Notes for Study

what is study and knowing in community?

where is sex?

what is precarity?

and what is intimate committed relationship?

     Part of my approach agrees w Lacan in that the Real world is difficult and near impossible to maintain direct connection with. There is a scattered and confusing relation. Such that our everyday social reality is the most difficult place to actually comprehend and integrate into our rythems of life. We are farthest from everyday life, we live in an abstract realm, constructions of emotion and ideas like ivory towers far above and with regulated flows of information about and energy with/to this “world”. This is contrary to what life appears to be, to what we are told that it is, and quite alarming! OMG we have to be responsible for this interaction that appears to be everywhere and all the time?!? What do any of my actions and intentions mean where community is defined by its lack of an outside boundary? Could cities be constructions created to answer this conundrum? Loneliness meets The Ages. Theres a moment in the movie The Hunger when David Bowie contemplates the idea of living forever as a vampire, and he appears to be quite tired of it.

     So if everyday life is where the rubber meets the road, then face to face (f2f) discourse for me is the goal and pinnacle of study and the key to the future. However it seems also to be one of the hardest places to get to, an oasis of interaction. Could f2f be more of a longer term goal, a heaven we may get to someday, with much hard work of preparation and letting go? Gospel choirs singing “Better get ready, better get ready...“

     Because when we are face to face, in everyday life, theres so much to say, theres a feeling of lostness in finding where to start to get to the main points. “How are you?” seems like a good place to start, and as well a fine place to get back to along the way - with a grounding sort of feeling occuring. But other problems with f2f are for instance 1) the fact that we can’t all speak at once; 2) everything someone says raises topics that can go off into a splintered set of directions; and 3) we don’t really have time for it, do we after all? At least not when we are “on the clock”, and feeling the pressure of production.

     I’m interested in the idea of elders in community, which after all could be people of any age. Its more the idea of f2f production over the extent of time, and the embracing of understanding about what time has to do with everyday life. Everyday life obviously has an extension into many generations of us, here in community. Time collapses as we strive to understand where we are and how to get down from the ivory tower. Perhaps that would be the first question I would ask, to start the whole f2f ball rolling. Collapsing time?

     One of my favorite places I lived at was called Killtime, as in the Killtime Warehouse. it was back in the ghost town days of the late 80’s, early 90’s when almost NOTHING was going on in Philly, it seemed. There were like 2 clubs where indie rock lived, I think a couple of early artist coops were starting then: Vox Populi being one of them, still in existence today. The name Killtime was created because of the idea of just finding something worthwhile to do: we’d put on shows with local or out of town bands, hold art openings, do performance art, concept art pieces, etc. It was a blast, altogether, and many friends of mine remember those days. But the name Killtime led to noticing a simple maxim of life: that when people are having a good time, time goes faster and yet has more meaning. But when time is going slowly, things are boring and your environs start to seem like a prison. So when people are not having any fun, time goes slowly and lasts FOREVER. There is a direct connection between joy, meaningful interaction with the world and time.