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a: ?; a beginning, a breath, a sound in the breath. this
sound in the breath is an impurity,
a seed from which a crystal evolves, mingles with other breaths, other impurities. soon there is
a very complex matter produced from such a simple beginning. one may be tempted to look for me, the breather, inside this complicated
crystal. this is a mistake. this
crystal is only a progression of growth into the regions where i am not. if one wishes to look for me, one would have to walk to
the edge of this form, to the shore of this breath-crystal. i begin there. abandon: v; abandoned by being
(as we all must be eventually) one should at least be able to abandon the
living without being pestered or blamed. abandonment: n; 1. if the public
will not attend your art you must
recognize the situation and allow your art to develop in this truth. your art must proceed in spite of an audience. one day, this public who has never attended but only believed they were involved will come to the
empty realization that your art happened, persisted, without them— in other
words, your art out-abandoned them.
2. the particular greets you and the
universal abandons you. Abelard
and Heloise: n; Abelard and Heloise are
present everywhere around me as though i live on the surface of a pond along
which the ripples are temporal manifestations of the original Abelard and
Heloise. these ripples affect me and everyone else
who live on the surface of this pond. and even
though i have read their story, i hear them still inside me conversing as
though i am a vessel for their concern within which their problem hopes to be
resolved. aberration: n; when used to explain some
occurrence (problem), the concept of aberration
may serve to deflect attention from the condition(s) which depend on such a
concept, the condition(s) which father the problem. the
concept of aberration assumes the
role of the battered spouse who is assumed to be intimately responsible for
the problem. able:
adj; the person who is able to understand, to learn, the person who is not an
evolutionary step or a major surgical procedure away from understanding and
self-improvement but who refuses, out of laziness and / or fear, to
understand will always be confronted by a little scab of self-criticism
whenever they do attempt to understand and succeed — why have i not attempted
this before? why do i refuse to better myself when
it is in my power? — this much self-knowledge is
enough to keep many people from even daring to learn. about: adv; a cage. to ask what is this about is to ask what has
been caged. as a writer i am not interested in about, i am not interested in creating
new cages; instead, i am interested in breaking through, or at least pointing
to the existence of, what cages us. it isn't about which is important but toward (intention). absence: n; 1. we inhabit
absence. the places where absence is most dense,
most organized, are the walls and the foundations of our dwelling. 2. even absence is a form of presence, is not fully void.
what is not is everywhere. we are suffocating in it and we call our struggle for
breath life. absolute: adj; 1. to decide anything absolutely about language with language is
a blind person attempting to discover the colour of a certain sample of paint
by mixing in other paint. 2. the desire for absolute judgments / determinations is to
seek an escape from personal responsibility with the issue/situation which
you desire to judge/determine. 3. the presence of some absolute is often a signal that what
is at issue has not been investigated in enough depth. it
is a signal that whatever problem the absolution has solved has been avoided, has been silenced. under
the muzzle of every absolute questioning struggles to voice itself. 4. all
absolutes choose their enemies, their conflict; at the same time they ignore
that which is able to undo them (and their conflict). 5. art, like life, fortunately requires absolutes. absolute
uncertainty:
n; in the scheme of creation, the transcendent is metaphorically wept into
the darkness. such a scattering of sadness is
random. this darkness was what was used to make all
that is. therefore the distribution of the
transcendent (by simply following the logic of the metaphor) is distributed
in some manner throughout creation. the state of
this distribution is unknown, it is absolutely
uncertain or ambiguous. the possibility exists, on a relative scale, for all our
world to be infused with transcendence, but the possibility also exists that
nothing of our world is infused with transcendence. this
is the uncertainty which has been strung from birth to death and on which we
balance precariously, never daring to look down. abstraction: n; 1. a common scenario: i'm very happy, or, are you happy? what is happy. happy is nothing
more than an abstraction. a number is also an
abstraction. for my part i'd rather live in a world
where people were striving to be the number three. 2. a flower of thought, though often not
of your own thought but of someone else's. such a
flower is offered to you for many possible reasons, a large number of which
are sinister. absulation: n; the only way to manipulate
the absolute is to affect the way it is experienced / perceived. absurdity: n; 1. the drool of transcendence. 2. Kafka expressed the infinities imprisoned in every activity,
in every experience. these infinities render every
activity/experience ambiguous. there is no stable
place from which to decide or judge due to the fact that there is no such
locus which is not infinitely reducible or infinitely extended. where existence is concerned, judgment is impossible. all that is called, revered as judgment in reality has no
basis and cannot stand without it crutch of contingent humanity. there is another way to express the infinite scope of
existence which obsessed Kafka. one could
continuously increase the scope of detail, narrowing one's focus which at the
same time serves to expand experience. an analogy
would be looking through a microscope— a meaningless drop of pond water
reveals a universe of forms and detail. it is this
approach which i plan to utilize in Yes.
like Kafka i will use an obsessive technical means
to explore the assumption, the truth, that where existence is concerned, judgment is impossible. 3. the absurd is the hyperbolic experience
that arises when a situation that embodies delusional consciousness confronts
the particular reality of which it is a symptom. abuse: n; an abuse of a person is
always accompanied by an abuse of language. abyss: n; 1. the abyss you must encounter and which you do everything to
avoid constitutes the means of your successful escape. 2. to be creative it is crucial to go to
the abyss, to find what is abysmal in one's understanding. that
one must go to the abyss does not mean one has to remain there. 3. the abyss
is an invitation that is always sliding beneath the door. 4. when it is stated that humanity has been led to an
abyss, it obscures the fact that the leading is always from
behind and humanity is usually marching blindly with arms raised. 5.
the abyss is associated with darkness because of its
humility. because it is so self-evident, so
undeniable a presence, it wishes to conceal itself as well as it can, even if
it is only linguistically, or conceptually. acceptance: n; if you can live alone for ten years you belong
alone. accident: n; like Kafka i want my books
to be an accident that people stare at in
passing. during their voyeuristic pleasure they
recognize something— a piece of clothing, a fragment— something which
undeniably links the catastrophe to them. this
moment of recognition of their implicit relationship to what is being
represented is the breath of art. accomplishment: n; the most important thing a
writer accomplishes is what is not accomplished— the book that is unfinished,
forever unfinished. not the drafts and the false
starts etc. but that one book which every writer who is worth anything lives
with for their entire creative lives. the one book
for which their other works are sketches, or prologues, or appendices. that book which is never completed and which can never be
completed, the book which sometimes is never even attempted. this book of books, this most secret of all books
is what defines a writer and is what should be used as a measure of their
worth. account: n; everything you should be accumulating, all the
self-knowledge and mental ability will one day be called for. evidence of all you should have learned and of all you
should have become will be demanded of you… all at once. such
critical moments cannot be avoided. this profound
and ruthless accounting will happen. maybe
it is happening right now. achievement: n; paranoia and complexes of persecution are the
predictable and unavoidable achievements of the self-infatuated. acquaintance: n; i don't know when we met. it's like waking up on a bus. i
don't remember the first time i ever took a bus. this
bus i'm on now isn't the same bus as the first bus i ever rode, though it is
very similar. what remains constant is that i am in
transit. action: n; every action need not be a
resolution between antagonistic desires (at an elementary level, between a will to do and a will not to do). perhaps sometimes an
action is a postponement. there is an extremely
paranoid person i occasionally see (and hear) on the bus. he
speaks incessantly using news headlines, advertising slogans, biblical
passages and proper names. sometimes when he speaks
i can hear the hesitation, the leaking into presence of the activity of
linking disparate phrases together. it sounds
agonizing. it sounds as though he is following the
single command you must talk all the
time. sometimes however he discovers an ease of some sort and the words and phrases slide
into each other effortlessly. in such cases i can
hear / feel a / his relief. vocalizations are
actions; his vocalizations in particular seem to be postponements of
resolutions, resolutions which can never be realized because paradoxically
his antagonism of desires has broken down. he has no
such antagonism, he truly is individuated. the
apparent relief of his effortless vocalizations is just an absence of the
agony found in his strained vocalizations. and the
reason for this agony is that he is expressing, or making (self-) evident his
impairment— a total absence of negotiating capabilities. his
i will is never antagonized by an i will not. his
life is an eternal, unquestionable i
must, i am. activity: n; one does not search for a poet in the words, only
in the activity. actual
selection:
n; 1. as opposed to natural
selection, this is the survival of the weak. as a
system it is able to operate because of the additive burden and therefore
failures in all ideal natural selection systems caused by the presence and interaction
of weak individuals. 2. the phenomenon of natural selection should read, the survival of those who happen to
survive. the reasons for this happening can then
be broken down into chance, genetic advantage, genetic disadvantage, etc. addition: n; courage wants to laugh - Nietszche but cannot
- Schertzer adjective: n; 1. adjectives are
important to the poet because they qualify the noun, that is, they differentiate
the abstract. abstractions are heavy— adjectives
give such elements some buoyancy. 2. experience,
that is, experience of the adjective is a metaphorical moment. for
example: blue {is the sky}, or, {this} blue {here} {is the sky} instead of the sky is blue a
poem is, taken as a whole, an adjective. 3. it
is imperative to understand the difference between the noun and the adjective.
justice is not the same as a just act.
4. adjectives are deities which attempt to
influence a world which seems unable to believe in gods. admission: n; a book is not a public
park. one has to be dressed appropriately and one
has to be prepared for what one is being admitted to. most
people are turned away. the exclusivity of writing
is inseparable from it and comprises much of its strength. adorno: n; “without admitting it they
sense that their lives would be completely intolerable as soon as they no
longer clung to the satisfactions which are none at all.” advantage: n; “fools always have an
advantage since they continually find themselves amongst peers… each is a Brother
Deadweight in the Temple of Nonsense” – Chamfort. adverb: n; we battled hard (they battled with
erections?), we played proud (they played proud parents, in a
play?), we struggled unbelievable (they struggled unbelievable
demons?). this inability to use an adverb
correctly, or more specifically, the almost flawless ability to use an
adjective where an adverb is required is not a momentary lapse, or, an
indication of a lack of education. it is true that
most of the examples one can think of come from athletes, the media, and
politicians— not exactly professions for the intellectually gifted; however,
this adverbial confusion is present wherever English is present. it is reasonable to attribute a basis, a material basis,
for a systematic behavior. if English in particular
is the basis for this specific error of usage (which is actually an error of
perception) what is it about English in particular that predisposes it to
such errors? English is a noun-based language. if as
Aristotle says, a language begins with the adjective, it may end with the
noun. to say a language begins with an adjective is
to say something about our perception of the world while at the same time
linking perception with our language faculty. a
language that begins with the adjective is a language that says this
is warm, this is blue, this is painful. and
this is what we experience, in its warmness, in its blueness, in its
painfulness. further differentiating what we
experience we might say that this is bath-warm, this is
sky-blue, this is dentist painful. it is
obvious that it is possible to omit the this and convert one of the
adjectives into a noun. the bath is warm.
such an action represents a different way of
experiencing the world. no longer is the world an
indefinite this which has infinite attributes. instead,
the world becomes filled with discrete objects, each with attributes. English
is relentless in its ability to fill the experienced world with
objects. most of these objects are of course
abstractions. nevertheless, English conditions its
users to experience the world as one of discrete objects. the
success of English and the co-incident success of capitalism (and
consumerism) is obvious. but how does such a
noun-centered language pre-dispose a user to use an adjective in place of an
adverb? an adverb, as everyone knows, modifies an adjective, verb, or other
adverb; it expresses a relation of place, time, circumstance, manner, etc. to
use an adverb correctly is to understand action, and represents an experience
of a world where activity is what binds things together (through place, time,
circumstance, manner, etc.). to use an adjective in
the place of an adverb consistently is then to experience a different
world. this different world is one in which action
is mistaken for abstraction, and where each abstraction is given the baroque
treatment of endless (adjectival) elaboration. and
if activity binds things together, co-existence with endlessly attributed
abstractions is, precisely, alienation. when
i hear someone disregarding an adverb it is alienation that i hear, a spectre
condemned to a spectral world where such things a responsibility, commitment,
compassion, intelligence can find no foothold. advertising: v; 1. you
can tell what the intended readership of a magazine is by looking at what
kind of advertisements it contains. only those
magazines which are free of ads are intended for human beings. 2. any image
carries with itself the authority of its own moment or its own being.
this authority one might call an ontological authority which arises necessarily because
of the nature of existence. (for example, a
telephone ringing is an authority concerning ringing telephones; or, an image
of an anorexic woman is an authority of an image of an anorexic woman). an
ontological authority is inert; yet, it has a potential power. if the authority is respected, if it is submitted to, it
then realizes a potential power to inform, to prejudice, in favour of itself.
images in the media have such an effective authority on this basis (not
on any moral basis or on any basis of truth). if
this authority is only denied, it will be relieved of its effectiveness and
will assume its inert state (and will be recognized as an ontological
authority only). 3. advertising is to art what prostitution is to love. intimacy is replaced by money. the
danger and unsettling reality of a human interaction is replaced by a
predictable, inert, empty transaction. 4.
advertisement is the extreme example of non-critical
thinking. 5. power,
in order to rule absolutely and without resistance needs to be represented. as well, these representations must produce in their
intended targets the effect of obviousness,
which is nothing more than the sense that what is being represented is exactly how things are. the representations considered as a whole function as a
common imaginary, coercive space. citizens of such a
space are characterized by a complete lack of questioning (e.g of the
substance / structure of the representations) and the accompanying acritical
(subservient) behavior. 6. destabilized consciousness can be steered by imagery. aesthetics: n; 1.
aesthetics eats ethics. 2. the road leading into prison is also the road leading out.
3. the aesthetic lies between the ideal and
the ethical, between the possible and the necessary. the
voice that sounds when a person encounters a great instance of art is the
same voice which tells a person what they should and should not do, and how
they should and should not act. if someone cannot
recognize a great instance of art for what it is it is unlikely that
they are going to benefit from any ethical self-support and therefore their
lives will be anything but purposeful, inspired. affect: v; all fictions of time-travel contain the
conceit that one cannot change anything in one’s past or else one alters
the necessary conditions for one’s existence. the
fallacy contained here lies in the assumption that one can exist and not
affect anything. affinity: n; when i have base, evil,
perverted thoughts i no longer feel alone. looking
about at such a moment i realize i have joined the mass of humanity at last. affirmation: n; only through an act of radical negation can
anything of value be affirmed. affliction: n; because someone lacks the
talent not to write does not mean they should write. they
should definitely not be read. the best course of
action would be for them to seek help for their affliction. afterlife: n; according to luther, the
kingdom of heaven was available only to those ho killed their
reason. if belief in an afterlife effectively
devalues all life here and now, the most potent way to ensure a meaningless,
utterly devalued existence is to abandon one’s reason. after-world: n; the after-life, or after-world is simply what comes
after, it is specifically what comes after the death of each moment. any eschatological proposition/image is not to be applied
to the end of our lives, rather, it should be applied to the death of the
moment to which our lives are bound. in a similar
way then any creation story is the story of the generation/resurrection of a
moment. such an outlook implies at once an extreme
pessimism and an extreme optimism as every moment will crumble, yet every
moment also always offers us the possibility for re-birth. again: adv;
in again, in repetition, there is a
dualism of towards (intentionality)
and against (in opposition to). repetition is
inherent in recognition. the heart of recognition is
re-
(again). if we
shake open re-cognition we will find what constitutes cognition, the
again-activities: |
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seek re-petition re-peat re-cur re-act re-cite re-fer re-iterate re-volve re-member * re-present * re-sume * re-menisce * re-vise * re-view * re-trieve * |
harmonize re-concile re-compense re-hearse re-fund re-member * re-dress * re-join * re-trieve * |
generate re-create re-form re-store re-doubt re-store re-vive re-surrect re-suscitate re-new re-novate re-nascent re-juvenate re-habilitate re-generate re-fresh re-furbish re-member * re-present * re-sume * re-menisce * re-vise * re-view * re-dress * re-join * |
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cognition then is composed of the semantic elements, to generate, to seek,
and to gather/harmonize. these elements, considered
together correspond to the archetype of the heroic birth/quest. to re-cognize is to heroicize again and again, to be born
anew, to seek, to attempt to unify what was broken, to die... age: n; 1. the difference between a man and a boy is quantitative. we are each born with an empty trunk which is called the trunk of all we used to do. as we grow older we put things into the trunk. when the trunk is full we are no longer boys. when a padlock appears on the trunk, a padlock to which we
have no key, we are no longer men. 2.
there are many aspects of your living which have
always been aged, infirm, near-death. 3.
the one who lives to a very old age, the miracle who lasts past their hundredth
year evidently suffers the cruelest disease. aggression: n; if one says for instance, i
am a woman and leaves it at that, then one has formed within oneself a local
in-group (women) and it becomes very easy to direct one's aggression towards
something which is not a part of that in-group. but
if one says i am a woman and i am also something else, then one's in group
becomes larger or more tolerant (less restrictive). one's
aggression may still directed towards an out-group but that group will be
limited in scope due to the transcendent step taken in the definition of your
self in relation to other things. this says nothing
about the usefulness of aggression and certainly doesn't seek an end to
aggressive behavior. it is not some
idealist/pacifist stance. what it does suggest is that the formation or
existence of an in-group which is not harmonious with the present
cultural/social climate will lead to
aggression and in this way such a definition of self is not a mature vision,
such a view needs to evolve, to increase in
tolerance to reach some sort of accord with its environment. a present day example: the in-group which social
conditions now demand, or the harmonious mature view of self in relation to
the world is one of a global in-group. it is of course implied by such a
definition that anything not of this planet will be viewed aggressively but
the demands for a interplanetary in-group are not present yet, that is a
later stage of growth (i.e. one can only be six feet tall after one has been
five feet tall). agitation: n; in the center of a sphere
one is farthest from an edge. in the center all the
vectors of your existence converge and exert an identical force upon you. this situation is the equilibrium point, the rest point of
existence and it is a point of maximum agitation. as
you move against this tendency towards an edge the effects of some vectors
lessen while that of others increases. reaching an
edge of this sphere of yourself you have reached an extreme position. At this
edge begins the realm of poetry. This movement then towards poetry lessens
the agitation paradoxically by increasing or maximizing certain tensions
while reducing and eliminating others.
agony: n; 1. people who want
to live forever, or at least for extended life spans, are in agony and are
obviously numb to the reality of their situation. in
fact, such people have no understanding of what agony is... which implies
that they have no understanding of elation. 2. that
living exploits agony is not in question. what is
arguable is whether this natural resource of existence is limted or
renewable. aholism: n; ancient cultures can tell me nothing about living in this
world, here and now… nothing, that is, more than any experience might
tell me. if i am interested in some past culture, it
may seem to teach me, but this is only a measure of my interest. staring at a sidewalk for hours on end would teach me as
much if i was interested in and drawn to sidewalks. the
attribution of sagacity, of majesty, to an old (dead) culture masks a radical
rejection of life (as it is lived in the present). alcohol: n; 1. the stool of
forgetfulness. 2. thinking that has not had to wade, to swim, through
alcohol has never run away from home. 3. we
are always one drink away from a favourable accident. alive: adv; a metaphoric statement
often evokes a metaphoric response. allegory: n; 1. where metaphor is a threat, allegory is an appeasement. 2. allegory
is how the mute clap their hands; metaphor is how they breathe. allotment: n; we are all born with an equal allotment of
suffering, what appears excessive in another is always a promise of what
awaits me. we end when the last of our
suffering has been spent. allusion: n; an unemployed metaphor. alone: adj; accumulations of banality
unite those who are deathly afraid of being alone in a common morass. it is a delusion of community. in
experiencing their inner life as a terrifying void an attempt is made to fill
it. the trivial, the false, the forgettable, the
meaningless— things all used to fill what is boundless. and
in the process the self, whatever it is,
slips away and is irretrievably lost. deathly
afraid of being alone a person becomes radically alone. alphabet: n; 1. if the alphabet is analogous to the genetic code then writing,
that is the movement from complexities to the coded language is a reversal, a
de-evolutionary process, a disassembly of what has been created. and then, to follow this analogy reading is the
re-assembly, the natural process of transcription and translation of the
elementary code into the complexities of images and thoughts and ideas and
emotions and even actions.. on the other hand, the genetic code may be an
alphabet, a text of sorts which is read and we, that is all the forms in
existence which share this code are parts of a text, complete or incomplete,
like books in an infinite library whose pages are able to merge with others,
new stories being written all the time, old stories being re-interpreted
differently, old stories becoming forgotten lost— that is our place in this
uni-verse. 2. a
fracturing, bending, and re-assembling of the shadow of language (in its
written form, spoken it is the echo). Althusser: n; 1. the subject, as a free agent is also a subject in the sense of
one who is commanded. 2. obviousness is the primary ideological effect. ambiguity: n; 1. the fact that any true poem cannot be paraphrased may lead one
to consider it to be ambiguous or obscure. however,
this is completely false. the poem itself is
completely realized. it is completely unambiguous in
metaphorically directing our attention to the unavoidable and unalterable
obscure/shielding nature of its/our language. the
obscurity of the referent with respect to language is revealed in the true poem.
2. wading
through honey. 3. as in a microscope, when looking at an object and trying
to bring that object into focus, there comes a point at which the object
again falls out of focus. what this means is that
for any object of interest there is a certain point of focus, a certain limit
beyond which there is only ambiguity. 4.
the experience of stillness. 5. the experience of doubleness, of the
double-act, is preserved in homophonic antonyms; e.g. quean / queen , cleave
/ cleave, raise / raze. 6. profundity lies in
ambiguity and profundity lies with
ambiguity. ambition: n; i want to be a stain, that
is, a stand-in for what is lacking, for what cannot be expressed. anagram: n; 1. alterity is reality. 2.
words are swords. 3. there is a poem in every promise. anatomy: n; the feet and the hands are
the ground and the reach of a person's being. where
other parts of the body are made-up, shaved, correctivley or cosmetically
altered, the feet and the hands betray every secret a person has endured. angels: n; literal expansion of a
world (view) which had/has become insufficient, needful. an
example of this is how the phenomenon of visions of angels (a verifiable set
of possibilities within a certain belief system) became supplanted by
sightings of UFOs (which only appeared after it became demonstrated that
human flight was possible and therefore, such sightings were possibly
verifiable and understandable within that technological belief system). artists/creators are not in need of such literal expansion
of an insufficient world-view because their particular world-views always include
an esoteric (non-literal, hidden) dimension. this
dimension lends their being-in-the-world a boundlessness which is only
frustrated by those who would like to impose bounds, by those who would like
to deny the existence/functioning of the human faculty which allows such a
dimension to be perceived and lived/acted in/upon. anger: n; 1. the front door opens. no one home. walk through the dark hallway into the kitchen, push that
door open. no one there either. stairs
at the back of the kitchen, another door. it opens. the staircase is dark. two steps
at a time and you are standing on a landing. open
the door to the study. no one there. push the bathroom door open. empty.
at the far end of the landing is a room. the door is closed and this one will not open. shake and pound the door. no
luck. turn and walk away. descend
the staircase and cover your ears. a woman's voice
issues from behind the locked door. go away it says.
go away as the door opens on its own. 2. a shovel.
3. the
emptiness which remains in the container after every drop of pain has been
spilled. angst: n; the infections caused by
the contingent understandings and beliefs which others have stapled to our
souls. angstrom: n; the angstrom is my favorite unit of measurement. unfortunately it is applied incorrectly. it should be a measure of global discord experienced at
the level of the individual at a specific moment in time. having
desired to build something to measure such a phenomenon for so long and with
such intensity i may have become just such an instrument… a poet. animation: n; in all i have read, the
difference between the idol and the animate is affected by miracle, which
means that either the animate has always existed or, in the history of
existence, there has been at least one miracle. annihilation: n; 1. it may be an
evolutionary necessity that we cannot know another completely. we cannot behold the truth that the body and the living of
another shields us from. we are granted appearance
and supposition, judgment and fantasy. a being
laid bare would be too much for us— a true annihilation which any
conservation of being would seek to
avoid at all costs. 2. if, as Engels
says, the industry producing the most lethal weapons is the most advanced
any competition based on rewards for being the most advanced industry will
necessarily result in more exquisite and more indefensible means to
annihilate people. anomaly: n; 1. so-called anomalies in science are often pseudo-anomalies. by this i mean that they are not violations of
expectations of a paradigm but instead reveal the operation of a
meta-paradigm which seeks to yoke the current paradigm. in
other words, the so-called anomaly is selectively expressed, desired. 2. the
anomaly opens up a chasm; this chasm is a representation of two possible
courses of action (where before the appearance of the anomaly there was only
a single course). firstly, one could heal the chasm,
which is to link it once again with the realm of the expected. the other possibility is to
take advantage of the instability and extend the chasm in an effort to turn a
local disturbance into a more global one. answer: n; an answer undoes the
shoelaces of a question, undresses it, puts it to bed and then steals whatever
it can from its pockets. antecedence: n; “The claim of the
antecedence of lived experience (so-called 'real life') to the text belongs to those who, not knowing how and not
being able to live [that is, in speech], let nothing live, requiring that it be officially said that they
live.” - G. Agamben. anthropocentricity: n; the passage from genesis, “god made man in his own image” has
always been read as meaning that man was made to look like god. this is just silly. this
misreading of the passage reveals a lack of comprehension of metaphor. what i believe the passage is saying is that man was
created in the image of god and not
in another aspect of god. this means that the
creation which is man is bounded in its experience within the image of god. figuratively
speaking, being creatures, this is where we live. if
we were to know everything about this/our mode of being, if we were able to
behold it all, it would only be the image
of god. god as transcendental and unknowable then is
implicit in this. we exist then not in the dream of
god or the argument of god or the basement of god, but in the image of god, whatever that image may
be, unmeasurable and undefinable as it is. anticipation: n; i hear, as though in
another language, madness asking incessantly when when when... antipode: n; thankfully the desire to have grandchildren
will remain incomprehensible to me. anxiety: n; 1. this is the cost of freedom. 2. there is uncertainty inherent in
every experience. this uncertainty is experienced as
anxiety. this anxiety is caused by the nature of
experience which is that we cannot objectively experience the entirety of
something. in other words we cannot objectively
experience the absolute. however, we as part of all that is around us are as
all that is around us is, namely, we are what some may call matter and
spirit, or simply the knowable objective self coupled with the unknowable
subjective self. we are absolute as is all else and
as such we have the ability to experience the absolute. however
such an experience is always devastating and so we have created, or society
has created, or religion has created, barriers which shield us from
experiences of the absolute. these barriers
eliminate the experience of the transcendent nature of being. however it is possible that these barriers are not
perfect, or that one may venture into an area of life where the barrier is
suddenly no protection. then, such an experience is
as before, devastating. the memory of such an
experience however may affect resultant experiences in that the objective
self may experience echoes from the subjective self, these echoes will
effectively suggest that what is being experienced is simply a mask or a thin
sheet draped over something which is unintelligible and devastating. such a message directed at the objective self during an
experienced event effectively creates uncertainty with respect to the meaning
etc. of the experience. this is ,as mentioned above,
experienced as anxiety. 3. it is hard for me to let the day go by. i
am jealous. i want to know where the day has been
and what the day has done. i need to hear the day
confess to who it is with while i sit alone. ape: v; the dismal situation of
canadian poetry can be described as a situation / tradition of self-declared
poets writing the same poem over and over and over again. thousands
of poets, one poem. and it is not even a good poem. this preserve of
poets do not understand the irony in the anagram a poet = to ape. in fact, they follow this anagram as though it is a
directive. aphasia: n; anyone who has had a mystical experience and then
attempts to extend this experience into a theoretical explanation of reality
can safely be assumed to have forgotten anything of value imparted during
their mystical episode. apocalypse: n; 1. apocalypses are unveilings. they are
examples of hyperbole and must be so in order to express the paradoxical idea
of the total eradication of everything, the unveiling of the nothingness
which is the basis of everything. this concept is
often applied to a time scale of lifetimes or longer. i
think the images of apocalypse, the concept of apocalypse should be applied
to every moment, that every moment there is an unveiling and a re-creation. 2. the
apocalyptic/messianic vision is a vision of two worlds, of a realized world
and an unrealized world. the essence of this vision
is the possibility of the transformation of the unrealized world into a
realized state. implicit in this transformation is
the destruction of the current world. to desire the
transformation of an unrealized world into a realized form is to favor such a
world over the existence of the current world. the
cataclysm or destruction of the current world would then not be a frightening
event. where the cataclysm is frightening, where it is
resisted, represents an instance where the unrealized world is not
favored over the current world. if the unrealized
world is a better world, then such instances of fright and resistance are
expressions of blindness and ignorance. if, however,
the unrealized world is worse than the current world then such instances of
fright and resistance are moments of illumination and possibilities for
escape. 3. the fact that so many people, who could think otherwise,
are unanimous with respect to judgments which are false is an argument in
favour of an apocalypse. apolitical: adj; maintaining the present order under the guise of
apoliticality is the most important political act that those in power could
wish from their subjects. it is also the only act a
subject can be expected to perform flawlessly, again and again, and
apparently without effort. apology: n; 1. when you have
attempted to create something on the margins of a tradition / discipline and
are then asked to describe your creation (and can do so only by referring to
that tradition which you have attempted to transcend / subvert) then often
all you can do is make apologies. 2. God has so much to answer for it
had better create another universe solely for the drafting of all the letters
of apology which are due. apparition: n; the making visible of
oneself, of one's servants, of those things which are employed by you. apparitions reacted to with fright are those which one
believes came from somewhere other than oneself (and therefore are
threatening). seductive apparitions are those which
one believes are from oneself. seductive apparitions
are shadows cast by frightening apparitions.
appearance: n; 1. it is simply an object taking unfair advantage of its own
position. 2. the
apparent weight of our living seems to displace what is
non-sensical, what is ridiculous. this apparent displacement creates a
clearing of sense, of reasonableness, which we understand to be our lives. however, if one lightens oneself and one's living, then it
becomes evident that there is in fact no displacement of the non-sensical, of
the ridiculous, and that such a displacement is impossible. the non-sensical, the ridiculous is our living. appendix: n; i have always lived in
another place, a here that is not
commonly understood as here, now. my living has fed on the belief that i should not be here,
that all space is filled and that i am an intruder— propertyless, an exile. wandering, at home in a no-place i am not really searching
for a proper place because no such place exists, or rather, this no-place,
this not-here-not-now is my proper
place. i am a protrusion, a swelling of something
already occupied and so... i must be removed. there
will be no scar. the body will continue to function normally. applause: n; 1. to applaud, to cheer, is to gasp for breath, to struggle
against drowning, ritually. (it is highly stylized
in the same way that a cross is a stylized and essential rendering of a
suffering human being). 2. it is very easy to applaud when someone else is
applauding. it is almost impossible not to applaud
when everyone else is applauding,
even when the applause is subtle, a silent assent, a yes i will do that even though i don't know why. apprehension: n; oppositional terms /
antonyms may be an artifact of our techniques of memory / learning. appropriation: n; “An ideology really
succeeds when even the facts which at first sight might seem to contradict it
start to function as arguments in its favor” - Zizek. this
can be seen in the advertising campaign by the Bank of Montreal where they
have appropriated the (critical) discourse (hand-held, hand-written signs) of
the oppressed. approximation: n; a question was asked, how much of the world must be retained in
order to be accessible to transcendency? i think
the answer is 1/9. archetype: n; 1. our brains are biochemical constructs and as such possess a
physical structure, a geometry. the mediation of our
thought processes and hence our behavior is achieved by the evolution of this
structure in conjunction with the external reality. 2. if at some time (birth or earlier)
called t0 the brain must exist in some structure = st0.
then as the brain interacts with external stimuli at
time tn, the brain exists in structure = stn (stn
not equal to st0). but if the operative
aspect of the brain is its structure and microstructures etc. then there must
exist in the initial formation of the brain, operative microstructures which
affect or determine behavioral activity of some sort. such primary structures
which are simply artifacts of brain structure, and which are genetically
based, and which, if the genetic basis is at a very primary level, may be
present in most human brains. it is these primary
structural determinants that i believe to be equivalent to the phenomenon of
archetype. 3. the representations
of archetypal configurations of the psyche in Hindu art, these figures
(marga/paths) which lead one to the self by leading one into the very primary
configurations upon which your psyche has developed. 5. when a negative space/landscape is
created any object which is introduced into such a setting can only appear
monumental. 6. an
archetype is an emptiness, a possibility which can be filled by experience. an archetype is then a preparation for the trials of being
alive. architecture: n; always an ideological
project(ion). Arendt: n; “The partner who comes to
life when you are alert and alone is the only one from whom you can never get
away — except by ceasing to think.” argument: n; the possibility of ending one’s life, of climbing out
of existence— this gift given to a consciousness that is bound to the
reality of suffering is the closest thing to an argument for divinity. aristotle: n;
however,
this is only the positive representation of the tensions of being. there also is a
similar representation which could be drawn which would be the tensions of non-being.
the
proper or complete representation would then be a union of both the tensions of being and the tensions of non-being. armour: n; the living of another is an
armour which we create for ourselves and which we often assume/appropriate
and mistake for a soul. but a soul cannot be made or
appropriated, a soul can only be destroyed, dismissed. arrangement: n; the poet was asked, why are you building a bridge where there
is no river? and the poet answered, i am only building half of a bridge, you
must build the other half. arrogance: n; arrogance dies when the
artist exposes its work to a public.
arrogance is born when an artist re-presents well
received work, when it reproduces work that can be anticipated to generate a
favourable response in a public. arrow: n; i imagine birds look at
arrows, and the feathers that stabilze them, with the remorse of one who
beholds a civilization that has squandered its gifts, it privileges. it is enough to make me want to be a bird. ars
poetica:
n; the impact of objects that call and encounter no answer. -Neruda art: n; 1. a method of being able to transform the world/experience so
that one can live in it. 2. beyond the functional aspects of art/language these are
the manifestations of our human lives/consciousness acting themselves out to
their full potential. this is what makes us human. one might even say that it is in the non-functional aspects
of art/language that the notion of soul resides. 3. science contents itself with the
knowable, with knowledge, art can only be content with ignorance, the
unknowable. 4. the
analogy drawn by Italo Calvino in The Count of Monte Cristo illustrates the
essence of the approach of the artist towards the world. With a simple
inversion of one of its units this analogy also demonstrates the scientific
approach to the world. prison X nature to escape to
master/undo/ control I one must imagine theorize/ one must construct the perfect prison a
model compare X with I and look for
differences difference indicates a difference
indicates fault with X,
a point of a
failing of the I. weakness through which therefore a
new I the artist can escape must
be constructed implied in the artist's implied
in the approach is that scientist's
approach X
plays a subservient is
that I is role to I subservient
to X in
other words, in the artist's approach, the world answers to the imagination
(method) whereas for the scientist it is the method (imagination) which must
answer to the world. as well, a similar picture is
drawn in Calvino's Invisible Cities. Polo is the explorer/artist, and Khan is
the conqueror/scientist. at best Khan will be an emblem amongst emblems, that is, he
will never transcend himself but will be left with in possession of his literal kingdom. Polo on the other
hand will have gained by his travels not possession but only entrance into
the metaphorical kingdom, entrance which is denied to Khan. in the above description, the difference between what is
imagined/desired and what imprisons you is either the very thing that keeps
you from escaping or is the very thing by which you can escape. either way, this difference is critical. for this reason one must continue to imagine/desire and
one must continually compare these imaginations/desires to the life that
holds you. 5. to
be used to violence, to be desensitized to cruelty and injustice
is to be art-less. such insensitivity, such
un-feeling is a cry for art. 6. art mediates between the everyday life of compromise
(submission) and pure transgression (between immanence and transcendence). crime and insanity are specific examples of pure
transgression. what this implies is that wherever
art is absent, there is either compromise (submission), crime, or insanity. 7. the
beauty of art is its ability to affect devastation. 8. the essence of entertainment is the
maintenance / preservation of a current mode of being; the essence of art is
the transformation of such modes. entertainment has
a place; the place of art is
everywhere. 9. art,
the experience of it, affects our understanding, disrupts it with a question
(the disruptive question, [which
is a hermeneutic engagement with the world, with being]) which is always the
following : is this particular (or my) understanding a contingency or is it
necessary? there are two responses to this
disruption: a negative response and a positive response. The negative response— no, this particular
(or my) understanding is not contingent, it is
necessary, results in the particular understanding which was disrupted to be
reinforced. this understanding is then again subject
to disruption by art/experience. continual negative
responses to the disruptive question result in a cycle of faith. such cycles of faith are the intended products of
indoctrination (e.g. soldiers, scientists, clergy). indoctrination,
that is, the production of a cycle of faith, requires only the ability to reject the disruptive question at
every encounter, without fail. the more severe, the
more successful, the indoctrination the more perfected will be this ability
of rejection. The positive response— yes, this particular
(or my) understanding is a contingency, it is not necessary, leads to a
cascade of further questions/disruptions which include the following: if this
particular understanding is a contingency why do I adopt it and not some
other? what other possible understandings are there
to adopt? what are the consequences, the implications of my understanding and
what are the consequences, the implications of any alternate understanding;
what does my understanding deny, what does it foster, and what do other understandings
deny and what do they foster? This positive response to the disruptive
question requires the skill of dissolving and reforming structures of
understanding, it is a skill of impression,
of imagination. This skill of
imagination is what is destroyed or arrested in the process of
indoctrination. The more severe the indoctrination, the more impoverished the
ability of imagination will be. 10.
art, or the creative act, is always saying 'this is
how the world is, this is its being. 11. there are four paradigms at work in
the common (popular) understanding of art. these
four are all specific cases of more general paradigms. what
is interesting is why these specific cases are supported whereas the other
more general cases are suppressed. the four paradigms are as follows: i) the doing of art is therapy
; ii) the artist is a manifestation of illness; iii) art is
sense-making; iv) art is a mirror/representation. the
concept of truth is implicit in the operation and favoring of the above
paradigms as will be demonstrated. the notion of
truth is not truth as truth, but is instead a reduction of truth into
propriety, morality, security, in-action, cowardice, repression. i) the doing of art as therapy:
the assumption here is that there is an illness or an imbalance which the doing of art eases. the
problem with operating under this paradigm is that anything which does not
ease, anything which may in fact create a problem or imbalance, will not be
considered art. this paradigm is one of the three
sub-classes of the following paradigm which i will call the disturbance paradigm. the assumption is that art disturbs. the cases are as
follows: a) if some
work causes a disturbance which affects a bad
or undesirable situation then the work will be seen to be therapeutic. (this is the understanding as described above). b) if some
work causes a disturbance which affects a good
or desirable situation the work will be seen to be revolutionary, dangerous,
perhaps even amoral, illegal. c) the a work
causes no disturbance, if there is no alteration of a situation then the work
is not art (since art disturbs) but is instead entertainment. the
disturbance paradigm relieves the
problem of the absoluteness of a work of art. instead,
the value of art as art depends on the value of its disturbance. the value of its disturbance is determined by the state
(situation) of the subject which is disturbed (or perhaps just entertained)
by the work. the insistence of only sub-class a) as
a working paradigm while ignoring the other two betrays a blindness and a
certain cowardice. the effect of this favoritism
serves to castrate art by allowing it to function only in sanctioned (safe)
domains. there is no reason why art cannot work in
revolutionary ways. the suppression of this
understanding is the blindness and the cowardice of which i was speaking. the insistence on sub-class a) as the only option also
erases any distinction between art and entertainment. that
entertainment reinforces the status quo and that art has the power to oppose
the status quo (and offer alternatives) is something which can never be
realized under such a favoritism. ii) the artist as a manifestation of illness: the assumption behind this
paradigm is that there is a difference between an artist and everyone else;
the essence of this difference is that the artist is unwell, dis-eased,
deviant, with respect to the normalcy, health, well-being of everyone else. the problem of operating solely under this paradigm is
that the artist, the living home of art, is understood as an illness, as a
sanitarium, as a hospital. the task of the artist
can then be ignored, the responsibility of art-making can be left to those
others who must be sick or insane. the general
public, the so-called normal ones can justify their exemption from shouldering
the burden of art-making. again, this is but a
sub-class of a more general paradigm which i will call the difference paradigm. the assumption underlying this paradigm is that there is
an essential difference between the artist (the one who performs the task/
ritual of art-making) and the non-artist. the cases are as follows: a) since there is a rift between the
identity of the artist and that of the non-artist, the identity of the artist
occupies a region of dis-comfort, of dis-ease, of illness when regarded from
the perspective of the non-artist who feels comfortable, well (or when
regarded from the perspective of the artist who feels the world of the
non-artist is healthy etc.). in other words, what is
healthy is not to undertake art-making. this is the
paradigm described above. b) if the
non-artist does not feel comfortable or well the identity of the artist will
be regarded as at ease, as comfortable, healthy. c) if the
artist is the one who performs the task of art-making, then only those
moments devoted to the task of art-making can be moments lived as an artist. therefore, the absolute label of artist does not exist,
but only arises through the activity of art-making. the
identity of artist is earned through a participation in something which the
non-artist chooses or has been convinced not to participate in. as has been said
above, favoring sub-class a) at the expense of others, besides introducing an
absolute, removes the responsibility of art-making, removes the participation
in art-making from the general public by making such participation appear
undesirable, even harmful to their well-being. (as
expressed above in the disturbance
paradigm, if their well-being is the status quo, then art-making will be
harmful/disturbing but this does not mean it should be avoided). iii) art is sense-making: the assumption at work here is that art
explains, makes clear. the problem is of course that
anything which does not explain, which only seems to confuse things even more
can not be art. this is a sub-class of the paradigm
i will call the transformation paradigm. it is very
similar to the disturbance paradigm, the sub-classes of each being identical.
the only difference between the two lie in their
semantics, in their imagery (which is to say, in their intended application).
the disturbance paradigm is corporeal (dealing with
health, therapy etc., bodily concerns). the
transformation paradigm on the other hand deals with intellectuality (sense,
meaning, order etc.; matters of cognition and understanding). the two paradigms are symptoms of the mind/body duality. the fact that there are these two paradigms indicates a
dependence on the mind/body dualism. the insistence
on either of these paradigms reveals the desire that art be considered either
corporeal or intellectual (but not both). the
existence of these two paradigms demands that what is thought is never acted,
and that what is acted out is never thought. the
depressing and sinister consequences of this (dominant) world-view do not
even need to be mentioned. a paradigm which
eliminates this distinction i would call the paradigm of influence. iv) art is a mirror / a representation: the assumption at work here is
that art reinforces a presence, some pre-existence. art
does not present, but re-presents. the trouble with
this is that only that which already exists, only that which can be
recognized can be called art. this is a specific
case of a more general paradigm i will call the presence paradigm. the assumption
underlying this paradigm is that art (the work of art) is a presence. the
specific cases are as follows: a) what is
presented is recognized, it is a re-presentation. this
is the paradigm as described above. art in this case
then deals with familiarity. art tells us about what
we are already aware. art is a reinforcement, an
indoctrinary process. b) what is
presented is not recognized, it is a presence. art
in this sense opens our world, welcomes a new presence. the
effects of this new arrival are unpredictable and therefore possibly
upsetting. bi) the above presence is capable of
being recognized or understood bii) the
above presence is incapable of being recognized or understood. when the above
paradigm is understood along with the paradigm
of influence any presence or re-presence whether it is understood or not
is capable of influence. it is for this very reason
that art is undertaken, that its burden is accepted— it is an effort to give
form, presence, to all that possesses the power of influence. in fact all three of the above general paradigms (influence [disturbance + transformation], difference, presence) are all parts
of an even more general paradigm, a paradigm which is the elimination of the
duality of being-as-art/artist and being-as-non-art/non-artist. this is the paradigm
of being, a primary ontology which acts as a fundamental hermeneutic. it assumes a unity of being where all rifts are only
apparent but not real, where all identities are contingencies, strategies of
stability which are symptoms of time and space. this paradigm is implicit in
the above general paradigms (that is, in the acceptance of the above
paradigms and all their sub-classes without any favoritism or suppression.
the importance of the paradigm of being is not simply the
completion of some intellectual exercise (which of course, from the
understanding above, is also the completion of a worldly act). what it
demands is that everyone acknowledges the responsibility they have with
respect to art and art-making for the simple reason that their being and the
being of art are not separate; in actuality one's being cannot escape art and
art cannot escape one's being. the rift between one's being and that of art
is only a delusion, a tragic one. 12.
all art is politically in-formed and all art is
powerless to keep from disclosing this in-formation. 13. every work, every creation is an
exemplification (a symbol) of the process that created it and of the
environment which allowed for such a creation to be possible (see exemplification). therefore,
nothing is without reference. as well, for something
to be considered (experienced/seen) as art it must at the very least be
considered as a creation as defined above— an exemplification of that which
creates it. the experience of art is then one of
active context-building/understanding/world re-organization. 14. according
to Kant there is no concept art
which holds true for all art. art cannot be judged
and if it is apparently done, then it is understood to be according to one or
both of the following standards: i) personal- a personal response(ability);
ii) public- either a theatrical (ironic/histrionic) event, or a deliberate
imposition of power (demonic). 15.
“painting (art) is born with a [hu]man's refusal to
reproduce itself, and out of self-mutilation”. (R. Krauss). this is the non-mimetic urge. 16. the heart of my work is not progress
but a geographical experience of nothingness / transcendence. 17. i place my collage work in the
following series of oppositions: i) ground ® figure ii) (ground ® figure) ® vision as phenomenon (abstraction of vision event) iii) [(ground ® figure) ® vision as phenomenon ] ®
phenomenon of
vision as perception; as contextual, integrated event. the first in the
above series describes mimetic concerns where the opposition of importance is
taken to be between a figure or object and a ground from which it
distinguishes itself in the artist's
eye. the second opposition takes the first
opposition and opposes it, or subjugates it to the phenomenon of vision. this is the concern of abstract art where it is the act of
seeing (colour, texture, etc.) which is foregrounded and which regards any
figurative (mimetic) expression to be irrelevant. my
collage work is described by the third opposition which takes the second
opposition and further extends it so that the phenomenon of vision is itself
seen as a contextual event (where the artist penetrates its environment and
is itself penetrated by it). because of this
interpenetration, the act of seeing is more than a regarding of an object (an
erasure of subject-object dichotomy) and is more than a physiological event
(an erasure of rational abstraction of experience); it is a complex human
negotiation of meaning and identity towards which any artistic expression
contributes. 18. a primordial act of rejection where the artist
“externalizes its immanent self-impediment” (Zizek). the
process of journeying towards (or around) an unattainable (poetry/art) is
this externalization of a primordial psychological activity— the
almost-circles of understanding, the failures and the re-tracing of mental
steps (the patterns of which provide the horizon for our actions). 19. corporate
art (art that is purchased by corporations) will be art that does not
challenge the authority of the corporation in particular and corporations in
general. the art will either support this authority
or hang silently amidst it, like a corpse. the very
art that should be encountered by the corporation never will be considered. the only exception to this is if a corporation in all its
imperial arrogance buys a subversive work and, like a caged native from the artifice: n; character, plot, dialogue—
an imposed limitation which, like rhyme, though useful in some contexts, are
for my experience of this world,
lifeless and archaic. i do not want to build a home
with skeletons. artificial
intelligence:
n; 1. for something to be truly
intelligent it must possess the ability to take its own life and to take the
life of others for no reason. it must be able to go
insane either completely or only for moments. 2. supporters of artificial intelligence
consider intelligent that which is able to accomplish a task after choosing
from a finite set of choices (none of these choices include refusal, or a
desire to harm, or to lie etc.) in other words, intelligence is for these
faithful ones nothing but subservience. according to their reasoning then,
slaves and other oppressed who have no way to do anything but what is
demanded of them are indicative (are paradigms) of intelligent behavior. 3. a modern
manifestation of the golem legend (which is misunderstood by its the AI
faithful). what they forget or do not see is that
the one thing the creator of the golem cannot give it is speech. speech being the specific human involvement / encounter
with being (transcendence) the
locus of which is to be. 4. the sign
of any intelligence in any creation would be that creation's continued
resistance against the domination it has been subjected to, against the subservience
which is the imposed condition/limit of its existence. 5. aside from being an oxymoron,
artificial intelligence deserves only mockery. at
its most pathetic there is the AI researcher who works and studies for years
to occupy a place in an isolated room where it tries to make a machine think;
all the while, outside of their privilege exist many billions of thinking
intelligent beings. at its worst and most inhuman
there is the AI researcher pursuing a task, the goal and guiding paradigm of
which is, there is no human responsibility for any action. it
is obvious why such research is funded by governments and the military. 6. the AI
researcher typically attaches the word intelligent
to something complex which can act predictably. slave, prisoner, unfortunate may be better terms. artist: n; 1. the artist lives a metaphorical existence. an
artist is an outcast, an exile, diseased, a companion of death etc. to insist
however that this must be literally true (of course it may be literally true,
an artist may be an exile) but to insist that this be literally true in order
for the individual to be classified as an artist, this is missing the point
completely. for instance, only a poem about a dead
grandmother is valid, and only when the person actually had a grandmother
die. only those who live in concentration camps are
poets. to insist on such things makes other
experiences invalid as artistic expressions. to
insist on such rigid conditions is to be afraid of the metaphor. to insist on such things is to protect oneself from the
possible devastating effects, the possible unnerving insights which might
come from a bona fide artistic experience. to insist
that only a story about the death of one's mother is truly a work of art
kills the artist both literally and metaphorically. and
a culture without artists is dead, literally and metaphorically. 2. the
artist's task is to create understanding, that is, a structure that others
can stand/live under/within, a shelter (see understanding). the shelter created by the
artist must be large enough for many (larger than the space of isolation). at the same time the shelter must not be one of privilege;
people must not be non-categorically turned away, the essence of
understanding is inclusion/engagement as opposed to the essence of privilege
which is exclusion/isolation. the shelter created by
the artist however, must not be freely accessible (and this is where the line
between understanding and privilege can blur for some), that is, the shelter
must not exist solely for the whims of those whom it might shelter. there must be an effort exacted (a reasonable effort, in
contrast to that demanded by privilege) on those who wish to enter. the cost of this effort, its result is that those who
enter might be transformed, illuminated. it is this
very risk of transformation, of
illumination which is too high for most people to pay. for
this reason, an artist must realize that even though an understanding of
adequate size has been created, very few people will come. this
does not mean that the artist should then set about building shelters that
will be adequate for only those who are likely to come, to enter— this is a
blueprint for privilege. on the other hand, the
artist should not be naive and believe that a shelter for everyone has been
built. such a (populist) structure in which masses
of people stand is practically no different then if they were all standing
together unsheltered. what must be created is a
structure which is complex enough that those within it realize they are in it
and are not somewhere else. the structure must also
make it clear to those who are in it
that others will be admitted and will always be admitted (in contrast to
privilege) so long as the shelter is functioning. the artist must build and
admit others, the artist must re-build when space becomes a limitation and
exclusion emerges as force, the artist must understand that the majority of
people do not want or are too afraid of transformation and illumination, the
artist must always provide adequate room for them, a space of compassion,
just in case the risk required for entry into a particular understanding
suddenly appears worthwhile. 3. artists must express their time (their particular
being-in-the-world). if they revoke this
responsibility (e.g. if they are content to re-present old or classic work) they are only acting as
museum curators. the reason artists have a
responsibility to express their time is that this responsibility reveals a
critical part of the relationship between an artist and its public/culture. the artist has the ability to demonstrate to everyone the
extent or absence of the public's ability to understand and or tolerate
contemporary expression. the reason this is
important is that a culture which is unable to understand or unwilling to
tolerate contemporary expressions is a dead or dying culture. it is for everyone's benefit that this fact, if true, be
revealed. and the way it is revealed is by artists
maintaining a position where they insist on challenging the public. work that is produced that is not understood then is not a
failure (though it may be for other reasons); where it succeeds is in
revealing the limits (of understanding and tolerance) of its culture. 4. it is the
artist's task to create arenas of ambiguity, that is, places where meaning
must be negotiated. 5. the greater the degree of acknowledgement of personal
realities the greater the effectiveness and the deeper the profundity of
one's art. 6. it
is not the artist's inherent responsibility to stop wars, end poverty etc. or
to suggest ways in which such suffering may be abated. the
only responsibility inherent to an artist with respect to such issues is to
open up the complexities of such situations with their work (work being their
activity as well as their final production). in
fact, with their work an artist may be saying (to the billions of others on
the planet who are doing even less than the artist) here is a situation and if it is going to change i/those involved
will need some help. 7. the artist is thrown into the oncoming horde of
phenomenon. whatever fells the artist you can be
sure will soon be surrounding your walled city demanding your unconditional
surrender, your mechanized consent. 8.
when one climbs a mountain there are only a few possibilities for future
action: 1)
one can remain at the summit and live there until one dies. 2)
one can descend and: a)
return to where one came from, or, b)
descend down the other side 3)
one can throw oneself off. 9. when
the artist creates it does so with all eight of its limbs. 10. “no group
of people lacks freedom more.” – A. Tarkovsky. 11. the artist, not the functionary, has
the responsibility not only of creating a new world, but of creating
a world that can compete with contemporary worlds. this
world must be inhabitable, in fact, that is its purpose — to be lived
in. to achieve this the artist must get beyond the disparate production
of objects and attempt to communicate a world. this
communication of a world may be unavoidable; even the functionary who
spends its time producing objects for consumption is communicating a
world, the world of its owners, its masters. and
that world, this world is barely inhabitable. 12.
the artist that claims i / my art does not change the world are focused on something which
yawns beyond their personal horizon. this distant
attention necessarily implies that what is close-at-hand, intimate,
is unnoticed, denied presence. 13.
to be a marginal artist is analogous to being
a receptor on a cell. such a being exists is
two worlds. it communicates with the external
world, it spans the border, and it transmits its interactions with the
world to the inside of the cell. for such a
marginal existence to function there must be a functioning cell, that
is, there must be sufficient processes occurring in order that the cell
remains viable. if the cell is dead, or dying,
the receptor still exists but it does not function. and
with loss of function eventually comes the loss of being. 14.
it is impossible for me to view my relation to life, to the
conditions of existence, as
anything other than adversarial. life offers
its surface, its appearance. but it is withholding
everything that is interesting, everything that is desirable. life must be forced to whisper its secrets, to relinquish
its treasures. sometimes the only way to force
life to do such things is by refusing to accept what it would rather
offer you. in other words, you must persist. 15. the artist understands its task is
to paint every home in its city with an eyelash for a brush. 16. an artist
differs from a scientist in the adherence to the dictum (in Nietzsche's
words) where one can guess, one
hates to calculate. 17.
an artist can progress, can be productive by subverting or
rejecting its entire technical and paradigmatic foundations (regardless
of whether these foundations themselves are productive). conversely,
the scientist's rejection of such foundations is unproductive and can
only become productive after consistent failure makes such a rejection
a necessity. 18. the
creative act occurs spontaneously,
naturally, almost in spite of
oneself. in other words, for a life to
be devoid of creative acts such acts must be actively
suppressed. if one can claim that they have
truly not been suppressing such things then it can be said for certain
that they have offered little or no resistance to those forces. for
those people who have been conveniently
suppressing such forces it is overwhelming for me to consider all the
exertion and all the entanglements and elaborate constructions that
a life must dedicate itself to in order to escape creativity. it
seems it would be simpler to just make something. 19. (supposing an artist lives to the age
of fifty) the difference between an artist and a non-artist with respect
to dedication and sacrifice (to art) is at least six orders of magnitude.
the artist could be thought of as megapublic, or the non-artist as microcreative. 20. something took hold of me, turned my head and forced me to
look towards a horizon that was not initially apparent. a
failing voice then whispered it
is your turn. walk and continue walking until
you can walk no further. someone will be waiting
for you. you will instruct them as i have instructed you. 21. build a
city and fill every room. then build a stable,
and a manger... a miracle might happen. 22. considering
the enormity and intransigence of the world what can an artist
do, what can an artist hope to achieve? Nietzsche has an answer— make the scales more delicate and hope for the
assistance of favorable accidents. 23. the
artist is always a beginner… that is, beginning is the act which
realizes art, which is art’s disclosure. 24. “something
in his mechanism has been unhinged to his advantage”. – E.M.
Cioran. ascension: n; some believe that when a
person dies, a miraculous moment of opportunity opens— as a form of
consciousness that has not yet dissipated, a person is able to speak with
anyone, but just one person, for a moment. after
this act of communication the consciousness of the deceased is negated. some have claimed that the person one can speak to can be
any person, either in the past or in the future; it is in this way, they
claim, that tenuous traditions are kept alive, or are revived. it is how, they claim, such a thing as inspiration can
exist. most others believe that only people who are
contemporary with the deceased can be communicated with. regardless of the
specifics, in such a scenario the same dilemma persists, the same dilemma
confronts every person as they die— who
will i speak to and what will i say? ascent: n; some have commented that i
am, or hold views which are, or engage in creative pursuits which are
depressing. my answer to these people is always the
same. when a person understands life to be filled
with suffering and somehow finds a way to persist in what is unbearable...
these people, their strength is what is important... these people and their
efforts are the rungs which lead upwards and which represent the steps i wish
to take. ash: n; 1. related to snow. a snow-shadow. snow is elemental (water), ash has been transformed by the
elemental (fire). 2. ash is snow that has become complicated. 3. an
envelope that someone else has opened and emptied. asking: v; every moment, every
situation you are faced with reflects in some way your preparedness, it takes
the shape and the color of the container (which you are). preparedness
implies an asking or many askings of various intensities; each moment may be
considered and experienced as such a thing (an asking). for
an example, using the brain as the subject, one could say that the brain is
prepared for insanity, or that the brain is prepared for language acquisition
(by nature of its structure and functioning). these
modes of preparedness are therefore askings (not to be associated with desire
or wishing). certain askings may be louder than
others, some may be overshadowed or blocked by other askings. as time progresses preparedness changes as asking(s)
is/are answered and new askings present themselves. association: n; it is unfortunate that
health rhymes with wealth. atheism: n; the divine promise of eternal life is the
only reason one needs to toss one’s life confidently into the cart of
atheism. athletics: n; athletics has become a means for people to avoid an
encounter with the world their particular ethical being supports and
engenders. atonement: n;
the son throws stones at the window over his father's heart. his father opens the window and tosses him down the key
that will let him into the house. audience: n; 1. whenever people respond to a so-called realistic work with yes, that's true, that is exactly how it
is all they are expressing is their desire that the situation which the
work is comparing itself to is really as simple as the work and that reality
is not as complex and inexpressible as they have feared. 2. the poem uses truths, contemporary
truths, as its material. if there is no audience for
poetry, if no one has the time for
it this is not indicative of a problem with poetry. it
is symptomatic of an ill public. 3. i write
for the dead and the dying… because they are literate. 4. the passive image of an audience in a theatre is not a human
audience and it is not what a poem encounters. a
poet presents a poem, which is a way to and/or from poetry. any audience for this act are those who care to preserve
the act. if no such people exist they cannot be
created ex nihilo. this does not relieve the
poet of its responsibility to present poems (or ways to poetry); moreover,
the poet should feel neither guilt or even despair at the absence of a
competent audience, only sadness and a rightful sense of foreboding. augury: n; in the past, men would open
up animals in order to glimpse the future. nothing
has changed. authenticity: n; 1. eventually, the
only question that matters is when the
ship is sinking and escape is impossible, will you close your eyes or will
you keep them open ? 2. authenticity— the
concept, the mental structure (or lean-to) is always my last refuge. eventually it, like all things, will have to be abandoned. authority: n; 1. the authority one man holds
and tries to force down another person's throat is just a limp penis. 2. authority
is, for those whose actions fall under its sway, a complex of decisions which
have already been made. it is the silhouette of
their future. 3. an authority that must
convince others of its power is no authority at all. autobiography: n; a talking cat. automatism: n; there is no way to
differentiate between an automatic / mechanical response and a so-called free
response. autumn: n; “fully dressed and ready
for a journey” – Pessoa. avant-garde: n; “Were the totalitarian mentality by any chance ever
to return, it would use the avant-garde as an extremely seductive, harmless
and banal channel of communication.” – Bernard-Henri Levy. aversion: n; no one despises literature
as much as someone who reviews books for a living. award: n; 1. when those in
power are constantly presented with the findings of scientists and then
consistently fail to act based on the scientific conclusions, such insolence
can only have two explanations. either those in
power are evil, knowing what should be done but having no intention of ever
doing it, or, they are ignorant and are petrified in their ignorance, unable
to act. in either case any medallion offered
as a reward for work well done can only be suspect and nothing less
than a yoke. Such rewards should be refused. 2. awards
are things which are hung from livestock and pinned to vegetables at county
fairs. 3. life is second prize. death is a recognition by the judges that you deserve
first prize and so are awarded it promptly. awareness: n; “awareness confronts the
line between engaging in or becoming disengaged by what follows.” - D.
Appelbaum axis: n; poems are minarets which
mark the human distances, the human limits which comprise every city, every
gathering . |
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