I think it comes off as pretentious still, but there it is: some off-the-cuff (and not brief enough) thoughts on blogging from about a month ago. John Baker responds to his own questions here.
To clarify something, if only slightly: the scene in "Mulholland Drive" when the parents walk in shreiking and shrunken, under the door...or, not dissimilarly, the first appearance of the midgets in "Time Bandits," or for that matter the giant exiting the sea. The way such radical changes in the scale of one's vision unsettle the world, or more precisely, unsettle the larger gaze that orients "the world" as we inevitably contain it/shrink it/curtain it off (forgetting for instance, to include an awareness of the space behind our heads)...these moments make me laugh. Moments that do strange things with time, as well. The world as möbius strip and Escher painting, someone once said, referring to such films. So these are among the moments that make me laugh in--what is rather unusual for me--spasmodic and inhaling gulps, almost as if it wasn't myself laughing. The laughter comes from outside and overwhelms, impersonal and foreign. It is not in honor of something "funny" exactly, or at least certainly not as we popularly debase the term--so much as strangely neutral. And yet vigorously affirming the experience, one of displacement, otherness, and yes, uncanniness. Fiercely and ruthlessly autonomous, I want to say, where there is no chance for a laughter in harmony, no echo and no adequate response. It is a great relief.
Likely I haven't said it very well. In other news, Naked Punch Magazine now has a blog. More magazines should, really (though I understand why they do not). Do check out their latest issue on Latin America, because it sure is sexy looking and the writing's also good.
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