I often listen to Graham Harman lectures as soon as they surface on the internet,

but I saved one for this morning.

*

(Below is a transcription i made a minute ago of a small part of this Harman talk;

the moment i heard him explain this, i felt a part of my self -- the self of this week in particular -- exposed,
grotesquely and beautifully, tenderly with a machete;

and more so, i am listening to the idea of this regarding relationships;

listening because i can't yet say internalizing;

i want to run from these words and to hold them up to those around me and say: See? Help me see.)

*

Things are in the background.
Once in a while they emerge into view, usually when they malfunction.

That's not the only case, but it's the usual case when we notice --
something malfunctions, it erupts into view, it becomes obtrusive.

It's what [Heidegger] calls a broken tool.
They don't have to be tools; it doesn't have to be a hammer. 

It can be anything that we're relying on that suddenly becomes visible
without our expecting it.

But Heidegger's theory of tools is a theory of broken tools:
Heidegger's theory of tools is that hammers break. 

Hammers do not do exactly what you want them to do [...]

These things happen. 

And the fact that these things happen proves that these things have a certain depth,
a certain surplus in them that was not taken account of by the smoothly functioning tool system [...]

The hammer is a fragile material thing that may have hidden cracks and fissures in it that suddenly come into play when I am using it. 

And then we realize the hammer isn't just this handy thing we thought it was --
the hammer had a certain autonomy, a certain resistance [...]

We need to start talking about individual objects dealing with each other,
whether they're human or not,
and how these objects withdraw from each other.

(Withdraw is Heidegger's technical term for the fact that things are not visible directly -- things are only indirectly encounterable.)

But again, one of the problems I'm going to return to about Heidegger here [...] is that Heidegger treats this hidden background of being not only as hidden, he also tends to treat it as a unified background.

He tends to treat being as One.

He tends to see multiplicity as something that occurs
only at the derivative level of perception [...]

self-portrait while looking up but falling down