Black Lives Matter: Judith Butler on the Necessity of Stating the Obvious

Watch the full hour, but start here for a direct discussion on how people allow themselves to value one life and devalue another. 

I spend a decent amount of my free time watching the great minds of our time give lectures to small auditoriums of academics. It's not entertainment, per se, and I would not typically review these videos in the pages of Entertainment Matters, but the current moment demands that we gather and share the best information we have in the fight against the devaluation of black lives in America.  

In the clip above, Judith Butler, discusses our ability to, at once, fully ignore or, in fact, glorify the violence that States enact on people during war, while at the same time abhor violence that non-state actors enact against people. At around 36:55 Butler says, and I quote selectively (the lecture is actually a snippet of an essay entitled, "Survivability, Vulnerability, Affect" published in a collection called "Frames of War," Verso 2009) 

The critique of violence must begin with the question of the representability of life itself: what allows a life to become visible in its precariousness and its need for shelter, and what is it that keeps us from seeing or understanding certain lives in this way? The problem concerns the media, at the most general level, since a life can be accorded a value only on the condition that it is perceivable as a life, but it is only on the condition of certain embedded evaluative structures that a life becomes perceivable at all.

…An ethical attitude does not spontaneously arrive as soon as the usual interpretive frameworks are destroyed, and no pure moral conscience emerges once the shackles of everyday interpretation have been thrown off. On the contrary, it is only by challenging the dominant media that certain kinds of lives may become visible or knowable in their precariousness. It is not only or exclusively the visual apprehension of a life that forms a necessary precondition for an understanding of the precariousness of life. Another life is taken in through all the senses, if it is taken in at all. The tacit interpretive scheme that divides worthy from unworthy lives works fundamentally through the senses, differentiating the cries we can hear from those we cannot, the sights we can see from those we cannot…

When I heard this, all I could think was, "This is why "Black Lives Matter" is such a relevant rallying cry." My next thoughts was, "Wait, why aren't Judith Butler quotes dominating my Facebook feed right now?" 

Then I come to find out, that on January 12, 2015 (18 months ago), Butler was interviewed by the New York Times for a piece entitled, "What's Wrong with 'All Lives Matter?" where, among countless clearly articulated statements she says, 

Perhaps we can think about the phrase “black lives matter.” What is implied by this statement, a statement that should be obviously true, but apparently is not? If black lives do not matter, then they are not really regarded as lives, since a life is supposed to matter. So what we see is that some lives matter more than others, that some lives matter so much that they need to be protected at all costs, and that other lives matter less, or not at all. And when that becomes the situation, then the lives that do not matter so much, or do not matter at all, can be killed or lost, can be exposed to conditions of destitution, and there is no concern, or even worse, that is regarded as the way it is supposed to be.

Followed quickly by, 

So it is not just that black lives matter, though that must be said again and again. It is also that stand-your-ground and racist killings are becoming increasingly normalized, which is why intelligent forms of collective outrage have become obligatory.

I could go on quoting Butler and that's my point here. If you are struggling to articulate why the term "All Lives Matter" makes no sense in the context of the current moment, stop struggling and quote someone who thinks for a living. 

And spend your time participating in "intelligent forms of collective outrage" so that one day black lives can become lives. 

Poetry Matters: "In Response to Trees," by Lisa Hiton

Cherry Blossoms 2013, Aaron Mosby

Lisa Hiton, "In Response to Trees," Two Poems, The Adroit Journal, Issue 12

For two weeks in April, Washington, DC partakes in an annual ritual called the Cherry Blossom Festival.  The epicenter of the festivities is the Tidal Basin where 1,800 Somei-Yoshino trees burst into pink and white bloom. The landscape is typically garrisoned with a phalanx of amateur photographers armed with digital cameras trying to capture the effervescent blossoms that seem to start falling the day they bloom. Having been one of those camera-armed soldiers, I can tell you that there is a sense of urgency that compels one to take as many pictures as one can before the sun goes down or before it rains or before our short spring morphs into our long summer. Rarely have I simply gone to the Tidal Basin and just sat underneath one of these blooming trees and just listened to what they were saying.

Lisa Hiton does pause to listen and offers us, "In Response to Trees," a vivid, contemplation of the language of nature. The poem, published in Issue 12 of The Adroit Journal, starts off with an acknowledgement of T.S. Eliot's cruel spring, "In winter I knew them all / as one dead thing," but seems to sluff off the despair in the next line, "but now I love to watch them blossom." For Hiton, it seems, the past is not something to be memorialized, it is merely the last guidepost on the uncharted path towards new discoveries.

The guide on this particular path, a Japanese tree, like so many soothsayers, seems to speak in riddles. While it "translates / beauty into sunlike white and pink," it leaves enough mystery that our narrator states, "I lie under them / deciphering / their shapes. …" There is a juxtaposition here between the primary language of nature that we can tap into with our senses, "sunlike white and pink," and the secondary (tertiary, etc.) language of thought, that attempts to reconfigure natural occurrences, like the blossoms of a tree, into something geometric like "shapes." This movement leads to the general problem of thought, eloquently stated in the poem, "…How to a give a name / to something you know so well…"

In the turn of a word, Hiton takes us back to our first real encounter with nature, "…:Mother," in what seems like an attempt to discover something we've always known.  But as we've learned in the first lines of the poem, what we claim to know is often loss and death.

"I know you are afraid

of my love
when I watch the little round discs fall

suicidality towards me. …"

Here, the fear of love is wrapped in the loss of love which is inextricably linked to the possession of love. And while we all know this natural occurrence, all too well, are we not in the same boat as the narrator who states:

"…I am afraid

of what I might call them
while they are in the air…"?

Here there seems to be a fear of naming the gravitational body that pulls us away from our first love "Mother" because that body takes the unfortuitous position of becoming a new "Mother" who will fear our love and who we will one day fall away from. And, again, we know this but what we know, as Hiton shows, is not as lovely as what we can dream:

"tiny petals like eyelids
dropping down. The first time I dreamt

of falling
it was peaceful like this:--

nameless world, filled with green light…"

Nature takes us out of the tongue-tied world of our conscious mind into the sensory-guided world of the unconscious.  Here, the act "of falling" from love to love is free of named loves lost or loves to be lost. It is simply a force of nature as natural as light itself.

Hiton leaves us with a coda that echoes the narrator's first question, "by what name, Japanese tree, / by what name, Mother?" And for me, that is the beauty of this poem. It reminds us that the answers to the biggest riddles of our lives lie in a return to nature and the language of light, vibration and touch.

Next year, I'm going to leave the digital camera at home as I walk through the cherry blossom trees. Instead, I'm going to have my dear friend Lisa's poetry in my heart as I ask the trees the big questions.  

Poetry Matters - The Last Slice - Original

On the occation of the launch of Pious Pies I offer a reflection on true love.

The Last Slice

True love is a pie eaten piece by piece. 

The first slice is often a surprise

The second, a lie. Peace,

By Peace, you survive each

Slice, some too small

To leave a

Mark, others

So

Big, they nearly cut your heart right out.

But you grow wiser as the pie

Grows smaller. You can calculate the

Dimensions required by true 

Love to make

Your hunger

Cease.

So when that piece lays before you, perfectly

Sized to fulfill your needs and desires

You can savor each freely

Offered bite without fear

Or doubt because

It's your
Last.

Poetry Matters: The Introduction to The Best American Poetry 2014

The Best American Poetry 2014, Guest Editor, Terrance Hayes, Series Editor David Lehman

One of my semi-weekly rituals is to roam around the Barnes & Nobel at the corner of E St. and 12 St. NW. Typically, I'll head right to the newsstand and grab the latest issue of Monocle before heading upstairs to peruse best sellers, hit business books and the extensive games section. Recently, I find myself lingering in front of the shelves that make up the "Poetry" section of the bookstore. About six weeks ago The Best American Poetry 2013 catches my eye and I purchase it on a whim. I thoroughly enjoy the process of reading these poems and when I find myself standing in front of that same "Poetry" shelf last week, I'm delighted to see that the 2014 edition of the anthology is already out.

I'm further delighted to see that this year's edition is guest edited by MacArthur Fellow Terrance Hayes. I first encounter Mr. Hayes at the O.B. Hardison Poetry Series where he joins a host of accomplished poets to commemorate the 125th anniversary of Poet Lore. He reads How To Be Drawn To Trouble and it's obvious to see to why he's a genius grant recipient.

Mr. Hayes' introduction to The Best American Poetry 2014 is unlike any introduction to the "Best American" anything I've ever read. The set up for the introduction is that Mr. Hayes sends a draft of the introduction to Dr. Charles Kinbote who is stunned to receive a 182-page treatise. In lieu of publishing the unwieldy introduction, Dr. Kinbote suggests that Mr. Hayes include the transcript of a wine soaked interview the two of them have.

The interview is great but after reading it I'm itching to get my hands of the full introduction. I scour the internet but I can't find any trace of the document. Finally, having no other option, I reach out directly to Mr. Hayes.

Here's what I write:

Will the 182 page version of the introduction ever be made available to the reading public?

And here's Mr. Hayes' incredible response:

Thanks for the inquiry, Aaron. The BAP 2014 Intro interview is really just me and a character from Vladimir Nabokov's novel, Pale Fire. There's no other introduction. I was imagining how long an intro would need to be to cover all I had to say about contemporary poetry. About as long as the anthology, I figure.

Best

Terrance

Note to self, before sending a note to a genius, do your homework. And a note to everyone else, do yourself a favor and pick up a copy of The Best American Poetry 2014.

Entertainment Matters: Poetry Matters: On Missing the 12:05 - Original

For many years the following quote has been pinned above my desk:

Let us remember…that in the end we go to poetry for one reason, so that we might more fully inhabit our lives and the world in which we live them, and that if we more fully inhabit these things, we might be less apt to destroy both. - Christian Wiman, Editor, Poetry

Recently, I've picked up to the tools of poetry to build my own houses in places I want to more fully inhabit. Typically these poems are written for an audience of one, usually the muse who inspired the song. I will offer them here in the pages of Entertainment Matters and I hope you find a resting place within each verse.

On Missing the 12:05

My watch says that I am on time

But as I reach the platform 

I hear the train doors chime

Chaste calm turns to storm

When we lock eyes 

An oblivious crew

Leaves with

You

Music Matters: Stars: "No One is Lost"

Stars - No One is Lost
Add to your "New Music" Spotify Playlist: "No One is Lost"

When pressed to answer the OK Cupid question, "What is your favorite band?" I usually say Stars, the indie-ish rock-ish band out of Toronto and other points Canadian. I first encountered Stars in December 2006 at the 9:30 Club. They opened up for Death Cab for Cutie and I was immediately stuck by how free they seemed on stage. They carried an air of grown-up playfulness that made them an absolute thrill to watch. When co-lead Torquil Campbell pulled out a trumpet and started wailing on it, I was hooked.

Two years later, the band headlined 9:30 while touring their anti-war opus "In Our Bedroom After the War."  This was just a few weeks before the 2008 presidential election and the feeling in the room was electric. Anticipation reverberated through the room and the band radiated flower power (and actual flowers which the they threw out into the audience) and the corresponding hopefulness. At one point during the show I was so overwhelmed that tears began streaming down my face. To this day, it was one of the most powerful shows I've ever been to.

On a fairly consistant candence, the band drops a new record and their latest come out on Tuesday. In classic Stars fashion, "No One is Lost," the title track, is an anthem for depressed extroverted outcasts who, no doubt, gleefully complie with the song's stark refrain: "Put your hands up, 'cause everybody dies/ put your hands up 'casue everybody dies (No on is lost)." Far from nihilistly hopeless, this refrain is driven home with a dance groove that permits this listener to revel in the glorious now.

For a selection of my favorite Stars tracks, check out my "Essential Stars" playlist of Spotifiy.  

Movie Matters: Intersteller Trailer

It's movie season!