How open are you?

[sus]

The guy I knew in college who was closest to a Bob Dylan Lou Reed type—mysterious, "fuck you" cult charisma—always wore the same set of flannel shirts and jeans and every shirt looked vaguely the same. There was a "look" a brand and it gave him powers and it also shut him off to changing, becoming something else. And I think it was a mix of terror (which you get with Dylan, "fragile as a winter leaf" Joan called him) and defensiveness, the brand was armor the shirts were armor. But it also gave him an air of independence, of being his own distinct person, that lent him an iconicity, a cult of personality. Perhaps that's what I'm projecting onto the Dylan situation.

 

[sus]

I watch a lot of reality tv and at some point every single contestant will say to someone they just met an hour ago ‘wow I’ve never talked to anyone about this stuff before.’ I think we partly crave this moment, and also if Americans are in Europe they probably just enjoy speaking loosely because there are no consequences for them as they are across the ocean, like talking to a taxi driver

Have you read this important shortform essay on Real Housewives https://tis.so/bravo-bravo-fucking-...limited-hangout-conspiracy-and-narrative-pt-3

 

[version]

The guy I knew in college who was closest to a Bob Dylan Lou Reed type—mysterious, "fuck you" cult charisma—always wore the same set of flannel shirts and jeans and every shirt looked vaguely the same. There was a "look" a brand and it gave him powers and it also shut him off to changing, becoming something else. And I think it was a mix of terror (which you get with Dylan, "fragile as a winter leaf" Joan called him) and defensiveness, the brand was armor the shirts were armor. But it also gave him an air of independence, of being his own distinct person, that lent him an iconicity, a cult of personality. Perhaps that's what I'm projecting onto the Dylan situation.

You seen that clip of Cale talking about meeting Reed? He describes him as very vulnerable and someone who only knew who he was when he was attacking.

 

[sus]

A perfect thread to repost my boy Jean again.

Yes that's perfect

I think it reproduces some of the same contradictions or linguistic paradoxes biscuits and patty were running into above, or that I ran into talking about Dylan just now—you could just as plausibly argue that the schizophrenic is too interior, is too much in his own world, that his problem is not being "grounded" by the social reality that everyone around him is constantly producing and affirming—but yes.

 

[sus]

Have you seen that clip of Cale talking about meeting Reed? He describes him as very vulnerable and someone who only knew who he was when he was attacking.

Yeah this is another one of those seeming contradictions, vulnerability and aggression, that actually go hand in hand.

A week or two I posted something like "The charismatic figure must believe in himself fully, must con himself first in order to con others." I got some likes and approving reactions. But I've fallen into doubt. So many of these figures, real and fictional (I'm thinking too about how Leto's portrayed by Frank Herbert) have a profound self-doubt which is publicly masked by extreme, arrogant faith. I don't know whether it's the extreme public arrogance that feeds the doubt (how could you live up to such bold claims, once advanced in public?) or whether the extreme public arrogance is a check on the doubt, a means of keeping it at bay, but yes. It's the vulnerability that puts you on the offensive. It's the extreme insecurity about image that makes you a master of image.

 

[sus]

You constantly fear exposure. You constantly see others suckered by your illusions. You hate them for buying into it even as you depend on their buying into it.

 

[sus]

Transcription for those who can't watch the vid:

He seemed extremely vulnerable. And with a very visceral sense of claiming his identity. It seemed like his identity was really clear when attacking things. Not that there was a... an ingrained hostility to everything on earth. But I guess that's a common trait in many people, the best way to define themselves is to attack, and this... unnerving and psychologically disturbing persona was struggling to have an artistic expression, that was being stifled by this confusion between his surroundings and himself. This description could well apply to myself as well. Trying to find a role in classical music that had anything to do with the outside world was certainly not clear in my mind, and I was using improvisation to find footing in my own personality. Words were not something that I was really adept with, though I loved all sorts of English-language experimentation, and Lou was very adept at spontaneously erupting into elegant forms of prose and poetry.

I do wonder about openness and mimicry, the way that people learn to babble, learn to imitate each other. Is this an openness? Is this why Lou was so adept, because he was schizophrenic in the Baudrillardean sense above?

 

[version]

Yeah this is another one of those seeming contradictions, vulnerability and aggression, that actually go hand in hand.

A week or two I posted something like "The charismatic figure must believe in himself fully, must con himself first in order to con others." I got some likes and approving reactions. But I've fallen into doubt. So many of these figures, real and fictional (I'm thinking too about how Leto's portrayed by Frank Herbert) have a profound self-doubt which is publicly masked by extreme, arrogant faith. I don't know whether it's the extreme public arrogance that feeds the doubt (how could you live up to such bold claims, once advanced in public?) or whether the extreme public arrogance is a check on the doubt, a means of keeping it at bay, but yes. It's the vulnerability that puts you on the offensive. It's the extreme insecurity about image that makes you a master of image.

Did you read that old blog post about LeBron going to Miami that KC posted?

Dune

watching lynches dune now https://www.channel4.com/programmes/dune/on-demand/6817-001 A classic. Lynch was nuts to regard this as a failure.

www.dissensus.com

LeBron James, The Lisan Al-Gaib?

This summer, as LeBron James announced to the world, and the children of the Greenwich Boys and Girls Club, that he was taking his talents to South Beach, I was in a sleeping bag, inside a tent, ne…

ilevy.wordpress.com

Greatness is a transitory experience. It is never consistent. It depends in part upon the myth-making imagination of humankind. The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in. He must reflect what is projected upon him. And he must have a strong sense of the sardonic. This is what uncouples him from belief in his own pretensions. The sardonic is all that permits him to move within himself. Without this quality, even occasional greatness will destroy a man.

– Frank Herbert, Dune

[...]

Since junior high LeBron has lived his life as the central figure in a modern myth. He has participated in perpetuating this myth to various degrees at different times, but I would argue that the myth-making is largely out of his control. Like the stories of Robert Bly and Sam Keen, a mythical template has been applied to a modern human being. As he was moving through his adolescence, the phase of one’s life where an identity is developed, he was dubbed “The King,” and we, with some minor prompting, willingly assumed the roles of “Witnesses.”

What LeBron’s choice this summer has revealed more than anything, is that he doesn’t have a feeling for the myth he’s in. He appears to lack that sense of the sardonic. As his life merged deeper with the mythical template, he either lost or never developed an awareness, that this myth was a construction of the people around him. The myth represented our projections and was not necessarily a reflection of his actual life, actions or attributes.

 

[sus]

Ahhh I literally just read that bit about greatness in Dune, marked it up and wrote "Dylan" next to it. Amazing bit of synchronicity.

 

[sus]

Yes, Dylan understood the myth he was in. I have no idea what myth I'm in, it's an open problem. I am probably not in a myth. The portals that could have taken me into one I failed to recognize, or passed up.

 

[sus]

Dylan knew by age... 20? 21? 22? It's incredible.

 

[sus]

"Are you in a myth?" could have been the alternate title of this thread.

If you know what myth you're in you have a sense for what portals to enter, what to be open to, and what is just distraction, what to shut down.

 

[yyaldrin]

I watch a lot of reality tv and at some point every single contestant will say to someone they just met an hour ago ‘wow I’ve never talked to anyone about this stuff before.’ I think we partly crave this moment, and also if Americans are in Europe they probably just enjoy speaking loosely because there are no consequences for them as they are across the ocean, like talking to a taxi driver

you're right i hadn't even considered the holiday effect, i think most people are more open when they are abroad or in a place unfamiliar

 

[sus]

Gender & sexuality transitions seem to be about openness. But you get this opening and closing. You open yourself up to the possibility your identity isn't what you thought. You let in the doubts. Or you listen to the little social whispers, wonder if they apply to you as well. But then you at some point many people decide they've found their final truth, they close themselves off again. And some people detransition; at some point, different whispers and worries make them consider a new shape a new form.

I guess being very open and being very protean are similar things. If you're sensitive to the world then it will change you. If you're insensitive you stay unchanged.

 

[other_life]

should we do a Character Analysis groupread. or maybe a selection of the less analytic-qua-psychoanalysis chapters/essays

 

[sus]

Maybe you can give us the tl;dr in simple english to entice us

 

[other_life]

i think we'd want to light on the sections about "character armor" in particular. how openness and closedness become pathological when they are adopted as fixed positions, and a person can no longer/never learns how to lower or raise their armor to consciously adapt. how pathological closedness is to neurosis as pathological openness is to psychosis, and as adaptive armoring and un-armoring is to 'the genital character'

 

[version]

@DannyL is our resident Reichian.

 

[sus]

i think we'd want to light on the sections about "character armor" in particular. how openness and closedness become pathological when they are adopted as fixed positions, and a person can no longer/never learns how to lower or raise their armor to consciously adapt. how pathological closedness is to neurosis as pathological openness is to psychosis, and as adaptive armoring and un-armoring is to 'the genital character'

I'd love excerpts on these topics! That would make me very happy

 

[other_life]

i'll have to throw something together this week when im not at work