What was really interesting was when I went to Vegas. Vegas is conservative middle America, and businessmen, it’s devoted to commodification and manipulation of desire. I’m going back to my notebook, where I started taking a few notes for a mail I was going to send you while I was out there but which I never got round to.
I thought I’d put down a few informal thoughts about my NAB time in Vegas. Partly to give you a sense of what it’s like, partly as process. Also partly because I feel the way to understand a thing is not to view it directly, but as Thomas Browne had it in his posthumously published Christian Morals (1716):
“Besides, many things are known, as some are seen, that is by parallaxis, or at some distance from their true and proper beings; the superficial regard of things having a different aspects from their true and central natures.”
Vegas is so strange. The elements are incredibly simple, almost abstract. There are two monads: the city of Vegas and the Mojave desert around it. The desert is a place of a fierce allegiance and antagonism between the sun - which burns very fiercely in the arid air - and the rock - that strata of organic matter, a result of the permian-triassic megadeath, a graveyard of 96% of all marine species laid down 252 million years ago in the shallow seabeds that covered the area, lithified and compressed by the winds and deep time.
JB Priestley said that as you travel southwest in the united states, you become more aware of geology than of human history. you can see the levels of geological time, and the contours and fluidity of the sierra, moving like waves through vast epochs (which is after all what they are doing).
The Paiute indians communed with the gods in the cosmos, and by the position of the stars, divined to know when the minimal sustenance the desert offered would be available: pine nuts from the pinyon tree, roots, and sagebrush. And in the centre of this harsh geometric plane, there is a central node, which is Las Vegas - The Meadows.
I stopped there, or rather my writing disintegrated into the usual mess of half-legible notes and arrows &c. that represents a diffusion of thought. But if i had continued more coherently, I would have pointed out that, imagining that plane of the Mojave Desert, with its vivid night sky and cosmic holism, in which is that single point of Las Vegas, which is formed by the intersection of four very basic vectors: money, energy (namely electricity), water, desire. The manipulation of these comprises the four causes of Vegas. There is one further coherent phrase in my notebook:
The single point of connection between these two monads is the Boulder Dam, now more commonly known as the Hoover Dam, across the Colorado River.
It may also be seen as the point of conversion - taking the cosmic system of the desert and canalising it into those four elements out of which Vegas was constructed and through which it is controlled or should i say through which it controls. This is as much the case in its efficient cause as it is in its material cause: The Meadows came into being as a consequence of the vast numbers of workers brought in to create the Boulder Dam. Out of the Great Depression and Roosevelt’s New Deal, was built this Fantasy Land, designed to part people from their hard-earned dollars as efficiently as possible. To my mind the Great Depression is still present in its working. It still designed to appeal more to middle America than any notion of the high roller - all the Middle Eastern gambling takes place in Macau, I think. But what is that appeal? Maybe some people think they will go to Vegas and make it rich, but the whole thing is clearly about fulfilling desire. As such it equally clearly in its commoditised, processed verions of desire-fulfilment it represents an emptiness. I don’t mean to patronise - the obvious extent to which Vegas goes about its business with such pathological determination suggests the people who visit are, to a certain extent, happy with what it has to offer, that they recognise the facade, and that what it gives is a proxy for desire fulfilment in return for cash. It is America’s theme park, to an extent I didn’t really realise - Lauren and her husband live in Lubbock, Texas, and regularly fly to Vegas at the weekend. It astonishes me that anyone would want to do this at all regularly, but people still do. The US ability to enjoy, in all sincerity, the ersatz is impressive really, or at least very un-English. This is different from the ironic enjoyment or awareness of the kitsch in the ersatz. Having said all that, I’m sure you like me have encountered many Americans who have an equally strong desire to consume that dangerous commodity, so auctioned by Old Europe - authenticity.
As for the material causes, the Boulder Dam generates the electricity (much of this is i believe sold to California, which then sells it back to Vegas O_o), and the water from Lake Mead. This water needs chlorinating because it needs constant recycling to irrigate the Meadows with its pleasure fountains and pools. The heavenly mirage of the oasis comes at a huge exertion of energy sucked out of nature. The infernal equivalent in the desert is the dust devil raised out of a compact of convecting desert heat and wind to raise a whirlwind of dust above the ground.
As is well known, I believe, Las Vegas negates the organic diurnal rhythms into a perpetual neon, oxygenated twilight in order to keep people gambling. I’d walk through the casinos listening to DAMN., across the grimy soft carpets, taking in the smell and texture of chlorine, ionized fag smoke, the chill of the aircon, ceilings painted like skies. The same mechanisms Vegas pioneered have since long been used in supermarkets and in all sorts of areas designed to optimise the ability to extract cash. Now many of the physical mechanisms seem quaint, with newer, more sophisticated mechanisms and algorithms sinking into the structures behind society and manipulating desire in ways harder to perceive than the gaudy excess of Vegas. As I say it seems almost innocent. And there is always an advantage to crudely set out versions of the mechanisms that control our lives in more sophisticated and hidden ways.
The architecture is of course, in rather raw sense of the word, incredible. It reminds me of a science-fiction short story, where a doomed planet was forced to emigrate to another, fresher planet, suitable for existence. First they sent the engineers, who perished on landing, in a crash, then they sent the anthropologists, to recreate the cultural landscape - they also perished, and so on. Finally they sent the blue-collar workers, who created a bizarre fantasy world that represented their image of the world they had come from. So Vegas, as you know. Excalibur has knights in armour, kilted Scottish lairds, maids in dirndles, Robin Hood, and Celtic trappings, Paris has the Eiffel Tower jammed in it and quaint 19th century facades, Venice is all hispanic gondaliers and chlorine. (It is interesting that the Trump Hotel is the only hotel where its theme is itself). Behind these frontages are those huge car parks, separate ones for staff and for patrons, themselves the true backdrop of US desire. They’re beginning to have to charge for the use of car parks, one sign among many that Vegas is in decline.
As far as I can tell one area it still continues to do well from is business conferences. I think it’s the largest conference facility in the US. And of course the answer to the question ‘Why Vegas?’ is because business was always the domain of men and so basically it was the place they could go to booze, get laid and gamble. According to a colleague, even comparatively recently (like in the last 20 years) some clients still expected to be taken to brothels. In fact, I don’t know why I’m so naive - I’m sure that still happens.
I know I’ve gone on at length, but this is the backdrop for NAB. It is, to my mind, all non-trivially weird and calculating at the same time. There is, as I say, a nauseating pathology to it all, especially when it comes to the cynicism of the corporate side. The male gaze is totally legitimised there. Men are released from the daily bullshit of having to pretend, and exchange conspiratorial glances and innuendo. That almost tactile male atmosphere a friend mentioned in corporate offices becomes a disgustingly thick fug, and you are treated with bare contempt if you are not the sort of person to enter into it. I do not want to come across as a blowhard puritan, but there is something about the rotten core of male business that gets exposed here. What am I saying, it exposes itself.
When you get to NAB on the first day it’s all still being put up - the chipboard stands will, in 24 hours, be glittering with encrusted media technology. It is all as flimsy and gimcrack as hell of course, like everything else here, including people’s egos.
There was a passage that struck me with great but enigmatic force in Gerhard Scholem’s account of his friendship with Walter Benjamin: Among the books he [Benjamin] read in connection with this seminar was Daniel Paul Schreber’s Denkwürdigkeiten eines Nervenkranken [Memoirs of a neuropath], which appealed to him far more than Freud’s essay on it. He also induced me to read Schreber’s book, which contained very impressive and pregnant formulations. From a salient passage in this book Benjamin derived the designation “flüchtig hingemachte Männer” [hastily put-up men]. Schreber, who at the height of his paranoia believed for a time that the world had been destroyed by “rays” hostile to him, gave this as an anaswer when it was pointed out to him that the doctors, patients, and employees of the insane asylum obviously existed. Flüchtig hingemachte Männer. I would like to know what Benjamin so designated by this phrase. It seems to me incredibly useful. So useful, that it’s tempting to use it for every damn person you come across in the office or at an event like this. And yet it means more than just empty or fraudulent. There is of course the notion of a deception, not an individual deception, but structural, organised deception. But there is more than just the notion of the Potemkin Village, designed to assure anyone reviewing the event that all is well. It is a structural deception designed to undermine a sense of reality. It is a sort of power-structure gaslighting, which will imply insanity for anyone who doubts it. With the façades of Vegas, the temporary shanty town of media technology, the trouser-hoisting, proud droit-de-seigneur surveillance of the men,mutually assuring each other of their power and feeble, fragile virility, it was a phrase that continually ocurred to me, with a sort of haunting hypnosis.
And DAMN. went from being something which seemed totally, socially rich and democratic to something that felt incredibly protective. I heard no Kendrick in Las Vegas. I’d put in my headphones and I’d find space to breathe. I remember listening to LUST on the monorail, with its line 'might as well overheat’ and thinking yes, just let go, stop trying to control it, just overheat, let the pain overtake you, let it overcome you, stop trying to control it, allow it to annihilate you - it was also incredibly hot outside of course - and I just felt a sense of tranquility, and of distance from it all. At this point the entire album seemed to ward off the bad spirits of Vegas. It was private, and contained within it the world that I’d seen in San Francisco.
@nhl is expanding to Vegas this year and thought I’d take a stab at designing a concept jersey for the new ‘Black Knights’. I’ve always been a big fan of simplistic designs with minimal piping and color, so this was pretty fun. I made the eye slits of the helmet upside down hockey sticks and the piping is based on layered armor without trying to get too complicated. #NHL #lasvegas #blackknights #hockey #design #conceptart #nhlexpansion
Hi! My name is Asia. I create my own form of art. I make custom ashtrays. All of them are $30. I do ship EVERYWHERE. Pls message me if interested and share with others. :) ❤️
Me hopping on a flight without rocking my own brand is like traveling without a neck pillow… the worse sh*t ever || #TheeFashioneer #Fashioneered #LasVegas #Monochromatic #LinkInBio (at Las Vegas (airport))
To my sister-momma, my role model, my “boys are dumb” let’s get this shmoney, my confidant, my inspiration…. Congrats on 10 years of marriage so glad to be you & @princeofpeds’s honorary third wheel! Just imagine so many more moments and trips i can invite myself on || #TheeFashioneer #FancyFreeHair #WoodsCelebrate10 #LasVegas (at The Viva Las Vegas Wedding Chapel)
When the Great Depression started, Nevada’s mines were decreasing, and its economy was in decline. Motivated to lift the state out of hard times and population flight, on March 19, 1931, the Nevada state legislature responded by voting to legalize gambling. This legislation allowed Las Vegas, Nevada, to become the gambling and entertainment capital of the world that we know today.
Las Vegas is not only famous for its gambling and casinos, but also its nightclubs and sporting events, which combined overall revenues currently account for most of Nevada’s taxes. To spotlight this occasion, we would like to share with you these photographs of Las Vegas relating to America’s Byways.
