Mark Fisher, as I have written before, was and is a massive influence on my thinking as a student, as a librarian, as a person. Occasionally, I go back to his blog, k-punk, and I find random posts and just read them. There is a certain melancholic catharsis to reading his words. Fittingly, his work haunts those that come after him.
As a librarian, I afford language a certain sanctity. The creation and protection of knowledge is a sacramental act for me. Perhaps, I think, that is why I find myself a single-minded obsessive about work. I take it extraordinarily seriously, but that is not to say that I do not have fun with it.
There always seems to me a light glow of a mountain of burned books just beyond the horizon. There is a certain grief for the lost knowledge, even that which no-one will ever read. While it is nice to hold retain the possessions of a lost relative, it is something else to retain their thoughts. I think that is the importance of the haunting of the past. The specters of intellects forever haunt the mind of those who are born after. But ghosts only live so long as we remember them. That is why I have a clerical devotion to the study of knowledge itself. I am afraid of forgetting. I am afraid that the rising tide of progress will wash away the rivers of ink that were spilled, and the sacrifices made attempting to rescue it. When I was in my early teens, I did not understand why anyone would use 3-site redundant storage, or RAID storage. I learned that importance of that storage when my mother died. The one thing I have of hers of any real value to me is a record of her voice in the last weeks, giving me advice.
In college, when I finally realized I was queer after many years of hiding it, I at last read some history on the subject. I found myself getting quite emotional over the burning of the library at the Institute for Sexual Science. I do not know if it came to it, if I would be able to kill, or indeed, to die, for the sake of preserving knowledge. I cannot claim to know what worldly books are worth exchanging for another life. I took a concealed carry class a couple of weeks ago, and six words the instructor said pierced my mind.
Some people need to be shot.
It makes me reflect on what would be so worth protecting that it would be justified to take a life. In my everyday life, my students would be at the top of my list. I like to think I would kill or die for any one of them, but to be honest, I do not know if I have it in me. If I doubt my ability to do it for people, I do not think that I could bring myself to do it for information. While I may be powerless to save people, I am extremely good at storing vast information.
Information wants to be free. It must be free. To lock it behind paywalls where it may disappear at the behest of governments is unacceptable. This is one of the few things I am extremely dogmatic about. Everyone who thinks that information cannot be free do not value it. Information is a priceless commodity. All of it.
I have recently begun keeping notebooks, where I jot down short aphorisms about whatever though appeared in my mind, or particularly impactful quotes I read in books. It helps, I think, to philosophize about it. I have recently started thinking about where I am going to store them so that they can be digitized and viewed after I die, in the event that anyone would be interested in my life in 50 years.
I am dearly afraid for the fate of information. It feels like a deep rot at the core of my profession. Like many others I have observed in the intellectual pursuits, I find myself a single-minded obsessive. This obsession I think comes from a deep anxiety, even fear, for a future where information is locked up. And look what fear’s done to my body.
This is track list, exploring the truly weird nature of world-historical events. It is, in a way, dedicated to k-punk, the writer that sparked my joy.
“Worlock” — Skinny Puppy" “The Sixth Circle” — Portrayal of Guilt “Slaughterhouse” — Chat Pile “Burner” — Youth Code “VIBE COP” — HEALTH “Espy” — Kate Mo$$ “Like Rats” — Godflesh “Clean” — Converge & Hellchild “Pestilence” — The Faceless “Amerika” — Rammstein “The Slow Cancellation of the Future” — Uboa