latest dreary shiny cultural product and hectoring us for failing to be sufficiently positive. A certain 'vulgar Deleuzianism', preaching against any kind of negativity, provides the theology for this compulsory excitation, evangelising on the endless delights available if only we consume harder. But what it is so often inspiring-- in politics as much as in popular culture-- is the capacity to nihilate present conditions. The nihilative slogan is neither be 'things are good, there is no need for change', nor 'things are bad, they cannot change', but 'things are bad, therefore they must change.'"

"The depressive, totally dislocated from the world, is in a better position to undergo subjective destitution than someone who thinks that there is some home within the current order that can be preserved and defended." --Mark Fisher, Dis-identity politics 

Understanding this by a current analogy to worldly-- or just national events. Protests such as the 'no kings' marches and attempted governmental shutdowns, as well as fetishised nationwide walkout from all occupations and sectors of life (as if that luxury of an option can be afforded by everyone) show a failure in understanding the idea of perpetual/permanent revolution as Marx and Trotsky intended on behalf of those left of centrism. Mirroring this from Charlottesville to the 2021 takeover of the United States capitol building on January 6 by the right shows a lack of motivation, or ambition, towards much of anything beyond a temporary spectacle; rather than using accomplishments as sustaining fuel for fire, future deeds of might in order to install some new idealised system. 

In his second appearance on Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan's podcast The Magnificent Others, Hollywood legacy and writer Conrad Flynn explored the modern epoch of "avatars" and modern culturally imbued individuals, paralleled to those hoisted up in the 1960s and '70s by the New Left as akin to those empowered by the New Right. Main examples given being John Lennon and Kanye "Ye" West, Nick Fuentes and Abby Hoffman. Explaining these sorts of characters repeat in the cycles of time, people responding to similar signals and finding a purpose being presented by said representative Avatars. Archetypes viewed in light of the atmosphere's of the era's; the 1960s and '70s permeated by the assassination of [both] Kennedy['s] and a nonsensical foreign war  in Vietnam and Civil Rights struggles; eventually seemingly dying down as the combative overseas conflict concluded and legally solved in certain regards. Ultimately however the grounds of contention shifted ever so slightly in scope viewed and issues covered. 

Kicking off the roaring 2020s, was a hypothesised war which never came into fruition beyond memes, forgotten as quickly as the hype around it began. Fast forward two months into the new decade and delving into a year and a half long bipolar quarantine as a result of the COVID-19 virus taking a global stranglehold. Whether it was a bioweapon invented on behalf of some Chinese weapon lab, elite meddling to induce the populus into more controlled fortion-- fear tactics-- is only slightly relevant to the ensuing cabin fever increasing hypernormalisation en mass. Deviation in mundane existence made clear as celebrities gathered together to sing Lennon's song Imagine from luxury while the rest of the people struggled to find something as simple as toilet paper. 

"Purpose. I sell purpose. These people got nothing; maybe they lost a job or a house or a kid to Oxy. Politicians don't give a shit, mainstream media tells them to be ashamed of their skin color. So, well, I bring 'em together, tell them a story, give them a purpose. Which would you rather believe? That you belong to a community of secret warriors battling a secret evil, or that you're a lonely inconsequential nobody that no one will ever remember?" --Firecracker, The Boys s4e2

Hippie, groyper, black panther, ally.  From Fuentes 'hot takes' and rising "aura" in the wake of the post-mortem deification via meme martyrdom of Charlie Kirk to Instagram influencers posting black squares in support of Black Lives Matter, even going back two decades to the height of the pop-punk/emo explosion. Fandom serves for fulfilment where purpose is lacking in order to sustain a motivational self-esteem; as Firecracker explained to Sister Sage her area of work in the irony intense series The Boys. As Timothy Leary gave out LSD, now people hallucinate from dopamine drained brains. Queer, Nazi, nigger, Thelemite, conservative, faggot, Deadhead: reclaimed is merely a synonym for repackages and sold in numbers. From this a Nietzschean posit can be made: as from the melancholic declaration mourning the murder of God at the hands of his creators and adherents, the attempts to fill a void of purpose and ways to exist in a world so seemingly less difficult, but simultaneously no different a struggle. Tomorrow is different but it's still the same.

"Identity politics seeks respect and recognition from the master class; dis-identity politics seeks the dissolution of the classifactory apparatus itself." (Fisher)

Now six years and another election later, new foreign conflicts sprouting in the midst of it all. From a nuclear false flag to a wary last-ditch effort to keep antisemite a bad label; it's almost like the second world war never ended. Machiavellian theatrics deployed to old foreign failures from Venezuela to Iran. Dictators dead or in cells to cheering citizens as bombs continue to explode over the latter; who were witness to mass executions earlier this year on behalf of protesting the oppressive regime, mirroring in a massive degree of difference but simultaneously similarly viewed killing of protestors by ICE in the United States in the midst of its own civil distress. As in the beginning of last June it is in the start of this March with missiles lighting up the Middle Eastern skyline; all because a nation which wasn't there until the 1940s has likely evidence the sitting POTUS fucked kids and is now MOSSAD's bitch. Days of future past; tomorrow is different, but it's still the same.

Dull Delirium

Corrected cadaver;

Resurrected razing

Debutant in dreary,

dulldelirium 

Calm coat of arms,

Armistice barrage butchering equilibrium 

Drug deal gone wrong,

by way of song

memory alone repeats—

Reruns until it’s right.

Primal Pariah

Uncanny ally,

voluptuous folly

Discomforting dim discrepancy,

Inarticulate biology—

Unsettling imitation;

instinctual paranoia

Hidden horror, unconscious evasion

Indiscernable identity,

Uncomfortable lack of humanity

Internal alarm, primal pariah—

Lost locals, historical pheromones 

Ancient hormones, mismatched anomaly,

uniquely unsettling 

threatening imaginary, 

harrowing hominids

Eve of Leave

Eve of leave;

Consecrated over a screen;

desecrated disposition; disillusioned nihilist,

Flawed egoist, tremendous tendencies,

Paralyzing pariah, failing fugue,

"Buckle up for phase two":

Coagulated cracked clay, gray in gaeity,

Green-gold in past perception—

Corrected cadaver, sea-less stoned sailor

Wineless wino; wandering wondering—

Slow, woeful tones;

death in order to grow

Delirious; what is gained wisdom,

without the insane to show for it?

Mechanical Memory

“The machines remember, so we don’t have to”

—Mark Fisher, i filmed it so i didn’t have to remember it

Denoting the documentation of nostalgia in digital device, so as to avoid personally committing the moment to full memory, hazy and unreliable as such can be, albeit. Documenting to dissociate but carry the receipts. Freeze frame on failure and memorializing mistakes; regret made into a fetish, point of perverted personal pride. 

Why?

All too common is it claimed by one that they wish they could just forget about all the terrible, banal bullshit which makes life so unpleasant. But without that where would growth be? Fire torches down the meadow to regrow into a dense forest just as the nearby volcano blows its top and unleashes its beam of heat destroy the area recently reborn. Remains for nature to reclaim, in our human context/ perceived prescription. 

Trauma and related psychology suggests the memory has an incredible depth and what can [re]surface with enough digging can be astounding in accuracy— or disgraceful distortions; like why the diagnosis of Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD) required rebranding after manipulative malpractice occurred in said area, becoming the now odd diagnosis of dissociative identity disorder (or DID). Nonetheless memory and the neuroplastic recall of the brain can be and is incredible; what isn’t truly remembered is seemingly scarce. Even Alzheimer’s and dementia patients have instances wherein they recall everything in due detail, lucid and momentary as it may be. Surely, under the proper conditions even the pain a woman may in childbirth experience but subsequently forgets from its intensity, could be recounted. 

Intensely documented is such an occasion, typically. Pictures and videos galore. All that would be left is a matter of manipulating the senses so as to induce the memory in detail— somewhat similar to the way EMDR therapy operates— by recreating the settings; so to say. It’s known certain sound frequencies of the sub-bass variety with the propensity to elucidate a sense of unease, unknown fear upon the beings of listening ears. Scent can quickly bring one to reminisce; paired with sight and sound the physical interpretation of information can be uniquely manipulated. 

Forgetting as a fetish however, is somewhat of a faith based in/on unresolved fear. The grass is always greener, is a platitude— true— however it is also a realistic rumination; but, the only thing way out is from the frying pan and through the fire… with a wet towel around the top of the head. What way through, differs but in every so slight degrees; regardless of lived extreme— life is but a banal dream. 

Mind flowing as age goes on and more is embedded: memorized and mended. It’s hard to fully forget before one is dead. 

None of this however answers the question, why document, if not to remember? Is it as simply complicated as being so addicted to the blue light of the phone screen, that it’s the chosen consensus reality? Obviously, there’s much oversight and overestimating the qualities, capacity and personal understanding of human memory; it’s flimsy and we are not elephants. While photographic memory seems so in select cases, it is still speculative in said examples. 

Which brings back around to the actual impulse to document, if it can be called an impulse. Arguably it is, as much as stepping out to smoke a cigarette is to some. In given connotation, the concept of documenting so as to let the machines remember for us, has an almost Gnostic lacing with such a negation of worldly sufferings. Stemming as aforementioned, from such fears and ills; and a lust for them not to cause so much inner shame. If such is the case, why then tape it in 4k?

Disconnected recollection, why documented evidence of deeds. In hindsight wished unseen, undone. Regret doesn’t make much sense without corrected course of action or continued drudging through the mud. Machines don’t seem to remember so we don’t in such instances even; they’re storage bins for aided reference in regards to  memory. Overactive imagination paired with erratic reminiscence. 

An unanswerable question overall, but it’s not one asked in the first place. 

Obtusely Aloof

Wilted flowers, call comes in all odd hours;

All in the beginning, all in the end:

Star dust, space sludge—

Scorched husk beyond the last;

Walking dust, it’s too much—

Talk today, talk about yesterday:

Plan around the foreseeable array;

Convulse as it all goes South all the same:

Bad mouth, wire chewing mouse,

self-fulfilling, hindsight ego distilling…

Wait a week, all will still beat at the brink—

Ear to ear, cut for another year:

Shiny, smiley; alarmingly timely;

New shoes, new groove,

gattling grove in obtuse aloof:

Phallic in passive;

Generally genital,

What is asexuality if not a stunted—

developmental delay

‘Carpe diem,’

So high, undoing every seam;

Anal-retentive,

Consciously dismissive—

Oligarchical oedipus…

Is it wandering, wondering,

or none of us?

Falling into rust, a hunk before scarred,

interstellar junk

Determining Canary

Vicarious verbiage, wallowing egress

Gray gaeity, determining canary;

Extinct esteem, ego overflow

Disordered discord, envious impractical sympathy

Common, acausal casualties—

Journeyed jargon; traveling in passivity;

Amorphous abomination,

Calm, cordial altercation;

Refreshed rumination—

Repressed Promethean:

Isolated, dim infatuation;

Damning illumination, destructive dedication—

Harsh hope, flowing dope

Full frontal, failed sabbatical;

Riotous pre-retinal revival,

Post-ironic instances

Black Eyeliner

“…it can get dirty and you don’t have to worry. You know, you can spill coffee on it… I mean, I am getting a little tired of it now… I tried for two or three years and then I went back to this; because it’s so— I think it really is about not wanting, for me. I don’t want to feel. I don’t want to worry about myself, I want to be out of myself and I don’t want to worry about my body. I don’t want to worry about anything. I don’t want to worry about it…” told Annie Leibovitz, the final photographer of a living John Lennon to Bella Freud, granddaughter of the father of psychoanalysis, on her psycho-fashion-focused podcast Fashion Neurosis. Aside the convenience of the color, and a small stint of sprinkled shirts when having child; her reasoning being an interesting explanation; an apparel chosen so as to dissociate from her own external persona. A black-flat-affect, so to say. 

Regarding fashion and its actual impact on a person’s psyche, undoubtedly as a person is what they eat, they refract what their attire refracts, chosen for aesthetic effect. Not as cause, more a contributing factor. Perspective taken in by the senses; light refracting into the eyes for sight, historically has a fair role in life as well as in general health: during the Spanish Flu pandemic in 1918, treated patients placed outside into open-air wards gained an increased likelihood for survival in recovery. 

Under settings a bit over a century later in more modern refractions of data, the change from yellow lighting to pale, fluorescent and its subsequent salience is a poignant pick. The former being warm, nostalgic, infectious but pleasant; while the updated replacement is stale, sterile and coldly reminiscent of a hospital or morgue— a place uninviting. 

Simultaneously, sitting in the sun and that truly warm light the yellow imitates, can cause skin cancer and land one in for that final hospital stay regardless of mode of dress. With that it’s not so black and white, rather a refutation of that polarity. Humans are not vampires outside of kinks and rare allergies; the sun is needed for nutrition as much as nightly negations of it are as a matter of balanced being. 

Interestingly however, both pale and yellow lighting are uncanny in their own reflections in their own way. Similar to the analogy regarding morality and the aesthetic based qualms about killing one and simple flicks of the wrist in attempts at the other, it’s almost a false binary in that. Yellow feeds into nostalgia while pale lighting is almost designed for depression. The moon’s refraction isn’t pale, it’s with a silver hue that separates it from the sun; though it is with the same light-style as a morgue, “the moon attracts and repels alternately the fluid of the earth, and thus produces the ebb and flow of the sea…” [Transcendental Magic, Eliphas Levi] Light within the dark making it possible for life; and dark encompassing it so as to allow for a balanced breath in the midst of solar heat. 

Departing momentarily to a brighter hue and quoting American designer Pauline Trigère, who urged simply, “when you’re feeling blue, wear red,” and in response and extended explanation in her guidebook Your Beauty Mark, Dita Von Teese asks on this advice and answers extensively. 

“How essential is red to a wardrobe? As my makeup artist friend Gregory Arlt likes to quip: ‘Red is the little black dress of makeup!’”

[…]

“So are the powers of a red lip that the color is unequal to any other shade of lipstick. In traffic, red might mean stop. Yet everywhere else in life, it connotates action. Ancient civilizations applied red face paint for fertility rituals. Artists color passion, lust, and anger in red. Witches claim it is the most potent of colors in a spell… Scientists have established that seeing red increases heart rate, blood pressure, and hunger… two researchers in 2008 […] found that whether the forces are societal or biological, the color red acts as an aphrodisiac for men: they find women in red more attractive…”

Bulls charge at the color, however analogous that statement can be used in differing contexts, all are with the same gist; red is an invigorating color. Historical aesthetics however, has been quite saturated in and remembered in “monochromatic celluloid” and the polar coloring being testament to the big screen’s influence. Evolving into the pale blue hue bleeding into eyes from pocket devices in the middle of the night. 

Being a matter of perspective the style and interpretation of the presented image can be manipulated by various changes of frame. Literally. All however seems to be active inductions of dissociative phenomena, similar to Annie Liebovitz’s personal experience with black; a more monotone, apathetic application of mirror neurons in regards to one’s own existence. 

Accessing Age

According to the latest episode of Real Time with Bill Maher, Australia— as well as a number of other nations now in talks to enact similar policy— social media has been banned for users under 16. Not mentioned but simultaneously as globally  platforms (from) Discord (to Porn sites, in certain states) begin implementing a form of visual identification/ authentication for access. An interesting difference in means of mediation; one being a seeming invasion of privacy, or in many mind perceived as such, and the other an implementation of moreso for adolescents. While understandable in a certain perspective, contextually in the US with current events and the alleged ties between school photos as brief notable example, there’s questionable aspects to it. 

Reasoning noting in the addictiveness of media mediums; and relating that if any other thing was (called cause in cases for) killing people with such an  innately possessive nature, would be strictly regulated. Like having a set age for drinking or the purchase of tobacco products. Sensible in a certain regard; it used to be a challenge to find addictive content, in the same sense adolescents— specifically between 13 and 20– will attempt, and in some moments succeed, and procuring anything from cigarettes to weed and sexuality. 

Exposing a level of irony, parenting has long touted the line against peer pressure— as it removes part of their own perceived authority in their own units— explaining much of it is, in part resulting because, ‘all the other kids have it’. Giving in so as to not possibly stunt their social development; all the while as those who were hit with the tech advancements in the most crucial years first, emerge with reporter regret in the resulted loss in social development from it’s over-inclusion so forced upon them. 

Retro-revolution being on the rise for the better few years— starting mostly from the re-popularization of vinyl records and likely in some byproduct of the hipster hype preceding it— is given an alternatively marketed route of content consumption. In a way, it’s like an actualization of past power interlaced with mixed optics, creating total environments which bring actualization, at least a modern form of it, to the phrase ‘retro-futurism’. 

Interestingly, it was the younger demographic in this 13 to around 32 age bracket are responsible for literal revolutionary reorganization of entire nations in the last 365 day cycle. Utilizing the platform of Discord, notably to democratically elect a new leader figure in the instance of Nepal; it’s curious the same platform is beginning restrictive measures with its new ownership; as all the other implemented prohibitions begin. 

What is the true end? What is the hidden rhyme and reason? Is there any? Is it overreach? Irony? Due process coming? Is it just safety and security or set up seclusion in selected settings?

Gray Gaeity

Drinking gin, it’s not a binge;

Stoned on survival, thriving cordial

Broke benevolence and intoxicating—

Choking in a haze of incense,

Gray gaeity in manic sanity

Personal pariah, protective precognition;

Dopeless eloped, sober seratonine;

Determined isolation, dreaded lonesome

Cigarette sex, nicotine like an alcoholic utter—

lively slow suicide; lesser lies love vice

Verse tonic and a pounding brain, typhonic

Delightful diabolical symphony, engrossing egress