15. A Short Thesis on How Jamie Bourdon Has Altered My Brain Patterns

This scientific document is dated November 20, 2006.

Let's start with a rudimentary diagram of the flow of thoughts through my brain in the last five minutes.

1. Nabokov--> 2. Google--> 3. G Mail --> 4. My ex-boyfriend --> 5. The Edogawa River --> 6. My friend Jack--> 7. Modern Aesthetics--> 8. Cremaster 5 --> 9. Jamie Bourdon

1. As do most thought patterns, mine began with a visual stimulus, in this case, the silvery spine of "The Short Stories of Vladimir Nabokov.

2. Instantly, I recall, "The Vane Sisters," which I read last night. Feeling that something was funny about the last paragraph, I flipped to the corresponding "Notes" entry and confirmed the story's acrostic ending. I spent approximately five seconds trying to tease out the meaning on my own, then instantly turned to the internet. (Thank you, Google, for making it so easy for me not to think.)

3. And of course, once I got thinking about Google, I was compelled to check my email.

4. Which contained a letter from my ex-boyfriend. "Come to California," it said. Enclosed, was a photo of TuPac.

5. Wishing to respond in kind, I replied with a photo I had taken on our last visit to the Edogawa River, near my apartment in Japan.

6. Which swept me, through some Joyceian deluge, to my friend Jack (who, like the ex, has a J name and is very tall and has a fine brain stuffed full of strange notions) and his unfaltering belief in...

7. Modern aesthetics. I used to spend a great deal of time thinking about modern aesthetics, flatness, and the like, having been a rather devout disciple of Immanuel Kant (via, at times, Clement Greenberg). But after reading "The Abuse of Beauty," by A. Danto this summer, I ceased my formalist fascism. And now, when I think of the aesthetic codes governing my life, I often think of Matthew Barney.

8. Including Cremaster 5, which I watched not so long ago. In September, I spent hours watching The Cremaster Cycle, only ceasing after I started having nightmares about foggy hills and shiny dead horses.

9. And then, for whatever reason, I thought of how much I hate Jamie Bourdon. Why, God, why, does Jamie Bourdon now follow Matthew Barney in the wheel of my memory's rote recall?

The explanation, I hope, is more Pavlovian than Freudian.