:: Kassander & Jameson's: Buzzing The Tower ::

:: Tuesday, January 21, 2003 ::

Hamlet, as a postmodern cartoon:

Hamlet's noble father is dead and he haunts Hamlet (quite literally). Hamlet's uncle, the new king, is a sloth. Hamlet's mother got over old king Hamlet's death right quick and seems quite happy with his brother for a husband. She's a whore. Poor young Hamlet, he's going mad, maybe for real, maybe he's faking -- does it matter? What to do? Father was a man, uncle is not. Should I kill uncle? The ghost of old father says so. Why is mother, God bless her, such a whore? Doesn't she see? And my beautiful lover here, Ophelia, what to do with her? If this is the new world order then fuck it, no more procreation. Poor Ophelia, off to a nunnery with you!

Father = The great men of old.
Uncle = The "great" (ahem) men of the present.
Mother = State, Society, Culture -- she that needs to bed with an idea.
Hamlet = I (you too?), tortured by the imparatives of the past, unable to correct the present.
Ophelia = the vehicle for the future.

Doctoral students, excepting marxists, feminists, and/or vegetarians, please feel free to steal my clever analogy for your thesis.

J.

:: POSTED BY: KASSANDER & JAMESON 5:19 PM [+] ::

...

I thought I'd introduce my hordes of readers to an interesting site for the discussion of ideas: The Boomer Bible Forum, in which readers of the The Boomer Bible attempt interpretation of that massive, complex tome and otherwise discuss the multitude of ideas that TBB forces diligent readers to explore. There are occassional rants, once upon a time there were fights, but for the most part discussion is peaceful, if pointed.

Currently, an interesting thread is running here: Homilies. In a nutshell, it is attempt to interpret Christianity (and, more generally, the old reliable truths) in light of modern ideas.

The following is a recent post of mine:

*****
Mal,

Wow, it has been a while since I looked at Hebrews 8. It seems to have a lot to say about this discussion.

You've reminded me of one of the beauties of the Protestant way, that of direct relation without mediation. Now it all comes flooding back.... That was the center of our whole argument against the Catholics, that, because of this new covenant, mediation is not necessary. Verse 13 (Revised English):

*** By speaking of a new covenant, he has pronounced the first one obsolete; and anything that is becoming obsolete and growing old will shortly disappear. ***

Those are powerful words, as they pertain to this context, and also generally. However, I cannot help thinking of what it was that was becoming obsolete for this writer of Hebrews, and what did (or did not) disappear. It couldn't have meant the physical priesthood, otherwise he was wrong. Although Christianity rendered the Jewish priesthood obsolete (for those who believed), the Catholic preisthood has been anything but obsolete for two thousand years and I doubt it will be disappearing shortly.

So while this *modern* idea from the writer of Hebrews seems beautiful and true to me -- the idea that we can have immediate communion with the truth without the Inquisitor's Okay -- I wonder if he meant what many modern protestants think he means. Previously, in verses 4 and 5, he says:

*** If he were on earth, he would not be a priest at all, since there are already priests to offer the gifts prescribed by the law, although the sanctuary in which they minister is only a shadowy symbol of the heavenly one. ***

This "shadowy symbol" is exactly what the Catholic church is and has been. He doesn't sound like he is condemning it -- should it be obsolete? I don't think so, because here is the value of the Catholic way: metaphor.

Jaynes (the relevant section begins on page 48): "It is by metaphor that language grows."

"In early times, language and its referents climbed up from the concrete to the abstract on the steps of metaphors, even, we may say, created the abstract on the bases of metaphors."

"Abstract words are ancient coins whose concrete images in the busy give-and-take of talk have worn away with use."

"The lexicon of language, then, is a finite set of terms that by metaphor is able to stretch out over an infinite set of circumstances, even to creating new circumstances thereby. (Could consciousness by such a new creation?)"

Anyhow, you know the theory. A metaphier (word, image) is used to describe a metaphrand (thing), and the metaphier necessarily has related paraphiers (words, images) that correspond to paraphrands (other things). Thus a universe of connections is born.

But when Milton and his fervent Presbyterian fellows went about ridding their churches of all the symbols, weren't they abolishing metaphor as it relates to these grand spiritual truths? They said, direct communion is ours! But what happened? I haven't known too many protestants who are very familiar with the "ancient coins", and after all that "busy give-and-take of talk" in their sermons and bible studies, what is left? To my mind, something dry, static, and uninspiring. I remember being there, feeling that way, all my friends feeling that way too, but not knowing what to do. That fact that it all seemed so mundane and routine couldn't mean it wasn't true....

I'd ventue that anyone who has spent some time in Catholic Masses as an adult (especially after coming from the other camp) could attest to the suggestive and creative power of all those symbols that are set between you and the truth. While the protestants, asserting direct relation without mediation, are left no choice anymore but to read everything literally. Interpretation is nearly a non-factor, because, after all, they are looking at the raw, plain-spoken, unequivocal writings of God. Unequivocal?!

If metaphors dies, if the ability to understand and create metaphor dies, then so does language. If language dies, consciousness dies. And, in my opinion, if consciousness dies, the human -- the creation "in the image of God" -- dies.

I think most of us would agree in calling that the ultimate failure. Yet, some protestants nowadays would hardly bat an eye as the suggestion. We're doomed to failure anyway, they might say, so the quicker the better. Off to heaven...!

But that interpretation seems to be the very product of this stunted imagination, the view of a mind already deadened to metaphor.

So I guess we still cannot escape a question of faith. And mine would be that "created in the image of God" needs to be at the center of an attempt to define humans. And, as I understand it, that phrase defines humans as creators.

Perhaps we are getting off topic, but this is all just about what that new covenant might mean and what it should look like. Before, I might have seemed to be arguing in favor of a free, unmediated relation to truth. So I guess my point is to avoid either extreme. We cannot communicate with truth in the void, yet there are certain types of mediation which I think we have every right to shake off, so long as we are prepared to shoulder the burden ourself.

No one is arguing in favor of "hippie freedom," which is not freedom at all because it discards responsibility, accountability, and integrity. But I think Zarathustra got at the heart of real individual freedom when he constantly reminded those who would pursue it, "terrible it is to be judge, jury, and executor of one's own law...."

The question seems to be: who (or what) will we allow to be our mediators? Because I think the rapidly degenerating mind of the Protestant community illustrates that mediation is necessary.

KJ

*****

Pick up your copy of TBB and particate in the war of ideas. Thanks.

K

:: POSTED BY: KASSANDER & JAMESON 2:49 PM [+] ::

...

On A Week's Worth, To --

This still green sea, this vortex and pull,
This soft scarlet splendor that fixes the bull.
There are eyes that reflect and eyes that devour
And eyes that seduce to the thorns on the flower.

This wild green sea, of solace and charm,
This tempered enamel raising hell on my arm.
There is touch that repels and touch that invites
And the touch of the one that knows what I fight.

Silence, caprice, and smiles in the cheek.
Immediate moments propelling a week
Of delays and dynamic forays into
Alleys and dead ends that few can see though.

Some minutes alone in a pen of non-persons,
Splitting and meeting again in the fire.
Two of a mold were righting the gyre
While the devil threw dice and cast an old curse on.

:: POSTED BY: KASSANDER & JAMESON 7:25 PM [+] ::

...

I suppose we shouldn't be suprised that the first comment we have received on any of our blog posts may have come from a fellow schizo-frenetic writer collective. They go by Leth & Sex, or is that Seth & Lex? Either way, we like their poetry, which can be found here: Leth & Sex and here Lex.

K.

:: POSTED BY: KASSANDER & JAMESON 12:28 AM [+] ::

...

I Came Away To Work The Pen

I came away to work the pen
To fire the mind and find the muse.
I chuckle at her clever ruse
And bend to lift the spade again.

I thought I'd conjure saving grace
In flowing white, with garlands green;
But I shared that drink with old Eugene
And now I fear his icy face.

All is lost, all is not lost--
Old foes embattled in my brain.
I'm sifting hopes and dreams like grain,
I'm counting coins and cutting costs.


:: POSTED BY: KASSANDER & JAMESON 11:06 PM [+] ::

...

I have also received a very interesting question from another old friend. I will be addressing it privately, but I thought I'd submit his thought for your perusal.

.....
Something I'd like hearing your thoughts about... My own belief is that music is fine, rich, and valid as a medium of expression; however, it does not replace the need for writing. I remember feeling bewildered at the discovery that Nero Wolfe, Rex Stout's outstandingly written armchair detective (surely constructed as a negative template of Sherlock Holmes), despised music, considering it barbaric. A trifle within a trifle? Probably. And yet, I confess to thinking of this trifle often, as I see all the best creative talent of successive generations poured into a medium that conveys (thus far anyway) emotion far more effectively than thought. And when I see children by the millions use that expression as a constant distraction from the terror of being alone with self, I begin to wonder (rabid Stones fan that I am) if we haven't all been damaged in some way by the permission music gives us to feel rather than reason.
.....

:: POSTED BY: KASSANDER & JAMESON 1:24 PM [+] ::

...

A few friends have recently sent us an excellent poetic attack on Percy Bysshe Shelley, copied below.

PERCY SHELLEY
John Peale Bishop

The question, lords and ladies, is
With what did Percy Shelley piss?
Was light dissolved in star showers thrown
When Percy Shelley had a bone?

Transcendental love we know
Is packed, but has no place to go,
And Percy's love, as he has said,
Resembled roses when they're dead.

And rose leaves when the rose is dead
Are out of place, like crumbs in bed.
No letter yet has come to light
To say if Percy rose at night.

No lady for whom Percy pined
Has left a diary behind,
And so there still remains a doubt
What Percy's love was all about.

Though scholars search, no letters come
Written in a flurry home;
We ask and ask, till silence palls,
Did Percy Bysshe have any balls?

...............

One stanza in particular is striking:

No lady for whom ????? pined
Has left a diary behind,
And so there still remains a doubt
What ?????'s love was all about.

But I guess I'm cheating with the question marks....

K.


:: POSTED BY: KASSANDER & JAMESON 1:14 PM [+] ::

...

Is there a Christian bone in Braveheart?

I was just thinking about this recently. Back in the day, '95, I thought Braveheart was a Christian story. But what exactly was Christian about it? Is it, perhaps, just heroic, with misleading Christian symbols? What about slaughtering the garrison because his wife is dead? What about invading England because his Scots were not free? Wallace does not defend anything. Wallace is an aggresor. That's a heroic tale that we have seen before, the kind we love, as humans living on earth. It is about human justice, about what needs to be made right on earth. Wallace corrects this life.

Well, at this point the language gets tricky. Does it make sense to call Braveheart Christian, to say that Braveheart presents a true interpretation of Christianity? Who calls Christ an aggresor? Is there anybody out there? If people do, I'd be happy to agree. But I'd probably be wrong. Christ might not be an aggresor. And in that case, what do we, as humans, love on this earth, and why do we love it?

K.

:: POSTED BY: KASSANDER & JAMESON 4:48 AM [+] ::

...

NOTE: The Lowly Parish Beacon, Balow Star, has a ventured a response to our Celebration Homily rebuttal-in-progress.

See here: Balow Star - stuned and amuzed 001

We appreciate the thoughts, and will take them into consideration as we continue our work. Our work, by the way, should not require another year to complete. The first third was written in one sitting back in July. The problem was that I, Kassander, sketched out and began the piece; but before long J. took over and, I far as I could tell, was just writing by the seat of his pants (as he tends to do). Because of this, I had numerous reservations about the content of the piece, for months. Eventually, however, the demand for the work was getting too overwhelming; so we decided to go ahead and publish part I, provided that J. take a backseat on sections II and III.

Also, I would like to briefly address the issue of context, which BS seems eager to highlight, suggesting that I haven't taken context into consideration. I would say that by examing the tone of his homily, I merely confirmed the context that we all assumed to be true: that BS is a lowly parish beacon, Harry bless him.

BS goes out of his way to confirm this context in the response, of course, dancing behind all the beauracratic demands laid upon him by the parish. So much Consolation to deliver, so little time, just following the "program," something about tax-free-status, and so on, so there.... In this sense, BS' response is superfluous; I already demonstrated it in the rebuttal.

Also, his complaint that our rebuttal sounds like "too-damn-much-college-to-me" is laughable. Of the tens of thousands of visitors to our blog who have already read the piece, most are offering different complaints, such as, and I quote: sounds like not-damn-enough-college-to-me; you must have gone to some public university in the south; you couldn't find the ass end of a philosophy with a hundred halogen headlamps; and (our personal favorite), what are your sources, the cliff notes of Western Civilization?

No matter, we press on despite these attacks on our credibility and relevance. But for the record, our little junket in higher education consists of the following: I, K., studied engineering as some forgettable school in some forgettable place for a few years. I was rather diligent, I must say. But eventually I had handed the reigns to my good friend J., who, as far as I know, took a boatload of worthless English classes from self-professed Marxist, Feminist, Vegetarians, at a completely different forgettable school in a completely different forgettable place. As far as I know, J. attended class occasionally and paid attention less. I think he eventually got the hell out of Dodge with nothing to show for his efforts, save a handful of textbooks on Literary Theory (in which the contributors were also primarily Marxists and Feminists, though not all were vegetarians.) Now that I think about it, I think he also brought us home a couple of Anthologies full of writing by carniverous males, both dead and white, for what that's worth.

Finally, if I am not actually quarreling with Balow Star, then I hope it is The Shuteye Train, of whom we definitely believe by the way. And if they have a bone to pick with us, we would even welcome a personal visit from the four; that way, when we are done arguing about the issues (or fighting, or however it is those guys resolve things), I, Kassander, will be kind enough to show them how a guitar is actually played. Is the Shuteye Train really hiding for all the mysterious reasons that are always thrown around, or is it just because they suck as musicians? Hmm...

K.

:: POSTED BY: KASSANDER & JAMESON 2:33 PM [+] ::

...

On The Way Of The Creator

Is it your wish, my brother, to go into solitdue? Is it your wish to seek the way to yourself? Then linger a moment, and listen to me.

"He who seeks, easily gets lost. All loneliness is guilt" -- thus speaks the herd. The voice of the herd will still be audible in you. And when you will say, "I no longer have a common conscience with you," it will be a lament and an agony. Behold, this agony itself was born of the common conscience, and the last glimmer of that conscience still glows on your affliction.

But do you want to go the way of your affliction, which is the way to yourself? Then show me your right and your strength to do so. Are you a new strength and a new right? A first movement? A self-propelled wheel? Can you compel the very stars to revolve around you?

Alas, there is so much lusting for the heights! There are so many convulsions of the ambitious. Show me that you are not one of the lustful and ambitious....

You call yourself free? Your dominant thought I want to hear, and not that you have escaped from a yoke. Are you one of those who had the right to escape from a yoke? There are some who threw away their last value when they threw away their servitude.

Free from what? As if that mattered to Zarathustra! But your eyes should tell me brightly: free for what?...

There are feelings which want to kill the lonely; and if they do not succeed, well, then they themselves must die. But are you capable of this -- to be a murderer?...

You force many to relearn about you; they charge it bitterly against you. You came close to them and yet passed them by: that they will never forgive. You pass over and beyond them: but the higher you ascend, the smaller you appear to the eye of envy. But most of all they hate those who fly.

"How would you be just to me?" you must say. "I choose your injustice as my proper lot." Injustice and filth they throw after the lonely one: but, my brother, if you would be a star, you must not shine less for them because of that.

And beware of the good and the just! They like to crucfiy those who invent their own virtue for themselves -- they hate the lonely one. Beware also of holy simplicity! Everything that is not simple it considers unholy; it also likes to play with fire -- the stake. And beware also of the attacks of your love! The lonely one offers his hand too quickly to whomever he encounters. To some people you may not give your hand, only a paw: and I desire that your paw should also have claws.

But the worst enemy you can encounter will always be you, yourself; you like in wait for yourself in caves and woods.

Lonely one, you are going the way to yourself. And your way leads past yourself and your seven devils. You will be a heretic to yourself and a witch and soothsayer and fool and doubter and unholy one and a villian. You must wish to consume yourself in your own flame: how could wish to become new unless you had first become ashes!

Lonely one, you are going the way of the creator: you would create a god for yourself out of your seven devils.

Lonely one, you are going the way of the lover: yourself you love, and therefore you despise yourself, as only lovers despise. The lover would create because he despises. What does he know of love who did not have to despise precisely what he loved!

Go into your loneliness with your love and with your creation, my brother; and only much later will justice limp after you.

With my tears go into your lonliness, my brother. I love him who wants to create over and beyond himself and thus perishes.

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

--Friedrich Nietzsche


:: POSTED BY: KASSANDER & JAMESON 7:37 PM [+] ::

...

A quote for Thursday:

If you're lucky, people like something you do early and something you do just before you drop dead. That's as many pats on the back as you should expect.

--Warren Zevon, who is terminally ill.

Wait...aren't we all?

:: POSTED BY: KASSANDER & JAMESON 7:01 PM [+] ::

...

Marriage (1960)

Should I get married? Should I be Good?
Astound the girl next door with my velvet suit and faustaus hood?
Don't take her to movies but to cemeteries
tell all about werewolf bathtubs and forked clarinets
then desire her and kiss her and all the preliminaries
and she going just so far and I understanding why
not getting angry saying You must feel! It's beautiful to feel!
Instead take her in my arms lean against an old crooked tombstone
and woo her the entire night the constellations in the sky--

When she introduces me to her parents
back straightened, hair finally combed, strangled by a tie,
should I sit knees together on their 3rd degree sofa
and not ask Where's the bathroom?
How else to feel other than I am,
often thinking Flash Gordon soap--
O how terrible it must be for a young man
seated before a family and the family thinking
We never saw him before! He wants our Mary Lou!
After tea and homemade cookies they ask What do you do for a living?
Should I tell them? Would they like me then?
Say All right get married, we're losing a daughter
but we're gaining a son--
And should I then ask Where's the bathroom?

O God, and the wedding! All her family and her friends
and only a handful of mine all scroungy and bearded
just waiting to get at the drinks and food--
And the priest! He looking at me if I masturbated
asking me Do you take this woman for your lawful wedded wife?
And I trembling what to say say Pie Glue!
I kiss the bride all those corny men slapping me on the back
She's all yours, boy! Ha-ha-ha!
And in their eyes you could see some obscene honeymoon going on--

then all that absurd rice and clanky cans and shoes
Niagara Falls! Hordes of us! Husbands! Wives! Flowers! Chocolates!
All streaming into cozy hotels
All going to do the same thing tonight
The indifferent clerk he knowing what was going to happen
The lobby zombies they knowing what
The whistling elevator man he knowing
The winking bellboy knowing
Everybody knowing! I'd be almost inclined not to do anything!
Stay up all night! Stare that hotel clerk in the eye!
Screaming: I deny honeymoon! I deny honeymoon!
running rampant into those almost climatic suites
yelling Radio belly! Cat shovel!
O I'd live in Niagara forever! in a dark cave beneath the Falls
I'd sit there the Mad Honeymooner devising ways to break marriages, a scourge of bigamy a saint of divorce--

But I should get married I should be good
How nice it'd be to come home to her
and sit by the fireplace and she in the kitchen
aproned young and lovely wanting by baby
and so happy about me she burns the roast beef
and comes crying to me and I get up from my big papa chair
saying Christmas teeth! Radiant brains! Apple deaf!
God what a husband I'd make! Yes, I should get married!
So much to do! like sneaking into Mr Jones' house late at night
and cover his golf clubs with 1920 Norwegian books
Like hanging a picture of Rimbaud on the lawnmower
like pasting Tannu Tuva postage stamps all over the picket fence
like when Mrs Kindhead comes to collect for the Community Chest
grab her and tell her There are unfavorable omens in the sky!
And when the mayor comes to get my vote tell him
When are you going to stop people killing whales!
And when the milkman comes leave him a note in the bottle
Penguin dust, bring me penguin dust, I want penguin dust--

Yet if I should get married and it's Connecticut and snow
and she gives birth to a child and I am sleepless, worn,
up for nights, head bowed against a quiet window, the past behind me,
finding myself in the most common of situations a trembling man
knowledged with responsibility not twig-smear not Roman coin soup--
O what would that be like!
Surely I'd give it for a nipple a rubber Tacitus
For a rattle bag of broken Bach records
Tack Della Francesca all over its crib
Sew the Greek alphabet on its bib
And build for its playpen a roofless Parthenon

No, I doubt I'd be that kind of father
not rural not snow no quiet window
but hot smelly New York City
seven flights up, roaches and rats in the walls
a fat Reichian wife screeching over potatoes Get a job!
And five nose running brats in love with Batman
And the neighbors all toothless and dry haired
like those hag masses of the 18th century
all wanting to come in and watch TV
The landlord wants his rent
Grocery store Blue Cross Gas & Electric Knights of Columbus
Impossible to lie back and dream Telephone snow, ghost parking--
No! I should not get married and I should never get married!
But--imagine if I were to marry a beautiful sophisticated woman
tall and pale wearing an elegant black dress and long black gloves
holding a cigarette holder in one hand and highball in the other
and we lived high up a penthouse with a huge window
from which we could see all of New York and even farther on clearer days
No I can't imagine myself married to that pleasant prison dream--

O but what about love? I forget love
not that I am incapable of love
it's just that I see love as odd as wearing shoes--
I never wanted to marry a girl who was like my mother
And Ingrid Bergman was always impossible
And there maybe a girl now but she's already married
And I don't like men and--
but there's got to be somebody!
Because what if I'm 60 years old and not married,
all alone in furnished room with pee stains on my underwear
and everybody else is married! All in the universe married but me!

Ah, yet well I know that were a woman possible as I am possible
then marriage would be possible--
Like SHE in her lonely alien gaud waiting her Egyptian lover
so I wait--bereft of 2,000 years and the bath of life.

--Gregory Corso

:: POSTED BY: KASSANDER & JAMESON 4:50 PM [+] ::

...

Association

He said: "the anchor"--not in the sense of fastening down,
or in relationship to the sea-bed--nothing like this.
He carried the anchor to his room, hung it
from the ceiling like a chandelier. Now, lying down, at night,
he looked at this anchor in the middle of the ceiling knowing
that its chain continued verticaly beyond the roof
holding over his head, high up, on a calm surface,
a big, dark, imposing boat, its lights out.
On the deck of this boat, a poor musician
took his violin our of its case and started playing;
while he, with an attentive smile, listened
to the melody filtered by the water and the moon.

--Yannis Ritsos

:: POSTED BY: KASSANDER & JAMESON 4:30 PM [+] ::

...

One should not think of wanting to make something, one should try only to build up one's own medium of expression and to say everything. One should work and have patience. Not to look right nor left. Should draw all of life into this circle, have nothing outside of this life. . . .

The great men have all let their lives become overgrown like an old road and have carried everything into their art. Their lives are stunted like an organ they no longer need. . . .

[This] is the principal thing -- not to remain with the dream, with the intention, with the being-in-the-mood, but always forcibly to convert it into things. . . .

One can imagine a man who had felt, wanted all that in himself, and had waited for better times to do it. Who would respect him; he would be an aging fool who had nothing more to hope for. But to make, to make is the thing . . . . [his] work stands like a great angel beside him and protects him.

--Rainer Maria Rilke.

:: POSTED BY: KASSANDER & JAMESON 4:20 PM [+] ::

...

ALERT: We have found our notes for sections II & III of our Celebration Homily rebuttal. What a boon! Unfortunately, we can hardly decipher the shorthand. We just keep reading the notes and looking at each other, saying, "What the hell...?" Well, a bummer indeed. No matter, we are determined to develop and write sections II and III anew. We plan to produce section II in the next few days.

Anyhow, the important news is that no one need fear the destruction of the already available section I, or the coming sections II and III, via any sort of drunken, anti-creative rage, despite the history of K & J. Destroying our own material is a thing of the past, even though that honeyed Water of Life is not.


:: POSTED BY: KASSANDER & JAMESON 8:52 AM [+] ::

...

Having posted a link to one of Miss Rand's famous rants from The Fountainhead, I thought I'd also link a nice, brief account from one of the many people out there who know how to call her bluff when she gets out of control. This one, by David Friedman, has a couple of humurous jabs thrown in as well.

Some Problems with Ayn Rand's Derivation of Ought from Is

I think that total agreement with her ideas would require a distasteful form of passion, the kind that whisks you over dangerous gaps on a magic carpet. Very tempting for young, disaffected, creative types like K & J....


:: POSTED BY: KASSANDER & JAMESON 11:10 PM [+] ::

...

(We wrote this essay in July 2002, in response to BS' Celebration Homily, which can be found here: Celebration Homily. One third of the essay has been completed. We will finish the rest when we find our notes, assuming they still make sense to us. Or, as our thinking has been very fluid over the past year, we may end up posting a rebuttal to our rebuttal. Either way, we will be sure to post a notice when more has been added. Thank you.)

(July 2002)

In response to the lowly Parish Beacon, BS, regarding his Celebration homily.

I

This morning, shortly after bacon and eggs, approaching the bottom of my first cup of coffee, I came across the following sentence in a book that I have just begun reading: "In fact, a disillusionment that used to be the prerogative of the few has become common property." This was not the first time I’ve entertained the idea, but since it has been nagging me like a loose tooth for a few months now, I decided it is about time to try developing it. As a point of departure, I will be refuting the remarks of Parish Beacon, BS, in his Celebration homily. As you may recall, BS’ Celebration homily offers us a comparative analysis of two famous twentieth century pieces: T. S. Eliot’s poem, The Hollow Men; and The Beatles’ early Rock and Roll effort, Twist and Shout. The former is the subject of TBB’s Psomething 28 and Psomething 35, the latter of Psomething 78.

I can think of no better aspect of the homily to start with than the tone. Tone is always one of the most important aspects of writing. Without analysis of tone, no piece of writing can be interpreted the way it deserves to be—that is, with intellectual rigor, which could else be described as the fearless determination to be honest and fair with the text in the context of one’s present knowledge, come what may. Tone is one of a writer’s most useful tools. Tone provides the writer with a range of masks from behind which he can say almost anything, whether it be his most genuine speculation or the most absurd fancy in his soaring imagination. But I’m sure this is all old news to stalwarts of Boomer Bible interpretation, for whom authorial tone must sometimes seem that hidden skeleton key that would unlock the Great Secret once and for all. In fact, one might argue (if one were so inclined and was possessed of a near infinity of leisure hours), that it is precisely the elusory nature of definitive tones in TBB that marks its greatness as a piece of literature and glows like a living, pulsing ruby at its center—that the demand placed on the reader to climb inside the mouth of every one of its tones, to then make decisions regarding the most probable intentions, and to follow by attempting to resolve the dissonance of voices, is what places TBB among the most valuable pieces of comtemporary literature available to us in the modern world. Ah, had we but world enough and time . . . but I digress!

We were going to discuss BS’ homiletic tone. . . . Well, he is a Parish Beacon, so the following remark should come as no surprise. The three primary intellectual and/or emotional tones that pour out of his Celebration text are desire, certainty, and blame. Let us examine all three:

What is desired? At the risk of sounding vague and neglecting my previously established commitment to rigor, I’ll suggest: something else. That is, something else than what currenty is. That may mean something else than The Beatles. It may mean the unreferenced, yet implied, something else in Eliot’s poem. It may mean something other than ourselves—we the readers, listeners, interpreters. It is tough to really put your finger on because, as with most of the most earnestly desired desires, it is a phantasm. It doesn’t exist. Little or no attempt is made to sketch it out. Ah, but nonetheless, it should exist. That is the premise. It, whatever it is, should exist and because it does not, we are disappointed. Therefore we will lament its non-existence. A boon indeed for the romantics among us, of whom I have lately taken to calling: inactive dreamers (in an effort to cure myself of the disease).

To begin with, we could suggest the three most obvious potential objects that provoke this ambiguous lamentation by BS: better poets, better musicians, or better men in general. To truly evaluate Twist and Shout as art we would need to venture into some uncharted analytical waters. Is it music? Is it poetry? Or is it just something new, something modern? Lacking the lenses for an appropriate evaluation of something quite this modern, we will need to separate the work from itself and inspect it with some old, trustworthy spectacles. If we look at the piece in terms of poetry and music, each separately, we encounter a similar phenomenon in both cases.

As poets, Lennon and McCartney are positively not students of the great English tradition in the way that their predecessors were. While there has always been a wide range in the amount of schooling completed and the degree of training engaged in by English poets, one gets the sense that the Greats (that is, the ones in your Norton Anthology) usually felt the need to respect their forebears and take care of the legacy they were inheriting, even if their intent was to screw with it. The craft changed and developed with each passing century, but the poetic ancestors were generally visible in the comtemporaries, at least between the lines. Lennon and McCartney, as poets, are a marked departure from this. Anthologies may not be reserving space for them. Little attention to meter or rhyme and even less attention to metaphor. There is no metaphor, no image at all, not even some immature decorative simile. Twist and Shout is just a simple, straighforward expression of a feeling, no frills. Lennon and McCartney are no diligent poets, they are just a couple of regular kids from some regular section of Liverpool. But how many English poems have been sung more often than this one? The juxtaposition of ideas presented in these last two sentences reappear if we examine Twist and Shout in terms of music. It is the same phenomenon, I don’t think I need to spell it out in great detail. Four regular kids lacking any significant formal musical training and possessing only a few popular instruments, some very basic musical structures and patterns, some basic harmonic motion, and some excitement. But did the people, or did they not, jump up upon hearing it and just know that they had to move their feet? The same phenomenon. I have not made a definitve value judgement yet, I am merely marking an observation that we will need to revisit. At this point we cannot be faulted for longing for better poets or musicians than Lennon and McCartney, if that is truly our desire, but we have come upon something extraordinary in the process: a mysterious union between a new type of artist and a new response to art.

But perhaps this is all a sidenote to BS’ genuine lamentation. Is the desire simply better men? If so, the choice of works for comparison seems odd and unbalanced, by virtue of what I have already shown. To be blunt, BS is trying to pull a fast one on us, and if we don’t examine his method of exposition carefully we’ll just end up waking the housecat with our ignorant nodding and grunting. When BS stitches sections of the two works together as he does, our eyes and ears are comparing one piece of art with another. But the homily’s introduction has already prepared our minds to compare the pieces on different terms. The playing field has been tilted, so to speak—Eliot is sniping from the ridge, The Beatles are stranded in the pass. Is this fair?

If we were to ignore BS’ prefatory remarks and just read the sections interspersed, what could we say? Judging on poetic merit, we would credit Eliot clearly (and heavily). We might also bring to light, however, that Eliot entered Harvard in 1906, went on to study literature and philosophy in France and Germany, and subsequently applied himself to Greek philosophy at Oxford. Lennon and McCartney might have been sweeping out some shithole in Liverpool in the late ‘50s. But no matter, what about the content? Simply put, one has a negative prescence while the other has a positive prescence. Or, one is born of a lack, the other spills out of abundance. Or, for one the desired object is somewhere else, while the other is a celebration of the object itself, which is a clear and present companion of the lyricist. In these comparisons, Eliot is the author of the former, The Beatles of the latter. This is by no means the sum of the matter, but shouldn’t a faithful analysis at least draw attention to the distinction?

But this was never BS’ point. His intention was to establish Eliot’s undescribed ideal in your mind, the "unhollow" man if you will (whoever that is), and then force the celebrants of Twist and Shout to live up to this ideal. Tricky…. He goes even further, trying to get you to substitute the discreet John Lennon for the song’s anonymous celebrant. And of course we all know how ridiculous Lennon became. . . . The judgement follows naturally and definitively, like dominoes.

And so, what has happened here? A fraudulent contrast has been thrust upon us, and that with very little effort. Have we let it pass untouched, allowing this unfair comparison to wallow before the mind’s ever blinking eye of thoughtless affirmation? Hmm, maybe so, but I was of the impression that punks always accost intruders. Eliot and Lennon—Hyperion to a satyr, we might say. But what exactly is the Hyperion? Something as unformed and otherwordly as one of Plato’s Forms. And the satyr? John Lennon, a very real, and somewhat regular, modern man.

Now, these observations in no way undermine Eliot’s poem on its own. It is an excellent poetic expression of an urgent human crisis (one might even suggest, the still greatest human crisis). It is clear that something pressed Eliot so hard that he could not hold his breath. He had to speak, and being a good poet, he crafted his dilemma into this lasting poem (which can usually be found in any faithful anthology of English verse). He sung about it in fact, and in between breaths something else does scream through the silence. But I am merely trying to call attention to BS’ simplistic textual analysis. The imagined eternal forms of Plato may call to us as deeply as they have ever called anyone, but what comes of then highlighting a brand new artistic phenomenon as evidence that, yes, the Present is truly fucked up? It is the tendency of many in our world to do exactly this that first throws light upon the core of my remarks today. It is the tendency of all of us Harriers, even lowly Parish Beacons.

Now, who is to blame in BS’ account? I don’t want to belabor this point, having done so on the last. One might almost think that The Beatles themselves are to blame. Actually, this is probably another sly intention of the preacher. "Revolution? The Hollow men are confused. Helter-Skelter? The Hollow Men are angry. Hey Jude? The Hollow Men are in analysis. Let It Be? The Hollow Men are resigned." Dear God, what falsity!—four works mentioned in passing, each reduced to a single adjective, without even so much as a glance at their texts, or their tone. And, of course, the "’hollow band’" reference that follows brands the situation with one simple, fired iron, ushering readers to their comfy judgement seat. But even if it isn’t The Beatles who are to blame, it sure as hell is someone. Righto, someone else, something else, just like the object of the desire.

Next, certainty. If you can forgive me, a list of quotes (emphasis mine):

-- After this very brief experience, I do not think you will ever be able to listen to The Beatles or anyone who talks about The Beatles in the same way you did before. I know that you won’t.
-- What do you think? Did you learn anything we haven’t already learned from Psom. 78 and Psom. 28? Right. Nothing.
-- And yet, how was this accomplished? Almost effortlessly.
-- Simply by following along…
-- … and doing a little digging…
-- …if your education didn’t provide instant access to each of the pieces…
-- It’s even easier on the web…
-- Not a lot of work….
-- …simply overwhelming…

And the conclusion: We are looking at a cultural fulcrum like no other. Indeed, we are, but the fulcrum is swinging over the tonal pivot in this interpretation, not the subject. Desire, Blame, and Certainty. The Harrier Way.

So, where do we proceed from here? We might begin by confronting ourselves as Harriers, insofar as we all participate. Insofar as we desire what we do not work to conjure up, blame shadows that we cannot name, and present the whole mess with simplicity and absolute certainty, so there. One might imagine a child, not an infant but a child nonetheless, who demands fabulous toys without understanding or wanting to understand the expenditure required to obtain them. One might imagine a child who is unwilling to live up to a deed that was difficult to look upon, profering some pathetic excuse. One might imagine a child telling himself a comforting bedtime story and falling asleep in peace, so there. One might imagine a People at the end of childhood. A civilization, a religion or two, an amalgam of races, and father screaming, "Grow Up!" Who is father? Reality, the inhabitant of the globe, eyes wide open. And here we are, in the year 2002, not wanting to grow up. Just tell us a another bedtime story.

But what if there is no choice but to confront the horror and insecurity of a People’s adolescence? Could this be the point of departure for the West, the transition touched upon and spelled out by various thinkers for the past 150 years, and that now stares us all, individually, in the face—the prescient ghost of transition that sleeps in our pillows and claws at our brains?

I will grant myself an assumption on behalf of my readers: TBB is a radical piece of literature. In structure, in complexity, in multiplicity of tone, in non-linearity, with an intentional shape that eventually reveals itself as multi-dimensional—it is a radical construction. It is a new form of literature. Why so? Well, the present runs amuck, one might suggest, extreme measures, et cetera —but wouldn’t another catechism, a secular catechism even, help to set us straight? I say no, it would not. Then why not?

Childhood’s end. Let us consider that Religion and Art are two different means of dealing with the unknown, that which feels beyond, the thing(s) that demands more, the source of unfulfillable longing that resides at the core of every human heart. Could we agree that Religion is always the first attempt to plug this void, with Art following after, building with Religion’s material scraps even upon Religion’s secure foundations, though it does bring some tools of its own? My own humble pursuit of knowledge in recent years has suggested this to me, so I will run with it.

The question is what would appear if the surfaces of a religion broke, like the violence of shattering stained glass, and the artists inside the sturdy cathedral had to decide how to proceed. Maybe they would welcome the fresh air. Maybe they would venture out through the windows where static images once stood and begin a grand construction that would envelop the entire cathedral. (Maybe they would occasionally fall out of the high windows and end up as unflattering portraits of pancakes in the courtyard—how many of these could we name? . . .) This is indeed what I would I like to suggest. This is what TBB is, what it is an early example of. The Boomer Bible is one of these daring constructions (though the punks might ultimately be among the unfortunate pancakes—I’ll get back to this later). The great governing religion had already broke, as far as the probability of strict literal interpretation is considered, but its monumental symbolic and material constructions remain as shelters, housing fountains of inspiration (which also provide for the general welfare—like, for example, our daily and mundane need for nourishment, so that we can get up in the morning without lodging a .45 inside our mouth), inside which the artists moving forward can develop their craft and plan their journeys onward to undiscovered lands. And this is precisely where BS’ comparison in the Celebration homily fails, in regards to this division. The unrepairable break may have occurred before both Eliot and The Beatles came on the scene, but while Eliot looks back weeping over the colorful shards, The Beatles are jamming, albeit recklessly, in the fresh air. And what a sound it is! A comparison between these artistic contexts simply cannot be made with any claim to integrity. A catastrophe has occurred, the poles have shifted, nothing can ever be the same.

Before we move on, let’s consider the nature of this continental realignment. A wandering, contemporary philosopher, named Rick Roderick, has outlined this break in a lecture series entitled Self Under Seige (available from The Teaching Company). He sets up the lectures by detailing the effects of what he calls "The Masters of Suspicion." These masters of suspicion are: Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud. In Roderick’s view, each of these thinkers present us with one serious mark upon the credibility of any claim to truth: Is it about Money? Is it about Power? Is it about Sex? You only need to record your reflex thoughts every time you surf past a television evangelist, listen to a prattering politician, and unfortunately these days, see a Catholic priest, to confirm the reality of these suspicions in your mind. They cannot be escaped. It is not that we cannot return to our previous structures of faith, says Roderick, but that any attempt to do so from this point forward must occur "under the mark of complexity."

But so far this all sounds negative, so continue with me. I’m speculating that perhaps a new appreciation of the cathedral’s architecture required the refreshing breath of this recently rising west wind, that it required an end to the stained glass windows. Or, even if is wasn’t required, it has occurred, so there. Granted the images of saints have fallen away, but we are left with the magnificence of the building’s construction. The vaulted arches, the way loads are defelected down through the butresses, the walls left thin. Architectual genius. What are we looking at? The conscious human being, with headspace to spare, with a promise of freedom. The Church can say what it wants of its present chaos, we are living witnesses to remarkable success of Christianity. Christianity perishes of its own fire, and what if that was the plan all along? (But perhaps I shouldn’t speculate as to God’s intentions.)

So what then are The Beatles in this context? Primitive players on a lately laid stage, a gigantic stage where the bouncers are generally friendly and forgiving, newly revealed by God (the stage that is, not necessarily The Beatles, or the bouncers). The Beatles are more or less irrelevant, they are not the point. The point is that certain products of the Christian imagination have created a space for others to speak. Coupled with that, the demise of literal Christian belief has created a need for all to speak. And now we are spiraling back down to the core of my thought.

What is the overall impression of BS’ homily? Longing for the past? Oh God, things were better back then, sorry we fucked up, someday, someday, something, and so on. Does anyone know this tune? I sure as hell know this tune, I’ve sung it too damn long and I’ve begun to realize that the tune is indeed hellish. Do you think Eliot knows this tune? I’ll grab a flashlight, you grab a spade, and we’ll go find out.

Why were times better back then? Because now we all feel alienated and alone, detached, adrift on the wide, wide sea without a sextant. Well, my friends, welcome to the Western Canon. All are welcome to participate now. They, that is, the Great Writers, have always felt this alone. What was once reserved for the few is now common property. What is funny is that modern Christians, being traditional and such, always promote the preservation of the Great Western Writers. Isn't this strange? They would and will continue to fill their libraries with the works that prophecy and make inevitable their own demise. The Greats have never been orthodox Christians. They have always remained to one degree or another outside the box of dogma. Was Dante a good Catholic sketching out the Otherworlds, or was he detailing something else, namely three possible contexts for human life? Chaucer’s vulgarity should indicate what he had seen and lived. There don't seem to be very many Christian bones in Shakespeare, though he is a product of and builds within the Christian cosmos. And Blake was keen enough to recognize that the committed Presbyterian, Milton (who in his domestic capacity as Cromwell’s secretary loved to refer to the Pope as Satan), was rather more a poet than a Christian:

Note. The reason Milton wrote in fetters when wrote of Angels & God, and at liberty when of Devils & Hell, is because he was a true Poet and of the Devil’s party without knowing it.
- The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

Earlier, Blake had postulated Satan as the symbol of eternal Energy, and Christ as the symbol of Reason. That might be a re-evaluation of all values before Nietzsche even called for one. And who, having read Paradise Lost, can deny that Satan is the hero? The conversations in Heaven are as boring as Goethe’s prologue in Faust. And yet the Reformed Presbyterian community talks of Milton as of a long lost brother. I know, I was there—and, God bless them, Milton began to lead me out of the circle. It’s great comedy. Wordsworth was brilliant, especially in his Intimations of Immortality, but eventually he retreated to an orthodox Christian camp and the great English poets who followed never really forgave him. One could not comprehensively name the poets and novelists writing in English who were dedicated enough to the Christian imagination to consider Christian dogma lightly. Perhaps Emerson was one of the last to think originally before the glass began to break once and for all. Then. It was all over.

All my sons, and all of you who come after me, know that the names of the wise cannot save you, for the wise have covered your home with inanity, and you can’t go home again.
-- Pspeciates.2.14

All great thinkers had lived and speculated within a cloud of isolation that the regular people could not immediately relate to. None of the thinkers relied on parish beliefs. They thought on their own, fearlessly, or full of fear, either way. And now that horror of alienation belongs to all of us. Should we regret this? Should we long for better times? The Greats were great enough to create lasting wonders out of this chaos. Are we less? Or, so what if we are less, should we not create anyhow?

Oh, I know, you’re thinking that I have misread The Prognosticator. That he meant it as a joke, a satirical jab at the despair that is continously disseminated by the intellectual elite. Perhaps. But why then do you take as literal, the Prognosticator’s 911 prophecies? There is something to them, in my humble opinion. The sketches of a real modern prophet perhaps? …the catcher in the rye, who will hunker on the Cloister Road, with one surrealistic pillow in his hand, and set a trap for the nowhere man, two thousand and one light-years form home….

Do you expect to return home again? One of the best expressions of this dilemma was by Sting, during his incarnation with The Police, called "Message in a Bottle". A simple message, a simple but excited expression, from a few of the people to the mass of the people. A hundred millions bottles washed up on the shore—seems I’m not alone in being alone . . . .

II

At this point, let’s get back to Eliot.

(To be continued….)

:: POSTED BY: KASSANDER & JAMESON 1:22 PM [+] ::

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The Very Last Row

Why do you sit in the very last row?
Trees fall in the woods, and yes, and yes,
Some must have felt that violent caress,
Some who leaned back in the very last row.

Consider your classroom dimensions,
Scientifically tailored for midgets you know.
Of course you know. A yearning for space
Situated your face, mouthing Present or Here,
In the very last row.

I know that it wasn’t for sleep, for fear,
For not to be noticed, for not to hear,
Assumptions like these applaud at their show
And discard their trash in the very last row.

Your textbook is snoring: Contemporary Thoughts
On New Readings of Postmodern Writing.
It is a collection of footnotes
For Prof. Suzyhack’s Syllabus,
Which is not snoring,
But shouting at you in the very last row.

I see you alone in the courtyard,
Surveying the zombies' soft somersault flow.
Then one final drag, a thought of the hag,
And shuffling you go to the very last row.




:: POSTED BY: KASSANDER & JAMESON 12:28 AM [+] ::

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On Realizing that Hamlet’s Got Your Number

For Christ’s sake!—Between clenched teeth,
Teeth clenching to claw
Around a word.
It had escaped to hover
The waters then remembered
The void in the Scriptures and then
About vacuums from Physics.
And now this breathless bastard retreating—
It wants back in!

Serpent words always sidling as sins in church,
Fangs tonguing through cookbooks looking
To forge homemade venom, and in the brush
The eternal wildfire working on the skin.
One moment more until the skin is on the floor
Fangs pull on demin, thick and whitewashed,
And cries of defiance in duct taped compliance
Cower together in prayer,
Writing eyelid poetry in the lurch.

There, it is done.
They are young but they’ll expect to fly.
They read that promise in your eyes.
There is an instant when wings will know
If they work.
The canyon below testifies
Of that instant. It sings, from wall to wall:

I offer Christian burial.
I cover pride with dignity.
Some I fossilize. And all
The dense I grant sublimity.
I name this one Anonymous.
And here lies Thus and Thus and Thus…

The canyon is full of pleasant echos.
There, it is done.




:: POSTED BY: KASSANDER & JAMESON 10:51 PM [+] ::

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On Glancing at the Back Yard

There’s a curse upon my lawn.
The mowing man, with muscles apt and strong,
Waits inside.
He thinks—reverse—He works, destroys,
He shuts the glass to stay intruding noise.

The grass outside shoots up and quick to sleep.
The creatures of the earth awake and creep.
Inside he thinks—reverse—All thought is weed!
He cuts the hair clean off an aging creed.

It grows—reverse—it bends to see the root.
Convexing canopy of shade above the brute.
He boils within a stew of curtains drawn.
He sets a concept loose upon the dawn.
But never does he rise to trim the lawn.

A neighbor’s brow is bent, “Is he still there?
“I swear I heard his music in the air”—
Inside the hours detach, the weeks dissolve,
His every retraced path decays resolve.
And just to cut the grass—what would that involve?

Creation—reverse —splintering fractions of whole
Like blades unbated turn and pierce his soul.
An even front lies of spreading weeds in back,
Green and free effacing every track
That dare impress a shape upon the slack.

Ah, foolish deception this….
To level the lawn—
Yes, some hours after dawn
I will shape it like a thought in bumpy verse,
Unless inside some thought—my god!—reverse.


:: POSTED BY: KASSANDER & JAMESON 10:45 PM [+] ::

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On Convincing Thyself

Urgent conflict unresolved! How letter
After letter follows hard, syllables
Aftertounged in the sternlight, space the better.
Harmony, dissonance fillable,
Space for aftervowels to be retrospoke.
Consonants in frantic embrace leave no room
For the grease of interpretation. Cut away
Hapless facts, a tale truncate limping the gloom.
Shall a hamlet razed avenge without delay?

Time, freight train tracking time, while vagrant each
Too nearsight of rhyme knows to steal a ride.
Time, in whistles pulsing fast across a breach
Sends dreams to flight and frights the lone aside.
Madness, decision, contraction of view
These things stew in fen of desire and fear.
Conscious sketch of unconscious chalky hue.
Hope in hands of youth, squalled doubts divide and leer.

Crusybled charms and crucifixated light.
Wealth accruing chests that bold possessors drown.
Slow healing harms, how heavy questioned might
Salts a wounded crew, arms in pain thrust down.
Raise them ever—warriors on the virgined
Skirts of half-created future! Never
Desert barren fields for groves long loved and known.
Warriors take arms and strike though ours dissever!


:: POSTED BY: KASSANDER & JAMESON 10:42 PM [+] ::

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On Sitting Down With Some I’ve Left Behind

Tempered glances, curled lips to angular eyes.
Adolescent dances on steely toes,
Infant synthetics starved in the throes.
Their girlish hips, their rectangular whys
Cannot receive the shape of my answer.

So I defer, would laugh as we together
Did laugh under violet skies, frighting
Graven interlopers back to weathered
Mornings of tomorrow, from which they messenged.
But now my laughter rings as foreign writing.

On sitting down with some I’ve left behind.
On taking tea, on smoking out a mind.
To trade an apple for a lemon rind
One trick played on the blind – what thought I to find?

For one word, for one tongue among us shared.
For one red spirit to fire what’s ever dared.
This film around the eye extenuates the scared.
O horrible, these regresslings of regret.
One solitary light, one conscience bared,
One million malperceptions misforget.

When avails truth? Often absent player
Offstage, throwing dice with the curtains—
Snake eyes perhaps fixed ahead. Are they loaded
To their cherry dimples with critic intent?
These would believe it not, literal and illiterate naysayers
Unbecoming the guises on which they've spent.

So I defer, would weep as we together
Did weep under violent skies, delugions
Seeping heavy sorrow on fair
Mornings of tomorrow, of which it presaged.
But now my tears should flood them all, and then drowning.

On sitting down with some I’ve left behind.
On coffee grounds, on gurgles in the mind.
On learning how to die for to unwind,
One hope for the resigned— what thought I to find?

One barks of honesty, as if it were
A cushioned stroll across a billion spineless
Doves. Rather, Noah’s whole primitive crew:
Stretching flesh, sweating fangs, prickly coats
Best for pricking. Could I blame them not to see it through?

So I defer, would remain silent as we together
Remained silent under august skies, drinking
Fire, fermenting stillest wine for the overloud
Mornings of tomorrow, for to remember.
Thus I sit in silence, and they—blinking.

On sitting down with some I’ve left behind.
On pleasantries, on parting in the mind.
On learning not to be nor seem their kind,
One cross for those maligned— these meetings do remind.



:: POSTED BY: KASSANDER & JAMESON 10:23 PM [+] ::

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Belief in inspiration. --- Artists have an interest in others' believing in sudden ideas, so-called inspirations; as if the idea of a work of art, of poetry, the fundamental thought of a philosophy shines down like a merciful light from heaven. In truth, the good artist's or thinker's imagination is continually producing things good, mediocre, and bad, but his power of judgment, highly sharpened and practiced, rejects, selects, joins together; thus we now see from Beethoven's notebooks that he gradually assembled the most glorious melodies and, to a degree, selected them out of disparate beginnings. The artist who separates less rigorously, liking to rely on his imitative memory, can in some circumstances become a great improviser; but artistic improvisation stands low in relation to artistic thoughts earnestly and laboriously chosen. All great men were great workers, untiring not only in invention but also in rejecting, sifting, reforming, arranging.
--Friedrich Nietzsche: Human, All Too Human 155

:: POSTED BY: KASSANDER & JAMESON 3:53 PM [+] ::

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