Occupy Wall Street
Happening now. (Not being reported in mainstream media.)
Monday, September 26, 2011
Friday, September 23, 2011
Be Drunk:
You have to be always drunk. That's all there is to it—it's the only way. So as not to feel the horrible burden of time that breaks your back and bends you to the earth, you have to be continually drunk.
But on what? Wine, poetry or virtue, as you wish. But be drunk.
And if sometimes, on the steps of a palace or the green grass of a ditch, in the mournful solitude of your room, you wake again, drunkenness already diminishing or gone, ask the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock, everything that is flying, everything that is groaning, everything that is rolling, everything that is singing, everything that is speaking. . .ask what time it is and wind, wave, star, bird, clock will answer you: "It is time to be drunk! So as not to be the martyred slaves of time, be drunk, be continually drunk! On wine, on poetry or on virtue as you wish."
- Charles Baudelaire
You have to be always drunk. That's all there is to it—it's the only way. So as not to feel the horrible burden of time that breaks your back and bends you to the earth, you have to be continually drunk.
But on what? Wine, poetry or virtue, as you wish. But be drunk.
And if sometimes, on the steps of a palace or the green grass of a ditch, in the mournful solitude of your room, you wake again, drunkenness already diminishing or gone, ask the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock, everything that is flying, everything that is groaning, everything that is rolling, everything that is singing, everything that is speaking. . .ask what time it is and wind, wave, star, bird, clock will answer you: "It is time to be drunk! So as not to be the martyred slaves of time, be drunk, be continually drunk! On wine, on poetry or on virtue as you wish."
- Charles Baudelaire
Friday, September 16, 2011
Taken separately, any of the lines that make up the drawing of the face would "mean" nothing---they would simply be "squiggles," simply examples of different sorts of curves or line segments. Taken together, however, the sense of each resonates with the sense of all the others, answers to the expectations the others set, and through each the "rhythm" of the face is communicated. For the vision that takes them together, they are the compelling presentation of a form.
At the basic level, then, these are all examples of ways in which particular aspects of sense call for a resolution or response---a fulfillment---in another aspect of sense. The body's grasp of one such aspect of sense sets up in that body a felt need for---a propulsion toward---the other. The dots impel me to notice their regular pairing, and the music propels me to dance. In other settings, a doorknob calls me to grasp and turn it, an open highway urges me to drive quickly, and the smooth, repetitive undulations of sand dunes invite me to wander aimlessly. It is in this way that the body senses as a propulsion to fulfillment in further sense that I will call "rhythm." What we can see here is that sense and action are not separable: perception is a kind of acting, a bodily answering to a call that allows something to be realized.
- John Russon, "Bearing Witness to Epiphany: Persons, Things, and the Nature of Erotic Life," p. 14.
At the basic level, then, these are all examples of ways in which particular aspects of sense call for a resolution or response---a fulfillment---in another aspect of sense. The body's grasp of one such aspect of sense sets up in that body a felt need for---a propulsion toward---the other. The dots impel me to notice their regular pairing, and the music propels me to dance. In other settings, a doorknob calls me to grasp and turn it, an open highway urges me to drive quickly, and the smooth, repetitive undulations of sand dunes invite me to wander aimlessly. It is in this way that the body senses as a propulsion to fulfillment in further sense that I will call "rhythm." What we can see here is that sense and action are not separable: perception is a kind of acting, a bodily answering to a call that allows something to be realized.
- John Russon, "Bearing Witness to Epiphany: Persons, Things, and the Nature of Erotic Life," p. 14.
Thursday, September 15, 2011
Damastes (Also Known As Procrustes) Speaks:
My movable empire between Athens and Megara
I ruled alone over forests ravines precipices
without the advice of old men foolish insignia with a simple club
dressed only in the shadow of a wolf
and terror caused by the sound of the word Damastes
I lacked subjects that is I had them briefly
they didn't live as long as dawn however it is slander
to say I was a bandit as the falsifiers of history claim
in reality I was a scholar and social reformer
my real passion was anthropometry
I invented a bed with the measurements of a perfect man
I compared the travelers I caught with this bed
it was hard to avoid---I admit---stretching limbs cutting legs
the patients died but the more there were who perished
the more I was certain my research was right
the goal was noble progress demands victims
I longed to abolish the difference between the high and the low
I wanted to give a single form to disgustingly varied humanity
I never stopped in my efforts to make people equal
my life was taken by Theseus the murderer of the innocent Minotaur
the one who went through the labyrinth with a woman's ball of yarn
an imposter full of tricks without principles or a vision of the future
I have the well-grounded hope others will continue my labor
and bring the task so boldly begun to its end
By Zbigniew Herbert.
My movable empire between Athens and Megara
I ruled alone over forests ravines precipices
without the advice of old men foolish insignia with a simple club
dressed only in the shadow of a wolf
and terror caused by the sound of the word Damastes
I lacked subjects that is I had them briefly
they didn't live as long as dawn however it is slander
to say I was a bandit as the falsifiers of history claim
in reality I was a scholar and social reformer
my real passion was anthropometry
I invented a bed with the measurements of a perfect man
I compared the travelers I caught with this bed
it was hard to avoid---I admit---stretching limbs cutting legs
the patients died but the more there were who perished
the more I was certain my research was right
the goal was noble progress demands victims
I longed to abolish the difference between the high and the low
I wanted to give a single form to disgustingly varied humanity
I never stopped in my efforts to make people equal
my life was taken by Theseus the murderer of the innocent Minotaur
the one who went through the labyrinth with a woman's ball of yarn
an imposter full of tricks without principles or a vision of the future
I have the well-grounded hope others will continue my labor
and bring the task so boldly begun to its end
By Zbigniew Herbert.
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
The Hallelujah-Chorus perception of the sun makes it a far more real sun than the guinea-sun, because more imagination has gone into perceiving it. Why, then, should intelligent men reject its reality? Because they hope that in the guinea-sun they will find their least common denominator and arrive at a common agreement which will point the way to a reality about the sun independent of their perception of it. The guinea-sun is a sensation assimilated to a general, impersonal, abstract idea. Blake can see it if he wants to, but when he sees the angels, he is not seeing more "in" the sun but more of it. He does not see it "emotionally": there is a greater emotional intensity in his perception; but it is not an emotional perception: such a thing is impossible, and to the extent that it is possible it would produce only a confused and maudlin blur---which is exactly what the guinea-sun of "common sense" is. He sees all that he can see of all that he wants to see; the perceivers of the guinea-sun see all that they want to see of all that they can see.
- Northrop Frye, from Fearful Symmetry
- Northrop Frye, from Fearful Symmetry
Monday, September 12, 2011
Sunday, September 11, 2011
And, to return for a moment specifically to dreams, we should note that there are cultures other than our own in which dreams are understood very much as ours understands poems -- as harbringers of growing wisdom or sound reasons to change one's life -- and in which they -- dreams -- don't stand in need of the explications we require. ...
And indeed, if a roughly Freudian model of dream interpretation is correct, then it seems we should at least entertain the possibility of the dream not merely as interpretand but as interpretiens. -- The dream as, in some cases, a re-structuring or translation of its own: as a raid on the articulate -- language, logic, kidnapped by connectedness, a dense protean vision of the world. Proof that you've understood such expressions is not that you can translate them, or translate them back, into secondary process, but that you are left breathless with the shock of meaning -- with the recognition of 'having been gone up to,' as Wittgenstein would put it, with the sense of "several things dovetailed in [the] mind," as Keats would say.
- Jan Zwicky, from "Dream Logic and the Politics of Interpretation."
And indeed, if a roughly Freudian model of dream interpretation is correct, then it seems we should at least entertain the possibility of the dream not merely as interpretand but as interpretiens. -- The dream as, in some cases, a re-structuring or translation of its own: as a raid on the articulate -- language, logic, kidnapped by connectedness, a dense protean vision of the world. Proof that you've understood such expressions is not that you can translate them, or translate them back, into secondary process, but that you are left breathless with the shock of meaning -- with the recognition of 'having been gone up to,' as Wittgenstein would put it, with the sense of "several things dovetailed in [the] mind," as Keats would say.
- Jan Zwicky, from "Dream Logic and the Politics of Interpretation."
Saturday, September 10, 2011
"I want to restrict the term 'name' to what cannot occur in the combination 'X exists'. -- And so one cannot say 'Red exists', because if there were no red, it could not be spoken of at all." -- More correctly: If "X exists" amounts to no more than "X" has a meaning -- then it is not a sentence which treats of X, but a sentence about our use of language, that is, about the use of the word "X".
- Wittgenstein, from Philosophical Investigations, from §58.
For a large class of cases of the employment of the word "meaning" -- though not for all -- this word can be explained in this way: the meaning of a word is its use in the language.
- from §43.
- Wittgenstein, from Philosophical Investigations, from §58.
For a large class of cases of the employment of the word "meaning" -- though not for all -- this word can be explained in this way: the meaning of a word is its use in the language.
- from §43.
Thursday, September 8, 2011
Don't let it bother you that languages (2) and (8) [these are examples Wittgenstein had previously given in the text: 'thought-experiments' concerning languages] consist only of orders. If you want to say that they are therefore incomplete, ask yourself whether our own language is complete -- whether it was so before the symbolism of chemistry and the notation of the infinitesimal calculus were incorporated in to it; for these are, so to speak, suburbs of our language. (And how many houses or streets does it take before a town begins to be a town?) Our language can be regarded as an ancient city: a maze of little streets and squares, of old and new houses, of houses with extensions from various periods, and all this surrounded by a multitude of new suburbs with straight and regular streets and uniform houses.
- Wittgenstein, from Philosophical Investigations, §18.
- Wittgenstein, from Philosophical Investigations, §18.
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
"Violin Phase by Steve Reich. Performed at Concert 13 of Music08 June 21, 2008 by Matthew Albert, Nick Naegele, Yei-in Jin, and Chi-Fan Tai."
Saturday, September 3, 2011
The Other Village:
Sometimes I take a moment off and I remember the village and the people I used to know. I remember how we read each other's thoughts. Then I say to myself: What is the use of remembering. I long for them and the sweet taste of their company. No longing can raise the stones on each other again or pull back the sea from the orchards. I live near a different part of the sea. The hawks present their wings to the sky straight and muscled. Close by, my baby daughter, crying, sounds like the child of another people.
The Other Village:
When it comes to lamentations
I prefer Aretha Franklin
to, let's say, Leonard Cohen
Needless to add, he hears a different drum
- from Leonard Cohen's Death Of A Lady's Man
Sometimes I take a moment off and I remember the village and the people I used to know. I remember how we read each other's thoughts. Then I say to myself: What is the use of remembering. I long for them and the sweet taste of their company. No longing can raise the stones on each other again or pull back the sea from the orchards. I live near a different part of the sea. The hawks present their wings to the sky straight and muscled. Close by, my baby daughter, crying, sounds like the child of another people.
The Other Village:
When it comes to lamentations
I prefer Aretha Franklin
to, let's say, Leonard Cohen
Needless to add, he hears a different drum
- from Leonard Cohen's Death Of A Lady's Man
Thursday, September 1, 2011
Post #300:
Like the primitive Indian musical systems, deep song is a stammer, a wavering emission of the voice, a marvelous buccal undulation that smashes the resonant cells of our tempered scale, eludes the cold, rigid staves of modern music, and makes the tightly closed flowers of the semi-tones blossom into a thousand petals.
Flamenco does not proceed by undulation but by leaps. Its rhythm is as sure as that of our own music, and it was born centuries after Guido of Arezzo had named the notes.
Deep song is akin to the trilling of birds, the crowing of the rooster, and the natural music of forest and fountain.
- Federico García Lorca, from "Deep Song", in "In Search of Duende"
Like the primitive Indian musical systems, deep song is a stammer, a wavering emission of the voice, a marvelous buccal undulation that smashes the resonant cells of our tempered scale, eludes the cold, rigid staves of modern music, and makes the tightly closed flowers of the semi-tones blossom into a thousand petals.
Flamenco does not proceed by undulation but by leaps. Its rhythm is as sure as that of our own music, and it was born centuries after Guido of Arezzo had named the notes.
Deep song is akin to the trilling of birds, the crowing of the rooster, and the natural music of forest and fountain.
- Federico García Lorca, from "Deep Song", in "In Search of Duende"
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