Dérive

What fascinated him about [superstructure and substructure] was that the spirit and its material manifestation were so intimately connected that it seemed permissible to discover everywhere Baudelaire's correspondences, which clarified and illuminated one another if they were properly correlated, so that finally they would no longer require any interpretative or explanatory commentary. He was concerned with the correlation between a street scene, a speculation on the stock exchange, a poem, a thought, with the hidden line which holds them together and enables the historian or philologist to recognize that they must a11 be placed in the same period. When Adorno criticized Benjamin's "wide-eyed presentation of actualities" (Briefe II, 793), he hit the nail right on its head; this is precisely what Benjamin was doing and wanted to do. Strongly influenced by surrealism, it was the "attempt to capture the portrait of history in the most insignificant representations...

I saw a street lamp and it reached out to the moon, To lay on top of it and subsume it to its own vested light. before the moon that retreating prude changed its mind And the earth laid down for the sun to sell out its counterpart. It’s not too much money, it’s never too much, We’re past saving up of course Put it back in we'll get some machinery And eventually we’ll have enough to drill that starry plot.

Naked and never again Standing on this hill Together, while deepwater spills Tonight they abrogate an end. Before in the dark they played and bashed the cymbals and snares til the rare passerby sat to listen, smoke, or stare. When that song was over they packed up the kit; Maybe they missed the rhythm but the music was shit. They’re yelling again in the rain but smell a fire idling late through their sets. And they both know that one isn’t there but she still talks about depth.

Alabama's gotten me so upset Tennessee made me lose my rest And everybody knows about Mississippi goddam - Nina Simone, Mississippi Goddam On the 55th aniversary of the murder of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwermer, we share an excerpt from our article on the wonderful film, Freedom on my Mind. One year after the assassination of Medgar Evers, on June 21 of 1964, word started to spread that three Mississippi civil rights workers - James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner - were missing. First the burned-out car appeared, then the bodies were found on August 12. What many suspected was later revealed: the cops and Klan worked hand-in-hand to murder the three Freedom Summer men. Normal Rockwell, Murder in Mississippi (1965)

Black Mirror's 15 Million Merrits When Google Calendar went offline this past Tuesday, CNN wrote, “it took with it a sense of time and stability in offices and households across the country (and parts of Europe, South America, Asia and Africa).” Many took to Twitter to engage in something of a collective, if subconscious, meditation on the nature of the work day. Despite a satirical undertone, the way in which people reacted to a disruption of the work day speaks volumes. Though not as significant as the pause in motion post-9/11 (so severe it warranted a “get back to shopping” plea from Bush Jr . ), the calendar’s disappearance did cause a disruption in the flow of everyday life under capitalism, as millions of workers worldwide faced an unexpected (and very much welcomed) hitch in the wage labor process. The following is my own little meditation on the momentary hitch as expressed through various quotes and Twitter posts. ---- “Work has come to so dominate our existence th...

You need to let yourself go   you need to loosen up. You’re perfectly safe and just need some fun, Have you drugged my food? No I’ve drugged your cup. La Llorona, don’t look down, don’t listen, don’t drink old haggard pots.   But my mother has seen real death without the need of a frigid absconse. So relax I’m perfectly safe beneath the smirking moon. Still, woman or witch? but tonight will not do, My boy clamors and cries for something old and new. He won’t get it, fear wins, the veil was long stripped so again like tonight tomorrow and the next day I’ll tidy up and sit.

Born are the beautiful children, hour by hour with brightest eyes, and loving hearts you have bestowed upon  fatherland, they will come, for bullets aren't the seeds of life.  - Mahjoub Sharif, Born are the Beautiful Children The Imprisoned Poet Famed activist and poet Mahjoub Sharif was imprisoned for the first time in 1970 by the National Revolutionary Command Council, chaired by the soon-to-be 15-year president of Sudan, Gaafar Nimeiry. The recipient of a Master’s Degree in Military Science from Fort Leavenworth, Nimeiry retained power until 1985, when one of many military coups (succeeded by one of many Transitional Military Councils) led to the rise of Ahmad Al-Mirghani in what is considered the last democratic election in the country’s tumultuous political history. Enter (via yet another military coup) the first of several starring characters: Omar al-Bashir, chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council for National Salvation from 1989 to 1993, then president fr...

Across the street, you sit cross-legged and bare, my friend and I suspect at your stare. I’m sorry that I — I don’t know your words but in four weeks, I’ll be gone and you’ll be deathly unheard. Jimmy. Jimmy, don’t say a word, sit on your porch and fix at the birds. Sixty, seventy, or eighty years old I don’t know but I’ve seen my twenty untold. In four weeks I’ll be stripped up and back to my school and you’ll, still be here alone in the soil.

“Can you let me out of here?” The little blue light kept blinking and he took a break from badgering the rectangular fixture. Looking to the middle of the room, he kept talking. “I wish I was hungry so that I could tell you what I wanted to eat. Imagine the endless ideas that would come up in my head. But if I were hungry then I’d have to stop talking to eat it once you gave me whatever I wanted, so I’m also glad I’m not hungry. I actually figured this problem out already… I thought I was a tragic figure condemned to falling asleep because sometimes I’m mute in my dreams. I don’t think you know how to dream and I hardly think you know how to talk. All you have is a ‘yes’ this, strangely enough never a no.” After each morning’s customary requests, he rambled on for hours. The only color in the white cushioned room—besides his flamboyant wardrobe—was the steadily blinking blue light. The space was usually small with just enough room for some sort of comical priso...