Prologue to the Silent Movie 2

If there is no transcendence, no connection, then we are nothing but lumps of matter. And running on a short lease is meaningless. If this place is really a void, then what we feel, comprehend, the shifting subtleties and endless re-focusings of conscious thought, simply don't matter. The point is that there absolutely has to be something, some way out or some point, some something, some perspective that will hold and not fade, or else I could not stand to physically exist.

In my mind, I am "deprived of so much". But it occurs to me sometimes, at lucid intervals, that we are all deprived. So, concentrating on my deprived state, I allow myself to wander into the illusion that, these few desires having been met, everything will be ok. And this thought is only fuel to more bitter desire.

All such thought is muddled, obtuse, equivocal. I myself am nothing but a shard of shattered glass. The shattered glass of all the old certainties and values.

Our whole culture is made of shattered glass. And the shards mingle and glint and reflect one another. Nothing is more confusing than the rubble of our lives. We have so many choices that choice becomes meaningless. Choice is deadened.

Among this rubble I stumble blindly to find an identity. Among garbage I search for diamonds. The diamond is inside me, you might say. All it takes from me is some switch of perspective, a volte-face of conception, a change in attitude. Vulgar people call it "thinking positive", or even "self-assertion". That's all very well, but I could never make it last, I could never attain such an internal state except for very briefly. It would take an inhuman effort to sustain a positive attitude, what with the ever-present knowledge that such an attitude would basically be false, based on self-deception and perhaps public dishonesty. This is "positive thought", "self-assertion", or insidious self-hypnosis like affirmations and other enforced regimes of positivity. Self-deception I say, a placebo for the soul.

How much more useful, more honest, and more suited to the inherent state of the world is self-negation, habitual negativity of thought, the personality as void? At least it does not rest on a giant untruth. As I've always said, negation can be the foundation of new and beautiful creation. We have to clear the old weeds completely from the ground before something new can be planted. What do I mean by this? I mean obliterate our tired old culture and its choices, burn away its tendrils that have snaked into your mind and affected your actions. Be a mirror to the world. Do not resist and struggle against the void. Become it... and the third millennium is yours.