Category Archives: life

Synchronicity and Drs. P

Synchronicity and Drs. P

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygvkZ35Z0-0

De veerpont (‘Heen en weer…’), one of the better-known songs of Drs. P.

We zijn hier aan de oever van een machtige rivier
De andere oever is daarginds, en deze hier is hier
De oever waar we niet zijn noemen wij de overkant
Die wordt dan deze kant zodra we daar zijn aangeland
En dit heet dan de overkant, onthoudt u dat dus goed
Want dit is van belang als u oversteken moet
Dat zou nog best eens kunnen, want er is hier veel verkeer
En daarom vaar ik steeds maar vice versa heen en weer

English rough translation, see untranslatability

We are here at the shore of a mighty river
The other shore is over there, and this one is over here
The shore where we are not is called the other side
Which will become this side as soon as we land there
And this then we call the other side, please remember well
This is important if you want to cross
And that is very possible, there’s lots of traffic here
And that is why I cross the river vice versa “to and fro”

When I was 23, I spent six months with my wife in Shanghai at Fudan University. Among the numerous great things that happened when I was there was meeting André.

André was one of a kind and we hit it off immediately. He had I believe only just finished high school and was 18 or 19 at the time. He was smart and creative, had theories on dancing (“when I dance, it’s all in the face”) and one on synchronicity which has stayed with me all this time. He was convinced that there was a Chinese equivalent to every American actor, and was thus constantly on the look-out for the Chinese Woody Allen.

Whether he found him or not, I don’t know, and – sadly – I also lost track of André. My wife and I were supposed to stay in Shanghai for a year but we left after six months, just before the Tank Man incident. I was young and when André and I parted ways I did not exchange addresses with him, thinking that if I was supposed to meet him again it would surely happen.

You probably ask yourself, what does this have to do with the Youtube clip above by Drs. P? Well, every country has a couple of artists, musicians or writers which are one-of-a-kind (sui generis). Drs. P is one of those people, he is a genius and cannot be compared to anyone within the Dutchophone area of Europe I live in.

However, I am convinced that every country in the world has its Drs. P. There must be one in Spain, New Zealand or the United States. Drs. P.’s sensibilities (word play, absurdism, playful narrativity, humor) must be synchronously present in every country in the world.

The question is for you dear reader, who is your country’s Drs. P. Or who is your country’s Woody Allen?

Spinoza and bondage (“He swore he’d never touch her again”)

Of Human Bondage He Swore

“He swore he’d never touch her again and then she whispered his name and he was lost” -film tagline

Of Human Bondage 1964

“When a man is prey to his emotions, he is not his own master, but lies at the mercy of fortune: so much so, that he is often compelled, while seeing that which is better for him, to follow that which is worse. ” —Ethics of Human Bondage or the Strength of the Emotions, Spinoza

I believe my first exposure to radical Dutch enlightenment philosopher Spinoza was via Gilles Deleuze or via the “perishable monuments” of Thomas Hirschhorn which I discovered in Germany at documenta in 2002.

Via Guy de Maupassant and William Somerset Maugham‘s Of Human Bondage I discovered this bit on human bondage.

In the 1660s, the Dutch philosopher Spinoza writes, in his Ethics of Human Bondage or the Strength of the Emotions (a part of his Ethics), that the term “bondage” relates to the human infirmity in moderating and checking the emotions.

Erotic (un)possibilities in an Antioch world

Over the past few days I’ve been mulling over Siri Hustvedt title essay A Plea for Eros which is a rumination on the effability and ineffability of sex in connection with the Antioch Ruling. Since January 1, 2006, the Antioch College in Ohio, United States, requires students to gain consent at each stage of a sexual encounter.

Hustvedt’s essay on the unreliability and ambiguity of language in relation to sexual ethics reminded me of Georges Bataille when he said that “sex begins where speech [or words] ends”, a statement I tend to agree with.

[Youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=q7SNOX9W3WY]

Emotionally charged scene in A History of Violence (French version)

Which brings me to Cronenberg penultimate film A History of Violence, the Straw Dogs of the 2000s. It is the story of Tom Stall, his wife Edie and their two children. Tom is a good-hearted impostor with organized crime roots. After his family finds out his true identity they initially reject him. He is finally accepted in a superb silent scene which is a celebration of the nuclear family; but not until after an emotionally charged fight between Tom and Edie followed by rough sex on the stairs. Notice the absence of adherence to the Antioch Ruling.

However, as Hustvedt points out at the beginning of her essay, an Antioch world can be full of erotic possibilities.

Imagine asking a female love interest “May I touch your left breast?”; patiently and eagerly waiting for the answer.

Dutch director Warmerdam’s cult film Little Tony predates Hustdvedt’s sentiments by 8 years. In this tragicomedy the erotic possibilities of explicitness in sexual encounters is illustrated by a key scene in which Brand, the protagonist illiterate farmer asks Lena, the school teacher who has been hired by Brand’s wife, “May I see your left breast?“. After a putative “Why?” by Lena, Brand answers: “So I can remain curious about the right one.”

History of Violence flotsam: Steven Shaviro gives a roundup of cinerati such as k-punk, girish twice, Chuck, Jodi — followed by k-punk’s reply and Jodi’s counter-reply — Jonathan Rosenbaum and his own view here.

Woman makes love to cloud, divine jealousy

Io by Correggio

Jupiter and Io (c. 1530) – Correggio

It would appear that the dynamics of the two married protagonists of Greek and Roman mythology Zeus (Jupiter) and Hera (Juno) is one of a jealous wife chasing a promiscuous husband.

In order to conceal his escapades, Zeus constantly makes use of his shapeshifting abilities. Thus, he transforms himself into a cloud (he hid himself within a cloud with Io), a golden shower with Danae, a swan with Leda, a bull with Europa, depending on whether he needed to be charming and beautiful or powerful and frightening in his conquest.

See also: divine jealousy

 

Why women love apes

Waarom vrouwen van apen houden

Why women love apes by Stine Jensen

Dedicated to my friend M______. A belated happy birthday.

Twentieth-century western culture is full of examples of erotic relationships between dark-haired apes and blond women: there is a striking connection between woman and ape not only in movies and novels, but also in scientific practice of primatology. In this fascinating study, literary theorist Stine Jensen shows how the roles of ape, woman and man, too, have changed fundamentally throughout the last century.

For example, the famous film classic King Kong from 1933, was born of the nineteenth-century obsession with the rape-ape, but at the same time it presented the ape as an ambiguous creature – both malicious and gentle. Thereafter, mostly female researchers, such as Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey and Biruté Galdikas, ensured that the image of the primate changed from killer king to gentle giant. In their endeavours to make primates seem milder these women pushed such issues as the killing of younger troop members and other violence within ape society into the background.

See previous posts here and here.

 

Cherchez la femme #1

Colette Peignot

Unidentified photo of Colette Peignot sourced here.

“I believe in our life together . . . I believe in it the way I believe in everything that brought us together: in the most profound depths of your darkness and of mine. I revealed everything about myself to you. Now that it gives you pleasure to laugh at it, to soil it––this leaves me as far away from anger as it is possible to be. Scatter, spoil, destroy, throw to the dogs all that you want: you will never affect me again. I will never be where you think you find me, where you think you’ve finally caught me in a chokehold that makes you come. . . . As for me I am beyond words, I have seen too much, known too much, experienced too much for appearance to take on form. You can do anything you want, I will not be hurt.” Colette Peignot in a letter to Georges Bataille via Laure: The “True Whore” as Muse by Jason DeBoer

Laure [Colette Peignot] began her affair with Bataille in 1934, and it proved to become one of the more tormented love stories of modern letters. Their correspondence reveals a mutually influential sharing of transgressive ideas: she was the woman of action, and he was the man versed in scholarly knowledge. Her uncompromising, anguished lifestyle proved very inspirational to Bataille, especially Laure’s own infatuation with the sacred and communication, two important ideas in Bataille’s later work. —source

Colette was born 104 years ago today.