We have drifted further into the Bräcke calm these last few days making writing difficult and writing retrospective entries a real chore. We have taken instead to recording video messages, mostly from the lake. This is much easier and is almost as worthwhile as the writing in terms of generating unexpected ideas which is surprising as it is that element of bringing forth the unthought of that I have come to prize in writing. That thing where one begins to type with one intention and in the process other new ideas about what to say are generated that would not have popped in there otherwise, like a magic trick, for real! It happens like that also when recording a live message, that is perhaps why they end up so long, but it only works because we use just the one go and no editing. That sets up conditions for a state where one kind of knows what to say but without any firm ideas making it possible to be led away but it's a balance. If we wanted to investigate this further we know which track to take, its the subject of improvisation that we used to study. That is the place for all these ideas about unconscious generation of ideas through practice, questions of improvisation vs composition and the like.1
We must find that Borges book that Yarvin referenced in his bro-lit treaty, the one about one world eating another. Just had a quick look for the Borges story and discovered a recent Yarvin text but it misses the mark, even as a provocation, and red and blue do not make grey! Scholar we are not but it just seems to be some poor work by a writer with an imagined justification to go on and on about everything. Although that is us also so lets not be the hypocrite. Perhaps for anyone with a creative practice the key ingredient is just that imagined justification to splurge away, its just that Yarvin is noticeably poor and in fact one senses that he is just writing exactly what is planned, what sits in the first mind lets call it, without deeper nuance. Like he said in his moldbug day "I was knocking around in the garage and came up with a new ideology." Like it's all so easy this critical theory business. I see Barry Clark2 holds him in high regard, he's found his purpose that one and no mistake. He has volumes of text holding forth on his vision and why not? There's 'nothing to do but munch our own grass' and Barry and Curtis do munch. Curtis however is backed by Peter Tiel so that is different but there are tens of millions of Barry Clark's and his opposite, building complex archives of their autodidactic researches, staunch opinions and unchecked goings on (again that is us too), what will the Borg make of it?
Barry has created himself, we have created ourself; building identity when the games gone. And how strong and fibrous these identity frameworks with which to perceive the world are, how unbreakable, unquestionable. But also how convenient also for the politician. To have everyone so laid bare, how organised it must seem from behind the data wheel, how ripe for manipulation we all are. Well the one thing one can say for Barry Clark is that he means it and he is dedicated and that it appears he is not in it for the click bait money, he's a real one. I suppose he might even attend authoritarian conferences... Listen to us, going on like it's 2018. Wise up and move on one might say. We're set now, but you know I am already dreading any form of election whether Swedish, in the UK or the USA or anywhere that may reach us for that matter. In this world the democratic election is not the boring parade of grey suited politicians embarrassing themselves to gain some opinion boost, a spectacle that incited enormous apathy, no, today we have a political fiction Olympics and there are plenty of events and countless competitors all promoting their identity. All the Barry's will train and build, to peak at the right time resulting in a disorientating stramash a la 2020, a riot in the fog, but look here, it is the bystanders that feel the brunt, not the identity jobsworths swinging the bats. Of course it is the professional actors in the conspiracy fields that will prepare the most diligently, look how all conspiracy issues have coalesced around the pandemic. Imagine if there was an election with conspiracy as the absolute core policy of some Trumpian nut! Well that is easy to imagine because its happened and is happening. Are they still auditing that Trump result? Preparation, preparation.
Here is a question, with so many disparate conspiracy issues all of which drive plenty of data, just how is it they are so easily rounded up to support a common position or candidate? We know really and at root we see the far right tech reich but the details it seems might only take shape during an actual campaign, new political fictions emerging before our very eyes but this now is quite enough. The lake raging not two meters from where we sit deserves better thoughts than these. It seems quite clear that the doggereal switch has been flicked once more. All this going on about Yarvin and the very Barry Clark is nothing more than the unconscious, unplanned seeping out. Morbid though it is however I think it has helped blow off the cobweb which we now realize has covered us since we began this ill advised program of retrospective writing we have set ourselves.
That's our back gate by the way.3
John
1 John researched the topic of how improvisation relates to art during his stint as Primary Instituter of the Open Council Institution for Experimental Policy in Newcastle from 2008 to 2011.
2 There are two possibilities here: One, Barry Clark the professor of Economics at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse whose research and publications have focused on the ethical dimensions of Public Policy. Or two, Barry Clark, Southerner, father, husband, Christian and retired Army field grade officer, standing against the tide of popular sentiment and bad ideology screaming “NO”!
3 View of the Back Gate, 90 x 73 cm, oil on canvas, 2021