Fink, FANK, Funk
1. Fink
Fink is short for Finkelstein; commonly it is a last name in its own right, as in Mike "Fink," the family friend who once gave me a mattress. Another example is Bruce Fink, translator of the works of Jacques Lacan and author of The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance, an excellent primer in all things subjectively split.
A fink is also someone slimy or slippery: an unsavory fellow. At a greater magnitude is the term "rat fink," presumably derived from the physiognomic comparison of the species rat and fink, thus indicating excessively rodent-like qualities, as in Dustin Hoffman's character in Midnight Cowboy.
3. Funk
"What is funk?" is a question my grandmother put to me during a recent attempt, on my part of course, to eulogize the late James Brown. When a grown woman needs a young man to tell her about the hardest working man in show business, I begin to think that the finer points of our civilization have been cruelly squandered. But as I remind myself, the Geist of funk is a complex one, beset by all the ambiguity and paradox of its nomial relations, "fink" and "FANK."
To be "in a funk": to experience doldrums and melancholy; in Kantian terms, to will the Blues. To be in a funky way, however, or, as with George Clinton, to have the funk (which is, as he reminds us, that which one has got to have - presumably if one is to undertake the entertaining occupation): to be moved by forces of dance and gaiety; but also to encounter a suavity of self, an inner-emmanating sense of cool. One who has the funk is good to lay down a masterful groove, but one who delves too deeply into matters funky, one who is "in a funk" --who passes within that territory whose boundaries bespeak gaiety and the Dionysiac, but whose nucleus is purely and monotonously Blue-- has gone too far. To merely have the funk is the secret of the funky. Funk is an ornament to those who have it; to those who seek its secrets, it is a prison of morose self-pitying.
To put it otherwise - Jump back, Jack; See you later, alligator.
Fink is short for Finkelstein; commonly it is a last name in its own right, as in Mike "Fink," the family friend who once gave me a mattress. Another example is Bruce Fink, translator of the works of Jacques Lacan and author of The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance, an excellent primer in all things subjectively split.
A fink is also someone slimy or slippery: an unsavory fellow. At a greater magnitude is the term "rat fink," presumably derived from the physiognomic comparison of the species rat and fink, thus indicating excessively rodent-like qualities, as in Dustin Hoffman's character in Midnight Cowboy.
Also, the verb "to fink," which signifies either the activity of lisped intellection, or the act of rodenting: to sniff, to crawl, to achieve unsavory doings.
2. FANK
3. Funk
"What is funk?" is a question my grandmother put to me during a recent attempt, on my part of course, to eulogize the late James Brown. When a grown woman needs a young man to tell her about the hardest working man in show business, I begin to think that the finer points of our civilization have been cruelly squandered. But as I remind myself, the Geist of funk is a complex one, beset by all the ambiguity and paradox of its nomial relations, "fink" and "FANK."
To be "in a funk": to experience doldrums and melancholy; in Kantian terms, to will the Blues. To be in a funky way, however, or, as with George Clinton, to have the funk (which is, as he reminds us, that which one has got to have - presumably if one is to undertake the entertaining occupation): to be moved by forces of dance and gaiety; but also to encounter a suavity of self, an inner-emmanating sense of cool. One who has the funk is good to lay down a masterful groove, but one who delves too deeply into matters funky, one who is "in a funk" --who passes within that territory whose boundaries bespeak gaiety and the Dionysiac, but whose nucleus is purely and monotonously Blue-- has gone too far. To merely have the funk is the secret of the funky. Funk is an ornament to those who have it; to those who seek its secrets, it is a prison of morose self-pitying.
To put it otherwise - Jump back, Jack; See you later, alligator.
posted by danny marcus at 11:19 AM
1 Comments:
Delicious poetry, brother.
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