Depth, Records, Jacks

"I concentrated on Jack: Prep school and Harvard accounted for my pleasurable fear and his overalls and red chamois shirt; I knew others who used poverty for depth."

--Robert Gluck, Jack the Modernist


Some topics: Jacks-of-all-Trades, Hybridity, Bio-Politics, Self-Policing. Gothamist appalled me today by posting a mug shot. I tried to join in on the discussion but people were generally unresponsive to me, but flamed another (incidentally, his name username was Jack). (Reading two Jack-related books... Just finished Jacks: A Gothic Gospel by Anne Stone, now reading this Robert Gluck book.)

Record keeping is a form of marking; personal histories can ultimately come back to haunt someone because of an assumption of "predisposition." We mark someone as problematic, digging a certain channel by which other events and circumstances can be interpreted. Situating someone in such a position binds them, indicting them for character issues and not for actual events. Cheating once means, for the rest of your life, you will be considered a cheater. Criminals, even when paroled, are always former prisoners. The record creates a spectre which haunts. And by reflection, ultimately constitutes an identity which is intimately linked with this conception. With records, people are prevented from actual change; their actions may change, but their historical relationship remains the determinate for the rest of their lives.