Paparazzi Ethnography

7/3: Tristan Mermin flew into Oslo from the Bay Area and we spent the week traveling the town and the surrounds, discussing our respective work, its limitations and possibilities.

It was an opportunity to speak endlessly.

We did more. We played tennis near our flat in Majorstuen, checked out the view from the top of Holmenkollen‘s championship ski jump, went swimming at Drøbak (40 minute drive from town), rented a car to catch a party in Farsund (nearly ten-hour drive to southern-est Norway), strolled the weekend flea market two steps from our front door, attended an Oslo party for Norway’s Miss Universe, toured the Viking and Kon-Tiki Museums and Royal Palace — and of course, hit restaurants and bars – dinners at Kafe Oslo Litteraturhuset, Hotel Havana, Olivia Hegdehaugsvei, drinks at Aku-Aku Tiki bar, Andy’s sportspub and pianobar, Bjoerungs, snacking in Marmaris Pizza & Grill Grunerløkka, Åpent Bakeri in Majorstua, Kaffebrenneriet, a bowl of cherries from Vestkanttorget after our tennis match, and Mabou nightclub where I always wanted to visit. In one discussion, I was reminded of my drafted manuscript titled Eureka Moment as Knowledge-Event Product, from which I read several paragraphs to Tristan, because of our interest in the role of commerce in the delivery of inspiration. We laughed aloud.

I had suggested a new type of advisory service titled the Eureka knowledge-event or EKE. Eureka knowledge-events (EKE) are delivered personally to clients in the form of an idea to create entrepreneurial thought for seizing opportunity. Responses to EKE are expressions of sudden awareness (wow, I’ve got it!).

The EKE, I suggested, connects forms of expectation associated with commercialized labor to experiences associated with a personal calling or vocation.

Upon its reading I pulled the manuscript for revision.

Within several days and during our stay, I received a manuscript request from Journal of Business Anthropology, to which I suggested the planned revised article.I also had a chance to describe my recent attendance at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF), the Davos of Russia. Describing how I capture the back-stage scene, Tristan pointed out the gravitational-pull creating activities that typify the event, including the concentric circle security patterns that define the heightened sense of excitement during attendance.

Attending keynote speeches, Russian President Vladimir Putin and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, requires high security identification badges, without which, I noticed several slipping through the turnstile by walking alongside another attendee with the appropriate ID, a tactic for getting a closer look at the power holders.We delved into recent activities of Tristan as owner of the brand Batiste Rum, an ultra-delicious, ultra-premium rum that he discovered during his travels throughout the Caribbean.

His stories of exploring the region, tasting, negotiating with different rum producers is fascinating, and I plan to invite myself to accompany him on a St. Barts Island adventure.Tristan reminded me also of the need for exercise and how all anxieties as toxins could be flushed through the system from just some running around, an life-balance reminder.

Did I mention how accomplished a tennis player Tristan has become, actually knocking me flat on my back with one of his first serves after I failed to dodge the ball. After the game, all things appeared to us even more cheery and clear.
We spent considerable time talking of excellence and the importance of interrogating the epistemological core of one’s object to identify in full the points around which what governs survival emerges.

I could not help acting particularly intense, and referred to means-ends causality in the form of a quote by King Louis IX of France, cited in Norbert Elias‘ Court Society, “beware of hope, a bad guide,” which I carry with me at all times, as reminder of that science is politics by other means.
We went into depth on topics relating of charisma and reflexivity, of humility and of vanity projects and whether second acts can provide an authentic experience and of a shift from wealth creation to commodity flows, and of the importance of protecting cash flow over securing the stability of wealth coming under continued threat.

We referred to Oslo itself, as a town that reflects, in fact, a city-wide country club, with its public tennis courts and swimming pools, its Royal Palace, museums and gardens, with its street cars that directly take you past the city’s best restaurants and clubs, and the streets themselves, with domiciles that represent, in miniature, sections of various European cities.

It was perhaps Belvedere writ large and public –but with all the actual prices of participation reaching so far into the stratosphere so as to impose limits of entry for only those who can afford the city’s often outrageous cost of living.
We discussed the ecology of ignorance surrounding ethical practices perceived by others and whether or not it makes any difference to provide feedback upon projects in which others simply do not feel the same. I was reminded of my early work in Alaska on elites and land claims and how the work continues to stir debate long after I have moved on to more pressing questions about energy development and that what presses upon folks as the ethical may long after be forgotten by others whose actions represent casual markings within an arc of trajectory.
We discussed the lady in the forest.

We mentioned the power of denying helplessness by foregoing desire and rebuilding a life entirely without purpose within the overall structure of capitalism in which the peripheries are purposefully denied agency beyond their capacity to fuel the future through resources and labor.

Tristan pointed out the importance of “enjoyment” or “profit as you go” principle, to always recuperate the present within the strategic objective.

And here, I thought of Diogenes and the power of anecdote in corporeality of expertise, alongside all the stories in the news these days of workers in Europe living their entire lives through delayed gratification — only to wake up and realize that all their savings have vanished at the hands of  bankers who shored up their own assets by putting the accumulated labor of others on the roulette table.

The story reminded me of Henry Miller‘s mantra about the importance of pinning your last dollar to a calendar, to prove and provide a final date when destitution arrives, thereby, living fully and completely up until the last moment. We pointed to the notion of pattern recognition, especially in the context of iconography, for example, that on display at the Kon-Tiki museum, an image hangs on the wall of a photograph of a seated Kon-Tikier, wearing straw hat and strumming an acoustic guitar during their wild ride in the Ocean — suggesting some kind of leisure amidst the wild, and that this very same image, or a cropped version, holds a prominent place in the Aku-Aku Bar in Oslo, suggesting that to replicate (this) iconic form regards a marker of authenticity.

We spent time deliberating on the typology of markers that constrain and define any social field of trajectory.
In connection, we discussed narrative structures and the importance placed on markers of distinction, the wholesale distraction that accompanies the blinding light associated with awards, research grants, peer-reviewed publications and the like, and the inability to reduce the complexity of the game, particularly in academia, to a logic of practice that could result in efficiencies by any other means than personal labor.

That was my argument, at any rate, even though what-that we had tested ideas about repackaging and kicking down the food chain research articles or the wholesale management of a career by the amount of money required during a budgeted year.
We mentioned the professionalization of professionals and of expertise, essentially — the bifurcation of intellectuals into those on the one hand that would come to represent a “standing reserve” and provide added value through quantitative values (numbers of publications) and, on the other hand, experts oriented toward research outcomes that would be qualitatively measured based upon the concept of an idea.

We departed as friends.