December 2010
9 posts
Grim Confessions
When I theorize on art my explanandum is Vampire Weekend’s “Mansard Roof.”
Quick and Dirty
Whether or not you need to cash out the experience of some artistic object into an explicit verbal enumeration of patterns you are spotting and comparisons you’re drawing to get something intellectually real out of the experience and not just vague impressions is like whether or not you need to cash French out into English to get something intellectually real and not just vague impression...
One That Talks Like Doolitle
If you’re a certain kind of person, then you have a friend you think is smart but way too narrow minded, and you have a friend you think is smart but way too bullshitty. You are the former’s friend that’s smart but way too bullshitty! You are the latter’s friend that’s smart but way too narrow minded!
Future Life Projects
“The Mnemonic Theory of Art”
“No authentic Chinese saying to this effect has...
I’m so immersed in politics of culture, at a pretty raw instinctive level, that in secret I feel like I’ve lived through 1775 to 1848, or like the turning of the 19th century or World War I or something. I was here for the death rattles of the counterculture! I’ve seen empires crumble, nations born, modes of production torn apart by their antagonisms from the inside! I have seen...
NPR Should Do a Story on Me
You guys wouldn’t know, but it’s so hard to be the only person in the world that has all-true beliefs.
(My sister said I have to say explicitly this is a joke about Moore’s paradox or everyone is gonna think that I’m an asshole.)
Let's All Have a Party!
I don’t think that art is ever any good for working on concrete, real questions of philosophy or theory or science, but I do think that art is ‘inquiry,’ at least to the extent that the concrete, real questions of philosophy or theory or science about x are coming from and geared toward — in a real way that underwrites the logic of these practices not in a creepy Hegel...
Life's Work, 12/10
Can evidential decision theory ground all your middle-class neuroses?
How do you find out you have a headache?
What’s the deal with Doctor Faustus? Why can’t he come up with shit to do with all these superpowers?
Isn’t talking to somebody who can’t see that David Bowie’s great frustrating just in the same way that it’s frustrating to talk to somebody stoned...