24 August 2009: "The Carlesfork 2000 (HRO2K: A List of the best mp3s ever burned)."

This post is about self-consuming rhetoric. Here I would like to call attention to a particular rhetorical trope of which Carles is fond: his tendency to combine the subjunctive, conditional, and imperative moods in single statements such as this: "It seems like I really just need to let the world know ‘what’s up’ and sort everything out." The "it seems like" negates the "really" and the combination of these two severely qualify the intention expressed in the predicate, forcing us to interrogate the possibility that any subject position can be "really" invested with the certainty necessary to "sort everything out." What Carles wants us to recognize is the fantasy element inherent in every command, in every will to power, that always threatens to bury the specific content of that wish. What we "really" want is always already only "seems like" it is so. A radical contingency haunts our expression; every attempt is overhung with the shadow of its own negation, its own admission of its limits, its incorporation of fictional wish-fulfillment elements, even when the wish so deeply held is to purge all utterances of dreamy falsity.

Hence the deliberately ludicrous, ludic nature of the list Carles proposes, for which he concocts a series of messianic promises, that his list of songs will save the record industry, individuality, local integrity, the world, etc. "I am not sure how to confidently state that I am ‘100% certain’ that my list is a compilation of the truly best songs ever created." Confidence always negates itself rhetorically -- the more emphatically it is expressed, the more likely the hollowness of its boasts will be evident. In a twist familiar to us from psychoanalysis, certainty always manifests itself as its opposite; a kind of projection occurs which reveals our certainty eroding itself, and our deep urge to enlist others in supporting the claims we have dared to make.

The problem is that every utterance we make has such sotieric intensity, not just our attempt to make lists of the best things the world has to offer in a particular category. When Carles declares, "We can’t be afraid to embrace social and historical responsibilities," he refers not to the compilation of spurious lists but to our continual skepticism of such lists and the static portrayal of the world they manifest. Our responsibility, at this unique moment in time in terms of media reach and dissemination, is to resist definition and reject identity of the puny sort that once held sway over youth: "We must define ourselves by defining the best music because mp3s define who u r [via iPod]." Devices like the iPood have sown the seeds of their own destruction; we listen to become not who we are but to destroy and dissolve the notion of self in an endless series of transformation, rewriting the media drives over and over again until the log of what we have consumed becomes inscrutable.

Carles concludes with a list of self-negating statements:

‘I honestly believe I have the best taste in music in the world.’
-every1

‘I just like to enjoy music without judging it or thinking about why I like it 2 much.’
-every1 trying 2 pretend they are not an ass hole

‘Have u heard of Animal Collective?’
-some bro

‘Have u heard of of Daughtry?’
-a real bro

‘Do u like my leather wrist band?’
-Daughtry when he goes home for Thanks giving

‘What r u having for lunch?’
-people in the office, right before 12 noon

‘I just brought my lunch.’
-office worker who doesn’t want to eat lunch in a group setting with sad coworkers

‘I save a lot of money by bringing my lunch every day.’
-some ass hole who brings his/her lunch every day

‘What’s ur favourite band?’
-trying to ‘connect’ with some1

‘______________’ (disappointing answer that leaves u feeling sad about what ‘real people’ listen to)
-a real person being realer than u will ever be

‘i have something 2 say.’
-a person who starts a lil blog site

‘I am interesting’
-every1

‘I am boring.’
-depressed person/person trying to ’seem interesting’ by ’saying they are boring.’

All of these statements are beyond true and false. The highlight the dichotomies that Carles is encouraging us to regard as yesterday's truths, now become irrelevant to the list-free future. All future sets are to be infinite.