Russell Brand interviewed by Marlena Katene. It struck me that this interview made both interviewer and interviewee more real.
“Good boy!”
Of course, the fact that one’s body is never fully one’s own, bounded and self-referential, is the condition of passionate encounter, of desire, of longing, and of those modes of address and addressability upon which the feeling of aliveness depends.
—Judith Butler, in Frames of War
This is the best photo op of Rob Ford as mayor there is to see. Watch his discomfort. Watch how he eyes the bread, how he seeks his own comfort inside his discomfort. He sways in discomfort. He watches and does not understand. This is a primer for Rob Ford for Rosh Hashana but what an awkward primer it is.
Joe McIntosh’s film Viewfinder. I found it while searching information on one of my favourite pastimes when I was a kid. It was this crazy low tech portal into new worlds. I love this take on it.
Humans’ craving for both novelty and money lead to terrible things for other animals. Our proclivity to stare and apprehend has led historically to some of the most interesting spectacle at the expense of the evolution of our capacity for compassion.
In all the books and articles I have read on Freakshows and carnival (a lot by now), a distinction is made between those freaks who are born with novelty (giants, midgets, dwarves, and other oddities) and those who self create (the tattooed lady, the sword swallower, the contortionist and other oddities). This little girl is the offspring of Iraqi parents and (conjecturally) depleted uranium. She is a man-made freak, only she didn’t decide and neither did her parents. How can we look at this? What does it make us to have made this?
Charles Stratton, famous Barnum actor, as Napoleon. Was he talented or was he a talented dwarf or was he just a dwarf? Why did people want to see him perform? Does it matter?
In the elevator, people examine us closely. It’s the same old story. I feel them looking so I turn to look back, to smile and show them I am human; they turn away quickly to pretend they weren’t looking. I feel like wearing a sign saying, “A bear did it.” A man in the lobby stares openly. I smile into his goggle eyes. But his expression remains unchanged, and he swivels his head to follow us out the front door. Thanks, mister. Everyone tells me how good I look. Liars. I keep my face to the ground as we leave the hospital.
—The Bear’s Embrace: A true story of surviving a grizzly bear attack, by Patricia Van Tighem, Greystone Books, Douglas & McIntyre Publishing Group, 200, p. 98)
Two things: who is filming this and what are they watching? The caption and the comments suggest the deer is seeking revenge. Is it? To me, it looks playful. How often do we misread the intent of animals (or each other) and so create false narrative? Do we ever create narrative that is not false? Can we know from staring?
