That's Just Insipid!

To be a theoretician of the cinema, one should ideally no longer love the cinema and yet still love it; have loved it a lot and only have detached oneself from it by taking it up again from the other end, taking it as the target for the very same scopic drive which had made one love it. Have broken with it, as certain relationships are, not in order to move on to something else, but in order to return to it at the next bend in the spiral. Carry the institution inside one still so that it is in a place accessible to self-analysis, but carry it there as a distinct instance which does not over-infiltrate the rest of the ego with the thousand paralyzing bonds of a tender unconditionality. Not have forgotten what the cinephile one use to be was like, in all the details of his affective inflections, in the three dimensions of his living being, and yet no longer be invaded by him: not have lost sight of him, but be keeping an eye on him. Finally, be him and not be him, since all in all these are the two conditions on which one can speak of him.

Christian Metz, The Imaginary Signifier

READINGS

• At the age of twelve I had an attitude toward life that was to endure, that was to make me seek those areas of living that would keep it alive, that was to make me skeptical of everything while seeking everything, tolerant of all and yet critical. The spirit I had caught gave me insight into the sufferings of others, made me gravitate toward those whose feelings were like my own, made me sit for hours while others told me of their lives, made me strangely tender and cruel, violent and peaceful. It made me want to drive coldly to the heart of every question and lay it open to the core of suffering I knew I would find there. It made me love burrowing into psychology, into realistic and naturalistic fiction and art, into those whirlpools of politics that had the power to claim the whole of men's souls. It directed my loyalties to the side of men in rebellion; it made me love talk that sought answers to questions that could help nobody, that could only keep alive in me that enthralling sense of wonder and awe in the face of the drama of human feeling which is hidden by the external drama of life.
  

• They did not place me on trial because they did not know how to give names to what they feared in me. I had not fought them as Ross had; I had not challenged a single policy of theirs. It was my way of thinking and feeling that they feared. The conditions under which I had to work were what baffled them. Writing had to be done in loneliness and Communism had declared war upon human loneliness. Alone, they said, a man was weak; united with others, he was strong. Therefore, they habitually feared a man who stood alone. Communism spelt the unity of human life, and when a Communist, newly risen from his oppressed isolation and feeling strange and lonely because of it, saw another man seeking seclusion, he became afraid of him. The Communism I looked upon was impatient of extended processes, of results that could not be obtained overnigt, of an act that could not be performed within a day. This was how America had embraced Communism; this was America's first green fruit of materialistic rebellion.

Richard Wright, Black Boy (1944)

WINE

I have begun work at a small specialty wine store in East Setauket; therefore, look for recommendations and commentary on wines and wine-store employment to enter into the purview of this here blog, along with the film, music, literature, and popular culture stuff. I can't offer anything now, since I have yet to work one of our Saturday afternoon tastings--my first is this weekend. More on that soon...

DECIDERS BLOG

I am playing soccer again, in an adult recreational sports league (Zog Sports) with Gary and his friends and their friends. We have a blog for our doings; check it out. We are known as The Deciders.