Daniel Coffeen

The difference is this: my social sense begins with selfishness, with self affirmation. This is not a selfishness that comes at the cost of the social but operates as part of the social — and, in fact, to me makes the social work better. But it only works if others enter the same contract — that is, they begin with their own selfishness, their own self affirmation.

When I was younger, the only art I really liked were portraits. I needed to see a face. Something about that face let me reckon the work, make sense of it, be moved by it. I needed the human element, that inflection of distinctly human being, that sense that it could be me, that this was some variation of me, one possibility within the infinite variegation of humanity.

Friends are another sort of relationship all together. We choose our friends and they, in turn, choose us. There is no necessity. The relationship exists through activity by both parties (unlike family: a brother is a brother regardless of what he does). Friendship is active. It demands work — a negotiation of, and between, at least two people.

According to Nietzsche, the strong are those who discipline themselves, who train their instincts (another great move Nietzsche makes: we can train our instincts!). The strong work themselves over like a piece of art, like a sculpture, chipping away the poor instincts, strengthening the strong ones.

But people are more complicated than just being this or that. I may be a pervert in this way but that doesn’t mean I am a pervert in all ways. Which is to say, our assumption that there is a real self, some defining nugget of self truth, shuts down the complexity of what it means to be a human being. This insistence on truth, on authenticity, becomes a sledgehammer of judgement.

Of course, I came here 20 years ago, when I was 21 and it was amazing — cheap and filled with freaks. Now it’s freakishly expensive and all those young ‘uns? They work for Google (or Apple or Yahoo or Genetech; there is an endless parade of corporate buses barreling up and down Guerrero headed to or from the Peninsula on a daily basis).

I’m not looking for the right one: they’re all right in their way. No, I don’t want what’s right: I want the pleasure, the delight, the delirium of all those different ways. Each thinker gives me a different way of making sense — and the more I read, the more I digest them, the more this multiplicity plays through my head, through my eyes, through my blood and guts.

My point is this: Power, as Foucault says, comes from everywhere. It is not something that exists out there, that comes from the top, that is enforced by police (although it’s that, too.) Power is what makes you move, physically and emotionally.

I was a history major in college. Mostly, this was because my high school history teachers were smart, Marxist revisionists so we read insane books. (It turned out I was actually interested in interpretation, not history, but it took me a few years to figure that out.) I entered college with all these AP credits in history so, well, I continued with it as a major.

An idea comes over me (oh, god, I love that expression almost as much as I love that sensation — the erotics of being entangled, enmeshed, permeated, penetrated by an idea). It takes possession. And suddenly it — or is it I? — begin making connections between this and that. It — or is it I? — begin rereading the world, seeing it again, seeing it anew.

I’ve been thinking recently about some of my favorite writers, favorite artists, favorite musicians — and how some of them have never “made it” in the traditional sense of the phrase. They are not renowned; they do not make money directly off their art. Most not only don’t make money from their art, their art costs money to make.

The obligations of the day blind us. We focus on waking up and getting ready, getting where we need to go, negotiating work and family and love and bills and traffic and taxes. It’s not often that we afford ourselves the opportunity to survey the world, its mechanics and mode of operation.

The business suit — a pain in the ass, no doubt, and rarely attractive — marks a clear line between home and work. It is a uniform that declares: “This is me at work. There is another me that is, frankly, none of your business.” In the old days, you couldn’t get a job if your hair was long, your nose pierced, and tattoos covered your arms.

And then there was us — the beast and me, a middle class hebe and his demi-jew spawn. Oh, it was a beautiful, if chaotic, event — loud music, people everywhere, and some professional skater in the middle of it all. My boy, needless to say, was a bit intimidated — he had his board and his helmet but he was sticking close to his pops.

Letting something have its way demands great trust. And so this is another aspect of generosity: assuming the best from something. That is, rather than looking for how something fails, why it sucks, why you hate it, you look for what’s great, what’s interesting, what has possibility.

Ah, but the amateur is a lively bloke who pays no heed to inherited categorical distinctions. The amateur reads what he reads, writes what he writes, thinks what he thinks. The amateur makes his way on the fly without regard to official knowledge. He makes connections in surprising ways, traversing domains along trajectories no one could have imagined.

This is not the only erotics. There is, needless to say, a beauty and power and frenzy and delight and merriment and madness in consummation, in riding that wave of attraction that exceeds you and dominates you and becomes you all the way to the sweaty, sticky end.

Nothing is literally more interesting than the weather. How could it be otherwise? It thoroughly defines our immediate environment. To dismiss the weather as unimportant is to suggest that we live independently of our environs, that we are actors on a stage and the stage does not inflect us.