Diarrhea and Dysphoria

Big Brother (Bob Flag)

Surely you have made mistakes? Perhaps one of them is blurting out an inanity. If you're a writer, you have scribbled one that falls  deafeningly on deaf ears. Perhaps you have even gone so far as to make matters even worse, by digging yourself even more deeply into a hole. Perhaps this kind of behavior has emerged in the middle of one of those high-minded gatherings filled with like-minded folks which tend to make you, as a great man or woman of historical importance, uneasy. You don't want to be a member of a lynch mob, even a well-intentioned one, you argue. You're opposed to collectivities of any sort, unless, of course, the collectivity is the face of your own dysphoria. You could go on but you won't.

read "Double Reverse Midas Touch" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star 

Nostalgie

 

"Nostalgie de la boue" is longing for shit--en Francais. But the expression is also "loaded." Nostalgie connotes something more than mere nostalgia. It is also aspirational in its romantic agony. You wish for something sad and dour and difficult, but ostensibly this Inferno, or to expropriate the Huysman's titled A Rebours or going back, which in English translates as Against Nature, is a form of replenishment, a Fleurs du Mal a la Baudelaire. The notion of diving deep into Hades is part of ancient mythology. Orpheus in Hell, Offenbach's comic opera. It is only Sade's 120 Days of Sodom and the Pasolini movie it inspired, Salo, that preclude the illusion of faith or belief.

read "Double Reverse Midas Touch" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star 

Trainspotting

filming Trainspotting toilet scene

Remember the iconic scene in Trainspotting (1995) when the drugs disappear down the toilet. The moment sets off a hallucination as iconic as the horrified nurse in the Odessa Steps sequence of Einstein's Potemkin. Cataclysmic discombobulation that sets one's life in a tailspin is something you know if you've ever fallen asleep at the wheel, waking up suddenly to screams at the terror of the incipient path of destruction that you've wreaked. Have you hit or even killed someone? "Down the tubes." That's where you're headed is something you've undoubtedly felt. One door closes and another opens is dispelled by the reality that when one door closes another likely closes too. In fact, if you are like the bag of junk in the Danny Boyle film, you are just another domino  falling.

read "Double Reverse Midas Touch" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star 

Silent Retreat

 

Mont St. Michel

Most creatives seek an audience. Writers and poets want be to read. Playwrights want their work performed, but in the age of AI, the role of the artist is recusal. Remember Winston Smith in Nineteen Eighty-Four? Now in 2026 it is hard to find authenticity. Inadvertent plagiarism was a problem long before the advent of AI. Without meaning to, many writers found themselves bombarded with memes and tropes whose provenance was hard to recognize. Now, ThinkSpeak has taken over. SSRIs are tantamount to Soma, the excising of personality being the price one has to pay for quieting depression and anxiety. In "The Double," Dostoevsky's alter-ego appropriates the life of its foundational self. Art in the 21st Century will be practiced by monastic orders which protect expression, by limiting its diffusion. You probably have already heard about people who go off to silent cell phone free retreats where electronic devices are not permitted.

read "Double Reverse Midas Touch" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star 

Free Expression

Samuel Beckett's "Not I" (The Guardian)

This is the Age of Expression and it’s not all for the good. There's something to be said for inhibition. Things pop so naturally out of the mouth of the President that he is smitten with belief prior to investigation. It’s all part “The Weave” aka gaslighting, whereby fiats and realities are fungible. A notion becomes reality simply because it's uttered and that is part of the problem. A pronunciamento or piece of rhetoric is soon an urban legend with little regard for the source. Influencers with millions of followers are the product of this Brave New World.

read "Double Reverse Midas Touch" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star 

JCPOA

satellite image of Natanz nuclear facility

Is there a limit to the deterioration? Sinkholes have been discovered on one of the two runways at LaGuardia, but they're literally more than depressions. You can either be a depressed personality or someone who lives in a psychotic state. What do you do in the face of a wizard whose worldview is a product of what he says? Yes utterance is at the heart of empiricism, but it usually posits the notion of so-called "real" objects on which the gaze is set. In current circumstances you have a person who constantly tells lies which he posits as truth. Occasionally statements are the result of ignorance, but "gaslighting" has now become public policy.  Such is the case with the JCPOA. Trump derisively refers to the former president name highlighting the Hussein part to imply the presence of a foreign agent, a quisling at the helm before going on to state the total success of an agreement which actually accounts for none of the key things that an unnecessary war was supposed to have brought about--the chief of which being, halting nuclear proliferation. But then again the pot is calling the kettle black. Is the current executive branch, with its abrogation of rights and its search for unquestioned power any less volatile than your once and a future Ayatollah?

read "Double Reverse Midas Touch" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star 

Knicks

The Atlantic.com

Common experience is almost a garish concept. Americans pride themselves on individuality and also their degree of alienation. MAGA politics is rightly regarded as stupidity but it's also a response to disenfranchisement. Economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton coined the term "deaths of despair" to. describe the high rate of suicide amongst white working class males. The working class which built the country for the Robber Barons is being marginalized. Mining is a tough business, but travel to Appalachia and you will discover a pride of belonging. The advent of the first trillionaire epitomizes the concept of income inequality that is the subject of Piketty's Capital in the 21st  Century (ironically a bestseller the author obviously profited from). It is hard to think of Trump as a figure of World Historical Significance,  as was Napoleon for Hegel. Trump voices a dissatisfaction with elites. The lumpenproletariat which is another word for the MAGA demographic actually is a rather sophisticated response to obsolescence. With AI the anger will only increase. Actually Trump for all his money and street smarts will be an excellent example of Great Replacement Theory when he is finally either impeached, or forced out of The White House--when he refuses to leave at the end of his term.

read "Double Reverse Midas Touch" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star