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“Peaceable Kingdom” (1830–32), Edward Hicks
As much as I love to go on and on (and on!), there’s something to be said for brevity. That’s it. That’s the whole intro.
Exit Animal House
A while back, a friend of mine whose politics are, let’s say, not my own was reacting with fury to a conflict you can probably guess. But they’re animals, she claimed of the side she so incorrectly derided. This provoked in me a gut reaction: We should never describe our enemies as animals. Animals are beyond reason. They act on instinct. Yes, they can be trained, but even the most domesticated beast can revert and go feral. Their wildness places them beneath us humans. This can be useful if you’re waging a propaganda campaign, and wish to eliminate the enemy entirely — we kill wild animals so civilization can survive, right?
But even before it’s evil, it’s lazy thinking. I want to treat my opponents as human: Given the full gift of reason, they have not only erred but chosen to err. They have knowingly broken rules and risked the punishment that I — or my cohort — seek to bring upon them. And ah, the triumph that victory brings! Any moron can shoot a dog. To defeat a man, to subject him to the system of laws he’s ridiculed, to establish his guilt, to exact retribution in proportion to his crimes — this is civilization. Woof!
Dammit, I Love Potato Chips!
Like just about everyone in the United States, when the pandemic hit five and a half years ago, my family and I started eating a lot more potato chips. We were facing death by droplets, so who could blame us for our crispy, salty, far-too-frequent indulgence? Our masked excursions to the markets would see us returning with a variety of air-puffed bags. Utz, Cape Cod, Kettle. Xochitl, Cheetos, Santita’s. We helped the chip industry (est’d 1853!) increase its sales by 22%.
We are still helping today. Most evenings, as the sun begins to sets, I crave that sodium crackle and pour part of a bag into a bowl. (Portion control!) Naturally, I eat the biggest chips first, daintily plucking them from the pile so my fingers don’t get too oily. Even when the bowl is reduced to shards and crumbles, I find it hard to stop scooping the remains into my palm and tossing them back like a handful of peanuts.
These days we buy Whole Foods brand ripple/ruffle/ridged chips, mostly because they come in a “family size” (or is it “party size”?) bag and cost less than other brands. They’re good, but the production quality is inconsistent; one bag may be too salty, another too bland, the next painfully crisp, the next verging on stale. Honestly, I’d prefer Cape Cod, or Utz’s hard-to-find crab chips. Still, it’s hard to argue with cheap. With a little bowl of olives and a glass of prosecco or a Campari-soda, cheap can feel pretty damn sophisticated.
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Teach the Algorithm a Thing or Two
The Internet czars want you to think their magical algorithms are designed to give you more of what you want — what you “like,” that is. This is not true. If you spend any time on a computer, you know that these systems send you an enormous volume of crap on top of (or instead of) the people, publications, and companies you really do like. Maybe you’ll like this? thinks some idiot computer somewhere. After all, you’ve liked so much so far!
I have mostly1 avoided this fate, in part because I’m very reluctant to like anything, but more because I zealously Hide All whenever I see anything I don’t care about. Blocking the junk, and the Pages, Groups, and Profiles hurling it your way, seems to send a much stronger message to the algorithms than a positive Like. Like something or someone and you may or may not see them again in your feed, but you’ll certainly see associated material. Hide All (and tell them it’s “irrelevant”!), and you can be pretty well assured it won’t come up again.
“Beauty and the Beast” (18th–19th century), attributed to Thomas Rowlandson
Get to the Punctum
Two months ago, I wrote an essay about photography — “Squawk, Memory!” — in which I posted a bunch of old, old pictures I’d taken and made this claim:
But when I see the images now, I’m re-seeing them. I remember the moment, decades ago, that that specific arrangement of shapes, scenery, color, and light entered my retina — the instant that whatever was happening around and in front of me crystallized into a memory that’s now as pure and immutable as a diamond.
What I did not know then, and what I learned soon after (from a photographer friend), was that my theoretical hero Roland Barthes had also written about this experience, more or less, in his book Camera Lucida. For Barthes, photos consist of two elements, one of which he dubs studium: This is a kind of general interest — what is happening in the photo, how it is composed, what details draw our eye and our attention. Studium is intellectual; it requires the viewer’s active engagement.
And then there is punctum:
It is not I who seek it out (as I invest the field of the studium with my sovereign consciousness), it is this element which rises from the scene, shoots out of it like an arrow, and pierces me. A Latin word exists to designate this wound, this prick, this mark made by a pointed instrument: the word suits me all the better in that it also refers to the notion of punctuation, and because the photographs I am speaking of are in effect punctuated, sometimes even speckled with these sensitive points; precisely, these marks, these wounds are so many points. This second element which will disturb the studium I shall therefore call punctum; for punctum is also: sting, speck, cut, little hole — and also a cast of the dice. A photograph’s punctum is that accident which pricks me (but also bruises me, is poignant to me).
And so there it is: an experience that was for me personal, vague, unusual has been named, defined, codified for all. I think Barthes would appreciate how I feel: I feel seen.
Is Trying
There is no question you can ask
whose answer doesn’t lead to danger.
A pitfall is, by its very nature,
the abrupt start of adventure.
But adventure by another name
is trauma. Or, witnessed: drama.
Why are you just sitting there
letting me make weird declamations?
You have a choice: stay or leave.
Both of these may lead to death.
—Christopher Michel
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1 Mostly.