DYSTALGIA

Quiet days in Dystalgia...

2007-10-16T00:01:00.000-07:00

This old grey mare definitely ain't what she used to be. And I am not referring to myself... Where is everybody?

Quantum Psychology and Nonlinear Time

2007-09-29T01:41:00.001-07:00

Terence McKenna wrote,

"Imagination being the deepening involvement of the species with things beheld but not actually existing in the present at hand."

If you search The Deoxyribonucleic Hyperdimension for quantum time you will find Irreversibility, Time Reversal and Generalized Entropy.

If you search for quantum memory you find the essay "Time and its Discontents" By John Zerzan.

Can quantum mechanics explain the enigma of consciousness and time?

In quantum physics, observations not only disturb what is to be measured, they produce it. Is the act of conscious observation and re-visitation creating Time itself?

Time exists because we are aware of it.

I don't know if this makes any sense. Richard Feynman once said, "Anyone who claims they understand quantum physics, does not understand quantum physics."

Maybe it was just something I smoked

nostalgia: 1770, "severe homesickness" (considered as a disease); the main modern sense of "wistful yearning for the past" first recorded in 1920.

2007-09-29T00:53:00.000-07:00

Spring and Fall: To a Young Child

Márgarét, are you gríeving

Over Goldengrove unleaving?

Leáves, líke the things of man, you

With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?

Ah! ás the heart grows older

It will come to such sights colder

By and by, nor spare a sigh

Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;

And yet you wíll weep and know why.

Now no matter, child, the name:

Sórrow's spríngs áre the same.

Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed

What heart heard of, ghost guessed:

It ís the blight man was born for,

It is Margaret you mourn for.

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)

negative feedback loop

2007-09-29T00:01:00.000-07:00

Googling things like "nonlinear time" and "negative feedback loop" in an effort to bring quantum physics into the discussion somehow (not that I know shit about it), I came across this. Somewhere in my scrambled brain, I see this as akin to a nostalgia-machine, perfecting the imperfect just-past. But is the making (and patenting) of the machine itself dystalgic, or perverse, or just practical?

Utopie

2007-09-19T10:41:00.000-07:00

From our friend Channing:
This should go to the dystalgia blog. It's what the french thought the
year 2000 would be like in 1910 -

http://expositions.bnf.fr/utopie/feuill/index.htm

This link also showed up through another friend on a discussion group I am part of, and it makes me wonder about the attraction to things like this. I think it may be dystalgic, indeed, perhaps because there seems to be so much hope and expectation inscribed in expressions and ideas such as these. It's not that they are naive; quite the opposite. Maybe we don't see ourselves as having that kind of hope or imagination for the future. I myself have become increasingly afraid of the future, envisioning it mostly as a bleak wasteland populated by sociopaths. But this is not a platform for discussing the future, so I will leave it at that.

Madmen for Dystalgia

2007-09-03T20:31:00.000-07:00

Style screams, defining relationships acted out between the sexes. Style does not illustrate an idealized moment set in a 1960 Manhattan ad agency, but reprimands the desire to live in that moment. In this scene watch Pete and Peggy as he tells his dystalgic story:

We are bodies and TV is TV. Looking at Magritte’s Not To Be Reproduced (La Reproduction interdite), which is a painting, we are not part of the moment being depicted, but can watch and reflect on what we see and say based on style and space. Both Madmen and the Magritte put us in our physical and emotional present.

You could really be a Beau Brummell, baby, if you just give it half a chance.

2007-08-29T20:07:00.000-07:00

Entertain by Sleater Kinney

2007-08-19T19:07:00.000-07:00

An anti-dystalgic song? "Nostalgia, youre using it like a whore"

So you want to be entertained?
Please look away (Don't look away)
We're not here 'cause we want to entertain
Go away (Don't go away)
Reality is the new fiction they saw
Truth is truer these days, truth is man-made
If you're here 'cause you want to be entertained
Please go away

If your art is done, Johnny get your gun
Join the rank and file, on your TV dial

You come around looking 1984
You're such a bore, 1984
Nostalgia, you're using it like a whore
It's better than before
You come around sounding 1972
You did nothing new with 1972
Where's the "Fuck You"?
Where's the black and blue

Hey! Look around they are lying to you
Can't you see it's just a silly ruse?
They are lying, and I am lying too.
All you want is entertainment,
Rip me open it's free

1,2,3! If you want to take
a shot at me get in line
1,2,3! I've had all my
shots and I'm fine

1,2,3! If you ahven't had
enought of me, get in line
1,2,3! You too deserve
it now, it's all right

1,2,3! We can drown in
mediocrity, it feels sublime
1,2,3! It feels like someone
pushed rewind

1,2,3! Give it to me easily,
my feeble mind needs time
1,2,3! Make it sweet and
syrupy with rhyme

(Dont drag me down,
I'm not falling down)

The grip of fear is already here
The lines are drawn,
whose side are you on?

"Those Were the Days..."

2007-08-19T18:09:00.000-07:00

The opening song to the TV show "All in the Family" used to drive me batty when I was a kid. The song expressing a yearning when culture/life was more defined & seemingly easier. But just look at these photos now - the 50's colliding with the 70's. Is there such a thing as funny or self aware dystalgia?

"Those Were The Days"

by Lee Adams and Charles Strouse

Boy, the way Glenn Miller played. Songs that made the Hit Parade.

Guys like us, we had it made. Those were the days.

Didn't need no welfare state. Everybody pulled his weight.

Gee, our old LaSalle ran great. Those were the days.

And you know who you were then. Girls were girls and men were men.

Mister, we could use a man like Herbert Hoover again.

People seemed to be content. Fifty dollars paid the rent.

Freaks were in a circus tent. Those were the days.

Take a little Sunday spin, go to watch the Dodgers win.

Have yourself a dandy day that cost you under a fin.

Hair was short and skirts were long. Kate Smith really sold a song.

I don't know just what went wrong. Those Were The Days.

To Create or to Synthesize?

2007-08-14T14:08:00.000-07:00

So, we aren't the first, but we can still be the best.

http://www.langmaker.com/db/Dystalgia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neologism

One Reporter's Opinion

2007-08-11T22:28:00.000-07:00

Installation view from Nest, a show by Dan Colen and Dash Snow at Deitch Projects on view from July 26–August 16, 2007. More on the show here.

A few dystalgic headlines:

1. Let's Get Political
2. Zingers Saved Up, Sprayed Up
3. Heads Hung Low
4. Pete And Repeat Went For a Walk, Pete Made a Show, Nothing Was Left
5. Where's The Outrage?
6. Andrew Dice Clay Spotted in SoHo
7. Jeffrey Handles the Vandals
8. Live At Budokan

Add your own!

La Reproduction Interdite

2007-08-08T08:14:00.000-07:00

Is the Magritte painting, Not To Be Reproduced (La Reproduction interdite) 1937, dystalgic or nostalgic?

Discuss.

The Old Grey Mare

2007-08-06T22:37:00.001-07:00

She ain't what she used to be.