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EGR: Aftermath
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Christopher Locke
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May 09, 2002 01:22 PDT
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Gonzo Marketing: Winning through Worst Practices
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0738204080/entropygradientr
http://www.gonzomarkets.com
http://www.rageboy.com/blogger.html
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I'm givin' you a piece of my mind
there's no charge of any kind
try a very simple test
you should just retrace your steps...
think / aftermath / stones
Valued Readers:
Because I digress horribly (though characteristically) in what
follows, I'm just gonna stick this up front.
Rebel Without a Pause
The Guardian, Thursday May 9, 2002
http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/story/0,3605,712067,00.html
Chris Locke, better-known as RageBoy, could have saved dotcoms
millions of dollars. But he reckons 'gonzo marketing' could still
lead a renaissance, writes Jack Schofield.
Go read it, then come back here. Let's hope in a bit more reverential
frame of mind. Here's a snatch...
He went back to Boulder, Colorado, where his love life took twists
and turns as engaging as any soap. "I am trying to live my heart
online, and it's dicey," he says. "We're giving ourselves
permission to act like humans online, and we've never had that
permission before. We fail and we make mistakes and we're broken,
and there's a lot of juice in that. I'm kind of on the edge, and
I'm trying to stay there."
Best article on my checkered career to date. And he gets what I've
been saying right. A welcome and refreshing shift in contemporary
journalism. You're a brick, Jack. Thanks. (And for the tasty Chinese
dinner in London. I think I forgot to say.)
And thanks to all of you who have sent get-well cards. I've greatly
enjoyed your email and letters and phone calls and such -- a couple
proposals, an offer of a dog, several hard-to-resist bids to enlarge
my penis, and so forth (the last item not to be confused with the
proposals, though it took me a while to figure that one out myself).
If you inferred from the previous send that I am writhing in terminal
emotional agony, hanging onto sanity by my fingernails, well, you'd be
largely correct. But only largely. The critical delta between "most of
the time" and "all the time" is not unakin to the secret of Taoist
butchery: to cut *between* the sinews. That way, said Chuang Tzu, or
one of those ancient anarchist spirit hosers, your cleaver will never
get dull.
Ward comes home after a long day at the office...
"Hi June. How's the Beaver doing?"
"Wet and ready, honey. Wanna cop a feel?"
"I was asking about our son, you incorrigible slut!"
Television has never been the same since the '50s. I fear that my
four-line mini-drama and it's ludic intertextual allusions to Chinese
alchemy will inevitably be lost on those too young to have flopped
down on the rug after school back then and flipped on Leave It To
Beaver. But so much of my work is lost on you people that I long ago
resigned myself to the fact that its full range and subtlety are
unlikely to be appreciated until 24th-century scholarly data mining is
perfected and all the jokes and en-passant asides are finally and
fully explicated. I, of course, and naturally, yourselves, will be
long dead by then. Nevertheless, I take solace in the inevitable. The
truly Great Man accepts the loneliness that awaits him atop the
intellectual food chain.
I said I was *reading* about narcissism. I didn't say I was buying
into anything. But I did start that book and it's really quite good.
The context was that today was the first time in memory I've waked up
and found myself completely out of coffee. Jesus, I thought, this is
getting serious. So I jumped into the car and headed up the street to
Cafe Sole where I sat outside in an unseasonably autumnal morning
chill, reading and sucking down a couple double cappuccinos.
Underlining everything.
Trapped in the Mirror:
Adult Children of Narcissists in Their Struggle for Self
by Elan Golomb
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0688140718/entropygradientr
Here's the approximate view from where I was sitting, though the sun
was on the other side of the sky:
http://boulder.noaa.gov/bldr_info.html
Not bad if you really *have* to be in hell. But of course, like
everything, well, almost everything, except this, it is a choice. A
choice of views, you could say. Listening to the Stones as I write
this. Aftermath. Paint It Black. And I ask myself: is this wise?
Think, think, think back baby. Tell me who's fault was that day? I
guess it depends on who "baby" instantiates to. And me I'm going, get
me on flight number f-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-ve oh five...
It's not easy living trapped in the mirror. It's a pretty hard thing.
For as St. Augustine reminds us, "all things are easy for love to
effect..." To which Mick and the lads replied some centuries later...
All of the things that you used to do
If they're done now, well they're done by you
It seems a big failing in a man
To take his girl for granted if he can
Shit, I knew I wasn't ready for these misogynist borstal brats. Odd
that this shows up on the same album with Under My Thumb. But speaking
of entrapment, I thought that writing "skullfucked" yesterday might
have been a tad over the top. So I was amused and amazed this morning
reading that book when I came upon this:
A narcissist attempts to define his children's reality. He tells
them what they are thinking and feeling, in contradiction to what
they really do feel and think. For example, a father responded to
his child who had just exclaimed, "I hate Grandma" (the
narcissist's cold and narcissistic mother) by saying "You don't
hate Grandma. Only a bad child could hate such a wonderful Grandma.
You love Grandma." This statement created vast conflict and
confusion in the child's mind. The child was experiencing what is
known in the vernacular as "mind fucking."
I about blew cappuccino out my nose.
By the way, the author is a graduate of Bennington College and earned
her Ph.D. in clinical psychology and her certificate in psychoanalysis
and psychotherapy from New York University. She has been in private
practice since 1972. So there. Skullfucking. I do so love a definitive
citation.
In a few days, the June issue of Wired hits the stands carrying a
little meditation I penned on the prospects of advanced computational
technologies, titled (unless those fuckers changed it) "Dr. Botlove:
Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Singularity." A *very*
brief taste lest the Kopyright Kops come a-knockin...
The more I thought about it, the more sense it made. I remembered
those black velvet Jesus pictures from my youth, with the eyes that
would follow you around the room. Maybe it was like that. And so
eventually, like so many others, I became a believer.
Chris Anderson, longtime EGR reader and now Editor in Chief of Wired
(you begin to see the benefits?) has clearly gotten a lot more
professional since leaving The Economist. I tried to wheedle a 5000-
word thumbsucker out of him. But it didn't work. He wrote: "I can't in
good conscience commission a piece when after reading a 1,645 word
outline, I still can't figure out what it is you intend to say."
A common complaint, as all Valued Readers can surely attest.
I wasn't going to make this a long one. You've been ever so patient
about the long ones. Just not sure how to wrap it up. I think I've
been eclectic enough, related a sufficient handful of unrelated
topics, worked in the usual pop-culture references. There was just one
more thing I was going to tell you. Then I thought I'd maybe leave it
out. Let it go at being funny and honking my horn. But like the man
said, trying to stay there.
I woke up this morning feeling rejected. I don't think that needs much
explaining. Then immediately hurt and massively resentful. I didn't
notice until later how they went together, the second wave following
closely on the first. So closely, it seemed they were one feeling. But
later, reading that book, drinking my coffee (did you check the URL
for the view?), I began to see the specific things that got rejected,
and why they were, and why there wasn't much choice. Not a great
selection, you could say. I had to agree that I'd do the same in the
same position. And it wasn't just bullshit. Wasn't just rationalizing
why I was sitting there alone with those mountains this morning. It
was understanding. Empathy. Maybe even something like compassion. I
had a good day after that. I didn't feel rejected-in-the-round. Just
for those bits I'd reject myself. Am and will if I can. Those bits
I've been looking at lately alone. And here with you. I rang up Jesse
and said come on over here, man, and he did and we called the swans
and looked at them awhile and talked awhile and I told him I loved
him. He didn't mistake it for an offhand comment. Later I went and got
Selene and we had a pretty fancy dinner. She flipped me off as I drove
away, so I figure she's coming around.
What I'm trying to say here is I think it's all gonna be OK.
If I look hard enough
into the setting sun
my love will laugh with me
before the morning comes...
Paint it aftermath. Negative numbers, transits, transforms: nadir to
ne plus ultra. More than a working theory, Ground Control. Just
depends on how "my love" instantiates. Workin on it. Playin with it.
But the channel is out of control. And that makes it a different game.
In the meantime...
good on ya,
chris
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