Throwing a Rod: Desiring Machines versus Repression, Part I
“Sometimes the idea runs through my head that I am living an extremely dangerous life, for I am one of those machines which can explode.” – Friedrich Nietzsche
Pussy L’Amour enters the television studio, sauntering in. He’s smoking a cigarette, and it is evident that it is to vent anger, and not to get enjoyment, that he’s puffing away. He’s angry. He’s got on a pink feather boa, and that’s it. I can’t stand the way that looks… He’s got a pale, hairy body… thick black swirling hair atop skin that is deathly white… cadaverously white… (or larvalously white… let’s be tolerant, here ) looks like he may know the heart-break of cirrhosis… (but that’s a disease of the liver… what he has is a flaking of the skin off-putting to lovers,) … he knows the heart-break of cirrhosis and the ecstasy of dipsomania. His stomach protrudes. A pink feather boa should never be worn this way, over a stomach like this.
But - I lied. In addition to the feather boa, he has on black socks and oxfords. We may get a lecture on linguistics. I hope not…. But that’s what they get at Oxford, and why else would he be wearing those?
Pussy L’Amour: “Hey maggot… ya know something, Maggot? That rhymes with faggot.”
Maggot: “Hey Pussy. You wearing that pink feather boa and all? I’m still scared of you. I know you could hand me my ass… I don’t think I’m going to take issue with you here. You want to call me a faggot, go ahead.”
Pussy L’Amour: “I’m not here to mess around. It is the order of the day, and the order of the words, and the disorder of the senses, and the tumescence of the rod, that makes my being here mandatory. Mandatory. Must be this way. Has to be this way. Justifies me being here… distinguishes me being here messing around and me being here to get some work done.
Maggot: (scurrying around, barking out orders to the television crew): “Hustle you assholes, hustle! I want all of this on film! I want to capture all of it! This is a historical moment. Pussy’s going to open up for us.”
The cigarette in Pussy’s mouth is being clamped down upon, which causes it to jut upwards, defiantly. Very vaguely, the film crew sees that jaunty jutting of the cigarette as if it were the smoke stack of a tough little tug boat in a crowded and busy and industrious harbor… they know it means business is being done. It is this knowledge, and not Maggot’s orders, which prompts them to swing into high “gear.”
Pussy L’Amour: “Hey man. The whole idea of speaking about desiring machines in the first place… do you really think that we did that so that everyone would accept zombie-ism and robot-ism and exploitation that much more readily? Shit fuck and damn! Our whole reason for doing anything… for getting out of bed… for pulling on our pants, one leg at a time, was to combat mindless mechanisms of behavior, mindless habits, mindless repetitions of dull lifelessness, dull lifelessness itself, not to promote that! I fucking hate reductionism, mechanization, dehumanization… I oppose it with the full force of my being. Get with it. ( The smoke from the cigarette has a funny color now – is that puce? No, it is mauve. It complements the pink in the boa.) I ain’t a messing around! I’m kicking mechanization’s ass! I’m kicking repression’s ass! I’m doing it with desiring machines – but that I say ‘machines’ doesn’t have a thing to do with what I’m doing! Got it?”
Maggot: (cowering): “ Hey, Pussy. I think I hate the same things you hate. (And I do hate. I do live the black, the ugly, the satanic, the nasty, and the 'not-suitable-for-dinnertime- conversation.' I am the ‘ Unenlightened over-grind.’ That’s me. And I say: to become enlightened will not involve, in any way, that I not hate, not be black, not be ugly, satanic, or nasty.) This autopoeisis stuff. It’s just a new way of coding these phrases… ‘That’s just the way it is…’ ‘ It’s only natural…’ ‘ It has to be this way.’ In other words, if autopoeisis is coding these things, autopoeisis is inimical to everything you’ve ever done or thought…. Exactly as ‘desiring machines’, if they are what people continue to think they are, would be the very opposite of anything you ever desired….”
Maggot: ( to the crew) : " Is it a wrap? Do we have it? Is it on tape?"
Pussy L’Amour enters the television studio, sauntering in. He’s smoking a cigarette, and it is evident that it is to vent anger, and not to get enjoyment, that he’s puffing away. He’s angry. He’s got on a pink feather boa, and that’s it. I can’t stand the way that looks… He’s got a pale, hairy body… thick black swirling hair atop skin that is deathly white… cadaverously white… (or larvalously white… let’s be tolerant, here ) looks like he may know the heart-break of cirrhosis… (but that’s a disease of the liver… what he has is a flaking of the skin off-putting to lovers,) … he knows the heart-break of cirrhosis and the ecstasy of dipsomania. His stomach protrudes. A pink feather boa should never be worn this way, over a stomach like this.
But - I lied. In addition to the feather boa, he has on black socks and oxfords. We may get a lecture on linguistics. I hope not…. But that’s what they get at Oxford, and why else would he be wearing those?
Pussy L’Amour: “Hey maggot… ya know something, Maggot? That rhymes with faggot.”
Maggot: “Hey Pussy. You wearing that pink feather boa and all? I’m still scared of you. I know you could hand me my ass… I don’t think I’m going to take issue with you here. You want to call me a faggot, go ahead.”
Pussy L’Amour: “I’m not here to mess around. It is the order of the day, and the order of the words, and the disorder of the senses, and the tumescence of the rod, that makes my being here mandatory. Mandatory. Must be this way. Has to be this way. Justifies me being here… distinguishes me being here messing around and me being here to get some work done.
Maggot: (scurrying around, barking out orders to the television crew): “Hustle you assholes, hustle! I want all of this on film! I want to capture all of it! This is a historical moment. Pussy’s going to open up for us.”
The cigarette in Pussy’s mouth is being clamped down upon, which causes it to jut upwards, defiantly. Very vaguely, the film crew sees that jaunty jutting of the cigarette as if it were the smoke stack of a tough little tug boat in a crowded and busy and industrious harbor… they know it means business is being done. It is this knowledge, and not Maggot’s orders, which prompts them to swing into high “gear.”
Pussy L’Amour: “Hey man. The whole idea of speaking about desiring machines in the first place… do you really think that we did that so that everyone would accept zombie-ism and robot-ism and exploitation that much more readily? Shit fuck and damn! Our whole reason for doing anything… for getting out of bed… for pulling on our pants, one leg at a time, was to combat mindless mechanisms of behavior, mindless habits, mindless repetitions of dull lifelessness, dull lifelessness itself, not to promote that! I fucking hate reductionism, mechanization, dehumanization… I oppose it with the full force of my being. Get with it. ( The smoke from the cigarette has a funny color now – is that puce? No, it is mauve. It complements the pink in the boa.) I ain’t a messing around! I’m kicking mechanization’s ass! I’m kicking repression’s ass! I’m doing it with desiring machines – but that I say ‘machines’ doesn’t have a thing to do with what I’m doing! Got it?”
Maggot: (cowering): “ Hey, Pussy. I think I hate the same things you hate. (And I do hate. I do live the black, the ugly, the satanic, the nasty, and the 'not-suitable-for-dinnertime- conversation.' I am the ‘ Unenlightened over-grind.’ That’s me. And I say: to become enlightened will not involve, in any way, that I not hate, not be black, not be ugly, satanic, or nasty.) This autopoeisis stuff. It’s just a new way of coding these phrases… ‘That’s just the way it is…’ ‘ It’s only natural…’ ‘ It has to be this way.’ In other words, if autopoeisis is coding these things, autopoeisis is inimical to everything you’ve ever done or thought…. Exactly as ‘desiring machines’, if they are what people continue to think they are, would be the very opposite of anything you ever desired….”
Maggot: ( to the crew) : " Is it a wrap? Do we have it? Is it on tape?"
posted by Yusef Asabiyah at 12:15 AM
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