Yo

Here’s something to think about

There was some movie (probably in the 1990s) that had a character played by Denis Leary. Of course, he was the stock asshole character that made him famous. This is embarasing, but I don’t know what the name of the movie was. Anyway, there was a line where his character said something of the order of: “I guess I’m just not naive enough to think that other people would waste their time paying any more attention to me than they do to themselves.” Now, I’m not sure if this was an actual movie, or if it was just some elaborate dream of mine, where Denis Leary made a cameo appearence.

The point behind this is: it’s true. I place little weight on my own feelings and emotions since I can choose for no one to pay attention to me. It’s actually really easy. Yeah, yeah. “But Frank, aren’t you essentially concealing your desires and masking your true impulsive free will over expression?”

No, that’s the kind of bullshit that artists think.

Think of it this way: most people are bad conversationalists. People have short attention spans and they lack passion towards most things that I have to tell them. This is because it is painfully hard to try to study the world systemically, so people must resort to paraphrased versions of everything. Why? Well, if you asked me I’d say that it is because people are preoccupied with themselves as individuals.

Actually, I know where I am going with this, I just need more time to refine it. (If you couldn’t tell).

“peculiar” is certainly peculiar

So, hey. My name is Frank and I am going to try my luck with Tumblr.

First off: I find all forms of self-representation as narcissistic. I’ll admit it. But, I am trying to steer away from that idea, since people are inclined to feel emotions. My reasons for believing this is that last year I took a Zen class and read about my favorite patriarch (or, easily top five): Hakuin.

Hakuin’s life is noteworthy. In a nutshell: he had multiple nervous breakdowns and did a bunch of funny art about how people are silly and imperfect (sadly there are no poster websites to purchase these musings… my house would look so much cooler). Anyways, people commonly misinterpret the dharma of the Budha and Ch’an (Zen) patriarchs, in thinking that it is a way to evade suffering. True, the Heart Sutra (among several others) tell us that there is no suffering. But, come on guys - we’re still human. I find that the dharma moreso tells us how to approach suffering as opposed to how to avoid it.

(It is noteworthy to read Audre Lorde’s essay “The Uses of the Erotic as Power” - a canonic work of contemporary African American lesbian feminism - where she points to the devaluation of spirituality of the ascetic as one who “aspires to feel nothing.”)

So, I’m giving Tumblr a shot to see if it provides a means of mediating my emotions.

Story behind the title: last night I was talking to my good friend Emily Partridge and we discussed how the word “peculiar” is in fact a peculiar word to say. If you say it enough, it looses its meaning and rather becomes a funny sound (a signifier, if you are a semiotician). That aside, it serves as a way of representing the idea of peculiarity - whatever the fuck that is. I like to set a narrative to my life instead of seeing it as a strain of meaningless events that are flung upon themselves that I get to watch play out.

In this journey of self-representation, I will see if I am brought any closer to the referent of my emotions through representing them. If my friend Emma McFarland was on Tumblr, she would either be having a criticaltheory-gasm right now or would be correcting the hell out of me.

I find myself peculiar.

Plus, it seems like my current girlfriend is giving me a bad rep, so I will counter that with wordy tangents about how I aesthetically relate to the world. This should be interesting…