12-01-2024 

Cannot believe we have reached December! Gonna be a long winter, getting us ready

for a long 4 years. But it is also the day Sarah McBride, the first transgender congresswoman, was invited to the New Yorker Radio Hour and showed so much passion, guts, and hope in defense of the American democratic experiment that I am presently believing Trump is pushing his luck so far that he will fail.

—–

Today is also the day when I listened to a totally improbable radio program! On France-Musique, every Sunday, “Repassez-moi le Standard” puts together a compilation of different versions of the same popular song, world popular I should say.

This morning, the song was Pete Seeger’s ‘Where are all the flowers gone?’. What a deeply nostalgic song this is! And how moving it became to listen to it over and over, in very different but all moving versions. In English, German or French. From Marlene Dietrich to Wes Montgomery to Joan Baez … I cannot believe that the bit of Americana contained in this song made me so emotional … I was conflating this with what Sarah McBride telling us what history had taught her about America’s ability to reboot in times of despair. Who would have dreamt of the New Deal in 1929? Who would have dared believing in a Civil Rights in 1960?  Where was Barack Obama in 2000? The answer to these questions, for Sarah McBride, is in her belief that there is a spirit of hope and resilience in America, which will prove stronger and prevail.

My words are poor to transmit her faith, for sure. But her signature off-key voice still rings in my ear. It gives her credibility and to the many who heard her this morning, a lot of heart. I can remember the time, about when I started this diary in fact, my belief was that the LGBTQ+ constellation was showing the way to liberation. I still believe it of course, only more convincingly!

Then I remembered – it makes some sense – Lee Atwater, a native  son of South Carolina – who taught the new generations of republicans how to manipulate what he called ‘wedge issues’, to split the fragile unity of the other party, like the intimate life of political opponents. All lies permitted, of course.

No limits to hatred?

No limits – now?

No limits? No!

Not so fast – tho!

Not so sure – yo!

I believe that it will prove as dangerous to ignore unifying issues to win the next elections as it has proved productive to use wedge issues at the last.

I am thinking about CLIMATE CHANGE. Unbelievably the issue hardly came up this time around, although most people in America and the world cannot ignore the imminent danger. The opposite is true with the WORKING CLASS issue. As the wealth gap is stirring up unrest everywhere, and as the WORKING CLASS is starving, it is totally ignored. It is all about the MIDDLE CLASS.

And then, adding YOUTH as a wedge issue, it is understood to be the generation to save or lose the  planet. Yet, they are denied education and the rights to choose.

—–

My new slogan:           contre l’évidence, la répression.

AGAINST EVIDENCE, REPRESSION

—–

All these loose commentaries are important to me. They keep me spinning and, when the Tuesday morning Creative Sync comes up, I may have a Checkin ready. A basic one maybe but my own and not about me. Important, nowadays, to declare one’s sources, whether self or other.

 

12-03-2024

Contre l’évidence, la répression.

This phrase came to me a few days ago

It got lost in my mind, in French!

Meaning:

Against evidence: repression.

In reference to the rise of authoritarianism around a world which – this is not accidental – experiences … what ?… in common?

My answer is that, in common, the world is experiencing the anxiety of climate change. Which could prove to be a deadly episode of global history with global lasting effects.

At the risk of repeating myself in this diary, I believe that the fringe of traders, shareholders and CEOs, who amass petro-techno-silicono-politico dollars, are scared shitless of the coming climatic episode in question. In their search of a scapegoat, they have sketched the profile of a human hybrid, a cross between Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a communist/socialist/collectivist, enemy of financial capitalism, fixated on issues like the working class, wage disparity, economic justice and democracy. This hybrid may be improbable but, with its powerful sense of autonomy and independence, it will be much closer to what most Americans would love to see their country look like. We  just don’t know how to articulate and verbalize this dream yet. Well, Bernie Cortez will give them the tools to. NO!  Bernie Cortez will give them  the knowledge needed to originate a renewed collective sense of what the American democracy could look like if … the two-party system does not sink in its binarism, does not offer a clearer choice between alternative political programs.

So far, no soap. No hope. Maybe the end of my rope!

—–

Yes, I may be at the end of my rope with this journal as it is.

Because TINYisPOWERFUL seems dormant and/or does not generate enough occasions to forage through my brains, I revert to less relevant topics for the collective. I blabbermouth about pseudo-political topics not even worthy of a mediocre blog. And I am tired of that. I want intellectual challenges and I am served questions taken care of weeks ago, as far as I am concerned. Like this morning, at the Creative Sync, the topic of Product and Process came back up. I pointed out that I had proposed a paper for the NewsLetter in October.  No return, no feedback. I thought a new NewsLetter was going to give new opportunities to tinker. It will have to wait. Who knows how we will communicate across the ocean, when GG and I are in France?

Need to take a break, anyway.

 

12-04-2024

Victoria called me this morning to make sure I understood what yesterday’s conversation about a fundraiser with Fresh Future Farm and Marcus as organizer, was all about. I explained that my confusion was from still having a hard time understanding what he says when he does not articulate. Since I know that both his parents are deaf, I understand his own speech must have been influenced. Isn’t it fascinating though, to be privy to such a particularity in someone else’s life.

Otherwise, my main frustrations, these days, stem from Zoom and the loss of collective dynamics it is responsible for. Meaning the total absence of live dialogue within the group. For example, this papers I am writing for the Diary and the NewsLetter, with the collective in mind, frustrates me especially … But, I may be dreaming of a cigaret smoke-filled room where, around an editor’s table, the headlines of the day are being decided upon! Nostalgia? No. Denial of humanity.

More to the point, my essay, “Process and Product – Isn’t dissociation a terminal state of individualism?”, (an excerpt from the diary dated 10-26-2024), was in reaction to Rayn’s use of the word ‘self-expression’ … Now, I wonder whether the writing of this diary is not a troubled, counter-intuitive response to the isolation Zoom is responsible for. Isn’t diary writing a solitary activity?

 

12-05-2024

France, in a political crisis! Today, the government has fallen. Yesterday there was a long program on Mediapart, more than two hours of exchanges among citizens, politicians and scholars, to prepare the readership for that fall. Throughout, there was hardly any mention of the climate crisis. When it popped up though, the only answer was a promise to get back to it before the end of the program . Of course there is no direct cause and effect chain between the fall of a government and the rising waters of the Seine river or the latest super-tempest over Britany. My contention is that such negligence over the most undeniable phenomena of today’s world’s experiences collectively, obvious to all without exception, is a sign that the political sphere has not yet integrated climate change into a renewed thinking, an undated language, a sense of the future. How much more powerful would the declared admission of climate change be if it forced publications like Mediapart to center its whole vision in that direction? I believe the journalists of Mediapart can accomplish such a feast. The sensory pressure it would apply on the body and mind of all concerned. A decisive step towards light, that would sear political agendas on the forehead! Denial no more. Climat change is a common denominator of daily living. A universal common ground. Not only a game changer, a language changer, an imaginary charger!

There may not yet be a positive cause and effect chain between climate change and policies, but it is undeniable that there is a deliberate unison of reactionary governments everywhere, calling climate activists eco-terrorists and treating them as such, Extinction-Rebellion for example. University students. And what about censorship in public libraries? Isn’t denying the existential need to reinforce climate laws a political choice? It is a global concern of the people. Don’t governments represent the people? The same people that scream NOT IN MY NAME.

Indeed, there is an intersection between climate change and politics. One of its most obvious and most forceful platforms is EcoFeminism. I was introduced  to ecofeminism through contemporary writers from South America and Spain. What strikes me most about them is how much liberty they take with the canons of their cultures, how consistent they are in their disregard and how far they carry it. Although the books I did read are literary, not theoretical works, there are always serious consequences to draw from them, due to the clarity of the authors’ vision and purpose, and the extent to which their characters assume consequences. The inner dynamics of ecofeminism as a movement, if movement there is, becomes obvious in the way its heroes do not spell out dogmas but live dynamic, activist, incredibly imaginative lives, inspired by principles of solidarity and autonomy in dissent. Anarchy at its most constructive! And, how ebulliently the arts and the spirit of the arts participate in the discomfiture of masculinist supremacy! One could believe all these women-writers are prophets of … let’s each have her choices of imaginaries!

What makes ecofeminism so powerful is that, as its tenets are naturally rhizomic, so are its strong sense of belonging in/with Nature, its diversity, its fragility also, its resilience, its inevitability.

It is getting ever clearer to me that the whole purpose of this diary is to conjure up bodies, minds and tools for liberation and transformation.

 

12-06-2024

Will today be a day of uplifting surprises?

Homer – Angela – Abriel. Three African-American friends, who filled my morning with gracious communications.

Around 8:00am – Homer, a neighbor with whom I shared my knowledge of what a woodworking router could do for him, called to let me know that, after his morning bible study, he thought of me! How much he had enjoyed our time in the studio, when together we built a large set of shelves he had been talking about for months, even years, but could not do alone, because he just didn’t know how to use the tool. He had purchased a plunge router years before still, along with the most complete set of bits I ever saw. Well, we finally got together in summer 23, a few afternoons that is. I remember showing him, guiding him and letting him loose as soon as I felt he was secure, as I like to do. We truly had a good time … He painted the set in a low luster black and ever since, every time he enters his library, he says, he is so proud and happy to have easy access to his history books! Homer is a historian who gardens professionally for a living. For years he took care of his old mother. She died a few months ago and ever since he works to keep up with bills, he says. A very nice gentleman for sure.

Right after 8:00am – her call came right after Homer had hung up! Angela appeared on the WhatsApp screen! Dressed to kill, a big smile and obviously outdoors. I understood she was walking. Her image was bouncing, her voice was straining … She was traveling with Muthi and a friend. “I won’t be able to have our French lesson today. We are in Dakar! – she announced. Jean-Marie, I want you to see the ocean. Wait a second, I am getting there.” She pointed her phone to a grand and gray Atlantic seascape. We had a long, joyous laugh of complicity. We knew how much dark symbolism and history we were sharing at that moment:  the Atlantic – the Middle Passage – America … as well as the many Friday morning hours we spent reading Rosa Luxemburg in French, on Zoom, one in Philadelphia, the other in Charleston! Nowadays we share the lessons with E. and K., Angela’s children + Muthi, most times. Rosa has been put aside for now and we try to be more conventional. Not an obvious proposition!

Gwylène often remarks on how much better we get along with Black folks than with your average American WASP (white-anglo-saxon-protestant!!). It’s a fact. Anglos are establishment whereas we and our black friends share living on a knife’s edge, so to speak. Whether it is by choice or out of necessity, we understand what it is to be considered ‘a minority’. They are black for ever. We are French still. One same combat. Not for status, not for merit, for equity and access. For civility too.

Continuing the list of African-American friends we keep in touch with always: Yesterday: Victoria and Darryl were the only people I talked to over the phone. The former is in Charleston, our fierce TINYisPOWERFUL leader. Even when there is not much to say, it is good to keep in touch. Don’t we all, sometimes, survive on mutual support only? Gwylène for one, in the unrolling and sometimes worrisome history of the collective, is the rock who keeps the stream on course.

Then, Darryl. Not that yesterday was the most rewarding conversation we ever had – there was nothing new to report – it remains important for Charleston and Santa Fe to keep in touch. He wanted us to know that he was having lunch with Lucile Lippard! She is 88 now, if I remember well. I read her in the 70’s and can hardly remember any of her work! But, Darryl likes to have interesting encounters like this to keep his moral up, in a town which he considers mostly superficial, snobbish and pompously ignorant.

 

12-07-2024

Today, I must continue my list! The old scrap metal man came by for the third time this week. The first two times Gwylène talked to him. He wanted to see me. I was not up to it at all. She lied for me: “Jean-Marie is not here today”, she would answer. Then, this morning, again, he rang. This time I had to answer the door. I don’t like to hide or lie like this. I knew he would get into a long story about why he needed help today! He does not have a working car to do his job of going around this side of town and picking up metal junk, scraps, whatever he can sell back to the Charleston Steel yard. I gave him $5. He left very relieved that his former two visits had not meant a final rejection! Far from it, as a matter of fact. I had already told Gwylène that I had been thinking of donating the Volvo to him, rather than handing it to ETV for their present fundraiser!

—–

And what about the viewing of  “Back de Green”, facilitated by Marcus and with Abriel at the center of the evening.?

Very successful session, with over 20 participants between in-person and Zoom attendance. Travis, the film maker was with us and answered many questions . So did Abriel, from that good group of mostly under-30 people, 2/3 black. They staid long after the end of the film (20 minutes of it only were shown). Abriel was very thorough, showing her enthusiasm for the process and the studio work. At the end, seeing how much attention she was drawing, I proposed that we meet, around a Question-Relay session, once the piece would be finished. I even saw some aquiescements!

 

12-08-2024

The sadistic tyrant of his own Syrian people, Assad, has been toppled off his throne of  gold and blood. It took but a few days to see his power melt away. Although I had read a few days earlier that he had decided to raise his army’s salaries – a sign that he was worried – the troupes did not lift a finger for the regime and he did the only thing that could spare him from a Ceausescu-style hanging: flee to Moscow, sweet home of the brave. Hope it bodes well for the future of Syria.

—–

Same day, Saleha, whose husband was born in Syria I believe, came for some woodwork I occasionally do with her the same way she does occasional sewing for

“a Tale of Charleston/ for Reparations”. For sure, the world Gwylène and I live in is multi-cultural. It is the only way we conceive the work we do. Its meaning is to be found in a sense of the universal, undergirded by respect for the local. Hoping that both local and global together give full meaning to our claims for equity, access and peace, since the world won’t be at peace as long as all of its corners are not at peace.

 

12-09-2024

Just watched the Edward Saïd movie from his book “Orientalism”. What is striking, again and again, is Saïd’s poise in front of adversaries. He is obviously the voice of ancestral wisdom, that which was gestated through 3000 years of Middle Eastern culture(s), centered so much around Palestine. Not a nation, more like a geographical notion defined, throughout the centuries by diversity, transits and transitions, amazing religious developments and tolerance. Altogether a land of intellectual high ground. I say, Israel could have been part of this germinal land. Israel is presently denying itself its participation in a flourishing of Palestine and the Palestinian people.

Mr. Netanyahu, this is what arrogance, informed by masculinism and boorishness – foolish self-induced ignorance, in other words – brings to the people you do not represent. Your cruelty does the rest.

Before this monstrous violence, Edward Said, at the beginning of his stay, his exile(?) in the US, admits he is astonished, baffled by the hostility of some of his Columbia colleagues. Here he is, he explains, born in Palestine where folks are forced to follow the rules dictated by New-York Jews who may never have set foot there, and who call him a terrorist in their city! Is this how the Powerful, insecure and feeling threatened, always do to the displaced people who chose to live in their midst

Contre l’évidence, la répression – Against evidence, repression.

—–

Trying to translate a sharp saying about the right to enjoy an affordable dwelling:

The right for all to have a home must overrule the possibility for a minority to have many.

Well put by a collective of housing rights activists in Basque Country, France. The ALDR also fights against very short leases, short rentals, RB&B, which mean ever more concrete poured to satisfy the greed of the landlord class …

Altogether in defense of ecology, access and equity!

Every time I reflect on this universal dereliction, an images comes to me of river banks in Indonesia, ocean edges in West Africa, thousands of square miles of water surfaces mired in plastic waste and abject refuse, solid enough for children to walk on, thick enough to prevent the traffic of small boats … I cannot but compare this to the millions spent by France to make one kilometer of the Seine river swimmable by olympians, for the two weeks of the Games.

 

12-11-2024

This morning, one of my favorite French sources of information relevant for our social consciousness  at TINYisPOWERFUL, ‘le Monde Diplomatique’, offers two reminders.   . One revives our memory of Simone Weil, the French philosopher. I am buying a biography by her friend Simone Pétrement. She has always fascinated me with the number of life experiments she got herself into, just to compassionately share their experience with all sorts of struggling people, in order to empathize with and be witness to what they really go through. From volunteers in the Spanish Civil War, to factory workers, to Second World War ‘Résistants’, she lived with them to know them. She even had a brush with catholicism late in her short life. I’ll know more soon. Never too late!

          . The other one concerns the twelve social classes of Erik Olin Wright. Far from the sketchy lower/middle/upper categories, he adds width and depth to class analysis by considering property, money, education, culture, skills as essential elements behind the definition of class and relationship with the state. For example, the Capitalist class which owns the means of production at the work place, the Managerial class and its authority over workers, the Petty Bourgeoisie, the Working class which has no ownership of its means of production, the Servant class and as many more classes as the refining of his analysis permits … A study which pulls academia out of its binary modes or gives everyone finer tools for defining their social identity …

12-12-2024

Yesterday, I did not mention how Simone Weil also wrote a small essay on why all political parties should be terminated! “Note on the general suppression of political parties”, was written in 1940 in London and published in France in 1950, posthumously. She considered parties to be oppressive structures where members are inevitably led to conform to party opinion, whereas political practice should be one of liberation, collective liberation.

What makes this writing of Weil even more relevant to me at the moment is that, last night, during a long program about Macron and the French political collapse, one of the participants sort of had the same language as she, concerning the effects of political parties on their membership. The fact is that polarization is often due to a collective deafness brought about by precisely the usual call for unity … indespensible to defeat the opposite side. Except that, in France right now, on the left, there is a confusion on who the enemy is + in such a hostile climate one tends to forget that the democratic debate is always ill-served by angry and frustrated egos, polarizing rather than unifying.

 

12-14-2024

So difficult to figure out the next step in the final stretch of “a Tale of Charleston/Tale for Reparations”! It consists of a series of sub-steps needed to finish the Sedan Chair, last piece of the ensemble. The closer I get to the end, the harder the decisions. Which is logical since this final piece is being defined by everything that preceded it. The path has been traced. I cannot fall off track. Yet my mind needs to remain free enough to make creative moves to the end.

Right now, the most difficult choice concerns the Guignol side of the sedan chair. There are many possibilities. I know that, whatever the decision, I will need Gwylène to hold my hand for the design of the two -or more- characters. I think I want them to be 3/4 view silouhettes of Guignol and a gendarme, mounted on wood sticks, facing each other. Yet, isn’t this confrontation too much of a binary? I would like to add a third character, like Gnafron or Madelon. Translated into American folklore, this would be Punch, Judy and one more. Possibly Mister Jack, the cop!

Or, now, how about a Jack and Judy confrontation? Binary, yes, but surely a representation of present reality. And not too obviously demagogical or self-serving.

—–

Gwylène just discovered that 701 CCA had sent us an invitation to participate in a memorialization of Wim, last Friday night. It makes me extremely sad to realize again and again that we have lost a potentially good, enriching friendship. Eileen came to see us a few times after his death. Now, we have not seen her for 8 or 10 month. Too bad, I say. And at the same time, so much like the way Americans often behave. It is not indifference, it is that life goes on! Does this mean that moving on is more important than dwelling on memories, regrets, conjectures? Is this what one calls American pragmatism?  Byproduct of expediency?  Shouldn’t it be the other way around? Never bodes well for the weak and the meek!

I sent a note to Eileen. I had to express to her my deep sadness as well as that of Gwylène.

 

12-15-2024

I keep wondering how this country is going to be governed by one handful of billionaires and one of perverts! I also wonder why Trump has made such a deliberately provocatively inadequate choice of actors for his next cabinet, short of wanting to destroy his country. Then, I turn to the French situation and I see how the president, there, has made a different choice, just as perverse though. Twice that I know, Macron has invited all French citizens, in a nationwide “book of grievances/register of dreams” – type of public offer, to communicate to him how he should govern in order fulfill their visions … Only to literally sequester all the answers and disregard them altogether. The first time was right after the revolt of the”Gillets Jaunes”, which was savagely repressed. The second time, the man himself had convened a cohort of citizens to come up with a climate agenda he promised to implement to a T. After months of studious work, indeed, the proposals were dismissed. Why such arrogance?

Governance and climate. The two keys to guaranteeing the world’s future. Yet, both Trump and Macron, among other world leaders, seem to believe that it is possible to find solutions to either issue without solutions to the other. This level of obstinate ignorance amounts to a lie. Our fearless flag wavers must believe that the greater the catastrophe, the more chances for them and the super-privileged to augment their hold on power. As for governance specifically … they will turn more and more towards authoritarianism because there will be more and more resistance from below and facts will prove stronger than words.

 

12-21-2024

Listening to Chopin’s opus 23 – the first Ballade. I sense the construction of the piece  around a repetitive motif, an obsessed image of love lost, I believe. Between repeats, Chopin expresses anxiety, exhilaration, fear, exhortation  … but he repeats. He continues. To an inescapable ending. No choice. Could there be an act of creation without it? Can there be creation at all, can there be art at all and no ending? An art piece is a development with an ending. It is not an ‘acte manqué’.

This Chopin stubbornness is encouraging me. It helps me understand the dialectics at work in ‘a Tale of Charleston/for reparations’. Not only is the effort extended and slow, it also ebbs and flows, it advances through times of fatigue, of exhilaration and fear, doubt and more fatigue. Yet it moves on and its motivations recur. This recurrence defines a punctuation, an unstoppable pace towards an inescapable ending.

The Tale is coming to an end

The physical end of a rolling stream of creativity

I may not know what waters I will bathe in next but

Doesn’t this uncertainty keeps the exploration fertile

The making relevant

The ending possible

Chopin’s Ballade replays, over and over, as Philippe Cassart walks his listeners through multiple interpretations, from Cortot to Horowitz and Rubinstein. It is getting almost too irritatingly emotional … Good thing he is now introducing the next title on his list.

How often has music gotten me in such a state in the past! When I am alone in the house or in the studio, for an extended time, if some neighbor were to eavesdrop on my musical choices, (s)he may doubt my sanity! At times, I put the CD player on ‘repeat’, loud enough for that could-be-neighbor to hear, I stop all activities and dive into the whirling currents of an imaginary river … I dream of bobbing along, on my back, till I feel the dangerous pull of an approaching waterfall! The end.

 

12-23-2024

Back at it! ‘A Tale’ is front and center. The dilemma of more formal choices v. less license to mentally meander is, from what Gwylène tells me, not an issue since, for her, there is no end to an endless quest. Otherwise, it may not be art we are talking about. It may be a form of auto-therapy! A slide into introversion. A way to divert from the general anxiety of the times.

Here, I mean to address the fact that the closer I get to the waterfall in yesterday’s metaphor – the end – the wider the range of formal vocabulary I have developed earlier in the making of the piece and which I refers to for visual continuity, the narrower the range of concepts available, in what the installation as a whole has become: ‘a visual paradigm in progress’.

—–

Gwylène is asking me to produce edited pages of this diary for the upcoming TINYisPOWERFUL NewsLetter. This request may force me to decide whether I will continue including para-political bits in it or not. At least, the question remains open. I really should stay away from ‘opinion pieces’. They always find a miserable death in the trappings of some rabbit hole. Who needs this aggravation? … Otherwise, Trump is still feeding newspapers and ourselves with anxiogenic news which paralyze, freeze in place all possibilities of collective hope … See, stay away from para-politics. Do not confuse entertainment with political speech . One is distraction, the other is our future.

—–

Victoria, this morning, informs me of a conversation she had with Abriel yesterday.

The present TINYisPOWERFUL artist in residence seems to be getting a lot from her experience in the studio. Together we slowly build an understanding of what content (relevant issues and thoughts which feed a piece of in/with community art) does to form and how this interaction makes the sculptor’s work a celebration of human ingeniosity,

(the skills and tools it takes to transform an imaginary into a livable reality).

What I do for Abriel is supplying her with my limited accumulated knowledge to sharpen her ingeniosity. She definitely has the imaginaries. She is not afraid of tools and she quickly acquires the skills. All she needs is the ingeniosity which, in her case, proves to be relatively easy to access, because she is eager, courageous and very aware.

Altogether, the collaboration we practice around her project is totally beneficial to the two of us for sure. Were it only for one basic reason: it takes two – or more- to exchange, to dialogue, to learn, and to build a common history of what it took to see the project through, to an end! Collective experience.

Thank you, Abriel!

 

12-25-2024

One more year under the belt! I am turning 82.

I read a piece by Joseph Confavreux which surprises me with its breadth of knowledge and information but also by the scantness of its conclusion. Coming from this smart guy, it must be the nature of the subject he treats which gives him cold feet! In this case, he reviews the pros, the cons, the with(s) and the against(s), alternatives and nuances for different schools of political thinking … and at the end, he forgets what will count most  at the end, in these times of vicious egos: open-mindedness and innovation, long term fraternity projects, all out solidarity and actionable trust.

The other day, Greg W. came to visit. He was the manager of the Cary Café for some years, after he had left his choice field of studies (biology). He went back to his original carrier after his stint at Fast&French. He sounded a bit unsure about his future … Can I say ‘Again’? He is not 60, retired, and, for a living, he rents apartments he has bought and rehabbed . Not a bad way to survive, but what a very unrewarding and demeaning activity it is to have other people make a living for you! He just collects an abusive part of their labor. He is a landlord. This is exploitative capitalism. This does not boost his morale! I suggested that he look into cooperative approaches to being a bobo! I suggested that he read about Mondragon and other cooperative movements. Do some good with your property. Don’t just squeeze out a good life for yourself at the expense of anyone else … We will see! … When he left, he mumbled that he was interested in the idea of cooperative … Yes, we will see. But it is good to keep in touch with folks you worked with years ago and who come visit their former boss every time they are in town.

 

12-28-2024

France is abandoning its arts sector. Cultural budgets are cut at all levels, national regional, departmental, municipal. Altogether the cumulated cuts can reach 60% or more. For some entities, they simply have to stop operating.

My first reaction could be that here, in the US, things may become terribly sour as well. Politically, the arts and artists are considered hostile by most right wing ideologies. Outside of some major public institutions under the umbrella of prestige and propaganda, the practice of art is mostly defined as an individual endeavor of self expression left for private money to take care of. My contention is that, when one believes that the arts are a distillation of the daily experiences of the people, with the people, by the people, for the people, then, what  they – the arts – require to prosper is not public or private money. It is collective mingling.

… Now, the Kennedy Center in DC will be under the direct control of the president and, for good, progressive measure, all new public building will fall under the architectural rubric of Greek or Roman revival, a sign of renewed enlightened ignorance.