TWO POEMS by Mary-Alice Daniel

we don’t have to confront them. This self-awareness of the compulsive character of much of our behavior becomes in essence a way to cover it up.

“Binge-watching” accomplishes this move even more effectively, since it beats the clinic to the punch. It doesn’t ironize an extant clinical term, but instills irony in the very name of the activity — watching an obscene amount of television to block out the existence of the outside world. It can’t even be referred to without the term. Irony is thus built in to any discussion of the activity. “Binge-watching” neutralizes critique. Taking it seriously is made reactionary and moralizing by the term itself.

Irony, in effect, becomes clichéd here. In the same way as cliché, the irony in the phrase “binge-watching” hovers comatose between life and death. Just as the dead horse in the cliché stops being really experienced as a metaphor, “binge-watching” stops being experienced as irony. The irony that animated the initial use of the term fades away and it is used as a simple name for an activity. But the irony doesn’t disappear completely. It still serves to automatically undercut the possibility of critique through the ironic admission of a compulsion. We no longer really experience the irony when we use the term, but it insinuates itself into our expressions and becomes thereby all the more effective.

This means that we get the benefits of irony — its feeling of distance and superiority — without having done any of the work of critical negation. Actual literal engagement with the activity gets covered over by a clichéd irony. When this pseudo-confessional irony is embedded in the name for the thing itself, we prevent it from really being seen. The name conceals the named. We cease to see people sitting in front of a screen for hours at a time, unable to tear themselves away, infantilized, stupefied by cheap cliffhangers and next episode autoplay, some rendered so impatient they feel compelled to consume the content on fast forward. Instead, they are simply “binge-watching” — engaged in a socially sanctioned activity with a cute name.

IV.

This clichéing of irony undercuts its social significance. The Greek eironeia meant “feigned ignorance.” Socrates was ironic because he affected not to know when he questioned accepted wisdom. It was a way of undermining thoughtlessly held beliefs. Irony has come (“ironically”) to mean almost the opposite. We now engage in clichéd mass irony in order to feign awareness of things we really aren’t aware of. We pay lip service to critique in order not to confront it head-on. Irony props up thoughtlessly held beliefs — clichés that we stamp on experiences before we have a chance to really experience them.

There is an ongoing complaint, periodically renewed by a spate of books or think-pieces, that sees us plagued by ironic language, attitudes, dress, et cetera. These are taken as signs of cynicism, alienation, disaffection. But, in reality, irony has become a coping mechanism, built-in critique that is not cynical, alienated, or disaffected enough. Half-sensing that something is wrong, we gesture toward critique, toward an external, alienated view of our circumstances, so we don’t have to take it up.

The pseudo-awareness that this engenders comes to conceal not just personal failings, but also the moral compromises extracted by modern bureaucracies. Indeed it is one of the remarkable and terrifying things about a bureaucracy — perhaps about our culture as a whole — that everyone in it seems to know better.

Diddlebock’s self-delusion looks naïve, but our protective clichés — not imprinted on woodblocks that hang above our heads, but integrated into our everyday speech — are just as damning. We deliver a series of pre-packaged postures and ready-made ironies on cue to keep the realities of our culture from making their repeated, compulsive appearance in full force. They serve the same purpose as Diddlebock’s tiles: to ensure us that what we’re doing is all right — what else can we do? — and to keep us from seeing things as they are. This refuge quickly becomes a prison.

OBSESSIONS: SHELFISHNESS

TODD STRAUSS-SCHULSON

I’m in Mexico, staying at a luxury resort where the food is expensive and gooey. I don’t love it. I take a walk down to the beach where some locals are bbq’ing lobsters right out of the ocean. It smells delicious — currents of bay laurel and lemon balm mixed with the smoke wafting of the coal. I wander over, access a well of charm that resides somewhere inside me and ask for a beautiful “laguna.” Tey laugh in my face and call me gafas but then give me a langosta.

I wander away and sit on a hammock, under the bright hazel light of the Mexican moon. As much as I want to shovel this food into my mouth, my frst real instinct is to snap a hot pic and throw it up on the gram so everyone can share this moment with me.

Snap.

Let’s jack up that yin yang sun thing at the top of the screen to around 67 percent.

Add a bit of Structure … maybe, oh I dunno, 30 percent or 35 percent? No, 30. Looks crunchy, but not dirty.

Warm it up a touch. Maybe a lil more. Like how Rachey Ray makes food look. Oh that’s nice, that’s delicious.

Saturation? Hmmm, I’ll give it a shot … no, nope, no thank you, this looks like a Lisa Frank trapper keeper now. No saturation. Moving right along to …

Vignette, just a taste, just a tasty taste taste. 25? 45? 72? 57? Sold. 57!

Sharpennnnn. Just subtle, seven percent, no one will even know, just a lil extra sizzle to it, you gotta let it sizzle.

Ok. Now. Clarenon? Errrr … Gingham … too indie … Lark … eh, that green tint? Pertetua? Who even uses this piece of shit flter? Valencia? Oh that’s pretty. Tat’s a beautiful one.

Mayfair no, X-Pro 11 … I always wanna say maybeeeeee but no. Hefe? Hefe’s always a winner.

But Valencia? Kinda artsy? Kinda interesting, got that tint, got that fade. But Hefe. Can’t go wrong, always a layup. Always a lotta likes with a Hefe post …

But Valencia … I think Valencia has my heart. Lemme close my eyes, reset the palate. And takeeee aaaaa looook againnnnn and … yeah, I like Valencia. And Hefe? Closing the eyes aaaaaand … Shit, that’s good too. What do I do?

It’s a profound question actually: Hefe or Valencia. Hefe to give the followers what they want. Warm, sunkissed, welcoming color. Or Valencia: a bit of fade, a bit of teal, it looks old but modern, timeless really.

Are these posts for me? Or gifts for my followers? Are artists in the service industry? Or in the self-expression business? Do you make something personal and hope people like it? Or do you eliminate yourself from the process and give them some Hefe?

I want those likes … I do … but, what about my personal taste? Where does that go? I am Valencia … they want Hefe … maybe, I mean … maybe you just have to change what you care about. Te outcome, not the creation? Maybe self-expression is shellfsh.

Deep breath.

Hefe.

Post.

I lay on the hammock, under the hazel moon, and eat that delicious langana as I watch those likes roll in.

STEPHANIE WASHBURN, HERE ABOUT 7, 2014, FOUND PHOTOGRAPH, TENNIS BALL AND DRAWING, 5.5 X 8 INCHES

DEATH OF PRINT CULTURE

TIMOTHY DONNELLY

There’s a sort of meteorologist Jeremy Joshua Jeffrey Jagger Josh that likes to make a show of his sensitivity in the hopes of winning the favor of strong female onlookers, particularly those who resemble his primary care physician, and watching it all play out on screen my friends, it is like watching Storm Spencer Pomponius Vince an anthropomorphized pistachio ice cream cone incrementally baring its pale ass to a category

five hurricane, which is not to comment on the conduct of meteorologists categorically or to compare them all to cartoon food or strong women to dangerous weather, it’s just that increasingly there are all these sensitive meteorologists Connor Conover Constantine Wolf

peering through their tears to notice the anchor tilting her head noticeably as if to measure a previously undetected depth when in truth she is remembering

a rapidly bitten-into falafel sandwich falling apart all over our nation’s leading news periodical dampening gloss pages as she wonders if she should just throw it into the trash or else surreptitiously return it to the stack of other periodicals compromised by happenstance in the network kitchenette, wash hands with rose geranium foaming hand soap and call it a day but not once does she ever consider taking it home with her.

JOHN DIVOLA, D29F06, 1996-98, GELATIN SILVER PRINT COURTESY OF THE ARTIST AND GALLERY LUISOTTI

DEATH OF THE AUTHOR

TIMOTHY DONNELLY

One warmish Good Friday after having fasted I rode my bike to Benny’s Home & Auto

2.4 miles away with David Simoneau for what I can’t remember, a good deal further

than ever before, much less on a rumbling holy empty stomach, and the day’s air turned

impatient with me, palpable, and the new tire smell of small business blurred my vision

in from the edges as I walked automatic to the sliding door but missed, banging pins

and needles of my face against the plate glass window, dying in public the first time ever

backwards a minute on the rutted welcome mat till flights of angels did around me sing

I must be high on drugs but all I was was Catholic. As for drugs, another thirteen years

later for all I could tell I was dead again on Scott and Kathy’s bathroom tile with a stone-

cold paralysis I still access on occasion as I wish, only this time I was shall we say eager to be revived, and then the green foil cylindrical canister of Comet scouring powder

told me to muster all my strength and hurl it down the hall in an arc like the celestial

object from which the product drew its name, whereupon rescue would come the way the magi

came to the Christ child guided by a star. Lynn was dead too but probably remembers it

differently than I. It might be for a time I wavered between the Comet and Kathy’s heirloom

marquetry jewelry box which would have come to harm if thrown so it pleases me to know

I chose the cleanser instead, not that marquetry with all its obvious involvement and dizzy

human handiwork isn’t almost always borderline repulsive, at least to someone whose most vivid

if not earliest association with hands is about which probably the less said the better,

but in between these deaths I did die again on the regular, over and over, albeit in the iffy

safety of a home, where the dead in time mistook me for one of them, or to put it accurately

came to know and stand around the bed of, intending then, I thought, to terrorize me more

but since the art of what went down was left mine to decipher, I say what they did was keep

part of me alive, wrapping it in the plastic of cloud architecture, for some other world than this.