Category Archives: fourteen forms of melancholy

“In my study, I noticed something interesting about the etymology of “genre” and “gender.” Both words come from the Latin word “genus,” translating to “race.” It was an enlightening discovery to learn that “race,” “gender,” “genre,” and even “class” all come from the same word in Latin, thereby having the same function.”

https://www.e-flux.com/journal/117/387112/noise-is-the-nigga-of-sound/

https://www.e-flux.com/journal/138/553676/who-haunts/

https://www.e-flux.com/notes/575616/how-to-haunt-oppenheimer-and-black-hanford?utm_campaign=later-linkinbio-e_flux&utm_content=later-39391406&utm_medium=social&utm_source=linkin.bio

“The powers of the world are invested in destroying time like subsidised corn burning in a field”

– Porpentine Charity Heartscape

…

From Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky’s short story, ‘Collector of Cracks’:

The jerkiness of our vision, the discontinuousness of our perception of a motion picture, say, is a fairly well-known fact. But to face that fact is not enough: One must go inside it. Wedged in between instants – when the film, having withdrawn one image from the retina, is advancing so as to produce another – is a split second when everything has been taken from the eye and another new given it. In that split second the eye is before emptiness, but it sees it: Something unseen seems seen.

…

From Stuck in a Sticky Shed with Side Chain Compression by Kristen Gallerneaux:

Stone, slime, mud and soundwaves are mineral level media with opinions. The taboo that connects the grime to the shine of our everyday digital life is on Drew’s mind too:

The tools I use are haunted by the souls that made them and origin in which they were conceived. It feels inescapable, as I type on my mid-2014 MacBook Pro. All the techno-wonders just feel drenched in exploitation – or bad vibrations – embedded in the circuitry.

Logic sometimes breeds monsters. For half a century there has been springing up a host of weird functions, which seem to strive to have as little resemblance as possible to honest functions that are of some use. No more continuity, or else continuity but no derivatives, etc. More than this, from the point of view of logic, it is these strange functions that are the most general; those that are met without being looked for no longer appear as more than a particular case, and they have only quite a little corner left them.

Formerly, when a new function was invented, it was in view of some practical end. To-day they are invented on purpose to show our ancestors’ reasonings at fault, and we shall never get anything more than that out of them.

If logic were the teacher’s only guide, he would have to begin with the most general, that is to say, with the most weird, functions. He would have to set the beginner to wrestle with this collection of monstrosities. If you don’t do so, the logicians might say, you will only reach exactness by stages.

—  Henri Poincaré, Science and Method (1899), (1914 translation)

Serpent Instrument

Sculpt away at undercarriage for breathing room
So when the air rushes to fill the empty spaces –
Woven I will see for variations sake transition.  

I

Like glacial slabs, go the weeks wasted in worry. 
Like historic flooding, my tears loose themselves. 
Like fire on the horizon, I can not stop lingering.
Will this be anything but a temporary hollow?
Some new small cave to bore into?

And still, the hole shall be opened
so that it shall be all openings.
And the mountains shall be moved off
so that they shall remain a mere semblance.
Where the worm never dies,
the fire never quenches.

Stop and listen and –
bloody tears fall free.
I’m in Rain City –
I pray for the keys to 
unlock your gate.
Your container will be filled
from the source of all water.
In your Valley of Hinnom –
the limits of worldly desire.
I wish to dwell in the shadows of your Earth, 
called Volva by the inhabitants of Levania. 
Because Volva goes through the same phases as the actual Moon.
Let me think you too can be a light in the darkness.

II

I still look for you
– in those open woods
– in those places free from brush
– or alongside a body of water

Heart field with wounds.
Those soft and violent, misty fields.
From way down in that thicker grove,
you can hear the ringing of a bell
never stopping.

Are we animated and freed by each other’s living, heavenly fire?
As when the angels with their fiery rods run, 
and no man might mistake his son or daughter their desire. 
So will I walk after the lust of my soul 
and afterward, I hope, return to this good earth.

From now on my Gehenna,
sacrifice will have to be practiced outside the walls of the city.
Because they have made this an alien place 
and have built upon the high places where we went to burn. 
Some of the most devout still try 
to proffer themselves as burnt offerings to 
“always, therefore, behold, more days are coming”.
And I can’t yet really argue with that.

Colonial Manuscript

(Found in a safety deposit box)

by David Berman

Orbit One—Far above my life, one trillion storeys up, above the silver judgement wheels, is a clear civilization, along the sidereal coast, a perpetual glide, where the rapid hearts sleep, where armrest factories puff, “we invite the nervous,” for warm firm handshakes immemorial.

Orbit Two—On the table is a glass of red soda, a traffic ticket, and a sketch of a telephone. Out the screen door I can hear two men arguing about a shed. The screen makes the whole tableau into a grid. I’m surprised when a cardinal lands on the window sill. I’ve only seen them on placemats.

Orbit Three—It was a revelation on a sled that brought him in from the cold white hills. To ask his wife, if in a city in the afterlife, she would recognize him on the street.

Imagination, memory in drag, called up a picture of an endless plane covered in sidewalks.

Orbit Four-In the painting, sky and ground run parallel. There is a palm tree and a jet. A forest stands in the corner, a set of antlers lies in the grass.

Off to the left there is a river, but you can’t see it, it’s outside the frame. The river is full of old wheels and chain, but they don’t make it go.

Off in the distance, it’s very faint, there’s a hill. A man sold everything he owned to buy that hill. The agent said he would be able to see the future from up there, and that it would be the same future every time.

Orbit Five—Several thousand years ago there was a man who wanted to kill a very powerful man. In his own room he drew his sword and stuck it into the wall to find out whether his hand could carry through. By some chance the powerful man was standing on the other side of the wall and was thus slain.

And that is how I live out every one of my days.