Harik, SANAM, Sametou Sawtan (Constellation Records)

“Right now you’re reading about free will. You’re free to go on reading, or stop now. You’ve started on this sentence, but you don’t have to………finish it.”
—Galen Strawson, “Luck Swallows Everything” in Things That Bother Me

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about deliberation.

There are subtle pronunciation differences and yet no change in spelling in the two most common uses of the term ‘deliberate.’

First is the verb: to deliberate. This word is pronounced ‘deliber-8’ and means to arrive at some form of conclusion about a problem or question. For instance, to deliberate is what a jury does after hearing legal arguments and examining evidence before establishing a judgment.

Second is the adjective: deliberate. This word is pronounced ‘deliber-@’ and simply denotes an act performed with intention. For instance, a premeditated murder is deliberate homicide. Its connotation is often negative, differentiating the action from something unconscious or accidental.

The verb ‘deliberate’ implies the passage of time. Juries are usually sequestered and allowed a determined period to reach a verdict. However, the adjective ‘deliberate’ does not imply any time at all. A murderer can deliberately kill someone in a split second, no deliberation required.

The word ‘deliberate’ is derived from the Latin language. At its heart is Liber, meaning the god of male fertility, wine, and freedom. The suffix ‘-ate’ means ‘an abundance.’ Passion-ate denotes an abundance of passion; consider-ate implies an excess of consideration. Thus, liberate suggests a wealth of freedom.

But the prefix ‘de-’ in Latin means ‘apart from’ or ‘away.’ So, deliberate literally means far from an abundance of freedom. Consequently, deliberation seems to suggest the paradoxical absence of free will in the nonetheless conscious performance of an act.

When the Orange Cheeto, with reference to America’s involvement in military action in support of Israel against Iran, says, “I like to make the final decision one second before it’s due,” this implies the rarest and most dangerous case of deliberation — a deliberate act that is de facto void of temporal contemplation, intentional carnage in absence of any meaningful forethought.

No Bystanders, Frantz Patrick Henry, Fonderie Darling, 19 June – 17 August 2025

“There are no innocent bystanders … what are they doing there in the first place?”
—William S. Burroughs, Exterminator!

Some people believe that we see what we’re looking for. This suggests that the world always meets our expectations. If you trust that people are generally inherently good, you will generally see the inherent goodness in people. If you think that people are generally inherently bad, generally, you won’t be disappointed.

Black Ox Orkestar, Matana Roberts, Erika Angell, and Sam Shalabi Septet, Théâtre de Verdure, 14 June 2025

“Detonating the bomb is like pushing the button that takes the selfie. At that moment, the imaginary world is in charge, for the real world, with all its discrimination and hopelessness, is no longer worth living in.”
—Byung-Chul Han, “Torturous Emptiness,” in Capitalism and the Death Drive

War is the most perverse form of self-harm — the injury of the Other in order to encourage the Other to injure us in retaliation. Narcissism is the flipside of the self-harm coin and provides the impetus for national conflict. We love our identity to such a degree that we fear annihilation and therefor attack the Other to inspire vengeance, thus self-harming. By this logic, the aggressor is able to claim victimhood as a justification to attack.

In the 21^st century, the U.S. rebooted this franchise with its pre-emptive strike on Iraq because of a supposed cache of weapons of mass-destruction that turned out not to exist. Israel’s insistence that Iran’s uranium enrichment capabilities will inevitably lead to a nuclear weapon is a subtler rationale and requires circuitous reasoning.

It is not logical to say that if Iran enriches uranium, it will use it to manufacture nuclear weapons. It is, however, logical to say that destroying Iran’s uranium enrichment capabilities will prevent Iran from producing nuclear weapons.

Rick Leong, The Night Blooms, Bradley Ertaskiran, 15 May – 5 July 2025

“This democracy thing is easy—you just vote for the guy who promises you the most stuff. An idiot could do it. Actually it likes idiots, treats them with apparent kindness, and does everything it can to manufacture more of them.”
—Nick Land, “Cross-Coded History,” in The Dark Enlightenment

The technical invention of cinematography in the late 19^th century enabled the mass dissemination of images. It also revolutionized acting.

Prior to cinema, theatre set the standard for drama. And the conventions of theatre were to play to the back of the room, i.e. to overemphasize and enunciate and dramatize every movement, every line.

The motion picture camera, though, was able to capture and magnify the minutia of behaviour, recording every detail, every gesture. It took some time to figure this out, and consequently, the majority of early cinema by today’s criteria looks stagey.

I claim that the trajectory started to reverse with the introduction of television. The shrinking of the screenic image meant that actors once again had to overact to convey cinematic sentiment on a diminutive scale. There was a momentary détente during the so-called golden age of TV with productions like The Sopranos and other prestige fare. But the process redoubled in speed as screens shrunk to laptop and then to smartphone size.

The sitting U.S. president arose as an outsize television personality, achieving celebrity status on late-night talk shows and his own reality series. Today, he has honed his overblown persona for TikTok, going bigly-er than ever before.

Quinton Barnes, Black Noise album launch, Casa del Popolo, 19 June 2025

“The idea of the future, pregnant with an infinity of possibilities, is thus more fruitful than the future itself, and this is why we find more charm in hope than in possession, in dreams than in reality.”
― Henri Bergson, Time and Free Will

‘Knowledge is power’ is a common adage. This axiom presupposes that the acquisition of knowledge — through higher education and life experience — will bestow upon the learner increasing measures of agency in the world.

But what if power is antecedent, not knowledge? That would suggest, rather, that information is produced by systems and networks that exert power in culture and society.

And what exerts power?

In today’s world? Money and violence are likely the most powerful observable culprits. But still, we have not quite located the precise root source of power. There is only one force capable of manufacturing ex nihilo money and violence and therefore knowledge, and that power is time.◼︎

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_{Cover image: Rick Leong, Spell of the Sensuous, 2025, Oil on canvas 182.9 x 182.9 cm. Photographed for NicheMTL.}