Don't You Forget About ME

REFERENCE #112408
That's your address in my memory.

You've seen the signs, all around town.
Having to watch 'Breakfast Club' whilst I do this.

"...And these children
that you spit on
as they try to change their worlds
are immune to your consultations.
They're quite aware
of what they're going through..."
DAVID BOWIE


Saturday, Mar. 24, 1984
Sherman High School,
Sherman, Illinois

60062

Dear Mr. Vernon,
We accept the fact that we had to sacrifice a whole Saturday in detention
for whatever it was we did wrong.

What we did was wrong, but
we think you're crazy to make us write an essay
telling you who we think we are. What do you care?
You see us as you want to see us.
In the simplest terms: the most convenient definitions.
But what we found out is that each one of us is a
brain...
and an athlete...
and a basket case...
a princess...
and a criminal. Correct?
That's the way we saw each other at 7 o'clock this morning.

We were brainwashed.


"I can't believe you can't get me out of this.
I mean, it's so absurd that I have to be here on a Saturday.
It's not like I'm a defective or anything."

The pilgrimage to the newly suburbanized friend is one that most Manhattan
women have made, and few truly enjoyed. In fact,
most come back to the city in an emotional state somewhere between giddy
and destroyed.
Here follows one such tale.

“Have you heard any voices recently? And what were they saying to you?”
contrary to contradict another one. be polite, be true, become opera live to contradict another one pretty damned important too. sleeping, the good stuff. I think that alotta the time I get confused about why people are telling me certain things.
how am i goin to make it right?
“Do you have any worries about your safety?”
A hypodermic syringe flashed in the doctor’s hands, and in a single motion the woman ripped open the sleeve of my shirt. I could smell some kind of chemical and then I passed out.
“Do you feel like you’re being watched?”
“But I AM being watched. There’s a camera in my room right up in the corner there. I know that you guys can see me. I know that you’re supposed to keep an eye on me to make sure that I don’t try to hurt myself again. It’s the law. I’m under your jurisdiction now that I no longer know what is in my own best interests.”
“Just to let you know, today is the twenty-first. It’s Wednesday. You were brought here yesterday.”
“VOLUNTARILY?!”
“No. I think you were brought here. That’s all for today. Take care.”

"It's the shits, huh?"
...
"I can't believe this is really happening to me."
"Oh, shit! What are we supposed to do if we have to take a piss?!"
"Please."
"You gotta go. You gotta go."
"Oh my god."
"Hey, you're not urinating in here, man."
"Don't talk! Don't talk! It makes it crawl back up!"
"You whip it out and you'll be dead before the first drop hits the floor."
"You're pretty sexy when you're angry... Hey, home boy. Why don't you close that door? We'll get the prom queen impregnated."

HAPPY INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY

Pounding and smashing, even the desire to kill, may be expressed. Self-organization is related to the tendency of the parent or sibling or perhaps the entire chaotic system to spontaneously enter states in which surprising and potentially useful properties arise either through play or through direct verbalization. This concept is revolutionizing: I’m finally locating some confidence in myself.

The brain may suddenly and unpredictably

bumped from one conscious state to another

by the escalating -Holy shit! That chick is interviewing for my job. “University types... We’ll see what happens.” She knows there’s still one candidate. But they’ll never find anyone who can move and shake like this!

activation of one of its many neuronal subsystems.

unknown territory. I know that a path can be made.

Movement and action

takes a certain amount of time or continuity.
How do we do this? How do we account for this? Back to Libet. “There is no experimental evidence against the possibility that the control process may appear without prior unconscious processes (that specifically develop it).”

"Who closed that door?!"

"...If he gets up, we'll all get up. It'll be anarchy!..."

"The door is way too heavy, sir."

"I expected a little more from a varsity letterman."
But he sometimes did good deeds amid a throng of bad ones; he stole with furious rapacity, and gave liberally; intrepid in action, rather mild in company, debauched at table, gay in debauchery, and above all full of frankness. ...

Sirens in the background.

"Are you through?"
but are you aware that in Paris there have already been some serious experiments relating to the possibility of the insane by means of the simple influence of logical reasoning? When I looked up at the building, I got scarred. Looked more like a castle than a school - bars on the windows and an iron gate on the front door. Above the door, the words in the stone read: ANTIDEPRESSANTS MAY INCREASE THE RISK OF SUICIDAL THOUGHTS OR ACTIONS IN CHILDREN AND TEENAGERS. Behind the school there were more trees in rows. I came round the corner, and my eyes saw something they didn’t know what to tell me it was. They were people -women, I think-

There was a certain professor there who died not so long ago, a serious scientist who believed that such a treatment was possible. If I say that Mirj is selfish because he refuses to become well, then what does that make me?

The risk may be greater during the first few months that patients take this medicine. Be sure that the benefits of using this medicine outweigh the risks.

"You're right. It's wrong to destroy literature..."

Recording thoughts in language. “It’s very freeing”, apparently, instead of in anger or hurtful actions. They only ever hurt themselves.

Maybe we’re all jus dancing all the time. Maybe those people are staring at me. Maybe they’re’adin my thoughts before I get to them. Maybe they’re passin them on to me. They think I’m copyin them down. They’re interrupting. They want me to move my existence. Well, that’s not going to happen any time soon, because I am an automatic weapon. I’m fully loaded and I’m ready to go. His basic idea was that there is nothing particularly wrong with the organism of the insane person, and that insanity is, as it were, a logical error, an error of judgement, a mistaken view of things. ADDITIONAL MONITORING OF YOUR DOSE OR CONDITION may be needed if you are taking certain diet medicines (such as phentermine), linezolid, lithium, metoclopramide, nefazodone reuptake inhibitors (SNRIs) (such as duloxetine), 5-HT1 receptor agonists (such as sumatriptan), tramadol, trazodone, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory agents (NSAIDs) (such as ibuprofen), diuretics (such as furosemde or hydrochlorothiazide), cimetidine, ketoconazole, cyproheptadine, aripiprazole, haloperidol, phenothiazines (such as chlorpromazine or thiorridazine), or reperidone. He would refute the arguments of his patient step by step and, would you believe it, it’s said he achieved results that way! But in view of the fact that he accompanied this treatment with cold baths, those results should, of course, be viewed with some scepticism...

All but four patients were right-handed according to the Edinburgh Inventory. Vision was normal or corrected to normal. Patients’ mean IQ, as estimated by the score at the Raven Progressive Matirices PM47, was 91.7. Short-term memory span was 6.4 and 3.5, forward and backwards, respectively. Language comprehension, as assessed by the Token Test was good (mean score 33.2/36).

“Ha,” said I to myself, “it seems that there are some people who grow there,” and, as my mind was so stupefied with grief, I only conceived ideas as in a dream. Suddenly the van changed its course and I saw the towers of Notre-Dame in the distance, blue and half hidden in the smoke of Paris. At once my ideas changed from Beatrice to Notre-Dame. “Those who will be on the tower with the flag will see my execution well,” said I to myself smiling stupidly. They’re interrupting. Want me to move my chair, my body (my existence?). Well, it’s not going to happen.

The patron saints of Bicycle Boys are white-haired writer George Plimpton, whose bike used to hang upside down above his employees' heads at the Paris Review offices, and white-haired Newsday columnist Murray Kempton.

“No physician’s prescriptions, no medecine seemed of the slightest benefit as a cure for this disease.”

Randt: “Granted it could always be a scam. Ain’t no people in the world who ain up for some kinda scam. Believe you me. But that don’t entail that there wasn some sorta truth to the proposition. That don’t entail that there wasn somethin real that they were pickin up. Miniscule alterations that you never noticed yerself, but were takin place none the less. “
Lewis proclaims, “The Vorticist does not suck up to Life. He lets Life know its place in a Vorticist Universe! He uses life for his brothel so that he can keep himself pure for non-life, that is Art.”
“Art, then becomes the contrasting force to Life.”
“Take Joe, for instance. Totally stuck in the eighties. He puts everyone into categories and gets so caught up in them that he totally forgets about people, like what real people are like. He's that whole Ringwald movie series all rolled into one. And the truth is, people just aren't like that anymore. Maybe its the drug movement, maybe it’s post-modern ecclecticism. Call it what you will, but the distinctions between different types of people have broken down.”

First I’m gonna try some classic Goffman (1961) on dis’ucker: “Staff members’ energy waxes and wanes. These involvement cycles occur when a staff member becomes close to some inmates, retreats, then builds warm relationships again.”

"Now, why don't you really tell me why you're in here?"

“No, I don get it.”
“Like, there are times when I really like the patients and I really want to work with them and help them. And then there are times when I get completely fed up with all of their crap. Don’t you get that?”
“...”
“When they are discouraged or despondent, they work in a listless, perfunctory, and routine way. Some make an effort to disguise their discouragement, but others do not.”
Randt is jus lookin at me kinda sideways, like he’s supposin dat dis a trick question or somethin, “I jus don’t think it’s the best time to be talkin bout that sorta thing, y’know, like when we’re actually surrounded by ‘the patients’. Y’know, like, we’re in the FIELD right now, man.”
Yeah, I guess he’s probly right bout that one. Somehow dat jus didn’t occur to me. I dunno why. Maybe i’s cuz I turned Maro off, or somethin. Thing is dat I don really get any other chance to talk to Randt. I only see him in de FIELD an sometimes at d’occasional Board Meetin. What am I s’posed to do, get’im to make an appointment?
“Some o’de patients ask to switch counselors when dey have conflicts wid’individual to whom dey bin assigned.”
“What is this about, man? You know I don’t get any patients assigned to me.”
Randt jus goes back to his usual shit, now.
“Take Joe, for instance. Totally stuck in the eighties. He puts everyone into categories and gets so caught up in them that he totally forgets about people, like what real people are like. He's that whole Ringwald movie series all rolled into one. And the truth is, people just aren't like that anymore. Maybe its the drug movement, maybe it’s post-modern ecclecticism. Call it what you will, but the distinctions between different types of people have broken down.”
Ok, so maybe I’ll try some Leibniz, den, “I know what you sayin, Nominal Definition: consists of de numeration o’the marks o’requisites which are sufficient to distinguish a thing from all others.”
I got de feelin he ain gonna like dat one too much.
“You can jus fuck right off. You don even kno’what you talkin bout. See ya later, sucker.”
Guess I’m on my own, now. De patients’till goin on.
“Even Time dissolves in the presence of Art. Life is the Past and the Future, the Present is Art.”
Man, where’d’ey boil up dis bile o’shit from? I’m gonna reply wid some real quality, “It is its time because it puts in the present, just as each acting subject is his time, that is, a presence that puts in the present whatever is related to it.”
Haa ha. Take that. Got that one from good old Henry Corbin.
Lewis insists, “There is no Present - there is a Past and Future, and there is Art.”
Dat is’uch bullshit. Might as well be talkin to Randt. I’ll try some more Corbin, but I don’t’hink i’s gonna get me anywhere. “It is likewise to reduce real time to abstract physical time, to the essentially quantitative time which is that of the objectivity of mundane calendars from which the signs that gave a sacred qualification to every present have disappeared.”
“For the sake of Art artists must reject society; for, in society, men ‘overlap’ and ‘intersect’, and promiscuity is normal.”
“But promiscuity is normal.”
“Artists must undergo a course of egotistic hardening before they can produce hard outside art.”
Dis d’art dat Lewis admires most. I oughtta be referrin dis guy to JoseF.
“Woodcuts are disciplined, blunt, thick and brutal.”
Or maybe I could get’im to meet up wid a student somehow. Maybe I should just enroll’im in one o’JoseF’s classes.

JoseF never listened to me. He didn’t like poetry. Or perhaps he just didn’t enjoy being read to. (How much attention should I pay to other people’s conversations anyhow?) Drifting in and out. A fake laugh, such a fake fake laugh. Recording thoughts in language (there are those who would say that there’s no such thing as thought without language). But this is just the beginning.
They’re interrupting. Want me to move my chair, my body (my existence?). Well, it’s not going to happen.
De tree dat sits right outside my window
“Post-Modernism... metamorphosis from Modernism into something else... Theory is very important to post-modernism... birth of post-modernism after WWII... big change... before WWII one could hide from modernism, after there was no escaping technology... sense possibility of total annihilation... dominance of image over sound... 1987 stock-crash made computer part of the world... mass consciousness of society... The alienation and anger that modernists felt became irony and detachment expressed through humour (e.g. Andy Warhol)... Borges... Calvino... Rushdie... playfulness with form... self-consciousness of literary form... skeptical regarding the possibility that literature can change society... emergence of Pop Culture... decisive change in repeatability... role of production... image over concept... Cinema becomes a more powerful influence... No one dominates in post-modernism... Rise of the role of the university... No other literary audience beyond the university... Rise of theory... deconstructionism... making of arts subordinate to theory... William S. Burroughs: jump-cuts, linear sequence, plot abandoned, works against convention, no beginning middle and end, reflects changes in sensibility in the twentieth century, polyphonic, multi-dimensional prose... use of the ellipse... experimented with promiscuity and different lifestyles.”
Well, JoseF would know all bout that.

"Now, why don't you tell me why you're really in here?"