Speaking of contraries, see how the brook
In that white wave runs counter to itself:
It is from that in water we were from
Long, long before we were from any creature.
~ Robert Frost, “West-Running Brook”
Of painting, Hans Hofmann said that one’s canvas “has actually been transformed into space.” By marking its surface, a tension is created – and motion, and forces. Wills. The surface becomes “a world in itself” with “a spiritual life.” From the nothing of the canvas, a great something is created – the only something.
Something from nothing: isn’t this what fiction is and isn’t? If a canvas can create space, can a novel create time? It’s been years since I read Jim Holt’s Why Does the World Exist, but one quote has lasted: “It doesn’t take all that much to create a universe. Resources on a cosmic scale are not required, nor are supernatural powers. It might even be possible for someone in a civilization not much more advanced than ours to cook up a new universe in a laboratory.” This new universe “would expand into itself… Its space would be so curved that it would look as tiny as an elementary particle to its creator.” The image I’ve carried since is a universe in one’s palm, folded inward and vast as the one we inhabit, and nonetheless right here, as in that mythic (probably wrong) Éluard quote: “There is another world, but it is in this one.”
I’ve been thinking of Hofmann – and of worlds – because I’m writing a new novel, a great gift to myself I didn’t realize I’d needed. Writing fiction is your space, your canvas transformed; no one can fuck with it, or with you while you’re there. It is also your time, in a strange, trans-dimensional way. So of course it’s a gift, especially compared to the claustrophobia of everyday life, its poverty of spirit. Outside of the sanctuary of fiction, not only is it likely that someone will abrade you, harm you, degrade you, but that they in their ignorance have been manipulated into enjoying your diminishment. Social media in particular is aestheticized powerlessness; we are shown, repeatedly, how our actions, beliefs, and desires are not only humiliating, but – in their cruel, spectacular dismantling – a bottomless source of entertainment, something people actually “like.”
It’s between these two worlds that I’ve been oscillating, and I hadn’t even realized it.
Human beings are not born in isolation, says Sartre, but “atomized when large social forces – work conditions under the capitalist regime, private property, institutions, and so forth – bring pressure to bear upon the groups they belong to, breaking them up and reducing them to the units which supposedly compose them… Each is other than himself and at the same time identical with all the Others who are other than themselves.” Sartre calls this “serialization,” or a kind of “thinking of powerlessness.” This from his essay, “Elections: A Trap for Fools” – a piece that’s hard not to take personally as I watch our elected “leaders” rip out their own spines and hand them to the fascists they were supposed to keep in check – but more on that some other time. Really, what strikes me is the “serialization” of being isolated together, of feeling lonely without privacy.
It strikes me, too, that this oscillation is why I wrote Image Control, and largely what the book tries to capture or narrate: that our ethics and morals are subverted by the aesthetics of the unethical, of the immoral, and that as long as what is greedy and stupid and genocidal controls (owns) the platforms on which we rail against greed, stupidity, and genocide, it seems impossible to believe that any hashtagged resistance will do anything but assimilate into the apparatus of harm – sort of like “welcoming” faggots and queers into mainstream economic life by making faggotry, making queerness, an overpriced and dull brand that makes boardroom after boardroom of straight bigots and faggot frackers richer. But again, more on that some other time.
Today, by the way, is June 17. In exactly two months Image Control: Art, Fascism, and the Right to Resist will be on shelves. Not to get all tooty on the old horn, but it’s raked up some flattering blurbs, and very positive early press. Pre-orders are still very important for the book’s success, and if you have any cash to spare, I would very much appreciate the gesture: https://bookshop.org/books/image-control-art-fascism-and-the-right-to-resist/9781640094536. I’m very, very proud of this book, and I offer it, sincerely, as a hand to hold, as a little hope or companionship among so much “serialization,” so much grief.
As a fun fact, I may be in New York at the end of September, so you might hear more on that soon. I have a few essays in the works as well, and look forward to sharing them when I can. Thank you for reading, thank you for your patience, thank you, generally, just for being here. You’re all right.
I love reading these and I can’t wait to read your new book, then your new new book, and all the books that come after.
The writer, like many a creator, *does* possess a certain power in the creative process. But, like the recalcitrants of Eden to their creator, one's characters often show an independence that their authorial creator seems powerless to control. And then there are the theologians who come after to critique and confound the all-xs attributed to their creator (their being almighty, all powerful, all knowing, all forgiving, etc.) as with the journalists and readers who find fault with the perfection the authorial creator had finally decided to send to the printer. The freedom of the author is fleeting, and must be cherished in those moments when their words flow onto the page.