Jeff
Crouch
-
1 poem -
Bricolage TV
So the very next
day when I punched in/With my big lunchbox and with help from my friends/I
left that day with a lunch box full of gears/Now, I never considered
myself a thief/GM wouldn't miss just one little piece/Especially if
I strung it out over several years.1
—I don’t know that a something modeled
on a long, black Cadillac built over several years suffices as bricolage.
Does bricolage come with its concept ready-to-hand? The goal here is
clear—a car. Of course, the resulting car will not be a car modeled
by type so much by the process of historical assemblage, and
this un-assembly line process is akin to the building of a medieval
cathedral. Not a bad metaphor for culture itself, even postmodern culture.
Theft. – Please, do we need The
Accursed Share here?
Deals made by God
and the Devil, and we in it/Pawns in the game, can't complain or say
shit/Just strap up and hold on, hope for the best/prepare for the worse,
no fears no nothing on earth/No tears if I'm dumped in a hearse, I won't
be the first/Nor the last nigga, let's get this cash nigga[.] 2
–Reminds me of the Saturday Night Live
“The Sinatra Hour” sketch of the Sinatra Group where Sinatra
gives Luther Campbell of 2 Live Crew the speech: clean it up or no more
record label, no WalMart sales.—Mookie from Do the Right Thing—i.e.,
get paid. All that 1980s gang violence, Colors.a
–Consider hate-crime legislation RICO, the
$10K or more cash need-to-notify, bulldozers, and police tactics like
those used in The District.
Power concedes nothing
without a demand. It
never did and it never will .3
—Frederick Douglass, an interesting choice. Why this website?
Also, I’m getting a sense of overkill on the quotations. Where’s
the essay?
God likes to
watch. He's a prankster. Think about it. He gives man instincts. He
gives you this extraordinary gift and then what does he do? I swear,
for his own amusement, his own private cosmic gag reel he sets the rules
in opposition. It's the goof of all time. Look but don't touch. Touch
but don't taste. Taste but don't swallow. And while you're jumping on
one foot to the next, what is he doing? He's laughing his sick fucking
ass off. He's a tightass. He's a sadist. He's an absentee-landlord!
Worship that? Never! 4 –Enjoy
your symptom! Paradise Lost, the game. Save Eve, produce Hegel.
Need Hobbes, need family. Read Dylan Thomas as the poet of the blow
job.
A gang, is with whoever I'm stepping[.]
5 –A comparison between
the violence in Jazz, Country and Western, the Blues, Rock and Roll,
Rock, Country, … and Rap—you’re going to have to find
it—. The “fight song” may be there in the history
of the United States as related to martial anthems and so too “taunting”
… . You might try “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
An historical digression.
In its British Colony days— the “United States” has
its Indian raids—very much a kind of gang warfare unless you are
a statist—, arms trade, alcohol, kidnapping and ransom, slavery,
… . Its Wild West days include a history of robbery, prostitution,
ride-bys, gambling …, protection money, guns for hire—crime
(where applicable) in general—that roughly corresponds to gang—a
very ethnic activity—in the cities: robbery, prostitution, drive-bys,
gambling, … extortion. And much intoxication, Prohibition or not.
Music often deals with
sex, drugs, and violence—aren’t these motifs key to Dionysian
art? What’s Country and Western without drinking and cheating,
Rock and Roll without sexual innuendo, … . But the sense of the
gang in 20th Century American popular music—I think there’s
research to be done here.
Leroy was an outlaw
hard as me . . . /Cause ladies love outlaws like babies like stray dogs/Ladies
touch babies like a banker touches gold/And outlaws touch ladies/ some-where
deep down in thier souls/Jessie liked cadillacs and diamonds on her
hands[.] 6 —Do
we really have the problem of audience appeal here—of keeping
the art clean even if it concerns killing and fucking? Is it the feminists
who constitute the difference in treatment of the inhuman, i.e., the
animal in music, or is the Kultur question outside gender? By feminist,
I mean one who would exert a female power.—Is Apollo a female
power—and, simultaneously, the very rationale of misogyny?—
— Chappelle does William Blake.
The Philosopher King
How sweet is the Philosopher King's sweet
lot!
From the morn to the evening he plays wolf;
He shall follow his sheep all the day,
And his tongue shall be filled with lies.
For he hears the call and calls the Nurse,
For he is Guardian of the reply;
He is watchful while they are in peace,
And they know when their Philosopher King is nigh.A
– Everything is
not William Blake. Who’s next in the daisy chain—Blake,
Nietzsche, Huxley, Morrison, …. —Chappelle? And why bring
The Birth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music to this discussion?
Where’s the feminist critique?—
Chappelle does William Blake. Look at their esoteric hermeneutics—of
the Devil’s Party—, a classic case in counter-value.
–What is counter-value? Do artists roughly
aligned with the middle class identify with the working class?
I also noticed the status
symbols are the same in Country and Rap—maybe a good point. Do
we only obtain symbols in this culture, i.e., is our rite of passage
through this culture always about status?
.— The hip-hop/rap name for C, Au, Cu, Ni, and/or Ag is bling-bling.
– Marketing is what I call this product.
Pure and simple. Most songs are extended advertisements—no different
in the movies, the James Bond series made it obvious. Indeed, Ray Bradbury
almost got it right—but it’s not just jingles that stick.
The whole culture is an advertisement for itself. But as far as direct
marketing goes, consider Jose Cuervo, Cadillac, Glock, Smith and Wesson,
Winchester, Jack Daniels, Bacardi, BMW, Coke, blow, Mary Jane, Mr. Brownstone,
Jesus, … .
_Chappelle’s Show_
. Air Date: 2/12/2003 [on The Comedy Channel]. Ep. #104.7
In this episode, “The Niggars,” a sketch presented as its
own TV show—it has a black-and-white format indicative of “The
Honeymooners” and, perhaps, the race question itself—, depicts
a white family—eponymously cast— and their milkman. The
milkman—Rochester or anti-Rochester? Jonathan Winters?—is,
as a black man on a black-and-white TV show both racially typed and
racially typing—telling the Niggars jokes.
Interestingly, the
other of the other here arises (a)historically as the Wetback family—when
the Niggars receive a visit from the Wetbacks and when the “white-washed”
newsman/presenter excuses this particular racism in the show, being
as it is outside the black and white, with the realization that any
such audience that it might offend—is probably watching Spanish-language
TV.–As
the Marxist critics have said, multi-culturalism makes us more marketable
(i.e., meaning sold out, not simply saleable or selling), yet the relativism
that other critics would point out in multiculturalism simply is not
there. Why? A political correctness as based on self-abnegation
rather than courtesy (respect as the gangstas call
it) dos not work in our culture. Another power simply takes the place
of anything that self-abnegates, and the godfathers—thanks
to Puzio, Pacino, and The Sopranos—currently have the
cultural cachet. Too, a culture is never multicultural—tolerance
is only about power, and eclecticism fast becomes its own grand narrative,
however cacophanous. The bricolage proves it. –But
you’re doing hermeneutics here? In particular, the hermeneutics
of Dave Chappelle. Announce it. For what is the
joke about?—the (dis) position of power. And does this power translate
to Spanish? Perhaps the history of slavery in Spanish-Portuguese, i.e.,
Catholic, countries as opposed to slavery in English, i.e. Anglican-Protestant,
countries?
[R] reason by itself
could not explain beauty[.] 8
–With this formulation, we have 20th Century politics—()
as aesthetics and aesthetics as value. Simply substitute race, class,
percentage of the population … for (), and we know who has power.
Aesthetics as response is not aesthetics as value, but the freak show—the
makeover, the re-do, the extreme challenge, … —continues.
Endnotes, or What is Bricolage?:
Levi-Strauss encounters
that most interesting figure, the bricoleur, in The Savage Mind,
he puts into play a figure for the postmodern epistemologist. The bricoleur
assembles knowledge—his “universe is … closed [,]
and … [he has] to make do with ‘whatever is at hand’”
9. Though the use of the term “closed” in describing his
universe is, perhaps, an oversimplification, the bricoleur does seem
to be in a limned universe, limned in the sense that it presents to
him a limited set of possibilities. I think a set of quotations best
captures the spirit of the bricoleur. You will, dear reader, probably
provide the narrative that links these (dis)junctive quoations together.—At
this point, we might well think of the bricoleur as a Heideggerian figure,
someone representative of “The Question Concerning Technology.”
Notes on The Savage Mind:
If you are not reading
The Savage Mind, some of its more pertinent passages are on
the Hervé Varenne 10 site: http://varenne.tc.columbia.edu/bib/info/levstcld066savamind.html
.
Also, Janine Mileaf 11 addresses the epistemological problems
Levi-Strauss encounters when he attempts to distinguish myth and science
and thereby, bricolage and craft: .
—Are you not going to discuss the points?
I take it there is no essay, but I see you have staked out foundations
for a cathedral.—Where’s Paul Feyerbend?
Citations:
1
http://www.lyricsdownload.com/johnny-cash-one-piece-at-a-time-lyrics.html
2 http://www.lyricsdownload.com/dmx-life-is-what-you-make-it-lyrics.html
3 http://creativequotations.com/one/438.htm
4 http://www.generationterrorists.com/quotes/tda.html
5 http://www.lyricsdownload.com/nwa-fuck-tha-police-lyrics.html
6 http://www.lyricsdownload.com/jennings-waylon-ladies-love-outlaws-lyrics.html
7 http://www.comedycentral.com/tv_shows/chappellesshow/episodes_s1.jhtml?startIndex=7
8 http://www2.bc.edu/~bruyn/Critique.pdf
9 Levi-Strauss, Claude. The Savage Mind. [1962.] Chicago:
U of Chicago P, [1966] 1969. 17.
10 http://varenne.tc.columbia.edu/bib/info/levstcld066savamind.html
11 http://www.english.upenn.edu/~jenglish/Courses/mileaf.html
a http://www.frank-sinatra.de/forum/messages/223.html
A A parody
based on the Project Gutenberg e-Text #1934.
