baboon2004
Darned cockwombles.
don't think it's depressing at all! addiction itself is, but finding ways to cope with it certainly isn't...i look forward to a future addiction-free life courtesy of dissesnus wisdom.
will check out the wallace book.
Addiction
- Thread starter baboon2004
- Start date
don't think it's depressing at all! addiction itself is, but finding ways to cope with it certainly isn't...i look forward to a future addiction-free life courtesy of dissesnus wisdom.
will check out the wallace book.
I am interested in a) the addiction to knowledge, and (closely related) b) the addiction to information. Maybe c) addiction to identity. Or d) addiction to power.
This text is good:
http://www.corpse.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=15&Itemid=1
Also this:
http://www.kritike.org/journal/issue_2/moeller_december2007.pdf
This text is good:
http://www.corpse.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=15&Itemid=1
Also this:
http://www.kritike.org/journal/issue_2/moeller_december2007.pdf
baboon2004
Darned cockwombles.
I have this, but it's the one addiction (I think) that makes me happy.
Edit: except that time I read all of the Guardian's 'The Knowledge' football questions back issues. That was largely pointless.
woops
is not like other people
didnt stop me
woops
is not like other people
damn, talk about the drama of the gifted child
Don't know about Luka, but I'd recommend Naked Lunch and Soft Machine. These were both written in one of his more intense periods of junk addiction following the death of his wife and self-imposed exile to Tangier, and so focus on the subject of addiction very heavily (virtually entirely).
The new additions are best they include a lot of good appendixes with additional material.
This version of Naked Lunch includes the Testimony Concerning A Sickness I quoted at the beginning of this thread.
Just saying. This is a bad idea. You of all people.
Last edited:
I know what you're saying. I have 1,383 posts now. Roughly an average of maybe 100 words a post. That's 138,300 words. That's basically a novel. I find consolation in reminding myself that I only ever post while I'm at work though. Still, that's sort of like saying I only smoke when I drink.
Tentative Andy
I'm in the Meal Deal
Yeah, when you put it like that, I couldn't really argue. It's certainly our national weakness.
There is a part of me that would like to say that not all instances of the pursuit of intoxication equate strictly to nihilism and getting fucked. With alchohol though, it's very hard to make that case, bearing in mind its depressive qualities, its potential for addiction, and the fact that in our culture it is definately used as an excuse for displaying aggression, even if the causal links in terms of actual chemistry may be weak.
Personally I make a huge effort these days not to drink to get drunk, and feel that my life is much better for it. I do often wish that some of my friends would get drunk less often and less severely than they do, but I find it hard to argue this with them. Partly just because such discussions are always difficult, but also because I am aware, melodramatic though it may seem, that it is often the only form of release, the only feeling of something like freedom that is readily available to them.
I think that's the closest you can come to putting a positive spin on our current drinking culture, as I perceive it: it's a sort of a sporadic release of frustration, of pent-up energy and unfulfilled desires, which then perhaps allows people to return to dealing with their practical problems for a period of time afterwards. Almost a return to the medieval culture of feast-days and carnivals, if that doesn't sound far too far-fetched!
I think that it's a marginally preferrable development to the blase, last-man kind of nihilism where people just abuse drink or other drugs routinely, in order to pass the time, in order to fulfill the compulsion to comsume. I do wish that people could throw out their frustrations onto a 'happier', more positive drug than booze though.
PS - I am in full-blown denial when it comes to how much I currently post here. I don't have a problem!
I'm not sure if I see how the addiction to junk itself (Burroughs basecamp for understanding the nature of all real addiction) is an addiction to image. The image of what? Or an addiction to control or power? I can see being pushed the illusion of power, it's pushed to us every day, but surely the real goal of actual power is to wield it, not to be perceived as having it?
Please explain because I don't think I've read Burroughs mention this (or read into it that way).
hahaha
no i don't think it's a bad idea. no one is perfect and sure we've had some intense fights but we've also had some really good conversations and fun times. i've decided that at the end of the day she's mostly a pretty awesome person. (and thanks to you know who you are for suggesting the idea last night)about our beloved Uncle Bill: i wouldn't recommend Naked Lunch to the newcomer, but rather the more readable earlier shorts like Junky or Queer. and i've always meant to read the Western Lands Trilogy, which is supposed to be his masterpiece...
Burroughs says on a few different occasions that "Image is Junk" and draws the links between image and junk elsewhere in his work. The third term is word, the word virus, language, from outer space. The logic of the cut-up trilogy is that image addiction (Towers Open Fire: Word Failing, Image Failing) can be severed through disjunction, juxtaposition, etc. He talks about how Billy Holiday knew she was off junk when she stopped watching TV, and the relationship of addiction to routine in particular.
It isn't the image of anything in particular - it is image as such. Control is itself addictive (control is never a means to anything but more control... but control needs time, for what it kills to grow in). The Burroughs fantasy in Queer is of "communication on a non-verbal level, a silent exchange of thought and feeling." In the silence you don't know...
Real power is at your fingertips.
It isn't the image of anything in particular - it is image as such. Control is itself addictive (control is never a means to anything but more control... but control needs time, for what it kills to grow in). The Burroughs fantasy in Queer is of "communication on a non-verbal level, a silent exchange of thought and feeling." In the silence you don't know...
Real power is at your fingertips.
not sure if i understand the first part either but the second surely resonates... representation and the phalocentric gaze, it's a fear of connection, hiding behind the safe distance of the voyeur...
Yes, and this is also the Situationist critique.... the passive reception of situation, rather than active engagement in their construction.
We are talking about image as any distortion of the true nature of things then? If so, junk as an image addiction makes more sense: the conversion of a regular metabolism to junk metabolism is analogous to the conversion of freedom to any system of control. The creation of a need, then supplying and with-holding the satisfaction of that need accordingly as a means to power over others.
Considering this:
makes a lot of sense to me in understanding why he made that connection.
baboon2004
Darned cockwombles.
i always have difficulty with these generalist abstract constructions....so we're talking about people not shaping their environment by getting eg politically involved, creating their own structures etc, but rather just accepting what already exists?