mills

My name is Mills Baker; I write about corporate culture, love, religion, music, memory, art, mental illness, media, death, suffering, and the utterly random.

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Wade in the Water - Sweet Honey in the Rock.
Dad’s house, Nashville Ave (approx. 9’). More photos. I don’t know how most New Orleanians feel about this possible hurricane we face, or to what extent the persistent, bruising depression that followed Katrina’s devastation (and the sense of alienation one felt from many of one’s countrymen) has darkened the once-ebullient mood that preceded hurricanes. The NYT quoted one resident still with his wit and wits: “Ain’t nothing too bad gonna happen,” said Vernon Navarre, a contractor, smiling broadly. He was working in the day’s brilliant sunshine in the Milan neighborhood. Besides, he added, “if I go to hell, I get to meet all my friends.” I know that I retain what Walker Percy described: the sensory quickening, the slightly nauseated excitement, that accompanies something so often simulated and so rarely present in modern life: real existential danger, real disruption to our social machinery. But it is muted, for obvious reasons. While I have no idea if Gustav will strike New Orleans with any appreciable force, and am not interested in monitoring the sensationalistic reports breathlessly offered by journalists who desire catastrophe as athletes do tournaments, I am already preparing myself to lose New Orleans again. The despairing fury I feel about it (a stupid and fumbling fury for -though I of course harbor resentment of the various agencies and politicians who failed- at whom can one scream for natural disasters?) is already returning; I am tired, angry, and above all sad. I don’t want to see New Orleans -or anyone- suffer again and again.

Dad’s house, Nashville Ave (approx. 9’). More photos.

I don’t know how most New Orleanians feel about this possible hurricane we face, or to what extent the persistent, bruising depression that followed Katrina’s devastation (and the sense of alienation one felt from many of one’s countrymen) has darkened the once-ebullient mood that preceded hurricanes.

The NYT quoted one resident still with his wit and wits:

“Ain’t nothing too bad gonna happen,” said Vernon Navarre, a contractor, smiling broadly. He was working in the day’s brilliant sunshine in the Milan neighborhood. Besides, he added, “if I go to hell, I get to meet all my friends.”

I know that I retain what Walker Percy described: the sensory quickening, the slightly nauseated excitement, that accompanies something so often simulated and so rarely present in modern life: real existential danger, real disruption to our social machinery.

But it is muted, for obvious reasons. While I have no idea if Gustav will strike New Orleans with any appreciable force, and am not interested in monitoring the sensationalistic reports breathlessly offered by journalists who desire catastrophe as athletes do tournaments, I am already preparing myself to lose New Orleans again.

The despairing fury I feel about it (a stupid and fumbling fury for -though I of course harbor resentment of the various agencies and politicians who failed- at whom can one scream for natural disasters?) is already returning; I am tired, angry, and above all sad. I don’t want to see New Orleans -or anyone- suffer again and again.

Bunnynico: This image struck me because it immediately reminded me of this: We are as forlorn as children lost in the woods.  When you stand in front of me and look at me, what do you know of the griefs that are in me and what do I know of yours?  And if I were to cast myself down before you and tell you, what more would you know about me than you know about hell when someone tells you it is hot and dreadful?  For that reason alone, we human beings ought to stand before one another as reverently, as reflectively, as lovingly, as we would before the entrance to hell.  For me, you were, along with much else, also like a window through which I could see the streets.  I could not do that by myself, for tall though I am, I do not yet reach to the windowsill. - Franz Kafka, Letter to Oskar Pollak  I ordinarily take the sort of banal, dull photos one sees tacked to cubicle walls: flat and uninteresting and overly concerned with content, barely conscious of composition, lighting, or any other aesthetic consideration. So I’m happy this photo of Green Mountain, which is now the background of this site, was interesting to someone, especially someone who takes photos like these. Here is the original photo, before being altered for web site use.

Bunnynico:

This image struck me because it immediately reminded me of this:

We are as forlorn as children lost in the woods.  When you stand in front of me and look at me, what do you know of the griefs that are in me and what do I know of yours?  And if I were to cast myself down before you and tell you, what more would you know about me than you know about hell when someone tells you it is hot and dreadful?  For that reason alone, we human beings ought to stand before one another as reverently, as reflectively, as lovingly, as we would before the entrance to hell.  For me, you were, along with much else, also like a window through which I could see the streets.  I could not do that by myself, for tall though I am, I do not yet reach to the windowsill.

- Franz Kafka, Letter to Oskar Pollak 

I ordinarily take the sort of banal, dull photos one sees tacked to cubicle walls: flat and uninteresting and overly concerned with content, barely conscious of composition, lighting, or any other aesthetic consideration.

So I’m happy this photo of Green Mountain, which is now the background of this site, was interesting to someone, especially someone who takes photos like these.

Here is the original photo, before being altered for web site use.

Frank nearly tears my ear off as I pull his shoelaces out while keeping my center of gravity low to avoid his ferociously strong punches. This photo satisfies all requirements for Wednesday’s gratuitousness: presence, violence, and as Frank is my intellectual hero it even perpetuates that meme.
Frank nearly tears my ear off as I pull his shoelaces out while keeping my center of gravity low to avoid his ferociously strong punches. This photo satisfies all requirements for Wednesday’s gratuitousness: presence, violence, and as Frank is my intellectual hero it even perpetuates that meme.
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Amon Tobin - Nightlife.

This song, a rather old favorite, popped into my head while I mowed my lawn in the darkness last night; some parts reminds me a bit of Danny Elfman.

Amon Tobin is absolutely brilliant; see also “Get Your Snack On,” “Rosies,” or any other damn song from his more recent albums; they require a bit of focus, these recent exemplars of layering and sonic recontextualizing, but they’re worth it.

“ Have you ever seen a human heart? It looks like a fist, wrapped in blood.
— Larry in Closer, played by the brilliant Clive Owen in response to Dan: “You think love is simple. You think the heart is like a diagram.” (via michelle658)
ellebelle: I have my fingers crossed that I will one day be able to capture a mysterious figure in a window or a floating head; anything other than the dreaded and disputed paranormal orbs that I frequently end up with.

ellebelle:

I have my fingers crossed that I will one day be able to capture a mysterious figure in a window or a floating head; anything other than the dreaded and disputed paranormal orbs that I frequently end up with.
“ And therein lies the whole of man’s plight. Human time does not turn in a circle; it runs ahead in a straight line. That is why man cannot be happy: happiness is the longing for repetition.
—

—Milan Kundera, in The Unbearable Lightness of Being, via Bunnynico, who added some interesting commentary.

One notable resonance to this thought comes from Kierkegaard’s description of how “rotation” and “repetition” are the strategies used by the smartest of the superficial, how we return to hobbies, abandon them, call exes, go back to visited cities, travel away from youth, regress to youth, etc. We devise ways to rotate and repeat our pleasures so we don’t wear them out.

Hence the various “life crises” one reads about: forever the “longing for repetition” in a universe where it isn’t truly possible. I often think the cruelest aspect of the world is the diminishment of all experience -love, drugs, pain, happiness- with repetition.

My friend DHK linked to this image he found through Wicker, who quoted from the photographer: “Ornithologists now use mist nets. These nearly invisible nets are set up like fences and function as huge spider webs, catching unsuspecting birds. The researcher carefully extracts the bird from the net. Each bird is measured, aged, sexed, and banded with an individually numbered anklet. Then the bird is released. I photographed these birds while they are caught in mist nets, moments before the ornithologist extracts them. Here, the birds inhabit a fascinating space between our framework of the bush and the hand. It is a fragile and embarrassing moment before they disappear back into the woods, and into data.” I suppose I am often embarrassed like that, before disappearing back into data.

My friend DHK linked to this image he found through Wicker, who quoted from the photographer:

“Ornithologists now use mist nets. These nearly invisible nets are set up like fences and function as huge spider webs, catching unsuspecting birds. The researcher carefully extracts the bird from the net. Each bird is measured, aged, sexed, and banded with an individually numbered anklet. Then the bird is released.

I photographed these birds while they are caught in mist nets, moments before the ornithologist extracts them. Here, the birds inhabit a fascinating space between our framework of the bush and the hand. It is a fragile and embarrassing moment before they disappear back into the woods, and into data.”

I suppose I am often embarrassed like that, before disappearing back into data.

Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon »

My esteemed doppelganger JM sent me a link to the Wikipedia article on the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, which

…occurs when a person, after having learned some (usually obscure) fact, word, phrase, or other item for the first time, encounters that item again, perhaps several times, shortly after having learned it.

This has naturally happened to me hundreds of times, and probably to us all. The coiner of the name experienced the phenomenon after learning of the Baader-Meinhof terrorist gang; hence the name.

Wikipedia notes that the there are similarities to concepts like synchronicity, and that the the “…psychological explanation of the phenomenon [may involve] the recency effect, in which the human brain has a bias that lends increased prominence to new or recently acquired information.”

Amusingly, I wrote and deleted a post last week about the Baader-Meinhof gang after learning that Sartre, ever-willing to extend philosophical empathy to those who murdered members of the bourgeoisie, met with Andreas Baader and decided that he was “incredibly stupid” and an “asshole.”

I’ve posted yet another photoset from the ranch, where I’ve been with Q (Syd’s husband), John, Andy, and Lucas. There are few pictures, and none are particularly interesting, because this was far and away the most purely redneck trip we’ve made, and whipping out the camera while people are shooting plants, getting vehicles stuck, and jumping off of the bluffs at midnight into black water just didn’t seem right. Warning: I made a questionable ethical decision, as well. My dogs are getting old; Bayou is eight and Five is nine. In accordance with their instincts, they’ve attempted to kill many animals through the years, and in accordance with my ethics (or, if you prefer, my wussiness) I’ve not let them. On this trip, however, I decided to finally let them do as they wished: I let them kill an armadillo. Depending on your sensibilities, and probably your birthplace, this will either seem loathsome or inconsequential. I regretted it as it happened, and afterward; I’ve thought about it far too much, in fact, and can only say that while I’m glad they had their animalistic fill, it won’t happen again. In any event, there are some rather gruesome photos of the incident in the set, so if you -like me- don’t wish to see them, this is your warning. My thanks to Q for ending the poor creature’s suffering when it became clear that a quick kill wasn’t likely.

I’ve posted yet another photoset from the ranch, where I’ve been with Q (Syd’s husband), John, Andy, and Lucas. There are few pictures, and none are particularly interesting, because this was far and away the most purely redneck trip we’ve made, and whipping out the camera while people are shooting plants, getting vehicles stuck, and jumping off of the bluffs at midnight into black water just didn’t seem right.

Warning: I made a questionable ethical decision, as well. My dogs are getting old; Bayou is eight and Five is nine. In accordance with their instincts, they’ve attempted to kill many animals through the years, and in accordance with my ethics (or, if you prefer, my wussiness) I’ve not let them.

On this trip, however, I decided to finally let them do as they wished: I let them kill an armadillo. Depending on your sensibilities, and probably your birthplace, this will either seem loathsome or inconsequential. I regretted it as it happened, and afterward; I’ve thought about it far too much, in fact, and can only say that while I’m glad they had their animalistic fill, it won’t happen again.

In any event, there are some rather gruesome photos of the incident in the set, so if you -like me- don’t wish to see them, this is your warning. My thanks to Q for ending the poor creature’s suffering when it became clear that a quick kill wasn’t likely.

Deconstructing Harry’s opening scene.

“…you take everyone’s suffering and turn it into gold…like some fucking black magician…”

In a previous post, I wrote about an ex-girlfriend whom I’ve naturally been unable to protect from the vicissitudes of the world; whenever I learn that she’s suffered some misfortune, I feel -still- that I’ve failed to shield her. That this sense of failure is narcissistic is obvious: who am I that I should arbitrate the dealings of the universe? And isn’t she capable of handling herself? Of course.

When I posted it, I gained followers; I usually do when I write about something personal and painful, presumably because in our personal and painful experiences we are all alike, whereas in our petty hobbies and habits and tastes we diverge. The resonance of literature from past centuries demonstrates that the core experiences of human life are unchanged, and likely will always be so.

But in the exchange, unwilled though it might have been, of sincere heartache for popularity (of a sort), I feel that I do precisely what I derided when I quote Kundera in that post:

“Kundera once said that art takes suffering and redeems it into existential wisdom, but I have no desire to make use of the painful detritus of our love.”

It is discomfiting for any writer to note that in discussing the shape and nature of grief, s/he might be praised for observations borne of real suffering (the artist’s or others’). While I might protest that my intention was merely to achieve some sort of catharsis, or even to try and construct meaning from despair, the fact is that such an effort is celebrated.

I once advised another Tumblr to share more of herself, as it was in her personal experiences that she was most fascinating, most compelling; I see now that in doing so I was making explicit my understanding of the currency our market: we traffic in pain to profit.

I see no clear way to avoid the sense that I am exploiting my own heart and the sorrows of others in writing these pieces, including this one. The vanity of the endeavor is irreducible. I can frame arguments in defense of art and of sharing, and I suppose some of them might even be true.

But I am reminded of the discussion inevitably tied to Kant: how moral can an act be when you know it will benefit you?

kylebingman: …upon the second week of “Gratuitous Picture of Yourself Obscured by Intellectual Desk Ornamentation Wednesday” (as created by Mills and others) I found myself with PhotoBooth open and my Alexander statue in hand. Tumblr has been very kind today, which I appreciate sincerely; and if I’m remembered for nothing else, let this meme be my legacy. That one of my all time favorites participated, and with Alexander (!), means I can finally die content. Update: Nudawn eschews traditional intellectual totems for a recontextualization of market symbolism, while Topherchris high-fives Mao, AckB systematizes, Thusly celebrates the hirsute, and Sara hides behind her critical forbears.

kylebingman:

…upon the second week of “Gratuitous Picture of Yourself Obscured by Intellectual Desk Ornamentation Wednesday” (as created by Mills and others) I found myself with PhotoBooth open and my Alexander statue in hand.

Tumblr has been very kind today, which I appreciate sincerely; and if I’m remembered for nothing else, let this meme be my legacy. That one of my all time favorites participated, and with Alexander (!), means I can finally die content.

Update: Nudawn eschews traditional intellectual totems for a recontextualization of market symbolism, while Topherchris high-fives Mao, AckB systematizes, Thusly celebrates the hirsute, and Sara hides behind her critical forbears.

After seeing this, I messaged Matt about the “Wittgenstein cut-out holding a sword.” He was kind enough not to textually laugh while explaining that it was a poker, in reference to the “legendary debate with Karl Popper.” Out of gratitude, and a desire for balance, I offer this. I love Wittgenstein, but Popper as well. Here’s a brief bit on Popper from a while ago, and here’s a quote of his I often think of. David Deutsch (see his amazing TED talk) claims that Popperian epistemology is one of the four strands required for understanding the universe, incidentally.

After seeing this, I messaged Matt about the “Wittgenstein cut-out holding a sword.” He was kind enough not to textually laugh while explaining that it was a poker, in reference to the “legendary debate with Karl Popper.”

Out of gratitude, and a desire for balance, I offer this. I love Wittgenstein, but Popper as well. Here’s a brief bit on Popper from a while ago, and here’s a quote of his I often think of.

David Deutsch (see his amazing TED talk) claims that Popperian epistemology is one of the four strands required for understanding the universe, incidentally.

John Coltrane - My Favorite Things (1961).

One of the first albums I can remember my father giving to me was “Ole,” by John Coltrane, which -perhaps because the tracks are all so long- hasn’t the popularity in his oeuvre that I feel it should.

Searching for clips of those songs on YouTube was fruitless (I’ve never even heard a live performance of them), so I settled for this excellent performance of “My Favorite Things,” which shares some harmonic elements with “Ole” and features some of the same personnel: Eric Dolphy, McCoy Tyner, Reggie Workman (but not Art Davis), and Elvin Jones.

(Apologies for so many posts in one night).