Each lover has a theory of his own About the difference between the ache Of being with his love, and being alone: Why what, when dreaming, is dear flesh and bone That really stirs the senses, when awake, Appears a simulacrum of his own. Narcissus disbelieves in the unknown; He cannot join his image in the lake So long as he assumes he is alone. The child, the waterfall, the fire, the stone, Are always up to miscief, though, and take The universe for granted as their own. The elderly, like Proust, are always prone To think of love as a subjective fake; The more they love, the more they feel alone. Whatever view we hold, it must be shown Why every lover has a wish to make Some other kind of otherness his own: Perhaps, in fact, we never are alone.

I'm just a WH Auden account right now

Far from his illness The wolves ran on through the evergreen forests, The peasant river was untempted by the fashionable quays; By mourning tongues The death of the poet was kept from his poems. But for him it was his last afternoon as himself, An afternoon of nurses and rumours; The provinces of his body revolted, The squares of his mind were empty, Silence invaded the suburbs, The current of his feeling failed; he became his admirers. Now he is scattered among a hundred cities And wholly given over to unfamiliar affections, To find his happiness in another kind of wood And be punished under a foreign code of conscience. The words of a dead man Are modified in the guts of the living.

Thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoyed it.

Such dreams are amorous; they are indeed: But no one but myself is loved in these, While time flies on above the dreamer’s head, Flies on, flies on, and with your beauty flies, And pride succeeds to each succeeding state, Still able to buy up the life within, License no liberty except his own, Order the fireworks after the defeat.

(Cross Channel spoilers)

How do I support the Backrooms and send the message to A24 that they should keep letting young creatives remake their passion projects, but with a higher budget, without accidentally sending the message "Hollywood should make movies about memes, and let Youtubers direct them?"

The second installment of Sunset Vallachia, the vampire locked room mystery series, is out now! You can read it here:

genmajou.com/works/sunset...

Welcome back, Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere

Dystopia, Genocide, and Anarchy: Some notes on The Purge franchise – The Orient Express Shocker: A political discussion about the movies that used a MAGA hat for a poster. A real "drunk looking for his keys under the same streetlight all night" deal.

For those who recognise the vigilantism in how ICE behaves recklessly and beyond the law, I'd like to once again point to this as one of the more important things I've written. Despite being about a silly little horror movie.

blog.psychopopular.com/film/the-purge

Brainstorming novel solutions for the crisis of public confidence in government.

This means that you can only ever see fascism from its "inside" here, and never grasp its roots in a wider social historical frame. A given TV show doesn't necessarily have to cover that wider perspective, but its lack here is politically problematic. The overall effect is too kind to fascism.

Its grounded in a first-person sense of life-or-death political struggle. Its avant-garde elements have a semi-Futurist feeling of motion. There's something ecstatic in the way it presents violence. Despite seemingly intending to condemn Mussolini, this approach valorises him as a "great man."

Here's something of my impressions of the Mussolini mini-series/drama after 5 episodes: it's fun to watch and has a very clear grasp on the retributive psychology of fascism. But stylistically speaking, it kinda extends too much empathy to the emotions and aesthetics of fascism.

The Timeless Timeliness of One Battle After Another – The Orient Express Some short notes on a film where history accumulates like sediment—where the dead ends of the past pile up layer-by-layer without ever “moving on.”

I wrote a short thing on One Battle After Another for those who are interested:

blog.psychopopular.com/film/one-bat...

Socialist History Values Test This is an attempt to make a political alignment test using concrete historical debates. Answer as if you were in the historical moment!

sochisttest.github.io

Literally generic it is so over.

Fascinated by "Trump 2023" of all years, where is it pulling that from.

The Phenomenology of Nyarlathotep – The Orient Express An anti-philosophical “philosophical” investigation of Wonderful Everyday (Subarashiki Hibi/Subahibi) as well as Tsui no Sora.

Hello Subahibi fans.

Those who trusted me not to release any new posts for awhile are in for a bit of a shock:

The Phenomenology of Nyarlathotep: An anti-philosophical “philosophical” investigation of Wonderful Everyday (Subahibi)

blog.psychopopular.com/japan-and-as...

For Stalinists, Fascism Doesn't Really Exist The origins, assumptions, and results of the theory of social fascism

I wrote a modestly lengthy thing on social fascism in response to the latest drama on the other site about it.

Please give it a read.

theorb.substack.com/p/on-social-...

"I'm A Political Theorist from Israel and this is My Nationalism" A quick note on right-wing Zionism and its Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Week

Here's some quick thoughts on the right's continued failure to face-up to its fascist turn.

theorb.substack.com/p/im-a-polit...

The Phenomenology of Nyarlathotep An anti-philosophical “philosophical” investigation of Wonderful Everyday (Subarashiki Hibi/Subahibi) as well as Tsui no Sora.

I've mirrored some of the recent blog posts to Substack. I feel like Wordpress is becoming less reliable over time so I wanted people to have alternatives. Feel free to take this opportunity to check out my recent post on Subahibi if you haven't.

psychopopular.substack.com/p/subahibi

メアリ・シェリー『フランケンシュタイン』は、怪物の訴えが突き刺さる。男性学的にいえば、怪物はこの世界の根深いルッキズムの犠牲者であり、産まれてこなかったことを夢見る反出生主義者であり、異性からの「心の共感」を求めるインセルでもある。また科学技術のプロメテウス主義＝加速主義の犠牲者とも言える。
怪物には理性があり、感情や共感があり、善良な良心もあった。怪物が人間たちから怪物と呼ばれるのは、とにかく徹底的に「外見」の問題である。外見があまりに醜くおぞましいがゆえに、全人類から嫌われ、恐怖される。ただひとつの願いが「異性の怪物を作ってくれ」であるのが、あまりに悲しい。

I've added a PDF and EPUB to this essay so that people can read it in chunks. Please check it out.

This is starting in December so there's still time to join if anyone wants to. We have 8 members so far, so don't be shy.

With how abstract this got, I really want to make sure that the next thing I write will be straightforward literary criticism. That said, perhaps "straightforward" just isn't how I do things. Either way, I still want to write some more stuff about art as art next.

The Phenomenology of Nyarlathotep – The Orient Express An anti-philosophical “philosophical” investigation of Wonderful Everyday (Subarashiki Hibi/Subahibi) as well as Tsui no Sora.

Hello Subahibi fans.

Those who trusted me not to release any new posts for awhile are in for a bit of a shock:

The Phenomenology of Nyarlathotep: An anti-philosophical “philosophical” investigation of Wonderful Everyday (Subahibi)

blog.psychopopular.com/japan-and-as...

How Continental Philosophers "Argue" On the unseriousness of the discipline

This is the article which I do not recommend.

benthams.substack.com/p/how-contin...

I suppose that, even as padding for an article that has no substance, this is somehow less embarrassing than the parts where he tries to engage with authentic human-written examples. In those, he proves that he simply cannot parse fairly basic sentences.

I wish I had the confidence required to write an article that accuses others of not having "arguments," only to turn around and quite literally direct my own "arguments" at a computer-generated strawman.

You'll have to follow me back or open your DMs