That interview

Remember that Newsweek interview I did a month ago?

As promised I look a fright, but I think I managed not to embarrass the entire conservative movement. I also apparently earned the distinction of being the only right-winger interviewed who made it into the final cut. They misspelled several names throughout the video, mine included, but that is a small quibble.

It is very bizarre to see one's self on camera and hear one's voice recorded. I sound much younger than I thought.

EDIT: I, in my infinite arrogance, completely neglected to mention the others interviewed in the video (all fellow members of the illustrious Yale Political Union!): Miss Leah Libresco (fellow HUS veteran), Mr Adam Stempel, Mr Dominick Lawton and Mr Matthew Shafer.

EDIT II: The youtube video has apparently been taken down, but you should be able to watch the video here.

Fanaticism is the only way to love

Alexander Ivanov's "Appearance of Christ to the People", 1837-1857

"Throughout [Ivanov's] long labors on this painting, he was driven by a concern for authenticity that astonished all who came in contact with him. He spent long hours in synagogues studying Jewish faces, made trips to the courtrooms of Rome to study the expressions of despair on the faces of condemned criminals, and invited peasants into his otherwise impenetrable study to tell them jokes and then sketch their spontaneous expressions of happiness and enjoyment.

He was particularly haunted by the problem of depicting Christ in art. He sought, up until the very eve of his death, to find the oldest and most authentic representation of Christ's earthly form--studying in museums, Byzantine frescoes, and finally embarking on a trip to Jerusalem and the Near East...

Slowly but inexorably, driven by some dark inner force which bears the mark of either sainthood or demonic pride, Ivanov became obsessed with the idea that he must in fact be Christ in order to be worthy of depicting him."

(No, The Icon and the Axe is not the only book I read, I swear.)

The neurotic is a wise man without disciples.

Mysticism in vending machines is the American way

"MYSTIC surprised by its beauty and intensity. It was created to live an intense and fleeting moment. Its racy style describes a supernatural world which soars skyward. Its skin has a sculpted unique spiritual experience.

We discover in the palm of our hand soft and aerodynamic forms. Its living surface is shaped by a force mysterious and transparent.

It sends us all the energy and excitement of Coca-Cola

Its sexy lines and red color give happiness in 3 dimensions.

Both organic shapes intertwine and form a body ambiguous and fascinating. Its loving silhouette, ties into a true popular poetry."

- Jerome Olivet, designer, visionary, and at least three tabs in

There's a video, too! Words that apparently describe this bottle include: "spiritual", "supernatural", "sexy", and "fascinating".

Granted that as an eager worshipper of the Cigarette and ardent Klein devotee, I can't fault him for overreading a consumer product, but... well, it doesn't look like much more than a Gatorade bottle's evil twin, frankly. Even in the universe where "supernatural" has been so gutted that it could feasibly describe a sugar-and-caffeine dispenser redesign, it sure as hell wouldn't apply to this one.

Come on, Mammonites. You can do better!

Favorite song of the moment

Dance, ballerina, dance
And do your pirouette in rhythm with your achin' heart.
Dance, ballerina, dance
You mustn't once forget a dancer has to dance the part.

Whirl, ballerina, whirl
And just ignore the chair that's empty in the second row.
This is your moment, girl,
Although he's not out there applauding as you steal the show.

Once you said his love must wait its turn
You wanted fame instead.
I guess that's your concern,
We live and learn.

And love is gone, ballerina, gone
So on with your career, you can't afford a backward glance.
Dance on and on and on
A thousand people here have come to see the show
As 'round and 'round you go
So ballerina, dance
Dance, dance!

Courtesy of the fantastic music selection always playing at the Owl Shop.

I have suspected, for some time now, that for the great man (artist?), eros (perhaps all love) is ultimately a distraction.

A dream

Actually dreamed that I was some kind of Slavic mystic healer last night.

I was a middle aged peasant in peasant homes, and an older bearded man (not yet greying) was taking me from house to house, and would gather a group of people around the sick one's bed, and was very adamant that I stand at the front of the bed, behind the sick person, but for some reason I would only ever stand at their feet. The dream was mostly in Russian, and even though I, in the dream, was one of them, I was still plagued by my lack of fluency, which only added to the confusion I felt at what everyone was demanding of me. I didn't understand why they thought I could be looked to to do this.

Like all dreams I have of an even vaguely spiritual bent, I woke up in horror and tried to erase it from my memory. I looked around my room and felt the panicked anxiety I knew so well as a child afraid of the dark, worried, convinced, that my fear would summon forth something terrible.

I successfully freed myself from the memory all day, until this passage in The Icon and the Axe reached something in my subconscious and brought it flooding back:

"A Russian colony had assembled there around Zinaida Volkonsky. She had brought with her a rich art collection and memories of her intimate relationship with Alexander I and the poet Venevitinov. She seems to have viewed herself as a kind of Russian Joan of Arc--having written, and sung the title role in, an opera of that name. It was in Rome, in the shadow of the Volkonsky villa, that Gogol and Ivanov were to create their greatest masterpieces."

I do not like that my life is a postmodern novel.

The Profundity Game

Christianity is more x than x:

Christianity is more stoic than stoicism.

Christianity is more Aristotelian than Aristotelianism.

Christianity is more satanic than Satanism.

Christianity is more egalitarian than egalitarianism.

Christianity is more aesthetic than aestheticism.

Christianity is more Marxist than Marxism.

Christianity is more individualist than individualism.

Christianity is more leftist than leftism.

Christianity is more existentialist than existentialism.

Christianity is more rational than rationalism.

Christianity is more sadistic than sadism.

Suggest your own!

I am reblogging this because it is that damn good

From the Awl:

The cynicism with which adults rebel comes from the nihilism of doing what you know is bad for you because you’re old enough to understand that these things usually go unpunished. The kind of joyless self-indulgence that adults traffic in doesn’t exist for teenagers. For the young, it’s unfathomable that act of self-indulgence can bring anything but joy. In the twilight of childhood, you’re not sure what’s like to be an adult but you know what it feels like to not be a child. Every brush with adult behavior-anything from smoking, to sneaking out, to driving, to fucking-is wrapped in a gauzy, loving haze. (It’s bittersweet though: as the twilight of childhood dims, there is within the heart of every teenager a dull throb that comes with the mourning of lost innocence.)

What’s alarming, then, is when grown-ups act like teenagers: denying themselves nothing, cherishing their transgressions like merit badges, constantly chasing the beginning of something, unable to parse the sensations of joys from despair.

And also:

Almost all addicts are childishly immature; full of demands, empty of offerings. When they want something, they it want it yesterday, and they want it effortlessly. Nothing is their fault-the addiction, their degradation, their desperation…. Psychiatrists who have studied them over long periods know that most of them are extremely narcissistic, that their intense preoccupation with heroin is a surface manifestation of a more profound emotional preoccupation with themselves.