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this was a note to paul mcisaac, responding to his invitations to a 68-98 conversation: It's like, i don't know what i think. i think...sure.... for the moment i am thinking, pass your message along: who do i want to pass your text along to? that's where i am. (Although if i am honest, Paul, i am thinking: who are those who will be most hostile to this, and sceptical and critical, and so pass it on to them! Who are those who have most distance from those years, and yet want still the same possibility of feeling free!) mainly i don't like the '68 thing. I just lived through it here in France where really all that energy was focused on a short and precise period of time: a few months. What happened here was mostly restrospective: ahh yes, i remember....and we were... Veterans of foreign wars, the usual. What we have to talk about was not a year--their year--CNN's year or Liberation newspapers' year, or the year-moment-memory of how many glossy magazines or even Tina Brown? Our time was a long time, and it is a life. i am into the long phrase part of it. and i think this '68-98 kind of thing leads to discussions about how much "the situation" or "the reality" or just and only how much "the world" has or hasn't changed, or why we were on or off base, etc., whereas the real thing is about: what IS the actual situation (chomsky's fine for me), what do we want, what's possible, and given all this, what do you want to do with your life, and if by chance you are making movies, well what are the movies you want to make? And these things have little to do with dates, or the positions that go with those dates. It's the position-problem that bothers me: Why won't we get caught up in a battle of positions? everybody with their positions. I dislike all these old sds presidents who feel that everything was good up until the end of their term in office: "Apres moi, le deluge!". i don't feel comfortable with the appologists (we were young and violent and sexist and we didn't know better; we were rebelling against our parents, we were out for a good time, we weren't serious; we were white and middleclass and....): oh, i am very far away from various available orthodoxys, and uncomfortable with all the media-explainers and mostly those who have marked out our collective and gigantic territory as their bread-and-butter-expertise: these experts CBS calls up when a head is needed, and a mouth also to mitigate with. See: the damage has already been done, everywhere, but above all else in our own daily lives. who is "68" a reference for? For me i'm not sure i know when 67 ended and 70 arrived. And 90? The Gulf War? Ask Roz. She's archiving the work. Paul, if you say "well its just a way to..." That is, a way to get people talking together or to hook up between then and now and us and them, and slide alittle out of our various isolations, well, fine. why not? you and i know eachother: sure, why not? But you know, that's a thing about organizing. There's something we knew then that is still true: if the goals aren't specified, if the reasons for doing whatever it is aren't clear, if the pretext is only a pretext and not made very present and tangible what it is and that it's (only) that, then in the end everything always comes back in your face. you just get haunted by your own public relations. Like if we want to talk together across the generations of film and politics and desperation and indifference, and maybe even tranquility, then maybe we need to find a way to say this to eachother. 68-98 appears to me to say something else. Just a little note. I mentioned Chomsky. What's excellent is The Chomsky Reader, edited by James Peck (Pantheon). Good, for two reasons: (1) the introduction, a long interview with Noam, and personal, alittle personal for a change, and with a whole context that is intersting, and (2) there are alot of texts from then, from back then, and so there is a way to see how clear-eyed he was back then, because each of us can compare their own perception at that time, and the knowledge they did and didn't have, and how they did or did not speak about these things and why, etc., (if we remember: if we remember judiciously, and that is surely one of the big problems here), and so judging someone's perspective is more possible because there are more elements to bring to bare and more points of reference.... And because it is startling how a level headed almost open-handed and empirical approach could become so radical. Indeed Chomsky is mostly trying to deal with what is. He hardly makes it to what might be! Anyway Paul, here are some spontaneous reactions , and surely my surly fragments can only help us to move along to the next exchanges, no? love, |