Notes

There is a post about watching the film Ferris Bueller’s Day Off over on the Infinite Regress blog.

At the very end of the post, there is this point:

What is the message for the your audience? If you are charming enough and don’t behave too too badly you can get away with much shenanigans? Ain’t that the truth.

I read this and thought about something about Freud's thought that I've been saying for a while now. Freud pointed out how, in his day and age, there was a kind of injunction against enjoyment (sexual enjoyment in particular). During this time, people wanted to (1) have fun by doing what was enjoyable and (2) obey the injunction not to enjoy so they wouldn't need to worry about getting in trouble. Being stuck between these two things is a main factor in compromise formation, AKA symptom formation.

After reading Freud seriously for years, I think what Freud was pointing out (but did not directly state) is that the social injunction against enjoyment was actually a demand that people didn't enjoy in public. If they did something enjoyable (i.e., sexual), they had to do it in a way that was very private. If they complied with that demand, they could get away with a lot.

The best example I've seen of this on TV comes from The Crown, where Prince Philip tells Princess Diana not to rock the boat.

He says,

Just be creative. You can break as many rules as you like. You can do whatever you want. You can make whatever arrangements you need to make to find your own happiness. As long as you remember the one condition, the one rule: you remain loyal to your husband and loyal to this family in public."

The bargain, then, is that you can break the rules as long as you publicly uphold them. What has to remain intact is the appearance of obedience.

There are so many things that I want to fold into my life, but my life is too small. So, I’ve got to make choices.

Via Warren Ellis’s blog:

It occurred to me the other evening that the bingewatch and the doomscroll are the same thing: a symptom of having given up control of your life.

Yeah.

Note: I realize I link back to Warren Ellis, and a few other people who produce work I enjoy. There are a few reasons for this.

1. Ellis posts often, and posts a lot of stuff I think is interesting.
2. I use this space (my blog/open notebook) as a way to capture things I want to remember.

Over on the Disquiet blog, Marc Weidenbaum will post 30 seconds of an interesting sound he encounters just going about his day. (This one is of buzz saws.)

Today, I was walking to the park with one of my kids, and I noticed this small thumping sound, which turned out to be acorns from the oak trees dropping to the ground. I liked the sound and recorded 1:00 min of it. There are is also the sound of lawn mower and birds in the background.

I think this is a small tree growing up through a hole where some rebar is coming through a parking brick.

I thought this was pretty.

I wonder if it will last, or if someone in the future will cut it down or pull it out.