One, when addressing another from a distance, either in space or time, turns inwards; an act of self-obsession—but the other does not disappear thusly, and, in fact, calling the meaning of the relation a ‘turning inward’, the presupposing of a Cartesian ontology,^[1] is itself a mistaken use of language (or at least, does not mean a metaphor which denies being together). Authentic relation will be understood as it presents itself in the ideal of the gift, that idea which cannot ever fulfill its yearning for altruism, that idea which seems to lapse into self-interest, self-obsession, particularly as it emerges through the language of invented cultural objects, that is, postcards and harmolodics, those arbitrary mediums which will be understood themselves as culture’s gifts, our ways of saying: ‘you’.^[2]

It should be clear that the analysis won’t pertain to the relevant acts of communication themselves (whether that be love or art, depending on the circumstance, or else the interpretation, of the piece), but to the peculiar oddness each invented artifact has about it, the nature of its necessary imprint on the given act of reaching out to another. (This is an investigation into the possibility of communication through distance with artifacts, the analysis of those artifact’s meaning to the relevant communication. Not disclosed here will be the possibility of having an authentic relation in physical and temporal nearness, but neither will its possibility be assumed, or its character weighed against that of writing or music.)

Of Ornette Coleman, Jennifer Herrema of Royal Trux^[3] writes: “his journey was not dry, didactic or scholarly in nature it was musical in nature… leading by example… never stopping… and playing music until the day he died” (par. 5). As the primary objects of ‘scrutiny’ here are earnest attempts at meaningful human relation, all of which belong(ed)^[4] to individuals or groups who, to me, seem to understand the immense difficulty such a project might be in actuality, it must be made clear that I cannot pass judgment on their ability to reach me. Nor can I know with certainty, especially having never known them personally, whether or not I stand in relation to these works’ authors or else to invented characters (invented by whom, I would be even less the expert to say). Further, as objects which mean either love or art, whatever, objects which wish to communicate, which have a particular ‘you’, the mistaken, or perhaps even sinister and selfish—no, the mistaken writer might foolishly twist the words and intentions of the investigated works to create whatever fantasy-reality suits them best. So it is left to the reader, I humbly ask, to proceed with a stern eye, but also a merciful one: with care for all of those who wish to say: “you.”

Derrida, in La Carte Postale,^[5] ^[6] writes of gifts: “pas de don, without a b s o l u t e forgetting (qui t'absolve aussi du don and of the dose), forgetting of what you give, to whom, why and how, of what you remember about it or hope. A gift, if there is one, ne se destine plus” (p.167). ‘A gift, if there is one,’ no longer has, or, has lost, its intention, its destiny/destination, and in a sense, has lost its meaning. Then there is no gift which exists among humanity, in human relations, for the notion of the gift implies a gift giver and another who receives, or simply, it implies the conscious act of giving; here, the gift is necessarily subsumed into a network of transactions, and the fundamental character of the gift, altruism, is lost. In the giver’s forgetting, the gift is absolved of an owner, becomes its ideal, but then also it breaks, loses its essential gift-like quality, that is, that it is given.The French don makes clear, or in its ambiguity, it discloses, the paradox between gift and giving; both are contained within it, as don and donn(er), coming out of Latin’s word for gift; dōnum.^[7] But dōnum’s gift was also one which meant an offering, a sacrifice for the gods, or else, in human relations, a funeral offering. In these ancient roots one sees the clear imprint of mythology,^[8] but also the inherent paradox of giving as it stands in relation to a debt, to owing, and to repaying; with the funeral offering, one gives to another who no longer is, who can no longer give or receive. Here, one makes a gesture of acknowledging that impossible sum (infinite) of meaning the other had conferred, the death crystallizing the imbalance, revealing the paradox.

In English, dōnum becomes ‘donation’, a word whose meaning carries an intention of altruism, but which also implies a certain imbalanced relation in its implication of the mediator-institution of a charity, in its being a giving which has in it already the receiving of silent, invented; thanks. It should be made clear that the gift is not merely a present, cadeau, although it might take that form, but any act which is in some way a pure giving which sustains itself, makes itself known through time, beyond the favour. When ‘gift’ is said, then, it is taken to mean, after Derrida, don, in all its latent impossibilities.

Derrida’s definition—if one might call it that, the words emerging in a flash, out of a love letter, informal, a definition already so elusive disguised further behind the invisible addressee—that definition is itself coming from a theory of the giver. One might ask: “what of the receiver, who quietly enjoys this gift, whose world is made whole in that tender act of relation?” First; after Buber’s proof, this pure relation only transpires in bubbling moments, in flashes—the gift persists. And the crude giver, even in their earnest giving, and even in the gift’s being received with gratitude, with an open and honest heart, the giver’s relation to the transaction, non-altruism, exists not only in the gift’s being, ontologically, but also in the social relation, the real manifestation of the gift, ontically. Around the Christmas tree, the celebration of the the holiday which means “on Earth peace, and goodwill toward men,” (at least on the popular translation),^[9] presents are exchanged; peace is a transactional affair (Luke 2:14). The parent’s giving to the child, life and care, that kind of gift which cannot ever be balanced out in an even exchange, is repaid by the child in their becoming a parent, the chains of a never ending promise. It is understood inversely, too, the child’s giving to the parent is repaid in their having a child someday.

And then one might wish to ask: “what of God?” And here I know less than nothing, for we are coming from a theory of the giver; I worry that, through this perspectival analysis, an answer to this question would require an adopting of dogmatics, the assumption of a subject called God, of access to the nature of this subject in its own, perspectival being.^[10] Instead, coming from a theory of the receiver, one might ask: is the trace to be understood as a gift, or can it be? Beginning with human affairs, in other words: is the gift absolved in its giver’s disappearance, in forgetting, or death?

Where one asks: “who left this here? And is it for me?,” when one realizes the (unpaid) translator or editor’s hand in the book, one is surely indebted. And asking this after discovering the abandoned hut in the forest, one is surely indebted after using it for rest, for one takes, or even, steals. But where one has awareness of that which was unassumingly left; this is no longer a gift. And so, insofar as one has an awareness of another’s handing, even unintentionally, some kernel of meaning, some kind of help, either explicitly, directly, or unintentionally through time, the gift enters into the transactional relation. And so it seems to follow with God, or at least, with the Christian God; “for the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord,” or simply remembered as; Jesus died for our sins (Romans 6:23).

“I've started to reread, to sort, to dig around in the box (mon premier gift, tout de suite elle n'a plus suffi),” and notice the English word, not don but neither cadeau (Derrida p.201). It seems then that gifts are only truly such, only actualize their ideal when invisible, and then are no longer even gifts. But there is a sense, on Derrida’s account, that in one’s yearning for the gift to mean an unconditional ‘you’, its potentiality is reached towards in self-obsession, that is, where he writes, impassioned, and sends her his gifts: postcards.

Now, it must be made clear the relation between a mode of communication and a gift, and in what way postcards are to be understood as both. Evidently, as writing, the postcard wishes to communicate. Postcards become understood explicitly as gifts, then, not necessarily in their individual physical being or in their literally being given—although these are both qualities of the particular kind of gift it is (a postcard)—but particularly in their yearning for earnest altruism; the gift is any given thing which yearns for existence away from transaction. The postcard is purchased, written, and sent, all for the other, for the other to have, and for the other to keep.

Postcards are both a gift and a written ‘you’, and in this way it might be said: “that gifts, as the yearning for altruism, for an equality, are themselves a mode of saying ‘you’.” The category of gift, though, does not then mean ‘relation’, but it is because one loves, one finds oneself in a relation, that one wishes to give, to show their love in the altruistic act. Particularly, it is because the postcard does not necessitate a response (the postcard sender is often moving, diasporic fragments of the sender’s travels) that it is understood as a gift. This is the great confusion of the postcard: that it is both a gift, which is a mode of saying ‘you’, and also a written ‘you’.

Again: it is not in the act of giving that the human relation exists, but in the yearning for an authentic gift, in that sharing a gift which has earnest meaning, in the acceptance of it, the destruction of any transaction in love (again, only in a flash, the flower blooms and dies in less than a moment!), because of the truth of human relation, that one might ever wish to give. The paradox is not herein solved, by any means, but the meaning of the gift, of action which means relation, is defined, and the ritual understood.

A brief account of the invention of the postcard, for isn’t it an odd thing to have been invented, and surely it must have come out of some ethereal cultural heritage, so instead, a genealogy: but in fact, it was invented by a certain individual,^[11] ^[12] though history transformed and shaped it, made it into whatever a ‘postcard’ means today. And though the postcard was invented by an individual, it’s existence as a genuine, or at least, reliable form of postal communication was contingent on its becoming allowed by the national, and, perhaps most importantly, international postal services; you can send a postcard to anyone, from anywhere, it will be accepted by the institution (a bureaucracy for the people!).

At the invention of the postcard, a flat object had two sides which, without alteration to the object, could each only be seen alone—and still today, the postcard has two sides—but in the very being, the invented postcard had no sides at all. The postcard was produced only as it was allowed to be sent, and so the invention of the postcard meant only one side with an image, and then the other with an address; really, this postcard is nothing. In this shipped object, the being of the relation is never encompassed in the mass-produced image, unless, by some miracle it captures the relation with some in-joke, but even then, it is only a well picked, (found), gift.

It is in the (benevolent) act of allowing for the image to be appropriated, in the early 20th century, in the postal service’s allowing for a writing on the side opposite the image, that the postcard becomes as it is, becomes two sides; it becomes something private and public, a gift and a written ‘you’. The one side, of course, is a gift, the other the relation—not really! Actually, the writing necessarily stands in relation to the image, the given topic, whether explicitly or not, comes from the image, or moves away from the image, but always intertwined. When one sees the perfect postcard image at the tourist shop’s stand, one is really seeing the one one wishes to write for, the relation is here also. And so, though the postcard has two sides, it is also a whole. It is an allegory for circumstance, the promise of real relation despite the neverending odds against it.^[13]

This appropriation becomes the private relation which stands in the open; the famous American jazz musician playing with a mystery European, the image from a public concert—the broken bug-car at the oceanside getaway spot—the two children eating ice cream among Spanish architecture—all these postcards sent to me which mean something, and made more than a mere recollection in their being appropriated, that is, revitalized and contextualized in the other side’s writing. And then the private-public sense of the sender’s words, too, travelling in post, visible and then hidden behind the secret passcode, being the special ‘you’ for whom the message is sent. But of course, the postcard’s artist and the mischievous message-reader are not somehow then excluded—we are not all intimate, not all lovers! One is never expected to see an advertisement and become weak at the knees in a magic moment of earnest human relation, but that the billboard can mean something at all; this is the real, overlooked magic that is everyday happenings. ^[14] ^[15]

The postcard is a gift given to us, given by Theodore Hook—whether intentionally a gift, or not, it is a part of his being which presses itself on our world, his being which has been appropriated to mean something special, a genuine mode of communication—or at least that is what I am led to believe after some amateur research, but then it is also given by so many others, and the exhaustive list is an impossibility; one is forever indebted.

Derrida, in a sense, is one of those ‘many others’, developing the postcard in publishing them an ode, revealing them as they are, sharing with us his secret love (both for his lover, and his postcards). The thread I wish to follow here is that of the postcard’s selfishness, its having an intense ‘I’, to ask: ‘what of this force against relation, of this distance between two people?’ If the gift yearns to say ‘you’, if it is the desire to show a ‘you’, then why does one turn away from one’s love, towards the writing desk, and further, how can one have a you in writing, across spatio-temporal distance? One finds the answer in the realization of the self in the act of writing; there is a sense in which the gift of the postcard is an enduring ‘you’, crystallized in writing, ready to be ‘forgotten’, if only for a moment, in that act of relation, in this case, in the act of reading.

And further, in turning away and writing for that ‘you’, in the self-obsessive, asocial act of writing, not only is the ‘I’ found for the writer to transcribe and discover, but the ‘you’ emerges too: “and just as you often give me the word without knowing it, again it is you who are writing the history, it is you who are dictating while at the same time I apply myself chewing on my tongue, letter after letter, without ever turning around” (p.13).

Derrida, who spent all his time writing, once interviewed,^[16] in speech and in a language second to him, Ornette Coleman, the musician who invented harmolodics, what the critics named ‘free jazz’, a musician who was made, his whole life, to ‘speak’ on his music, to legitimize his art—it comes as no surprise that the interview is, unless its tone was so shattered after being translated twice (from English to French back to English), a shining example of human non-relation. There seems to be an infinite chasm between each person, both communicating in a bizarre (to them) medium. Further, the circumstance of speaking, and more precisely, of interviewing, is alien to both participants; Derrida’s role is made almost impossible in using a second language with one who is, in race and nationality and primary medium of communication (music/harmolodics and writing/philosophy), different, although he does try and draw a parallel between them through these categories. In the end, however, the title of the interview is apt in suggesting that Coleman is therein made an other. But enough about the interview (a segue in shambles!).

Harmolodics are, as Coleman describes in that interview, the “manufacturing of [the particular group of musicians’] own words, with a precise idea of what [they] want [those] words to mean to people” (p.321). The relating of this music to ‘words’ and to ‘meaning’, apart from the hope that his music might speak in his place (which, if anyone were to listen, does^[17]) indicates precisely that, as Royal Trux writes;^[18] “harmolodics describes a possibility of relationships.” Like the postcard which has no thesis, is written by hand without space for error, Coleman’s music is generally improvised; it is a reflection of the self, a searching ‘inward’ to communicate. (Where one might generalize and call improvised music selfish, self-interested, one hardly thinks to then name a meaningful postcard from a loved one an exercise in conceit.) And though the music does share the shades of jazz or funk instrumentations, it sounds independent, free from genre apart from its own designation. His music is, though difficult for some to digest, by almost all accounts, a success.

And while Coleman invented a music with his particular techniques which allowed for ‘a possibility of relationships’, the possibility to have a relationship in other, oppressive musical traditions is strangled by the structures that define these genres. Royal Trux, who make self described “harmolodic rock and roll,” acknowledge the tyranny the rock and roll genre embodies on music as communication, because of its codification, and make it their meaning to reconcile their paradoxical ideal. They begin the liner notes: “First, let me begin by thanking everyone who has ever made money off of Royal Trux,” which is an intentionally roundabout, maybe poetic way to say; ‘thank you for helping lessen that necessary transactional burden of playing (after performing, after giving) rock & roll’ (Singles, Live, Unreleased). Their music is, though challenging at times, by almost all accounts, a success.

But this is all a rather messy introductory remark to the relatively quickly-said analysis of their ‘tribute’ to Ornette Coleman, written and published after his death, their way to say ‘thank you’: they are entirely indebted, two musician’s written offerings which mean eternal respect. But, though they make clear their gratitude to the inventor of harmolodics who allowed them a means of earnest communication, they show nothing but disrespect from the invisible cultural artifact they themselves make meaningful, that is, rock and roll.

In obsessing over one’s ‘I’, one finds one’s ‘you’ in the other (and in this way, the ‘other’ disappears), and so one becomes an other’s crystallized ‘you’, too; relation. I hope that it is clear by now that one is constantly entangled with cultural artifacts, which are in their being used, invisible, to have a relation. One is always getting help, and it is in the analyzing of these gifts from humanity that we are fulfilling the paradox of gifts, making them un-gifts, entering into the transactional relation. Really, it is the air we breathe, that which is invisible to us, that is really ever a gift, those cultural artifacts which allow our movements, those things whose investigation is impossible for us to ever see, beyond genealogical analysis, which fulfill the ideal of the gift. And so too for the possibility of relation; once it becomes the object of analysis, it breaks and crumbles, but this never prevents one, unless one is to become obsessed with this analysis, this never prevents one from going out into the world and meeting another in their being.

It is in this sense that one, after discovering that giver, that they are indebted—but in this sense, one can say, give (back) thanks—the postcard, harmolodics, neverending chains, relations.

Arthur Russell, who obsessed over and invented a self contained, independent ‘world of echo’,^[19] sings: “Where you see where it is, but don’t know where it is, [...] I’m putting everything around you, over by you, Now I’m hiding your, your present from you,” and one, after hearing these vague words, might say: ‘here is the entire meaning of the pamphlet!’ and the writer would be in absolute agreement—both, here, could be entirely wrong, and still would be right.

[4] Not ‘(ed)’ as in “they are now dead, unable to claim their stake,” but ‘(ed)’ as in: having sent off their work, their darlings, into the invisible public world, one might ask if they are owners any longer, or at least, what it means for an artifact to belong or to have belonged to someone.

[10] Assumed Cartesianism again, what a nasty habit!—as another kind of proof, a Heideggerian analysis might read: the gift is an ontic-ontological affair for Dasein, arising out of her/his togetherness with others in the world. As such, the designation of a ‘giver’ is inherently human, and cannot, without prior analysis, be attributed to God. Gibberish until utopia.

[15] Quickly, meaning through the impasse of culture and language, persisting despite it all in Angel’s Egg: because the film itself has a cross cultural being, is the result of its writer/director’s falling out of Chrstianity, it lies before us in this paradoxical beauty. After the Tower of Babel, Japan developed almost entirely independently, a peculiar language and tradition only somewhat shadowing China and other neighbouring countries. A Christian anime—anime’s genesis already being the transliteration of animation, evolving into its own distinct entity—what happens after so much translation? And that story of Babel, which tells that “they may not understand one another's speech,” which perhaps promises the impossibility of translation (and especially between languages from opposing corners of the earth!) answers: babel (Genesis 11:7). But perhaps the story of Babel means to say, instead, that the tower humanity will henceforth break themselves building is that of relation: relation through translation, and even through conversation, writing, and postcards (etc.). The image of the postcard is never automatically understood—but in writing on it, it is still made meaningful in a real way, and for the reader too, especially in repetition. As with Angel’s Egg, as with Oshii and Christianity; and for him, that act of repetition brings real meaning: he found nihilism, which is a ‘European invention’, after all! “[R]eread before burning, so be it, in order to incorporate the letter (like a member of the resistance under torture) and to talce it in him by heart " (p.60).