| Paul Evan Hughes
MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts Goddard G3 Packet02 Dear Pam, I hope this packet finds you well, either in the frozen windy north or in making art in my cantankerous nation. I’ve sent the physical component of this packet on to Peter’s address in Rhode Island, so I hope it gets there for you to look over, not that there’s been any true progress in the status of my camera. Once again, the packet has been cobbled together from mostly non-video elements, since I was informed by United Radio Service that the repair firewire port won’t arrive in Syracuse until March 7-17. Sigh. I had hoped to have the Lonely Bear project assembled for you, but the footage is still raw and untouched. On the video that I’ve sent, you’ll find all of the footage I’d taken until the camera died, along with the footage that my minions in New Orleans took from which I plan to extract some form of coherent statement on the meaning of community. Feel free to do lots of fast-forwarding; I know I did. New Orleans itself was an amazing experience… Still trying to sort through the potent vat of emotions and sensations that I brought home with me. I will call the event a success, in that people are already planning resurrenderNOLA04 and several smaller gatherings sprinkled throughout the rest of this year. The experience has ushered in what I’ve begun to call resurrender: phase two, which I will discuss at length later in this packet. I’ve tried to write feverishly in my new novel and journal for this packet. I’ve continued to read Delany, who never ceases to be an inspiration. I’ve assembled a short two-minute video with still images and manipulated sound so that I didn’t feel like the lack of a camera was completely ruining the packet and I’m still somewhat of a video artist. That’s about all, though… I know everyone has off-packets from time to time, but so far this semester the technological frustrations have really put a damper on my plans to generate footage and play. I hope by packet three to have the camera back safely in my hands, working at 100% condition, so that I can get my ass to work. Another frustration has been the MFA-IA board. I feel guilty that I basically said that the message board would be a remarkable way for everyone to communicate, but now access issues are plaguing quite a few Goddardites and there’s nothing I can really do about it until the vB update. of ruin, of loss… That phrase just came to me while driving, and now I’m using it everywhere. Maybe it’s this sense of impotence, the inability to work in video right now, the inability to fix the board problems, my day-to-day lack of ambition. There are dozens of one-year anniversaries flooding my life right now, and so much of my waking self is devoted to trying not to think about them that something is irrevocably lost in the process. I’m trying to be Paul, but at the same time I know if I’m him right now, I’ll destroy myself. That’s about all to report from this end. Packet continues with my response to your response! I hope you are doing well. No, not just well, but BEST! love,
G3 Packet 02: Response to Pam’s Packet 01 Response: I imagine you arriving home from New Orleans… climate and culture
changing radically in the space of a single journey… Bus? Train? Plane?
Perhaps you drove it? From solitary to surrounded and back again
to solitary… aaaaaah… I know this feeling. I hope it was magnificent.
I hope it was curious and disorienting in a good way… filled with revelation
and surprise… discovery and delight… and of course, not too much “disappointment”
(if indeed, there was any at all!).
How to even begin to describe it? I had no idea in 1996 when I clicked the “upload” button to send my first index.html to Geocities that what I began on that day would become something so.. Words escape. Global? De-centralized? Centralized? Integral to my existence? I had no idea that someday that sliver of myself that I placed online would be the basis of a flourishing online community that is now taking steps beyond computer-mediated communication (CMC) into the face-to-face (FTF) world. All fears and disappointments aside (refer: Lilies), resurrenderNOLA03 was what I consider the first step into a new phase of this interdisciplinary project that is resurrender. I’m still filtering through the experience, still trying to pull specific anecdotes to relate, but it’s so difficult. I find myself resorting to dangerous generalization, but I’m certain that if I polled the participants, they’d respond the same way. From the first scotch in the airport bar with a young Toronto resident who’d been posting on the board since 2000 to the final goodbye kiss from a thirty-something Colorado mother before slipping back to the airport to depart, it was as if we’d all already met offline, as if this was just another meeting of old friends. Initial conversations didn’t begin with the typical introductions and bullshit questions; we’d all already “met” each other before. And now I’ve begun resurrender: phase two, a loose collection of offline gatherings throughout the community. Already, people have begun to meet in the real world with no encouragement or organization from me, even members of the community who were not able to attend the NOLA03 conference: a college girl and a martial artist from Seattle and Toronto getting together in Seattle, a mother and art student and a graffiti artist who both lived in the same area of Colorado Springs meeting for coffee, four attendees of NOLA03 re-converging in Miami next weekend to fan the romantic sparks that segmented four FTF strangers into two FTF couples, plans for NOLA04 already in motion, plans for NYC03 this summer, and my own gathering in Cape Coral next week with timeforkink.com authors Beerman and Jonathan, old friends, Singing Saints, drinking buddies. We’re actually singing at a high school at which my friend Colonel teaches. NOLA03 was the inspiration for all of this, an amazing opportunity to prove at least to myself and at least within the others that ours is a valid community that stretches beyond zeros and ones into the space between two hotel beds, the price of a drink or ten, the time it takes a drunken karaoke voice to resonate through vocal cords to the back of the bar where twelve people who had never met in person just days before all applauded, laughed, shouted. In NOLA03, I found a new appreciation for the people of my community, a new validity, a new energy and drive, in that we’ve proven that it works offline. Everything resurrender stands for applies in the real world as well. Now it’s my job to make sure the world hears about it. My normal process is to respond to your cover letter, and then deal in detail with the substantive work of the packet… if you prefer some other structure, then simply howl and we will work out something new and different! You should feel free to howl at me as well. I sometimes diverge from the path of intellectual discourse and babble and swear and FUCK SHIT PISS FUCK what was I talking about? ;) So sorry about the camera glitchery. The real world sucks in its refusal to remain within our notions of control. Not a problem… I will look forward to footage until it comes. I am Paul; I persevere. I just really want to start putting the pieces together, and it’s so frustrating to have my beloved camera sitting in some back room of the repair place. I guess it helps me focus more intensely on my own writing and reading, though. I am delighted you are not sending hard copy, printed out packets. Too many trees are being devoured in the name of art and learning as it is, so I am entirely satisfied by electronic packets… so, unless or until you feel it necessary to send me something hard, then I am happy with hyperlinks. I’ll send hard copies of videos in the mail if I find that the files are just too huge to host or send online. Or, as in this packet, I’ll send hard copy video if I just don’t have the means to transfer it to my computer. Stupid repair place. Let me say thank you for the work you have done in creating the MFAIA message board, and also the board for our advisee/seminar group. This is tremendously generous of you, and for me (and I suspect for others), has entirely enhanced the way in which I dance through distance with Goddard. Thank you, thank you, you clever boy. I’ll admit that I’m somewhat ashamed of the performance of the board so far. I never realized how many browsers were incompatible and wouldn’t allow people to post, but we're working frantically it working 100%. I was just aware that in more and more private conversations, Goddard students were increasingly frustrated with the email listserv, a dinosaur of a technology, the equivalent of watching the latest Star Wars film through a child’s Viewmaster. You are quite welcome for the board; it’s the least I could do for the Goddard community. Before I move to the substantive work of the packet I cannot help but express my appreciation for your implied praise of Rare Birds… which I assume you have seen since you are comparing it to The Shipping News. I suspect that this is a bit like comparing apples and chewing gum, but appreciate it nevertheless. I loved it, my parents loved it, and now whenever there’s mention of Newfoundland anywhere, they ask me what my advisor’s name is again, that fiery redhead who helped make Rare Birds? O Canada! (An anthem I actually enjoyed singing more than my own back in my collegiate singing days because the bass part was soooo much better.) I’ve also recently fallen in love with the voice of a young Mr. Hayden Desser of Ontario and I’ve included one of his tracks in the short video I made for this packet. Video: Have you thought about inter-cutting from the storyboard to the “real” images??? Or cutting in some of your previous imagery from the same locations? (i.e. the computer desk, the ashtray etc, etc? your hand with the cigarette, the bear’s hand? Etc. ) Or of enhancing the story board stills so they might serve as “sets” for the bear to interact with? Are you pixelating the movement of the bear up the stairs and in other circumstances where he/she might be moving, or just dissolving/cutting stills together with larger movement gaps? Or have you figured out some strategy or device (a mechanical effect?) to enable the bear to move in real time through the frame? Is your intention to tell a relatively “straight” story about the bear, or to play with layering in the shooting and edit which will take the piece in other directions? (i.e. more “formal” play with the mechanisms of storytelling, or with the possibilities of animation?) In the initial stages of the Lonely Bear project, I had considered cutting from the bear to myself, because there are dozens of opportunities to do so. I’m not sure if I want to so boldly inject myself into the image, though, since in the context of my belongings, my computer, my truck, my apartment, even my futon, it’s fairly obvious to the viewer that the bear is just a representation of Paul. As I hope the raw footage I’ve sent shows, the bear itself is full of motion, walking through space, viewing the monitors and television, freeing his friends from garbage-bag-captivity. My hand does show in many shots, especially my thumb (the bear is remarkably accepting of manipulation and gestural movement), but I don’t think this detracts from the overall success in the same way that object-oriented artists detract from their “puppets” during a performance. I shot this project fairly “straight,” with the intent of creating the audience emotion through what is depicted on the screen, not relying on fancy editing or interruption of cuts, animation, etc. I am playing with the idea of writing a simple voiceover that tells the story of the bear like a children’s book. Because I intend to revisit the bear in subsequent projects, I do intend to explore areas of animation, perhaps stop-motion work, or maybe a person in a full-sized bear outfit. Did you know that the cheapest two-person zebra costume I could find online cost $800US? It made me sad, because I’ve always wanted a two-piece zebra costume since seeing the original Pink Panther movie as a child. I raise these questions simply to try and get a better handle on your intention… on how complex your objectives are, how far you want to run, push, poke at the “form” as versus the content of the piece. Just because it is a narrative doesn’t mean there is no room for serious fooling around with how you might “tell” this simple little story. Does any of this make sense? It makes complete sense, and now there are so many new ideas floating through my head that I want to break into the camera repair shop and throw things around until I feel better. “Okay, you did a storyboard…so what?” What is the process about, what do you want to learn here, how are you stretching your “muscles” as a storyteller/filmmaker/video-guy? Yeah, the storyboard wasn’t so much a departure from the way I usually pre-plan everything for a project, but this time since the camera was broken, I just wanted to create a way for you to see online what I was thinking, what I was shooting, since there would be no video footage (yet). I realize that in the future when I shoot longer, more complicated pieces, I will need to storyboard it out so that I don’t go completely crazier. It’s my intention before I leave Goddard to shoot a script that I completed in 2000 about a man who finds a talking monkey on his doorstep and has to take him to Las Vegas while evading government agents and aliens and such. Maybe G4. I’m considering re-working the script soon and starting to board it out. Next time can you tell me a little bit more about your shooting process/practice? How intentional it might be? Where you take your camera? What draws you to shoot something? How much “manipulation” you like to do as versus “finding”… does that make sense as a question? Most of my shots, on the surface, are intuitive, just picking up the camera and pressing “record.” But at the same time, I realize there is a lot of stuff going on inside of my brain that gives me that intuition, an entire personal history that determines what is aesthetically-pleasing to me, what is compositionally-interesting and innovative, what fits in to my overall body of work, what challenges my pre- and mis-conceptions about my own work, my own practice. Calling it intuition is a cop-out on my part. I shoot things that mesh nicely with the overall disconcerting, dark, deceptive, striking, unbalanced, shaky, annoying, self-absorbed, whiny, me me me motif of my previous work. I will say that my work until this semester has been almost entirely “found,” in that most shots were not manipulated directly by my hands, motivations, or interior processes. However, since most of my work has taken place within my own sphere of influence, my apartment, my parents’ farm, the space that I inhabit and name as my own, sometimes a suffocating closeness, the interruption and transgression of personal space, all of it has been manipulated by me at some point: placed, named, stacked and knocked over. I guess I side with the formalist photographers in that I believe every image has meaning; every image shows the audience exactly what the photographer wants them to see, nothing more, nothing less, and every image has an inherent meaning drawn directly from the artist’s act of choosing and presenting. Audio: Have you thought about voice-over tracks as well? How much
sound play have you done? Are you cutting in Final Cut Pro or something
else? Do you have the capability of recording voice or other audio and
altering it? Are you at all interested in fooling with sound?
I have considered a voiceover track giving a narrative of the events on-camera in the style of a child’s book, and if I do choose to create that track, I’m pretty sure I can convince my actor friend to do any number of annoying, pretentious accents I desire. But then again, I’m not sure if I want the experience to be so easy for the audience… Do I want someone naming actions, describing what’s going on, or do I want there to be a stark soundtrack of simple music, with latent sounds left in, little sound bites added for effect, perhaps a growl of frustration, a squawk of joy? Still working on that answer. I do all video work in Pinnacle Studio 8.5 because I run XP and it’s
the best solution I’ve found for myself so far.. I just don’t enjoy
Premiere. I do all audio work with CoolEdit Pro, a program new in
1998, but still an excellent recording and multitrack mixing solution.
All of my previous videos were assembled with Studio and CoolEdit.
I have just about as much recording equipment packed into my apartment
as possible for audio work, so I can definitely record and play with sound.
In fact, one of the elements of these projects that I most enjoy is acquiring
and altering sound for the soundtracks, as evidenced by the richly-layered
audio tracks of “To Wound” and to a lesser degree, the beginning and middle
segments of “The Stillness.” In undergrad, I was in charge of the
music and graphics labs, so working with the equipment and swapping wires
and recording is a passion of mine. I was also the Production Manager
of my a cappella group, so I got to work on the production and final mixdown
of our 1999 album, Yardwork! I loves the audio side of things!
I mean, I love video as well, but audio is a date that I’d take home to
the parents.
Webdesign: How do you want me to interact with your web-work? Is it something you want feedback on from me, or are you satisfied that I comment only on your video, reading, thinking and writing? Can you let me know how you want me to dance with your webdesign work, if indeed you want me to dance with it at all? I’m always interested in feedback on my online presence from a variety of people, so I’ve included links to what I’m updating, building, presenting to you in the hopes that you can peruse and let me know what appeals, what appalls, what offends and bothers and inspires. And if something doesn’t work, doesn’t display, is spelled wrong or looks horrible in your browser, feel free to let me know. ;) My online presence is composed mostly of my audio/video, my thinking and writing; resurrender.net is just a culminating presentation form for a broad audience. I don’t expect or desire any in-depth cybercultural analysis of what you see on my pages, but if what you see in an inspiration for another thread of dialogue, I’ll be thrilled. Can you also let me know whether you see the web as more than just a site/venue/location for sharing your work in other media… that is, do you see it also as an expressive medium to make art with? As a possible personal creation medium rather than just a dissemination tool? Bolter and Grusin in Remediation argue that as the internet developed, it basically robbed earlier media in that a web page is a collection of text, audio, images arranged into something else. The act of presenting these individual media in the coherent coalescing form of a web page is the creation of a new form of art. It bleeds through across all media… Look at CNN or hell, any local news broadcast and the screen will look suspiciously like a webpage. Are news webpages made to look like newspapers or are newspapers now made to look like webpages? That’s what I’m fascinated with, the way these technologies are leaking through into other forms while at the same time stealing, borrowing, re-presenting. I do believe there are ways to create art online. There are mundane processes such as the simple act of creating an image and asking people to download it, alter it, and upload it. There are computer geniuses whose work is defined by mathematics, who trade scripts and codes, adding on, subtracting, until the final product holds just an echo of the original. Where does technology end and art begin? I started a page at offensemechanism.com to initiate a dialogue with online artists about contemporary art. In time, I’d like to develop it into a collaborative site where artists can share, alter, shatter, destroy, and glue back together one another’s art. If we really want to dig into the meaning of art, I could argue that resurrender.net isn’t art as traditional video, image, audio, text inasmuch as it is art through the disseminated concept of resurrender: the act is the art. The concept of the community is art. The basic human interaction that takes place, creating and destroying intellectual, profane, ridiculous discourse is the physical manifestation of the art that is resurrender, and resurrender is art because I named it so. Writing: “Declassified”, eh? No more secrets? This is extremely interesting terrain for me, Paul. Perhaps you have already spent lots of time on this issue of public/private (personal/political… exhibitionism/voyeurism…etc.) with your other advisors and have tired of it, or used it all up as a point of dialogue… but… if you haven’t, I am very interested in pursuing this entire thread, which runs in one way or another through all your web sites, a lot of your writing, and some, if not all of your video work. Can we “go” here? Do you want to? Is it useful territory to explore together? I have explored the public/private concept with both Ruth and Catherine, but to tell the truth, it’s a concept I just can’t seem to get enough of. It’s a central theme of my work and a central conflict of Paul, so I’m ready to explore this issue if you are! …on the heels of New Orleans, and the irreversible consequences of the physical and material encounters with your “friends” from dyingdays, I am eager to know more about your motivations for giving so much of yourself away in this context. I want to know how you keep yourself “safe”, how history interacts with mystery, how time collapses in relationships which share so much information before bodies meet in real space. What does such intimate knowledge contribute to assumption, expectation, and imagination? What “work” between people remains to do? What terrain remains to explore? And of course… how does such self-exposure feed into your work and intention as an artist? Do you see your “self” on the web as creating some context for your work? An additional layer, set of layers? Or is it, in your view, distinct and separate from the intentions you pursue in your work? Why do you want to be “known” or “seen” in such a way? Maybe it’s a pithy personal theory, or maybe it’s just an intellectual consequence of drinking too many hurricanes in New Orleans, but I think I now have a phrase for how I see the private/public conflict. Let’s call it “Smoking In New Orleans.” I’ll explain: I never used to smoke. I had my first cigar at age fifteen, but had my first cigarette at probably age 19. I enjoyed the occasional cigar, but never really smoked, not daily, not even weekly, and I never smoked cigarettes. Cigars and weed, weed and cigars. In the fall of 2001 that changed. I saw things on a television that broke me. I’d sit up all night watching the city from my window, playing guitar, and I started smoking. First two or three a day, then ten, then a pack, now two and a half packs. Never looked back. What the hell does this have to do with public/private in a cyberpsychological space, right? I soon discovered the worlds within which smokers can operate at a reasonable level of comfort and satisfaction. I’m sure you know what I mean. Smokers can’t smoke indoors anymore. Smokers have to stand outside of bars and freeze their balls off and ovaries out while feeding the addiction. Smokers stink, smokers have yellow teeth, smokers die young, and smokers are a distinct segment of the human population (at least in the North American cultural context) who are marginalized, pushed aside, pushed away. New York loves to tax me. New York loves to make me sit in a special place in restaurants or bars or doesn’t allow me to sit at all. This is where the Smoking in New Orleans theory comes in. There are still places in NOLA where you can’t smoke. Looking back, I can at least think of the airport as one fine example. That’s about it. Where I stayed, two blocks from Bourbon Street, people smoked everywhere. I mean everywhere. The guy behind the counter at the hotel, the airport shuttle driver, the short-order cook at the Clover Grill, and about two billion people who were on Bourbon: everyone was smoking. It was perfectly acceptable to walk from the street into a drugstore to buy more cigarettes WHILE SMOKING. Walk into a restaurant SMOKING and still be allowed to SMOKE. In the same vein, it was perfectly acceptable to walk from said bar back into the street while DRINKING. Try that in New York and see how many felonies you can rack up at once. Paul, just stop. What the fuck does this have to do with public/private? New York is a world seemingly constructed out of private spaces through which the typical smoker must navigate. Smokers are marginalized. NOLA is a world seemingly constructed in exactly the opposite way: all is public, and non-smokers and non-drinkers are the marginalized population. I think you understand that. The online world is public to that demographic of the population that can access it. I’m not saying it’s a public space for a third-world child who eats dirt to survive while assembling sneakers in a sweatshop; it’s not available to the world population, nor do I expect that it will ever be. But within the context of mainly the mainly Western, white, heterosexual users of the internet, it is a public space. If you place something online, anyone online can access it. In that regard, you have to be extremely careful when constructing which persona to present. I pride myself on being a transparent online presence. One remark that I kept getting at NOLA03 was that I seemed exactly like the Paul from the online world. There were very few discrepancies between people’s anticipation of Paul and the FTF Paul. If I had presented myself as a hot blonde Swedish model for seven years, things might have been different. These people created an image of Paul based on my public online persona. The private aspect of the conflict comes with the desire to maintain transparency while holding back just enough to protect myself, physically, emotionally, intellectually. In the real world, each of us constructs personae on a daily basis to present to people. The difference is that in the virtual world, all communication is constructed-personae-based, by the very nature of the medium, which reduces physical signifiers and relies mostly on text and two-dimensional imagery. The successful and safe internet persona can navigate the entirely public space while maintaining a hidden reserve of private space that lies beyond the monitor and is experienced truly only within the mind: the desires, the intentions, the hopes of the physical. In bringing so much of my personal life to the virtual world, I’m in essence a smoker sitting down in a New York courthouse and blowing smoke in the judge’s face. I know that it’s not smart. I know that there will be repercussions, but whether that is jail time or a punch in the throat from the court clerk, I’ll never know until it happens. So many questions, but I feel like I’ve not even scratched the surface of this discussion. I hope to continue it throughout our advising relationship. With regard to new writing for broken tomorrows… how do you want me to interact with your writing? Let me know what you wish for. I guess I’d like feedback in the context of what you can draw from my
other art, my webdesign, and your own reading of the love of my life, Chip
Delany. What strikes you as successful in my writing, that is, what
reflects the merging of my words, experiences, desires, fears, the best?
Hmmm… I don’t know. What disgusts? What offends?
What is trite or innovative? What pisses you off to no end?
Am I just a ripoff author or do you see anything at all of value and originality?
Should I just get a job as a mechanic and stop this foolishness?
I’m not looking for reviews, but I know that sometimes I lose myself in
the writing and become unaware of the predominant themes, motifs, etc.
and I need someone willing to point them out and make me pay attention
to the process.
Your Reading: I was intrigued by your notes on Delany’s Mad Man. This notion/fact that art/language can create a visceral physical/embodied response is one which is very close to my heart… even if the response is horrific. I cannot blame you for wanting to gain similar mastery in your own writing, though suspect that such skill can be turned as much to the “sacred” as the “profane”… can thrill as much as disgust, can move to joy, arousal, and pleasure as much as to abhorrence, nausea, and revulsion. Yes? I think perhaps I’m drawn at this time in my writing (and I certainly can’t deny that the sacred can evince clearly visceral responses within readers) to the profane because I’ve been so long drawn to the touchy-feely romantic. I wrote the last book for a girl. As such, it’s filled with hackneyed emotional scenes of romance, relationship bullshit, and I guess I’m just tired of trying to sound like I have the vaguest idea of what that’s all about anymore. The profane allows me to dig deeply into human emotions that are for the most part hidden from everyday society: the passion, the fury, the resonating despair of complete loss, those little nasty deep dark feelings that we gloss over. I don’t sense a lot of the sacred in my own life right now, so I explore the profane. Finally, I want to ask you something which that passage about desire and loss (p.8) raised for me. It is something I am thinking a lot about myself for a variety of reasons… and that is the difference between desire and pleasure. Can you write me something about this in your next packet? For you… at this moment in your history… what do you think are the differences between desire and pleasure? (Okay, this seems like “homework”, right? But I suspect that in this question might lie some interesting insights into notions of embodiment, of loss, of “agency”, of “self”… and certainly, of “relation”… all things I suspect you are interested in.) Of course, I could be wrong. The following is a piece I wrote for my journal on dyingdays.com that explores my conception of desire versus pleasure. * * * paul.
You've blotted the rich form of desire from my life and left me only some vaguely eccentric behaviors that have grown up to integrate so much pleasure into the mundane world around me. What text could I write now? It's as though I cannot even remember what I once desired. All I can look for now, when I have the energy, is lost desire itself-- and I look for it by clearly inadequate means. At best such an account as I might write would read like the life of anyone else, with, now and again, a bizarre and interruptive incident, largely mysterious and completely demystified-- at least that's what it has become without the day-to-day, moment-to-moment web of wanting that you have unstrung from about my universe. Without it, all falls apart. In a single gesture you've turned me into the most ordinary of human creatures and at once left me an obsessive, pleasureless eccentric, trapped in a set of habits which no longer have reason because they no longer lead to reward. And if I had enough self-confidence, in the midst of this bland continual chaos into which you've shunted me, for hate, I should hate you. But I don't have it. -Stars In My Pocket
Like Grains of Sand, Samuel R. Delany
-The English Patient,
Michael Ondaatje
-Goddard G3 Packet 01
response, Pam Hall
in the spirit of my newfound fascination with Delany's transgressive fiction, allow me to be brutally honest: i love the sensation of vaginal walls wrapped around my penis. some would argue that sexual activity is an inherently violent act, the stretching, sometimes tearing penetration, church lady says: "thrusting and releasing," the throwing around of bodies, biting, pinching, sweating, fucking. it's invasive. it strips away all layers of and notions of safe space. it tears down the socially-constructed zone around our bodies that belongs to me and replaces it with a micro-socially-constructed space that belongs to us in which we will do things to each other. even in consent, there is invasion, pain, destruction. pleasure through pain. ever had your penis bent by an over-eager mount? yeah, that's pain. and i remember clearly the night that we snuggled after joining, after cigarettes and ice cream, and she sighed, smiling through tears: you're so gentle. no one's ever been so gentle with me. and who would expect it from this ominous form? who would expect paul hughes to be a gentle lover, a tender, caring partner in the sex act? remember the stories you'd heard about him? threesomes, married women, dick-biting, ass-slapping fun. that's him. not gentle, never more concerned about the woman than himself. there is a difference between desire and pleasure. to me, they are two distinct states, seldom intertwining, if anything, each subverting and destroying our concept of the other. how many times have you pursued someone only to be disappointed, either in the topiary mess you found downstairs, the complete lack of ability to intelligently converse, or an annoying habit like chewing gum with her mouth open? these are of course gross generalizations, but in my experience, the desired seldom if ever becomes the agent of pleasure. my mind seems hard-wired to always pursue, and then when the hunt is over, something ineffable is lost, something beyond description or self-justification. it seems that i'm happiest when i'm not happy. gentle? me? how many times since she said i am gentle have i engaged in furious, angry, ball-slapping sex with a partner who simply begs for more, harder, faster, now, yes, please, oh god, yes? i've lost all notions of gentle. i've lost most notions of pleasure. it's the separation of mind and body. i'm sure descartes, dozens of hebrew authors, and saint gregory of nyssa are applauding from their graves right now. pleasure? remembering. things. the brush of lips, the peach fuzz beneath nose, the color of her nipples, phone calls after sixty-nine, the difficulty of insertion in the shower and the way i almost drowned while performing cunnilingus, scent and taste and touch. all conceptions of pleasure based solely in the impossible dance of past and future. i suppose i could blame the pills. hell, 80mg of lexapro and another 40mg of wellbutrin each day are enough to kill a wolverine's hardon. my friends joke. they laugh. they say that i'm ruining an entire generation of women because they'll start to believe that all men can fuck all night long without orgasm. it's not about the orgasm... i do experience pleasure, just not that pleasure, and it's not that important to me, although i do feel like an impotent old man who's shotgun is well-oiled, locked and loaded, but the trigger is stuck. i'm not complaining; i've had some amazing sexual experiences since i started taking the pills that keep me from wanting to lay my arms open with a kitchen knife, but i'd be lying if i said that i'd had an orgasm with a woman since last may. maybe that makes me feel better about myself; maybe it makes me feel like i'm not cheating on someone to whom i promised my future, my heart, my everything. a question of agency: is it still sex if the mind is elsewhere and the penis refuses to work? yeah, i know the answer. billions of human females just looked at me and said "Well, I've never had an orgasm in my life, you violent white masculine hegemon." sorry about that. the question is difficult to phrase... and why am i even concerned about this newfound sexual freedom? it's not like i have anything to prove to anyone. it's not like i'm actually cheating, since it's been made clear to me that forever consists of about two months and love consists of running away. desire and pleasure... i desire. i pleasure. i desire pleasure. i've entered bodies and swum up them like rivers. it's a sadness, a search, a resignation. the first was funny. close friend of an ex. in one of my best friend's beds. there was a lot of giggling. my friends called me a champion the next morning, after waking, stumbling over bodies on the living room floor. it developed into an affair of sorts, conducted in extreme secrecy, so as not to hurt the ex. a new year's resolution ended it. i didn't mind, i guess. best for her to disappear before i developed feelings for her, which i could have, which i wanted to, but and the second.. unexpected. painful in that she was a young, blonde, thin artist who drank and smoked too much. i found in her just a substitute for someone else. she fell. i didn't. i felt bad that i didn't. and the third... goddard. add that to number two. umm. yeah. and the fourth. random party girl. not traditionally attractive. not attractive at all, according to friends. but it still happened. it was a moment of need on both our parts. she recently said that i was the most unemotional person she'd ever met. me? unemotional? where did that paul come from? let me rephrase: where the FUCK did that paul come from? paul has always been described as the most emotionally-aware, emotionally-open person people have met. he hides nothing, feels everything, tears up at music and smells and movies and memories. to now be named The Most Unemotional Person Ever... it is difficult to realize that i've become in this last year the complete opposite of what i was. and i remember the first time, well into the second minute, the first orgasm inside of a girl. and her disappointment, and my embarrassment, and the fact that i only had one rubber because i'd stolen it from my brother. no second chances that night. [and the second time it happened with her, she asked, under the moonlight, mosquitos biting my bare ass, her breasts, with a smile: "When the hell did you develop stamina?"] and the fifth was amazing, absolutely amazing... maybe because of the sexual tension that had always existed. maybe because i knew how she felt. maybe because i owe the fact that i'm still alive to her phone call while i drew a bath, sharpened a knife. it was years of release in that act. it was beautiful. and it wasn't without meaning. there are impossibilities, and we both recognize this. and i wanted so much to please them all, and i hope i did. i knew that my own pleasure was secondary, impossible, that the drugs that now keep me alive keep me from completing that act. maybe it's better that way. maybe i'm still fixating on fidelity. and i've learned that it's possible for men to successfully fake orgasms. about desire, about pleasure... of loss, of ruin. it's an overwhelming desire for this moment one year ago, the utter contentedness of that moment, the concept of Us, the concept of forever. to have that "rich form of desire" the predominant mental process... the days are emptier. the acts are just acting. everything is a simple going through the motions, because without the focus of love, desire, pleasure, all is a gray haze through which i walk, force myself, bend against the current, borne ceaselessly into the past. the self is lost amidst rivers of Lethe, Styx. one would think that a man would love the ability to fuck all night with no fear of blowing a load early. what a man! he lasts all fucking night! tell your friends. he's a keeper. thing is, i don't want to be kept, because the heart is wounded, the heart beats in time to. a. different. drummer. sigh. i can hear it now. "he's full of shit. he's bragging. blah blah blah." it doesn't matter. bend over and i'll show ya. there's no solace in these acts, no happiness. and in the process of pleasure (it does feel good, although i've found that i've become the most ticklish person ever, as if the body doesn't want to be touched at all, as if the tracing of fingertips or tongue is just not right if it doesn't belong to a particular tip or tongue, as if the pills themselves are the agent in this coupling, denying me pleasure at the prospect of continual impossible desire) something inherent to paul is lost, my vision of my self, my self-construction, my self-awareness. just shudder. shiver, shudder, gasp, exhale. smile like you enjoyed it. go to the bathroom to remove the empty rubber. maybe go back to bed for some pretend snuggling or maybe just sit down at your computer and smoke a cigarette, checking to see if there's an email from someone who died, wondering if the girl still moistening the leopard sheets of your bed is going to leave soon or expect to spend the night. it's simple.
And before I close this one down… can you tell me more next time about Rutsky’s feminine/masculine notions of virtual environments , and especially how you see this metaphor “appearing” in your own work ? Rutsky (and Delany, in Shorter Views) discussed how Freud has been misread in his use of the term “masculine” to mean “active.” Gibson’s concept of matrices, online worlds that users (mostly men) physically interface with in order to enter and explore (and the “jacking-in” process itself is an interesting concept… popular fiction is filled with images of the penetration of needles, tubes, cylinders of metal to achieve this process. the men are the penetrated participant) describes a sea-like ocean of though whose placidity is interrupted by more penetrations, more entrances of more men, more participants. I’m not quite sure how to relate this to my own work… Let me think about it. I promise a response in the next packet, because this will take some intense introspection.
G3 Packet 02 Substantive Work: Video:
• of loss, of ruin.
Audio:
Webdesign: sites updated/created: • http://www.timeforkink.com new articles: If You Really Loved Me, You'd Shave Your Crotch.
A Conversation Using Too Many Asterisks.
• http://www.silverthought.com broken tomorrows: proem: ghosts.
broken tomorrows: chapter one: of loss, of ruin.
Carl Rafala: Deep Grooves.
• http://www.illout.com I’ve begun re-structuring the resurrender.net presence on illout.com, creating new boards for timeforkink.com and ifihadamonkey.com. I’ve also renamed the resurrenderNOLA03 board “resurrender: phase two” in preparation for the second phase of my resurrender project, which I envision as a series of offline gatherings and intellectual exchanges, forging bonds other than those of the virtual world by creating a face-to-face component of the project. Writing:
• paul: wars of desire and technology:
Practicum:
G3 Packet 02 Resource List Delany, Samuel R. Atlantis: Three Tales. Hanover, NH: Wesleyan, 1995. • I’ve finished reading the first of the three short stories presented in this work, “Atlantis: Model 1924,” a fictionalized biographical account of Delany’s paternal grandfather’s arrival in New York City in 1924 and his adjustment to the new world that could not be any more different than the duality of his previous life in the south, as a young man surrounded by intellectual Negroes, living on the campus of one of the first black colleges in America, his parents accomplished and educated, while outside those academic walls was a world of hate and racism. Suddenly thrust into the “Atlantis” of New York, the protagonist (Sam, whose son would name his son Sam as well) finds a world where the racism isn’t so direct, so blatant, but lies underneath an exterior of near-acceptance. The story recounts Sam’s struggle trying to find a place both with his now-Northern siblings and the chaotic city lifestyle. The story is told with Delany’s signature playfulness of language, weaving of mundane and profane and beautiful, sacred spaces, and pages-ling departures from true narrative while exploring issues of psychology, art, and the place of the Negro (protagonist’s term) in the white city. I felt this was a valuable read not only because it was another step in my desire to read everything Delany’s ever published, but because he shows that his writing talent applies to traditional fiction just as well as it is displayed in his science fiction, transgressive fiction, and other paraliterary (new word. ooh!) realms into which he’s ventured. As I incorporate more non-fiction and autobiography into my own sf, Delany’s work is an inspiring example of the synthesis of literary forms. Delany, Samuel R. Captives of the Flame. New York, NY: Ace Books, 1963. • The oldest physical Delany book I own: a $0.40 Ace Double with Delany’s Captives joined by Keith Woodcott’s The Psionic Menace (itself a laughable sf read about killer psychics and alien half-robot men). Captives was one of Delany’s earliest novels, as I remember from my previous readings of his autobiographical works. The first of a trilogy, and later renamed Out of the Dead City, Captives isn’t nearly as captivating a work as I had hoped, but it does show a critical step in Delany’s development, as he began to write as a living, not just a supplementary income. Delany, Samuel R. The Jewels of Aptor. New York, NY: Bantam, 1982. • As Delany’s first novel, Jewels exhibits a remarkable sophistication for something written in a spiral-bound notebook by a seventeen-year-old. It seems to me that this story’s central conflict comes not in the visible and tactile conflict between two warring islands or the religious structures that govern those civilizations, but within the very notion of religion and spirituality itself, as the band of main characters who are sent on a mission to recover a sacred jewel that contains unbelievable power must deal with the fact that suddenly they don’t know which side is good, which is evil, and all of their conceptions of right and wrong are cast into the ambiguity of a post-apocalyptic world ruled by physically-manifested gods, human/animal hybrids, and a race of shape shifters. First published in 1962, I feel this book must speak to the ambiguity of American society at the time, and the sense of impending catastrophic cultural and social change that the next decade would experience. Delany, Samuel R. Shorter Views: Queer Thoughts & The Politics of the Paraliterary. Hanover, NH: Wesleyan, 1999. • I’ve begun reading the first segment of Shorter Views. Okay, I’ll admit it, I intended to read for half an hour last night before pretending to sleep, but instead found myself reading his essays until seven in the morning. What I’ve read so far deals with the notion of discourse as an exchange, a conversation, an interaction that has an inherent value judgment. I guess I should preface that statement with an explanation that Shorter Views is a collection of Delany essays dealing with all sorts of good little nuggets like sf writing, queer theory, desire and loss, masochism and sadism, etc. I hope to include an extended reading of this book for the next packet, but right now I’m armpit-deep in an essay in which Delany recounts several anecdotes about his “heterosexual white vanilla male” friends who ask him for advice on love, on desire, on crushes, not questions that you would expect too many homosexual black chocolate males to have to ford. Delany, Samuel R. They Fly At Ciron. New York, NY: Tor, 1993. • Although I’ve just started reading this book (got this and Shorter Views in the mail yesterday), I’m already thrilled will the level of blood and guts that’s being exhibited. It’s not typical for Delany to explore such graphic violence, and I’m interested and excited to read how he will develop this theme throughout the book, and if the level of violence will resolve itself by the end of the story to a statement of anti-violence, or if he’s just using it for something new.
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