<nettime> Delose

[Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>]

Delose


On the disaster of the future planet now


..."If one person, sane to a degree, may be found willing and ready to
sacrifice his life and the life of others, for his beliefs in the now
and hereafter, the world is doomed."

..."And yet it is a commonplace among us that the swarm of men and women
shall bring the scythe to bear on all others who covet not the truth."

The Cusp of Information, a continuing digression

The plethora of the world, its fecundity (potential for production of 
organism and information) is at its maximum. Future knowledge will no 
longer be at the beck and call of its past; if anything, it will be vastly 
reduced as power grids collapse, desertifications and extinctions set in. 
What I am writing now, what you are writing, has no chance for survival. 
Records, archives, require potential wells which become more and more 
difficult to maintain in environments which are increasingly adverse. If 
we are headed towards any singularity, it is the collapse of the Sememe, 
the disappearance of universals as the world turns towards isolated and 
violent localizations. Think of the chains of supply and demand that 
produce for example this computer - chains that span continents as a 
result of research and sterile laboratories that construct the truth-value 
of the isolated molecule or atom. All this disappears in the maelstrom of 
disease, inundation, mafia and gang rule, suicide bombers, new forms of 
terrorism still undreamed. The Internet provides a convenient model; 
created within regimes of relative trust and open communication in spite 
of the cold war, it now proves so leaky that Usenet is rendered useless; 
the ratio of spam to personalized email is probably four or five to one; 
hackers continue to bring down data-bases, operating systems, and hardware 
for fun and profit; communality creates hundreds of distributed and 
problematic best friends; and what's left of the Net can just as easily 
(perhaps more easily) be used by criminal organizations, however defined, 
than by the rest of us. Packets or no packets, without the power grid, 
without wireless or functioning computers, perhaps without broadband, what 
passes for transparent information will become bottle-necked, hopelessly 
entangled, dysfnctional; one can imagine ghost-mail for example, ghost- 
sites passing for the "real thing" which no longer exists. And it's no 
longer true that technology will save us (it never was), that the ruin of 
the world will revert to universal efflorescence; temperature rise is 
fast-forward, and whatever changes might bring back a temporarily sustain- 
able equilibrium will take tens of thousands of years at best. The Sahara 
for example is nowhere near greening, and what's lost in the Amazon - a 
premonition of information in general - remains lost. "There's no there 
there" because the sentence is cut off in mid- sentence with nowhere to 
go. Was it Hawking who recently pointed out that humanity's only chance 
(forget the rest of the biosphere) is space travel? Shall we take our 
problems elsewhere, only to repeat them - to create places defined by 
escape velocity, strategies of escape, one from another? And how do we 
live with ourselves without the most radical desensitization, objecti- 
fication, in relation to the untold and unbelievable suffering we bring to 
the remaining animals on the planet? (For as Foreman has pointed out, we 
have already done a good job of ridding most of the continents of their 
megafauna - Africa is the last to go.) In the future, even our knowledge 
of these things will have disappeared, along with the last of the last of 
"their" species, of any _other_; without communication pipelines, the 
"clean and proper" use of the electromagnetic spectrum, what happens in 
one part of the world will remain in that part of the world. Be assured it 
will be in ignorance, it will be in violence, permeated by gangs, deeply 
religious hysteric. Some few will remain. Information, in the sense used 
here, will not, and only its residue, dissolution and chaos, the symbolic 
of the broken hard-drive, will remain. (I should add one literally cannot 
cope with this, with this second-sight permeated by information, hence 
one's tendency towards suicide, which must be continually monitored. Not 
that one wants to disappear, voluntarily, from this world, not yet. In any 
case, we shall die within the beginning of the worst of it, although who, 
then, shall know of that, shall think otherwise? If wisdom is thinking 
otherwise, wisdom as well is close to its final site, final citation. One 
cannot think otherwise, with so much knowledge, structure, text and sub- 
text, at one's disposal.)

My Life in Spades

(reworked from http://www.asondheim.org/biog.txt which is continually 
updated.)

A bad catch... Acconci and Acker (later) and Laurie Anderson (later), I 
found myself in Acconci; she had a drawing of his on the wall which she'd 
turn backside Allison staying in Amherst, New York, because she couldn't 
cross the Altarpiece. Mayer and I went to Munich together; I paid from the 
book Anderson insisted I was. As for Aram Saroyan (earlier), he wanted me 
out Artcenter in Buffalo, of which I have already written. Atlanta. 
Atlanta. I didn't behave well with Shellie. Australia, where I was keynote 
speaker and participated in a number of Avenue. I don't think I was 
friendly with the Brennans any more. We used Because of the earlier 
closeness with the family, it's hard to stay Because you deserve to be, he 
replied. I remember bow and arrow, swimming Biennale. In Paris, Beth found 
a way from our room to the subway - around Brunonia, lake Pleasant, near 
Casco. But the Everglades saved me; at first we noticed only the 
alligators and Center. Allison and I move to Atlanta. I get drunk at the 
first Chris, wrote at one point she wished she were a cockroach on my 
wall. To City; she was married to John, had a chile, was close to 
suicidal. Was Clancy and Al, were counselors who brought their own 
keelless canoe; I Dallas, under Dean Robert Corrigan's multi-disciplinary 
program; fourteen Dallas; as far as I know (1997), they still have it, 
almost worn out... I Defense (about Tina Weymouth), The Fourteen Stations 
of the Cross Doctor Dattner, who was a home practitioner and family 
friend. Encyclopedia of Jazz. They sung. England, beginning September 
through February 2000 English badly, accusing me of everything. Everglades 
with just flashlight; it was amazing. It was then I saw the Everglades. I 
couldn't face the other faculty or the school; I roamed the Fukuoka 
Harlem; her parents had arranged this. Now thinking about it "just the 
Hopkins. The blues seemed the only way out. When I went abroad I took a 
Hubert Acquin; they resonated. I always do... Her drawings were 
everywhere. She was still obsessed with I am transitive, an invisible 
transitive, among the physical-real of the I don't remember moving into 
the new house or how it was originally set I had to teach in New Jersey; 
she came with me. From then on my life I make $2000-$3000 from the tape. I 
moved to New York; she came to the city to see me. She and Chris Franz I 
never behaved so badly. I was. And today, 2006, realizing where I was, 
again. I'd always been frightened of my father's anger - now it came out 
in full I'd keep a list of best friends in it as well as a list of "things 
to do" Individuals: Post-Movement Art in America that I had edited. There 
was a Irvine, and Ellen came later. It's printed in Halifax and Williams 
College, two editions. Parts surface Jennifer book is published; rewrote 
the book for Saul Ostrow in November Jerusalem. And for a moment, this 
sense of panic. And then realizing where Joanna's wedding. Since the 
former, Margie and I have been distant and Joseph - with Nachamah 
Leibowitz. Hebrew was relatively bad. Wrote poetry, Kabbalah as best I 
could. Then I was introduced to Wittgenstein by Ed Kingston?) She asked me 
if we were cyber-fucking. Later we met in the NS Later she told Allison I 
was crazy; Allison told me; I told Allison Kathy Later that day - that 
night in fact - we went back to Shark Valley in the Leslie telling me that 
I had a responsibility to her. The day she arrived Loebs (?) and somehow 
the name 'Raub' also comes up. My father would yell Logico-Philosophicus, 
which has remained one of my favorites; it continues Mark's On-the-Bowery. 
She borrowed a videocamera from me, and set it up in My writing was 
horrible. I didn't know what I was doing; I wanted to Nothing leaves me 
and nothing leaves me alone. Now I try to understand this, and will meet 
her in Seattle, travel with Once I was reading (attempting to read at 
best) Sholem Aleichem in Hebrew; Providence. An,ode was my M.A. thesis - a 
work of experimental poetry Quebecois referendum. I discovered Nicole 
Brossard, feminin ecriture, and SF Schell's wife, giving me something hot 
to drink. I favored swimming under- Seminary, hopelessly in love with 
Platt Townend, yes, dancing breathless Site - I never wanted to speak to 
her again. So that everything is ordered by date; I enter when I can, the 
dates are Stollman of ESP again at an opening at Grand Central Artist 
Center. He Television was still pre-network. Computers were partial 
dreams. The idea Temple, by myself, facing death and the world and the one 
family member I That I've never had. The stuff was out there, remembered. 
These situations create an aporia, a kind of knot which is doubly-bound, 
Thornton. Called em/bedded, it features 12 channels of video/audio, 
Toronto; I met her on Chris Keep's postmodern list. (Maybe it was UN, the 
former were condemned; in real life, it was all too clear that the 
University. I had gone for an interview - and felt I was simply promised a 
Virtual Environments Laboratory in West Virginia? I began working with 
Welbutrin (which I'd like to get off of), and something for cholesterol. 
Yale (with Kathy), Wesleyan, etc. Kathy and I parted dubious friends. [and 
why is this fragment here? what has been missing, lost, in this list, `cp 
.bio .bio.old`; `sort -o .bio .bio`; a scandal. And worked then in the 
Alps: around the Aletsch glacier, and a week later. Her voice was 
incredible; she immediately replaced our about freighters while staying at 
Kristin's and Jason's, returned to accident (maternal). I went to his 
funeral, my maternal grand- father; I accompanied by horrific feelings of 
submergence and fuzziness; I never am accompanied me twice. aesthetics 
problematic; in a way it was too easy to create beautiful affected me with 
Margaret. afraid of her father's anti-semitism. *** Again, a removal, 
hopefully the against me. Baraka created quite a stir. I couldn't stand 
the complacency ahead. After we returned, I visited her loft one day; her 
diary was open all of the people I knew there; at this point, I remember 
Keith Waldrop all the time... My worst class was English composition; I'd 
buck the along for the first two weeks or so, before psychosis and 
hysteria set in. along the line, Acconci later insisted I wasn't an 
artist, on the same day along with these people - what's left of my family 
- and I tire of being always been honest with her, as best I can, only 
when younger, keeping my always face others. always saving them, somehow, 
desperately, they'd turn toward me, I'd take an old age home. I want to 
die before that happens. Or perhaps he isn't, and I have forgotten each 
other. Now my thesis advisor, Edwin Honig, is in and I'm feeling close to 
both of them. Family problems at the wedding; I and Summa, among others. 
and a machine (I later identified as an atomic cannon) wheel out, run to 
another - I couldn't really identify them. I also had the runic alphabet 
another disaster. She moved in the day we met, upon my invitation; we got 
another time, she drew a perfect cunt between my asshole and prick. I was 
anti-semitic. Someone put a pig's nose in my bed since I was Jewish. I've 
apart. It wasn't the first or last time. apartment apartment near the 
Waldrops; I remember editing "ppress" - a hand-printed apartment to 
another) and longer in Paris, where I was in the Paris apartment. And then 
later she was remarried or with someone else, had appeared with different 
names in my early writing. And now I wonder if I arranged alphabetically; 
when I add to the lines, the sections lose their articles for him. Or were 
these later? One was done with Rosemarie; the artist and gallerist, and 
decided on the latter, at first representing her as a result of software? 
hardware? I leave it here, the atomic cannon as scanning work that would 
be completed in the summer of 2006. But these as well as the usual 
guitars. Started a blog. Feel like a hungry ghost. assassination of 
President Nixon; and diagrams relating to the "general at Brown. At Hebrew 
University I remember sitting in front of a bus. The at everyone during 
the game; it would wake me. And perhaps it was around at the breakfast 
table. Everything changed when I was encapsulated at at this point, the 
first time? It's a blur. We were driven around. I mix attitudes towards 
me. My father screamed at me in front of everyone; he autobiography, 
screen or peripheral memories, asides, eyes or bodies avatars then through 
motion capture and Poser. We created a number of avatars would form the 
background to more abstract mocap images, as well babysitter at this 
point. Tensions became really difficult; I left for back in, dressed as 
punks, terrified... back to Montreal. Allison Rossiter said I mistreated 
her. She spoke back, my legs spread, etc. etc. badly, and used him. Later 
he apologized. basement. The idea was to catch people faking deafness. But 
my reflex became religious, meandered around the country. Didn't I go to 
Mea Shearim become all too close to Shellie Fleming, the film Curator at 
Image in been reading Johnson's Dictionary. been; I bounced myself off of 
every wall in existence, barely making it before that, I wrote Tamara 
Bowers (who I had slept with at Irvine and who behind_ her. The walls were 
tiled, I think, some light beige/ yellow black. I remember a red wagon. I 
remember... The sidewalk in front of the bleachers; I forget his name. The 
same year or close to, others? the border (we fought, were depressed), I 
took up the curatorship at Nexus in brain twitches have come back, etc. I 
take three medications, aspirin, break through the marriage, there and 
then. She testi- fied against me at breaking each other's arms. I was 
working at a Settlement House in East broke my nose, left me covered with 
blood; I went looking for a friend of broke the record. I was living at a 
settlement house run by Pete - I brought Leroi Jones Amiri Baraka to the 
campus. My Black roomate turned call her; I did, and calmed her down. She 
was hysterical. I hadn't spoken can relate more and more to her, an 
indication of my own failings. I've care of them, everything would be all 
right, eternal life and devotion, carried out. After I had thought to 
myself, I'm not feeling this, sitting cartoons.  All of my work has 
stemmed from this. The magic reminds me of castigated me, say, "Why do you 
have to bring this stuff up?" For her it cathecting for a long time now; 
it wasn't sexual, and stemmed largely from cds released. Azure and I 
worked with very low frequency (VLF) radio; I chop($str=<STDIN>); close 
APPEND;} coloration. committed to me the day she left. I remember the 
truck pulling away, the comparative emptiness. confused - odd, given the 
obdurate nature of the real at any particular contract with Bernard 
(Bernie) Stollman for the second; it didn't matter. contributed anything 
for six years. It's time I formally abandoned this. conversion. I feel 
relieved that Jew isn't a dirty word, that the blasted correspondence... 
corrobrated all this had happened (decades later). Later as well, we had a 
couldn't take his notion of "my generation / your generation" and 
countesses dressed in black. I ran into incredible kids surviving in the 
court procedure. And again later, I remember visiting her in New York 
covers _acts_ and the former a state out of one's control. It's the latter 
created with a scanning electron microscope; a piece based on an crinkled 
black with a translucent window for viewing the animated crits. I was 
invisible. Jacek my graduate student took over my classes. cross the line, 
conservative secretly? curtains. My world was black. I felt I didn't 
belong. I felt my roomates days I can't sleep, days I do nothing but; 
lowered body temperature is decades ago. I remember visit- ing (a farm? a 
village?) her home; when I deep; I had felt close to the Weiss, not the 
Sondheim, side of the family. department head, made veiled threats. To 
this day I'm not sure why I was departments. I met Sungja Lee and we lived 
together for a year, traveling destruction of all good things, that I was 
doomed, cowardly, unable to devouring ourselves. dictionary symptomology. 
didn't exist. For the school year 2001-2002 I was in Miami. At the end of 
didn't show up and she played with our group (Damaged Life). She moved in 
didn't succeed and I was impotent until I was 24. I was completely died? 
That my cat died as well? I returned home at a loss; I hadn't been 
director. By April I had resigned. distant but when I don't, the pattern 
starts all over again. divorced somewhere around here; she received 
alimony which we both decided do something. I called from the main 
Pembroke dorm. It took a while to get don't remember where I got the time. 
dormitory. I have no idea how I got there. I should not have been admitted 
down. A pogo stick. A pair of stilts. during some of the speeches, which 
were heard. It was extremely upsetting. ecstatic, transported; I sucked 
her tampax. Images made a perfect grid on ecstatically. Sooner or later 
the bathtub was abandoned; I'd lie on my eliminated. The school continued 
to lie to me; Carol Damian, who was the encapsulation of sorts - distorted 
avatar work of the past five years. entire life; I feel the fragility of 
flesh, fragility of the world - for escape. Hell. A roomate built 
transistor radios without cases, the wires even here is a synchronous 
world, shifted slightly as if diachrony were events after were 
devastating. Since that time I've been on terrible terms everyone was on 
an emotional edge. everything must come to light. everything ordered 
through dates. The program: everything to you." 1997 I think I'm so smart. 
everywhere. I ran into the evil of landlords, the decay of buildings, the 
example this organized power grid I type into - on a constant basis. 
exit(0); experience, with Patti Rogers. She tried to kill herself at 
Syracuse; I explored the Bolsa Chica wetlands, helped a graduate student 
release a expression on the face of her mother. I was stunned... She met 
her future eyes, eyes, eyes. facility that was, we "knew" intended for the 
development and production fact. factory? A low building, very wide and 
long, no one ever seen. But the falling onto the floor. The walls were 
painted black. There were black father who would never let me assert 
myself, who yelled at me almost fear of anything and everything in the 
world. And from being physically flowers kept trimmed, the grass cut. The 
machine was enormous and furious. flu; I can't function. My body signals 
my body the misplacement of following omens. Studied stone tools with 
Stekelis, Bible - story of for the Phd. I begin to work on ideas of 's/ms' 
and develop Nikuko, who force, and I haven't been able to really get along 
with him since. There forget his last name - on, I think, 125th Street. I 
ran into people who four days friendly, which I hadn't expected. friends' 
works. frightened, gathering security and comfort where I could, this very 
early front of the GCAC; she was writing sad and lonely words with a brush 
and frustrated and mad with each other. She left suddenly; she had to. We 
were fucking me; she only did it because I was paying for the trip. 
Sometimes a fully awake. There's some sort of chemical imbalance, tending 
not only gave me some, said take them. Vitamins.


speed.

i can't slow up. death is an hysteria. i don't care about your gender. i 
send out work as soon as it's done. i make work as soon as i think of it. 
i read as fast as i can. i watch news and practice music while i read. i 
know if i slow up i'll die. i know there will be a missive or missile here 
in this space that will not be sent. i know the missive will be the tag or 
curlicue. i know it will be the conjunction of my death. i read the con- 
junction as not both life and death. i read the conjunction as neither 
life nor death. i eat fast. i never sleep properly. i dream theory and 
practice. i hunt on the internet. i shape ride on the internet. i speak 
here and do not speak elsewhere. speech is a privilege. i cannot pronounce 
other languages in proper order. i cannot pronounce the rudiments of 
speech. i breath fast. i get out of breath fast. death promises slowing. 
death does not halt. i watch myself as i speak. i watch myself as i 
remember. i remember remembering. i remember what i have forgotten. i 
watch my brain at work. i remember watching. i know what i forget will be 
my last. i know if i forgot i should be reminded to die. i am afraid of 
being reminded to die. life is a remission. life is under remission. i 
cannot keep up with myself. i watch myself ahead of myself. i am never 
behind. i am always ahead. if i am comfortable with speed i am not speed- 
ing. i must speed into discomfort. i must be beyond myself. i must be 
beyond ahead of myself. i play music fast. i want to get all the music out 
before i can no longer play music. i want to get out this absolute music. 
i want to theorize as bulwark and therapeutic. i want to theorize before i 
can no longer theorize. before i can no longer theorize in complexity. i 
guard my theorization. i guard my brain and my speed. if i think of a 
sentence i say that sentence. if i think of a poem i write that poem. if i 
have an idea i write that idea. if i think of a video i make that video. i 
make that video when i think of the video. i edit that video while i make 
that video. i am afraid of passing out. i am afraid of dizziness. i speed 
through dizziness. if i stop i will die. if i die this thought will not be 
finished. i must finish this thought. i have a new thought now.

Notes on the parenthetical vis-a-vis LISP


1 The comfort of LISP, maternal enclosure of forms; results leak out like 
residues, programs huddle. (Of course there are all sorts of exceptions, 
some side-effects, outputs, debugs etc.)

2 Primordial counting structures, loosened lists, beginnings and endings.

3 Is there really any need to run a program's perfect framework? Running 
a program: _Time stays out of it._

4 LISP primitives relate strongly to Badiou's ontology and multiplicities.

5 What constitutes ( and )? Or the NULL, NIL, ()?

  -z. 
(NULL '( ))
T
(NULL T)
NIL
(EQUAL NIL '( )))
T
As well as this ontology:
(ATOM '( ))
T
And this (in relation to Peirce):
(EQUAL '() ( ))

  a. Generally the parenthetical is considered subordinate, an addendum.

  b. Generally the parenthetical is related to the bracket [ and ], as well 
as { and }. The bracket is a building-block, a support; { and } are always 
subordinate. All of these - like commas in a lost - or dashes as in this 
sentence - isolate what is subvocalized, below the level of the breath.
Part-object, not abject.

  c. The parenthetical becomes something else - the shape constitutes a 
womb within the sentence, breakdown of linearity, potential branch-struc- 
ture.

  d. In LISP besides the leak, the parenthetical is _all there is._ Con- 
sider this: the always already parenthetical of the world relates to 
eidetic reduction, the bracketing of reality, etc.

  e. In Buddhism of course the bracketing is of concern to the extent that 
given (A) one wants A or () and NIL or  .

  f. The frame is always already a narrative; a program is always already 
a narrative.

  g. The frame constructs the narrative: Narrative is (_literally_) the 
construct of the real: narrative constructs the real; the real con- 
structs narrative.

  h. Without the frame there is nothing.

  i. LISP is frame. The procedure/program/atom/primitive of LISP is always 
already embedded. The embedding is self-embedding; the embedding is a 
construct defined and created by the transcendental consciousness (within 
this frame or parentheses) of the programmer. It makes no difference 
whether LISP exists or not.

  j. Frames are never empty; emptied frames to frames are beings to Being.
The frame is a mess of the programmer; the programmer is a mess of the 
frame. All code is dirty code. Emptied frames are abandoned frames, their 
residue excreted.

6. The above relates to thought, not LISP necessarily. (Of LISP I am 
ignorant.)



The Edge

Go to the edge of the world. Don't come back until you find it. Don't tell 
me there's no edge. If you think there's no edge you're not at the edge of 
the world. Are you. When you reach the edge of the world you have only one 
way to go. You may think you have another way to do but you only have one 
way to go and that is away from the edge of the world. You may go to the 
edge and you may look over the edge. You may see the shell of the world or 
the beams of the world. You may see the nodes of the world and the vectors 
of the world. You cannot go beyond the edge of the world. You may think 
the edge of the world is quiet and smooth. It is not. The edge of the 
world repulses the world. The edge of the world repulses the world trying 
to go beyond the edge of the world. The world cannot go beyond the edge of 
the world. If you cannot go beyond the world at the edge of the world 
you're at the edge of the world. You may dance at the edge of the world 
and you may look. You may look just a little beyond the edge of the world. 
You may look at the sky. The sky is part of the edge of the world. If you 
look at the sky and you cannot touch the sky you are at the edge of the 
world.

The edge of the world is not a barrier and not a frontier. There are no 
guards at the edge of the worlds. There are no tariffs and no customs. 
There is nothing at the edge of the world but the edge of the world. The 
edge of the world is nothing and separates you from nothing. You may think 
to yourself someone owns the rest of the world. Or someone owns the edge 
of the world. Someone may own up to the edge of the world. Someone may own 
the edge of the edge of the world. No one can own the edge of the edge 
beyond the edge of the world. The edge of the edge beyond the edge of the 
world is an open set. The world up to the edge of the world includes the 
edge of the world. The edge of the world is a closed set. You may think 
you are free but you are in a closed set. You may dance within the closed 
set and you will be thrown back at the edge of the world. For the edge of 
the world is an active edge and a prohibition. The prohibition at the edge 
of the world is within the world.

Every dance is a dance at the edge of the world. Every dance weakens the 
world. The world is weaker for dance. Dance is stronger for the world.

You may think you are at the edge of the world. Then return from the edge 
of the world. You may think there's no edge of the world. Then you're not 
at the edge of the world.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LS5-v9yrGPY Bones
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ht9rjkaFpqg Blocked
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6f56M3B1DM Dropping 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bAnuua9-Pc Xcape

*There is a site bed on the edge. It is not an edge at all.
** There is no end to the open set of the other of the edge of the world. 
*** There is no beginning as well.



=======================================================================
Work on YouTube, blog at http://nikuko.blogspot.com . Tel 718-813-3285.
Webpage directory http://www.asondheim.org . Email: sondheim@panix.com.
http://clc.as.wvu.edu:8080/clc/Members/sondheim for theory; also check
WVU Zwiki, Google for recent. Write for info on books, cds, performance,
dvds, etc. =============================================================



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