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FLUENCE


     This page is now CLOSED and is OBSOLETE.
     The latest version is at: INFLUENCE

                                           February 17, 2009

But okay, let me calm down
a bit, and breath a little,
and forget about Greil Marcus.           CHALKBOARD_TRACES

Let's try to think seriously
about "cultural influence",
and the recurrence of tropes,       And perhaps,
and what channels it all might      about what we
flow through.                       can expect in
                                    the future.
This is The Process:

You identify a simlarity
between the ideas of A and B,
then you look for knowledge
of A by B, then failing that,
you look for less direct
links (a third party that
knows of A and is known by
B)-- and when that process of
tracing knowledge fails, when         And when you can
it looks truly unlikely that          identify a rough
B could've been "influenced"          cycle, like a veering
by A, *then* you have a very          between Apollonian
interesting piece of data:            and Dionysian poles,
you may be staring at a               then it's not at all
Universal, a clue to a                unreasonable to make
fundamental principle of              a prediction...
human nature.                         Perhaps you now know      Knowing that,
                                      where the culture         can you
                                      is going.                 prepare for
                                                                it?  Can you
                                                                direct it?

 You can draw a
 line from Picasso
 through Pollock     And that "line" is       Let us say that there are
 and Rauschenberg    the identification       connections and/or
 to Kerouac and      of parallel              parallels worth following
 Burroughs to get    attitudes: a             between the "Lettrist
 to the punks, and   retreat from             International" and
 one might make      orderly control,         "Anarchy in the U.K.".
 stops at dada/SI    an embrace of
 along the way.      messiness, perhaps           Is there any reason to
                     of spontaniety.              think that these are
                                                  more interesting, than,
                                                  say, tracing a line
 It *might* be true                               from Beat to Punk?
 that the young punks
 of the late 70s had no                                       (William
 knowledge of the line                                        Burroughs
 they were treading --                                   is not
 that any chains of                                           mentioned
 influence here are          It strikes me as far more        in "Lipstick
 purely imaginary, or        likely, that the New York        Traces".)
 at least untraceable.       punks were seeded with
                             intellectuals who knew           And is
 It may be true in           full well what they were         there some
 some sense that it          doing, and that *these*          reason
 doesn't matter so           people became strong             we're not
 much if the punks           influences on the later,         talking
 knew much about             more ignorant punks.             about, say,
 modern art: ideas                                            existentialism?
 can be in the air,                 Patti Smith,
 passed around, and                 Richard Hell,                    Or the
 end up in the heads                Tom Verlaine,                    romantic
 of people who don't                and David Byrne                  poets?
 really know much                   were not people
 about their source.                who turned up
                                    their noses at
                                    literature.       The art school
                                                      renegades of
    It also could be that there's a                   Talking Heads
    cycle of conformity and rebellion                 and their fans
    built into the human psyche, that                 certainly knew
    parallel behavior can recur skipping              their way around
    generations, without any obvious                  Picasso and
    influence between the players,                    Pollock.
    simply because it's built into the
    logic of the situation... when                    AUTHENTICALLY_STUPID
    Apollonian control is dominant, one
    either goes along, or does not, and
    when one chooses not to, the
    Dionysian emerges, dancing a jig          TRAGEDY
    eerily reminscent of something seen
    generations ago.



                        The pendulum swings,
                        it's momentum constrains
                        it to the dwell only at
                        the two extremes.

                            But we may hope that
                            it precesses...              There may be small,
                                                         external forces
                                                         that can carry it
                                                         somewhere new,
                                                         though it may look
                                                         as though it just
                                                         rushes back and forth.

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