Sunday, July 15, 2007

Once again, I don't really know what to do with this blog. I think it might only be read by friends who check by out of curiosity once in a while. But now that Facebook has soaked up that function (answering the question, 'what's Catherine up to these days') - what is to be done with this thing here? I'm sure someone must still read it.

I'd comment about politics or music or other topical goings-on. But the thing is, I'm very, very unengaged with the world at the moment. That is, all parts of the world that aren't Deleuze or Hegel scholarship. Which, when you think of it, is probably most of it. The world, I mean.

Secretly, however, I like my blog more than I like Facebook. Oh yes, Facebook is fun. It is nice to get a little bulletin everytime someone scratches their arse, or to know that if I was a man named Harry who only watched Lateline to relish the unresolved narcissistic sexual tension between Tony Jones and Kevin Rudd, that I could join a group called "People named Harry who only watch Lateline to relish the unresolved narcissistic sexual tension between Tony Jones and Kevin Rudd". All the same, I think Facebook indulges proclivities of mine that really should be left to wither in the dark somewhere. These include: the temptation to live in the past; and spending too much time staring at my own goddamn face.

And worst of all - after a hard evening of reading Deleuze talk about differential calculus and the wonderful violence of Ideas, is it really refreshing to go to the internet and look at 20 pictures of my friends living it up in Berlin, or cruising around somewhere exotic in the sunshine? Surprisingly, it is not.

I'll have to leave it there, as I'm about to run out of batteries on my laptop. But if I come up with anything to post, you'll be the first to know.

Friday, July 06, 2007

At the beginning of "Get Me Bodied", Beyonce announces a cryptic set of numbers amid some seriously spacey-sounding reverb: "9... 4... 8... 1." Ominous pause. "... B Day." Now, as it turns out, this set of numbers refers to the day of Beyonce's birth: the 4th of September, 1981. This, it would seem, is her birthday - literally, birth-day, the day of her birth, her B Day. So perhaps what the phrase 'get me bodied' refers to is the incarnation of the godly power of Beyonce in the form of flesh. Previously she'd been just an immanent force in the universe, but what the B Day marks is the becoming-flesh of Beyonce, her getting a body.

So plainly, Beyonce is working with some sort of dualist mind-body distinction. I just don't know if I can find that plausible! Where are her references? Where does she define her terms?

Good song though.
Ok, I think I've got the Deleuze reading in hand - 164 pages down, 140 pages to go. If I do 15 pages a day, I should at least finish Difference and Repetition before second semester goes back.

The Hegel, however... I wonder. Do you think it's quite common with these things that you can read words, and yet not really have any idea about what's going on? At all?

Oh well. Downloads of recent days include Justice's plus assorted others - the Freemasons mix of "Ring the Alarm", The Human League's "The Things That Dreams Are Made Of", some others that I can't think of now. Tatu, Kate Bush, various things from Tim's mix CDs and Destiny's Child's #1s have been in high rotation. Oh and weirdly, I found listening to System of a Down invigorating while going for a run. How perverse!

Tuesday, July 03, 2007

It would be bad enough if I was only falling asleep while pushing my brain through page after interminable page of Difference and Repetition. But no. Because Deleuze was saying something about Plato's concept of "reminiscence", I now have Madison Avenue's cover of "Reminiscing" playing in my head. Grumble.