Change My Life

Barreling through The L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Book in one day is bewildering. Previously I'd dipped in & out of it. Reading it as a whole reminds me that the synoptic versions of the motives of langpo (resistance to the capitalistic commodification of language/allowing theory to inform the crative practices/whatever you say in one sentence when you need to describe the movement) are so limiting. It also reminds me that some of these essays are borderline mystical. I could imagine reading this when the magazine was coming out & being completely housed.

Thinking about books that could change your life I was thinking about this Time-Life book. When I was a kid. I used to read my parents’ encyclopedia set. I would take the books up to my room & read them in bed. And also those Time-Life books about oceans, space, technology, whatever. I read what we had in the bookshelves.

I remember a photograph in one of the Time-Life books of a whaling yard. The sea red with blood. It was the first time I remember thinking of a body as meat. It was the first time I saw that humans could hack into other bodies & kill them. And that this can be called industry. It’s always somewhere in my head when I think of humans.

I miss the time when books, records, art, conversations could change my life. I know that everything you read changes you in some sense, if only that it was part of the timeline of what has made you you, that you decided to pick up a spy novel instead of Spinoza’s Ethics. every book results in some physical action in your brain that leads to the next. But it's not in the spirit of what one means when one says "change your life." Now I read books as life support.

Here's the battle for this week.
Amede Ardoin I'm Never Comin' Back: The Roots of Zydeco
vs
Christian Death: Only Theatre of Pain
Sloppy early LA goth-punk vs raw, passionate accordian music with yelping vocals. Neither of which are going to change my life.

My friend Jen is leaving town soon. That stinks.