William Eaton

Pop Music (Econ Therapy)

April 30, 2015 by William Eaton

In memoirs published decades later, the Beatles producer George Martin recalls meeting with the band members in 1962 after they auditioned for him and his colleagues. Martin did not think the Beatles’ songs were very good, but, chatting with them afterwards he happened to ask if there was anything that they themselves did not like. To which George Harrison replied: “Well, there’s your tie, for a start.” Legend has it that this was the turning point. Harrison’s impish, gently […]

Categories: William Eaton, ZiR • Tags: Beatles, bossa nova, capitalism, consumerism, João Gilberto, Raymond Williams, Rolling Stones, Yeats

Leave a comment

Courage as Measure

April 28, 2015 by William Eaton

After the poet dies, people like to argue about the relevance of their work. Was it innovative? Did it do something new for form, for formality, for fluency. Does it deserve to be reread in schools or university seminars? Sometimes this discussion is valid. Sometimes the poetry in question is perhaps only marginally relevant. Other times the discussion becomes ridiculous, as it does when it concerns a poet like Anne Sexton. Sexton, often linked to the Confessional poets, which includes writers like […]

Categories: Ana Maria Caballero, ZiR • Tags: anne sexton, books, feminism, literature, poetry, reading, writing

Leave a comment

Kunsthaus Bregenz

April 25, 2015 by William Eaton

Kunsthaus Bergenz, a place for contemporary art Exhibiting contemporary art has not been a simple enterprise since about or before the 80s when the possibilities of what could be art became anything. We wait in anticipation to see if the new 422 million dollar version of the downtown Whitney will succeed in its new location at the foot of the High Line. (So far the reviews are positive.) Will the trendy meatpacking district with Hudson River view be […]

Categories: Gayle Rodda Kurtz, ZiLL • Tags: art, Kunsthaus Bregenz, Rosemarie Trockel, Trix and Robert Haussmann

Leave a comment

Hélène Cixous’s Tomb(e)

April 22, 2015 by William Eaton

Review of Tomb(e) by Hélène Cixous, translated by Laurent Milesi (Seagull Books, 2014). Distributed by The University of Chicago Press. By Walter Cummins What are we to make of prose like this? Never did I love so powerfully but for dreaming still and dreaming the Dream of Dreams, as if Love killed me in order to give me life, through a marvelous retrospective cancellation of the dantext which I had mistaken for life. I have known the orgasm of the […]

Categories: Review • Tags: fiction, Finnegans Wake, French, Hélène Cixous, John Coltrane, literature

Leave a comment

We are the robots!

April 11, 2015 by William Eaton

As reported in “The Spy Who Fired Me, The human costs of workplace monitoring” by Esther Kaplan, in March 2015, Harper’s, the company Cornerstone OnDemand provides software that tracks the every move of a company’s employees. Companies that use its platform can quickly assess an employee’s performance by analyzing his or her online interactions, including emails, instant messages and Web use. . . With the rise of the global workforce, the remote workforce, the smartphone and the […]

Categories: Gayle Rodda Kurtz, ZiLL • Tags: art, global capitalism, technology

Thou shalt not read

April 9, 2015 by William Eaton

At a brunch an American father mentioned his surprise that his teenage son did not believe that people were naturally good. My son doesn’t believe this either, but in my household this is not surprising. Of course this is a large subject which would quickly bog down were we to try to define the good. Heading toward a definition of evil, one of the other fathers at the table mentioned self-interest. As in, we humans are willing to do a […]

Categories: William Eaton, ZiR • Tags: evil, Germany, Holocaust, indigenous people, Jesus, Kant, lynching, Rousseau, self-interest

Leave a comment

Derek Walcott on CLR James and cricket.

April 3, 2015 by William Eaton

In his collection of essays, What the Twilight Says, Nobel prize-winning poet Derek Walcott discusses, among other things, fellow writers of the Caribbean, including the Marxist historian CLR James. In his short piece on James, Walcott explores the seeming contradiction between the writer’s unrelenting combat against Empire and the racism it engendered, and his love for the very British game of cricket. James’s Beyond a Boundary is probably less well known than his classic work The Black Jacobins, the history […]

Categories: Catherine Vigier, ZiR • Tags: History, literature, race

Leave a comment

Divine Wisdom (and of course emotions)

April 2, 2015 by William Eaton

Love, the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan has been translated (perhaps inaccurately) as saying, involves giving something you haven’t got to someone who doesn’t exist. It might be more simply proposed that movies involve offering illusions to people who are in the dark. And the next step for a purist would be to propose that the best movies are those that concern, or at least touch on, this very fact. I read in the New York Times that the American-French […]

Categories: William Eaton, ZiLL • Tags: families, incest, isolation, Lacan, marriage, movies

Leave a comment

Sekou Sundiata and The Narrative

March 31, 2015 by William Eaton

Current events and dialogue frequently remind me of the late poet and musician, Sekou Sundiata. As a former student in his “America Project” class, I, like many others, was greatly influenced by his teachings. Sekou’s 2000 album, Long Story Short, features a song called “Reparations,” which was also performed by him on Russell Simmons’s popular HBO series, Def Jam Poetry (as seen in the video included in this post). In watching his performance again, I am reminded of Sekou’s unique voice. Come on and […]

Categories: Jeremy Syrop, ZiLL • Tags: music, narrative, poetry, sekou sundiata, sound

Leave a comment

ZETEO

Zeteo (ζητέω): to challenge, question, dispute, explore the forgotten and ignored

Author Archives: William Eaton

Pop Music (Econ Therapy)

Courage as Measure

Kunsthaus Bregenz

Hélène Cixous’s Tomb(e)

We are the robots!

Thou shalt not read

Derek Walcott on CLR James and cricket.

Divine Wisdom (and of course emotions)

Sekou Sundiata and The Narrative