So now we learn about high frequency trading (see John Lanchester’s piece in the current LRB), millions made so fast that it has to be described in nanoseconds, or what it sounds like is how to make money without risk, transferring the risk to . . . Well anybody who happens to be standing around outside of the privileged loop. But then we have potlatch – wild gifting without limit, giving until I don’t even have any clothes with which to drape my naked body.
Strange how I can be pulled into both these ideas – embracing the riches on offer and giving everything away. Sounds like a party doesn’t it. Which might be the point. To party until death comes knocking at the door. And then we can join a death group and chat about the meaning of it all. Break the taboo with Plato and Tacitus. After all we need a bit of perspective on the whole business.
Seen it all before mate!
Allow me to bring play into the arena. We could say that we have two systems that are playful: theft, legal theft as practiced by the international financial industry, becoming rich because ‘we’ say we are and getting ‘us’ to believe in it and to accept the rightness of it. And the other, the play of art as gift. Richness is in the act of creation and the giving of it.
But then some neurotic anxiety will raise its head from that dark corner over there and demand payment and security and while we’re on the subject might I suggest that we get rid of death.
Screams and perplexity! I don’t want to be left behind! I don’t want to alone!
I want to play. Yes, even with the risks. Like this blog, I want to play in it with whatever comes to hand. This device at my finger tips. And get my mucky fingers into language and image – tools and material. See what comes. See who comes knocking at the door.
