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thoughts run amuck, but there is not much to cleave from these spaces that have been emptied of all material matter after the man left the trap door open and i fell asunder, it was the pressure of losing his cerebral muse into the waves that she said would pull us under – now we have nothing to lose and there is a pounding in this heart that goes faster faster with expediency that rolls a wave of thunder that brought down the rain tonight keeping us neither wet nor dry – it is the devil, she cries, pounding the ground awake from below and we feel her ache – we scream her scream for why must we swirl into this dream of living when it goes out of control under steam and plows down too many innocent things, innocent dreams that were just beginning to breathe softer under her soft sheen producing golden rubs upon their round chins and pursed lips; we shall never understand this, this life that is full of happiness, yet it pulls some of us under until we become buried within a storm so devastating that we question reality – was it really just a blink – in this bed of stolen slumber we shall finally find what could never been seen ~

(Apologies – it has been forever since there was freedom to just write a bit of stream. I am a bit lost without having a paper to write, a lecture to watch or a chapter to read. This bit of breath (2 courses start soon) has me choking on air.)

“So long as the artist does not belong, in the most concrete sense, to one of the great historical classes of humanity, so long he cannot realize a social expression in all its public fullness. Which is to say, an expression for, and not against. The artist is greatest in affirmation.”

~ Robert Motherwell

It is interesting, searching Motherwell’s book this weekend for personal research, I stumbled upon the above quote. The quote reads as the artist equivalent to Judith Butler on defining gender and sex. It should really come as no surprise for Motherwell was a philosophy student first, artist second. I left notes in the margins pointing out echoes of Marx, Rousseau and Foucault.

“To express the felt nature of reality is the artist’s principal concern.” ~ Robert Motherwell

What is reality…really? Is it the artist’s reality or the reality of society, a certain faction that is addressed within said art? How is it that this goes expressed in art? What is the purpose of art if the artist’s concern is expression of Felt nature – are we involved in this feeling too? If we do not get moved, who failed who?

A thought to leave with you – actually two:

1) I recently watched The Examined Life which is a fascinating documentary featuring several of the philosophers mentioned in recent papers on this blog. žižek’s brief interview took place in a garbage facility. He spoke of consumption, i.e. overconsumption and our throw-a-way society. He felt that society is too quick to forget where all this garbage goes – we just throw and ‘poof’ it is gone from our mind. It had me thinking – it would be wonderful if school age children took a field trip to a local garbage facility to understand where everything is going. In this “wonderful world”, they then would visit an artist’s studio whose work is composed from garbage or found things….

2) Would it be wrong to have a Conceptional Art Museum with nothing in it?

(This blog post has been powered tonight by First Listen @NPR : Laura Marling.)

Que sais-je?

desperate – the whisper of clock hands strike hours gone and there is a time stamp on your mind to turn it gone by 2am leaving minutes minus fifteen to find a song that captures the words woven in today’s northward wind – but every melody is of a different memory – a hum of june lawnmowers, a taste of salt and lemon grass, for it was another time of low keys and nights that never ceased even when ninety degree sun beat upon the damp pillow- and no one could understand how those limbs continued to bloom despite no sunlight – only rain – - you, you knew though didn’t you with a peace offering saying, it is you, You, that tuned in my head when she sang a quiet voice to acoustic string – go chase another dream and leave this foolish one to travel – an empty car gone waiting for someone to place a key inside her and turn, but no one ever came and she sits rusting in almost the same place, playing the same dashboard song, chasing the same summer dream – someday, another will walk past her, only to stop and wonder about that old steering wheel serving as an anchor for the trunk that is blooming stubbornly in april snow~

(that was composed a few nights ago- never did like its flow- forced- closed it down at 2:30am and forgot about it until tonight when figuring if the inspiration from the day was still here.. it has gone waxen under her bright glow but oh how young frogs sing under the window and there is a hint of summer’s humidity ready to bathe skin in sweet misery; so much waits upon death’s rising, or is it life’s cycling round… Zizek wails about Saint Paul and Christianity, it intrigues for it is yet a reveal if this is true or false, which offers a great segue into David Shield’s book Reality Hunger started today, too (one gets so much more done when allowing the mind to wander in books without punching a clock, if only there were a fairy to carry my financial burdens) – Shields has quite a few clever observations on the state of truth in writing today … not tucked in enough to complete a summation, but shall leave a few nuggets; blank slate started me here in the first place…a vista that reminded me of a contrary nature of self -a war, country beauty vs city energy)

“Collage, the art of reassembling fragments of preexisting images in such a way as to form a new image, was the most important innovation in the art of the twentieth century.”

blank slate -a quiet beauty in its death, yet its life writhes under us

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“One responds to the history of his art so far; the other responds to life itself.”

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“Art is a conversation, not a patent office.”

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(Quotes have been patented in Mr. Shields’s manifesto.)

welcome to the zoo

Nothing soothes the flight of mind flying over violin snares seeping into a deep crescendo as I read her words – dear HD, how she seemed prayed (if that was her way) to write her world in poem in order to deal with each subjection into which she offered objection such as The Master, having just read sensing her anger welling believing it is her pen to Pound not seeing it is her Stein’s Picasso to Freud – he treated her with belief that she needed a man to keep her willow from weeping – I weep for her (or is it for all of us) a long note, a cello’s masterly cry into this cave “for whom are we living” Dear God, he preaches tonight your loving but if that is so then why these games since Adam went a wandering – each day there is fruit consumed from the apple tree – is this why you plant bombs in our head – or is that not you, that is what they call free will or is that what I mean when there are too many parlor games- thee shall be no preaching to anyone to follow these folded hands for the only prayed thing is to a master who is already dead to the noise of the living’s heart song and redemption is so dark when it has already gone to seed – should we not moor up our boat on this blood soaked sea and cast an anchor to something ahead of us for behind us is only more the same as the insane can testament to anyone who is kind enough to listen, but we are never listening to the chatter of them only to them – dealers of power – yes, it is a parlor game in our virtual salon hoping to make aces out of marked cards whilst someone outside on the street screams I AM only to not be the way but to pretend he is Nietzsche and his battle cry cries out the death – the death- where are all the animals locked up tonight – I have faith – it is not in the zoo ~

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there is a scream in my brain tonight – somewhere in deep grey, no make it brown recesses of brain where the melanin stops, not the sun from over cooking grey matter, but the thousands of firing neurons especially for those of us who burn at both ends and sleep is something that weeps when a day comes – but we, we need to go back to that scream and figure why it comes under a silence of moon pass and tepid tea – did you know we are to live like animals and keep our wits about our past – live for today and all as Emerson extols this individual mantra that had me for a moment feeling like I was reading Rand – must we shit on others just to be, to be a one woman band- never ask a brother for a nickel when you know he just won the lotto for that is when true nature takes form- a scream, a mother fucking howl akin to his Howl let loose in this mind listening to him wax on about the ordinary – yes, we are all ordinary for weren’t we fashioned in his image – ha! you cannot have it both ways and while we are preaching about things,stop it – did you realize you mentioned teenage eating disorders and porn addiction in the same breath – god, when will fat middle aged men get a grip and understand that not every female disorderly is willing to fit medias perfection – man it is called control, get some, your sister in Christ has some and that is why she is the ways she is and you is the way you is – it seems someone is living large with no pain whilst the other is just sliding along the gutter hoping a door becomes ajar and she is just thin enough to slip inside – there was a dream last night that held me tight and i swore it was a glacier that was as perfect as Neverland – church is neverland of make believers who are better than a bard’s stage and it is all for naught – is it possible that my dog is god incarnate – flip the name and voila – now do not hate for this is not blasphemy – hell, she is better than most human beings, honest too- do you know that there, there is –

this is only a

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(10 minutes – 15 max…tick tick tick…but there is a message gnawing at the back of this that eats & eats but there is something else that has gone starving – what is it that we want to feed upon in order to satisfy an insatiable hunger that leaves us forever empty – is it our need for a quality that is beyond this personal intake, this personal tug-o-war as we grapple in a sea of stimuli only to place a shield of human resistance to avoid a shock that shakes our shell – REBEL HELL – this is not a life of resistance but a life diving off into the deep end hoping it is not too late to experience drowning while still remaining above ground – we are free to breathe deeply when our mind is floating nicely in a river of dreams)

 See… see! This is what happens when you have two classes exploring Freud. Seriously, it is rather serendipitous for Freud’s theory of consciousness and memory had just been explored in Walter Benjamin’s essay on Baudelaire (still reading). Benjamin goes on to explain Freud’s concept of consciousness in conjunction with stimuli helps us to handle the shock – fright. If this is not assimilated properly then we have a host of issues that can manifest in our dreams. What is interesting is Benjamin’s further exploration of how Proust and Baudelaire produce writings that are prime examples of this type of consciousness and involuntary memory.

(it was nothing but a dream but it took me to a place again and again and we laughed like children – it felt good to laugh despite the pain…there was pain, wasn’t there? it was dark in that cave of existence, but all that surfaces is an orange neon sign that tells me the bar is open – when are we going to sing again? when are we going to dance our way to freedom? it was in the shadows that the light seemed to stream from a pinhole that led to your face as you smiled far off from this resistance)

All kinds of minds make this world go round but it is the mind that is perhaps a bit too open that leads us into a kingdom of images we would have not otherwise seen. I have always reasoned that it is those with a touch of madness that touch us because they have a vision of obscene purity, if such a thing exists. It is upon these waves of genius that we float and drown and die until we recreate our own being if we allow opening to it. That is why it makes sense when Robert Gupta speaks of music and how it heals us, how it can become medicine, for in the hands of the creative mind there is revolution – a revelation of the spark that creates a flame that creates a fire that builds until every inch of their creative self ignites producing an explosion that does not burn the receiver, quite the opposite, it sets us down a river on a raft that should be labeled lifeboat – music bridges the pain and the beauty until we cannot hear anything but the silence of

(goodnight) 

 


 

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do you ever pave your day with good intentions only to step on a piece of glass, not hard enough to cut skin but smart enough to stop your footsteps – circle back, try to walk it off – shake it away – but then you sit down and just stare at the clouds and wait for the rain to come down, washing away trace of limestone or glass or ideas that you had scattered amongst the detritus that clings to frozen branches waiting with spindling arms to embrace your cold branches hanging in defeat for was not the sun shining when you woke but now it is a field filled with crows escaping that dark beast who has draped the sky in ink 

(there were good intentions to visit all of you who are kind enough to comment on my mediocrity or to attempt to read it and give me a thumbs up… alas, 3 AM came early and the day broke early and this afternoon of good intentions before libraryland asks for my body to man its evening fort, i sit in front of this ghost of a machine and listen to something that has passed me – passed you – passed life - in a dream his guitar opens my eyes and in it there is a taste of clay soil baked by southern sun while parched lips quest for something to fill a void left by an empty river left behind by a grand dam that had to water millions of mouths)

 

this really tells you nothing, does it, so here it is for i share because his story moved me and it may move you for many of you, dear readers, are of such depth and understand the demons that come with creativity, demons that are strong enough even to beat down the path laid with golden intentions for the stronghold got hold and started melting everything until the last step was beyond where the material world could go. and some of us were not blessed enough to know him while he was here, only to read a RIP and wonder “who is this” and go read – go discover spend an hour listening to his soul pour forth and wonder – how did i miss this beauty?

we can never hold beauty, though, for it is fleeting and you risk tearing its wings if you place it in a cage – so we must set it free for all to find it in a blink, in a dream, in a post from a ghost that fills a machine with words who sometimes wonders…. 

 

 

(i shall try to visit all of you very soon ~ a)

(( ( I)) )) )((( I )))

“When the orbits of these two satellites of ours happened to cross paths, we could be together. Maybe even open our hearts to each other. But that was only for the briefest moment. In the next instant we’d be in absolute solitude. Until we burned up and became nothing.”
— Haruki Murakami (Sputnik Sweetheart)

no worries, this post has nothing to do about romance or missed connection — no, it has everything to do with serendipity

It is the final week for one of my MOOC courses, a beginning philosophy course, in which we have studied a little bit of Everything including Morality, Scientific Realism and finally, Time Travel. Tonight, playing catch up on several courses, I attempted to ‘wind down’ by watching a bit of lecture on time travel. Must say, a bit of a shocker to tune in to see a professor in what I thought was odd Scottish garb, only to find out he is lecturing in his very own Steampunk costume! Despite the initial distraction, I tune in and his words start to get me –

the mind takes me traveling backward until I see distinct images of a puzzle – flashes of an airport, an insane asylum and streets in dark chaos

– flashes from scenes from “12 Monkeys”, a film I remember vividly – leaving the theatre, hitting the local pancake house, smoking furiously as we argued about the meaning of the plot. I became obsessed. Not because it was a wonderful film, but because I had a very hard time wrapping my brain around the concept of how it all worked in time – present, future and past –

we desire things More when they elude  us ~ it need to be the lover that rejects us, it could be a problem we cannot seem to solve

– puzzled by the lecture, I slip into the discussion forum. A thread catches my eye – I still don’t know why-  I follow the words finding the professor has commented too- I skim discussions beyond my realm – then, there it is – sweet serendipity - a link to a photo feed –

does your heart ever quicken – your mind race- though you know not why

– bizarre pictures of LEGO like machines – reps of steampunk – THEN, there is a picture of a man holding a book, or is it a DVD, next to a film poster with a name that has the mind traveling backward into that grey recess of remembering –

Le Jetee

– a title of the book I found was the inspiration behind the film “12 Monkeys”. Almost 20 years ago, I tried to order it from overseas via Borders to no avail – I knew nothing of it, only that is was an essay of the film in stills, black & white. After six months of trying, it fell way to where unrequited quests go –

our memory, some theorize a container that holds everything, especially those things that cause our senses pain 

– tonight, there is no pain, no sadness, but elation for technology has propelled me forward – never did I know about the original film - never did I have access to purchasing the book on my own -

perhaps you are like me and enjoy something of a mind bender, an exploration of time travel and the human condition… 

amor fati

“Amor Fati – “Love Your Fate”, which is in fact your life.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche

(reading Nietzsche for Modern Contemporary rather unsuccessfully – arvo pÄrt channel on pandora streams glass breaking the hours into pieces – thinking in the back of my mind – as if fn’s words came in, floated into the ether to co-mingle with music projected behind me -never to meld but hang somewhere in an unattainable recess)

An ironic thing about reading N – it allowed me to break the spine of his collected works. Uncertain as to the last time anything was actually read from this book, ergo, it was sweet serendipity that an old Van Gogh postcard was wedged within the chapter, one page to be exact, from the assigned reading – below is a picture just in case you don’t believe me. What does it mean…perhaps that this life is on the right page – or this is my fate…

Tiring quickly, though, of reading his ideas on punishment, good and evil and God, I traveled on to our other reading, Baudelaire’s “Paris Spleen”. Curiously, online I read snippets from three different translations – one was filled with beauty – too beautiful for Baudelaire, I think. It made me wonder, do you think that is a risk of translating – mistranslation based on one’s desire for beauty? A bit of the poetry:

1) “My nerves are strung to such a pitch that they can no longer give out anything but shrill and painful vibrations.”

from “Artist’s Confiteor”

2) “A Wag” – “A Wit” – “A Joker” – all titles for the same poem that made me smile at Baudelaire’s humorous take on the French bourgeoisie, a faction that he seems to detest, thou in a book I have of his, he seems rather obsessed with noting of fashion and the airs of society.
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3) “The Double Room” though the site whose translations read too beautiful titled it ” The Twofold Room” which was quite lovely of an idea. The poem made me jot this down upon reading: reminds me why there is no art found on most of these walls – if it were not abstract or a photograph that defines no mood – would it not imprison one in its nature, never allowing the mind to rest, nor the creative beast to roam free…

4) (Je t’aime le gateau! )”The Cake” – it speaks again of how cruelty dines – the haves torture the have-nots – that ever famous line “Qu’ils mangent de la brioche!” No one, however, can ever say if it was the dear lady who lost her head who said it. Many say no for she held no disdain for the poor. JJ Rousseau actually made the line much famous in his “Confessions”. (although this is a book upon my shelf, there is not time to dig for it and its context.. another day).

(it was a day that started with rain and ended in snow. at one point, needing to escape the confines of these walls, these words, these courses that feed the mind but deplete creativity – z & i took a stroll between heavy white lines- this is what did not melt)

How she shows us her power
first in her icy barbs
then heavy sheets of white, cascading down
we all unite beneath her wet
residue. Shouldn’t we slow the fuck down
under such beauty, such duress? Disregard
the siren wailing, blurring our distance.
No one stops their pace anymore
we can race fate, we can fake it
God – we are still incomplete in our consumption.
We sleep under her blanket dreaming of Sunday’s penance.
Observing a field filled with geese
does anyone else see their dozens of beaks
an optical illusion in stalks knee-high
camouflaging existence, their fat bodies. How
we feed only on easy lines and pink words.
Sweating, walking zombies of manufactured landscapes
no naked eye sees it better than we who walk blindly.
Thin skin burns under her cold stare
no where can we escape her reign. Gone
hollow, a rotted stump reveals a secret inside
Someday this (pointing in) will look the same. ~
(chasing fate)

yellow house
[1] started to watch “Bill Cunningham New York” documentary which curiously came to mind for he speaks of the evil of money and art.

~=~~==~~~====~~~ ÎĮÏ ======~===:::::::. .

Thinking back on Kant’s text, I wonder whether we may not envisage modernity rather as an attitude than as a period of history. And by “attitude,” I mean a mode of relating to contemporary reality; a voluntary choice made by certain people; in the end, a way of thinking and feeling; a way, too, of acting and behaving that at one and the same time marks a relation of belonging and presents itself as a task. (Michel Foucault, “What Is Enlightenment”)

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how do we relate to contemporary reality – what is contemporary reality – do you see what i see – do you hear what i hear

i hear nothing but jazz – no, f-stop – it stopped in light of the scrim of cat gut that got stuck in that wishbone she chucked – what was that cat thinking spewing like that – did she lose all her mittens to get so bent?

went downtown, meant to go uptown, but there is no down tempo on the metro so we all swoon to her beat which rolls us right-side  damn city was built facing east and the roads buckle under her white powder turning to gel until it is a frozen heap.

did you get that swat team memo sent from base camp, otherwise know as home – cc to clergy, mother and your honey – what the hell, you threw the first snowball – not- a -fools- chance- in your hell -that THAT primal scream excused as thoracic release cleared your blue chakra – try some herbal tea, or something strong, you gonna need to loosen that tongue, you must have swallowed it after agreeing to his fifth and a rock glass made for two; we all have our limits on solitude – desperation paints silver lines over black raindrops that fall from your painted eyes. 

i heard her sing ‘someday, when you’re feeling low (da ta da ta da) know someone loves you    - but only in a song.

(Do not ask – I shall not tell – just a forward, backward, thinking stream dedicated to understanding reality for I truly believe that some do not live in this reality, but their reality — to that end, do we really have a society if no one can agree what is real? Perhaps Rousseau had it right – reflection is man’s worse enemy.)

one final whisper from her coven of trees under a moonlit stream gone frozen dreaming of summer wisteria drinking deeply from her rooted crown-  ”watch for beasts that feed on souls reflecting on empty words drowning in hate” ~ 

of beasts & infinite beauty ~

there is no plastic, only a bubble that sets forth and carries our eyes into an abyss that can never be our world for it is a world for wild things from dreams that drown within the murky waters of yesterday and resuscitate with the promise of sunlight when the scientist breaks open the cave, finding one more painting that denotes an existence – is it reality, or is it stepping into an awake dream, though, when one screams inside a bubble can we hear it – not if it is plastic but this one is made of the thin layer that encapsulates this universe allowing each gong to reverberate loudly from the seams that stitch each scene until every being is in its place – beast or man or grass or sand, it is the power of the core that pulls us under but there is voodoo that keeps away the truth and builds a mansion out of tin cans – when the last match is burned, it shall be death that sends us forward into the next universe to recycle our existence so that the quilt can continue to patch until a fabric covers the entire cosmos in rich matter until someday it blocks out the breath of wind and the warmth of sun – then, we shall rest under its weight in everlasting dreams 

I had a dream, its fragmentations continue to speak to me and I wonder what it is trying to say. Perhaps watching Beasts of the Southern Wild haunts me more for it echoes what my mind has been pondering in sleep, in waking. Beasts does not let go of the dream – but it is not a dream, just a patchwork of reality that one steps into when steeped in understanding of how this world bleeds into our greater existence if we bother to look truth in the eye.

It was interesting to watch Beasts of the Southern Wild tonight, it reminds that the world is quite broken, but also quite beautiful in its ability to survive as a project of symbiosis. Hushpuppy narrates this beauty, reveling what we all must know to survive – the strong animal survives, but even the strongest must die. There is a quiet brilliance in her six-year-old observations: it is the heartbeat of any beast that denotes our rhythm in this world – it tells if you are living or if you are dying. Beyond the levee, in the Bathtub, they live one step from dying -but  it is a life of freedom, their cherished freedom – one that cannot be found in plastic existence.

even tonight the stars promise a bit of serendipity  for in both dream and movie there was a last supper ~ 

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