Out of Cacophony : Majestic Travesty of Storytelling from Darkness (4 / 2)

NO : Normcore!

“They say, ‘So what?,’ I say, ‘So this.’”

Iggy Pop, “Hideaway,” Blah, Blah, Blah (1986)

A lump of grayness, almost suffocating in its thickness preventing the particles to obtain the form which would disclose their distinctiveness, casts a shadow over the scenery it can by no means be aware of. The thickness is a color. More precisely, it’s a shade—a shade of what seems to be an ever increasing darkening nuance of grayness.

There is an intruder, however, silently subverting the congestion separating chunks of space around it. The tiny rescuer of the captives punctures the seemingly impenetrable thickness with a gentle maneuver revealing the distinctive features of unruly amalgamation, simultaneously highlighting verbal reshifting from what up to that moment characterized them as particles towards the signification of the notion of particulates.

Like the smudginess of paint spread across the canvass, like pixels consolidating an image out of dispersal, like digitized narratives pasted on etherized celluloid, like poetry evaporated from moist barks, raindrops drying on the surface of leaves, like words emanated from the withdrawal in front of the impossibility to either comprehend in its entirety or verbalize in totality the subtle, yet vigorous, modification of the scenery from the site of abhorringly oppressive consternation towards an openness enabling the smooth, yet balanced, flow of the mighty oxygen and its two co-dwellers within the precious molecules constituting vivid play of white and blue interlocutors.

/

The thematic portrayed here is partly an acknowledgement of the idiosyncrasies pivotal to the genre forged through the hybrid form such as essay at cultural phenomenology—a crossbreed between a style of writing, an epistemological perspective, and a discipline. Partly, it can be perceived as the cluster of questions informing the subject matter of Steven Connor’s piece entitled “Obnubilation” (2009).[1]

Few can deny the intensity of the experience of immersing oneself in cloudgazing. The notion and the phenomenon suggested in the title of Connor’s essay can be thought through the idea of the historicizable ahistorical. To bring the context closer to the core debate of this work, one is prone to invoke the frequently stated historical fact about the contribution of certain artists on the way creation is perceived. For example, it has often been indicated how revolutionary the sound of the Stooges, especially the 1969 self-titled album, has been. As much as that particular one can be thought of in the context of the revolutionary role, so can it be said that the following ones have been of very specific significance for the history of subcultural voices. Fun House (1970), for instance, relies on a darkish psychedelic strain inherited from the preceding decade, and yet, featured in a slightly modified fashion. Not only did it bring to the music scene reflections about and echoes of the liberatory predilections for the experiment such as the sound of the Stooges, but it also introduced a hint of where such inquisitiveness was going to find fruition, albeit conditionally speaking. More precisely, Raw Power (1973) vocalizes rebellion the way rusty, slimy sewers would display a commentary on the manners and nuances of discharge layers manifesting themselves over time.

This fervent unorthodoxy, innate to the music of the band, set the tonal frame in the light of the signature unadulterated invocation of the opacity imbued in fuzzy, grumpy, unrefined, untamed intensity of nonconformity : the alphabet of resistance : a selective approach to the vacillations between dissensus & consensus. Thus, it, if not foreshadowed, then inspired the nascent punk rock generation to adopt certain aspects of the subversive idiosyncratic idiom and intertwine them with the novel creative / critical accounts of the world. As if it were now, the hybrid including both robust, defiant edginess and a vibrant, yet gentle, lyrical streak of sorts opened up the avenue of exploring, on the one hand, a troublesome socioscape calling for an increase in communal cohesion and, on the other, demands at the level of the individual in the key of integrity, as well.

How the band’s music redescribed the musical pattern of the sixties seems to be of particular relevance. Given the following decade that brought the advent of punk rock, little doubt can be cast upon such an assumption. And yet, for the generations who have been introduced to the fruits of this paradigm modification in the aftermath, it is highly unlikely to ever experience the authentic freshness of the sound in question. This by no means diminishes either the pleasure gotten from or the reverence for either the revolution or its fruits.

Conversely, other contexts do not seem to necessitate the same kind of historicity. For instance, no first hand experience of the epoch is needed in order for one to be provided with an unhindered access to the reasoning depicted in Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1961 film The Night (La Notte). Namely, in the wee hours of the morning, amid decadent luxury of the party at the Gherardini family, Lidia (stunningly acted by Jeanne Moreau) wanders in solitude. Directionless, she comes across a young man named Roberto. A sudden spell of a night summer shower entails a seductive conversation in the stranger’s car. Driving through the forest of rain. A romance is emerging from the horizon of the mansion where they return. Soaked. What it is that motivates Lidia’s withdrawal confronted with Roberto’s (charmingly subtle, yet courageous, cameo played by Giorgio Negro) lips approaching hers might elude verbal articulation. Perhaps, it is not something entirely divergent from that what makes Valentina Gherardini (glamorously portrayed by Monica Vitti), having almost gotten involved in a wild adventure with Lidia’s husband, Giovanni Pontano (the role, sublimating the troubling hollowness borne out of sweeping—dazzlingly solemn—alienation, presented by Marcello Mastroianni), restrain herself from interfering with the marriage.

Given the subtext within which inexplicable dynamics of the overarching question about what it is is sought, it is not unreasonable to contemplate the humbleness of accepting the answer and understanding it without entirely comprehending it in the context of Connor’s idea of impassioned emptying, as presented in his essay “How to Get out of Your Head: Notes toward a Philosophy of Mixed Bodies.” It may easily be the very kindred concept that ensures the perception of the significance of bands such as the Stooges. Likewise, it could appease the hardship of the conundrum epitomized in the idea anchoring the notion of the historicizable ahistorical.

/

Thinning the layers of noise that sometimes look like clouds…To track the debate closer to the context of Connor’s writing, the vacillations suggested within the idea of the historicizable ahistorical in a certain sense can be said to parallel spatial indeterminacy of clouds. Other aspects of the phenomenon feature similar elusiveness. For example, their symbolic oscillates between the ominous and the numinous, between the benevolent and the sinister, between form and insubstantiality, between monstrosity and solace.

To position oneself according to the value thus ascribed is to accept an ontology. And yet,  a looming cognizance, half-perceivable, resists being totally encapsulated by linguistic, logic, epistemological—you name it—patterns available. Therefore, the attempt to entirely grasp it is to be approached in the vein of Terry Eagleton’s thought in The Gatekeeper: A Memoir (2001). He presents a critique of the genre called autobiography, conforming to the audiences’ susceptibility to superficial entertainment and forced affinities for sensationalism, instantaneity, and sentimentality; hence, it is to be surpassed, rather than ignored. Like the problem of power : to be contained, rather than escaped, as McKenzie Wark observes in 50 Years of Recuperation of the Situationist International (2008).

In Connor’s essay, clouds roll now as lumpy, slimy miasma, now as thick gaseous formations, yet magically penetrable by majestic rays. Like obstacles in the communication channel, clouds hinder the flow. And yet, the rays persist. Like obstacles in the communication channel, clouds distort the image of the sky. And yet, they are also “a source of vitalising rain” (Steven Connor, “Obnubilation” 5). They epitomize the idea of density. Overarching the sites below, they fuse the concepts of volume and tumult. Like a swarmed motion, they exude a sense of turbulence. They breathe into the atmosphere rhythm of collision. Their movements are restless and chaotic. And yet, suggestive of quirky consistency. The rays persist.

Elevated, like inflated droplets, swollen divinities, clouds appear as “the scene or source of visions of prodigious horror”  (Steven Connor, “Obnubilation” 7). Like magnified bulbous travelers across the horizon, this (self)-dissolving terror-vapor — between water and air / between earth and air — meets warm climes : solvent to a cloud’s frown. A sky’s puke...Pods of plague…Melancholy thunderbolt...Contagious ennui. Etherized dispassion. Borne out of the gale & storm : solvent to tumult.

They consist of particles that quite often turn out to be particulates. They are charged with poisonous ingredients, but sometimes, they bring the much needed--not necessarily polluted--water. They spread.

Such travesty is wondrous. Like noise in the communication channel, like blurry amalgamation threatening to annihilate the distinction between uniformity and unity, between individualism and individuality. Only, not wondrous in exactly the same way. Perhaps not wondrous at all. What is, however, astonishing is the endurance of the distinction. What is, however, startling is the perseverance of the human face. Despite bewildering cultural flows.

To sum up in a romanticist tradition without romanticizing either the phenomena or the vocabulary in question, the dynamic of the vapor might best be perceived in the key of natural imagery, as presented in Coleridge’s poems “The Eolian Harp” (1796) and “Frost at Midnight” (1798). Borne out of nebulous tribulation, borne out of the vitalizing dialogue between the sick and sound—refacement : rebirth of the human face through alternating cycles of noise and silence / subtonic hi-fi solidarity of selfless, yet reindividualized, fellow humans united in enduring hindrances to patient, persistent creation of a free culture based on trust and love.

/

The indefinable character of the phenomenon and experience in question can perhaps best be perceived in the context of the elusiveness of language itself. Not only is it both threateningly obscure at times and inexplicably protective, but any attempt to confine the abundance of meaning--on the object and the meta levels alike--within an absolutely precise linguistic articulation is of the same twofold nature. For example, should one try to explicate the components constituting the message, the result may be an exhaustive list including intonation, accent, lexical choices, semantic nuances, morphological playfulness, eerie and / or humbly plain spelling, untamable and / or meek, obedient punctuation, coloring at the level of syntax. However, neither any of them separately nor a fusion of them all suffice to embody the tacit sphere of that what is conveyed. It, in other words, always already remains in the domain of resistance to being entirely fathomable and / or completely effable.

Like quirky wondering in Gang of Four’s number “What We All Want” (1981),  insisting on one’s incapability to put one’s finger on it. It may be annoying, but, paradoxically enough, it can also be strangely comforting.

Like clouds : between the ominous and the numinous, between the obfuscating and the elucidating, between a wild fantasy fuelling device and a stunning alphabet spelling out the message comprehendible only in the power of weakness--one’s capability to humble oneself before and in the service of their mesmerizing stories.

[1] An extended version of a talk given in a series devoted to Clouds, broadcast as BBC Radio 3's The Essay. 25 February, 2009 ( http://www.stevenconnor.com/atmospheres.htm).

Out of Cacophony : Majestic Travesty of Storytelling from Darkness (4 / 1)

we are not robozombies! : resistance to somnambulist nihilo-cannibalist culture

Goal : NO!

“And the more I see, the more I know / The more I know, the less I understand.”

Paul Weller, “The Changingman,” Stanley Road (1995)

“The more I see, the less I know / The more I like to let it go.”

Red Hot Chili Peppers, “Snow (Hey Oh),” Stadium Arcadium (2006)  

What Richard Rorty criticizes romanticism for is the overlooked capacity to disavow the status of privileged cultural vocabulary ascribed to poetry. Exalting the idea of a poeticized culture in Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (1989), he certainly does not undervalue the redemptive potential of creation. However, he, nevertheless, strives to maintain the much needed restraint to unleashed interpretations of cultural remapping through the stages of diverse kinds of divinization of discourse. In Consequences of Pragmatism: Essays, 1972-1980 (1982), Rorty fervently espouses what he calls weak textualism as a means of avoiding a deceitful idea about the totality of discourse and, simultaneously, taming the equally delusional thinking in the key of human omnipotence. McEwan does so by destabilizing the role of the narrator and other literary conventions suggestive of phantasmal, overstated power of mediation. Symbolizing self-dissolving untrustworthiness of unreliable communicational tools, narration enables consolidating the sovereign rule of the message. Dennis Cooper’s masterfully hazy fluidity of characterization challenges delusional thinking by safeguarding silent, clandestine unadulterated oases amid a dispirited archipelago infested by a seeming reign of disassociation, indifference, and decay. Jeff Noon contributes to the debate by marvelously deploying the setting in the service of the message, thereby reconfirming and solidifying the relevance of that what spreads despite the bewilderment-saturated, intoxication-affluent communication channel. Despite noise.

In one of his essays in cultural phenomenology titled “How to Get out of Your Head: Notes toward a Philosophy of Mixed Bodies” (2006),[1] Steven Connor vocalizes rebellious reflections against “the imperialism of spirit” (1).  He aptly criticizes the supremacy of and hegemonic streaks within the legacy of the age of reason, yet always reasserting the indisputability  of the significance of the ability to reason. Further, in the context of the tendencies in certain schools of thought to overspiritualize, dematerialize, and/or overrationalize self, the world, and discourse, he proposes a balanced take on the reconfiguration of the traditional subject-object dichotomy. Not entirely unlike Baudrillard’s theorizing in The Vital Illusion (2000), Connor rejects objectification of that what cannot be thought of in terms of things. Likewise, he insists on refusing to credit the inanimate with the capacity to be subjects. Pondering the thematic, Connor states:”The things towards which the mind is directed are paradoxically both in the mind and outside them” (4).

In the tradition of the power of weakness, Connor’s thought is considered particularly with regard to his observation about the negotiations along the subordination-dominance scale. Steven Connor, “How to Get out of Your Head: Notes toward a Philosophy of Mixed Bodies”: “Romanticism was particularly keen on motions of subsuming” (1).  Rather than in kinetic terms, the dynamics should instead be pondered in relation to the much needed dialectic of humbleness and elevation. Clearly, in the context which divinizes discourse, it cannot be imagined and reflected upon in a sufficiently precise fashion. If the romantics overspiritualized poetry, it only means that such a situation calls for disambiguation. The context in which this remixing sidekick technique is thinkable is certainly Connor’s magnificent device called “impassioned emptying” (8). Humbly, yet shamelessly, he remarks:”But to know yourself is to develop an intentional relation to yourself, to be able to constitute yourself as part of the world” (7).

Connor, conditionally speaking, entertains the idea of losing oneself (3), presumably within the dynamics of the notion of being oneself. The versatility of potentially misleading manifestations of the increments on such a scale is illuminated through etymological tracking of the modifications of the meaning of the word intentionality. Steven Connor, “How to Get out of Your Head: Notes toward a Philosophy of Mixed Bodies”: “In philosophical usage, particularly that of the medieval Scholastics, ‘intentionality’ has this meaning of ‘directedness’, rather than ‘purposiveness’. Intentionality is the condition of having an aim or object, not meaning to do something” (4).

The perception of so understood notion of intentionality stems from Connor’s succinct scrutiny and reiteration of the idea of relationality. It is particularly observed in the context of the question of the correlation between the mind and the world. While, as Richard Rorty claims, the world might be indifferent to our descriptions of it, that fact by no means invites indiscriminate linguistic proliferation of descriptions. While it is indisputable that what we can say about the world is what our mind filters allow, this by no means entails that any portrayal of it is discernible, cogent, and viable. In other words, what is needed is to humbly adjust our redescriptions, although we cannot expect either an absolute confirmation or renouncement on behalf of the world. That’s what is here celebrated as unshakeable balancing of constant uncertainties : throughout the remix. While selfidentification is invaluable, self-referentiality is not.

If such a strategy can elucidate obfuscating self-referentiality, strangely aligned with deindividualizing hollowness, it does so from the perspective here known as the reconstitution and reconsolidation of the distinction between individualism and individuality, between uniformity and unity. It is, in other words, the context here celebrated from the angle of refacement: rebirth of the human face through alternating cycles of noise and silence / subtonic hi-fi solidarity of selfless, yet reindividualized, fellow humans united in persistent and patient enduring hindrances to the creation of a free culture based on trust and love.

---

[1] A talk given to the London Consortium,  26 January, 2006 (Steven Connor, Essays at Cultural Phenomenology, http://www.stevenconnor.com/cp.htm)

 

Out of Cacophony : Majestic Travesty of Storytelling from Darkness (Interlude 2 / part 2)

Icelandic Saga

in glamvoid, reigns of oversaturating pixilated metaphors rule.  / or, so somnambulist logic wants one to believe.

in response, the poetics of the remix provides devices of peaceful/peaceable resistance to noise : renegades of glamvoid.

one prefers to think of it in terms of surveillance. / only with a postfuturist twist.

We don’t buy it.

instead, alternating cycles of suspension of belief and distrust.

words of angular tenderness / words of quirky gentleness:

Q : mafotherphunkie counterrites.

A : mafotherphunkie counterrites.

Out of Cacophony : Majestic Travesty of Storytelling from Darkness (Interlude 2 / part one)

Interlude 2 : Icelandic Saga

“I prefer to think they’ve cancelled out and that we’re too entwined in mutual surveillance to let each other go.” Ian McEwan, Sweet Tooth (369)

Once upon a time, in glamvoid, instead of stars, zillions of electric eyes’ld observe the band of the overexposed in pursuit of climes otherwise elucidated, rays from different sources to quench thirst.

Once upon a time, in glamvoid, instead of suns, camera flashes’ld announce the long sought word born out of the disintegration of corrosive noise.

In glamvoid, oversaturation by digitized oneiric imagery rules. Or, so somnambulist logic would want one to believe.

We don’t buy it.

Crawling across urban wastelands, exhausted fellow cyborgs thirst ever so intensely. Drawing closer to what they think might be the scenery of different light, messages reach them. Messages are numberless. Among them, one resonates with the nature of their search. Based on the echoes, carefully filtered, meticulously sifted, and perceived with the sensitivity granted by the correlated rhythm of their indefatigable seeking and the signals from the sites afar, they learn about a pocket of darkness on the outskirts of the city.

“roots we have no more,” they say to themselves, “aerials root us.”

Hence, they think: “we are rooted, as well.” Webwiered.

They choose daylight, when parasite signals seem to be overshadowed by different light, to find the corners of darkness promising encounters with a different version of extended moments of solitude amidst the multitudes. Solace of darkness.

Walking is the only vehicle they can afford. Underprivileged as they may be, walk, nevertheless,  they can. 

Walk they know. Because they know of the word long searched for--half-forgotten, half-dissolved in the threat of an overwhelming amnesia spreading like contagious spleen across the urbanity that seems to be redescribing its own name. Because they know how to seek. Where to look. How to walk, how to speak. Despite noise.

beyond parasite signals / beyond static / beyond noise.

“beyond glamvoid, my fellow cyborgs,” they say to each other.

That’s how they find anew strength to keep walking. Moving closer towards the peculiar dark corners, where distant cypresses whisper tales of nearly unthinkable possibility to contain noise. Spots of tales, spots of darkness.

Darkness with a strange affinity to disclosing its valences and synchronizing electric charge of its particles with the akin mollicules, thereby transforming itself into a crepuscular hue, thinning as the fellow cyborgs are populating the friendly spaces of peculiar darkness. Spots of angular tenderness, spots of quirky gentleness.

Spots that reveal what they offer : that what spreads.

Those dark enclaves turn out to be constitutive of the colossal creature whose, perhaps, most astonishing characteristic is its innerness consisting of mirrors. Thus, it is the mirror images that those weary fellow travelers find so appeasing.

“could it be that mirror images are capable of such an alleviating effect?” they ask themselves.

“possibly,” they contemplate.

Perhaps. Because those mirror images speak of different light :

words of ruby amber / words of crystallizing petals :

melting in the intersection of the time axes : DJing : against noise, and in the service of the remix.

Q : we are not robozombies!

A : we are not robozombies!

Out of Cacophony : Majestic Travesty of Storytelling from Darkness (part 3/4)

The Sound of Refacement : The Hybrid Word in Glamvoid

peaceful/peaceable resistance to power gladiatorship

Somewhere, in what is presumed to be his habitas, and what feels as interstellar spaces in proliferated galaxies hosting numberless orbits most astonishingly positioned against each other, Joe Palmer is entertaining thoughts of Nola. Firmly anchored in indecisiveness, or, at least, verbal elusiveness of that what once passed between them, he hopes to find a way to download her. Dweller of the kingdom of pirate frequencies, he patiently, persistently nourishes germs regenerating the invaluable legacy of the communication they once had.

Dozing on & off now, dreaming the wi(e)red dream, those vacuumlike spatiotemporalities seem less hostile. What once was a pulverizing beat of a crowded bar is now being transpositioned into a soothing lick of the sinuous, yet steady, bassline groove. What once was a hysterical echo of the masses enchanted by power is now being channeled into finely sifted, toned down, yet articulate, sonic kiss of the guitar strings enhancing the embroidery of that what spreads. What once was dominance of ferociously ravenous chaos of excessive notes lost in the memory of the overexposed desperately plugged into a (self)dissolving spectacle arena is now being finetuned to a smoky, yet undoubtedly present, vibe of the friendly cyborg shadow.

Through semi-oneiric meanders, the rhythm of the remix is being established, as Joseph finds the bruise he now acquired. Navigating the bruise, he is experiencing what once was “the city of lost images speaking in tongues, gathered together on a woman’s skin” (2843). Where he once emerged from, is now being sensed as Nola’s quietly spoken words:”Inside the lens lies a world beyond ours. We have created it, set it free. Now it grows, expands. People live there. The spectral ones, the lost and the damaged for whom this world sets too painful a task, there they live”(2395). Just as once her “body melted away into the forest, becoming the forest” (2488), so are her words now becoming tongueless. Just as once the whole skin of things was emitted from her own, so does Joseph’s bruise contain static : re-placing noise.

The universe, as we know it, might still revolve around the motto “It’s all about making money!” (2923). Yet, in Joseph’s bruise, there is a story dancing to the melody sketched after a silhouette of “a bird of deeper loveliness for all of that” (2883). It’s all about scoring. It’s a culture disneyfied to the core, thereby attempting to impose on one a deceitful idea about the totality of discourse abundant in delusional choices between cultural theory, either oblivious to its relationship with that what it theorizes, or, forgetful of a critical distance toward the subject of critique. Obfuscating the boundaries and relationships between narrative and extralingusitic levels, such a culture seems to provide little room for critical / creative voices that object to crippling impediments to sound responses. Or, so buzz logic would want one to believe.

Terry Eagleton, After Theory (2003):

In this social order, then, you can no longer have bohemian rebels or revolutionary avant-gardes because they no longer have anything to blow up. Their top-hatted, frock coated, easily outraged enemy has evaporated. Instead, the non-normative has become the norm. Nowadays, it is not just anarchists for whom anything goes, but starlets, newspaper editors, stockbrokers and corporate executives. The norm is money; but since money has absolutely no principles or identity of its own, it is no kind of norm at all. (16-7)

            Perhaps it really is not about having something to blow up or blowing up per se to start with. It’s not about the deceitful concept of revolution that aims solely at overthrowing a regime, a class, or any other category in power for the sake of replacing it with another dominance-starved elite. Power narratives call for remapping. Redescriptions of socioscape call for disambiguation. Cultural amalgamation that Noon’s fictitious world reflects can perhaps best be discerned through his writing that indefatigably explores the possibilities for wholesome responses against inhibitions coming from superimposed cultural models, and yet celebrating the restraint that enables articulating sensible communication. The much needed remapping and disambiguation spur from knots of obscurity vividly portrayed in the story “The Blind Spot” (metamorphiction). An oasis of embalming darkness, protective of the overexposed outcasts, dreamers of the wir/ǝ/d dream, in an electric empire of blinding noise feels not entirely unlike the call in the novel Nymphomation (1997) that offers to all the underprivileged a corner of alleviating play to quench their thirst.

Thus, out of bewildering polyphonic bruises, the vibe spreads, the message—ethereally rooted—spreads. Out of cacophony of cultural smudge buzz--beyond captivity by sensationalist parasite signals—threatening to dissolve individuality and unity alike--the human face is being borne. Told in the child’s voice, the story, spreading the message, is reconstituting hic & nunc / anticarpediem poetics. Selfless, yet reindividualized, united, yet distinctive, are fellow cyborgs enduring the hindrances to patient and persistent containing noise through the hybrid legacy of change and preservation.

Out of Cacophony : Majestic Travesty of Storytelling from Darkness (part 3/3)

The Sound of Refacement : The Hybrid Word in Glamvoid

Renegades of Noise : Mirror / Skin Alliance

Thus, the vacuity saturating hotel rooms is not very different from the vapidity of wide open spaces. Not entirely unlike them are the apartments, exuding exuberant affluence, resembling sites of glamworship. In particular, the Pleasure Dome, that can be perceived as an equivalent of reality TV shows in the culture we know, is where producers, managers, singers, viewers seem to dwell. That’s where their desires are being sustained, continuously animated, their longing fired, their projections galvanized. That’s where their skin starts acquiring features of slightly excessively permeable membranes. That’s where they most intensely reach the oblivion of the suspension of belief. Or, so somnambulist logic wants one to believe.

            In the novel where everyone is watched and perversely rejoices in such voyeuristic-exhibitionist conditions, surveillance is more rendered invisible than approved, accepted, embraced, or adopted. It is a society oblivious of and blind to the subtleties and nuances of being observed, overseen, and/or recognized. It is a culture deaf to the human face. Well, almost.

            Noon devises a symbol reminiscent of the nearly forgotten need and capacity for establishing an awareness about the role of skin : its sensitivity, its resilience, and its potential to maintain the boundaries. These characteristics are insisted upon via a symbolic plane that from another perspective concerns the difference between  individualism and individuality, between uniformity and unity. By extension, Noon’s narrative technique provides a creative / critical vocabulary. It demonstrates the vitality of creation and reconfirms the vibrancy of a critical distance. As such, it, simultaneously, reinstates the significance of both critical thinking and reading-writing in the spirit of reverence.

In Channel SK1N, mirrors emerge as anchoring, steadying signposts. In response to a dorian gray thematic in the context of digitized fame, the symbolic of the mirror is subliminally soothing, since it distracts the look from deafening noise of glamacams and visionplex towards an image more resembling the touch of gentler, less abrasive, more appeasing light spilling a friendly shadow over the face, over the body, over the skin—the mirror image as friendly, reconstituting, ethereally rooted energy amidst alien pixilated sites: the image remindful of the human presence / solace.

Mirrors—between nights fuzzing with thickness of liquor, smudged in distastefully oversaturated flavors, noise of overcrowded bars. Mirrors—between solitary night driving through desertlike luxury, abandoned landscapes, urbanity camouflaged in disinterested facelessness. Mirrors—through the crevices in the bruise on Nola’s belly, through the crack in the bruise on her hand. Borne out of these humanoid reflections, squeezing out digitized sensuality, is the child’s voice. Borne out of the mirror is an invocation of childhood, reminiscence of the human presence. Borne out of the mirror is Nola’s etherized self, bringing to the eye of the reader reconstituted, spectral Melissa Gold—daughter of George Gold--the Pleasure Dome superstar, who was to disappear into alleged suicide.  Until the mirror (somewhere, sometime), after Nola Blue’s body has been found by the railroad, regenerates her.

George Gold, father to them both, albeit in different ways, is in awe faced with the sheer wonder of the site of the bruise. As the white dove from the inside is becoming prominent, as the world is opening, George is being sucked in. Until the mirror renders available fruits of  Nola’s disintegration that started during those long forgotten nights of bar crawling when she was released—not screenbound any more. As Evelyn Moore, the gossip/spectacle hunter, was taking over the bodily narrative, and Melissa Gold assuming the digitized one, Nola was disappearing. Learning how to balance being open to signals and being resistant to them. Parts of herself functioning independently from each other, yet her whole being not disconnected.

Until the mirror regains the presence of Joe Palmer, once brought to Nola’s world out of the bruise. A young man who once was in the bruise, a young man with a voice that talks, sings stories of semisecret pockets within polluted information flow, the voice that semireveals contrapuntal signals, anticorrosive message: amidst the hollowness of a hotel room, he vocalizes the message about that what spreads not being an illness. Or, perhaps, solace.

And yet, still slightly distant, aloof, detached feels the interaction. Enabling alienation. By virtue of the power of weakness, language generously keeps the characters at bay. Being kept at bay, they are protected by the inability to dominate. At the same time, language acknowledges its limits. It cannot provide the characters with linguistic means to convey the message in its entirety. There is no way to precisely verbalize the characters’ humble withdrawal before the realization that it is less relevant which one of them sends out redeeming signals. There is no way to utterly precisely articulate that it is the message whose centrality enables recuperation of the communication channel. Jeff Noon, Channel SK1N:

Nola’s body reacted to the human presence, the closeness. Her skin tingled. Strangely, she felt comforted. It was good to be giving pleasure in this way, to be sending out signals, and to have those signals received and understood. She became a giving object. A subject to be viewed. Here was solace, of a kind. (861)

It is, perhaps, the very incapacity of the characters and the limits of language that are also suggestive of the limits of robopoetics engines. Like humans, albeit in different ways.

Out of Cacophony : Majestic Travesty of Storytelling from Darkness (part 3/2)

The Sound of Refacement : The Hybrid Word in Glamvoid

The Power of Weakness : Storytelling from Void

The dialogue between these realms in Jeff Noon’s novel Channel SK1N (2012) is primarily suggested through the specificities of the deployment of particular literary elements. It seems that, despite the apparent dominance of characterization, it is the setting that constitutes the pillars of the novel and the abundance of the symbolic offered to the denizens of the world now increasingly characterized by a wide reaching penetration of the internet of things into the spheres that were once imagined to belong to technologically generated and managed aspects of culture.

The internet of things implies broadening the perception and scope of technology. It requires a transformed approach to digitized cultural realities. It demands cultural critique in the key of resistance to noise. It also inspires rethinking and remapping power-narratives. In From Mobile Playgrounds to Sweatshop City (2010) — a conversation about urbanity informed by a somewhat blurry, yet potentially appropriable, redescriptions of labor, play, the public, and the private -- Trebor Scholz and Laura Y. Liu explore the ways of navigating those newly arisen possibilities, as well as the caveats engendered by expropriation of labor, production of knowledge, fabrication of information, the contested domestic, the public definable in monetizing terms more than anything else, the online and the offline interlaced within the culture plagued by the internet of things.

They focus on the elusiveness of social relations in the context of questionable values, norms, and ontologies. They emphasize the conundrums both immigrant and native working classes encounter within extremely exploitative societies. Their critique celebrates the potentialities of technologically advanced communities, yet not for a second falling into a trap of a deceitful idea about the omnipotence such culture may entail. Neither glorifying nor demonizing technology per se, Scholz and Liu rather call for media activism that would solidify a sense of communality and recuperate individuality amidst cultural amalgamation partly informed by the internet of things.

Cultural realities of their meditation can further be investigated in the light of Kenneth Goldsmith’s ideas from Uncreative Writing: Managing Language in the Digital Age (2011). His visions of personified electrical appliances, supposedly enabled by the same means that engender poetry, appear not very far from being turned into robopoetics engines. The portrayal of the world plagued by such uncreative writing might be a dystopian take on posthuman history (225). It may also be reflected upon through the world of Noon’s novel. If there is a plot in Channel SK1N, it is contextualized within trickster alleyways undoing parasite signals, confusing static, bewildering images. If such responses to the hindrances in the communication channel can be characterized, the easiest way to understand the dynamic is by juxtaposing them with the question of alienation.

If detachment can be felt, it is certainly best depicted in the realm of the setting. Nola Blue, the protagonist of the novel, is a pop star. The reader first meets her during her stroll to the river, through urban enclaves of disinterested streets, in night clubs. We see her in her apartment. In others’ apartments: George Gold, her manager who facilitated Nola’s transformation into a music star, enabled her acquiring a new name (instead of Diana Knowles), new voice, learning how to navigate the signals, do the transmission, learn to contain noise; Christina, her minder, personal assistant, the loyal one. What makes the setting specific is that what is supposed to be the domestic, the private, feels like any of the hotel rooms we later see her in, or, indifferent spaces surrounding the freeways she drives along. In search for signals, songs, stories. Or, perhaps, solace.

So created, the setting allows the narrative to play along the lines Noon proposes in his experimental writings and writings about literary experimentation such as “How to Make a Modern Novel” (2001), calling for a radical immersion in literary playfulness; Automated Alice (1996), offering a take on rendering tradition remixable, just as contemporary cultural realities are; “The Blind Spot” (metamorphiction), providing a glance of the world of the overexposed in the context of the redescription of darkness in the muted age; “The Ghost on the B-Side” (metamorphiction), making available to the readership the remixing technique based on play, experimentation, and preservation.

All Noon’s literary devices can now be found in the setting of the novel Channel SK1N dazzling and pulsating with a gleam of a celebrity-orwellian culture. The gloom of the blinding glitter is exacerbating, but also energizing. It might easily be what John Brenkman in “Innovation: Notes on Nihilism and the Aesthetics of the Novel” (2006)[1], a study in the contemporary novel, dubs as “an enabling alienation” (823). If it enables anything in this novel of Noon’s, it is neither the characters nor the narrative itself. Instead, multiple, multilayered weakening invigorates the very language. Language against noise. As weakness teaches, power is in acknowledging the limits, incessantly reenacted in language.

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[1] Franco Moretti, ed. The Novel. Volume 2 Forms and Themes. Princeton: Princeton University Press (2006). 808 – 838. Print.