It is not that i project anymore into the future and worry about it, at least not the longterm future, it's more that i feel the weight of the present and past too keenly, like a sort of burden. This is like a sort of central theme, fundamental to everything i write, and yet at the same time, one one level it's definitely bland and banal, like discontent of one sort or another generally is.
If i follow strictly my own line of subjectivity, i come to the conclusion that truth is impossible, that words are meaningless, and at that point, if i'm being consistent, i have to fall silent.
Then again, what if it's more banal even than that, that the truth doesn't deserve to be expressed? What a predicament the writer is in when on page one he finds himself thoroughly disenchanted, disgusted even, with expression, if he finds description itself distasteful...
Tuesday, 9 December 2008
If everyone was like me, and every student, say, held such stuff, such secrets, inside, then the world could not go on functioning for any length of time. Something would have to give, and me and all my confusions are only a sort of microcosmic reflection of that, projected down, as it were, to an insignificant scale.
Art is refreshed and made more acute by a refusal to be objective, but objectivity is sometimes relieving. Maybe it's essential to a self-concept, to a knowledge of the self. Maybe no knowledge of the self, no self-concept, is entirely possible. I've dramatized my own identity issues into a sort of rationalized debate about subjectivity and objectivity, but really i'm not entirely convinced it's a valid argument, based as it might be on a false distinction, and really the only conclusion you can come to in the end (after all this speculation) is that there is no objectivity and there is no truth.
If you be subjective and act subjectively though, is you try being, as it were, fundamentally subjective, you soon run into problems. Chief among these is an absolutely crippling, and if not crippling then at least enfeebling, sense of isolation.
Art is refreshed and made more acute by a refusal to be objective, but objectivity is sometimes relieving. Maybe it's essential to a self-concept, to a knowledge of the self. Maybe no knowledge of the self, no self-concept, is entirely possible. I've dramatized my own identity issues into a sort of rationalized debate about subjectivity and objectivity, but really i'm not entirely convinced it's a valid argument, based as it might be on a false distinction, and really the only conclusion you can come to in the end (after all this speculation) is that there is no objectivity and there is no truth.
If you be subjective and act subjectively though, is you try being, as it were, fundamentally subjective, you soon run into problems. Chief among these is an absolutely crippling, and if not crippling then at least enfeebling, sense of isolation.
Wednesday, 19 November 2008
I hate nothing so much as a cliché and always try my best to avoid them. In everyday speech i mean, and also the clichéd occassion is one of my biggest hates, or sources of discomfort. Thus it is that sometimes i struggle to express myself, as i can by no means avoid the clichéd sentiment, unexpressed as it may be.
A cliché is dead language, a sure sign of not just unoriginal thought but actual lack of thought, mental lethargy. I am only saying this for myself, applying these standards only to myself, out of a feeling of necessity.
A cliché is dead language, a sure sign of not just unoriginal thought but actual lack of thought, mental lethargy. I am only saying this for myself, applying these standards only to myself, out of a feeling of necessity.
Sunday, 9 November 2008
If i feel acted upon, as i often do, as is inevitable, rather than controlling the outcome and the direction of my time, it will lead me to a feeling of fatalism, doom, anxiety... I will be anxious because i am acted upon rather than acting independently, to realise my objectives in full autonomy and the most precise reasoning, unclouded by the prejudices of others, above all unencumbered by traditions of authority, that decree how my life should be. My time is structured by others, by tradition, and thus are my activities, my loves, my very dreams affected and circumscribed. Others may have adapted to this. I never have.
I feel dirtied by the obcene tides of time, ever ebbing and falling, catching me and soaking all my labours with their stink. Hours and days flow past me. I jump through hoops, by someone else's decree, as though prodded into life by a jolt of electricity. I am not grateful, i am sorry and enraged. So much of my lassitude and misery comes from this ingrained attitude of looking at time, seeing the inevitability of certain actions, which arise as part of "playing the game", at the behest of others, not in accordance with me as an autonomous, thinking, independent being, full of awareness and reason, but merely as though i had been reduced to the status of an object that is "acted upon".
I feel dirtied by the obcene tides of time, ever ebbing and falling, catching me and soaking all my labours with their stink. Hours and days flow past me. I jump through hoops, by someone else's decree, as though prodded into life by a jolt of electricity. I am not grateful, i am sorry and enraged. So much of my lassitude and misery comes from this ingrained attitude of looking at time, seeing the inevitability of certain actions, which arise as part of "playing the game", at the behest of others, not in accordance with me as an autonomous, thinking, independent being, full of awareness and reason, but merely as though i had been reduced to the status of an object that is "acted upon".
Sunday, 2 November 2008
Of anything distinct from the world of sensation there is nothing that can be said for certain... hence my sickening uncertainty. I am not even certain of my loves or hates except momentarilly. I am an intermittent revolutionary, i even have sudden flashes of conservatism. But i am neither one nor the other. It is only the primitive type of man that loves wholeheartedly, or can give his passions consistently. But he is also happier, more fulfilled.
Those who have given their lives to an ideal, say a formalised and rigid ideal such as Christianity, are often content and may appear smug, considering themselves of the elect. But their mythology supplies them with a mystical, quiescent satisfaction. A man like me can only yearn for a satisfaction like that, because belief of any kind in absolute certainties is exactly what i find most difficult.
Those who have given their lives to an ideal, say a formalised and rigid ideal such as Christianity, are often content and may appear smug, considering themselves of the elect. But their mythology supplies them with a mystical, quiescent satisfaction. A man like me can only yearn for a satisfaction like that, because belief of any kind in absolute certainties is exactly what i find most difficult.
Saturday, 1 November 2008
Everywhere around us now we see signs of isolation.
We hear isolating songs on the radio, see isolating images on TV, and hear from the mouths of
casual acquaintances isolating talk.
Our life is a state of tension, purposefully bent that way by the masters of our time, who are the masters of madness.
If i adhere to negation, inversion, it is partially out of cowardice but, more widely, out of a passion for meaning that is misplaced in our time. What i miss is certainty.
What i wish most fervently is never to delude myself.
I am in prison, it seems.
We hear isolating songs on the radio, see isolating images on TV, and hear from the mouths of
casual acquaintances isolating talk.
Our life is a state of tension, purposefully bent that way by the masters of our time, who are the masters of madness.
If i adhere to negation, inversion, it is partially out of cowardice but, more widely, out of a passion for meaning that is misplaced in our time. What i miss is certainty.
What i wish most fervently is never to delude myself.
I am in prison, it seems.
Wednesday, 22 October 2008
There is a big building and inside are thousands of young people thronged together. These folk are watching someone on a stage who is saying words relayed through a tannoy.
The words are like gas, like beige, like rustling leaves, like the shadow of a cloud that will pass swiftly on.
No-one will ever remember the words, not even the speaker. This speaker has a job and this is the commencement and execution thereof. The speaker collects symbolical money to feed an actual family, with all the resultant anomalies and strains. With all the absurdity, which the speaker has trained him or herself not to see, not to apprehend too keenly.
The speaker collects symbolical money. Symbolical money is transferred to a symbolical account. The speaker ritually removes some of it, invisibly. The speaker ritually collects actual substances, bestowing them to its children, the fruit of its loins. These children eat wheat and milk and butter and vegetables, soda and chocolate and candy and meat. At some unspecified later date, defecation occurs.
Thus the ritual completes and can be resumed once again, the speaker again taking her place, performing her activity abstractly, and being rewarded with abstract quantities, collecting fibre and protein to once again sustain the organism, to lengthen its life, for obscure purposes, to cast away its waste so that others may sort through it, and be compensated with gaseous quantities of finite invisible credit, descending ghostly like the holy spirit, merciless like the Olympian gods, all-encompassing like Jehovah's reach. Everyone swallows and is swallowed.
My heart does not even rebel; no, i only feel an urgent desire to vomit and weep.
.... but my Angel touches me on the shoulder, and says:
How bout no bosses? No juniors? No symbology? No abstracts? No power?
How bout energy? Violence? Lust? Exhaustion? Joy?
How bout no more co-dependent relationships? No more master and servant?
No more useless activity? No more meaningless toil?
How bout an endless party, full, replete with unbounded love for all?
How bout a new spring followed by an eternal summer?
The words are like gas, like beige, like rustling leaves, like the shadow of a cloud that will pass swiftly on.
No-one will ever remember the words, not even the speaker. This speaker has a job and this is the commencement and execution thereof. The speaker collects symbolical money to feed an actual family, with all the resultant anomalies and strains. With all the absurdity, which the speaker has trained him or herself not to see, not to apprehend too keenly.
The speaker collects symbolical money. Symbolical money is transferred to a symbolical account. The speaker ritually removes some of it, invisibly. The speaker ritually collects actual substances, bestowing them to its children, the fruit of its loins. These children eat wheat and milk and butter and vegetables, soda and chocolate and candy and meat. At some unspecified later date, defecation occurs.
Thus the ritual completes and can be resumed once again, the speaker again taking her place, performing her activity abstractly, and being rewarded with abstract quantities, collecting fibre and protein to once again sustain the organism, to lengthen its life, for obscure purposes, to cast away its waste so that others may sort through it, and be compensated with gaseous quantities of finite invisible credit, descending ghostly like the holy spirit, merciless like the Olympian gods, all-encompassing like Jehovah's reach. Everyone swallows and is swallowed.
My heart does not even rebel; no, i only feel an urgent desire to vomit and weep.
.... but my Angel touches me on the shoulder, and says:
How bout no bosses? No juniors? No symbology? No abstracts? No power?
How bout energy? Violence? Lust? Exhaustion? Joy?
How bout no more co-dependent relationships? No more master and servant?
No more useless activity? No more meaningless toil?
How bout an endless party, full, replete with unbounded love for all?
How bout a new spring followed by an eternal summer?
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