on world domination

[gurdonark]

Lately I've been thinking that I need to start an LJ community. I guess what got me across the border into serious thought was reading yet another of those LJ communities in which bashing other folks' journals who request "reviews" (or bashing) is the theme of the community. At least this one was somewhat more amusing (and, granted, "rating is voluntary") than the earlier one which involved making fun of userpics (rhetorical question for the LJ universe: what does "this journal has been deleted for violation of LJ guidelines mean?") The problem is that my idea of community building is less about knowing something We All Should Have in Common and more about the sheer vanity of being a community moderator. I love user bios that say "check out my community, FrigginIron, a place for welders to post poetry", or "I post my novel in GreatAm, my political essays in XoffGW and my friends all know to check out the latest on my navel pierce in my new community, Gutneedle".

I like to join other peoples' communities. I am part of one community where we are all do-gooders, changeyourworld, only the only good we seem to do is to post "hi, I am a do-gooder" posts when we join.
Obviously, I could do something to change my world and post it in that community instead of writing silly LJ critical posts here and fix that.

I posted my favorite "feeder guppy rescue" story to the guppies community, but I've been disappointed that we don't get more "platy pride" or other livebearer sagas. astrotheism, the religion founded by jupitergarden, a teen from the UK, is a great community, fun to post in, fun to read, but my theological bent really doesn't run into many insightful comments on "we are all made of the same dust as stars".

So now I'm thinking that the way I can win friends and influence people is to found a community. Maybe I would be popular, like that semester in college.
Maybe I'd be seen as erudite, like that time in law school. Maybe nobody would join (like all of high school). There's a big world out there in LJ, and all I need is a hook, a chance, an angle.

Yes, I could BE somebody...that's all I want to be.
Somebody. 'Cause otherwise, as Jerry Lewis repeatedly assured us, you're nobody and that's not somebody to be...

Comments

[marstokyo.livejournal.com]

I'm nobody
Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
:-)
I've found most LJ communities to be a bust---either nobody joins, or nobody posts. It's hard to maintain enthusiasm. At least for me. I love the two visual communities--texture and [Bad username or site: color theory @ livejournal.com] because I like looking at interesting photography-- but as for views and things-- I'm content choosing my LJ friends based on that--(their views on things)

[marstokyo.livejournal.com]

OOOOH bad user name in LJ!!! I be bad!!
My bad.
I think maybe this will work-- who knows? color_theory

the texture of being nobody

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

I'm not cool enough to be "nobody", I'm just "present".

I got one all wrong in a comment, putting (reality) when I meant "reality review", so I can relate.

I love texture. It's my favorite LJ community. I don't join for reasons of quirk and to keep so many photos off my ledger, but I love that community.

Package indeed in mail today. Really liked that just after I addressed it, I get psychic friends comment "where is it"? Let me know if/when it arrives.

Re: the texture of being nobody

[marstokyo.livejournal.com]

this is why Joe Wall refers to me as SCARY!
be afraid!! BE VERY AFRAID!!!

nobody is my name

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

and gee, the pithy thing I wrote this morning about how your psychic powers just prove my point on the Salvage theater is ether-lost....LJ seems to glitch a bit more often right now.

Re: nobody is my name

[marstokyo.livejournal.com]

LJ is ALWAYS glitching...:-(

[nacowafer.livejournal.com]

Oh, man. reality_review is harsh! (If that's the community you're speaking of above...) I had a morbid curiosity (as with all things LJ) and spent a good chunk of time reading through the reviews and then looking at the crucified journals last night. And then I got to thinking...about the whole notion of having your journal reviewed. I don't know. I got really confused. I would never ask that anyone review my journal. Ugh. What do they know/care? I'm just thrilled that anyone finds it mildly fascinating enough to look at every once in a while. I think the real impetus for reality_review is the entertainment of its members. Which is fine, since people who get reviewed are willing participants. I was shocked that you can see all the user pics someone has uploaded! I had no idea.

And I like the idea of communities, and I keep joining them, but they do seem to peeter out quickly, if they ever even really get started. Or they're just disappointing. Um, nothing enlightening here, just rambling. But it's interesting that you were just ruminating over reality_review, too.

my absurdity *is* my reality, and LiveJournal helps bake it

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

I think it must have been reality I was reviewing. I picked some community or other up off one of the posts on your friends' list (I find myself reading all my friends' lists more often than looking for communities these days), so that probably explains the "great minds think alike" factor. I am sad to say that while I rather disapproved of it, I also had the gut feeling that I could be much more pithy and cutting, which makes me worry that I am one of those people who would read the penny dreadfuls for the racy passages, and then extoll the morality of the conclusion. It's so hard to be a saint when you're a judgemental boy out on the streets.

I think your ramble is right on. I like communities, I like to read them, I like to join them, and I will join more. Hell, I'll start one, someday, just for fun. My favorite one, texture, I just read without joining, but that ties into the fact that several journals I think of as "friends" are folks not on my "friends" list. Life must be quirky, or it is nothing. If Art is meaning stripped bare, as you once posited, then LJ is quirkiness stripped bare, and
for that quirkiness I am rarely a bridesmaid and always a bride.

Re: my absurdity *is* my reality, and LiveJournal helps bake it

[nacowafer.livejournal.com]

A bride stripped bare (by her bachelors, even)!!!

[There simply aren't enough opportunities in life to bandy that one about!]

bachelorette number 2 is from Malibu and likes surfing

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

and the terrible thing is that I, like most of my generation, learned of the painting through the Bryan Ferry album title, and not vice versa.
Revolt Into Style, indeed.

Re: bachelorette number 2 is from Malibu and likes surfing

[nacowafer.livejournal.com]

It's the title of a Bryan Ferry album?! I was not aware.

The title still makes me giggle. And the fact that movers broke it! That makes me giggle, too. Imagine how freaked they must have been...then again, maybe they didn't care. Have you seen the creepy installation in the "Duchamp room" in Philly. That does not make me giggle. It makes me a little nervous...The voyeur gets what she deserves! Kind of like LJ. (Had to at least try to bring it back full-circle.)

Re: bachelorette number 2 is from Malibu and likes surfing

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

When I had an insurance insolvency convention in Philly some years ago, I *would have* gone to see the Duchamp room. I imagine library conventions are fun and dialectical, but the National Association of Insurance Commissioners is a rather different orientation. The people are nice, but there's little
meat in it. But back to the point--
I did not realize that the Bride had been broken,
and even google could not tell me about the creepy installation. I think the real question is whether Duchamp would giggle about it all. I was watching an old newsreel about Dali the other day, hamming up an art installation for the cameras. Now that's the way to giggle.

The Bride Stripped Bare is the some folks' pick for the best early Ferry album. It's got that Lou Reed cover whose name escapes me, and a "Take Me to the River" that's an altogether different spin than Al Green or David Byrne. It doesn't have "It's My Party", as does These Foolish Things, or the incredible "Like a Hurricane" from the Roxy live ep, but it's got good things on it. I wish I owned it.

I did not remember to give you the obligatory
compliment that you worked Duchamp in just where he should be worked in. I'm preoccupied with community names, and "broken stripped brides" sounds good, but a bit faux violent for my taste. The last thing I'd want to do is create some weird "violent fantasy" forum, particularly after asphalteden wrote such a great post on this topic a while back. I hate to be judgmental, but stuff like that makes me judgmental.
Not that I want to restrict freedom of thought or expression. I just don't want to read that particular community.

My, though, I'm going far afield! and to places I don't really wish to be. But while I'm afield, I'll suggest that you check out my friend Ken's great "Angel of Columbine", which is now featured in this month's Wired Hearts, which I believe is www.wiredheart.com or www.wiredhearts.com or some such. Ken's not a dadaist, but the image really catches me.

Re: bachelorette number 2 is from Malibu and likes surfing

[nacowafer.livejournal.com]

Yes, the bride was broken, by movers before an exhibition. That's where the cracks in the glass come from--a "happy accident." And Duchamp was giddy! He liked the cracks.

His final installation is called Etant Donnes and it fits in well with the "violent fantasy" forum you mentioned above (maybe--depending on your interpretation.) If you want to risk it, here's the first image of it I came across online: http://eliot.gq.nu/etantinside.htm
This is what you see when you peek through a crack in an old wooden door, standing "inside" a little room. I recoiled but then went back. It was fun to stand around and watch people's reactions.

I couldn't find your friend's work...the Wired Hearts site seems to be under construction at the moment.

Re: bachelorette number 2 is from Malibu and likes surfing

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

now, see, I think that's really getting Duchamp, because standing back and watching the reaction is the real art intended by the piece. thanks for the link to the duchamp "inside" piece.

i don't have any great insights on it. it helped me to go back and re-read that it was behind a door.
the juxtaposition is interesting, the lamp, etc., but to me, the most interesting thing is that the "recoil" we first experience is not a recoil from the image itself, but from all the things we invest in that particular image. the violence, or its potential, all too real, the sin, the purity, the venality, the transport...all imported images...all metatags we superimpose on the image, and the art is in watching the metatags on other peoples' faces, a folie a centime, AND a folie a hundred (damn it, can't remember the French word for 100...if it's not s'il vous plait or pain au chocolat or choucroute or hotel or taxi or a similar tourist phrase, I don't need it when I travel).
I'd write something about how I wish we could all lose the baggage, but that sounds so 18th C. and besides, some of the baggage is quite charming.

I couldn't duplicate the link to Ken's picture either, though that's what showed up when I reached there this morning. But a better view is the hyperlink on his home page to some museum in north carolina that's showing him now. Ken's page is www.kenmora.com, and the work is the "Angel Columbine". I love realistic images in service of metaphoric ideas.

Re: bachelorette number 2 is from Malibu and likes surfing

[marstokyo.livejournal.com]

yes but the dossier in a small suitcase is worth going for.

[marstokyo.livejournal.com]

I had no idea such a stupid-assed thing existed! It would be one thing if they ferreted out the INTERESTING LJ's-- but no-- they review the 99% of crap that makes up LJ and then think they're being *trenchant* or something. Jeez-- I'm sorry, but I am WAY to old to be doing this. ugh :-(

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

Hey, you're not that much older than ME, and I'm a virtual child.

Re:

[marstokyo.livejournal.com]

Hey, I'm older than EVERYBODY! trust me-- I'm like in my 90's!!!

[voodoukween.livejournal.com]

ahhh, but i've been greatly entertained. could not resist one more peek as i exit the material world for a respite.....will laugh all the way to the mountains.

you are brilliant!

the bride blushes

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much for the kind words. What a pick-me-up.