#Humpty Dumpty Elegy

[jefferyryanlong]

FEEL with DJ Jeff Long - January 15, 2019

your mind is on vacation and your mouth is working overtime

Music Is My Sanctuary - Gary Bartz Expansions - Lonnie Liston Smith Rozzie - Gene Ammons 153rd Street Theme - Larry Willis You’se a Viper - Stuff Smith and His Onyx Club Boys Your Mind Is on Vacation - Mose Allison Na Na Hey Hey (Kiss Hm Goodbye) - The Belmonts My Sweet Lord - The Belmonts Hare Krishna - Marion Williams The Trip - Bobbi Humphrey  Elegie - Bjorn Alkes Kvartett Woman of the World - Donald Byrd Woman of the World - Marvin Gaye One - Leon Thomas India - Gato Barbieri Moon and Sand - Chet Baker Metamorphosis Two - Philip Glass O True Believers - James Blackshaw Blowhole - jakubazookas School Play - Daniel Lopatin Transformer Man - Neil Young Humpty Dumpty - The Sure Fire Soul Ensemble  Rise of the East- The Sure Fire Soul Ensemble Isaac Hayes - Ghost Funk Orchestra Taifa - Gary Bartz NTU Troop Music, You All (live) - Cannonball Adderly Waiting on a Friend - The Rolling Stones Moonlight Serenade - Glenn Miller Giving Him Something He Can Feel - En Vogue Songs My Mother Taught Me - Antonin Dvorak Clair de Lune - Kamasi Washington KTUH FM Honolulu - ktuh.org

#playlists #ktuh #FEEL

[flauntpage]

Sabina Ott and Dana Berman Duff: What She Sees When She Shuts Her Eyes

Closing Event on Saturday, February 16, 2019

4:00-6:00 pm at Aspect Ratio Gallery

The Dear Friend Reading by Karen Finley. Performance by A.J. McClenon. Conversation with Stephanie Barber, Phyllis Bramson, Dana Berman Duff, Karen Finley, Matthew Girson, Tracie D. Hall, La Keisha Leek, A.J. McClenon, and Lori Waxman.

An Illustrated Elegy

Of all the days in the year, what better one than St. Valentine’s Day for writing an elegy inspired by Sabina Ott and Dana Berman Duff’s exhibition, What She Sees When She Shuts Her Eyes. The two created a friendship that traverses the vicissitudes of space and time.

Sabina Ott challenged herself in her art-making. She insisted her friends and students challenge themselves too. She perceived possibilities beyond the horizon and then pushed even further. Duff channels Ott’s chutzpah to navigate the choppy waters of posthumous collaboration. With What She Sees When She Shuts Her Eyes, Ott and Duff launch their friendship into art’s astral plane.

For my response to the exhibition, I adopt the three-part poetic form of the elegy. I embroider the rhymed couplets with illustrations from the show and other interlocutors. Informative descriptions of the works are available from Duff and Aspect Ratio Gallery.

I.  Lamentation

Wrested from life’s humpty-dumpty terrain

Our friend Sabina is no longer here.

Why, again why, dear friends plead in refrain

Mere mortals founder in grief and fear.

II. Admiration

Life she spices with styrofoam masala

Prismatic color and mirrors of light.

She swims and soars in her art’s kabbalah,

Wanders in jungles where tigers burn bright.

III. Consolation

Our feminist artist claimed her own space

Mountain peak, fountain, garden and home.

With pink melon joy, she gets in our face:

Set senses free and spirit will roam.

Whatever we believe about after life, one thing is certain: Ott’s life force persists in her art. During and after her life, she catalyzes art making. What She Sees When She Shuts Her Eyes is much more than the collaboration of Ott and Duff. Bodies of water and subterranean lava fired their imagination.

They tapped the talents of Karen Finley and A.J. McClenon (sound); Stephanie Barber (text); Jon Lee (title graphics); Jesus Lopez Gorosave (drone videographer); and John Paulett (producer). John Cage no less emerged from the archives while Duff willed the work to completion.

On a Chicago winter day traffic flowing past the gallery sloshes melting snow. Inside, the alchemy of looking and listening enchants shut-eye rhythms of light with music of spheres inaudible to ears.

Illustrations

What Does She See When She Shuts Her Eyes, from video.

What Does She See When She Shuts Her Eyes, installation view.

William Blake, illustration for Edward Young’s The Complaint, and the Consolation; or Night Thoughts. Designed and engraved by William Blake; hand colored, possibly by William Blake and Catherine Blake (William Blake Archive).

What Does She See When She Shuts Her Eyes, from video.

What Does She See When She Shuts Her Eyes, installation view.

William Blake, Descent of man into the vale of death. Illustration for Robert Blair’s The Grave (William Blake Archive).

The World Is Round: Remembering Sabina, in foreground.

What Does She See When She Shuts Her Eyes, from video.

The World Is Round: Remembering Sabina, from video.

Lava Balls, in foreground.

The World Is Round: Remembering Sabina, from video.

Sabina Ott, always everyone, 2016.

William Blake, Dante in the Empyrean Drinking at the River of Light. Illustration for The Divine Comedy, Paradiso (William Blake Archive).

Ice lingam in the Himalayan cave temple of Amarnath in Kashmir, India.

What Does She See When She Shuts Her Eyes, still from video.

Colophon: Photograph by David Soltzman & graphic by Kennedy Warfield.

Art Newspaper Takes a Look Inside the Jeff Koons Studio & 120 Assistants

Mario Gonzalez Jr AKA Zore 64 Is Back in Town

An Introduction to Relational Aesthetics and Social Practice

Episode 180: Stephanie Brooks and Mess Hall

Bad at Sports: One Thousand Posts Strong & Still Going

Sabina Ott and Dana Berman Duff: What She Sees When She Shuts Her Eyes published first on https://footballhighlightseurope.tumblr.com/

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• Humpty Dumpty Elegy #1 | 👨‍⚖️DOOM👎 •

My friend Wednesday introduced me to Humpty Dumpty a few years back. He was hoping we could rehabilitate him into humanity. I've given up.

Humpty Dumpty went to highschool with us. Was held back a grade. Diagnosed with autism + a handful of other things. Sequestered off from the other students to the point where Wednesday said he had quasi-feral qualities. I don't remember seeing him anywhere. A fun sense of humor, and similar interests in entertainment, behind crippling anxiety. A virgin, and a bitterly resentful incel, but hey, more grist for the mental illness mill. A little help and patience oughta go a very long way.

I knew better than to pick friends based on some heroic attempt to re-invent them. That's hubris. But Hump and Wens had been discussing the idea for a while. All I was signing up for, was a new Discord friend. One with a caveat: 'He may at times be a bit baffling, awkward, and straight up unpleasant. But we can help him. We've all had similar struggles to him in our own ways, and we've overcome them. He's asking; he's vulnerable.'

I'll go further into why I find Humpty Dumpty so hopeless, as this series continues. But suffice it to say that he's not autistic; few if any of his problems are out of his control, and he's just a narcissist using pity for attention.

Over the years I listened to story after story from Mr. Dumpty. Sympathizing and empathizing with him as a protagonist. Trying to find parallels in his story that align with mine, as well as with friends in our group, and the things that've helped us so much.

The whole discord has showered him with advice, primarily based on our experiences: Job skills, establishing boundaries, communicating, ruminating, introspection tips, analogies, family dynamics, inspiring fucking allegories and historical legends, whole nine. Anything that ever nourished one of our god damn souls.

It all comes back at us with an assured, almost amused, "Naah, that won't work either."

"Yeah but it worked for me and two-three other dudes here." We'd insist.

"Hmmmm, I know, but autism/OCD/trauma/anxiety/horny/nihilism, so... ya know..."

"The dudes we're talking about have some or all of those issues and it still worked reliably. You have to try something before you say it can't help you."

"Yes, but none of you are as crazy as meee."

"You can't even hold a candle to Wednesday, dude, you know this. Why do you keep saying that?"

On and on it goes. A shell game of pity, advice, and excuses. For years now. Time wasted, and an uncharismatic sociopath stays the center of attention, indefinitely. To the alienation of other friends, who feel way less patience towards him. Whom we see less and less of, as time goes by.

My grand strategy was to vomit books all over him. It's all I've got to give. I'm a Machiavellian Gladwellian maven. In the tenth grade, Wednesday and I took a psychology class, and it's the only phase of mine that never ended. I've been reading books on psychology for eleven years. Just straight gargling them, loudly. And Wednesday is on his way to becoming a bonafide therapist. The idea of healing the mentally ill means a tremendous amount to Wednesday and I. We were conned by the better angels of our nature.

However, once I stopped giving him the benefit of the doubt, it all unraveled in my head, in a day.

So this series is all the books I deeply hoped would slowly change Humpty Dumpty's life, like they did mine. I put a lot of time and thought into which books would make the greatest impact on a troubled young adult's life.

Finally, I felt like I really committed to something bigger than myself, and intrinsically valuable, only to be mocked. This list will be here as a resource for Humpty Dumpty to browse. And my debt will be squared. My goal is still constructive. I've just lost the soft touch of a friend. Now he's a foil for us to learn from.

He's got all the time in the world, so long as he doesn't kill himself, or someone else. Although since the latter is far more likely, here are all the books he'll have time to read in prison:

• #1 You Are Not So Smart by David McRaney •

If I freeze diarrhea solid, is it still diarrhea? Just trying to hold your attention, lets keep moving. I already know the answer, don’t worry about it.

I recently told Humpty I planned to give him my copy of this, when we meet face-to-face. Said this is the book that started my journey up from rock bottom. That it changed my life, and for the first time, made me feel like my feet were planted firmly on the ground. This one light read means so much to me.

I said, "While I can't force you to read a word, I can force you to take it home with you."

He gleefully laughed and said "I'll just hold onto it till I see you again, and give it back, unread"

He meant it.

He died to me that day. The whole project ended there. Nobody else would have offended me by that comment. Because nobody else has ever begged me for guidance.

His take on the story, after the fact, is that he said he won't read it because he plans to get it on audiobook. He's been saying he'll get his Audible account started for as long as I've known him.

He spends his time replaying games upwards of six times for achievements, and watching speed runs on twitch.

My non-autistic narcissist step dad watched Looney Toons and spaghetti westerns every day. It's called being boring. Hump literally complains to us about how boring his entertainment is. But he can't pencil in one second for a best-seller or two.

I gave this to a local book box. It's in curious hands, once again.

46 digestible little psychological decryption keys. This felt like a bestiary, mixed with a book of spell-countering-spells. Wednesday read it in highschool too. We both see this as a must-read.

Granted, for readers with a solid understanding of psychology and critical thinking, you may prefer to spend your money on Thinking Fast and Slow or The Laws Of Human Nature.

Obviously, the book isn’t condescending or demeaning, as the name might suggest. It’s deeply empowering. That gap between how smart we think we are, and how smart we really are, is a source of constant distress for us.

Most of these delusions are evolutionary adaptations we should all be grateful for. But this fact comes with a big BUT: none of this information means anything, if you’re just going to be a thoughtless determinist about it. They may be your nature, but they’re not your fate.

Nobody loves determinism more than ol' Dumpity Doo-Dah. That way, he never has to change. Fate is his first trump card against sound advice.

If he did read this, he might: stop self-handicapping; stop forming self-fulfilling prophesies; stop confirming his nihilistic biases; recognize when he's confabulating in the face of ignorance; account for the Dunning-Kruger effect; drop his expensive brand loyalties; distrust supernormal releasers; be careful where he finds catharsis; or combat learned helplessness; etc. etc. etc. to name his biggest and most correctable flaws.

All of the above, he'd just call textbook autism or OCD. Too arcane for us to understand fully. Whatever it takes to keep his flaws firmly in place. His greatest strength, is his illusion of weakness.

Here’s David McRaney's blog/podcast. If you think this series apes his work, wait till you see what I got planned next. Oh baby, I’m gonna invent my own psychology all by myself. I might call it, ‘You Are Not Convinced’ I’ll test fan-submitted fried chicken recipes on my podcast and everything.

I developed more confidence, patience, and humility after reading this. Confidence, knowing my shortcomings aren’t unique to me. I don’t err cause I’m an error, I err cause I’m an ape. Patience, knowing nobody is really on the ball, and we’re lucky anything actually works at all. And humility, I rarely claim to be certain; certainty is a childish indulgence. I’ll tell you I have these flaws long before you see one acted out, if you ever even do.

It’s definitely still diarrhea.

• #2 The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz •

Funkadelic Toltec knowledge from OUTER SPACE. Four simple agreements, pinky swears at the ready! Lets go:

Be impeccable with your word

Take nothing personally

Don’t assume

Do your best

If my secular home had a holy book, it was this one. My mom read this when I was four, and did everything in her power to adopt these agreements into practice. I'm a lucky son of an alien.

It helped her reverse the narcissistic gaslighting my grandma raised her with. This was where my mom learned to stop being emotionally manipulated. A problem Humpty has complained too much about.

My mom's practically a guru, among her friends. Because she's always there to remind them of these agreements.

This keeps her on that constant Bruce Lee, 'be like water' shit. Her words are honest, clear and settled. Insults pass through her like a vapour. She flows without the friction of assumptions. She crashes into goals with all her potential. And some people think she's ice cold, but she just a solid pimp, sucka.

I read this in 2017, and until then, this was all just 'Gangster Mom Wisdom.' Now it's 'Ancient Toltec Wisdom'. Far more credible. If I want people to buy my amazing advice, it needs to be more than plain old mamma's-boy-ism.

The rules have vulnerabilities and caveats, on their own. But as a quartet, they make up for any of each others’ shortcomings. They're more complex than a point-form list. They create a whole ecology of good behaviors in your life. Don Miguel Ruiz does a fantastic job of illustrating how a regular human can effortlessly live these agreements every day.

The more you conform to these ideals, the more brave, optimistic, relaxed, and reliable you become. It’s a powerful thing, being able to look someone in the eye and say ‘When was the last time I misled or lied to you?’  I’m a hit with all my bosses, because these, and some other rules, are my first priority at work.

You’d think, at this point, that people would get sick of hearing me say ‘I dunno, I’d have to assume. So [shrug]’ But they haven’t yet. I literally gave up on making stupid wild guesses to others, and it made me look 12% smarter.

Humpty does nothing BUT take things personally, assume, and half-ass. The lies, I'm only starting to fully uncover. His whole life story is a tangled ball of non-sequiturs and red herrings. Reading this would put some responsibility on him to know better, and to act better. Hence why it's holy water to his vampire ass.

He'd once again claim an autist can't fix these problems. We're gonna hear that a whole lot.

• #3 The Practicing Stoic by Ward Farnsworth •

The cub on the right... I hope that’s just his leg.

No philosophy produces cooler people than stoicism. No other ‘–ism’ comes close. From Keanu Reeves, to Clint Eastwood, to Yoda.

‘Stoic’ comes from the Greek, ‘stoa’ which means, ‘porch’. As in, the kind of wisdom you get from an old person, chilling on their porch. What are old people thinking on their porches? They’re thinking, ‘I’m right about everything, and I’m not chasing your silly ass down to tell you.”

So unless you’ve been cordially invited to porch class, to play dominoes with your local sages and crones, you better read this book. Otherwise the only way to get it, is wait about 50-80 years. Or you could fight in a war. It’s also known as the philosophy of the veterans.

Nassim Taleb got me hyped about the idea of PTG (Post Traumatic Growth), in his book, Antifragile. A lot of the discussion around PTSD involves a gravity well of pity and hopelessness, that just sucks you deeper and deeper. Some people take a PTSD diagnosis, like they’ve been informed they have Alzheimer's. Instead of attempting to treat it, they just start searching for hospice caretakers and adult diapers.

PTG is a concept older than written language, but in the history of trauma research, it’s still very young (90′s baby club yass). And the aircraft carrier of PTSD treatment is still turning very slowly in its direction. So in the meantime, how bout a philosophy adjustment? PTG is stoicism’s bread and butter.

Life’s just one big plate of steaming shit after another, and you just gotta eat it without complaining. – My dad. Not a practicing stoic.

Speaking of other ‘–isms,’ stoicism is an Axial-age philosophy.

Look at those old mustard-colored Boomer religions. Stinky!

Ever look at all the major religions and think, "seems like they’re all kinda gettin’ at the same thing"? Well, they were all attached to the same ancient trade network, the one that crystalized into the Silk Road. All these nerds were sharing ideas for centuries. A number of large figures from each team could have met face-to-face. Coulda gave one another blowjobs, who knows.

If stoicism ever gives you Buddhist vibes, it’s because in Greece’s Macedonian days, they parked their borders right up next to the Hindu Kush, made like a tree, and stayed there for a couple centuries.

Although, come to think of it, can’t remember the last time I’ve heard anyone say, ‘Want to be less anxious? Think more like a Greek.”

• #4 The Body Keeps The Score by Bessel Van Der Kolk •

This is what got me wondering if trauma was the nucleus of Humpty Dumpty's woes. Rather than autism. His most pronounced symptom, as a kid, was screaming/crying fits. That's mostly it. The rest of his autism-cred comes from merely being institutionalized over his early fits.

The only thing I won't doubt or denigrate about Humpty's life story, is that he was traumatized as a young man, by his family, by institutions, and by peers. Although getting him to specify where it maybe came from leads to babble. The non-sequitur fountain starts back up.

What I've pieced together from these tales, is that whatever Humpty did as a kid, got him scooped up by the Ontario school mental health system, labelled defective in every measurable way, prescribed every treatment available, robbed of any internal locus of control, then mentally vivisected and left unzipped. No identity, no agency, no guidance, and most importantly, shockingly little time spent socializing with peers.

But anyway, more about the book:

PTSD manifests in two ways: Overstimulation, or numbness; Panic attacks, or dissociation.

Never had a panic attack in my life. I’m Snowcone Jones, not... Volcano Alfredo. When everyone around me is wide-eyed and terrified, I enjoy a guilty moment of bliss. I float around in a little endorphin bubble, and everything moves just slow enough to handle.

The coping mechanism in his L-M-N-O-P’s went from healthy, to unhealthy, to a hell he never leaves – Aesop Rock, Lazy Eye

Psychologists say the cut-off age for adolescence keeps extending. To how old, thus far? 25, and climbing. We’re going to need a new Catcher In The Rye for this century, with a 30-year-old Holden Caulfield.

Adolescence isn’t biological, it’s cultural. It comes down to material things like attending school, living with your parents, etc. But also, mental aspects. Like sociopathy, and having an uncompromising sense of uniqueness.

We all need a sense of uniqueness, in order to create a sense of being an individual. But taken too far, it creates a frightening state of isolation. Trauma, while always deeply personal, is rarely unique.

This book shatters the feeling of lonely uniqueness that trauma can generate. I can connect with people in catatonic states, similar to my own. And more importantly, I can see overstimulated people, whom I used to refer to as ‘spazzes’, and recognize that there’s someone very similar to me, reacting to their pain with plan A, rather than B.

One of trauma’s secret ingredients is a lack of agency. That locus of control I was referring to is vitally important to your wellbeing. Bessel’s book focuses heavily on how trauma victims can inject some agency into their past, present, and future selves.

Trauma can be a Horse and Stag sorta deal. The stag is a traumatic event, and our physiological reaction is like the hunter with the saddle. We accept the hunter’s help, and it makes inspirationally quick work of the stag. But when we invite the hunter to kindly piss off, he says ‘Hey, thanks for the horse’ and there you are, stuck in a stable. A stoic’s worst nightmare.

Bessel sees the way out of the stable. If you can lose the Stag, and the saddle, that’s post traumatic growth.

If you’ve watched The Sinner on Netflix, it’s basically this book in cop drama form. I love it.

• #5 Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink & Leif Babin •

Good

You gotta grit your teeth and flex all your neck muscles when you grumble the name of this book.

So much to love: Doing your best, checking your delusions, philosophy from sexy veterans, and vast agency-expanding wisdom.

The absolute last thing Humpty Dumpty will ever read. If I wanted to improve him with this book, my odds would be better if I just hurled it at his head like a baseball, and prayed for acquired savant powers. Which I won't do, because I got the audiobook. And because he's an egg.

I mentioned being a hit with my bosses. This is the cherry on top.

Corporations hire Jocko to come in when a team is failing to meet its goals. Jocko shows up and says, with his navy SEAL stage whisper, ‘what’s the problem?’ And the leaders say, ‘everything but us.’ And he squints like, ‘biiitch... please’  then he sinks back into the water with a Bowie knife in his teeth.

No bad teams, only bad leaders.

Responsibility isn’t a question of guilt or shame, when things go south. It’s a question of awareness and control. e.g. Did you have what you needed? No. Did you know you’d need it? No. Could you have checked beforehand to know you would need it? Yes. Then at some point, success was under your control, and you made the wrong choice. You share a portion of responsibility, own it.

We're most often the victim of circumstance only once, and the rest of the time thereafter, a participant. If you know better, then you're responsible for acting better, period.

There’s a big caveat, though. One can have a pathologically internal locus of control. Jocko alludes to this fact a lot in Extreme Ownership, but people struggle with the idea so much in practice, he wrote The Dichotomy Of Leadership and made a 2-part series of it all. A book on leading, and a book on following.

I, for example, have to stop acting like Dumpty is under my control. I want to believe I did something wrong to fail this quest to save his mind. I feel this urge to take ownership of his choices. That's extremely unhealthy. It's time for some malicious compliance; it's time to let him own his choice to languish.

It’s daunting, the practice of dropping the flattering excuses, and just owning your shit. For about a week, it feels like all you’re doing is masochistically barbequing your ego. But once the spiciness wears off, you’re left fortified. Or, dare I say, matured.

We all need help leading others, leading ourselves, and being led. It’s a delicate process. Few things are worse than a bad leader. Authority is not a trivial thing.

I've never once witnessed Humpty take ownership of his choices. Every decision of his was made by someone or something else. This book is the most counter-Humpty-Dumpty book I've ever read.

• End bit •

I'm still hanging with Humpty. I just don't reward his pity gimmicks with attention. The most malicious thing I plan to do is bore him.

No more explaining, cajoling, demanding, pleading, bargaining, or Socratic back-and-forth. No more time alone, ruminating over his endlessly complex life puzzles, or fantasizing about how much potential he has under all his self-sabotage. No more positive attention for being a dedicatedly permanent loser. No more making excuses for his disgusting misogyny. Not after this series is done.

In the event that I'm wrong in my judgement, and I'm just pooping on a harmless victim of fate, these books will always be here. Here, waiting for Humpty to simply take recovery into his own hands.

Honestly, if he just read a single one of these books, I'd see him in a hopeful light again. But he won't.

If you're wondering what he'll think about this, I have a pretty good guess:

Nothing

I promise, everything stated in this series has been said to him multiple times, by multiple people, in every variety of mitigated language. Mostly loud and pleadingly. As a matter of fact, while writing this, I decided to put a couple verbal haymakers together, and fire them at him next time he inevitably did more of his exaggerated Negative Nancy spiel.

I went in as accusatory as possible, brutal, no humor, expected defensiveness, and was ready to dial things back, the moment I got his attention:

I said he collects self-diagnoses for pure vanity's sake, and that they give him endless moral license to wallow in a pity puddle for attention. That he's consciously and deliberately working to never improve, so he can get attention forever. That he's a faker.

He didn't skip a beat. Rattled off some inaccurate OCD trivia to something said earlier in the conversation and moved on.

I said he has some form of Munchhausen disorder, explained it, and repeated that he's actively committed to never getting better, and nearly all his sickness is a bullshit contrivance exhausting people's attention and energy. And we're all fully losing interest in his recovery.

Another instant and effortless non-sequitur, so disconnected from the conversation I can't remember who he addressed it to. But we advanced like I said nothing.

Then after hearing him describe another person supposedly reading his mind, and thinking evil thoughts about him, I said all he does is project his shadow onto random people. Did the whole Carl Jung elevator pitch right then and there, and reminded him, "You know, like that game you love, Persona."

He told me the latest news on Persona 6. And we kept on rolling.

In one ear, out the other. Nothing disturbed him, because he still had everything he wanted in that moment: My attention.

The story of Humpty Dumpty, to me, is about Munchhausen disorder. I know that isn't even close to canon, but I think it's why it has held in our imagination.

Humpty Dumpty was an empty egg, with nothing growing deep inside him. An egg, first of all, knows how fragile it is, and knows it doesn't belong on top of a fucking wall. Yet in the face of an impotent existence, he reckoned his greatest strength was his weakness, and he shattered himself to pieces. Pieces, which spent their last moments lovingly tended to, by the skilled hands of the King and his horsemen.

I wash my hands of this brimstone-scented shell salad. He can smash himself into pigment for all I care. It's always been his choice. I suspended a lot of valuable and accurate judgements for long enough. There are better marks for him to con. Endless wells of sympathy. Marks that don't know a fraction as much as we do about psychology.

But YOU, lovely reader, have merely ONE thing to do to avoid being a devilish HUMPTY DUMPTY (fuckin booooo):

Participate in your own recovery.

Don't drown all your lifeguards. Shit, at the very least, when the lifeguards throw you a floatation device, don't catch it and mischievously hurl it as far away as you can. If you ask someone to spoon-feed you help, don't blow it off the spoon and laugh in their face.

Nobody can pump and swing your limbs around and make you burn fat, you gotta move them yourself. Nobody can integrate your shadow into your conscious self, that's for you to investigate personally. You can't humble others, only yourself; People call humbling others, "humiliating". And nobody can cure your addiction to self-pity till you alone decide you want to.

See you all next month, with another 5 books, an Aesop Rock quote, and more lessons from one of fastest growing character archetypes in our generation: the Humpty Dumpty.

We gon talk about autism! We gon talk about all this suicide shit! Ooow we gon talk about work! Humpty gon come to my house and kill my life! I'm excited! hahahahaha yisssss!

What a way to get murdered. Death by book club.

#you are not so smart #the four agreements #the practicing stoic #the body keeps the score #extreme ownership #psychology #philosophy #stoicism #trauma #responsibility #david mcraney #don miguel ruiz #ward farnsworth #bessel van der kolk #jocko willink #leif babin #incels #self help #humpty dumpty elegy #munchausen syndrome #GARBLEGOX

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• Humpty Dumpty Elegy 3 | five books on ☠DEATH🌼 •

The group held a vote on whether to kick Mr. Dumpty out for a year.

Yes won.

I wasn't in on the deliberation, behind the scenes. I'm not a big wig; didn't even get a vote. But I know three big things tipped the scales: Our safety, the perversion, and content violations in chat.

Once we had all taken off our pity goggles, we started to wonder why we overlooked all the murder-suicide commentary. We also thought, in horror, about the reactions of our loved ones, girlfriends, or wives, if we exposed them to Humpty's antics.

A few long-time regulars on the discord were becoming noticeably more absent since he joined. One said a year ago that he wouldn't tolerate Humpty Dumpty's bullshit. He meant it, and he made his point through his actions from the start.

We wanted our other friends back. Friends we'd known for many more years; who actually participate in games with the group; who are gregarious and entertaining; Friends that haven't designated the entire group to be their therapist.

Not everyone had bad memories of Humpty. Because some never logged on when he was in voice chat.

It's officially an elegy.

We all feel gross. Our admin, despite all the negative testimonies, including his own, felt that booting Dumpty was a bitter pill to swallow. He's only ever banned people for egregious, obvious, suicide-by-admin type behavior. But he also felt a bit ashamed for letting people in his group be exposed to such an individual.

In a way, we could hold ourselves responsible for not being more firm in enforcing our boundaries. Five "no"s, and one "yes", means "yes". Five "no"s, a "yes", and a "man, Humpty, you're really a piece of shit, you know that?" also means "yes" just the same. I know how to say "no". And with Humpty, I didn't do my best.

But again, we were never actual therapists, and Humpty rarely acted like a friend. What kind of friend makes you have to consult with books by FBI agents on establishing firm boundaries? Nutty fuckin douchebag friends. I did appreciate him buying me Doom, though. That felt genuinely nice before he cracked a whip at me about it.

This time, I'm gonna try to be far more respectful. He is a human. He is lonely. He does have a lot to learn. And I get no pleasure from his exile. Maybe relief, but no schadenfreude.

Before, I was writing from the perspective of someone at the end of their rope. After experimenting with every level of intensity, trying to get these points across, the only level I hadn't tried was the furious, "Okay fuckhead, you're dead to me. If you don't want to do it the easy way, we'll do it the humiliating way" level of intensity.

It's been fun. But my anger has only one thing left to do, and that's diminish. I got a lot of books for Humpty Dumpty to read, and it's going to be hard to keep the fire hot.

My overall goal is still to share books with people, and to learn from the finest anti-model I've ever met. I told Dump about what I was writing, the reason why, and the fact that I was trying to eviscerate him. He chuckled at me and never got around to reading it, which kind of emboldened me to crank up the spice.

Now that he's cut off, there's a far greater chance he revisits this series. I'll focus on making it actually readable for him too, and not a massive diarrhea cannon aimed at his face. I'll sound like how I spoke to him pre-Twelve Days of Christmas, when I was in investigation mode; When I had hope for him. I got into this mess via sympathy.

"I'm going to kill myself" was Hump's #1 catch phrase. I still reckon he stole it from Wednesday for attention, but whatever, lets just humor him. I don't want that to happen. And if he was ever tempted to really do it, it might be after getting swept off into the goatscape.

So, as we kick off our more namaste-like, Dumpty-free future, let's begin with my favorite books about DEATH. Books a suicidal cat might dig. I know I did.

• #1 Man's Search For Meaning by Viktor Frankl •

Cried like a silly bitch at work, the other day, thanks to this book. I re-listened to it on my phone, and you'd think I spent the whole shift slicing onions.

I'm blessed with coworkers whom I can joke about it with. In the kitchen, we have two types of conversations on line: peep-to-peep chatter; or shouting from one corner of the room to the other, as a sort of performance to make front of house laugh.

Our favorite hits include shouting about: Familial trauma or neglect, sleep disrupting insecurities, suicidal thoughts, political cynicism, nihilistic bile, and the last thing we had a good fuckin cry about. Like a half dozen Statlers and Waldorfs, heckling existence itself.

This one produced some rare tears, though. Tears of awe. This feels like one of those, "Read-every-few-years-for-the-rest-of-my-life" type books.

Known as "the third school of Viennese psychology," Viktor Frankl's "Logotherapy" was first put to the test when he survived three years, in four different Nazi concentration camps. From, "logos" meaning, "meaning" or "reason", logotherapy focusses on the existential meaning of a patient's existence.

Frankl would often ask patients, after they spilled out all their woes, "So, why haven't you killed yourself, yet?" It wasn't rhetorical, he wasn't just trying to be hilarious, the "why" was the point of his entire practice.

"One who has a why to live can bear almost any how" -- Friedrich Nietzsche (aka Frick Nitzels)

Viktor witnessed what happened to a person when their meaning was lost. A man, who lived to see March 31st, the day he prophesized would be his liberation, died two days later when it became clear his dream wouldn't come true. First, he went catatonic, then came typhus. Death by April Fools.

Meanwhile, another man, who prayed to god to transmute all of his suffering into protection for his loved ones in other camps, took every measure of sadism and misery with a steady return of hope. That's not masochism, that's alchemy.

I discussed with Humpty the importance of how he constructs a narrative around his life. That he cultivates nihilism at his own peril. That his big strong brain only has access to half of the truth, if he only focusses on the objective ones. Psychology has a reductionism problem, where mechanical focus on clinical diagnoses reduces people to barely animals.

For some people, their neurology is perfectly sound. Not an imbalance in sight. Their lives? Ship-shape & Bristol; Ivan Ilyich approved; all rites passed; A G R E E A B L E. But how do they feel to be alive? Like the biggest bag of worthless shit.

Why? What makes some people seemingly impervious to psychiatric intervention? Because not all psychiatrists think "the meaning of life" is a scientific topic, and therefore not their role to discuss. Which means you can spend a lot of time learning about psychology, and never learn a single subjective truth.

This is why self-diagnosis is so risky. Where is any of this bullshit I'm writing about on Web MD?

So start here. Evaluate self-help by more logotheraputic standards. Ask, "does this even acknowledge the importance of meaning in my life, or help me pursue it?"

This is my favorite shit to summon tears with. I'm not fully sure why. But if I need tears on queue: "I am here- I am here-..." and I'm away. Same at work, as while I write this now. Makes me wonder what madness even means.

• #2 The Road To Character by David Brooks •

What does Dumpty value?

Not dating fat or ugly women; Getting the negative attention of Japanese videogame developers on Twitter; Being seen as the brother of a girl who isn't his biological sister, or in his family at all; $750 Shadow The Hedgehog statues; Not being a "normie"; and many other purely worthless things.

He's where I started wondering if chronic depression might be a philosophical issue for some people, as opposed to a contextual or neurochemical one. The man will never improve till he wraps his head around the idea of intrinsic values.

There's zero hope of Humpty living a happy life without a moral compass. Sadly for him, he's not a real psychopath, who can easily find all the eudaimonia he wants, just at other people's expense, guilt free. He's a dull narcissist, whose fate is just a crescendo of greater and greater solitude; a deeper and more empty abyss, till annihilation.

This is a book I read early, in my journey to deconfuckulate my brain, and it played a major role in most of my Humpty-scolding, largely without me recognizing it. Upon re-reading, I was surprised to find it influenced my decision to read 4 other books over the years. Including Man's Search For Meaning, and Culture And Anarchy (BANGER) by Matthew Arnold.

Btw Matthew Arnold is the guy who gave us the modern usage of "philistine." I'll be writing more about him, because his book is as applicable today as it was seven generations ago. That book is 2 Yosemite Sam guns/2 Yosemite Sam guns, bang bang bang.

Maybe you're like me, and "moralist" sounds like an insult. Well, Brooks isn't here to scold anyone or be a nerdy little bitch. Don't let anyone fool you, this isn't religious or conservative propaganda, it's another contribution to logotherapy. Take it from a pathologically anti-authoritarian douchebag like myself.

He gives a couple handy binaries to help organize your priorities. "Adam I vs Adam II" virtues, or "Resume vs Eulogy" virtues.

The Adams refer to how in Genesis, Adam displayed two different sets of virtues at different times. Adam I is practical, marketable, flexible, conditional, and Hellenistic. While Adam II is spiritual, self-contained, disciplined, unconditional, and Hebraistic.

Adam I is a great object, but a vacuous subject. Adam II puts little value in the objective world, in favor of a richer subjective one. Not everyone is in a rush to hire Adam II for a job, but everyone's coming to his funeral to pay their respects. Spending time around Adam II is mind expanding, and spiritually enriching.

You see the orange of that cover? That's the yolk I've been trying to get into Humpty's empty fucking shell the whole time. But little did I know I'm just a stupid normie, trying to argue against the axiom that life is meaningless. Am I really that cruel for calling Humpty empty? He's the only motherfucker I know to be like "Yeah, sonder is bliss, but leave me out of it. I'm an ant, not a hill, in this useless head of mine."

We could hold modern psychology responsible for a lot of this. When people dropped faith, and abandoned priests, they created a vacuum in their hearts. I think you can fill it with a multitude of things, without going back to church. But to fill it with psychology exclusively is a disastrous mistake. If you want dogma, just go back to church. Way better chance of turning out friendly.

When Humpty asked for help, what did he have in mind? He claimed he was continuously improving, just by being in our presence. But I know "improve" has nothing to do with eulogy virtues, coming from him. It's why I became convinced he was just looking for attention. The sweetness of a spotlight.

Everyone in the group has got eulogy virtues, and the kind of worries that'd fill Adam II's heart with the warmest sympathy. Wednesday is someone who has exhausted all conventional strategies for fighting depression; all the neurochemical and contextual battlefronts have been braved by him. But the real victories have been existential; A change in philosophy. (Plus, our frontal lobes grew in. If you're under 25 look forward to that shit. It's nice. 👍👍👍👍)

There's no such thing as building character through osmosis. Brooks, like many others in this series, see it as a painful reconstruction project. Parts of you need to be dismantled, examined, and often thrown away. This is why this series is so heinously mean. Humpty is the only one that can humble himself; For me to do it is just humiliating. I tried to lead this horse to this water, and this horse stomped it into a mud puddle.

Another thicc scoop of logotherapy, with a stoic cherry on top. I said that it got me to read four other books, but really it's a bibliography of more than a dozen great authors we should all read before we die. From Mary Ann Evans to Montagne. He makes St Augustine sound like Iceberg Slim. Bestseller for a reason.

• #3 Denial Of Death by Ernest Becker •

Hey, I was just wondering if it'd be cool if I could just be immortal and unforgotten forever? At least for a few millennia. I'm thinking Giza pyramids level longevity. Should be easy. I like a good bite-sized goal.

A lot of people will tell you that the reason they, or anyone else, do anything is to get laid. That at the nucleus of all their heroism, striving, and anxiety, is sex. But why is sex so important? Because we're mortal. The real nucleus is death. The one bone our subconscious chews away on, day and night.

This is where "monkey brain" doesn't apply. Death anxiety is a unique byproduct of human intelligence. It's based on our ability to treat abstract symbols as if they were as concrete as the things they symbolize. A banknote, representing cold hard gold glows in the hand of its owner, like real precious metal; a man wearing a hat, that signifies his leadership over 50 armed men, can be as threatening alone with his hat as he is with his all his men in tow; And looking at the corpse of another human is a glimpse at one's own future. As if your death were mine too.

Every bit of psychological progress is just a wobbly house of cards if you built it before grappling with death. It's the "worm at the core of our pretentions to happiness."

We've all heard the story, someone reaches the tippity-tip-tap-top of the hippity-hip-hap-heap and what do they do? They stoop, put their chin to their fist, furrow their brow, and bum everyone the fuck out with an unsolicited existential crisis.

Because you ain't a pyramid you silly bitch. You a poopy worm.

This book though, in all seriousness, is all seriousness. When I read this I was like "FINALLY! Freudian psychology without all the awkward erections!" See, Freud was 95% right, but his dogmatic obsession with orgasms left his work in need of some decryption.

This book is where we all stop pretending we're any different from Humpty Dumpty. When we act out, we're lashing against our fear of death; fear of heroism; fear of success. When we reach to great heights, we're grasping at immortality.

Lets be straight up, Humpty's not stupid. He can give you a crystal clear description of objective facts, plus secondary and tertiary details. That brain of his is firing on all cinderblocks. The problem is, the neurotic are people who see things with perfect clarity, rather than confusion.

Humpty knows he's mortal. He knows heroism is just a reflex, to either uselessly distract yourself from death, or futilely attempt to negate it. He knows success will just leave him with one last thing to do: die, and be forgotten.

But he doesn't handle those facts, lets say, gracefully. His solipsism has him convinced he came up with all these notions himself. Anyone who appears to grasp them, AND put them towards a happy life, must not grasp them properly.

A little stupidity could do Dumpty some good. Or as Ernest calls it, "legitimate foolishness". The religious call it, "faith". His biggest fears are, making a fool of himself, and buying into comforting lies. He won't talk to women because of course they're going to reject him; He won't join a meatspace community because of course they don't want an autist, or an independent thinker; Of course he won't spend time on self-help, it's either redundant, or futile.

Maybe he's right, because you know, each "of course not" has a long flowchart of if-thens and either-ors behind it, that he spent DAYS ruminating on. Instead of one moment, where he tests his pessimistic hypotheses. Testing would be foolish, when you consider the prior arithmetic.

If Humpty looks even a little foolish, people instantly spot his autism and then he's DOOMED.

He's such a god that he can predict the future, but not withstand it. And such a worm that life is a joke, but too sacred to play with it.

You think "worm" is an insult. But most people don't even live up to a worm's standards; worms leave the world around them a better place. All they do is enrich. I bet if we didn't have worms, plants and fungi would officially cancel this "terrestrial animal" project they've been experimenting with for a while.

For want of a worm, the dirt was lost. For want of a dirt, the food was lost. For want a food, the poop was lost. For want of a poop, life was lost. For want of a life, the Earth was lost. For want of a Earth, God was lost. And all for the want of some shit little worms.

• #4 The Worm At The Core by Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, and Tom Pyszczynski •

Giving myself only a month to discuss this was HUBRIS. Good fuckin JESUS god! Then again, the work has all been done, I'm just trying to waft some air from these books at people's noses. It's gloomy, but this is the bread isle for the existentially starving. Virgin Mary toast, by tha loaf.

All that stuff back there? Ernest Becker? Not a scientist, that guy. It was one of those dirty rotten philosophy books. Eew! If you ask any traditional scientist nowadays, what they think about the importance of philosophy, a heartbreaking percentage think it's obsolete. Which to me, means a heartbreaking percentage of scientists are arrogant brainless fuckin' tumors.

When Denial Of Death dropped in '73, it garnered a ton of hype. It inspired a lot of art. But the scientific community abandoned it like a mamma bird, ditching her nest of chicks because they carry a foreign smell. They felt a little cucked by Kierkegaard, the pre-Freudian post-Freudian. And they'll never be outshone by a theologian. Not willingly.

But there were still scientists looking to bring Becker's work into the realm of the empirical. People like our authors here. Data, studies, models of predictability, nice science shit. The result? TMT, or "Terror Management Theory." Sounds so metal.

It's a treatment lane. Some people are mentally ill due to life circumstances, genetics, physical sickness, etc. For which, there are drugs, CBT, and lifestyle adjustments. One illness can be the result of many different influences, and can thus be treated by many different things.

One drastically overlooked influence however is existential dread. Yes, it can kill you.

Drugs won't change your relationship with mortality. All they can do is take away the physical manifestations of our inner conflict. But they don't answer questions once and for all. With the exception to psychedelics, which I highly recommend. A psychedelic near-death experience is a good time. Try experiencing a little eternity, and tell me you long to live forever.

You're longing for the scariest thing IN THE UNIVERSE!

Cognitive behavioral therapy is great for misbehavior. But behaving like a content person, when you're not, doesn't make you a content person. It's painful, like bone tinnitus. It doesn't answer important subjective questions. Doesn't wipe away the oily film of the absurd.

Lifestyle adjustments are great, but again, it's all extrinsic. Perfect in the meantime, as you're working on coming to terms with your mortality. But your lifestyle will adjust itself anyway, as your fear of death diminishes. It's one way you know its coming along. However I'd never assume I'm over my fear, rather that I'm just artfully dancing around the topic in my head. Once again, an art, not a science.

Do I have a healthy relationship with death? I think I do. Sadly, I think it has a lot to do with my parents, a healthy dosage of dying pets and peers, and most importantly, 3 catastrophic nightmare psilocybin trips. Things I can't share with others; All non-fungible experiences.

The shroom inhibitions were another big reason I gave up on Humpty. You gotta be humbled, you gotta be scared, you need to practice your death before you die. You can't just manage death terror with sarcasm, and catatonic pessimism. He needed to see what the fuck a "monkey brain" can really do.

Our generation has made such a mockery of suicide. All the yapping about it is becoming profane. Whether we play that card for laughs, or just to hear another person beg us to keep on living, we play it as often as we can. Why? Why cry so much god damn wolf?

I think it's a "proximal defense" against terror. We construct what they call proximal and distal defenses against death's effect on our emotions.

Distal defenses are like a roof over your head, and mortal terror is like the rain. Distal defenses do most of the work, keeping subconscious thoughts under control, long before they emerge onto the surface. But when the rain gets through our roof, our proximal defenses play the role of a bucket, catching individual leaks.

Humpty's roof is rusty, corrugated swiss cheese. He thinks the scheme of things is all a sham. Group oriented values are the values of a sheep. He's abandoned all hope of having kids, and has sour-graped on the topic entirely. The rain gets in with full force.

His bucket? He turned it upside down, painted "suicide" on the side, and now wears it on his head. He's soaked up to the neck, shivering, and laughing from the dark. You won't fire him, he'll quit. Everything in his life has been pure fate, except for his death. That'll be his creation.

• #5 The Myth Of Sysyphus by Albert Camus •

Camus and I are perfect examples of the fact that being super handsome and cool doesn't make your life happy or more meaningful. Don't worry 'bout it. 'Sno big deal.

I'm barely smart enough to read shit like this. I re-read everything before I write about it, and I re-re-re-read this one. Felt like an Aesop Rock song, where I'm carried along by isolated little lines and phrases that blow my mind. And only after repeated exposure, do I start to get the thread from start to finish.

The point is, Sisyphus is a bad muthafucka. Don't pity the man, he's a hero. Life is an absurd Sisyphean bunch of goofishness. This book focusses on the question of suicide, in the face of this reality. The rock is going to roll back down hill. Why push it up?

I might be mistaken, but I'm pretty sure all four of the previous books have referenced sexy ass Albert Camus. That wasn't intentional, but it's pretty neat. If this book feels like it's really tearing your mental asshole open, try easing into it with the other ones. I'm still loosening up for Kierkegaard. The one guy all five books can't stop slobberin' on about.

One thing I liked about Humpty was that he recognized the absurd, and it consumed him too. We shared the same harrowing passion. I think he had a bitchboy response to the issue, but to be engaged with it at all was something I respected deeply within him.

In a way, a "normie" is someone who has either never grappled with absurdity, or lives to avoid it at all costs. We share a disdain for people like that. Especially the avoiders. Humpty wants what Camus calls "living without appeal"

That is, appeal to a god, an ideology, a fiction, or hope. Anything that would insult his genuine gift of lucidity. His atheism, individualism, rationalism, and cynicism are virtues of his. I got no books on abandoning any of those things. But they're a heavy ballast, and they can sink you if you're reckless. An issue that really only effects the smartest people, to toot all our horns. Hey you, give yourself a toot!

Honestly, I've probably spent more time telling Humpty he needs Jesus, than I've said he needs Camus. Because I think he's too Dunning-Kreuger to take him seriously. If something resembles a stupid movie, TV show, or game he likes, he'll consider himself already schooled on the topic. And there's plenty of flippant absurdist media out there to distract him from that good-good shit.

Albert gives 3 examples of living an "absurd life" without appeal. An actor, a seducer (Don Juan), or a conqueror. It should be noted that Humpty is quite deliberately none of these things, and Wednesday is dying to be all three at once. The act of wearing a mask in social settings is extremely degrading, in his opinion; he says women reject him, but he wouldn't dare approach them anyhow, for love is short-lived and exceptional; And he knows everything conquerable is re-conquerable. The point is, you ain't gonna make Humpty look stupid, by fooling him into carrying that rock anywhere.

He also discusses Dostoyevsky's character, Kirilov. A man who committed "logical suicide". After grappling with the absence of god, and his lack of spiritual purpose, Kirilov sought revolt, freedom, and passion through taking his own life. This is the character I think Humpty most resembles.

It's as if Dumpty has the myth backwards in his head. At the top of the hill is death, and at the bottom of the hill is life. Like death is the burden he shoulders, and life is the inevitable retrograde from all his hard work. He can kill himself, or millions of others, and the worms will eat, nutrients will flow. Life will flourish like nothing happened. Fed only sooner in his haste.

This book has drastically improved my attitude at work. Few jobs are more blatantly Sisyphean than cooking food and washing dishes. And I think few cooks handle it with as positive an outlook as me.

Granted, I can't wait to leave. It's also one of the few jobs where you just get burned every day. The palms of my hands are a permanent strawberry bubblegum colour, while the backs are a ghostly pale mick beige; I'll fucking destroy you in a game of hot potato. But in the meantime, I'm proud to carry my daily rock with dignity.

In fact, inspired by the masterpiece, Holes, I like to think of my work like Madam Zeroni's pig. When I'm carrying a 50lb flour bag down four flights of stairs twice a day, or dumping 180lbs of canola oil into their fryers to start the morning (240 if it's dump day), I hear her spooky ass voice in my head. I watch my body get stronger, and I feel some squaring of my debt to the universe. Whatever it takes to be Sisyphus with a smile.

I guess Humpty was looking to be my rock. I was hoping he'd find his own.

• End bit •

(Oops, this was late. Real dickfuck move from someone trying to give life advice. Although I get a free pass thanks to Atomic Habits, so long as I don't fuck up twice in a row. Considering the massive topic, the drastic change in direction, and waiting 15 days to start writing... well I don't have any valid excuses either way. Just gotta not do it again. Okay? Capeesh? Prick?)

It's amazing how quickly the worst memories began to fade the second I didn't have Humpty Dumpty around to resent. It helps that he's a pretty textbook case of himself, and there are countless other people like him to remind me of our time together.

You gotta wonder, "what kind of hyper-demanding asshole friend expects one to read this many books?" honestly I never expected that. I thought Humpty came to Wednesday and I, believing we had knowledge to share, and I spent close to two years, thoughtfully trying to inject lessons from our reading/life into conversations with Humpty. Not only did he breeze by them with zero feedback, he often chose to argue with us directly.

It's not like he's just never been exposed to these things, but would have loved to be. He's always been bent on disproving them.

This series had a different aim, just before I turned on Dumpty. I called it "Books My Dumbass Friends Need To Read." I used the same five books, with 5 different write-ups, posted it, and after all the fun of writing it, it felt completely wrong.

I've been teasing my other friends for a long time, that they all gotta read some of this shit, instead of just getting the sparknotes from me. These books have patched up issues for me that my friends continue to grapple with, and one of the only tools I know of to fix them is a nice book.

(and shrooms)

But my heart wasn't lashing out at them at all. For a number of big reasons. First, they all read books, unlike Humpty. It's what makes book recommendations possible in the first place, and why I don't need to blog at them. They're all bonafide seekers, who are finding happiness at respectable paces. I learn from them just as well. God bless em. Second, none of them use the group as an emotional barf bag. We all expect ourselves to bring something to the table to REWARD people for giving us attention.

I was furious with Humpty Dumpty. I was tired of wasting the group's time, interviewing him about his made up psychoses. Hours on this fucking piece of shit, who'd move the goalpost to a new fantasy dimension of cum and shit and sarcastic scoffs the second you got an eye on his shadow's true form. I needed to put this iceberg of wasted patience far from our boat.

I might replace my anti-model with a role-model. My boy Wednesday. Hump Day, not Humpty Dumpty. He got two different eyes, he seen so much death, and he knows the future. He's Odin. He's Moondog. The Witcher to my Dandelion. The warrior to my poet.

We'll see. I'm gonna be vague about him. Then again I've been super vague about Humpty.

Toning down the venom is a must, though. These aren't books for pieces of shit. They're books so robust even pieces of shit can put them to full use. Albeit, maybe with the help of a jail sentence. Humpty Dumpty is a nauseatingly relatable human being. He's not of a different form from us, but of a different scale.

Oh boy! Next month I bring you 5 more of these dirty little whores! You had better fucking like reading! Oooooh SHIT!

#psychology #self help #mental health #books #man's search for meaning #the road to character #denial of death #the worm at the core #the myth of sisyphus #philosophy #viktor frankl #david brooks #ernest becker #sheldon solomon #jeff greenberg #tom pyszczynski #albert camus #book club #death #suicide #meaning of life #morality #existentialism #Humpty Dumpty Elegy #humpty dumpty #wednesday #GARBLEGOX

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Sabina Ott and Dana Berman Duff: What She Sees When She Shuts Her Eyes

Closing Event on Saturday, February 16, 2019

4:00-6:00 pm at Aspect Ratio Gallery

The Dear Friend Reading by Karen Finley. Performance by A.J. McClenon. Conversation with Stephanie Barber, Phyllis Bramson, Dana Berman Duff, Karen Finley, Matthew Girson, Tracie D. Hall, La Keisha Leek, A.J. McClenon, and Lori Waxman.

An Illustrated Elegy

Of all the days in the year, what better one than St. Valentine’s Day for writing an elegy inspired by Sabina Ott and Dana Berman Duff’s exhibition, What She Sees When She Shuts Her Eyes. The two created a friendship that traverses the vicissitudes of space and time.

Sabina Ott challenged herself in her art-making. She insisted her friends and students challenge themselves too. She perceived possibilities beyond the horizon and then pushed even further. Duff channels Ott’s chutzpah to navigate the choppy waters of posthumous collaboration. With What She Sees When She Shuts Her Eyes, Ott and Duff launch their friendship into art’s astral plane.

For my response to the exhibition, I adopt the three-part poetic form of the elegy. I embroider the rhymed couplets with illustrations from the show and other interlocutors. Informative descriptions of the works are available from Duff and Aspect Ratio Gallery.

I.  Lamentation

Wrested from life’s humpty-dumpty terrain

Our friend Sabina is no longer here.

Why, again why, dear friends plead in refrain

Mere mortals founder in grief and fear.

II. Admiration

Life she spices with styrofoam masala

Prismatic color and mirrors of light.

She swims and soars in her art’s kabbalah,

Wanders in jungles where tigers burn bright.

III. Consolation

Our feminist artist claimed her own space

Mountain peak, fountain, garden and home.

With pink melon joy, she gets in our face:

Set senses free and spirit will roam.

Whatever we believe about after life, one thing is certain: Ott’s life force persists in her art. During and after her life, she catalyzes art making. What She Sees When She Shuts Her Eyes is much more than the collaboration of Ott and Duff. Bodies of water and subterranean lava fired their imagination.

They tapped the talents of Karen Finley and A.J. McClenon (sound); Stephanie Barber (text); Jon Lee (title graphics); Jesus Lopez Gorosave (drone videographer); and John Paulett (producer). John Cage no less emerged from the archives while Duff willed the work to completion.

On a Chicago winter day traffic flowing past the gallery sloshes melting snow. Inside, the alchemy of looking and listening enchants shut-eye rhythms of light with music of spheres inaudible to ears.

Illustrations

What Does She See When She Shuts Her Eyes, from video.

What Does She See When She Shuts Her Eyes, installation view.

William Blake, illustration for Edward Young’s The Complaint, and the Consolation; or Night Thoughts. Designed and engraved by William Blake; hand colored, possibly by William Blake and Catherine Blake (William Blake Archive).

What Does She See When She Shuts Her Eyes, from video.

What Does She See When She Shuts Her Eyes, installation view.

William Blake, Descent of man into the vale of death. Illustration for Robert Blair’s The Grave (William Blake Archive).

The World Is Round: Remembering Sabina, in foreground.

What Does She See When She Shuts Her Eyes, from video.

The World Is Round: Remembering Sabina, from video.

Lava Balls, in foreground.

The World Is Round: Remembering Sabina, from video.

Sabina Ott, always everyone, 2016.

William Blake, Dante in the Empyrean Drinking at the River of Light. Illustration for The Divine Comedy, Paradiso (William Blake Archive).

Ice lingam in the Himalayan cave temple of Amarnath in Kashmir, India.

What Does She See When She Shuts Her Eyes, still from video.

Colophon: Photograph by David Soltzman & graphic by Kennedy Warfield.

Contemporary Art, Collected Collectively

Episode 291: Polly Apfelbaum

Methodical Handprints: An Interview with Stephen Lapthisophon

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Sabina Ott and Dana Berman Duff: What She Sees When She Shuts Her Eyes published first on https://footballhighlightseurope.tumblr.com/

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Sabina Ott and Dana Berman Duff: What She Sees When She Shuts Her Eyes

Closing Event on Saturday, February 16, 2019

4:00-6:00 pm at Aspect Ratio Gallery

The Dear Friend Reading by Karen Finley. Performance by A.J. McClenon. Conversation with Stephanie Barber, Phyllis Bramson, Dana Berman Duff, Karen Finley, Matthew Girson, Tracie D. Hall, La Keisha Leek, A.J. McClenon, and Lori Waxman.

An Illustrated Elegy

Of all the days in the year, what better one than St. Valentine’s Day for writing an elegy inspired by Sabina Ott and Dana Berman Duff’s exhibition, What She Sees When She Shuts Her Eyes. The two created a friendship that traverses the vicissitudes of space and time.

Sabina Ott challenged herself in her art-making. She insisted her friends and students challenge themselves too. She perceived possibilities beyond the horizon and then pushed even further. Duff channels Ott’s chutzpah to navigate the choppy waters of posthumous collaboration. With What She Sees When She Shuts Her Eyes, Ott and Duff launch their friendship into art’s astral plane.

For my response to the exhibition, I adopt the three-part poetic form of the elegy. I embroider the rhymed couplets with illustrations from the show and other interlocutors. Informative descriptions of the works are available from Duff and Aspect Ratio Gallery.

I.  Lamentation

Wrested from life’s humpty-dumpty terrain

Our friend Sabina is no longer here.

Why, again why, dear friends plead in refrain

Mere mortals founder in grief and fear.

II. Admiration

Life she spices with styrofoam masala

Prismatic color and mirrors of light.

She swims and soars in her art’s kabbalah,

Wanders in jungles where tigers burn bright.

III. Consolation

Our feminist artist claimed her own space

Mountain peak, fountain, garden and home.

With pink melon joy, she gets in our face:

Set senses free and spirit will roam.

Whatever we believe about after life, one thing is certain: Ott’s life force persists in her art. During and after her life, she catalyzes art making. What She Sees When She Shuts Her Eyes is much more than the collaboration of Ott and Duff. Bodies of water and subterranean lava fired their imagination.

They tapped the talents of Karen Finley and A.J. McClenon (sound); Stephanie Barber (text); Jon Lee (title graphics); Jesus Lopez Gorosave (drone videographer); and John Paulett (producer). John Cage no less emerged from the archives while Duff willed the work to completion.

On a Chicago winter day traffic flowing past the gallery sloshes melting snow. Inside, the alchemy of looking and listening enchants shut-eye rhythms of light with music of spheres inaudible to ears.

Illustrations

What Does She See When She Shuts Her Eyes, from video.

What Does She See When She Shuts Her Eyes, installation view.

William Blake, illustration for Edward Young’s The Complaint, and the Consolation; or Night Thoughts. Designed and engraved by William Blake; hand colored, possibly by William Blake and Catherine Blake (William Blake Archive).

What Does She See When She Shuts Her Eyes, from video.

What Does She See When She Shuts Her Eyes, installation view.

William Blake, Descent of man into the vale of death. Illustration for Robert Blair’s The Grave (William Blake Archive).

The World Is Round: Remembering Sabina, in foreground.

What Does She See When She Shuts Her Eyes, from video.

The World Is Round: Remembering Sabina, from video.

Lava Balls, in foreground.

The World Is Round: Remembering Sabina, from video.

Sabina Ott, always everyone, 2016.

William Blake, Dante in the Empyrean Drinking at the River of Light. Illustration for The Divine Comedy, Paradiso (William Blake Archive).

Ice lingam in the Himalayan cave temple of Amarnath in Kashmir, India.

What Does She See When She Shuts Her Eyes, still from video.

Colophon: Photograph by David Soltzman & graphic by Kennedy Warfield.

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Sabina Ott and Dana Berman Duff: What She Sees When She Shuts Her Eyes published first on https://footballhighlightseurope.tumblr.com/

[flauntpage]

Sabina Ott and Dana Berman Duff: What She Sees When She Shuts Her Eyes

Closing Event on Saturday, February 16, 2019

4:00-6:00 pm at Aspect Ratio Gallery

The Dear Friend Reading by Karen Finley. Performance by A.J. McClenon. Conversation with Stephanie Barber, Phyllis Bramson, Dana Berman Duff, Karen Finley, Matthew Girson, Tracie D. Hall, La Keisha Leek, A.J. McClenon, and Lori Waxman.

An Illustrated Elegy

Of all the days in the year, what better one than St. Valentine’s Day for writing an elegy inspired by Sabina Ott and Dana Berman Duff’s exhibition, What She Sees When She Shuts Her Eyes. The two created a friendship that traverses the vicissitudes of space and time.

Sabina Ott challenged herself in her art-making. She insisted her friends and students challenge themselves too. She perceived possibilities beyond the horizon and then pushed even further. Duff channels Ott’s chutzpah to navigate the choppy waters of posthumous collaboration. With What She Sees When She Shuts Her Eyes, Ott and Duff launch their friendship into art’s astral plane.

For my response to the exhibition, I adopt the three-part poetic form of the elegy. I embroider the rhymed couplets with illustrations from the show and other interlocutors. Informative descriptions of the works are available from Duff and Aspect Ratio Gallery.

I.  Lamentation

Wrested from life’s humpty-dumpty terrain

Our friend Sabina is no longer here.

Why, again why, dear friends plead in refrain

Mere mortals founder in grief and fear.

II. Admiration

Life she spices with styrofoam masala

Prismatic color and mirrors of light.

She swims and soars in her art’s kabbalah,

Wanders in jungles where tigers burn bright.

III. Consolation

Our feminist artist claimed her own space

Mountain peak, fountain, garden and home.

With pink melon joy, she gets in our face:

Set senses free and spirit will roam.

Whatever we believe about after life, one thing is certain: Ott’s life force persists in her art. During and after her life, she catalyzes art making. What She Sees When She Shuts Her Eyes is much more than the collaboration of Ott and Duff. Bodies of water and subterranean lava fired their imagination.

They tapped the talents of Karen Finley and A.J. McClenon (sound); Stephanie Barber (text); Jon Lee (title graphics); Jesus Lopez Gorosave (drone videographer); and John Paulett (producer). John Cage no less emerged from the archives while Duff willed the work to completion.

On a Chicago winter day traffic flowing past the gallery sloshes melting snow. Inside, the alchemy of looking and listening enchants shut-eye rhythms of light with music of spheres inaudible to ears.

Illustrations

What Does She See When She Shuts Her Eyes, from video.

What Does She See When She Shuts Her Eyes, installation view.

William Blake, illustration for Edward Young’s The Complaint, and the Consolation; or Night Thoughts. Designed and engraved by William Blake; hand colored, possibly by William Blake and Catherine Blake (William Blake Archive).

What Does She See When She Shuts Her Eyes, from video.

What Does She See When She Shuts Her Eyes, installation view.

William Blake, Descent of man into the vale of death. Illustration for Robert Blair’s The Grave (William Blake Archive).

The World Is Round: Remembering Sabina, in foreground.

What Does She See When She Shuts Her Eyes, from video.

The World Is Round: Remembering Sabina, from video.

Lava Balls, in foreground.

The World Is Round: Remembering Sabina, from video.

Sabina Ott, always everyone, 2016.

William Blake, Dante in the Empyrean Drinking at the River of Light. Illustration for The Divine Comedy, Paradiso (William Blake Archive).

Ice lingam in the Himalayan cave temple of Amarnath in Kashmir, India.

What Does She See When She Shuts Her Eyes, still from video.

Colophon: Photograph by David Soltzman & graphic by Kennedy Warfield.

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Sabina Ott and Dana Berman Duff: What She Sees When She Shuts Her Eyes published first on https://footballhighlightseurope.tumblr.com/

[flauntpage]

Sabina Ott and Dana Berman Duff: What She Sees When She Shuts Her Eyes

Closing Event on Saturday, February 16, 2019

4:00-6:00 pm at Aspect Ratio Gallery

The Dear Friend Reading by Karen Finley. Performance by A.J. McClenon. Conversation with Stephanie Barber, Phyllis Bramson, Dana Berman Duff, Karen Finley, Matthew Girson, Tracie D. Hall, La Keisha Leek, A.J. McClenon, and Lori Waxman.

An Illustrated Elegy

Of all the days in the year, what better one than St. Valentine’s Day for writing an elegy inspired by Sabina Ott and Dana Berman Duff’s exhibition, What She Sees When She Shuts Her Eyes. The two created a friendship that traverses the vicissitudes of space and time.

Sabina Ott challenged herself in her art-making. She insisted her friends and students challenge themselves too. She perceived possibilities beyond the horizon and then pushed even further. Duff channels Ott’s chutzpah to navigate the choppy waters of posthumous collaboration. With What She Sees When She Shuts Her Eyes, Ott and Duff launch their friendship into art’s astral plane.

For my response to the exhibition, I adopt the three-part poetic form of the elegy. I embroider the rhymed couplets with illustrations from the show and other interlocutors. Informative descriptions of the works are available from Duff and Aspect Ratio Gallery.

I.  Lamentation

Wrested from life’s humpty-dumpty terrain

Our friend Sabina is no longer here.

Why, again why, dear friends plead in refrain

Mere mortals founder in grief and fear.

II. Admiration

Life she spices with styrofoam masala

Prismatic color and mirrors of light.

She swims and soars in her art’s kabbalah,

Wanders in jungles where tigers burn bright.

III. Consolation

Our feminist artist claimed her own space

Mountain peak, fountain, garden and home.

With pink melon joy, she gets in our face:

Set senses free and spirit will roam.

Whatever we believe about after life, one thing is certain: Ott’s life force persists in her art. During and after her life, she catalyzes art making. What She Sees When She Shuts Her Eyes is much more than the collaboration of Ott and Duff. Bodies of water and subterranean lava fired their imagination.

They tapped the talents of Karen Finley and A.J. McClenon (sound); Stephanie Barber (text); Jon Lee (title graphics); Jesus Lopez Gorosave (drone videographer); and John Paulett (producer). John Cage no less emerged from the archives while Duff willed the work to completion.

On a Chicago winter day traffic flowing past the gallery sloshes melting snow. Inside, the alchemy of looking and listening enchants shut-eye rhythms of light with music of spheres inaudible to ears.

Illustrations

What Does She See When She Shuts Her Eyes, from video.

What Does She See When She Shuts Her Eyes, installation view.

William Blake, illustration for Edward Young’s The Complaint, and the Consolation; or Night Thoughts. Designed and engraved by William Blake; hand colored, possibly by William Blake and Catherine Blake (William Blake Archive).

What Does She See When She Shuts Her Eyes, from video.

What Does She See When She Shuts Her Eyes, installation view.

William Blake, Descent of man into the vale of death. Illustration for Robert Blair’s The Grave (William Blake Archive).

The World Is Round: Remembering Sabina, in foreground.

What Does She See When She Shuts Her Eyes, from video.

The World Is Round: Remembering Sabina, from video.

Lava Balls, in foreground.

The World Is Round: Remembering Sabina, from video.

Sabina Ott, always everyone, 2016.

William Blake, Dante in the Empyrean Drinking at the River of Light. Illustration for The Divine Comedy, Paradiso (William Blake Archive).

Ice lingam in the Himalayan cave temple of Amarnath in Kashmir, India.

What Does She See When She Shuts Her Eyes, still from video.

Colophon: Photograph by David Soltzman & graphic by Kennedy Warfield.

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Sabina Ott and Dana Berman Duff: What She Sees When She Shuts Her Eyes published first on https://footballhighlightseurope.tumblr.com/

[flauntpage]

Sabina Ott and Dana Berman Duff: What She Sees When She Shuts Her Eyes

Closing Event on Saturday, February 16, 2019

4:00-6:00 pm at Aspect Ratio Gallery

The Dear Friend Reading by Karen Finley. Performance by A.J. McClenon. Conversation with Stephanie Barber, Phyllis Bramson, Dana Berman Duff, Karen Finley, Matthew Girson, Tracie D. Hall, La Keisha Leek, A.J. McClenon, and Lori Waxman.

An Illustrated Elegy

Of all the days in the year, what better one than St. Valentine’s Day for writing an elegy inspired by Sabina Ott and Dana Berman Duff’s exhibition, What She Sees When She Shuts Her Eyes. The two created a friendship that traverses the vicissitudes of space and time.

Sabina Ott challenged herself in her art-making. She insisted her friends and students challenge themselves too. She perceived possibilities beyond the horizon and then pushed even further. Duff channels Ott’s chutzpah to navigate the choppy waters of posthumous collaboration. With What She Sees When She Shuts Her Eyes, Ott and Duff launch their friendship into art’s astral plane.

For my response to the exhibition, I adopt the three-part poetic form of the elegy. I embroider the rhymed couplets with illustrations from the show and other interlocutors. Informative descriptions of the works are available from Duff and Aspect Ratio Gallery.

I.  Lamentation

Wrested from life’s humpty-dumpty terrain

Our friend Sabina is no longer here.

Why, again why, dear friends plead in refrain

Mere mortals founder in grief and fear.

II. Admiration

Life she spices with styrofoam masala

Prismatic color and mirrors of light.

She swims and soars in her art’s kabbalah,

Wanders in jungles where tigers burn bright.

III. Consolation

Our feminist artist claimed her own space

Mountain peak, fountain, garden and home.

With pink melon joy, she gets in our face:

Set senses free and spirit will roam.

Whatever we believe about after life, one thing is certain: Ott’s life force persists in her art. During and after her life, she catalyzes art making. What She Sees When She Shuts Her Eyes is much more than the collaboration of Ott and Duff. Bodies of water and subterranean lava fired their imagination.

They tapped the talents of Karen Finley and A.J. McClenon (sound); Stephanie Barber (text); Jon Lee (title graphics); Jesus Lopez Gorosave (drone videographer); and John Paulett (producer). John Cage no less emerged from the archives while Duff willed the work to completion.

On a Chicago winter day traffic flowing past the gallery sloshes melting snow. Inside, the alchemy of looking and listening enchants shut-eye rhythms of light with music of spheres inaudible to ears.

Illustrations

What Does She See When She Shuts Her Eyes, from video.

What Does She See When She Shuts Her Eyes, installation view.

William Blake, illustration for Edward Young’s The Complaint, and the Consolation; or Night Thoughts. Designed and engraved by William Blake; hand colored, possibly by William Blake and Catherine Blake (William Blake Archive).

What Does She See When She Shuts Her Eyes, from video.

What Does She See When She Shuts Her Eyes, installation view.

William Blake, Descent of man into the vale of death. Illustration for Robert Blair’s The Grave (William Blake Archive).

The World Is Round: Remembering Sabina, in foreground.

What Does She See When She Shuts Her Eyes, from video.

The World Is Round: Remembering Sabina, from video.

Lava Balls, in foreground.

The World Is Round: Remembering Sabina, from video.

Sabina Ott, always everyone, 2016.

William Blake, Dante in the Empyrean Drinking at the River of Light. Illustration for The Divine Comedy, Paradiso (William Blake Archive).

Ice lingam in the Himalayan cave temple of Amarnath in Kashmir, India.

What Does She See When She Shuts Her Eyes, still from video.

Colophon: Photograph by David Soltzman & graphic by Kennedy Warfield.

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Sabina Ott and Dana Berman Duff: What She Sees When She Shuts Her Eyes published first on https://footballhighlightseurope.tumblr.com/

[flauntpage]

Sabina Ott and Dana Berman Duff: What She Sees When She Shuts Her Eyes

Closing Event on Saturday, February 16, 2019

4:00-6:00 pm at Aspect Ratio Gallery

The Dear Friend Reading by Karen Finley. Performance by A.J. McClenon. Conversation with Stephanie Barber, Phyllis Bramson, Dana Berman Duff, Karen Finley, Matthew Girson, Tracie D. Hall, La Keisha Leek, A.J. McClenon, and Lori Waxman.

An Illustrated Elegy

Of all the days in the year, what better one than St. Valentine’s Day for writing an elegy inspired by Sabina Ott and Dana Berman Duff’s exhibition, What She Sees When She Shuts Her Eyes. The two created a friendship that traverses the vicissitudes of space and time.

Sabina Ott challenged herself in her art-making. She insisted her friends and students challenge themselves too. She perceived possibilities beyond the horizon and then pushed even further. Duff channels Ott’s chutzpah to navigate the choppy waters of posthumous collaboration. With What She Sees When She Shuts Her Eyes, Ott and Duff launch their friendship into art’s astral plane.

For my response to the exhibition, I adopt the three-part poetic form of the elegy. I embroider the rhymed couplets with illustrations from the show and other interlocutors. Informative descriptions of the works are available from Duff and Aspect Ratio Gallery.

I.  Lamentation

Wrested from life’s humpty-dumpty terrain

Our friend Sabina is no longer here.

Why, again why, dear friends plead in refrain

Mere mortals founder in grief and fear.

II. Admiration

Life she spices with styrofoam masala

Prismatic color and mirrors of light.

She swims and soars in her art’s kabbalah,

Wanders in jungles where tigers burn bright.

III. Consolation

Our feminist artist claimed her own space

Mountain peak, fountain, garden and home.

With pink melon joy, she gets in our face:

Set senses free and spirit will roam.

Whatever we believe about after life, one thing is certain: Ott’s life force persists in her art. During and after her life, she catalyzes art making. What She Sees When She Shuts Her Eyes is much more than the collaboration of Ott and Duff. Bodies of water and subterranean lava fired their imagination.

They tapped the talents of Karen Finley and A.J. McClenon (sound); Stephanie Barber (text); Jon Lee (title graphics); Jesus Lopez Gorosave (drone videographer); and John Paulett (producer). John Cage no less emerged from the archives while Duff willed the work to completion.

On a Chicago winter day traffic flowing past the gallery sloshes melting snow. Inside, the alchemy of looking and listening enchants shut-eye rhythms of light with music of spheres inaudible to ears.

Illustrations

What Does She See When She Shuts Her Eyes, from video.

What Does She See When She Shuts Her Eyes, installation view.

William Blake, illustration for Edward Young’s The Complaint, and the Consolation; or Night Thoughts (William Blake Archive).

What Does She See When She Shuts Her Eyes, from video.

What Does She See When She Shuts Her Eyes, installation view.

William Blake, Descent of man into the vale of death. Illustration for Robert Blair’s The Grave (William Blake Archive).

The World Is Round: Remembering Sabina, in foreground.

What Does She See When She Shuts Her Eyes, from video.

The World Is Round: Remembering Sabina, from video.

Lava Balls, in foreground.

The World Is Round: Remembering Sabina, from video.

Sabina Ott, always everyone, 2016.

William Blake, Dante in the Empyrean Drinking at the River of Light. Illustration for The Divine Comedy, Paradiso (William Blake Archive).

Ice lingam in the Himalayan cave temple of Amarnath in Kashmir, India.

What Does She See When She Shuts Her Eyes, still from video.

Colophon: Photograph by David Soltzman & graphic by Kennedy Warfield.

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Sabina Ott and Dana Berman Duff: What She Sees When She Shuts Her Eyes published first on https://footballhighlightseurope.tumblr.com/