PT Anderson and Elliot Smith

Well, this is a treat. One of my favorite musicians, Elliot Smith, being filmed by one of my favorite filmmakers, Paul Thomas Anderson, way back in 2000. Enjoy.

Income without work

I've been reading Hannah Arendt's introduction to Walter Benjamin's Illuminations, and while some of it is a little dry and academic for my taste, there is no doubt that Benjamin was a fascinating figure. Particularly interesting to me is his attitude towards money, which was one of almost aristocratic self-entitlement. Arendt traces this back to "the ancient Jewish believe that those who 'learn'...were the true elite of the people and should not be bothered with so vulgar an occupation as making money or working for it." Benjamin saw himself as a kind of "man of letters," one who, surrounded by books, was neither "obliged nor willing to write and read professionally, in order to earn a living. Unlike the class of the intellectuals, who offers their services either to the state as experts, specialists, and officials, or to society for diversion and instruction, the hommes de lettres always strove to keep aloof from both state and society. Their material existence was based on income without work, and their intellectual attitude rested upon their resolute refusal to be integrated politically or socially."

How antithetical to our age such an attitude would seem. It might appear conservative, too, the man of letters holding himself aloof from the rest of society. But Benjamin was not a conservative. He was, in fact, a deeply progressive and forward-looking thinker.

The body wants to feel inspired

by Alex Gallo-Brown

Blue lights twirl
through bare window,
flicker like laptop screen
pointed towards our face.
The body springs up. The body
will know what to do.
The body 

bangs head against glass,
craning its neck to see.

Downstairs, the neighbor shakes 

against an open door.

There is a body, dead,

lying in the back lot.
No way he will sleep

until it has been removed.

Nothing to say, 

to see, here

for the body.

It does not know

this man.

Upstairs, in the room, 

body flicks laptop up,

presses a button

until it begins to speak.

There is a convention on,
chirping mouths

in quivering heads
to fill our ears
with air.
There is an election on
and we want to feel 

inspired.

Interview

Gabriel Blackwell interviewed me yesterday for the lit site Big Other about The Language of Grief, Lewis Hyde's The Gift, the gift-giving community some of you were a part of, and more. Have a look.

The Last Book I Loved

Sorry for the long absence -- I've been in the middle of many moves, changes, etc. I do have a new essay up on The Rumpus, however, about "the last book I loved," which was Tom Bissell's Magic Hours. Have a look, if you feel so inclined.

Dad

I've been reading Tom Bissel's brilliant collection of essays, Magic Hours, and came across this nugget on travel writers:

"Travel writers are seldom scholars. They are, by inclination if not definition, transients and dilettantes. All that can save the travel writer and redeem his or her often inexpert perceptions of foreign people and places is curiosity, a willingness to be uncertain, an essential emotional generosity, and an ability to write."

Sighted

I finally have a "real" website, replete with links to my published articles, excerpts from The Language of Grief, a button for ordering the book (which includes a short screed against Amazon), an author's bio, and, perhaps most importantly, a series of photographs courtesy of the noted photographer Jennifer Miran Lobsenz, or, as many of you know her, simply Jenne.

Take a look. I'm quite pleased with the whole thing.