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<p>Dear <<empyreans>>,</p>
<p>I am enjoying the dissonance between Sonata and
Solidarnosc--Mozart and Jean-Michel Jarre, together at last.<br>
</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Annie Mcclanahan wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:7FF66BA6-8828-4703-98E7-9332A57C243A@ad.uci.edu">that
solidarity requires that we see ourselves as intimately connected
to lots of people we don’t know</blockquote>
<br>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 29/04/20 5:09 pm, Patricia
Zimmermann wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:DM6PR17MB2988407C4C63E711048412E4DEAD0@DM6PR17MB2988.namprd17.prod.outlook.com">
<div style="font-family: Calibri, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">We had one week to
"migrate" our courses to "remote instruction." Words from
administrators and not from faculty. COVID meant
shelter-in-place. No more F2F classes as they have come to be
called. F2F, a phantom, a phantasmatic, a fantasy in this COVID
world of invisible viruses, illness, death, and screens.
Migration from the embodied sensorium of the classroom to the
emphemerality of screens. From three dimensions to two. From a
world of chiararscuro to flat.</div>
<div style="font-family: Calibri, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">
<br>
</div>
<div style="font-family: Calibri, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">
The great migration as some have called it came with a great
work speed up. Many colleges, including my own, insisted on
propagating ideas about "student centered," a neoliberal
construct of consumerism and comfort displacing the messiness of
ideas and debate. A dangerous shift from the collective to the
individual, from the abstract to feelings.</div>
</blockquote>
<p>Of course there is recapitulation here. <br>
</p>
<p>I went back to Milan Kundera for his view on kitsch, about the
cruelty sentimentality and mawkishness cover over, and recalled
how Kundera listened to<span class="st"><em> </em>Varèse and
Xenakis, finding, especially in the latter, consolation. He asks
himself why? Why, when he could be listening to Smetana? and
recapitulating in its patriotism his nostalgia for homeland and
for collective belonging. <br>
</span></p>
<p><span class="st">He writes, equally brutally, perhaps, to the
brutality he describes, and again, forgive me quoting at length:</span></p>
<p><span class="st">"Despite Stravinsky's denial that music
expresses feeling, the naive listener cannot see it any other
way. That is music's curse, its mindless aspect. All it takes is
a violinist playing the three long opening notes of a largo, and
a sensitive listener will sigh, "Ah, how beautiful!" In those
three notes that set off the emotional response, there is
nothing, no invention, no creation, nothing at all: it's the
most ridiculous "sentimentality hoax." But no one is proof
against that perception of music, or against the foolish sigh it
stirs.</span></p>
<p><span class="st">"European music is founded on the artificial
sound of a note and of a scale; in this it is the opposite of
the <i>objective</i> sound of the world. Since its beginnings,
Western music is bound, by an insurmountable convention, to the
need to express <i>subjectivity</i>. It stands against the
harsh sound of the outside world just as the sensitive soul
stands against the insensibility of the universe.</span></p>
<p><span class="st">"But the moment could come (in the life of a man
or of a civilization) when sentiment (previously considered a
force that makes man more human and relieves the coldness of his
reason) is abruptly revealed as the "superstructure of
brutality," ever present in hatred, in vengeance, in the fervor
of bloody victories. At that time I came to see music as the
deafening noise of the emotions, whereas the world of noises in
Xenakis's works became beauty; beauty washed clean of affective
filth, stripped of sentimental barbarity."</span></p>
<p><span class="st">...</span></p>
<p><span class="st">As of Monday New Zealand has moved to what has
been called for the simplification of collective imagining alert
Level 3. This is nothing like the great migration to the digital
Patricia Zimmerman names. But then, perhaps it is, since, on
entering a cafe or going to a restaurant offering takeaway
service (since entering Level 3 there has been a great rush to
do so), although one is met by serving staff--at the appropriate
distance--one cannot simply make a verbal request of them, point
to and say, That piece of pie, or A latte, please. One must
"click and collect." <br>
</span></p>
<p><span class="st">The publicity for this programme speaks to its
convenience--and it is not only applied to food and drink, but
applies to hardware and clothing stores. Even in the absence of
a delivery service, it is allegedly more convenient to text in a
request--using the app--and to take oneself there, often with
others, who might not be as observant of the rules as oneself,
and make payment by a "swipe" or "paywave" (the latter
encouraged, cash vehemently discouraged) of one's card.</span></p>
<p><span class="st">Now this is getting to be an almost universal
proposition, covering all transactions. <br>
</span></p>
<p><span class="st">Of course it <i>can</i> cover, with its
convenience and ease well-attested to, the dropping of
superfluous staff. <br>
</span></p>
<p><span class="st">But what is discovered by it is of course its
inconvenience and the disease of the migration of some basic
behaviours to the digital--in what might be called a series of <i>small
migrations</i>. Further, what is entailed in the migration of
the small is a disproportionate increase in the number of<i>
personal data points</i> one is handing over, freely, that one
is both encouraged to as well as <i>has to</i>. <br>
</span></p>
<p><span class="st">And this having to as well as being encouraged
to and sometimes cajoled to, by ads calling for Unity, and yes
Solidarity, against the enemy, mirrors nicely the very softly
very gently impositions of rules for self-isolation and social
distancing covering over with voluntarily adopted rules the fact
of their being enforceable laws. The noise of this
contagion--the digital, at the outset of the pandemic, was
readily identified, before being identified with information or
instruction, with <i>dis</i>information, as the more
contagious--is covered over with sweetness.</span></p>
<p><span class="st">Best,</span></p>
<p><span class="st">Simon</span></p>
<p><span class="st"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://squarewhiteworld.com">http://squarewhiteworld.com</a><br>
</span></p>
<p><span class="st"><br>
</span></p>
<p><br>
</p>
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