I was talking a bit about the bible to toaster. If I have a bible, it's A Year With Swollen Appendices, a great book by Brian Eno. Elaborate on great? It has unique, challenging opinions on society, art, and change in technology and the world. You get to read his diary (a year) which is so mind-bogglingly astute and full of concepts that he footnotes them with appendices (which are quite swollen). He produces music, works on art exhibits, hangs out with his young daughters, travels to Egypt and Bosnia, cooks some food, analyzes computer programs
Here is his take on "pretentiousness". I wanted to put it in the UK Hook-Up thread, cuz it deals with England in the beginning, but that thread was way off-topic, wasn't it? I hope UK people can add their thoughts below....anyway:
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Pretension--
Pretension is the dismissive name given to people's attempts to be something other than what they "really are". It is villified in England in particular because we are so suspicious of people trying to "rise above their station."
In the arts, the word pretentious hs a special meaning: the attempt at something that the critic thinks you have no right even to try. I'm very happy to have added my little offering to the glowing mountain of things described as "pretentious"-- I'm happy to have made claims on things that I didn't have any "right" to, and I'm happy to have tried being someone else to see what it felt like.
I decided to turn the word pretentious into a compliment. The common assumption is that there are "real" people and there are others who are pretending to be something they're not. There is also an assumption that there is something morally wrong with pretending. My assumptions about culture as a place where you can take psychological risks without incurring physical penalties make me think that pretending is the most important thing we do. It's the way we make our thought experiments, find out what it would be like to be otherwise.
Robert Wyatt once said that we were always in the condition of children-- faced with things we couldn't understand and thus with the need to guess and improvise.Pretending is what kids do all the time, It's how they learn. What makes anyone think you should sometime give it up?
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http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0571179959/ref=lib_rd_ss_TBCV/104-8991780-9585559?v=glance&s=books&vi=reader&img=30#reader-link
The back cover will also give an idea where he's coming from, not to mention whatever other bonus pages Amazon lists....or better yet, BUY IT.
Here is his take on "pretentiousness". I wanted to put it in the UK Hook-Up thread, cuz it deals with England in the beginning, but that thread was way off-topic, wasn't it? I hope UK people can add their thoughts below....anyway:
--------------------------------------------------
Pretension--
Pretension is the dismissive name given to people's attempts to be something other than what they "really are". It is villified in England in particular because we are so suspicious of people trying to "rise above their station."
In the arts, the word pretentious hs a special meaning: the attempt at something that the critic thinks you have no right even to try. I'm very happy to have added my little offering to the glowing mountain of things described as "pretentious"-- I'm happy to have made claims on things that I didn't have any "right" to, and I'm happy to have tried being someone else to see what it felt like.
I decided to turn the word pretentious into a compliment. The common assumption is that there are "real" people and there are others who are pretending to be something they're not. There is also an assumption that there is something morally wrong with pretending. My assumptions about culture as a place where you can take psychological risks without incurring physical penalties make me think that pretending is the most important thing we do. It's the way we make our thought experiments, find out what it would be like to be otherwise.
Robert Wyatt once said that we were always in the condition of children-- faced with things we couldn't understand and thus with the need to guess and improvise.Pretending is what kids do all the time, It's how they learn. What makes anyone think you should sometime give it up?
---------------------------------------------------
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0571179959/ref=lib_rd_ss_TBCV/104-8991780-9585559?v=glance&s=books&vi=reader&img=30#reader-link
The back cover will also give an idea where he's coming from, not to mention whatever other bonus pages Amazon lists....or better yet, BUY IT.
VIEW 12 of 12 COMMENTS
Do you have the Neil Young "Rust Never Sleeps" DVD? It's really good.
Too fucking sick to most more right now. Take care.
And I'm going for the job so I can get a killer discount. I don't know how much of a discount I would get, but any discount is a good discount. Wholesale discount? That's a wet dream.