Wall of Sound: Looking For A Form the Tyrant Does Not Own

"‘In a station’ ‘I saw’ ‘a woman crying’ ‘she stood against’ / ‘the wall’ ‘looking dirty’ ‘& exhausted,’ ‘ crying quietly ’/ ‘I asked her who she was’ ‘& why’ ‘she was crying’ ‘She / said: “I’ ‘am a painter’ ‘ I have been trying’ ‘to find’ / ‘a form the tyrant’ ‘doesn’t own—’ ‘something’ ‘he doesn’t / know about’ ‘hasn’t invented, hasn’t’ ‘mastered’ ‘hasn’t / made his own’ ‘in his mind’ ‘not rectangular,’ ‘not a / sculpture’ ‘Not a thing at all—’ ‘he owns all things,..."'" -Alice Notley

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Content note: graphic violence against women

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“He hit me And it felt like a kiss. He hit me And I knew he loved me.

“If he didn't care for me I could have never made him mad But he hit me, And I was glad.” 

-performed by the Crystals, written by Carole King and Gerry Goffin at the insistence of pop producer Phil Spector

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“I fucked my way up to the top. This is my show. I fucked my way up to the top. Go, baby, go.”

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“In the land of gods and monsters I was an angel, lookin’ to get fucked hard Like a groupie incognito posing as a real singer Life imitates art You got that medicine I need Dope, shoot it up straight to the heart please I don’t really wanna know what’s good for me God’s dead, I said ‘baby that’s alright with me’

“No one’s gonna take my soul away Living like Jim Morrison Headed towards a fucked up holiday Motel, sprees, sprees, and I’m singing Fuck yeah give it to me, this is heaven, what I truly want.”

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On the surface, the Lana Del Rey Authenticity Debate™ swings between two depressing possibilities: (1) That’s she’s all but the fourth Kardashian sister, Frankensteined together by old white guys in ties in order to exploit the now sizable ‘indie’ market, or (2) that she is a moderately talented singer who is getting over by pushing our buttons with nostalgia and good looks. This is the distracting crux, the long shadow of a pointless debate that falls over Born to Die. For critics and anonymous commenters alike, the prospect of an attractive female artist who sings plainly about her desire because she has it, with a vision that is personal and not manufactured by others, who writes her own songs and makes her own videos, who understands what it takes to be a viable pop product and is capable of guiding herself to those perilous heights, this is an unsolvable equation. Yet, Lana Del Rey is doing it all, before our very eyes.

Jessica Hopper, “Deconstructing Lana Del Rey”

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‘In a station’ ‘I saw’ ‘a woman crying’ ‘she stood against’ / ‘the wall’ ‘looking dirty’ ‘& exhausted,’ ‘ crying quietly ’/ ‘I asked her who she was’ ‘& why’ ‘she was crying’ ‘She / said: “I’ ‘am a painter’ ‘ I have been trying’ ‘to find’ / ‘a form the tyrant’ ‘doesn’t own—’ ‘something’ ‘he doesn’t /  know about’ ‘hasn’t invented, hasn’t’ ‘mastered’ ‘hasn’t / made his own’ ‘in his mind’ ‘not rectangular,’ ‘not a / sculpture’ ‘Not a thing at all—’ ‘he owns all things,...'"

Alice Notley, The Descent of Alette

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…[W]e must devise a new politic of looking and being looked at. At the risk of sounding instrumentalizing, something like the Du Boisian double consciousness that has characterized Black life for centuries has wriggled its way into the minds of all subjects and now every single networked human being now exists under this condition of ‘looking at oneself through the eyes of others’ or living, watching, being watched, watching yourself watch others. What could be a workable theory of auto-expression that takes into account the temporally, spatially, experientially flattened act of looking and being looked at? We are each the constant voyeuristic subject and object, both surveilled and surveyor.

Aria Dean, “Closing the Loop”

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Try to read the demand for solutions and your frustration for what they are: products of the logic of diversity work, which wants to get the debt paid, over with, done. Diversity work is slow and yet it’s always in a rush. It can’t relax. It can’t afford the informal gesture, the improvised note, the tangential question that moves off script, away from representation into some weird territory of you and me talking in this room right now. Diversity work can’t afford to entertain the thought that some debts can’t be paid, that they might just be past due. With agonizing slowness, this work grinds on toward payment—that is, toward the point where it will no longer exist. It’s a suicidal project.

Sofia Samatar, “Skin Feeling”

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“The Other Woman” by Nina Simone

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“Dress” by PJ Harvey

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“Code Switching and Recoding Language” by Jennifer Tamayo

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“CAGED/UnCAGED: Live Black Women (A Guerilla Performance Art Experience)” by B. Fly

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“Cut Piece” by Yoko Ono

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“Blood Sign #2″ by Ana Mendieta

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“This is ultraviolence. / I can hear sirens, sirens / He hit me and it felt like a kiss / I can hear violins, violins / Give me all of that ultraviolence.”

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Sick Woman Theory

Johanna Hedva lives with chronic illness and her Sick Woman Theory is for those who were never meant to survive but did. Her fellow spoonies.

“If we take Hannah Arendt’s definition of the political – which is still one of the most dominant in mainstream discourse – as being any action that is performed in public, we must contend with the implications of what that excludes. If being present in public is what is required to be political, then whole swathes of the population can be deemed a-political – simply because they are not physically able to get their bodies into the street.”