The wolves we dreamed of incessantly as children no longer trouble our sleep. A crack between the curtain and the window no longer summons the demons from deepest imagination. Still, the terror that gave birth to such visions has not gone away. What the child dreams in fear is no mere delusion but a premonition of what awaits her in waking life: the nightmare for which there are no soothing words, the one from which not even our parents know how to wake.
Of all the rituals that accompany the new year, few give voice to our collective delusion better than the so-called resolution. In a world where only a few can win, where strength is denied to all but the strong, there is something more than a little perverse in this practice that pretends otherwise. And yet, the delusion is not entirely that. For only the poorest vision could fail to detect the utopian bent of all such resolutions; the deep longing that things might, just this once, come out otherwise; the true voice that prays, dear God, do not make this a year like all the rest. In the recesses of even our deepest perversions lies the goodness that could spell their end.
In a repeat of last year, my favourite books of 2011 were all ones I did not read. However, one of the books I did not read clearly stood out among all the others I did not read: Victor Harris’ 1949 All Coherence Gone.
Musically, the closest thing I found to something that exists was Psychic Reality’s Vibrant New Age. This song in particular was a fine example of something almost come into being.
In pre-modern societies, the sacrificial victim is usually a hideous, mutilated creature. It acts as a scapegoat on to which the community can project its own violence and criminality, and in doing so can disavow them. The scapegoat is driven beyond the boundaries of the city, to suffer an ignominious death beyond its walls. By this ritual mechanism, the people cleanse themselves of pollution and guilt. Sacrifice is needed when the community falls sick; but the community is always sick.
-Terry Eagleton, Holy Terror
