Soir Bleu, 1914. Edward Hopper

After great pain, a formal feeling comes -
The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs
The stiff Heart questions, was it He, that bore,
And Yesterday, or Centuries before?

The Feet, mechanical, go round -
Of Ground, or Air, or Ought -
A Wooden way
Regardless grown,
A Quartz contentment, like a stone -

This is the Hour of Lead -
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow -
First Chill - then Stupor - then the letting go -

After Great Pain. 1864.  Emily Dickinson

"...It's a really bad idea to share all your information in a system in which one guy gets a copy of everything...I want to share some things with my actual friends; I want to share some things with everybody in the world equally, but why would I want to share with my friends AND Mr. Zuckerberg or with the entire world AND Mr. Zuckerberg?

The other thing that we tend to forget is that there are two kinds of information: there's the information we share and then there's the information about who accesses what we share. The web-server log is the most important data on most web servers. On the web server it's pictures of my cat; on the log is pictures on who looks at me when I am with my cats. At Facebook, if you run the place, you can tell who's going to have a love affair before the people know, because you know that "girl" is obsessively checking Facebook page of "boy", or "boy" is obsessively checking Facebook page of "boy". And so, you know what is happening before it happens, because they think they are sharing with one another but you are the one keeping the log.

It's a really bad idea to share with people in a way which gives one person all the logs... I don't think that there was ever anything wrong with living in the Soviet Union and distributing Samizdat, but there was something really wrong with being in the Soviet Union and distributing Samizdat through KGB... that's the difference..."

Eben Moglen.

" ... Es una muy mala idea compartir toda tu información en un sistema en el cual un solo tipo recibe una copia de todo ... quiero compartir algunas cosas con mis amigos reales, quiero compartir algunas cosas con todo el mundo, pero ¿por qué habría yo de querer compartir con mis amigos Y con el Sr. Zuckerberg, o con todo el mundo Y con el Sr. Zuckerberg?

La otra cosa que tendemos a olvidar es que hay dos tipos de información: esta la información que compartimos, y luego está la información sobre quién accede a lo que compartimos. El registro de servidor web contiene los datos más importantes de la mayoría de los servidores web. En el servidor web esta la fotos de mi gato; en el registro esta la foto de quien me mira cuando estoy con mi gato. En Facebook, si eres el jefe, puedes predecir quien va a tener una historia de amor antes de que las personas lo sepan, porque sabes que "chica" está observando obsesivamente la página de Facebook de "chico" o "chico" está observando obsesivamente la página de Facebook de "chico". Y así, tu sabes lo que está pasando antes de que suceda, porque ellos piensan que están compartiendo entre sí, pero eres tú quien mantiene el registro.

Es una muy mala idea compartir con gente de manera tal que se de a una sola persona todo el registro ... No creo que haya habido nada de malo en vivir en la Unión Soviética y distribuir Samizdat , pero había algo realmente malo en vivir en la Unión Soviética distribuyendo Samizdat a través de la KGB ... esa es la diferencia ... "

"... what would an angel say, the devil wants to know..."

Fiona Apple

(...)
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.

The windiest militant trash
Important Persons shout
Is not so crude as our wish:
What mad Nijinsky wrote
About Diaghilev
Is true of the normal heart;
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.

From the conservative dark

Into the ethical life

The dense commuters come,

Repeating their morning vow;

"I will be true to the wife,

I'll concentrate more on my work,"

And helpless governors wake

To resume their compulsory game:

Who can release them now,

Who can reach the deaf,

Who can speak for the dumb?

(...)

September 1, 1939 (fragmento). W.H. Auden.

Publicado por primera vez en The New Republic, 18 Octubre 1939.

Publicado en formato de libro en la coleccion "Another Time", 1940.

Las leyes de los hombres
intentan ordenar sus relaciones.
Disuadir y penar el impulso homicida.
Regular el tráfico de bienes.
Dosificar la bilis de la codicia.
Registrar las variantes codificadas del amor
en los antiguos cajones del registro.
No les importa si hay amor.
Porque las leyes de los hombres
custodian las formas.
No examinan ni explican
su interior.
El criminal afila la navaja.
El usurero cuenta las monedas.
Las muerde para verificar
que no son falsas.
Los prometidos violan las promesas
a las que juraron fidelidad
frente a un notario.
Se compran y se venden cueros,
hierros, telas, peces y terneros.
Se clasifican las especies del herbolario.
¿Y con eso qué?
Quiero tajear la superficie
hasta que sangre. Quiero morderla
apretando los dientes.
Sacudir sin soltar,
como un lobo que empuja y tironea
obstinadamente de su presa.
La jurisprudencia no ausculta el porvenir
sino el pasado.
La jurisprudencia es inútil
para mi empresa.
No tiene archivo lo que estoy buscando.
Tampoco tiene edad.
Mi mercancía está fuera del comercio.
Mi amor tiene la forma de la curiosidad. 

Mariel Manrique, Descartes en Holanda. Paradiso Ediciones, 2010

Like as, to make our appetites more keen,

With eager compounds we our palate urge;

As, to prevent our maladies unseen,

We sicken to shun sickness when we purge;

Even so, being full of your ne'er-cloying sweetness,

To bitter sauces did I frame my feeding;

And, sick of welfare, found a kind of meetness

To be diseased, ere that there was true needing.

Thus policy in love, to anticipate

The ills that were not, grew to faults assured,

And brought to medicine a healthful state

Which, rank of goodness, would by ill be cured;

   But thence I learn and find the lesson true,

   Drugs poison him that so fell sick of you.

Soneto 118, Sonetos. William Shakespeare.

Jacques Brel, casado con Therese Michelsen y con tres hijos, conoce en un club nocturno parisino a una mujer luminosa e inteligente llamada Suzanne, y a quien todos conocen como Zizou. Actriz ella y cantante el, se enamoran perdidamente. Brel vivirá, amara y se entregara vehemente a ella durante cinco años, en una relación intensa y cautiva que culmina con el embarazo de Zizou.

Brel responde miserablemente a la noticia. Se esconde de 'Zizou', de su gran amor, de ella. Jacques desaparece de su vida como un vulgar marido con amante y, finalmente, se niega a reconocer que es el padre, el responsable del "embarazo" de Suzanne. Zizou, desesperada, lo destierra de su vida. Brel, entonces, se refugia en su mujer e incluso utiliza su historia para escribir la canción de amor "Ne me quitte pas". Un "no me dejes" póstumo e interesado, que ni sirve de excusa ni remienda daños.

Brel acabó como un cobarde. Se comportó como muchos seres patéticos que, dando la espalda al amor, se aferran al decimonónico y putrefacto status quo de familia nuclear, aunque el amor no exista, y la imagen tiesa muestre las grietas. Preservar a la comprensiva esposa y madre de sus hijos luego de humillar y despreciar a la mujer que amaba.

 Zizou interrumpió su embarazo.

Brel diría, años después, que la canción no es una canción de amor sino una canción acerca de la cobardía de los hombres.

Solo la voz de Nina Simone es capaz de dar sentido a tanta decadencia.

"That sort of view that feminism is against men it just doesn't make sense, from the beginning, it has never made sense to me. I was asked recently by a group of young women, in a young women leadership conference program in Harvard: do I think of myself as a feminist? So I said:  yes, would you like to know how I define feminism? So they said yes! So I said I thought of feminism as one of THE great liberation movements in human history and it’s the movement to free democracy from patriarchy. And then I got a bunch of e-mails after that weekend of this Harvard group saying “the one thing I wrote down from the whole weekend was your definition of feminism”. But it seems so obvious to me that that’s what feminism is. I mean it is really seeing and it is easier for women to speak out against patriarchy because we are not so shame for speaking out as it is. I think Virginia Woolf wrote about that in “Three Guineas”, actually, but it’s in how in contradiction with democracy patriarchy is and the cost for both men and women. So that’s what I think feminism is and I think it is an extremely important historic movement of women’s liberation. And so of course, if that’s what feminism is: “moving to free democracy from patriarchy”, you are going to have a kick back from patriarchy. And the kick back is that feminism is anti-man and real man and all this. So I think that’s why you have to go back to say: wait a minute, that’s not what feminism is. (…)

There is a misunderstanding of  (patriarchy) is this sort of men’s oppression of women. In fact here is where the psychological work is key in the developmental work because it explains why women’s voices are so important in this because, if men are initiated, boys are initiated into patriarchy around these gender things which is what is a real man and how is manhood constructed and being a man means not being a girl or being a woman and it means being on top, that’s patriarchal masculinity and this happens around 4 or 5 or 6,  and girls are initiated into patriarchal femininity which means being selfless which is really the most amazing term, being selfless in order to have relationships. But we've just said: if you have no self you are not in a relationship, so it’s incoherent, really. But since that doesn't happen till adolescence, girls have more language and so they can speak about this, and if you silence girls and women then nobody talks about it. 

So put all this making feminism anti-man which is truly not, or defining patriarchy not as something that divides everyone…  I mean, what is patriarchy: it’s a hierarchy, which means the rule of priests, in which the hiereus, the priest is patriarch, a pater, a father, so it divides fathers, it divides some men from other men, divides the men from the boys, like African-American men were called boys, not real men, and it divides all men from women; and it places fathers over mothers and children. And in fact, in making those separations it divides everyone from parts of themselves. So, psychologically, patriarchy is always unstable. On the other hand, if you talk about democratic society it requires that kind of people having voices and being able to speak honestly from their experiences. So the psychological quality feeds into a truly democratic society, so then you come back to: patriarchy is contradictory to democracy like slavery is and like imperialism is. And I think that’s where we are right now, in that struggle, for men, for women, for people of color, the whole thing. It’s like the title of Christina Robb's book: “This changes everything”. It’s a shift in the paradigm. It’s not like taking the old paradigm and switching it some from having men on top to women on top. That’s the old structure. It’s changing the structure."

Dr. Carol Gilligan defines feminism and patriarchy.

Psychalive featuring Dr. Carol Gilligan.

Republican Automatons. George Grosz. 1893 -1959.

"...High though his titles, proud his name,

Boundless his wealth as wish can claim

Despite those titles, power, and pelf,

The wretch, concentred all in self,

Living, shall forfeit fair renown,

And, doubly dying, shall go down

To the vile dust from whence he sprung,

Unwept, unhonored, and unsung."

"Breathes there the man with soul so dead..." 

Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832)