thesubversivesound:

Our central idea is the construction of situations, that is to say, the concrete construction of momentary ambiences of life and their transformation into a superior passional quality.

-Guy Debord, Toward A Situationist International

the construction of situations is such a crucial and delicate art. 

post documents; transform your feelings

“if the text acts once, it can act again, and possibly against its prior act. this raises the possibility of resignification as an alternative reading of performativity and politics.”

—judith butler, excitable speech 

look at me don’t look at me

fuckdudeskilldudes:

sl33pcr33p:

fuckdudeskilldudes replied to your post: UGH STAT COUNTER WHY DO I

whatever you are relatable/fascinating! full disclosure I also read through like 90 pages of your blog when I first found it? did the same with pussy-strut, rgr, karaj and others; ANONYMOUS SOULMATE IDENTIFICATION AS SELFCARE

fuckdudeskilldudes replied to your post: UGH STAT COUNTER WHY DO I

I am genuinely sorry if that creeps you out though! what is the difference between being creepy and being appreciative (probably writing messages like these?) WHAT EVEN IS A INTERNET

I DON’T KNOW WHY IT UPSETS ME BUT IT DOES. i think it’s like, i am very conscious of/easily upset by being looked at. especially when i don’t know who’s looking at me. i don’t like not being in control of who can access my vulnerability. i deleted my first tumblr blog when it reached some critical mass of followers that felt like too much (500, which i’ve heard ISN’T A LOT but i can’t imagine having more than that/i would die/i would quit the internet forever). i hate hyper-visibility. i think i saw a gif one time that was like “DON’T LOOK AT ME” and i want that gif to explain myself all of the time. essentially my stance is DON’T READ THIS BLOG and that works most of the time, cause like, no1curr about me and i want it that way cause godddd shut up neu-wave western white feminist girls that know like way too much about riot grrl but can’t even play more than 5 chords on guitar. i don’t want to take up very much space because i don’t think i have much valuable to contribute to it other than shit other young white girls would relate to and like, again, who cares about white girls’ feelings no one should

but the weird thing is i love performing. there is something that feels removed about performing and i take comfort in the 4th wall. i am incessantly stroking that 4th wall. this blog is not a performance. i wish it was. and that’s where i have this cognitive dysfunction wherein i want my blog to be a performance but instead it is BRAIN VOMIT, and i look at other people’s blogs that seem so curated and so intentional and i can’t fucking bring myself to stop being so fucking emotionally/mentally present in this space. it’s probably the most vulnerable thing about me. i live in terror of people reading this blog (people i marginally know irl especially! dear sweet baby jesus god in heaven one of my Real Life Punk Friends saw a picture of me on someone else’s tumblr blog that she reads and i wanted to die when she told me), but i need it to survive because it’s an outlet for so many things.

AAAAHHH THE INTERNET I CAN’T CONTROL IT IT’S THIS BIG WRITHING MASS OF PEOPLE WHO SHOULD NEVER LOOK AT ME BUT DO ANYWAY

“DON’T LOOK AT ME” is a feeling that I am pretty intimately familiar with! that is why I really admire the immediacy/emotional presence of yr blog. because working through my own feelings re: vulnerability and the internet (The Feelings swing wildly between boredom and terror) is one of my current projects I guess, and it is SO HARD because I always just want to be more intentional/curatorial/abstruse/glacial/austere because it is easier and less dangerous. and I constantly have to be like “NO NO NO NO NO NO you are a human lady you are a lady on the internet you are a person JUST CLICK PUBLISH CLICK IT CLICK IT” and so far I have been succeeding at this project more than with other blogs I have had, but I still probably never share quite as much as I want to/as I think I should.

I dunno I am way too tired to write out a proper reply to this? that is another thing about tumblr that kills me, is the pace of it. it is exciting that all of these dialogues are constantly happening! but it also feels like they are happening really fast, and I  am a person who usually needs a couple days to pull articulate or at least vaguely language-shaped thoughts out of the formless void.

ALL THIS TO SAY: this is important to me, I am sorry again (for reals) for creeping you out, no one is entitled to your vulnerability, I will work on finding ways to appreciate people that respect their boundaries/fears, expect a better/clearer reply in a little while!

“JUST CLICK PUBLISH CLICK IT CLICK IT.” this whole discussion.

(Source: persephonette)

today i had several amazing discussions with various professors and friends in preparation for exams. topics included:

• the benefits of being a single mother
• our respective feminist narcissistic activities (“oh, are those pictures of you in your new book? i would do that”)
• how it is necessary to my feminist intellectual ethos to have the dream of a common language on my “feminist performances, 1960-present” list, and not under the genre of “feminist writing,” but as one of my theoretical texts
• feminist archiving, which included answering a lot of specific questions on how i’ve been thinking about it that i had no idea i am actually now articulate about 
• the importance of concentrating on work this summer for the first time ever
• that discipline and punish should have been on one of my lists 
• that i am forbidden (by 2 professors) from attending a certain dissertation defense and phd party, but will make the celebration up later for sure 
• being allowed to have a glass of wine at dinner during exams
• my intense love of archive of feelings and how cvetkovich’s intervention on trauma as ongoing and everyday is crucial 
• that this book on academic depression looks amazing 
• how one of our professors can always solve your intellectual conundrum before you even finish telling him what it is (i actually think i feel this way about all of my professors and felt that way from my first semester in the program and it was and is totally amazing and i’ve never felt that way anywhere else) 
• how delicious the beer cocktails are at vandaag. i got the one with acquavit, in honor of absent friends and past similarly very good times 
• fiona apple
• that the general exam is about describing the parameters of performance studies as a field and what books you would draw on to illustrate it. the thought of writing 10 pages on this fills me with excitement and also, after, i might be able to explain what i do in a way that isn’t “it’s sort of like cultural studies” (which it really isn’t) 
• how exams are sexy: “it’s like with a fetish, you overfocus on the object, and with theory you overfocus on the language and it’s all about close reading” 
• how to think about risk theoretically 
• “so you want to think about…transmitting, and in the transmitting of, transforming the past.” that is right exactly. 
• how i’m excited for exams: bed, writing, theory, and (personal) transformations 

i can’t wait until everyone posts the video from tonight in a few hours. this is the one important song i have not yet posted. the first half is really the best. 

lyrics: 

going to the fiona apple concert was one of the best and most satisfying things i have ever done. i really did smile almost the entire time. she played every song i’ve tumblrd: “fast as you can,” “paper bag,” “mistake,” and “sleep to dream.” she also played “extraordinary machine” and “criminal.”

as aliza said before i went, “i think this is actually the perfect instance of what richard schechner would call a ‘transformation ritual.’ you will do it, and you will be different afterwards.”

i am, i am, i am. 

the last day of class in my junior year of high school the english teacher gave us a list of the books to read that summer and i went home and stayed up almost all night reading the temple of my familiar instead of studying for the exam the next day because that is how i have always rolled, which is part of why i wasn’t even in honors english my sophomore year, because i could not bear the boring reading and wouldn’t do it. this identity-work descriptor is sort of irrelevant to the story (but not to the story that is my complicatedly anti-identitarian post-traumatic identity-work). anyway, we were supposed to write some sort of personal essays on the books we read that summer and i wrote my essays on temple and on cat’s eye.the first day of english class our senior year the teacher was all “no one did these essays right except for kara” and read one or maybe both of them.

i remember the thrill of her reading them, though i don’t remember what they said, just that it was not stuff i would have ever talked about in catholic school. i was so good at the confessional “I.” even without going to confession! i mean, i read sassy. i don’t think anyone else i knew did. don’t believe everything you read about 1992.

anyway my predilections were in place so young; it’s so sad we didn’t have photobooth or livejournal in the 90s. so much lost time to make up and also it’s going to take me a little while to get to aliza’s 1000 creepy reading-in-bed pictures, but maybe i can write about narcissistic posting for one of my exams and rationalize my new hobby, the way i do with everything, including tumblr. there will be references to the hospital, archives of feeling and shoshana felman, and to that judith butler quote about recognition that i will post or reblog if i can find it. 

also i’m really into the “professionally creepy” tag. i’ve never used the word “creepy” before this but 2012, new beginnings, etc. it’s a good redescription of exactly what i usually am and always aspire to be. 

i write short

if you tell me to write a 20-page paper, i can barely get to 15. i blame this on my magazine and newspaper career: how often did i have more than 1500 words? (and sometimes i had 20.) but i was writing my unsafety conference abstract for real tonight, since it is due tomorrow, and it is fucking twice as long as it can be. now i am cutting. this is literally unprecedented in my history; sometimes topics find you. if i don’t get in i’ll post the proposal here since my boundaries just keep getting blurrier. writing that sentence just gave me french feminist feelings. 

staging excess precariously