Hair In A Bucket I have been so helplessly lost today. I am not at all privy as to the reasons. But i feel depressed now. I didnt yesterday - nor the day before, but i did see this downward spiral.

I have spent all day moping around home. Everything yet another failed attempt in my life.

I finally dragged myself out of bed to go shopping. And Sophie added some cheer along the way. But I couldnt find what i was looking for. So i waited at the deli to buy a whole chicken. the lady informed me that i did not need to wait to be served because the chickens are already wrapped to go. All i needed to do was pick one up. People smirked. Another lady wrapped up a fresh chicken to make me feel better. She noticed how stricken i looked. I then wandered throughout the supermarket with my chicken. I dont even particularly like chicken. But i couldnt remember what the hell i needed.

Giving up i left. frustrated i paid in cash -- and left.

As i arrived home i decided i would clean the dishes to some music and the satisfacon would appease some of the disappointment of the day. However i recalled that anika didnt want the dvd to run through her amp! again i was ploughed into immense sadness. Why does this shit me? I am not a hundred percent sure. I just know that the dvd will not damage her amp. I know that the problem she complained about earlier was due to the previous speakers. But it matters not if i am right. I dont own the amp. I know i am correct -- i have done a sound engineering course - i work with sound - i am meant to know these things. I thought she was a dj.

So i proceeded to lay my anxieties upon the backyard lawn. The sense of accomplishment at taming nature would surely dull my woes. But alas the damnable lawn mower would not start. Damn it, damn the insatiable creature to hell.

I went to my room and skulked.

After sometime. A short dream and a gulp of water. Work was commenced upon photoshop, while Sanatra sang at his proudest. But i was not leaving for new york and it was not raining - so i did not sing. The artistic avenue i had chosen was not responsive to my sadness and sent me into an existential dillemma.

This is it. I am resorting to drugs. I need a chocolate milkshake. The endorphin kick shall be good.

The milkshake maker - i suddenly remembered - had been used by a flatmate some weeks ago. And the aforementioned character had dared not to clean the instrument. Again i was at a loss. Do i clean up after this squalid character - who had used MY milkshake maker - and thus have to clean the dishes with no music? I couldn't bare it.

At this stage i felt like running in front of a bus.

I knew the safest thing to do was to put myself to sleep. Managing a certain state of unconscious, i dreamt as though i had been led into a trap by a wicked sorceress in her fallen cathedral. I awoke with a start.

I needed to leave the confines of my bedroom. Of the house. Of Surry Hills.

Eventually of Sydney...(but i did not get that far)

There was a task i could not possibly fail in its goal. The delivery of a guitar to a service store across the city. I would walk. It would be good to walk. the forward movement excells one's thoughts into a forward progression. Walking removes the vicious circle.

The city was busy.
I knew not why.

I have often pondered this very bizarre occurence. If it is a fact that most people work between the hours of 9am to 5pm HOW IS IT POSSIBLE THAT THE CITY BE BUSY INBETWEEN THESE VERY HOURS OF THE DAY!?!?!?

Nevertheless, arriving at my destination there was action all around. Noise being made, guitars being unashamedly mutilated. A symbol of defiance, i strode to the front desk. No one served me.

I laughed - out loud. I had all the time in the world and a little to spare.

People looked and i looked back. I dared them to look back. And they shunned their eyes to the ground or the nearest instrument.

Finally, as some annoying pratt named Damien, who lived at Artarmon, tried to buy a guitar and case for $1100 with a savings card, which allows a mere $800 withdrawal limit per a day, a salesperson asked me what i wanted. Now i am familiar with these salespeople at this particular store so their attitudes do not intimidate me. Let me suss out the scenario. The store is busy. There are people who want to buy stuff and there a lot of kids who just want to fuck around and dream. It is school holidays i realise. One staff member is on holidays. One is out for lunch. There needs to be one staff member on each of the three floors. That leaves two serving the main floor, and one on each other. It seems to be understaffed, and the staff look as though they are understaffed. But it is not it is just busy.

The head honcho - who eventually takes my business - is a no shit attitude. To him all the shit guitars sound the same because he knows they all come out of the same factory in japan or south korea. They put the nice fender, epiphone, or yamaha label on it afterwards. if you want to spend real money, thousands of dollars, and buy a guitar from the states, private factory or custom, then he wants to listen to you. So his attitude, although it probably should, doesnt make me feel any worse then i am already feeling.

With this out of the way the day is now technically over. I think i will hook up the dvd player to the amp anyways. I will just unplug it after i am done. I will clean the dishes and have a milkshake. I might make some pasta.

It doesnt matter. I still feel like shit.

Maybe i am having a bad hair day.

DH  ¶ 5:29 pm 1 Comments

  P1 fan

Labels: art

  ¶ 11:17 am 0 Comments

  z3 Why do you hate me so? A mere drip of post-mortem discussion and this is what you leave behind. A trail of insults, a list of reclusive places in which i may bury my self-esteemed head. Those liars and phonies among you, how you dare speak. You don't know what you are doing, so stop telling others what they should be doing. You, of all people, set out to achieve when you have no goals. You think you are human beings - you claim a status as visual art students - but you are neither. What do you think - nothing. What do you learn - nothing. Your self announciating titles are flagrant, oppurtunistic and arbitruary. It is not that i don't like you, or hate you - it is this: that you are nothing to love or hate. You are nothing.

Labels: art

  ¶ 11:15 am 1 Comments

  Yes, please. Two African Voodoo zealots are having visions of association. Both of them are experiencing dreams that give insight into the surroundings, and sometimes into the very near future. A woman from the United States, who is a a servant of a far-seer phony, has sought them out to bring them to the United States in order that they may work with her mentor.

The visions are derivations from their sub-consciousness that piece together fragments of the conscious world in order to reveal that which is hidden. Every man, woman, and child wears their deepest secrets on the sleeve of their shirt - merely hidden in code. However the two men are experiencing these dream like relapses within conscious states, and usually simultanouesly. Together, sharing their visions they are able to draw conclusions of what they have seen into the actual conscious world.

An incident in a flooding street lands them on a game-show. As one of the men is accidently struck on the head with a baseball. Another man, not far off - dressed in baggy clothes, caucasian, blue cap - picks up a baseball bat that has been thrown from the same location (building) as the ball. The baggy man runs up to the building and begins batting on the glass doors. The doors are promptly opened and the capped man enters the building quickly and proceeds, gathering momentum, toward Tim Alllen, who is answering questions while baseballs are being pitched at him. This is a new gameshow.

The two African men are invited to partake in a new game-show, which is a spin off of the earlier base-ball related one. This games involves an association game. It is hosted by Wil Anderson. The games follows the same line as: "Hand is to Glove, as, Foot is to ..." Points are awarded as to your answer - the associations become very difficult, and no answer is particularly wrong, there is merely a scoring system by which there are better answers as the association the contestant gives is more complex and the speediness of the reply. The game-show takes off splendidly because the two African men are on the opening night and make it seem so interesting, fun and intellectual - without being too much (these are African men appearing on tv in the USA remember).

The African men are a big hit on this new show, and they develop a celebrity status among game-shows. They instantly increase the popularity of the show that they appear on, and they do extremely well at whatever game they are playing. The audience loves it and really gets behind them.

Game Show Hosts have a secret. They are the instigators of the largest child pornography ring in the world. Due to their unique position they gain access to all the components needed to be able to film and edit such subject matter. Yet they are somehow untouchable. Their money, their success...the link seems so tenuous and unbelievable that they leave no leads for law authorities.

The African Men begin to have visions about the hosts. They have spent so much time being on game-shows and meeting hosts that their ability has atuned to the deepest and dirtiest secret held by these people.

The hosts capture footage of children in bathrooms and toilets near schools. Always public toilets. They have very expensive video recording equipment. Some wait in the toilet cubicles. Others play games with the children. The end result on film. A child playing with himself, in a studio perfect bathroom. To the child, it all seems like a game-show.

  ¶ 4:46 pm 2 Comments

  Heidegger: First Exercise Heidegger presents Dasein as a being with understanding, because “Dasein projects its Being upon possibilities” . That is to say that Dasein understands itself by way of disclosing its own possibilities of being. Dasein already had pre-existing structures, not clearly a prior, that allow Dasein, as a Being-of-possibilities, to come to terms with itself and its place within the world. These structures, as Heidegger highlights, are the ‘fore-‘structure and the ‘as’-structure. These structures give a working framework in which entities of the world can be classified distinctly. Understanding, thus, is derived from Dasein’s difference. From this base Heidegger continues to the notion of “inauthentic understanding” - an understanding of the everyday world that Dasein exists within. Within this everyday world Dasein encounters entities, that are not at this point concerned as being-with Dasein, but are discovered to be in the world. They are the ready-to-hand and the present-to-hand. The important link at this point in Heidegger’s argument is the connection between understanding and interpretation. The root of understanding, which is the basis for all of Heidegger’s further expressions of understanding and interpretation, derives from the point of projection; that as long as Dasein is projecting itself [into the world], then Dasein will understand itself. All understanding therefore derives from Dasein’s ability to understand itself and Dasein’s understanding of itself. In this way we can understand that the concepts of ready-to-hand and present-at-hand have been formed by their direct relationship to Dasein. The way in which Heidegger explains that Dasein understands the world is directly linked to the terms fore-having, fore-sight, and fore-conception. These three terms are the integral advanced knowledge of Dasein to be found within the ‘fore’-structure that guides Dasein into a method of interpretation that allows for understanding of the ready-to-hand object on three levels: as an entity within the world and its references, a definitive entity with characteristics suitable to a variety of contexts, and a definite category according to its relationship to Dasein and purpose. The passage in question examines the interpretation dealing with the “totality of involvements” – a complete context – with the fore-having. Here Heidegger expresses the concept that interpretation of the ready-to-hand is possible by Dasein’s ability to understand the ready-to-hand in its complete context – position in the world. However for this understanding to take place Heidegger proposes that there must be a fore-having for Dasein. Heidegger’s argument thus far is that Dasein has understanding through the use of a pre-existing structure known as the ‘fore’-structure. Also, Dasein has interpretation through the use of another pre-existing structure known as the ‘as’-structure. These structures have come about because Dasein understands itself based on the argument that while Dasein projects itself upon the world Dasein will inevitably understand itself within that world. The understanding and interpretations of entities are articulated by all their possibilities within the world of Dasein. A distinction is thus made between understanding and meaning. Even though meaning is ultimately derived from the ‘fore’-structure, the structure of understanding, it is not attached to the entities themselves, but is bound to Dasein. It seems then that entities can only have meaning from, or to, Dasein. These pre-existing structures are allowing Dasein to understand objects before they are understood, and interpret said objects before they have meaning (not that they could ever have a meaning of their own). This understanding before understanding Heidegger examines as a vicious circle, a circle that is not problematic because it is only a small subset of the greater way of viewing the world. That the circular argument can be advantageous if approached as an “existential fore-structure of Dasein itself”. Without a firm grasp of how one is to go about characterizing the ‘fore’-structure and the ‘as’-structure, Heidegger concludes that the circular problem with understanding deals with the ‘structure of meaning’, and by this he means the method in which Dasein gives meaning to entities. The method by which Dasein imparts meaning is not dealt with specifically at this stage, but it seems, due to the nature of the circle not being problematic, that the method itself is either relative or arbitrary considering that Dasein alone can have meaning or not have meaning. Things other than Dasein must be considered as “unmeaning”, or absurd.

The passage deals with how Dasein interprets entities within the world. The world that Dasein itself is situated within, and thus interacts with. Dasein interacts with entities – ready-to-hand – and therefore must come to understand them. Understanding is not meaning, it is knowing ‘something as something’ – an articulation of an entity that is not Dasein – prior to making further assertions of a clarifying nature upon the entity. The structure that is apparent when understanding entities is disclosed in the passage by the terms fore-having and fore-sight. This is the introduction of what Heidegger continues to explain as the ‘fore’-structure. This ‘fore’-structure is intrinsically tied to the interpretations of entities by Dasein. That Dasein’s interpretation springs from a previously existing structure where Dasein already has an advanced understanding of an entity, and this is due to Dasein’s own ability to project and predict possibilities. This ability is linked, as stated earlier, to Dasein’s self-awareness by understanding itself as a “potentiality-for-Being”. Dasein must understand the world and its references in order to understand itself. So it follows that Dasein understands the ready-to-hand with a fore-having because Dasein already understands the context of the ready to hand within the world. This is the interpretation that is grounded in the fore-having. A Being, such as Dasein, previous to all other interpretation, already understands, by its own nature, the contextual totality of the world and thus when such a Being interprets other objects in the world the Being does so with this contextual knowledge in mind. It is this contextual – totality of involvements – knowledge that is bound to the fore-having, and is part of the presupposed ‘fore’-structure. The following concept in this passage takes the entity as understood, via the fore-having, but remaining “veiled” . The object at this point is understood contextually, in the totality of the world, but is yet, by the observer (Dasein), to be regarded with purpose. Interpretation then, by appropriation, grounded in fore-sight is the explanation or unraveling of the references that the ready-to-hand has with the world. The act of appropriation removes the discovered entity out of its original position, or native context, and then places it within another one. This act alone highlights characteristics of the ready-to-hand, thus articulating the ready-to-hand, not just as something as something, but as an entity with Dasein. This fore-sight is Dasein’s ability to see possibilities for entities within the world. Without the fore-sight Dasein could not re-contextualise and appropriate the found objects within the world and thus they would not be liable to hold meaning for Dasein; the interpretation of ready-to-hand entities without fore-sight would misrepresent the entities as present-at-hand.

The purpose behind this passage is to reveal the structure that is underlying the act of interpretation of ready-to-hand objects. This is very important to the overall argument being proposed in “Understanding and Interpretation”; the passage is detailing a finer point of how Dasein undertakes interpretation in a certain way. The examination of the ‘fore’-structure in three sets of ‘pre-existing understanding’ [i.e. fore-having, fore-sight and fore-conception] of the world within Dasein, they are present merely because Dasein is present within the world, is used to illustrate the process of interpretation of the ready-to-hand that are discovered by Dasein. While the argument forces a distinction between interpretation and understanding, there is somewhat of a large, and confusing overlap between the two, especially with reference to the aforementioned passage. The problem here lies definitely with the evident bundling, or fixed relationship, with the ‘fore’-structure with the understanding and the ‘as’-strucuture with the interpretation. This distinction is fine on its own merits; the justification is there, but by no means clear. It is presented that the ‘fore’-structure is used by Dasein to create the underlying understanding of the ready-to-hand, with its signification within the world related to Dasein. While on the other hand the ‘as’-structure underlies the interpretation of these objects as “something as something”; this is the first articulation, or explicit reference to the ‘as’ in reference to entities found by Dasein. The difficulty relates to the usage of the term interpretation within the context of the ‘fore’-structure where the argument is clearly about understanding. Since this is the case there are at least two possible diversions in which the point being made could be drawn to. Whether the ‘fore’-structure is an interpretation of the understanding , or if there are multiple levels of interpretation built upon understanding, so on and so forth . The latter seems to coincide with the later discussion concerning the circular nature of understanding, based upon the projection of Dasein, however this is never fully explored in detail, which leaves the passage in question open to interpretation. While the former means to comprehend the passage in terms of varying usages of the terms understanding and interpretation coincides with the first premise of Dasein’s projection onto the world and from this understanding of itself springs yet another understanding of the world which then leads firstly to an interpretation of Dasein within that world. From these beginnings there is a clear layering of understanding and interpretation of Dasein, the world, entities, ready-to-hand, and present-to-hand, all by Dasein itself. The referencing between the various types is tied sometimes merely by the term this. As exampled within the passage’s first and final sentences: “In every case this interpretation is grounded…” and “In every case interpretation is grounded…”

The proposition being put forward within the extract of “Understanding and Interpretation’ is that from Dasein projecting unto the world Dasein understands itself via the pre-existing ‘fore’-structure that sets out guides of understanding. Upon this foundation, Dasein can make interpretations of entities that are in the world with the aid of the pre-existing ‘as’-structure that makes explicit the entities as the things they are. With these structures in place Dasein can therefore relate the objects within the world to Dasein itself. The premise is made that only Dasein is capable of having meaning, or being meaningless by opposition, due to the conclusion that only Dasein can understand and interpret the world, and that it is only through understanding and interpretation that meaning can exist. The largest difficulty here is accepting the first premise of Dasein by its own nature being able understand itself within the world. The premise works in the argument by definition and then so too do the pre-existing structures that are used to illustrate understanding and interpretation. Nevertheless, the questions raised within the text, [e.g. “How are we to conceive the character of the ‘fore’?] and the place in which these structures exist in terms of a priori or posteriori leave a gap in the comprehension of the overall argument. The theory of underlying structures, be they a priori or posteriori, is a self-sufficient but difficult concept. Putting aside altogether the unknown factors of other being skepticism by the term Dasein, Heidegger very carefully illustrates a purposeful set of guides by which Dasein comes to terms with the world that Dasein is located within, and being thus appropriately dictates meaning to the world Dasein is involved with.

Being and Time, Understanding and Interpretation. 32. Martin Hediegger, pg 188 (148)
Ibid. pg 189 (149)
Being and Time, Being There as Understanding. 32. Martin Hediegger,pg 185 (145)
Being and Time, Understanding and Interpretation. 32. Martin Hediegger, pg 191 (150)
Being and Time, Being There as Understanding. 32. Martin Hediegger,pg 185 (145)
Being and Time, Understanding and Interpretation. 32. Martin Hediegger, pg 194 (152)
Ibid. pg 193 (151)
Ibid. pg 188 (148)
Ibid. pg 191 (150)
Ibid. pg 192 (151)
Ibid. pg 193 (151)
Ibid. pg 188 (148)
Ibid. pg 191 (150)
Ibid. pg 192 (151)

Labels: philosophy

  ¶ 5:05 pm 1 Comments