ndeed, that is one good place to start knowing who The Coup is—or at least it is for me, given what I saw that night. The Coup is a group of musicians that goes out of its way, whenever and wherever it performs, to share the spotlight, whose shine its presence generates, with other, lesser-known, more “local” groups. Rather than laying claim to all the glory for itself, The Coup would seem to glory in sharing the glory with others.
Read moreHow You Will See Me Again in September
I am once again taking the summer off from this blog. My plan is to resume posting every Monday morning after Labor Day, starting with Monday, September 11.
The Kiss of Medusa and Trauma's Return: Thought-Play (6)
Fortunately for us all, Medusa is persistent. Her natural capacity is infinite, which means “without limits or borders,” as is her generativity. She is capacious enough in her power to make use even of the desolation spread everywhere by the very fear of her. Medusa, which is to say gender in the form of the Mother, makes use of that desolation by letting the system that produces it, the very system set up by the boy-man’s apotropaic reaction against her, escalate itself to the point where it finally breaks-down, as such self-escalating systems inevitably do. It is that very point of ultimate break-down that, at last, the door opens to permit Medusa’s break-though, which comes not with a vengeance but with a kiss.
The Kiss of Medusa and Trauma's Return: Thought-Play (5)
Perhaps what so threatens the boy-child is the threat delivered by the sight of a split, a cleft, a tear or rift, that separates him irrevocably from the Mother, and from all that the Mother means to him. That is, perhaps what really threatens the little “man” so is the vision of a yawning gap between himself and all who are like him, most definitely including the Father, on the one side, and the Mother and all who are like her, on the other.
Read moreThe Kiss of Medusa and Trauma's Return: Thought-Play (4)
Our automatic reaction to what we perceive as dreadful, threatening, or monstrous is apotropaic. We try to drive the monster away, fleeing from it—combining fight against it with flight from it, in the common “fight-or-flight” reaction to what engenders fear in us. Thus did one flee from Medusa, as one fled from all three Gorgons of Greek myth. Unfortunately—at least it strikes us at first as a misfortune, and continues so to strike us for a very long while—Medusa refuses to be avoided.
Read moreThe Kiss of Medusa and Trauma's Return: Thought-Play (3)
As petrifying as the sight of Medusa’s head might have been, Medousa, the name of one of the Gorgons, literally meant “guardian,” from the verb medein, “to protect, guard over.” The ultimate root of both words is the Proto Indo-European root *med-. That original root meant “to take appropriate measures.”
The Kiss of Medusa and Trauma's Return: Thought-Play (2)
The wisdom of the desert hermits is that the only effective response to acedia, the devil of boredom that prowls at noon, is not to try to divert ourselves from it, in an unfulfilled, unfulfilled-able, and ultimately counter-productive—and ultimately magical—endeavor to ward it off and keep it away. Rather, it is to accept it, as one accepts a gift, and to remain with it. It is to let it wash over one, relaxing into it instead of stiffening against it in.
Read moreThe Kiss of Medusa and Trauma’s Return: Thought-Play (1)
Apotropaic means “designed to avert evil” (from Greek apo-, “away from,” plus trepein, “to turn”). Acts so designed arise from the fear that evil—or at least what we experience as evil—evokes. To experience some thing or occurrence as evil is to experience it as injurious, dangerous, threatening. We flee from what we experience as evil, flee from it either by moving away from it, or by putting up defenses against it, to ward it off, deflect it, avert it (literally, “turn it aside”).
Read moreIn Defense of Apathy (2)
The mere labeling of all non-voters as apathetic—in its dominant contemporary meaning of indolent, lazy, or just not caring—already reinforces the idea that one is doing something important by voting, and acting irresponsibly by not doing so. However, more than one author has cogently argued that encouraging the public to think in such an automatic pro-voting way actually supports a power system that has rigged the outcome of any election in advance.
Read moreIn Defense of Apathy (1)
Abstaining in deliberate protest does not mean that one does not care about the issues that are themselves at the root of politics and political decisions. Rather it is an expression of caring about those very issues, even caring intensely—so intensely that one refuses to participate in any process that reduces them all to no more than the equivalent of lines in a farce. Deliberately refusing to vote for such a principled reason reflects anything but apathy, in the dominant contemporary sense.
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