11-3-2024
I woke up this morning with a thought I believed has momentum – after a night longer by
one hour due to time change. This extra hour gave me a chance to listen to today’s NPR New Yorker Sunday morning program, this time with Liz Cheney and Rachel Maddow … of all media stars … and to brain-spin! Here it is, in the form of a question:
Isn’t dissociation a terminal state of individualism?
[This could actually be the title for the article in the next TINYisPOWERFUL newsletter!]
My answer is yes. And to choose it for a piece on Process and Product seems to be a natural. It has nothing to do with the politics of Maddow, Cheney or the New Yorker, and everything to do with the people’s politics, and polity. I would only have to list the key-words in the above diary entries to prove it. But one short phrase does incapsulate my whole purpose, I believe: collective intelligence. Is it being lost? Or has it already been lost? … In which case dissociation is the culprit.
Not much to add on the subject right now! I am just impatient to get to other searches, not so clearly related to 2024 presidential developments! Like … Integrity and Dissociation! How exciting can this be?
Where does this urge to know further come from but the spirit of the arts? Sounds like Michel Serres: no thinking, no dreaming, no art without anticipating!
At our own risk, I add.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ end of NewsLetter entry
11-06-2024
THE DAY AFTER
Yesterday I could have written: Morgen is auch ein Tag
Today I must write: Heute ist auch ein Tag
‘Today is just an other day’ in the life of the giant, beastly machine, so very unfit to feed 335 millions voracious Americans! Trump’s anointment has not, for one second, slowed the flesh grinding that their labor is and the regurgitation of mountains of byproducts and waste that their consumption is. As of January 20th, Trump will be the byproduct of America’s waste.
Harris or Trump, what is the difference for the monster?
This morning also, my little Scion dashboard blinked: Maintenance requested.
Called CIA (Charlestowne’s Import Automotive) for appointment
Appointment scheduled … routine …
America is on a roll
Must keep moving
Like Shostakovich – Cello concerto #1 – Allegretto
Music better than words?
Art over politics?
NO. Art is politics?
NO, in/with community art is political.
Let’s make it our cause:
the relevance of art depends on what we understand to be political.
11-08-2024
This site refers to the largest one-time sale of slaves, which took place in Charleston in 1835. The irony here is that this legion of 600 humans-for-sale was only part of the estate of the deceased John Ball Jr., who was the ancestor of present John Ball, who wrote ‘Slaves in the family’ in 1998. Present John Ball was a good regular at Fast& French before he left town! Not having read his book, I am not sure he knew the true extent of his ancestor’s slave-holding. Neither did he know that in 2024, a historic marker would expose this history to the wide wild world!
—–
Impossible to find out the voters turnout for this 2024 election. It is usually one of the major markers. How can I speculate on the whereabouts of the 2 million votes Trump lost between now and 2020 and of the 10 or more million democrats lost as well? This represents a huge, huge loss of silent voices no one seems to be concerned about. I personally feel very comfortable imagining large scale manipulations. Mostly since Trump still talks about 2020 as being stolen from him and 2024 as perfectly honest!
Abriel is also telling me that many of her friends have encountered difficulties voting for all sorts of reason like late reception of mailing ballots, absence of their name on the voting rolls, wrong information about voter’s registration and driver’s license in SC ….
Let’s say that I feel free to have my doubts and hope they have nothing to do with paranoia!
——
Amazing to see how the panel of French political analysts specialized in American politics, which I followed last night, fixates on the religious side of the Trump victory! And particularly the catholic spectrum which seems so influential with JD Vance among many! And Biden of course.
Certainly, there is also the whole Evangelical push for ultra-conservative values. When one remembers how much hypocrisy and corruption American faith organizations were burdened with in the 1980s and 90s (as ever), how can anybody believe that they are not, today, after anything but big power and big money … and the crushing of womanhood? This widely justifies my insistence on exploring dissociation. And my revulsion at established religion or anything religious in politics. No room for redemption here! What is there to ‘redempt’ when entire communities are prevented from integrating their thinking with their doing, when persons unravel, lay undone?
—–
I have to admit something though!
I woke up this morning with a thought clear as branch water: it is not because Trump won big (?) and has such a dangerous repress and reform agenda that he will not encounter major resistance. And in two years, he will face the music for sure. It is a usual replay when a new president, who has just won the presidency and the two chambers, sees his political sweep reduced to naught when electors express their updated disenchantment with their vote. Where are the young women, the pro-Palestine cohorts, students or not, the handicapped, the immigrants who feel insulted for good reasons? It seems that the discontent has been silenced, swallowed up, swept away by the winds of unstoppable change. I mean, specifically, discontent owes it to the media, mass or not, to have been unreported as not on script. No surprise though. The cowardise of the Washington Post’s editorial staff was the latest manifestation of what it means to be owed by a billionaire, for the freedom of the printed press! We could also talk about the freedom of the digital media/pretend press and about Musk and his instant power grab for having delivered Trump a sweeping victory.
But no, this morning, a bird was singing in my head and my heart was light. When Bill came to drop off the yellow paint I had asked him for, my message was one of optimism and joy almost! Bill is an elementary teacher; I felt compelled to cheer him up. His responsibility over the future of the young must be hard to carry today. Although he expressed doubt about reaching a state of optimism, he thanked me for the boost! But now, as I am trying to translate the experience on paper, no word comes out or is strong enough …
Then, why did Gwylène choose this moment to recite a quote from Tony Morrison about the power of art? The timing was perfect. She was justifying the optimism consistently melded in the practice of art. Isn’t this enough to keep us fed and going? I think so.
There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal. I know the world is bruised and bleeding, and though it is important not to ignore its pain, it is also critical to refuse to succumb to its malevolence. Like failure, chaos contains information that can lead to knowledge – even wisdom. Like art.
Tony Morrison
+++++++++++++++ EDITED ABOVE THIS LINE
11-10-2024
All this is terribly exciting! Artists do not retire. Artists do not despair. Artists hold the healing power of ‘civilizations’ in their hands … And terribly more dire: artists will be identified and targeted, bruised. They may bleed but will not succomb.
—–
Yesterday afternoon, Gwylène had decided she would go to the Cannon street Art Center and check out a performance titled: “This is not a Performance”. I went along. The artist is Rachel Wyley. She is black. Her purpose, I guess, is to shake up the audience with her upfront offer for the public to participate. She was actually going as far as promissing that her performance would go the way the public wanted it to go … The show started as a typical dialogue between an artist on stage and an audience, below. Not very exciting and, for me, at times, hard to hear … At one point I felt it was the right time for me to step in. I got up and asked her if I could come on stage and sit with her. I sat very close to her, on the last step of a stairs prop. Looking straight at her, then turning to the audience, I asked what it meant to perform as a Black woman, in front of an all white audience, at this (political) moment, in a city like Charleston. I went on: with someone sitting next to you as I am, can you still call our dialogue a performance, whereas, alone on stage, you would, for sure, be performing. Then I stood up and hopped back to my seat. The applause did not mean that someone else was eager to replace me up there! However, she herself, after a while, came down and sat in the room with the audience. This made a difference in the quality of her presence. She was not performing any longer. She was seeking a public dialogue.
Later on, in the middle of the night, it became very clear to me why being alone on a stage, whatever stage, is performing. This meant, just as clearly, that it takes two (or more) to NOT perform but to exchange. Reciprocity is a peace-seeking exercise.
—–
<inequality.org> , a subsidiary of the Institute for Policy Studies
11-14-2024
It is less and less credible to affirm that pro-Palestinian means Antisemitic and that antisemitism and anti-Zionism go hand in hand. There is no confusion here. There is a partisan language with possibly violent political consequences. Case in point: what to make of the fact that when the Israeli national soccer team was invited to meet the French team in Paris, everyone understood that it may create confrontations like those in England a few days ago? The politics of international sport work both ways. They may open doors for diplomacy but also become sources of antagonistic passions. And what of the fact that three, yes three, French Presidents or former French Presidents of the French Republic chose to show up? In support of what? I admit it, when I saw this triple endorsement, I did not explode in anger, I exploded in laughter! Wasn’t this hyper-hypo(critical) presidential smokescreen, exposed and ridiculed by the fact that the stadium was only 20% full!? Nebulous politics are not a potent energizer! A very bad show at the end. I do not know the final score. I suppose it was a draw! The soccer world is known for its corruptive influence on politics, professional sports and, at the end of the chain but most consequentially, on the people who love the sports … What do they get? Negative reenforcement: the sport-money-politics dirt pile.
11-15-2024
Yesterday afternoon there was a TINY INVESTIGATION, facilitated by Pam and Gwylène. I did not appreciate its apparent vagueries until this morning, when Gwylène and I agreed that such a hybrid meeting, with Zoom participation, in person presence and the projection of a movie, was quite a difficult, technical feat, considering the means TINYisPOWERFUL has at hand. Besides, it was taking place at Pam’s new home, something like the discovery of a virgin land! A vast townhouse in the middle of a nicely landscaped environment. In such contrast with Pam’s former place (the one I knew, at least), small and so cramped that it would have been impossible to accommodate half of yesterday’s event there. I am sure folks would have better shared Pam’s joy to offer her place, had they known it was a first, new to her as much as to us. An EXPERIMENT … in reciprocity, what else!
This morning then, I vented my frustrations. But, as I started understanding the challenge, I ventured that exposing it to the audience in depth, in candor, and presenting it as the EXPERIMENT it really was, would have made it so much more authentic, empathetic. I went as far as remembering the success of conNECKtedTOO’s “Charleston Cut”. The project was introduced to each barber as an attempt at presenting them and their barbershop as everyday, friendly, local amenities. Their essential role as hubs of community living would come later. The final pitch! There was a managed simplicity and a warmth to that experiment; the simplicity and warmth of an art in/with community project in the making; a give-and-take where everyone’s attention is not only on the performance but also on the sharing.
To deliberately present yesterday’s event as an EXPERIMENT would have possibly better achieved the intended goal of ‘making community’ around the daily life of TINYisPOWERFUL artists, meeting and talking shop. The technical obstacles would have been seen as part of the EXPERIMENT as well … at least by impatient me! Impatient and now sorry not to have enjoyed what was offered, the way it was offered.
PS: Victoria, when I reiterated to her my interest in the EXPERIMENT side, answered that it may not be convincing enough to guarantee Donnelly’s continued support. She may well be right!
11-18-2024
Yesterday, ROOTS had a Zoom session around the notion of power: where is the power at ROOTS? One of the facilitators was Alice Lovelace. She seems to have gone through hard times lately. On screen, she appeared very grey of skin and her hair has turned completely white. However, she still has her extraordinary contagious stamina and proposed a warming exercise to prove the ‘power’ of art. She was so convincing that I jumped in, although I cannot stand any ‘art-making’ quickie, like a poem, a drawing, a one-liner or the “tell us in one word” type proposition! Later on, I told Gwylène that Alice was one of the rare people I am in awe of. She so intimidates me that when I meet her, usually with Gwylène, I say hello and step back. After all, she is contagious! But now, I think that the next time I meet her, I will attempt a conversation.
11-21-2024
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/21/green-new-deal-from-below-legislation
I have been a supporter of the Green New Deal from the start. The way it clearly envisions the development of green energy sources, along with a parallel ethical, economic/financial, imaginative, liberated sense of what the future can be for young generations – they are at the heart of our concern – presently ignored by most politicians. Except when it is a matter of sabotaging public education with more book bans and religious fundamentalism.
In this sentence, rather unexpectedly, I have covered the full array of issues at the core of TINYisPOWERFUL’s vision, at least the way it comes out in this diary. It is clear to me that it defines a whole way of life, private or institutional. It exposes its main sources, presents the activities it inspires and all their corollaries. The diary, with its multi-directional character, intends to be the manifestation of a liberated mind seeking clarification, support, agency, from an uncontrollable number of imaginaries! An intellectual jungle really!
a primordial, mythical jungle
which never was but
why not
some day
may be!
This could be the dream, the energized imagining sought by ‘a Tale of Charleston/for Reparations’; a projection which does not deny any of the positive innovations brought about by this [our own, so far very sad and dystopian] 21st century. An imagining rid of the killer impulses of deculturation. In which the arts in/with community and the spirit of the arts are common practice … At this moment of heavy anxiety, my first request is to the political class and its horde of brain stuffers:
GIVE THE PEOPLE TIME TO IMAGINE.
—–
Michael Walzer is an American political philosopher who co-founded Dissent, the progressive magazine Darryl wrote articles for a while ago. Walzer’s stand on the Palestine conflict is extremely sensible and unusually informed, I think. I appreciate the way he approaches October 7. Although he finds Israel’s early response justifiable, as soon as the initial attacks had been launched and violence against civilians had become overwhelming, he considers the asymmetry and the limitless violence indefensible. Same judgement on the argument that Hamas uses its own civilian population as human shield and, therefore, is the sole culprit of the massacre.There is a quote I need to translate in full (I found it in French) to illustrate further Mr. Walzer’s consummate nuances: < As someone who attempted to study the Talmud, I am in a good position to know how difficult a task it is and how, to pretend that thousands of ultra-orthodox citizens have engaged in such a study, is a make-believe. Very few of them become knowledgable in religious matters, most of them become, first and foremost, ignoranti, who know nothing of the history of their country, the history of modern Europe, the history of the Middle-East. Israeli education is presently in crisis because the State is not controlling religious schools.>
The similarity with the direction American education has now taken is striking and worrisome.
Youth should be taught creativity. But it is fed dogmas.
The dream of ideologues the likes of Huckabee, new US ambassador to Jerusalem, is to control minds across the planet, all the way to Israel, erasing history or rewriting it to fit his evangelical politics. See what he propagates about Palestine being but an antisemitic notion. About as vicious as Golda Meyer! And such a very destructive ploy against popular education, designed to anchor ever deeper the dissociations which erode collective intelligence and shut it up.
At this point, I am talking about popular education and collective intelligence as global realities, with all their particular regionalisms – of course – but which contribute to a renewed global sense of universalism.
11-24-2024
This morning, discovery of Suliman Bachir-Diagne, a philosopher from Senegal who teaches at Columbia. A pure child of Senghor, Glissant and the poet-philosophers of universalism, yes! Same inspiration as yesterday’s Michael Walzer.
I really like the title of one of his latest books: “Le fagot de la mémoire”. How to translate this? A ‘fagot’ is a bundle of wood. Memoire is memory. Bachir-Diagne compares memory to a bundle of tree branches, often carried on the head, itself the seat of memory. In my colonial imagery I see dry, stunted sticks of wood, tidied together and carried on her head by a woman. Kindling for the domestic hearth … And how can I not remember that, a few days ago, I described this diary and the imaginings it evokes as a jungle? A primordial, mythical jungle. Do I have my categories crossed, joining together images of the abundance of jungles with the penury of Southern Sahara? Or do I attempt to feed America-the-Exceptional and soon to be Great-Again what it urgently needs: a high dose of exoticism, colors, smells and tastes of diversity … to make sure its global tentacles don’t fall off its desperately whited out body.
11-27-2024
Still handicapped by a very bad case of lumbago/lower back misery! It is tiring.
This morning I read a short article about the desire for Macron to elevate eminent French historian Marc Bloch – a hero of the French Resistance who was executed by the nazis in June 1944 – to the glory of a (symbolic) funeral at the Pantheon, in Paris.
His family quickly published a letter, the essence of which preventatively rejects the appropriation of everything ‘French'(and courageous) by the government: < ... We also reiterate that the work of this determined patriot is deeply anti-nationalistic, built against a National Tale and the reduction of French history to its national borders ... >.
Such a damning reminder that, indeed, the world is presently witnessing the ascent of ultra-nationalism, yet an other twisted version of exceptionalism. This will have very negative consequences on the urgent need for a coordinated, universal effort to think collectively at the scale of the planet, to save it.
In the case of France and Marc Bloch, Macron also manipulates Bloch’s jewish roots for political gain. What an opportunity to show off France’s solidarity with Israel! And indirectly endorse a basse lie: the conflation of pro-Palestinian and anti-semitic … Marc Bloch’s family is here to rectify the hypocrisy.
—–
This Mark Bloch story contributes to my sense of urgency in seeking a clearer link between the universality of the GREEN struggles and the also universal manipulations of the alt-right.
Of course, bringing up the alt-right means to add race and gender to the mix. This is necessary because undeniable. But is it the best way to make the GREEN struggle more familiar or, on the contrary, more polarizing? Because, at this moment, we need familiar, not polarizing.