Date: Thu, 31 Aug 1995 22:29:52 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Greg J. Seigworth" <gseigwor-AT-marauder.millersv.edu>
Subject: Re: Refrain/Hecceites/Affect


Charley ... my apologies that I am a few days late at responding to your
most recent posts.  Not only has school started here (as I assume it has
for most everyone on this list) but, in the infinite wisdom of our
university administration, our entire department was moved to a new campus
location two days before the start of the semester.  My school office has
yet to be 'wired' in any sense of the word: no electricity and no phone
(probably until next week).  But, on the up-side, there is running water
and indoor plumbing so who am I to complain?  Needless to say, my net/web
link was in temporary limbo until I got an extra phone line here at home
and lugged my office computer (and its attendant gear) up here to my home
office workspace in the attic of my house.  From out of the chaos to the
beginnings of order and a glance out the attic window (across the old
Lancaster cemetery) to the nightsky, the cosmos ... and now back to the
screen. 

There's so much now--so many words and pages and ideas--I'm not sure where
to begin.  Except to perhaps say "yes": "yes" to nearly everything you've
said over the course of the last three posts.  (But, then, I've been
saying "yes" pretty much since the get-go.) As a start, let me, first,
dispense of my 'pessimism' since that stung a bit: when I saw those words
rebound back to me in your return post, I laughed and cringed.  Me?  A
pessimist? My friends (especially those occasionally depressive ones who
call me when they need cheering) wouldn't recognize me in such a word.  I
don't recognize myself in it (hence the reason why I _hate_ to be a
pessimist).  The pessimism to which I was alluding was the Spinozan
pessimism that finds its way into Gramsci's "pessimism of the intellect,
optimism of the will."  As Hardt remarks on Spinoza's pessimism (95),
don't be disheartened by it; it's the admittedly sad but necessary
perspective that allows ethical practice to be born out of ethical
questioning.  Without it, the injunction to 'become active' is rather
empty. Without it, the injunction lacks any sense of the battle (the real,
material struggle) in becoming active. I'll leave it to others--and this
might, in fact, be a useful discussion (for me, anyway)--to decide how
_easy_ it is to enact a 'becoming.' But to recognize that becomings
sometimes end in failure (or barely get off the ground) is not the same as
to wish for or anticipate such an occurrence: that is the kind of
pessimism into which I will always refuse to descend. 

At least, I know now one of the reasons why Foucault claimed to write so
as not to have a face: somehow that thing that departed and circulated,
that is now staring back at you is not your own. Which gets me to my next
point ... 

While I think it is at least intriguing to try to write so as not to have
a face, I also want to write in such a way so as not to forget that I have
a body. That is precisely what you have done with those additional pages
(the prologue and intro) of your essay; they make all the difference in
the world.  Here are the bodies, your body: they're the real color of the
essay's soul. My response after reading them was: well, why didn't you say
so in the first place?  These pages clear up a lot of my questions.  (I
could, of course, cry 'foul' that your response is arranged so that my
most pointed questions follow your now-included sensuous descriptions of
cajun music and dance.  But I'll accept your acknowledgement of a certain
'bassackward'ness in your post's conclusion.) These pages also correct an
imbalance that I thought the essay--in its prior form--had: namely, that
cajun music & dance seemed more an occasion for explaining (and putting
into use) Deleuze and Guattari's theory/concepts (which, frankly, is a
worthy enough task in and of itself) but, when added up, the cajun scene
didn't get as much back in return as it gave.  (Too regularly the
purported subject of an essay gets lost in the warp and woof of theory.) I
wasn't sure how to broach this aspect before (especially when, despite my
self-acknowledged two left feet, I wanted to set this dance off on the,
uh, right foot).  But the balance seems right now.

One additional thing in this regard: these 'new' prefatory pages also
bring, to your essay, a better sense of 'home.' That is, they give the
essay a greater sense of [personal] place (nevermind our place/space
debate for the moment ... I suspect that, when we've reached some
agreement about the 'ease' and/or 'struggle' of becomings, we'll also have
gone some distance toward resolving what is involved in the affective
production of space). At the risk of cross-pollinating the simultaneous
list-discussion on 'assault,' it seems to me that a sense of home (what
one brings to the encounter with, in this case, [assaultive] art) is what
has largely been missing from that discussion: with the possible exception
of Karen Houle's taking her kids to the museum.  Fairly regularly, people
use D&G to race to the edge of an apparent cliff and, when they get there,
they find a lot of people yawning and saying, "You think this is the edge? 
No no no, there's the edge."  And they point to a tightrope (maybe it's
Rosi Braidotti's tightrope, maybe it's Brian Massumi's walk over the
quivering ground of an ceaseless fractalization) that's stretched across
to the 'other side:' except you can't see, through the mists that rise up
from the deep chasm, whether this rope is actually _attached_ to anything. 
And these yawning people are ready to give you a push and you realize that
before you let them, you want to hum a little song to yourself, trace out
a halting circle, hug this ground beneath your feet for just a moment
longer: suddenly you feel compelled to tell them the story of how you got
there (maybe you title your little story, your little song: you call it
something like "memoirs of a dancer" or "close to the knives: a memoir of
disintegration" [buffalo tumble over the cliff on the cover of David
Wojnarowicz's book]). 

"Of the Refrain" begins at home (or, at least, the making of a 'home'). 
In *What is Philosophy?* (189), D&G remark that "Everything begins with
houses ...  Everything begins with refrains" and, while I know that a
house is not a home [following the child's song of _ATP_, D&G say "Now we
are at home.  But home does not preexist ..." (311)] and that by invoking
"home" one cannot help but call up the way in which it has been histor-
ically and differentially gendered (Meaghan Morris, for one, talks
about this somewhere ... "Henry Parkes Motel" maybe?), "home"--in some
necessarily reconfigured sense--is what you carry with you.  Nomads aren't
forever leaving home; they're carrying their home on their backs (those of
us with children--like Karen H and myself--occasionally carry 'home' a bit
more to the side and slightly off one hip).  Your edge might be my middle
(or vice versa) but that doesn't mean I should push you over it; sing me
your song, tell me your little story of how you got to this precipice ...
maybe I can find something in your song--some rhythm or other sonorous
block--that allows us to walk that rope together (or to stick momentarily
to this ground) and not simply send one or the other of us tumbling over
like so many buffalo.  Dick Hebdige closes his *Hiding in the Light* with
Novalis' "philosophy is homesickness" and speaks of a (necessary) yearning
for what is on 'the other side.' Likewise, Massumi closes his "Everywhere
You Want to Be: Introduction to Fear" essay (which opens with a mountain
climber falling down a rock face) with an invocation of bell hook's
yearning: 'an ethic of yearning.' I like this sense of yearning and home;
home as an always mobile place where one opens the circle, where one
yearns and not yawns (though there is that too ... but more privately and
directed more at one's own slip into complacency rather than someone
else's supposed banality), where one ventures out on the thread of a tune,
where one gathers the forces of the cosmos and (temporarily) holds chaos
at bay.  Dick Hebdige's conclusion is focused on Talking Heads' video
"Road to Nowhere" but here I find myself thinking of the album before and
the song "This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)." Hi Yo Sing into my
mouth. 

But, more than anything else, I'd point to Neneh Cherry's aptly titled
album "Homebrew" as a way to bring together these themes of home and
yearning and, yes, assault.  It is the most perfectly Spinozist record I
know (as Deleuze says in *Spinoza: Practical Philosophy*, "one may be a
Spinozist without knowing it" (129). To do so requires "only one term
'Life' ... to let others live, provided that others let [you] live ... to
want only to inspire, to waken, to reveal" (14). Cherry's "Homebrew" is
quite literally a journey out of home and, then, back.  Stepping out the
door and onto the street in the first song, she is lauded by the rapper
Guru (from Gangstarr) for her emotional toughness ("she's got the force to
knock it out of the box") and, subsequently, each song is a stop-over at
someone else's house or some other locale (like when she stops by the
studio to sing a song and begins by asking her baby to hush for a moment
while she sings).  At one point, in the song "Move with Me" she drops in
on a lover and reveals that whatever weakness she might display always
comes out of position of strength: "So move with me I'm strong enough / To
be weak in your arms / Move with me I'm strong enough / To be real in your
arms."  A bit later, Cherry has a nasty run-in with someone on the street
("Ain't Gone Under Yet"); whoever this person is they've clearly pissed
Neneh off.  She stops this person in their tracks and gives them an
ear-full: "See bodies with souls lining the street / No one wants to live
with nothing to eat / But to climb over living people and feel / That they
brought it on themselves / Cause they're lazy or would rather steal / is a
mystery / So don't judge me by the color of my skin / My blood runs deep
as yours runs red."  But, at the end of the song, rather than continue to
lash out and push this person away, Cherry asks instead: "Why don't you
come live next to me for a while?"  (As if to say: Let's find some element
that will allow us to compose a relation;  let's not leave it at this
level of hatred and incompossibility.) And so the album goes from song to
song, talking of 'ordinary joys and pains,' facing questions that pop
songs don't usually address, trying to give answers, trying to live,
trying to create a space in which everyone can live. 

But it's the record's last song that always strikes like a kick to the
solar plexis.  Cherry stops by the grocery store on her return trip home. 
Accompanied by very sparse instrumentation--the sustained chords of a
synth, the rasp of a hi-hat, and a flappy kickdrum like a irregular
heartbeat--"Red Paint," the album's finale, is Neneh Cherry's first person
recounting of an incident her mother actually witnessed outside a NYC
grocery store.  A crowd has gathered around a young man who has been
assaulted and stabbed;  his moutainbike leans against the storefront and
he's sprawled across the front steps bleeding ("...and the friend is gone
/ who put the hole in you").  When it becomes apparent that the ambulance
will not be soon in coming, the crowd grows bored and most of them decide
that--since they're already at the store--they may as well take care of
their shopping: stepping over the bleeding boy and into the shop.  The
"red paint" of the song's title is a reference to the bloody footprints
the shoppers leave up and down the store's aisles as they fill their
baskets ("taking a part of you / like red red paint / nothing to do with
common sense / or sensitivity").  The ambulance finally arrives as Cherry
herself is leaving the store.  And she walks back home following its blue
light as it speeds off into the distance ("Guided by the blue light that /
Takes you away I'm on my way home).  And she sings this refrain to herself
as she closes her circle and returns home: "Sensitivity / I'm feeling cold
as concrete / Your dignity's reflecting / In the way I feel it."  And you
know that she's no longer the same person who departed the house just a
little while earlier.  [D&G from "What is Philosophy?" (191): "The great
refrain arises as we distance ourselves from the house, even if this is in
order to return, since no one will recognize us any more when we come
back."] But, even more than this, I remember the first time I listened to
"Homebrew" the whole way through ... as Cherry finishes the final verse of
"Red Paint," sirens and the radio-squawk of ambulance-personnel emerge
over the soundtrack.  I remember being temporarily confused and, in fact,
I turned down my stereo to try to figure out whether or not if what I
heard _was actually happening_ on my street.  It was only after subsequent
listenings that I realized Neneh Cherry's street runs past my house. 
(Maybe yours too.) 

**********************************************************************

A few odds and ends: as I am new to the list (hell, I'm new to the
net--period), I've been working my way back through previous strings. 
Charley mentions a previous discussion (though he wasn't sure where) of
virtual/actual and it can be found in October '94 and, again, in January
'95 (subject: habitus, representation).  I must confess that, while I was
happy to see many of my own wobbly ideas steadied in these strings, it was
accompanied by the feeling that I'd once again been deluded enough to
believe that I'd somehow invented the wheel only to discover a bunch of
other people were already blueprinting the car. 

The Stealers' Wheel song--used in the (in)famous ear scene from Reservoir
Dogs--is actually "Stuck in the Middle" (not "Back in the Middle") and the
first line is "Clowns (not 'crowds') to the left of me / Jokers to the
right / Here I am stuck ..."  Not that Charley's minor misapprehension
effects his point in any way.  (Just like when Dick Hebdige is jolted out
of his Baudrillard and *Face* revelry, he calls the Pretenders' song 'A
Bitter Line Between Love and Hate' when, instead, it is a 'Thin' line.) By
the way, there is a great little essay by Greil Marcus (from his *Ranters
and Crowd Pleasers*) on 'Blue Velvet'--speaking of movies with cut
ears--where he talks about how Roy Orbison's song "In Dreams" is
assaulted/de/re-territorialized (though he doesn't use the D&G
terminology) in ways similarly applicable to "Stuck in the Middle." 

Anyway, there is much more I could (and will eventually) say to you
Charley;  there's a universe in your responses to my questions.  I am
touched by the depth of their consideration and the generousness of their
spirit.  You _are_ a much better dancer than I but, best of all, you never
seemed to mind too much when I occasionally stepped on your toes. Lucinda
Williams' glorious "Crescent City"  has been going through my head for the
past few days: "Tu le ton son temps / That's what we'd say / We used to
dance / The night away ..."  And, of course, I know you've been humming
Richard Thompson's accordion-driven "Two Left Feet." 

I hope you haven't found the act of answering too tedious or bothersome;
you have helped direct and redirect my current thoughts in immeasurably
productive ways. 

Greg

*Post*script: Bjork's new album *Post* (which she claims has nothing
whatsover to do with postmodernism and everything to do with the mail) has
a breathtaking song called "Hyper-Ballad" where she walks to the edge of a
mountain every morning and throws off little things "like car parts,
bottles, and cutlery / or whatever I find lying around."  "It is a habit,"
she sings, "a way to start the day."  "I go through all this / before you
wake up / so I can feel happier / to be safe up here with you."  Back at
the cliff one morning, she has a revelation.  What would happen if she
threw her body over?  "Imagine what my body would sound like / Slamming
against those rocks ... When it lands / Will my eyes / Be closed or open?" 

Bodies and cliffs and home and habit and everyday things and yearning ...

I've been working this essay for a little local magazine on Bjork and
Tricky and trip-hop and Deleuze's fold and what makes certain music seem
'cinematic' and I just found this interview (in the new *Option*) where
Bjork talks about her new found affection for Olivier Messiaen (who, of
course, is also given a fair amount of attention by D&G in _ATP_: 
especially in their 'Refrain' chapter).  She talks of her desire to make
music from the sound that your vcr makes when the tape slides in, the
peeping/beeping sound of the microwave, etc.  Oh, to make everyday life
itself sing! 





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