“Real­ity has passed com­pletely into the game of real­ity.” – Jean Baudrillard.1

My under­tak­ing here is quixotic per­haps and, I sus­pect of myself, disin­gen­u­ous, dis­dain­ful and con­de­scend­ing; thus it is per­fectly suited to the Inter­net which pur­ports to sate our intel­lec­tual curios­ity, lib­er­ate us polit­i­cally, and heal us socially while it (or rather we) dis­si­pate in its con­fab­u­la­tory hallucination.

The new babble.

I have a long-standing fan­tasy in which I pre­pare a lav­ish din­ner party to which all my acquain­tances have been sum­moned. The domi­cile is thor­oughly cleaned; sump­tu­ous dishes are pre­pared; the wine cel­lar is mined for its most pre­cious gems. For­mal evening dress is NOT optional. With the prepa­ra­tions com­pleted, the ser­vants briefed, the can­dles aglow, I depart moments before the appointed hour bequeath­ing my guests an evening unen­cum­bered by my dys­pep­tic and deflat­ing pres­ence and par­don­ing them peremp­to­rily for any eti­quette transgressions.

While I have reluc­tantly under­taken this blog (does not the term con­jure that ooz­ing, expand­ing, gelati­nous mass which envelopes homes, busi­nesses, neigh­bors and fam­ily as is swells inex­orably, feed­ing upon itself – The Blob?) I hope to real­ize in some sense my fan­tasy; to cre­ate an invit­ing set­ting and take my leave.

This shall not be a bio­graph­i­cal litany of activ­i­ties, ambi­tions, and dis­ap­point­ments; nor shall it men­tion adorable cats. The imme­di­ate, the facile, and nar­cis­sis­tic are hereby ban­ished. Per­haps in their absence, some­thing per­sis­tent and com­mon may emerge.

Wel­come to the party and goodbye.

1 Bau­drillard, Jean. Sym­bolic Exchange and Death, p. 74. SAGE pub­li­ca­tions, 1993, Eng­lish Translation.

Extended quote:“In fact, hyper­re­al­ism must be inter­preted in an inverse man­ner: today real­ity itself is hyper­ral­ist. The secret of sur­re­al­ism was that the most every­day real­ity could become sur­real, but only at priv­i­leged instants which again arose out of art and the imag­i­nary. Today every­day, polit­i­cal, social, his­tor­i­cal, eco­nomic, etc., real­ity has already incor­po­rated the hyper­re­al­ist dimen­sions of sim­u­la­tion so that we are now liv­ing entirely with the ‘aes­thetic’ hal­lu­ci­na­tion of real­ity. The old slo­gan, ‘real­ity is stranger than fic­tion’, which still cor­re­sponded to the sur­re­al­ist stage in the aes­theti­ci­sa­tion of life, has been out­run, since there is no longer any fic­tion that life can pos­si­bly con­front, even as its con­queror. Real­ity has passed com­pletely into the game of real­ity. Rad­i­cal dis­af­fec­tion, the cool and cyber­netic stage, replaces the hot, phan­tas­matic phase.”