From: Christopher Locke [clocke@panix.com]
Sent: Thursday, July 02, 1998 10:18 AM
To: David Weinberger
Subject: the web and the rock

> I'll be on The Vineyard learning how to properly drape a
> sweater over my shoulders with a single knot of the arms
> around my neck.

sounds so... Jay Gatsby. perhaps a little polo? or at
least croquet...

the longing. when we first talked about this I invoked a
Buddhist perspective. historically, early Buddhism -- the
Theravadan or Hinayana school -- saw Passion, Aggression
and Ignorance as the big-three "poisons" -- and calls them
such. Passion = desire of all kinds, not just sexual,
although any monastic setup sees that as a primary big
deal. I'm not well versed in the history (or the
philosophy; it's deep and voluminous) but by the 5th-6th
century CE (i.e., 1000 years after Gautama Buddha) proto-
desire begins to be seen as bodhicitta -- literally, the 
seed of awakened mind -- essentially same desire as the 
poison "variety" and thus the foundation of the non-duality 
that will later flower as the Vajrayana in Tibet. I learned 
this not from books but from a teacher in the direct lineage 
of that tradition, Chogyam Trungpa (who is dead now but 
has reincarnated on amazon.com).

I have certainly never talked about this in email, rest
assured.

shift gears/change metaphors.

much of the best 60s rock-n-roll always struck me as
colored by this non-duality, at least to a degree. it was
the acid surely; it could have been just me, I suppose,
but the artists were coming from the same place, as we
might have said back then. one of the deepest resonnances
involved sex-as-something-else. at the same time it wasn't
not-sex. here's what I mean. when Hendrix sang...

   I have only one burning desire
   let me stand next to your fire

...was he (just) talking about some chick? this music
could easily accompany the iconography of Vajrayogini,
consort to Vajradhara, embodiment of primordial, awakened
heart. in this iconography, the two are usually depicted
fucking.

the eastern stuff turns many off -- and for god reason;
it's mixed up with silly notions of brain-dead happy-go-
lucky mystical bullshit filtered through tripsters and
hucksters who never had a clue. but go back to hundreds,
thousands of rock references to sex, love and desire and
you will find this "other" dimension. it's what gave the
music a depth almost unrelated to the doo-wah girlfriend
ballads of the 50s.

   don't you want somebody to love
   don't you NEED somebody to love
   you better find somebody to love...

one of my favorites from the period is little known now
but an amazing anthem from the Kinks:

   As long as I gaze on Waterloo Sunset
   I am in paradise.
   Every day I look at the world from my window...

or the Beatles' Day Tripper

   got a good reason for taking the easy way out...
   it took me so long to find out... I found out.
   she's a big teaser...

maybe it was just a backseat liaison, but I never heard it
that way. the "Day Tripper" of the song is, after all, a
pun, an allusion to some other instantiation. Lenon was
famous for precisely this kind of thing. Closer to Joyce
than Elvis. there are better examples than I've used here.
The girl with kaleioscope eyes perhaps. follow her down to
a bridge by a fountain...

and later, the Police in "Every Little Thing She Does is
Magic" are singing bhyo over and over in the background. 
this is a tantric seed-sylable associated with mandala 
construction and other stuff I can only guess at. I 
doubt Sting knew much about it either, but it's not 
there by accident I think.

   even though my life before was tragic
   now I know my love for her goes on...

closer to the present, U2's Desire...

   Yeah, lover I'm on the streets
   Gonna go where the bright lights and the big city meet
   With a red guitar, on fire,
   Desire

   She's the candle burning in my room
   I'm like the needle - needle and spoon
   Over the counter with a shotgun
   Pretty soon, everybody got one
   And the fever when I'm beside her
   Desire

   She's the dollars
   She's my protection
   She's a promise
   In the year of election
   Sister, I can't let you go
   I'm like a preacher
   Stealing hearts at a traveling show
   For love or money, money, money
   Desire

Bono is shaped, above all, by Irish Catholism. "She moves in
mysterious ways" -- yeah, that's probably his steady date.
Right?

The "she" of Desire is the same dark goddess of the Stones'
Heartbreaker...

   Heartbreaker, pain maker
   I'm gonna tear your world apart...

...Kali, the terrifying dark side of the mother archetype.
still, she is The Beloved -- source of life and object of
all longing when enough layers are scratched away.

this obviously goes a little deeper than the web, but it's
what we long for. though few might admit it, it's what we
seek everywhere and seldom find.

   her eyes were clear and bright
   her voice was soft and cool
   but she's not there...

yet

   see her shake on the silver screen.

god, I gotta stop doin this shit. and no, I'm not sure what 
it means. if it means anything.

in the darkest night,
r. tuesday

It's wonderful to see Jeneane Seessum and Blog Sisters hit the bigtime. However, this article is flawed in so many ways. It's unfortunate, for instance, that the goal of one of the women bloggers chosen -- as representative of the blog scene in general we are given to presume -- is to cook every dish in a Julia Child cookbook. Cool, I suppose, but hardly a great leap forward for women online. Out of the frying pan and into... the kitchen? And why all the references to knitting blogs? This is an article about women finding their voices on the web? Excuse me? And why the same old warblogger hit magnets, all men, with NY Times trackers assigned to them -- and to no women? There's some cogent criticism showing up on the Blog Sisters site, and I'm sure we'll see more before the day is out. I know Jeneane spent a lot of time with the writer, pointing her to various worthwhile sites by both women and men, so the article's muddied thinking and conflicting signals cannot be laid at the door of her informants. Except for maybe Virginia Postrell, of whom I can say no good; I basically hate her dumbbell dynamist/stasist hogwash. But more about Ginny another time perhaps.

This NY Times piece could have been a watershed document; instead, it comes across as sloppy and confused. Too bad. But kudos to the sisters, who much deserve high praise for their flash and sass, balls and brash, and a ton of damn good writing. Personally, I could give a shit about geopolitical harangues and yet another, deeper round of techno-fetishism. If it weren't for what (many) women and (some) men are blogging here about their hearts, their lives, their work in the world at large, their dreams, there wouldn't be a whole lotta reason to log on. Wonderfully, there's plenty of reason, though it may be a little -- oh no! oh dear! -- irrational. But here's an idea: why don't we sing this song all together. Open our heads and let pictures come...

Tom Matrullo wrote something today -- blog saliencies -- that made me think of the following. It's a passage from the introduction to Gonzo Marketing...

Precisely Which Part Of "Yes"
Didn't You Understand?

From www.lauriedoctor.com...

Once upon a time people took their vision, their imagination, their dreams and committed them to paper or clay or cave walls. Vision is made new when it becomes physical. Without vision being voiced or voice made visible, we are lost. Nothing changes. Today, paying tribute to what is unseen is an answer to despair. It makes transformation possible. It is both an act of recognition and a cry for recognition. There is time left...

I wrote part of that. It was a joy to shape the words together, to say what about that way, do you mean to say this? Until some meaning emerged that felt right to both. So it seemed. Vision voiced and voice made visible. The cave paintings at Chauvet, 30,000 years old. An answer to despair and a cry for recognition. In and around and though these words I wove my contribution to what it appeared we were becoming. Only by acknowledging darkness is it possible to shed any light. So I thought. And still do, though the price has been high. As it turned out, there was no time left. By the date of the workshop this passage describes, we had become strangers.

Some things are too personal, some say, to write about in public. But I have always thought that what we're doing here, one of the things we could be doing, is to show each other what it is to be completley and uncompromisingly human. In Gonzo Marketing I wrote the following bit in the chapter titled The Value Proposition:

Something animated and vital looks out from our children�s eyes. Whatever it is, we recognize it and know it is precious. Yet except in rare cases today, that spirit is broken early and irreparably. The light goes out all too soon. We know, because at some inarticulate and dimly conscious level, we are those children. We feel the wind of spirit move us at odd moments, but put it down to nostalgia or temporary possession by some impractical flight of fancy. We shake it off and get back to work. Robbed of a voice to speak of these things, something animated and vital looks out from our own eyes, but only in rare, unguarded moments -- and even then, wary, circumspect, suspicious. We let no one see what we fear no one will understand.

Where is the value in this, I wonder? What is the cost? Catching the light, a flock of pigeons turns through the sky over the highway. I am driving and remembering and feeling how much is lost, how precious this life.

These are a couple things I wrote earlier this year. The memory of loss is still raw, unrefined, not yet settled and fixed and filed safely away. I return to these things, to these words and the hope they carried, not to torture myself as some friends (and they are true friends) have suggested, but to remind myself of what my heart can bear, and has. To remind myself of what I will never lose.

Monday, February 4, 2002

what I forgot to say tonight

what I forgot to say
was how brightly the stars
burned through the trees
in your hidden courtyard
the night so cold
just outside the warmth
of your kitchen
your spirit fire
two candles in the snow.
And me there wondering:
had it been snowing
when last you lit them?

what I forgot to say
was how much at home
I felt at last
in the night that was once
too big, too infinite,
how you had taught me this
how I had listened
all those years
for a sign, a song
even when my heart
could not contain
your music.

what I forgot to say
was nothing
when the only words
I could find to speak
held no memory of you
no faith, no fire
no coal black sky
so deep so dark a dream
no morning.

what I forgot to say
was that I need to sleep
to take this darkness down
into my heart's own healing
which I did not find today
and failing, let myself believe
cannot be found
under that same moon
that same night wind
in which your candles prayed.

what I forgot to say
so many times
was that my darkness
once a comfort
is no longer
no more familiar
no more a gift
than it ever was.

my hands are empty.
my dreams are broken.

what I forgot to say
was how
under all the words I said
if I am still now
I can hear
the night
your smile
a deeper faith.
these broken dreams
released
these empty hands
opening into a silence
that breaks like dawn.

why my only one
do I forget these things?
how can I tell you then
that I have not forgotten?

somewhere the tree
does not bend or burn
the night does not end
yet morning always comes.
somehow I find
all the ways I need to say
I love you.

Wednesday, February 6, 2002

I wished tonight that I was Pablo Neruda so I could write
you poetry like that, with windy dark nights and the moon
the color of blood in the river. with old trees blasted by
many winters, yet covered with blossoms in the spring.
with smooth stones and rough wool blankets by a fire dying
slowly under the stars and the warmth of your eyes my last
memory before morning.

• Q: Who is Doc? [nothing]
• Q: Who is Doc Searls? [nada]
• Q: Who is keeping us from finding out about Doc Searls? [hmmm...]
• Q: Who stands to gain the most from Doc Searls death? [bingo!]

But hey, I got a really nifty present in the mail today, including this neato book. I can't tell you who sent it, as that would be just ever so uncool (thanks Angel). It wasn't Shelley, even though it's her book. Used to be; not anymore. Now it's my fuckin book! (And btw, this has to be the absolutely sickest, most insensitive cover O'Reilly has ever produced. I mean, the Dali Llamas were bad enogh.)

Please DO NOT send me anything off my Amazon wish list, because all I put there is real expensive shit that I don't think is really worth the money (otherwise I woulda bought them already). But you could send me a little FUCKING email. Or if you're feeling superextraordinarily inspired and ambitious, I like getting weird or beautiful or both picture postcards. Send your best shot to me, RageBoy, at 930-D West Moorhead Circle, Boulder, CO 80305.

And of course, cash money is always in good taste. Or, if you're really loaded, this would be nice.

The improved version...

This initially appeared in Harvard Business School's Working Knowledge newsletter, clearly a cheap knockoff of Knowledge@Wharton. However, I cribbed these off Corante's Premium Blend, without which I never would have known they existed. These missteps were like already way insightful, but I updated them for the blogging side of The Industry. Never hurts to take a few tips from the Big Boys...

1. Delaying decisions that will improve the long-term health of your blog for fear of offending readers' inflated sense of their near-term self-importance.
2. Assuming that the smart way to gear back up is always cautiously and incrementally.
3. Trying to bulletproof your blog by moving into recession-resistant rhetoric.
4. Trying to broaden your Weltanschauung now. Fuggedaboutit!
5. Assuming that a recovery is based on what the hosers think, not what they buy.

Wow. How do these guys know this kinda shit? By phoning up God, that's how!

Tom Matrullo writes about nervous publishers, humorless lawyers, bloggers, punsters, parody and play, all with with his usual anti-pedantic panache. Some samples:

...what's at stake here in the journalistic self-image is a proper understanding of the Difference between The Serious and The Not Serious, i.e., a model of play, which apparently is always the thing.

and...

Parody is one of the more seriously difficult modes of meaning to rigorously control precisely because it involves the use of mimicry - drawing acute attention to conventions of discourse - as an essential element to explore and usually to explode the very thing it is imitating. (It is seriously playful shit, and any simply binary effort to create law differentiating it from Serious Journalism is likely to suffer the slings and arrows of an infinite succession of meta-parodies, at the very least.)

and...

If you look, for example, at the fertile exploits of Gary Turner, or at the amazing in-depth interviews by Frank Paynter (which have reached a point at which we do not know whether the person being interviewed even exists), or at the dicey, polyvocal screeds of Mike Golby, or at RageBoy, you might sense something complex at work which, for want of a better word, I would call play.

Yes, yes! Precisely. This ties in with what I've been trying to say all along...

Speaking of el dia de los muertos, when my daughter Selene was first born, I bought a papier-mâché Haitian skeleton and hung it over her crib. The in-laws were, needless to say, gassed. Metaphorically, more's the pity. Anyway, it seems to have worked. The rest of my life may be fucked up beyond repair, but at least I know I brought my kid up right. Selene is now twelve (and a half). Tomorrow after school she's taking her Mom to the opening of 8 Mile. Bigtime fan. She signs her mail:

*selene mirage - proud eminem luver*

The body text of that one said: "you didn't blog it you imbecile! grr."

What Selene is referring to involves last night. We went to this restaurant, and as we were going in, she sees a boy who goes to her school. Worse, when we get seated, it seems he's only two tables away.

So Selene says, "You got a pen?"

As it turns out, I do. I give it to her. "You got any paper?" she asks.

I look. "Yeah, here's a Starbucks brochure." Don't ask. "Will that work?"

Here's what she writes:

THINGS TO NOT DO AROUND PEOPLE I KNOW

1. DO NOT talk about anyone from school.
2. DO NOT talk about when I was a little kid.
3. DO NOT talk about drugs, alcohol, or anything you can get high off.
4. DO NOT talk about sex.
5. DO NOT use excessive bad language.
6. DO NOT use any bad language.
7. DO NOT flirt.
8. DO NOT talk in an accent.
9. DO NOT act gay.
10. DO NOT imitate wild animals.
11. DO NOT ask me to foretell the future.

So yo, Selene Mirage: I want to go to that 4 o'clock show with you guys. Grab another ticket off the web.

look, if you had one shot, one opportunity
to seize everything you ever wanted
one moment
would you capture it or just let it slip?



you better lose yourself in the music, the moment
you own it, you better never let it go
you only get one shot, do not
miss your chance to blow
this opportunity comes once in a lifetime yo...


thanks to my main nigger
Eric Norlin
for sending the
soundtrack.

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