As you might know, today is the 10th anniversity of Kurt Cobain’s suicide. I mention it, as his life and death have significant resonance for me, as they likely do for many people of that generation. Today, coincidentally or not, I am finishing discussion of Internet Invention, my second semester teaching this book. I am using it this time in a grad class, and it seems to be going better, perhaps because the students are stronger or perhaps because I have a better sense of what to expect. It is the Nirvana song “Heart-Shaped Box” that provides the epigram for my emblem, forever in debt to your priceless advice. This line, delivered with Cobain’s signature irony, links my motto (Deleuze’s proclamation, “I have nothing to admit”) with the twisted highway desert scene of my emblem.

The desert highway carries the American values of the frontier, of freedom, that notion of the “American Adam” captured by the Marlboro cowboy that Ulmer discusses. This is the cultural “default” mood of this scene. But it cannot help communicating its syncretic possibilities. If the desert signifies cowboys, it also signifies Indians and colonization. It suggests the possibility of secret knowledge, of going out into the desert to have a vision: a practice that stretches from the Native American SouthWest to the Judeo-Christian-Muslim deserts of the Middle East. In addition, I have added effects to the picture to conote the traditional mirage-effect of the desert, as well as the experience of speeding along the highway. Perhaps this is also simulation, Baudrillard’s “desert of the real” famously quoted in The Matrix. So the desert is itself a riddle, an aporia. However, if the desert is a site of “vision,” as well as an emblem of American freedom and individuality, it is also a tool of cultural orientation.

As Deleuze and Guattari note in Anti-Oedipus, the desert vision becomes the focal point of messianic, paranoid despotism. It is also the site of confession, where we face our inner demons as well as our god(s). So here is my response, to state, ironically, my indebtedness to their “priceless advice.” And to proclaim, in the face of confession, that “I have nothing to admit.” Again, in the words of Deleuze, “to be done with judgment.” throw down your umbilical noose, so I can climb right back