Just read an interesting article on Courtney Love, who is recently being charged for some assault/drug possesion something-or-other. While reading I thought to myself what has happened to Courtney Love. Over th years she has gone through a couple of suicide attempts, the suicide of her husband, embarrasing events on public television (such as flashing and doing a hideous rendition of Danny Boy on Letterman), assault charges, one allegedly with a bottle of spirit and a torch her at ex-manager/boyfriend with a woman, her demise as gone into freefall. It is amazing the rampant self-destruction she has committed to herself. Misguided self direction, insecurity and self desctruction are hidden flaws in all of us which i think Love so explosively reminds you. The sadness of her situation will get you down but the enthusiasm and fervour at which lives at if uplifting and a triumph. Her history proves a fascinating and turbulant read and lends some explanation for her behaviour.
Born Courtney Michelle Harrison, she spent her ealry years with her father, Hank, a Grateful Daed acolyte who reportedly forcefed his four-year-old LSD and dragged her all over the world, from a sheep station in New Zealand to hippie commune in San Francisco.
At 12, love was sent to live with her mother in Portland, oregan, but by the time she was 16 she had disowned her parents and taken to the road.
After working as a stripper in Japan, Love turned up in liverpool in the early eighties, where she had a brief relationship with the teardrop Explodes singer Julian Cope. In 1986 she moved to LA where she met director Alex Cox and lobbied for the part of Spungen in his Sid Vicious biopic Sid and Nancy. She ended up playing Nancy's best friend, Gretchen, though her fascination with the Sid-Nancy relationaship continued apparently forming the template for her marriage to Kurt Cobain. While not one of rock's greatest talents. Love will certainly be remembered as one of its most notorious screw-ups. she is shortlisted to star in some new vampire movies recently.
How long can someone stay on the road of destruction and anarchy that she has. It's a tremendous display of spirit and will power.
Monday, September 20, 2004
Monday, July 26, 2004
Fahrenheit 9/11
The only film I've anticipated for a while and it turned out to dissappoint a little. I approached with caution as I'm aware of Moore's techniques. I just wish he didn't have to resort to the same sensationalism that the neo-cons and there cronies use to manipulate people. He's only fighting fire with fire, I suppose... and he has now become a popular symbol and strong leader for the left, badly needed at the moment.
The Guardian is right when they say '... it is incendiary, excitable, often mawkishly emotional but simply gripping: a cheerfully partisan assault on the Bush administration.'
The Guardian is right when they say '... it is incendiary, excitable, often mawkishly emotional but simply gripping: a cheerfully partisan assault on the Bush administration.'
Wednesday, June 16, 2004
Tuesday, June 15, 2004
Bataille on Discontuity, Eroticism and Death
Been reading a book, Eroticism by George Bataille, on and off recently. More off then on due to the convoluted language and philisophical ways of expression... but I found it really enjoyable and fulfilling. Its as though I've found someone more intellegent to articulate thoughts I've internalized but never taken the time to sit down and think about. I particularly identified with the below sections. Being an atheist I found it refreshing to get a different view on life outside the christian explanation.
"In asexual reproduction, the organism, a single cell, divides at a certain point in it's growth. Two nuclei are formed and from one single being two new beings are derived. But we cannot say that one being has given birth to a second being. The two new beings are equally products of the first. The first being has disappeared. It is to all intents and purposes dead, in that it doeas not survive in either of the two beings it has produced. It does not decompose in the way that sexual animals do when they die, but it ceases to exist. It ceases to exist in so far as it was discontinous. But at one stage of the reproductive process there was continuity. There is a point at which the original one becomes two. As soon as there are two, there is again discontiuty for each of the beings. But the process entails one instant of continuity between the two of them. The first one dies, but as it dies there is this moment of continuity between the two new beings.
The same continuity cannot occur in the death of sexual creatures, where reproduction is in theory independent of death and disappearance. But sexual reproduction, basically a matter of cellular division just like asexual reproduction, brings in a new kind of transition from discontinuity to continuity. Sperm and ovum are to begin with discontinuous entities, but they unite, and consequently a contuity comes into existence between them to form a new entity from the death and disappearance of the seperate beings. The new entity is itself discontinuous, but it bears within itself the transition to continiuty, the fusion, fatal to both, of two separate beings...
...On the most fundamental level there are transitions from continuous to to discontinuous or from discontinuous to continuous. We are discontinous beings, individuals who perish in isolation in the midst of an incomprehensible adventure, but we yearn for our lost continuity. We find the state of affairs that binds us to our random and ephemeral indiviuality hard to bear. Along with our tormenting desire that evanescent thing should last, there stands our obsession with a primal continuity linking us with everything that is. This nostalgia has nothing to do with knowledge of the basic facts I have mentioned. A man can suffer at the thought of not existing in the world like a wave lost among many other waves, even if he knows nothing about the division and fusion of simple cells. But this nostalgia is responsible for the three forms of eroticism in man."
He goes on to explain the differnt forms of eroticism. From what I can understand the three are; Sexual, Friendship/Paternal/Maternal (similiar to eros and agape) and finally Religious eroticism which is the most interesting.
And thats it... all pretty spot on I think... except for that bit about the lost waves, I don't know what he was going on about there. I've often thought to myself sex and death are definitely related and the ultimate truths in understanding ourselves, both of heavily supressed in christian society... but why? for me Bataille has scratched away a layer from this complex question.
"In asexual reproduction, the organism, a single cell, divides at a certain point in it's growth. Two nuclei are formed and from one single being two new beings are derived. But we cannot say that one being has given birth to a second being. The two new beings are equally products of the first. The first being has disappeared. It is to all intents and purposes dead, in that it doeas not survive in either of the two beings it has produced. It does not decompose in the way that sexual animals do when they die, but it ceases to exist. It ceases to exist in so far as it was discontinous. But at one stage of the reproductive process there was continuity. There is a point at which the original one becomes two. As soon as there are two, there is again discontiuty for each of the beings. But the process entails one instant of continuity between the two of them. The first one dies, but as it dies there is this moment of continuity between the two new beings.
The same continuity cannot occur in the death of sexual creatures, where reproduction is in theory independent of death and disappearance. But sexual reproduction, basically a matter of cellular division just like asexual reproduction, brings in a new kind of transition from discontinuity to continuity. Sperm and ovum are to begin with discontinuous entities, but they unite, and consequently a contuity comes into existence between them to form a new entity from the death and disappearance of the seperate beings. The new entity is itself discontinuous, but it bears within itself the transition to continiuty, the fusion, fatal to both, of two separate beings...
...On the most fundamental level there are transitions from continuous to to discontinuous or from discontinuous to continuous. We are discontinous beings, individuals who perish in isolation in the midst of an incomprehensible adventure, but we yearn for our lost continuity. We find the state of affairs that binds us to our random and ephemeral indiviuality hard to bear. Along with our tormenting desire that evanescent thing should last, there stands our obsession with a primal continuity linking us with everything that is. This nostalgia has nothing to do with knowledge of the basic facts I have mentioned. A man can suffer at the thought of not existing in the world like a wave lost among many other waves, even if he knows nothing about the division and fusion of simple cells. But this nostalgia is responsible for the three forms of eroticism in man."
He goes on to explain the differnt forms of eroticism. From what I can understand the three are; Sexual, Friendship/Paternal/Maternal (similiar to eros and agape) and finally Religious eroticism which is the most interesting.
And thats it... all pretty spot on I think... except for that bit about the lost waves, I don't know what he was going on about there. I've often thought to myself sex and death are definitely related and the ultimate truths in understanding ourselves, both of heavily supressed in christian society... but why? for me Bataille has scratched away a layer from this complex question.
Tuesday, May 25, 2004
Music For Airports
Have just checked into a hostel (the Roebuck Bay Backpackers) and there's a chatty English lad in my room. He has a pretty extensive mpeg collection. With the exact taste in music that I have. It's fun seeing the enthusiasm on his face from chatting to a like mind. We found our way onto the subject of music after he heard me playing GYBE on my CD player.
Listening to his 'Music For Aiports', Brian Eno now... wow! soundscape brilliance a little bizarre really as I'm not coseyly Sprwaled out on my bed (like I'd usually be) but in a bustling LAN gaming internet cafe complete with roaring kids zapping the bejaysus out of each other. Great name for the album too. It has all that transient anxiety kinda feel that I always feel in airports.
Listening to his 'Music For Aiports', Brian Eno now... wow! soundscape brilliance a little bizarre really as I'm not coseyly Sprwaled out on my bed (like I'd usually be) but in a bustling LAN gaming internet cafe complete with roaring kids zapping the bejaysus out of each other. Great name for the album too. It has all that transient anxiety kinda feel that I always feel in airports.
Monday, May 24, 2004
Welcome Me!
So I've finally figured out how to make a blog without having to manage all the techno babble by my owns.
Will hope to ad more and more now... must start by getting that digital camera active and do something with it. Maybe take some photos of lovely Broome, Western Australia. I've never had a diary before so this should be interesting? It's gonna be odd talking to no-one but yet still having (potentially) everyone reading.
Will hope to ad more and more now... must start by getting that digital camera active and do something with it. Maybe take some photos of lovely Broome, Western Australia. I've never had a diary before so this should be interesting? It's gonna be odd talking to no-one but yet still having (potentially) everyone reading.
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