Timing Is Everything (Missed Connections)

        All of us have probably had occasion to feel or say that “it’s all a matter of timing, ” and fortunately we probably care in unequal degrees about the many things we may have “missed” through our inattention, miscues, missed cues, etc.

Peter Griffin, Example of "Post-Modern Architecture," Zhengzhou Green Fair, China

    I think I missed (am currently missing and will continue to miss) post-modernism.  The only thing the term has ever meant to me (that is to say, the image that forms in my mind whenever I hear it) is of the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan becoming overfull (even after its porcine over-expansion), over-capacity, and art marketers desperately meeting in secret committees to coin a new term to promote and sell subsequent "art events" and so-called "art developments."  Branding, after all, is everything these days.

 

      Today, while engaging in research concerning the weird and deplorable "human microphone" (the people control device/exercise being used at contemporary political rallies), I learned that I really must have missed "queer theory"  too (although I knew of its existence) because it is apparently in the process of being supplanted by "post-queer theory" (skip to end of linked article).

 

Scully and Mulder.  For some reaon, Mulder is identified in this photo as the "Post-Modern Prometheus." 

        I can survive without regret both of these losses or deficiencies.  Generally I am able, when I need or want to, to understand complicated, even insanely prolix, pieces of literature or technical writing, provided their authors are sincerely trying to communicate, are making a palpable effort to make themselves understood. 

M.C. Escher, Relativity, 1953.  Modern? Post-Modern? None of the above?  Queer, certainly, and proudly so.

        I cannot accomplish this, however, nor can I abide reading self-involved, neologism and jargon-filled academic or pseudo-academic writing that clearly seeks to impress, but is nothing more than grotesque and distorted Fun House mirror fare.

         I sincerely believe that this kind of work is intentionally self-deceptive and that it also seeks to deceive readers based on the authors' contempt, anger and fear.

Post-modern Chinese surgical needles (Actual caption label)

Mrs. Danvers must fit in here somewhere.  The rest is silence, except for:

Look At Me, I'm Wonderful  &

Tent

(Bonzo Dog Band links from Keynsham, 1969)


[Please Note 3 links in Paragraph 3]