The cosmic state of being between two places— even in a
micro-context like my meta-criticism— is also one which is making America in 2015
an intriguing place. There is a mystery in people which didn’t use to be there,
even if it sounds awkward to bring to the surface— what their Internet habits
are. The glut of information and operating systems available on the Net make it
so that what any individual may know is more surprising then it would have been
twenty or thirty years ago. People’s lives are as constrained as they’ve ever
been, perhaps more so; but the passkey towards all varieties of data means that
more individuals then ever can hold on to their own brains. The surface/depth
tension in the Elegies is the surface/depth tension here— people forced by
circumstance to bring platitudes to the surface, hiding what really interests
them and what they’d really like to talk about. Phenomenology in the age of the
Internet is quite difficult, because so much more information about everything
is more available then its ever been before, and people have bizarrely shaped
brains from bringing dross to the surface yet holding golden perspectives in
their minds. So, what the characters in the Elegies do— attempt to infiltrate
and take over and co-opt over people’s brains— is now something easier
half-done than done in totem. The Internet has manifested a camouflage system
which has in it all the Piscean deceptiveness of Neptune’s current travels— and
those meant to live as individuals, if only in their thoughts and visions, can
now do so unimpeded, even as they may lead lives, as the Elegies characters do,
of quiet drudgery and despair. Worth thinking about.
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