Things to be thankful for

I try to remem­ber that we are still alive. I try to find good things.

Last night, as Latham star­ted his con­ces­sion speech, I star­ted to cry. I don’t think I had real­ised how strongly I felt about this until then. I feel so betrayed.

Today, numb after a bottle and a half of merlot, I rang frou_frou to entice her to hangover brunch and she invited me out to see the Man Ray exhib­i­tion at the NGV. Apart from the beau­ti­ful pho­to­graphy and the usual envy for grand artists living grand lives, it was salutory to read small remind­ers that these times are sour, yes, but we can still fight and breathe. Nusch Eluard, for example, died in 1946 of star­va­tion fol­low­ing the war. Walter Ben­jamin wrote and lived as he did des­pite the Nazi threat. And Jacques Der­rida, beau­ti­ful Der­rida, who died today, also Jewish, came to the con­clu­sion that the only act you can truly for­give is an unfor­giv­able act.

As Nicky said, these people cre­ated great art in the face of much worse than we’re con­front­ing. We must rally, regroup and find some­way through. 

I also ran into a friend of a friend, Narelle, who I thought was in Paris. She’s back for five months, work­ing for the Arts fest­ival with the Spiegel­tent, so that’s a pos­it­ive too.

I am etern­ally grate­ful for the High Tea this after­noon… still the ghetto, but being able to share how gutted we are was power­ful in itself. And I didn’t think I could laugh today, but after drjon men­tioned Der­rid­a’s death, morgan303 and I star­ted talk­ing about the­or­ists we like, I men­tioned Ant­o­nio Negri and next thing I knew, drzero has come up with “two-fisted philo­sophy” and we had some very odd impres­sions going (thanks to both of you, classic!)

I am humbled by how elo­quent my friends are on this issue: patch­workkid, the_christian, thorfinn, I am inspired by you. The numb­ness and depres­sion is giving way to anger again. I still want to flee the coun­try and come back in three years if Latham gets in, but you are remind­ing me of ways to resist.

And while both morgan303 and I were both dis­tressed to hear that Der­rida had died, I want to think instead that I had the priv­ilege to hear him speak in Sydney when he vis­ited, and that I had the edu­ca­tion I had that I encountered his work at all… that his books sur­vive and that great human­it­arian thinkers like him do the work that they do. He isn’t dead; he’s just shif­ted modes into another deferred meaning.