josh blog

Ordinary language is all right.

One could divide humanity into two classes:
those who master a metaphor, and those who hold by a formula.
Those with a bent for both are too few, they do not comprise a class.

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30 Mar '04 10:25:25 AM

'As a teacher I should like to be able to give a course as Dylan organizes a song, as astonishing producer rather than author. And that it should begin as he does, suddenly, with his clown's mask, with a technique of contriving, and yet improvising each detail. The opposite of a plagiarist, but also the opposite of a master or a model. A very lengthy preparation, yet no method, nor rules, nor recipes.' The same might be said about Jay-Z. Deleuze meant to emphasize the wild kind of creation not adequately pictured in 'machine', with its image of a man on an assembly line, turning a crank, pushing a button, replicas streaming by. It likewise easily eludes 'maker', with that word's sense that encompasses watchmakers, potters, cooks, poets. Craftsmen. But in thus achieving its accuracy with regard to the character of creation, Deleuze's word 'producer' leaves me unsure: what then am I to say Jay-Z is producing? In what manner? You can run with it from there.

26 Feb '04 08:27:41 AM

Please don't be excited. I haven't changed my mind about bring this project to a close. But I do have reasons for wanting to get at the parts, and at the moment I'm too lazy and muddleheaded to tweak the parts that would let me hide it away from you and still get it to work.

The underwhelming dismay at this page's disappearance didn't really come as a surprise to me; it only confirmed some of my reasons for quitting.

Take care.

- Joshua

20 Jan '04 11:14:30 AM

See, we don't love like the flowers, all in a
single year; for us, when we love, immemorial
sap rises into our arms. O you girl,
this: that far back within us, we loved, not one thing, not a thing in the future, but
all the innumerable brewing; not a particular child,
but the fathers lying in our depths like rubble
of wrecked mountains; but also the dry riverbeds
of former mothers---; but also the entire
silent landscape under a clouded or
clear fate---: girl, all this came before you.

20 Jan '04 06:50:43 AM

Apparently R. Rhees citing Wittgenstein, with my dream Wittgenstein quote: 'I don't try to make you believe something you don't believe, but to make you do something you won't do.' Too bad it's not written down in any of W.'s own things.

20 Jan '04 05:51:06 AM

I'm not sure but I think Jay just boasted about having an Indiglo watch so bright that he could use it to render bitches distracted so he could fuck them. I'm not sure if that's silly or not.

19 Jan '04 10:56:50 PM

'Imagine if I put my heart in this', Beans says. Yes. Wouldn't that be something?

18 Jan '04 11:06:17 AM

'The story of this novel amounts to this, that the story that ought to be told in it is not told.'

18 Jan '04 10:00:03 AM

And again:

Derek Bailey / Ballads
Luomo / Vocalcity
Scarface / The Fix
Sonic Youth / Daydream Nation
Miles records: E.S.P., Miles Smiles, Nefertiti, Miles in the Sky, Filles de Kilimanjaro

17 Jan '04 09:37:51 PM

Gff has suggested that his lyrical find would be better notated:

bounce. bitch.

I suggested:

bounce; bitch

And now it seems we're at an impasse. Just like musical notation, it seems Western punctuation is insufficient to capture the nuances of Jay-Z records.