Author: paulattinello
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Notes from California
An enjoyable, if too short and rather fragmented, trip to Los Angeles – saw dear friends (and missed a couple who couldn’t get in to see me); met a lot of new academics among the old ones; and gave, if I say so myself, a good presentation of a sexy topic. Almost everyone in LA…
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chemical bodies
[A draft of a short panel presentation for a Los Angeles symposium on musicals. Rather on the speculative/bonkers side – in the tradition of Adorno and the post-structuralists – but then I like that kind of thing….] Here we sit, in the unnamed capitol, or at least the largest marketplace, of accelerating physical transformation: from…
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Victories
My sister is far better, sounded remarkably cheerful on the telephone yesterday. Friday I started calculating exactly what I had to get done before leaving for Los Angeles this coming Thursday; and panicked – nerves, anxiety, woke at 6 am to wander restlessly about, wondering how it could all possibly get done. (Especially as most…
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Relative
Fragments of good things and difficult ones; much administration, many students (most of whom seem rather smart, charming, alert this year; as D. said, sometimes it seems as though changes in students are like the weather – who knows why they happen – which means, I guess, we should be grateful for good weather). A…
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Fortress Persona
Distance, limits, boundaries: I seem especially concerned, even tense and anxious, these days around the connections between myself and other people. This, of course, after ages of lamenting that I am too alone – but perhaps partly as a result of that, I’m struggling not to experience other people as painful chores, as demanding and…
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Panic
I am startled – and discomfited, and somewhat embarrassed, but I suppose also intrigued – by discovering, while doing this cognitive behavior therapy for depression, that underneath the depression is a wide pool of anxiety, nerves, fear. Anger and hostility, insecurity and defensiveness. Hysteria. Panic. It’s a bit weird, really. One of the things about…
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Helpful books
There is a television show on, with Joan Didion (whose work I love so much) talking about her book The Year of Magical Thinking, about the year after her husband and daughter died. I was a bit surprised, however, when she said that part of why she wrote the book was because she couldn’t find…
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Uncharted landscape
My blogging has sort of slowed to a halt since mid-August – apologies (especially to those of you using neither RSS nor Bloglines, who have to actually bring up this page to see if there’s anything new engraved on it – that must be a bit like switching channels and seeing only reruns). Have felt…
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P’tit soleil noir
An elaborately Barthesian pleasure at reading the first pages of Julia Kristeva’s Black Sun, her book on the psychoanalysis of depression. I giggle, recognize myself, nod understandingly, make comments… “For those who are wracked by melancholia, writing about it would have meaning only if writing sprang out of that very melancholia.” You’re right, I won’t…
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Insults for the new century
Patrick has invented a new insult for our age: “He has to pay people to read his blog.” He thinks we need a word for that kind of person, too – blogstitution? no, that’s not it. Perhaps this is in line with Anne’s complaint earlier this evening that her students were unpleasantly startled that she…
Paul Attinello 