Daal mein Kuch Kaala Hain

Somebody needs to rechristen the 27th of December, "Let's lick Patrilineal Dynasty's balls" day. And no, the ballsiness of this message is not just gratuitous frustrating against our present political climate. It's literal. Think balls. Feudal egos. PPP prados. And surnames that are an easy ticket to an Oxbridge education. Think VIP. Think Bakhtwar saying: "Our party is like a family." Think entitlement. Enthronement. Ennoblement. Think over-wrought memorializing, an Olympic season since the day. 

And then, don't think at all. Because that's the easiest way to get through the suffocating observances of 27th December.

Whatever happened to honest, measured appraisals of office bearing political persons' careers? What of all the vehement liberal shout outs for human rights records and violations? Why the amnesiac refusal to be critical in our remembrances and exhume easily forgotten grievances? Should an undoubtedly tragic, unwarranted assassination automatically entitle one to canonization and conveniently absolve one of all error and fault? 

Posthumous revisionings of leaders need to admit alternative readings/interpretations. 

I appreciate cult of personality, I understand hero/ine worship and deification, I respect sentiments, I admire the sacrifices and struggles of partisan workers and the PPP's experience and expedience in party politics.  I am further schooled in popular culture and pop icons, but I will not understand the refusal to speak freely and openly of former leaders in public office.

If you're such a popular figure, then, with the flowers, you should also be ready to receive the thorns. It really is that simple. Call it tough love. 

The state and the PPP establishment have no right to coopt public office and render it a throne. The state must not be partisan. It's an OFFICE, not a Mahal, nor a Jamaat. The office stays. People/leaders come and go. Get over it, get on top of it and stay ahead of it. That's the spirit of service. The servicemen and women are never bigger than service, are never beyond service. 

If BB belonged to the Peoples Party (whatever that means), then surely, her so-called legacy and spoils of leadership are OURS to plunder, pillage and scrutinize. You gotta grant me my 10-110 % here!!! 

She belongs to the citizens she claims to serve, not only in their patronage, but also in their protest. If she belongs to me, and claims to represent me (a problematic idea in and of itself), then surely I should be able to (re)vision her as I will. 

Which is why the idea of a "People's" party is troublesome in the first place. When you're part of the feudal elite, everyone and anyone else can be lumped into the homogenizing category of "People" with condescending ease and remove. This is a convenient exercise too, for the people become the lowest common denominator as seen from the highest of vantage points. It's really never been about the people- it's been about peopledom. There's a cleavage here, one which Pakistan seems to be falling deeper and deeper into. So that ideas of empowering the people/the MANY are only refractions of ruling-class ideology/the FEW. The masses are made. Massification is a project, not unlike the nation-state. I think this Youtube user's comment serves to illustrate how precarious and fragile the term "people" really is: "i will never vote for you people, tum kia jano masoor ki daal kitnay ki milti hai." It is, perhaps unwittingly, disruptive of the People in the people's party. It is poised to question: Whose people yaara? Yours? Mine? Ours? WTF? Masoor ki daal.

In context of the PPP and trinitarian Baap-Beti-Beta Bhuttoisms at large, nothing is more elitist/exclusivist than claiming to speak for and galvanize the people ("masses") when you've been born into landed privilege. Nothing spells elitist reappropriation of apparently populist ideals, more. 

BB, you really were a remarkable woman. I just wish a greater spectrum of remarks would be engaged. 

So on this auspicious 4th Anniversary, also arbitrarily designated a National Holiday - like we don't get enough of those already- I will not contribute to preferred + privileged + dominant canonizing discourses and narratives. 

I will not keep my peace, nor dignified, politically correct silence. I shouldn't have to. 
That's what gravestones are for. And by the likes of Garhi Khuda Bakhsh's entombed legacies, some stones speak for themselves. And some are so boastful, so set, so erect, they silence dissident whisperings all together, and seem to make a second killing and heartier stuffing of fallen martyr.

If only those paying their respects would read more than just their Fatiah. 

*************************************************
Postscript; To the Lost

May you rest in peace. And May I, my mortal self, never find it in this life. 

No ease for me, in Sovereign peace. 
Make that an order of unrest, 
on the rocks please. 

************************************************

This poster recasts the cover to Hofstadter's "Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid" Penguin Books, 1980.
I thought the Mobius triangle would be a fitting way to convey the never-ending spiral of dynastic, in-house politics and symbolise the trinitarian extent of Bhuttoism, today. The PPP arrow might just as well be a bloodline, and a bloody one at that too. The Khaki shades reflect yet another presence in Pakistan's political history: that of the uniform, against whom democracy is sworn as "the best revenge", a vicious cycle all its own.

Mythic Politik 1: POPulisms

Mythic Politik 1: POPulisms; Dil Bola Pakola.


 25th December, 2011.

The PTI rally today was heartening, to say the least. And I'm not speaking here from a partisan standpoint.  Where I do wish Imran Khan's proclamations were anchored in more than just rhetoric, I gotta admit, rhetoric can be addictive, uplifting and empowering. To that effect, the rally today was quite compelling. It was a sight to behold.

Who needs a solution when you got a slogan? Who needs a future when you're drunk on the heady brewing imperative of now? That kinda sentiment. It's sexy. It catches on. 
I caught on too, not to the politics of it, but the poetics of it. The assemblage, flags, celebrations, speeches. The promises. And how each of these things are performed, staged and cued.  

People are so cynical about Obama, and we all have our reasons I'm sure, but I remember the night of his election, I was suffused with hope and possibility. If I were to freeze that moment in time and take a snapshot, and separate it from what was to follow and what came before, it sure was beautiful. And it still is. Perhaps it is beauty betrayed, but beauty nonetheless.

If I can think of a way to seize the moment and then freeze it, I can perhaps find a way to rescue it from potential betrayal. You might call it an exercise in foolishness, but I call it one of vindication. Pre emptive as much as it is redemptive- my mythic politik. 

I like doing that with pretty much everything. 

That initial point of contact. Before you have to worry about where you must proceed from that point. Just that irreducible speck of satisfaction and faith. Before there's too much gum and tongue. before you hit some posterior wall. Before the after-taste kicks in. before the fall. that's where the magic is at. 

We tend to privilege the continuous. At the expense of the momentous. When we do privilege momentous occasions, we feel compelled to locate them in a bigger history and anchor them in greater contexts and timelines. So that the moment gets mangled with all these other concerns and trajectories. 

Demonstrations of fidelity- political, social ,sexual, what have you- can feel very true. So amazingly powerful and dramatic. The trust we invest in the social contracts, oaths and vows we undertake, is a beautiful thing. Even if it is abused after, as it often can be. It's beautiful when it's plucked out of that timeline. The *moment* we swear upon eternity, minus all the concern with eternity. Now isn't that just the most convenient dream ever?

I saw an expectant sparkle in so many of the attendants' eyes today; their hope in betterment.It's never a waste of time. Because the moment I lose trust, I lose vitality. I lose sparkle.

Sometimes I think, damn the ballot. Bring on the confetti, and belong, for a moment, to something bigger and better than your surroundings. Surrender to the mob. At least, it's a happy mob. At least, the only riotousness here is the mischief of courting possibility and flirting with potentiality. 

Celebrate. Before our preoccupation with continuity and a sense of objective remove, screws everything over and sends this parade under.

Congratulations to all the attendants at the rally today, and PTI supporters in general. In my wilfully and unapologetically contrived snapshot, this day, change *did* come. The revolution did arrive. It may have been two hours late. But it came all right. The flags bear witness. 

If your revolution doesn't stay, don't hold the moment accountable or answerable. Hold the guy on the podium responsible. For the moment is true, but ever so careless. It makes no promises, and keeps no secrets. It is so pure and so irresponsibly perfect. How could you not be swayed by it?

As a caveat to carpe diem, it's not just seizing the moment that's important to me, and freezing it in snap-shot, it's letting go once the seizing's done, and releasing it from the cold clutches of historical continuity, analysis and hindsight. 

Before there's too much gum and tongue. Before you hit some posterior wall. Before you lose yourself in his oral cavity. Before mommy walks in the room and finds you out. Before she tells you you've been bad. Bad enough to commit wholeheartedly to the one thing that makes you good- trust and hope. Bad enough to believe in revolution.

It's only a kiss, mother. It’s only our spirits in the air. It’s only the fizz on the brim of our raised glasses (sparkling water, not sharaab, mother). It’s only soda pop. He was so hot, we were frothing at the lips. But we won’t heed your caution. We won’t handle with care.

It’s only a kiss, mother. It's only a revolution. 

Let us Rejoice, before the fall. Before our belatedness can read the writing on the wall (yes; the very same).

Before there is too much tooth 'n' tongue. Before they can say, you were in college, silly, and ever so young.

His Splattered Contents.

He's feeling so inadequate today. Not bad about himself. But not quite good enough. Never present enough. Or broad enough at the shoulders enough. It's not cold enough to cover up enough. Not bulging enough. He's not bursting. He's not swelling enough. Not lead role enough. Doesn't dress well enough. Not enough money, enough. Doesn't lift enough weight, enough.


So much doubt. don't hurt in public doubt. don't cry too loud doubt. don't betray your weakness doubt. Walk with purpose, doubt. Don't wear that tank top in public doubt. take your T-shirt off in a carefree way, doubt. What will they say doubt. He loves boys doubt. But he was never one of them. He's not beautiful enough, doubt. don't take those doubt. you could take them though doubt. don't go there doubt. don't take God's name in vain doubt. Don't shove your finger up His glorious fucking dominion doubt. don't just give up yet doubt. don't jump doubt. don't jump yet doubt. there's a balcony and opportunity so you really can doubt. 8th floor doubt. Will they pick up the splattered contents of your spilled over soul and make something new and beautiful out of it doubt? Will they hear doubt? Will they ask doubt? Will they call the authorities? Will they shout doubt? Will the Earth pause for a moment doubt. Jump! Too late doubt. You could have gone for the coloured pills, doubt. You should have, doubt. Judy will welcome you at the other side, doubt. Rainbows are real, doubt. You had a life, doubt. You had his love, doubt. He looked into your eyes and said, and meant it too, "You are the most beautiful thing I ever saw" doubt. "I'm in love with you" doubt. "Are you really", doubt. "Yes I am", doubt. "Will you marry me" doubt. "Yes I will" doubt. No you won't, doubt. You're ugly doubt. So ugly doubt. 8th floor, looking down doubt. Over and out, doubt. Curtain call, doubt. There'll be a standing ovation, doubt. Am I looking alright? doubt. Yes you are, doubt. Am I ready? doubt. Yes you are, doubt. You're ready, doubt. Put on your best smile, doubt. Don't show your teeth, doubt. They're not quite aligned, doubt. Smile and wave doubt. Smile and wave, doubt. Don't give a fuck- doubt. Does he like it when you fuck-doubt. Should I taste it or swallow, doubt. You had his love, doubt. He looked into your eyes and said, and meant it too, "You are the most beautiful thing I ever saw" doubt. Have faith in his eyes, doubt. Believe in his smile, doubt. It will save you, doubt. It will save you, doubt. It's not too-late, doubt. You can still jump, doubt. There's no fall like a free fall, doubt. Jump, doubt. Jump, doubt.

Will-they-pick-up-the-splattered-contents-of-your- spilled-over-soul-and-make-something-new-and-beautiful-out-of-it-doubt.

A Serving Suggestion

                                                            **************************


Three  years and nineteen unsuccessful college applications later, (with another ten to go), I still can't tell the difference between a prospectus and a box of cereal.

   

It's funny because they both offer good times, personal growth (even the horizontal kind) and a fresh start to your day and future. They are all ample and abundance. And there's always enough milk, cereal and personal growth to go around. 

What their faces don't tell you is that you're accruing credit and calories, the American way. There's something about living on credit and feeding off calories that's undeniably addicting. They never satisfy desire, but exasperate it. It's a fascinating predicament, and can be seen erupting on Wall Street every now and then. 


Speaking of Wall Street, let's not forget cheat meals! And the confessionals that follow, after. No priest at the booth this time, but your personal trainer/doctor/therapist. Also known as the priest at the booth. Only this booth looks more like a counter with a cashier at the till. Guilt sells. And self actualization sells long before it ever pays back. 


 That priceless education, sunshine and invaluable experience gained whilst canopied in the shadow of an appropriately Medieval Gothic spire or Baroque building, is going to make you pay out of your ass.

The devil is, afterall, in the details (I hear they're calling it 'texture' too).

Some cereals are kinder, and recognizing this, care to mention in the finest of print:

ENLARGED TO SHOW TEXTURE;

CONTENTS MAY HAVE SETTLED DURING SHIPPING

I wish the prospectus would say the same.

 

Prospectus

Prospectus

             THE CEREAL KILLER SMILE

Homecoming queen,

say cheese to your

                 

American Dream

Hashtag Perspective

Too Camp for Kansas

For my debut Youtube video, here I am with a cover of Judy Garland's "Somewhere Over the Rainbow", as rendered for the MGM musical "The Wizard of Oz" (1939), with music and lyrics by Harold Arlen and E.Y. Harburg.

After so many years of taking notes on camp, I thought the rainbow would be a good place to start.

This is for Judy, and all the friends of Dorothy.

Here's to the lies that tell the truth. Here's to the rainbow- and here's to all those who want out or want in.

Happy Listening!



                                           

The Problem of Perspective: When my walls agree.

Sometimes, all this tired talk of "perspective" and "putting things in perspective", gets on my nerves. Or rather, it numbs them, like any good ol' anaesthetic for the soul.

It's dizzying in the most unflattering of ways. It reminds me of an optician constantly adjusting and readjusting the aperture of their lens, in an attempt not simply to put things in perspective, but force perspective upon things.

Screw the view and the vista. And to rest with all these world views and visions of a better tomorrow. Then there's the "bigger picture" trope. Now, depending upon the frame one casts and recasts that picture in, ideas of scale, size and dimension are all relative anyway. So this bigger picture is bigger than what picture exactly? The smaller one staring me in the face right now?

When that picture happens to be a beautiful set of lips or a beautiful, sensual something else, I desire no perspective. 

This is not an exhibit at a museum, rubric reading "Please do not Touch" (or alternatively: Pictured: Sunset at Ipanema Beach). 

This is about the reach.

This ain't a view. This is you. And me. Without the room for two overlooking a postcard of molten (and always broad) horizon.

This is not perspectival, civilizational or millenial, because it's not a self-help guide or a Third-World Development Goals booklet- it's personal.

Expand/broaden my horizons? Sometimes, I really don't want to. There is horizon in the wainscot if I will it enough.

Perspective means I look through things to their utmost, obtuse end. It's giving my dream vacation the same dimensions as that tropical looking beach in post-card-pristine. I don't want to look through you, I want to look at you. I don't want to look through that beach, I want to look right at it. I wanna hold it in the palms of my hands and smell it and touch it and feel it. I wanna spin it around on its invisible axis. And when it's time for my vacation, and the world to end, I want to unhinge it off that axis all together. 

Sometimes I just want to contract-it-ALL so that for one sacred glorious moment, all that really matters, is this perfect square inch of wallpaper and all the goings on within it. 


I would like to make peace with the walls and agree.
I would like to be shown no bigger picture. Not bigger than this room, anyway. Not bigger than my mirror, which knows me best. 

Perspective demands I view the painting from a distance. But what of that inviting stroke there and that speck of paint here that falls on the canvas like it could have been a suggestion, rejected. Or a divinely ordained accident. The sort I'd commit deliberately and with eyes wide shut.

I would like to be that speck and be that stroke.
I'm not sure if it sees much at all, but it looks so content. It looks like it would rather be nowhere else. It would raincheck on the beach.
I would like to think that I can give it my blessing. And that it can bless me in return.
All that really matters, is this- my perfect square inch- this palm to hold and clench. Then, release again.

I've got my eyes on the prize so often that I forget. It is possible to hold your palm in your hand.




The walls agree.

 

Minute Man

Ad in the Personals section of the Daily you might find abandoned on a seat on the Underground:

 

Life-changing, threatening stray bullet looking to get into hazardous scrape with unassuming stranger. ;) Send your applications here.

Be advised that I will not be able to respond immediately. There are lots of promising candidates- and SO MUCH potential I'm sure. Also be advised that there are no contractual obligations.  Be advised that I am as commitment weary as they come.

(In case you wish to suspend contact, I will politely hand you your receipt and “Thank you for your custom''. It will read: My name is Roel/Munni/Nikhil, I fill the immigrant bill, and I served you today. P.S.- Don't mind me. I'm a token of your blasé cosmopolitan diversity-minority at the till- your fill of the multicultural.)  

 

               

                                                

                                     

                              

Be Mine?

Very Vanilla featuring Roel

Munni served you today

                                                                                                                           

                              

Having said that, here I am, trying my luck! You never know when you might get lucky. I am Eliot's bang and you could be my hollow man. And we could fill each other's most vacuous silences in the purest and filthiest of ways.

We could be the others' target wound- negotiate entry and exit. And together we could heal ALL the pain. Fall in love for the frame; we'd never need a name.

 

You, man oh man, are so f******* kind. I think the both of us would rhyme- as it all does in a Hitchcock crime. Because you're so hot and I like you a lot. Give it some time, and my metaphor will clot.

The next station is the same as all the previous ones. Another unassuming silence will bend over at my will. We're all stray bullets, and one glorious day, we'll go in for the kill. I am Eliot's bang, and you could be my hollow man.

babe, we'd be heard all 'round the world

If you'd open that mouth and.

say a word.

And then, perhaps, some more?

 

If there were a backroom here, you could be my man of the minute. Or if the moment & your travel plans allowed, we could be a lifetime.

We'd fall in love for the frame- won't even need a name. Nor a fancy escape plan- just answer this question true- Will you be my minute man? I'd love you in a word or two. And together we'd END whence we did begin.

Until then.

                                                         
                                   

                                                   

Madness & Memoria

Rhapsody on a Windy Night

Twelve o'clock.

Along the reaches of the street

Held in a lunar synthesis,

Whispering lunar incantations

Dissolve the floors of memory

And all its clear relations,

Its divisions and precisions,

Every street lamp that I pass

Beats like a fatalistic drum,

And through the spaces of the dark

Midnight shakes the memory

As a madman shakes a dead geranium.

                                                                           Excerpt from Rhapsody on a Windy Night – T.S Eliot

                                   **********************************************

Is it possible that the more humankind develops its capacity to record and preserve information , the less it seems to remember?


We allegedly developed textual communication systems, for instance, so our memory could keep up with our ever-increasing trade links & military conquests. As we turn to the surrogate data-spheres of our cellphones, iPads & BlackBerries, frantically inscribing our lives, loves & Saturday nights from one interface to another within yet another, I wonder if the far reaches & deepening recesses of our data bases can can keep up with our many extended, protracted memories and our search-engine assisted remembrances. 

It wasn't until an active tech user shared his concerns about his own memory that my curiosity was piqued. Having been an enthusiastic end user for the past 14-15 years, he finds that the extent of his automatic dependence on the reliability of data archives like g-mail, has reworked his memory. His memory is not diminishing per se;rather he finds that the pathways of his remembrances are being rewritten, or perhaps more aptly, reprogrammed. He added on: 'When i view a lecture on YouTube, I don't come away from it remembering very much. Because it's there. I 'Like' it. It's on my list.'

Keywords, “Your Favourites”, Related Searches, bookmarks, search tags/qualifiers/refiners, tabs & 'Like' buttons are all part of an increasingly sophisticated and reliable mnemonic complex of buttons and other clickable options that'll take us where we want to go, or where others before us have gone already.

I deliberately Google searched some of the most open-ended, ill defined 'searches' I could come up with to ascertain how the engine processes and filters my 'search', providing context to an otherwise blind search.

I entered the word “Death” on Google search, and the Related Searches option yielded an instructive, almost enlightening range of choices. The “Death penalty”, “death pics”, “grim reaper”, “life after death”, “life” & “love” were all a click away.

I googled “Life” and had lots to choose from yet again- what life did I want to play? The board game or the tv show? The movie, quotes, magazine,love, death, Eddie Murphy? I could further qualify my search and could go for life shopping, or life recipes or life patents.

Sex was next on the list- and so was “love”, “cars”, “girls” and the “disney channel” as related searches. (“Cartoon network” too.)

The examples I use are playfully illustrative in the least and symptomatic at most of the fragmented world of knowledge-processing, cartoon-network sex and receiving we live, learn & love in. I'd be hard pressed to discover an artifact of the contemporary world that is more meta-referential than the Internet.

What these search trajectories reveal to me is that the button is not an end to itself- every button,tag and link begets yet more buttons, tags and links- just as the so called originate “search” leads to yet more derivative finds. There is no Nirvana here- no Holy Grail. Enter the loop where Life yields death and death yields life. You'll find love when you're searching for sex and find sex when you're searching for love. Love/sex- life/death- and therein lies the self-referential knowledge loop, the spiralling staircase with no landing that is information in the contemporary world. Search engines might encourage us to be seekers and searchers but oftentimes I feel my counterparts and I are not seekers in our digital age as much as we are passive finders. We feed and leech;we do not seek.

Information access seems no longer to hinge on the originate source as it does around the derivative fragments- as end users we are left to sift and sort through the flotsam and jetsam of a sunken vessel. I could even go as far as to cynically comment that search engines may be seen as filtering, streamlining and refining a hollow dust-bin of information. How we wish to integrate ourselves (or not) with the tech-savvy world they attend upon is a matter that begs continued introspect, debate and deliberation.

My curiosities have little to do with fears of our information technologies suddenly being no longer operative and leaving us in listless withdrawal. They do, however, have everything to do with the reality that I will wake up to every morning of their continued existence and influence in my life. The writing's on your wall/profile/page/email- technology is here to stay, and so are we. It is precisely the nature of this relationship and its bearings upon memory making processes that interests me.


Why? "Because it's there” as my respondent tells me.
What he was implying was that services such as Google, YouTube, Yahoo & other numerous search engines have assumed the role of associative memory tags: information hasn't to be found- it has to be accessed. The tag will take you there. It's all there, or @, a few effortless, carefree clicks or swipes of a finger, away.

To analogize the situation, we have moved from the memory-aid to the heavily aided memory. This was precisely my respondent's concern- the action of information technology upon memory and remembrance.

This remarkably powerful technology to record, preserve & archive it all somehow seems counterintuitive to the selective now-you-see-it/now-you-don't discrimination of memory; to what I affectionately and romantically like calling the myth of memory; rather, the mythic fabric underpinning all Memory- that capacity for improvisation, selection, approximation & omission. I can't help but think the way we orient ourselves towards historicity & continuity, our own and the worlds', has already changed greatly and will continue to do so. Facebook, for instance, just reminded me I was running low on faith and hope a year ago. My despondence has made waves and entered the Hall of Memorable Status Updates. 

Mythic fabric aside, and "fatalistic drum" at hand, I imagine a future where we proceed from the hyper/omni-memorial 'IT'S ALL MEMORABLE!' thrust of 21st century information dissemination to a place where the amemorial reigns. Amnesia turned in on itself. If this 'place' looks anything like the dystopian, neo-noir landscape of Blade Runner Los Angeles, I'd really like to pay a visit. What a trip that would be. In all seriousness, sometimes I feel we remember , 'know' & 'record' too much. I hang out with my friends and take a couple of pictures (mostly of myself) and then commit those pictures to a cache on my computer and the World Wide Web. There's no extricating yourself once you're caught in that Web (think former U.S. Representative Anthony Weiner); the “information explosion” appears a thing of the past already- an impending implosion seems more appropriate.

Of course, I am not running out of my memory- but memory increasingly seems to be running out of me.

It's not simply the Pods, Phones & Pads that command my attention, it's the conspicuous i that attends upon the super convenient world of touch screens & iPod Touch devices which prides itself on extending human contact rather than diminishing it. It is the invisible hyphenated bridge, i & millions others, traverse every day of our lives. It's the prospect of this bridge collapsing; the possibility of the gap between the i & the Pod growing ever wider, or conversely, narrowing in. It's a social-media-frenzied world where my subjectivity, and yours, is stirred and served on a template. It's the realization that before myspace is my space, it belongs to the World Wide Web and the Domain Name System(DNS). To this end, the lines separating where I begin & where this interface & that iPod/Pad/Phone ends become irrevocably blurred.

I feel that in some unfathomable but very tangible way, communication and information technology are reworking my fundamental cognition. This is a thought that excites & troubles me in even measure. Perhaps I would be more comforted if this "tangible" force were a group of cognition technicians dressed up for conspiracy- sort of like in The Matrix Trilogy. But it's not. The force rests in buttons & "Save As" & "Refresh” & clickability,interfaces,templates. 

The iPod touch's video-recording abilities are certainly reworking a lot. They are marketed thus: "Because your iPod touch — and its built-in HD video camera — go with you everywhere, you’re always ready to record when the moment strikes. And now you can do it in stunning high definition (my emphasis).

  

How hyper-real is the ability to record a "moment" in "stunning high definition" & render it into an 'HD memory' almost instantaneously!? "Always" being "ready to record when the moment strikes" aptly reflects the contemporary technological drive to memorialize the moment, & therein crucify it, all in stunningly redemptive "high definition." This state of readiness throws me off a little and leaves me wondering whether the "moment" can ever "strike" back as we continue to mediate & negotiate it via an increasingly sophisticated tech-sensorioum.     

If memory entails retention, recollection & the reproduction & recognition of information, all of these processes are increasingly mediated technologically. A lot of my associations & recognitions are hyper-linked & hyper-connected. They're sprawling across my Facebook profile & the History Tab on my browser window. They're navigable & accessible in a way they never were before.

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines memory as “the power or process of reproducing or recalling what has been learned and retained especially through associative mechanisms.” As these mechanisms evolve & extend themselves, my powers of memory devolve from my being to the device I clutch in my hand. This reads like an intervention & they're not asking my permission (or are they?). The intervention might not pose an apocalyptic threat to my human but it does stir the very depths of my being. I'd rather not go on about the existential, ontological, metaphysical, political, spiritual, epistemological & other big worded implications of what I'm struggling with here, because therein exist potentialities & possibilities that are so much bigger & wordier than I am.

The Rhetorica ad Herennium, the oldest surviving Latin book on rhetoric and also significantly bigger and wordier than I am, describes memory (memoria) as "the treasury of things invented". I can't help but envisage a time when that treasury assumes instead an inventory not of "things invented", but of invented things.

Perhaps the tech-privileged world will, at some point in a higher-than-HIGH-DEFINITION inter-galactic future far far away, need then to remember how it forgot. And being accident-prone, erect in memoriam, on Moses' tablet of stone:

                       Here Lies A Precious Memory;

                       In earnest forgetfulness,

                       It Rests in Eternal Peace.

                    
                       Pray, leave it fucking be.

                      (                        )

I'm squinting the eye of my mass mediated hyper-linked mind to conjure an image of my father- smell, touch, a kiss and a hug.  Some sensual detail, a less-than-vital sign. It's not working, though. In another time & place, Dad would have been a myth. A fade in fade out projection. A blur on the rim of my eyes, diffuse retinal guise. A game of disembodied eye-spy in the dark room of my very own sensory studio. Aggressive metaphors, like that one, & signal-Noise- & we've lost contact.

But he's less than myth now. He's a photo in an album: now I see him; now I see him some more. It doesn't even hurt, let alone heal. That's not my father, though.

I just shook a dead geranium.

"Reminder: Forget the rest."










Because midnight can't shake the memory without a reminder.