Cultural criticism, reviews, travel, translations, and personal blog posts since 1999.
Sunday, January 29, 2006
Tom Tom Yest? Surely, I jest...
Saturday, January 28, 2006
Time won't give me time, Tom Yest. Time is money...
Friday, January 27, 2006
Tom Yest's pen is mightier than a swordfish. It is written...
Thursday, January 26, 2006
There once was a man named Tom Yest. And then what happened...
Wednesday, January 25, 2006
Tom Yest, is anyone home? A cat, a nap, a plan…
Tuesday, January 24, 2006
Tom Yest is like a shadow on me all of the time? Turn around, bright eyes...
It was you, thank god! And thanks for reminding me that I've already said too much. Now I really must go: There's a knock at the door.
Monday, January 23, 2006
Tom Yest tells a story? It could've used a vampire...
Sunday, January 22, 2006
A jig by Tom Yest? He dances before the Lord...
In all the names of all the godsReading the name "Jebusite" in the magic book of the tribe of YHWH is no different than hearing a Nazi spit the name "Jude."
We find the name of our True God
In all the symbols and signs and allegories of God
We find the Face of our True God
Within the face of our Lord
We see the face of all of man
And the images he makes of all the gods that ever were
May His Image be inscribed on our hearts
Saturday, January 21, 2006
Tom Yest spreads blasphemous rumors? Thanks to small mercies...
Friday, January 20, 2006
Tom Yest through time? All in good time...
When all fire will fall from the sky (glory to the image of our Lord)And then came the tribe of YHWH....
Then redemption will be at hand (and the end shall be as it was)
For nothing that is known (and all that remains unknowable)
Is out of sight from the image of our Lord (and the Lord will inhabit the reflection of His image)
Thursday, January 19, 2006
Tom Yest will return at his regularly scheduled time tomorrow. Famous last words...
Wednesday, January 18, 2006
Tom Yest is walking? Walking in the rain...
Here are the notes from Professor X's last lecture:
Jean-Luc Godard’s 1960 New Wave film À bout de souffle (Breathless) and Bernardo Bertolucci’s 2003 The Dreamers are populated by characters who self-consciously inhabit mediated versions of themselves, or, more accurately, mediated versions of the types they wish to be. Godard’s protagonist Jean-Paul Belmondo and Bertolucci’s Isabelle and Theo define themselves only insofar as they intentionally reflect characters drawn from the history of film.
Similarly, and also within the Parisian context, the flâneur, who Walter Benjamin identifies as the “alienated man," finds himself as pure reflection (of himself) from the windows he walks past. Because he is alienated both geographically as well as socio-economically—he stands at the margins of both Paris and the bourgeoisie—he exists outside the realm of the real and outside the domain of a politically efficacious class. That is, his bourgeois-ness is negatively defined: not nobility and not proletariat. The only inherent characteristic linking him to his class is not economic but lifestyle; namely, a lack of manual labor. Yet, Paris and the bourgeoisie have called the flâneur into being, for it is only within the urban milieu among so many other men who, like Louis-Phillippe, also have declared Paris their “native city,” and within the non-working class that such a type could exist.
Moreover, his walks about the city are entirely mediated by urban planning; therefore, when he goes out for a walk, it is only within the confines of a purely artificial and manufactured space. This interiority, especially that of the department stores and arcades, informs not only the urban landscape but the identity of the flâneur as well, who seeks “his asylum in the crowd” while concurrently asserting his individuality. He dresses the part of the flâneur and surely encounters others just like him on the streets of Paris, but he remains alone as he blends into the crowd: there is no social intercourse among all these individual wanderers and window-shoppers.
A key factor in the life of the flâneur is that of documentation. Benjamin reminds us that “living means leaving traces." However, this documentation, particularly within the medium of the daguerreotype, was also the reference point at which he completed his identification as flâneur: the camera captures the Parisian street scene, further demarcating that space as that of the flâneur. The medium re-informs his self-perception in the same way as previous films re-inform Godard’s and Bertolucci’s characters. Benjamin himself also plays the role of the self-referential, self-conscious flâneur in his work with its meandering, stream-of-conscious analysis of the arcades, linguistically reconstructing and reconstituting those very same arcades as the site inhabited by the flâneur.
For citations, please send 3 boxtops and proof of purchase.
Tuesday, January 17, 2006
Tom Yest and Greek tragedy. I am the Alpha and the Omega...
Monday, January 16, 2006
Paging Tom Yest. I am calling you...
Sunday, January 15, 2006
And another thing! Tom Yest plays Cupid, and I'm with stupid...
Sam attended a performance by the classical music ensemble last night; they were playing the same program every classical music ensemble performs: any boring form of music before 1870. Half-way through the last piece, Sam saw Max. What was he doing here? Max noticed Sam and thought the same thing. Max ignored him and quickly left the auditorium as soon as the last note played. It was weird for Sam to always be bumping into his ex at such events. He wished he'd never see Max again. Outside the snow began to fall.
Saturday, January 14, 2006
Is there something I should (k)now? Tom Yest is talking in his sleep...
Friday, January 13, 2006
Don't say it in Russian, Tom Yest! Say it in broken English...
Bad Weather & Heartbreak (A Cold War Love Song)
(a duet for Marianne Faithful & Nina Hagen)
My lover was a spy
For the losing side.
We met in a café,
He met me halfway,
And then he told me goodbye.
Out in the Warsaw rain,
Trying not to complain.
Forgot my umbrella
And lost my fellow.
Ran to catch the last train.
Bad weather and heartbreak
Was all I ever got from this world.
Bad weather and heartbreak—
Storms between a boy and a girl.
Woke up in East Berlin.
Taste of cigarettes and sin.
The sun was shining:
Clouds with silver lining.
Thinking I could finally win.
A chill grew heavy in the air.
Looked for a lover no longer there.
Escaped to the other side.
A hole left gaping wide
In a wall that keeps me here.
Bad weather and heartbreak
Was all I ever got from this world.
Bad weather and heartbreak—
Storms between a boy and a girl.
This war was cold just like your heart.
You had your missiles aimed at me from the start.
Bad weather and heartbreak
Was all I ever got from this world.
Bad weather and heartbreak—
Storms between a boy and a girl.
Thursday, January 12, 2006
Oil can? Tom Yest is off to see the wizard...
Wednesday, January 11, 2006
In the beginning? Tom Yest say, Let there be light...
The important thing is not, or not only, to legitimate
playground that the world would end in fire. God
denotative utterances pertaining to the truth, such
had already, it was understood, destroyed the earth
as "The earth revolves around the sun," but rather
by water. But thanks to His promise as symbolized
to legitimate prescriptive utterances pertaining to
by the rainbow, God would never destroy the earth
justice, such as "Carthage must be destroyed" or
again by water. Next time, it would be with fire. And
"The minimum wage must be set at x dollars." In
somewhere already in the Middle East, that fire had
this context, the only role positive knowledge can
already started. Jimi was not a religious boy; although
play is to inform the practical subject about the
his family attended mass regularly, he marked most
reality within which the execution of the prescription
things concerning religion as something that happened
is to be inscribed. It allows the subject to
a long time ago. And very far away. But he had
circumscribe the executable, or what it is possible
recently heard a news report about the Middle East.
to do. But the executory, what should be done, is
Surely the Middle East had to be nearby for it
not within the purview of positive knowledge. It
to make the local news in El Paso. Perhaps it was
is one thing for an undertaking to be possible and
just across the border. Or maybe it was on the other
another for it to be just. Knowledge is no longer
side of New Mexico. The Middle East now seemed
the subject, but in the service of the subject: its
as close as the wrath of God. Jimi went home that
only legitimacy (though it is formidable) is the fact
evening and prayed to be spared when the fire came.
that it allows morality to become reality. - Lytoard