(A Primal Scene?)

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I’m not there, I’m gone
It’s all about confusion…

(Bob Dylan, “I’m Not There”)

I’m not there, except through a photograph. I’m not there except through a scanned and digitized version of a photograph. Unheimlich/ Heimlich. An un(canny) image that serves as a reminder that I was not there even when “I” was there.

(A Scene?) - This term is ill-chosen, for what it supposedly names is unrepresentable, and escapes fiction as well; yet ‘scene’ is pertinent in that it allows one at least not to speak as if of an event taking place at a moment in time.” (Blanchot)

[Yes, this is me. Another me. Unrecognizing myself in the disaster.]

A scene: – A little over seven. The excitement of a first holiday abroad with family. Meeting new family. – Germany: so many expectations tied to it. So many expectations miraculously fulfilled. Unexpectations not fulfilled. Germany no more: Germania – germarina. – The wall. Wall? History I could not see. – Would like to own a piece, even though I don’t want to touch it. Looks dirty. Ewww. – Why did it happen? When? What are you not telling me? The generous effect of the disaster.

Revisited Revised

Another catastrophe, one we never imagined,
sudden, precipitous, falls upon us,
and unprepared — there is no more time — carries us off.

How can I make myself not read this allegorically? How can I make myself not take this literally?

Is this poem timeless, or has history rendered it time-less?

This was around the time Cavafy had given up on symbols.

Myth, to him, is “depoliticized speech” … poetry with no context, the personal detatched from the political. Could this be right???

His poem has a personal tone, a tone of defiance. Defiance, but not complete disregard for an audience. Not disregard the sense that the audience has to empathize.

He must overcome the trappings of myth, precisely through the very trappings of myth: language, poetry, abstraction, allegory.

Only then can his work be set free. But freedom never comes. Freedom is besides the point.

Cybermnemonics

Cybermnemonics

“Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts… A graphic representation of data abstracted from banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data.Like city lights, receding…”  (William Gibson, Neuromancer)

All mighty Cyberspace, help me recreate the scene to myself (from my self, and for myself)!

Can you help me remind myself? Can I trigger something in myself? Can I recollect my(childhood)self?

If the complexity of cyberspace has become navigable, does that mean we have mastered it or, at least, reduced it to a perceptible level? No. It has just evolved from “unthinkable” to thinkable complexity. We are willingly giving in immersing ourselves in this “consensual hallucination.”

A wall that once was. A country that once wasn’t. A family that once was. “Buy a souvenir, something to show the grandparents back home”.

Memento Mori

Memento mori is a Latin phrase meaning “Be mindful of death” and may be translated as “Remember that you are mortal,” “Remember you will die,” “Remember that you must die,” or “Remember your death”. It names a genre of artistic creations that vary widely from one another, but which all share the same purpose, which is to remind people of their own mortality. (Wikipedia)

Memento. Mori.

MORI

“Man’s guilt in history and in the tides of his own blood has been complicated by technology, the daily seeping falsehearted deathbed.” >>> “You are the sum total of your data. No man escapes that.” <<

(from Don DeLillo’s White Noise).

MEMENTO:

“They tried to teach you to make lists in grade school, remember? Back when your day planner was the back of your hand. And if your assignments came off in the shower, well, then they didn’t get done. No direction, they said. No discipline. So they tried to get you to write it all down somewhere more permanent…[The list is] like a letter you write to yourself. A master plan, drafted by the guy who can see the light, made with steps simple enough for the rest of the idiots to understand.” (from Jonathan Nolan’s short story, Memento Mori)

The blog is the list I make to myself, for myself. The instructions from my relays are part of my list. Do not forget to …

I will help myself remember that which escapes memory. Google will help me conjure the images. Can I make my unconscious googleable?

Cinematic mnemonics

Scene from Wolfgang Becker’s film Goodbye Lenin! (2003).

East Germany, 1989: A loyal Socialist  living in Eastern Berlin during the Cold War loses her husband to the West. After seeing her son protesting against the Socialists, she suffers from a heart attack and falls into a coma. While she is in a coma, East and West Germany reunite. When she awakes from her coma, her children try to prevent her from experiencing shock by converting their now westernized lives back into an Eastern-Socialist lifestyle…

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The shock of discovery … the shock at discovering that the disaster has come and gone (was it ever here?), and I could not bring myself to its site. The disaster is beyond me, beyond time, beyond comprehension. A film/ a ” reality”/ a fiction/ a myth conveys this feeling better than I ever will.

Athens, Greece (2009). Wall outside the Greek parliament. Riot police officer standing next to the wall. The slogan on the wall was written by anarchists protesters that joined hundreds of migrants to demonstrate against police violence and demand more liberal immigration laws.

British popgroup Pet Shop Boys used QR-code for the artwork of their download-only single Integral in 2007. The videoclip for the song also features QR-code. When the codes are scanned correctly, users are directed to petshopboys.co.uk, and web pages about the British national identity card plans, respectively. ***

Users with a camera phone equipped with the correct reader software can scan the image of the QR Code causing the phone’s browser to launch and redirect to the programmed URL. This act of linking from physical world objects is known as a hardlink or physical world hyperlinks. Users can also generate and print their own QR Code for others to scan and use by visiting one of several free QR Code generating sites.  (Wiki)

a memory, an image, a trigger

The Berlin Wall.

What was there before ME. I was not there. It never happened to me.

Childhood memory / Child’s fiction

One of my happiest and most idealized childhood memories: a family trip to Germany.

Up to this moment, I never thought of my first visit to Germany as anything else but a blissful childhood memory.

The last vacation we took as a family.

My first time on a plane.

First time in another country.

First time to meet my new aunt.

First time to practice the few German words I learned.  First time to have my accent made fun of.

Exploring the unknown  for the first time …

… and that is where it was located all this time…  buried under happy, ignorant moments.