‘Today in our cities,

most learning occurs outside the classroom.

The sheer quantity of information conveyed by

press-mags-film-TV-radio

far exceeds

the quantity of information conveyed by

school instruction & texts.

This challenge has destroyed

the monopoly of the book as a teaching aid

& cracked the very walls of the classroom,

so suddenly,

we’re confused, baffled.”

M. Mcluhan

Pan Panpan Pan pan

I heard the news today ohh boy

They were sad, but I had to laugh! 

Just moving, sorry for not writing for this long. Unfortunate but necessary. Moving always brings new perspectives into our life . Woke up, dragged a comb across my hair… Feeling kinda quirky and happy, a result of having moved across town to a better apartment, having space to breath, I feel free, be it from psychological oppression be it physical enjailment. Today we moved things around and finally found a final configuration for our living room. Good winds to all!

Orson Welles, the scene where K. runs from the Judiciary department, light shining through the fence and laughing children onto his desperate running face. Remarkable things about both K. and Welles. I renember sitting at the cinema while a class from the nearby law school (have in mind, one of the most important in Brazil) slept or talked through the old and black'n white picture. Why? Later a friend (we had watched it together) retold the event to his International Law professor.

[Digression - a great teacher]

His reply:

"That [The Trial] is what they [law students] will become"

Amazing. The man with a simple phrase justified the whole existence of the movie. Not that it needs to be justified. It is a great movie anyway. Renembering made me want to write about Kafka. So I do.

[Digression - then I reminded myself of an most important fact: I can't write! Well I can, but I would commit an indecency by writing something on Kafka. Or any other writer]

Totalitarian logic and bureaucracy. Man's refusal to accept his own lawless humanity. I read this somewhere. I don't know if I agree. Not yet. But it seems possible. I recommend. Both movie and book.

technorati tags: Kafka, Literature, Law, Politics, Human

Liberty disorder. LO. Some laughs over this, but a great blog on the net: Anarchia. Our modern democracies appear to be doomed: the existentialist vaccum of the middle-class will eventually open it's doors to totalitarism. The forceful orientation of the masses through ideology, the melting of individualities into a great collective, oriented toward one goal, be it the evolution of mankind or history. The World as Will and Representation. Through FEAR (War on Terror and terrorism itself [both the jihad and the crusade]) and IDEOLOGY (populism, nationalism, radical Zionism) we are being led to new totalitarian nations, commanding vast ammounts of directed populi-power (totalitarism seems to quite effective at this). I don't know. I prefer not to talk of the subject as I tend to leave analysys and become prophetical. I only ask of people to accept the possibility of failure. Whenever anything is stated it can be wrong. Logic might be flawed. Practical example: 'it's common sense'.

Common sense is bullshit.

It's an axiom, a revealed truth. It denotes a set of values which can never be true for all people affected by it. Yet daily one uses it to justify himself. All that exists is the clash of desires over common existence. Common sense cannot be the judge of this. Common sense cannot accept the possibility of both parties being right over the same matter, neither can logic.

I should stop here.

I am a Doctor not an activist Jim!

Technorati Tags: Anarchy, Politics, Philosophy, Totalitarism, Terror

History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake. – Ulysses, James Joyce

History as a determined course of events, objective in space-time, cannot exist. We might think of it as a series of probable facts. Memories and evidence. We all have to accept the probability of being wrong. At all times. No subjective world, no, not what I mean. Just no objective world possible. Better: no possible objective perception of the world. The past is not a physical entity, hence history only exists as seen by man, as renembered by man. Cannot be right or wrong. When all memory of this planet is erased along with our race, will our past have existed? No. Past=function of memory. No memory – no past. Again as a physical reality the past does not exist. Only probable pasts. Nightmare – History's judgment. Positivistic. Morals do not make sense. Positivistic laws do not make sense. How to interpret the course of humanity without pastcertainty? Death of memory will erase all. Not only the present and future possibilities. No Laplace's Demon. Only probable events in a probable timeline. Patterns repeating themselves through human experience over and over and over and over. Cicles? Fluxus.

pastcertainty will haunt history and dedalus

how to think of cause and effect?

Possibilities.

Meaningmakingmachine.

Technorati Tags: Joyce, History, Fluxus, Quantum, Ulysses

Following a strand of musical topics, I pop another one-in-all problem: finding contemporary music. I rarely find anything on Cd's, except for my college's library, and even there I must restrict myself to very few composers. I.e.: La Monte Young. I heard his 'Drift Study' in college, and since then haven't found another piece. I was very interested by the study so I looked for more. I haven't found anything else. Be it on the net or stores (many stores). How to keep in touch with new developments? Sure you can find Philip Glass, Stockhausen and Ligeti, but what about Tom Johnson and John Godfrey? Radios (BBC on the net, Cultura on FM) have contemporary music shows, but I am yet restricted by others choices.

‘Sleep, where in the waste is the wisdom?‘ (FW, 114.13-20)

Enough on that. Now for some good memories: Ligeti's Requiem. I am drowsy with sleep, tommorrow I travel back home, three-daysout already homesick. Death to those bastards. Damn them all.

P.S.: More on the bastards to come

Technorati Tags: Music, Monte, Protest, Help, Literature

While I looked for some good internet radio, across came BBC's Radio. Amazing website. Radio programs ranging from sports and news to contemporary classical music and Beckett plays. While you, mon hypocrite lecteur, stare at your screen the name of this topic may seem a bit off radio…. Naryana's cows is a problem involving cows and calves. But cows are not the point tonight! It is also the title of a piece by Tom Johnson inspired by the cow problem. Again amazing. All this in one program, Hear and Now, at BBC's Radio 3. If you enjoy cows, math and music do take a look. I've started posting some photographs using Flickr. I have some very likable drawings up there (and to your right side on the brighty-brighty). Soon I will put some of my drawings and spoil everything.

Lately been trying to work my way through Finnegan's Wake. So many meanings, so many! In Umberto Eco's words, Joyce 'has prepared a machinery of suggestion which, like any complex machine, is capable of operating beyond the original intentions of the builder'.

Back to music by a commudius vicus of recirculation!

I'm listening to Aria 51 by John Godfrey right now. Very interesting. Dreadful pun… Of course, by the vicus, on BBC's Hear and Now! I haven't listened to it all yet, so I'll bite my tongue for a while. All these songs played by the marvellous Crash Ensemble. I can't emphasize: all readers, tune in to BBC's Radio 3! After looking around and feeling at home, look for Hear and Now. A nice way to come in contact with contemp. music. This song, so much. The use of tape repetitions and the piano, brilliant.

'Sleep, where in the waste is the wisdom?' (FW, 114.13-20)

Technorati Tags: Radio, Flickr, Joyce, Music, Literature

Perfectly planned evening. Day even. But. All buts in my way, boredom seemingly my only motivation. And yet with the perspective of turning a perfectly planned evening into Hell, I stopped. What a clown. These are the days someone once told me, these are the days my friend. A perfectly planned evening at the ballet. Nothing in my way. And yet. yet. yet. yet.
I lack the hability of turning future projections into concrete fears and hopes. And yet.
I should've gone to the ballet.

[...] Farewell happy fields
Where joy for ever dwells: hail horrors, hail
Infernal world, and thou profoundest Hell
Receive thy new possessor: one who brings
A mind not to be changed by place or time.
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n.
What matter where, if I be still the same,
And what I should be, all but less than he
Whom thunder hath made greater? Here at least
We shall be free; th' Almighty hath not built
Here for his envy, will not drive us hence:
Here we may reign secure, and in my choice
To reign is worth ambition though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heav'n
- Paradise Lost, Book I 249-264, John Milton

Technorati Tags: Life, Poetry, Ballet, Doubt, Milton

Passing the hours away. Nothing else to do, nohow to passaway hours. No will to do anything. Better fix it. Only indifference between death and life brings true freedom. Better to die of vodka than of boredom – Maiakovsky. Everything might for a moment seem impossible. Even the simplest action shudders when it is confronted with the enormity of time through which it will not resist. Resisting is impossible. Time will swallow what I was, what I did, where I lived. Time will swallow everything, thus everything is without meaning. God is either curel or incompetent. Or simply he never existed, or should've never existed. What are the roots that clutch you, Son of Man? Everything tastes sour, allthings seem ugly, everywhere hopeless. Time clutches and drags and weighs down, every fiber fights, but death must eventually approach and deliver. Deliver from pain to endless bliss of nothingness. Why must we strugle against the inevitable? We can only live by. For though everything is rendered meaningless by time, so does time make every small deed a necessity. We must spend our time somehow, only without purpose. No purpose necessary, no objective. Just fill time is all we can ever do. If possible.

Technorati Tags: Poetry, Boredom, Russia, Time, Death