Plague Journal, One More Poem
My Brain Is Mad for Baudrillard
Today, I read of scientists’ warnings
about the potential dangers of sex
robots and thought of you. Some blame
the rise of right-wing populism
on postmodern windbags like you, holed
up in your university office, giving head
to your shadow. But Jean, you were right—
we are living in the desert of the real,
where signs metastasize like cancer cells,
and who hasn’t felt the Foucauldian
grip around her wrists, her ankles?
Even desire a simulacrum of itself.
I drowned in you as if in a frozen lake,
but either I or the lake was dreaming.
I like this poem. This poem is thunder and lightning! We cannot overdo support of poets. Poetry is the epitome of writing.
We are drowning in a tsunami of words, a deluge of text, audio and video information. Everyone who wants one has a megaphone, and Fox News is a most gargantuan of all the fire hoses of drivel. At best what is disseminated by Fox is irrelevant to the individual American no matter where they live. What does the discovery of Brian Laundrie’s body in a Florida woods have to do with me?
At worst Fox News is a material hazard to the public health of the entire country, with their anti-vaxx bias. Moreover the network is an existential threat to this republic as a consequence of their support of the January “support the steal” overthrow-assault on the capital. How many Americans listen to Fox in the background, a constant drumbeat of anti-government malice, every day of their waking life?
We are drowning. Another way of putting it — “we are living in the desert of the real.”
As the poet eloquently states, Jean Baudrillard was prescient. Baudrillard wrote of the nascent shape-shifting of lying as well as our preference for the official lie of manifest destiny, and of advertising. In America “signs metastasize like cancer cells.” Here, “desire…a simulacrum of itself.” Our very desires are fake, cheap copies ginned up by media advertising.
And yes, I too have immersed myself in reading Jean Baudrillard’s words.
P.S. Not conversant with Jean Baudrillard’s work? I recommend his essay Radical Thought which you can find HERE..
