Jokowi’s Way Jokowi’s Way
Can Indonesia’s charismatic new president solve the slow-burning crises of the world’s third-largest democracy?
Sep 3, 2014 / Books & the Arts / Thomas Meaney and Saskia Schäfer
Headphones Headphones
The French Revolution vanishes into rain. The cafe where Camille Desmoulins jumped atop the table and roared is closed. So too the one grocery store in the Adirondack town. Three years fade into centuries of raised voices. When I think “of my childhood” what am I thinking? Spiro Agnew’s widow died. Everything a function of stochastic patterns this rain also obeys. Can’t you hear it the unpitched wave soaking the spruce? Can’t you hear them screaming? Morton Feldman said pointing below the Berlin pavement stones. One deafens to live till you’re deafened to all. I’m canceling all the noise my earthened ears bring me.
Sep 3, 2014 / Books & the Arts / Maureen McLane
The View The View
How Michael Bloomberg turned architecture into a sixty-four-ounce Coke.
Sep 3, 2014 / Books & the Arts / Michael Sorkin
Ferguson’s Anthem Ferguson’s Anthem
How “Fuck the Police” came to narrate the town’s humiliations and violations.
Sep 3, 2014 / Books & the Arts / Joshua Clover
The Haus of Maus The Haus of Maus
Art Spiegelman’s twitchy irreverence
Aug 27, 2014 / Books & the Arts / Alisa Solomon
Hope Against Hope Hope Against Hope
Jeff Koons and the art of blissful idiocy; Kara Walker’s art of subtlety.
Aug 27, 2014 / Books & the Arts / Barry Schwabsky
Science as Salvation? Science as Salvation?
Marcelo Gleiser wants to heal the rift between humanists and scientists by deflating scientific dreams of establishing final truths.
Aug 27, 2014 / Books & the Arts / Michael Saler
The Burkean Regicide The Burkean Regicide
Does David Bromwich’s idea of a Burkean left amount to anything more than contempt for Obama?
Aug 12, 2014 / Books & the Arts / Samuel Moyn
Violent Femme Violent Femme
How Scarlett Johansson learned to become aloof from her own seductiveness.
Aug 12, 2014 / Books & the Arts / Stuart Klawans
Song of the Andoumboulou: 142 Song of the Andoumboulou: 142
—moment’s omen— We were on a train somewhere on our way to Cal- ifornia. Florida, Panama and the Bahamas lay behind. Abandoned boys and girls again, the band of us. We threw our votes toward the polling place, too far away to reach… Southern arrest had set in. We set our sights west. Sunset’s chemical sky some new recognizance, balm the omen’s notice might be… Lone Coast obliquity said come hither… Steeped insolvency, bittersweet obliquity, bend. Fit were it the end of it but not, Lone Coast arri- vancy. Lone Coast obliquity’s behest… We had just gotten started, we were barely off. A dream of outmost arrival obliged us, the asymptotic hustle it was notwithstanding, a blessing we were bent on, boon beyond any, Lone Coast rapprochement… Either we stood in a line wrapped around the world or we sat on a train headed west, IDs in see- thru ink… Either way we circumambulated, un- sure which, the ballot box our Ka’ba stone, black rock, no way to look thru or look into it, no matter it lay broken or because it lay broken, come from no sky we knew… We were scared and afraid fear meant we knew something, scared being scared was know- ing’s omen, moment’s gnosis. The Alone lay waiting, the we we were afraid we’d be • I knew there was no we. I knew I knew we less than we’s rumor. I knew it was a feeling from before… I knew there was the hum it made at least. I snuck a peek at where the Alone were, Lone Coast intaglio a grimace in the wind. The it of it might only be the hum of it I saw, heard what it made me imagine I saw, an aggrieved amen we were a moan away from… Why they take it away, why they try to we were asking. A lady dressed in black stood in the aisle and started dancing. Other- wise we sat with refugee blankets tossed over us, flags, we later learned, of the possessed… Why we the had we were asking, wanting more to think of an earlier life, some lifted sense, something said get- ting out of a car when we were nineteen… So it was and so it went… So we said and saw it come true… Dispossession got hold of us, possessed us, got us happy, Lone Coast abandon woven into the blankets we wore… Now it was a bus we were on, going backwards, no matter we sat in front. Where was the ballot box we were asking, where did they put it… We soon saw the way, the fey design of it, away from Lone Coast while on it, none of us know- ing where, none of us knowing when. We were in the aisle now, the lady in black our leader. Lone Coast islander, she intimated come hither, gave the air a bump with her hips and gave it a grind. Give it all a don’t- care damn we took her to mean ____________________ She was the moment’s woman, frustration’s main squeeze. Given to paradox, don’t-care damn we gave it up to, all of us only there not knowing why she made us admit… She took it from jook to flamenco before we could blink. Back stiff, head and chin high, heels hammers, face rationing pride and duress… Eyes elsewhere, her hands bore mu- dras, a sign from the east it seemed. Don’t-care damn a danced indifference, dance don’t-care’s ta- ’wil • Heels hit the floor, we’d had enough. The lady in black’s heels hit and ours followed. Heels hit the floor on the bus that had been a train, the bus that again was a train when our heels hit… A Websterian growl went up as they hit, cante jondo’s friend. A breathy reed squawk be- hind each of us, a kundalini blacksnake moan… A buttress it seemed it was in back of us. Gravel- ly strafe Camarón would’ve blown had he blown a horn… Thus it was we spoke of clowns and kings, each of us conducting our lone apocalypse. “Na- ture Boy,” before we knew it, was on the box that wasn’t there. Instead, we spoke with our feet… An early joy relived in a dream came next. Lone Coast reconnaissance. Dreamt-of entelechy. Hint- ed what arrival might be ____________________ (slogan) What it was was dance was a weapon for the weaponless, would-be some would’ve said. It wasn’t some “next level” stuff, we’d have none of it, a way of being away that brought out in was all it was, frown-line amenity a wrinkle in the wind, noses up as though we took offense… What it was was we did take offense, ballot-box ab- scondity afoot, no one would not have. Deep song dance’s hauteur was no shuffle. All heel was what it was, all stomp
Aug 12, 2014 / Books & the Arts / Nathaniel Mackey