|
|
|
|
It
must have not been always like this, because we wouldn’t have gotten
this far, but it had occurred to us that the state of communication has
deteriorated to a new and completely unprecedented low. Maybe it’s just
us, but we meet more and more people who want to be amused, entertained,
people approaching a simple conversation as a one-way relationship, people
expecting you to perform, do your thing and be gone in a blink of their
eye once your routine is over. Yes, we’re living in the age of
push-button communication, where everything is approached with a remote
control in hand. And if there ever were two words heavy with meaning these
are the ones: “remote” and “control”. Because what an average citizen wants from an instance of communication is to retain the distance. Proximity is equaled to unwanted involvement, investment of emotion, designating space of one’s mind’s hard drive to the other, without any certainty of a pay-off. Proximity is the loss of objectivity, and we wouldn’t want to lose our objectivity, now would we? Proximity is identification of the other with yourself, and we wouldn’t want that either, because who knows what might happen if we become less ourselves and more of the other, and if the other becomes more of who we are. Proximity is a big no-no in the world in which everybody desires to be viewed separately, as a unique occurrence, individual specimen or speciwoman, something rare, never to be found again. Well
what’s wrong with that, you might ask, so we’ll draw your attention
to the words “everybody desires to be viewed”. Yes, a desire to be
viewed is something completely different from a desire to be, and more
often than not these two desires cancel each other out, for while one
desires to be viewed as different that same one tries his or her best to
be the same as everybody else, and that other one who actually is
different does everything in his or her power to blend in. This
is again where proximity is not valued, because the greater the
proximity, the greater the difference, making it harder for those who
only want to be viewed as different to conceal their sameness. Because,
proximity is lack of control, and control is something we never have
enough of. The illusion of control is something that is efficiently
generated by television, and it’s this television paradigm that people
are trying to apply to people when engaged in any sort of communication.
One would like to control the person one is communicating with as one
feels he or she controls the TV-set; with a push of a button one wants
to make people tell him exactly what one wants to hear, or one will
switch to another channel, cut, go to commercials! We
don’t accept that kind of communication, because it is not a
communication, it is self-indulgence. With the new issue of Admit Two
we’re trying once again to show that there still are people who are
willing and needing to share their creative worlds with others and to
include others in these worlds. Welcome!
NG&OR |
AdmitTwo, No. 5, May, 2005. & & Fiction:
by Natalija Grgorinic & Ognjen Raden
"Wooden poles stapled to death - slim punk poles with pieces of flyers helplessly fluttering in the wind. A forest of stapled trees, that’s LA. Stapled poles – cacti in the human desert. Lost, kitty? Not to worry, momma’s gonna put your picture up on the pole and you’ll be found within a week, unless you get run down by a Chevy Impala. Moving sale, everything must go! Everything must go? Okay, but do we really have to? We just got here."
- - -
Poetry:
three poems: The Seahorse is Double-Sexed, and So Am I
& "Most
academics, after several grueling days conducting interviews at the MLA
conferences, might never want to speak to each other again. By contrast,
Tony, David and I spent the flight from Philadelphia to Chicago writing
these poems, one line each, passed between rows 8 and 9. So they are
mile-high poems." - - -
Poetry:
four poems: What You've Taught Me About Temperature by Margo Solod & Carolyn Ogburn
"we met briefly at a
writers' conference and then once again for a few hrs. we began to
correspond by email and i found some of her emails so beautifully
written that one day i pulled out several of her sentences, turned them
into lines of poetry, and added several lines of my own. i sent this
back to her with no word of explanation and wated to see what would
happen. the next day the poem came back, with another stanza added, and
the collaborative process was born
- - -
Essay:
two chapters from Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897
Elizabeth Cady Stanton on Susan B. Anthony
"Here we forged resolutions, protests, appeals, petitions, agricultural reports, and constitutional arguments; for we made it a matter of conscience to accept every invitation to speak on every question, in order to maintain woman's right to do so... It is often said, by those who know Miss Anthony best, that she has been my good angel, always pushing and goading me to work, and that but for her pertinacity I should never have accomplished the little I have. On the other hand it has been said that I forged the thunderbolts and she fired them."
|
