[-empyre-] January 2017: -empyre- STRIKES BACK

[Alan Sondheim]

Happy New Year as well!

Resolutions coupled with critique; this is a period when we have to fight, 
against not only fake news, diatribes, violence and hatred, but also 
against simplistic analysis; we must learn to listen - to any and all 
voices. We were not prepared to comprehend the suddeness of the concrete 
overturning of legislations we fought for and believe in, and too many of 
us have turned to such despair, as to be basically dysfunctional; I see 
this over and over again. So we must stay alive (too much talk of suicide 
and total resignation) in the first place; and we must be prepared to 
resist, on whatever level we can.

- Resist, make art, make noise, be furious!

(A personal resolution - to stay away from Facebook and other social media 
platitudes/aphorisms that serve to comfort us - and instead tend towards 
deeper listening and analysis: not against theory, but theory with a 
swerve and the long take. The world's too complex otherwise and the 
surface of Fb etc. is horrific and inauthentic (in Sartre's sense) in this 
regard. And another personal resolution - to stay away from Heidegger!)


- Alan