How To Do Nothing - Chapter 2 (Patreon)

[Pictured: Morcom Rose Garden, Oakland California]

NOTE: I made a mistake about the schedule so this main post focuses on chapter 1 and then my chapter 2 post is in the comments, beside yours!

I also want to add that Valentin and BrEaNs have volunteered imgur links to their reading spots and some pics for the book report or for just community existeicineing. And I think that is great. The survey at the end will request some media but if you just throw up some imgur links they're lovely to see and will be very useful for early book report aesthetic construction. & its just a nice extra touch to the weekly threads.

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Bird-watching is the opposite of looking something up online. (p. 8)

Privilege:

Something very kind of funny about this book is how it sometimes unlocks my disdain for coastal lefty intellectuals. There was some discussion about privilege in previous thread and I think it's more interesting to unpack here. Basically I think it's valuble to separate your Subjective and Objective Tastes on the matter. Subjectively I totally have the sigh privilege reaction and yet I think the book Objectively completely retains its value despite it's subjectivity and specificity and style.

u might catch me in a little eyeroll when Odell describes the election of Donald Trump leaving her bereft in shock, unable to create art, birdwatching for weeks to cope with this unprecedented travesty, and when she deviates into describing conceptual art i kind of want her to get on with it, (and try to avoid reading every sentence of this book in the tone of a TED talk cause it will ruin a lot of it) but I think it's mostly me just indulging the Death Instinct. I am toooo cool for this.

In actuality, I also felt rather shattered and fucky and angry in 2016 and 2017, it was pivotal for culture, and also if Odell was speaking about these art things in any other circumstance I would be rapt. It's just that I have gotten really used to reading hard philosophy and have a predilection towards Object oriented art and lack finesse in visual mediums.

I think her initial address of the Privilege Critique on page 12 is fine, (just because this right is denied to many people doesn't make it any less of a right) but I think there's more obvious points. Doing nothing doesn't require a lakefront cottage, and the attention economy does not only prey upon the free time and fear and anxiety of the affluent. EVERYONE deserves their attention, their mind, their efficacy. For example, if your grassroots leftist coalition is totally tumorous because of the influence of reactionary online political conventions that you are all constantly steeped in, slurred together with your memes and anxious 24 news cycle and reaction fractals, you can expect your coalition to collapse into toxicity and stupidity, annihilating its effectiveness. Organizing a meaningful group to operate against a profit incentive REQUIRES embodiment, REQUIRES nothing.

I don't say this glibly I say it thinking of my leftist friends whose sincere efforts have been wildly ineffective, vs my leftist friends who have been able to build communities (and businesses) and take care of each other and themselves, creating joy and opportunity and space for Nothing and Meaning.

I'm reminded of this iconic quote from a Contrapoints ramble about LGBTQ internet callout posts (her Patreon rambles are not like unscripted hangs, they are literal video essays I suggest all of you subscribe to her patreon immediately)

"Lilith and Rainbow broke up, and now Lilith has gone public with accusations that Rainbow is a manipulator, who gaslit the entire household about doing the dishes, and"

Creativity:

dont let me get in my zone dont let me get in my zone

John Cleese was right

John Cleese's 5 prerequisites for creativity:

1. Space 2. Time 3. Time 4. Confidence 5. A̶ 2̶2̶ i̶n̶c̶h̶ w̶a̶i̶s̶t̶  Humor

Scott Polach was right

Boredom breeds creativity. I know that when I don't listen to music and I go on along walk, I think. I think and I have 20 new ideas for art and work and life. Words simply magically come to me if I allow myself to be bored. And yet instead I often opt to fill the time and space with noise that I barely pay attention to, but has enough traction to kill my passive creativity. (Lately its been Critical Role compilations of Jester , what can I say I don't even watch the show in full which would be a more meaningful exercise in attention.)

Haweya has written well of this in an analogous sense opting for the term Originality.

"Originality starts by putting our attention in a place where it isn’t  being actively assaulted. If we spend hours upon hours on these  platforms, we unwittingly adopt their ways of being."

The things I hate about online discourse is how impossibly online it is. How things seem to mean more, to be more real in real life, over real time. That hyperfeed of speech and media and ideas feels so real when you're in it, but coming out of it is a lot like waking up from a dream. Real stuff happens in real life and you often realize you were hallucinating the importance of all that other stuff.

In terms of art, it makes me think of "Content Creation" instead of Art Creation. Art requires being offline. It requires being alone and having individual passions and not satisfyin them by curating a pinterest board or a playlist or looking up reddit threads talking about it, but MAKING or DOING the thing you love. Even having the luxury of KNOWING what you love. You gotta fit the meaning of life in your life somewhere. We all have some individual control to exert. Even just to beautify the things around you, a little bit, where you can.

This type of embarrassing discovery, in which something you thought was one thing is actually two things, and each of those two things is actually ten things, seems like a simple function of the duration and quality of one's attention. With effort, we can become attuned to things, able to pick up and then hopefully differentiate finer and finer frequencies each time. (p. 9)

Sound and Fury, Signifying Nothing:

It is this financially incentive proliferation of chatter, and the utter speed at which waves of hysteria now happen online, that has so deeply horrified me and offended my senses and cognition  as a human who dwells in human, bodily time. (p. 18)

This is the part that really pulls at my soul. It makes me uncomfortable about my job.

Do we really need more speaking? I kind of think we need to shut the fuck up.

Or rather, I think we should dwell on our passions and pick our battles very carefully. Too many people modified with the widgets of social media feel the need to comment on everything, to consume everything. I don't think you can meaningfully comment or consume when immersed in the sludge. When you speak about everything, it seems you me you start to speak about nothing.

We're riddled with pointless talk, insane quantities of words and images. Stupidity's never blind or mute. So it's not a problem of getting people to express themselves but of providing little gaps of solitude and silence in which they might eventually have something to say. Repressive forces don't stop people expressing themselves but rather force them to express themselves; what a relief to have nothingothign to say, the right to say nothing, because only then is there a chance of framing the rare, and ever rarer, thing that might be worth saying. (Deleuze, Negotiations)

Everyone is already talking about everything online. I choose these days to emphasize our right to say nothing. Maybe too much. I am a little too in my head. But I am trying. And this time of depression & chaos for me is already starting to push me into having some new ideas. Against my will, kicking and screaming.

#NOMO

I know that in the months after the election, a lot of people found themselves searching for this thing called "truth," but what I also felt to be missing was just reality, something I could point  to after all of this and say, This is really real. (p. 19)

oh look thats the conclusion of my video

Finally I adore Mierle Laderman' Ukele's Life & Death Instinct Theorum. I was visiting a friend in the hospital for mental health things recently and we talked about it a lot.

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