Utopia, again

But is utopia viable or even tolerable for its alleged beneficiaries? Set aside the problem of who actually does the work to keep the whole system running, who makes decisions at which points and so on... If you think you've got everything you've ever wanted and everything you ever will want, then is it too radical to suggest that you may in fact be talking to a robot, or a machine of some persuasion? Could a genuine human being, with anyone's wants, cares, concerns, distractions - warts and all - be convinced of its own timeless perfection? Would we not want something more, something the present Utopia in all its glory cannot yet provide? Dreaming beyond the horizon, we may yet invent fresh needs for ourselves which render the current condition inadequate. Intolerable, even. Would we be persuaded by arguments about built-in correctives? It's easy to see what might be corrected in ourselves, perhaps, on something like a situational basis. Frequently enough it informs the substance of what we might call ethics. But what remains to be corrected that transcends the individual? This is the type of challenge Utopia attempts to address, and about which there is, unfortunately, scant empirical evidence.

Ce qu'a vu le vent d'ouest

A brief foray into Dutch phonology and grammar led me to the classic Aesop fable extolling the virtues of persuasion over force. Here's a delightful 1972 animated version produced by none other than the NFB. Straight from the horse's mouth, this one!

The North Wind and the Sun: A Fable by Aesop, Rhoda Leyer 

& Les Drew, provided by the National Film Board of Canada

(continued)

But no utopia really is one. That's the first thing to understand about utopias, of course. A utopia is really only something like a selective gaze; a prior agreement, perhaps, that things are or ought to be as rendered clearly in the mind or according to aspects of circumstance.

Real outcomes differ, and they differ both individually and collectively. Not everyone has a voice that can be heard above the clamor and din. Those that make it through might have had some help, maybe, or some luck. You must look around the edges, where things grow a bit wild and where freaks test out new models and configurations.

The bristled border regions, hedgerows and marshlands, as ever, carry the weight of the traffic, winding through turnarounds carrying in supplies from the outlands and fields, and the people who live in the service of others all but in name.

So where

...but, the universal IS the particular!

It's the particular that bugs people, isn't it?

"Are you on Spotify (tm)?"

If I had one dollar (better a euro) for every occasion on which I was asked this question, I could simply stop releasing records now. I wouldn't have to work doing anything ever again. Either for something, or for nothing. 

Yes, you can stream my music for free before you buy it.

No, I am not on Spotify. 

I understand it's a very popular platform, but okay. Just nod and smile?? I really don't happen to like it. It's music for lazy people that don't really give a shit about what they're listening to. That's the general impression I get with Spotify, anyway. Maybe it has to do with their business model. Pennies on the dime is a hard sell for someone in my shoes, to be sure.

On the other hand, perhaps I've said too much already. Why don't you just enjoy the music and have a lovely afternoon! It's summer, it's festival season, it's time start gettin' down. Let's take it to the stage, right!?! 

See you in hell.

0 Through 9

Dutch streets have numbers and facades the way plants have seed pods and leaves; they grow out, extend and terminate according to a quasi-mathematical framework that nevertheless admits the full reality of bricks, soil, stone, sun and wind. A Utopia for the anti-Platonist; rationalism weathered by the shift and hustle of the restless sea.

Away from the throngs of passersby, the real Netherlands blooms : a Jasper Johns feast of the imagination where rounded portholes, wild plants, stylized digits, grit and neon extravagence blur together, floating, like ghostly lilypads dangling octopus-like tendrils in the gardens of the mind.

Running up that hill

"Tor" is an interesting word. Apart from its digital designation as an anonymous computer network, it refers to a gateway, goal or door in German, which explains its use as a component of many place names. After having spent more than a week in the Netherlands, I've dicovered that the same word means "beetle" or "scarab" in Dutch. Not the close cognate one might expect, save perhaps in some metaphorical or mythological sense.

Certain languages like Turkish retain the classical derivation of a hill or tower (presumably through the Latin turris), but with various other usages and meanings having long since taken firmer prominence. The Old English and / or Celtic root tor designating a rocky outcrop at the peak of a hill is seemingly only loosely retained elsewhere, being almost certainly unrelated to the infinitives torquere or torrere, verbs that mean "to twist"; only torso carries with it an echo of rugged, windswept highlands desiccated by the ravages of time.