What Remains Unsaid

If we allow ourselves the luxury of language there are very few things we cannot say. What these things are naturally I cannot say. Perhaps it's merely a question of knowledge, and if one did know these things one cannot say, then one could say them.

Clear Cut Clean Through

"Truth is simple, falseness complex? Why?"
"Falseness requires entangling complexity to delude the mind as to its falseness. The man of truth cuts the Gordian knot of complexity with the direct external blow, rather than stepping into its pathways where the point of true perspective is wholly lost."

Hatched Intellect

"Did reasoning powers bring about the existence of reasoning powers?"
"No, reasoning powers did not exist prior to the existence of reasoning powers so as to be able to bring about the existence of reasoning powers."

Screen of Truth

Sociological experts have refuted claims that television "adds pounds" to individuals thereon; ie making them appear heavier than in actuality.
"The truth is that life makes one look thinner than one really is. The camera never lies."

Russian Icon 18th Century

Colleen-I'll Read You A Story

Watch here. By French musician Colleen- real name Cecile Schott from the Et Les Boîtes À Musique ep. I think much on the long ep is a bit too throwaway, but certainly not the above. Though it's also on her Golden Morning Breaks album which I must get hold of, title track here.

The Animal of Creation & the Dialogue of Invention

"The ability to read is man's greatest invention."
"No, you're wrong. The ability to walk is man's greatest invention."
"Yes of course."

Shame

It is to my eternal, or at least temporary, shame that this post merely exists as an excuse to write It is to my eternal, or at least temporary shame.

Alternatively:

It is to my eternal, or at least temporary, shame that this post merely exists as an excuse to write It is to my eternal, or at least temporary shame that this post merely exists as an excuse to write It is to my eternal...

God is Dead. Why?

One of the most famous of pithy statements of the last few centuries is Nietzsche's "God is dead." As to the existence of an specific individual entity, whether dead or alive, somehow outside of life, naturally all is pure speculation, though if we accepted the working hypothesis of 'his' existence, then the declaration of his death would seem the height of presumption. Presumably what Nietzsche meant was the death of the concept of God, though here we have the limitless vistas of irrelevance as to agreeing as to what exactly is the nature of the human concept in the first place, then the desirability of the existence or not of this concept and all the rest of it. Nietzsche on the one hand seemed to feel it to be the opening of an existential space of pure being into which freedom the new man could stride magnificently, but on the other hand, double edged sword that the concept was, that 'God' had died because of a shrinking of man's horizons. Pettiness and egotistical barbarism were the future for the masses, while a more napoleonic egotism of power were the future for the liberated hero. Which all in all amounts to little more than points of perspective from which to view 'the antheap'.

Though the whimsical thought that has led to the words above ushering forth from my mind was a look at why this God, a living being, not a concept, might have died. And that little thought being that God received word and formed his understanding of man, just like so many of our exalted men, from the medium of the mainstream media. And naturally from the picture of reality that emerges from these effluences, God had little choice but to open his veins in shame and despair.

John Carey New Work

The literary world is buzzing with excitement over the forthcoming publication of John Carey's new work, More Disingenuous Bullshit. The anti-intellectual Mr Carey, who is one of the brightest of lights within the intellectual firmament, has allegedly said regarding the provocative title, "Who knows- perhaps what I write isn't disingenuous at all. Maybe I really am this stupid."

Ingres and Feminism

Following on from the recent post involving Jean-Auguste Dominique Ingres, a post on his much undervalued role as an intellectual patron and artistic chronicler of the liberating force of feminism. Below is one of the leading figures of the emerging movement that changed the landscape of life, Venus Anadyomène, painted by Ingres in slightly allegorical mode. Anadyomène was regarded by the ruling elites as "one of the most dangerous people in Europe" for her radical views regarding universal suffrage.

Ingres' most important work as chronicler of the rise of feminism is the painting below, which shows the first organised meeting of like-minded women from around Europe to debate and formulate strategies for the campaign ahead. Ingres, the only male present, was requested by Anadyomène to record the event for posterity, which , given the sociological climate of the time, he intentionally misleadingly titled The Turkish Bath. Noone will deny Ingres has managed to capture something of the tension of the heated exchanges that occured at that seminal gathering.

And finally, below is a painting of the extremist figure, still only known by her nom de plume, The Source, by which the painting is still known. She believed the ends justified the means, and women were duty bound to resort to violence to further the struggle.

Somnambulance

Somnambulance: a vehicle for transporting people to a slow, soporific death. Otherwise known as mainstream culture. Some say the somnambulance floats atop the main stream, while others claim the somnambulance is the stream itself. Some claim the somnambulance is consciously driven by human agents, while others that it is self-propelled, merely unconsciously obeying the laws of its own being.

Ingres, Turner & the Desire for Order

No man is a psychological island, and through the simple fact of being human is a universal being, or at least universal in the earthly sense. The individual actualises certain traits or potentialites of the universal self in his person- the personality a form of greater or lesser fluidity- and this most easily witnessed in the realms of art where inner substance takes outer form. This universality of self is naturally the sole reason art is of interest to individuals other than that of the individual creator. Whatever life the artist breathes into his work resonates with us through human commonality.

Perhaps the prime motivation of art is the urge towards unity, where the elements of existence find some cohesive form. What then becomes interesting is the extent to which the form achieved satsifies the inner nature and complexity of life, and is istelf a living extension of life. Is the art of a comparatively genuine order, reaching into the emotional and intellectual depths of life- the work of a great artist- or inconsistent with life, a false clarity, certainty at the expense of truth- for example, the childish work of a Tarantino. In the first, the artwork is an organic extension of life, whereas in the second the work simply seves the desire for form, but is more or less a parralel universe of artificiality, and will soon lie in the dust of forgotten time.

And to look at two roughly contemporary artists- Ingres(1780-1867) and Turner(1775-1851), as two examples of wildly divergent senses of being, reflected in their respective art.

In Ingres’ own words, “Drawing is seven eights of what makes up painting. This signifying a sense of self that sees, or wishes to see, life contained within purely delineated contours, and he abhorred the visible brushstroke, in obvious contrast to artists like Rembrandt, Van Gogh and Turner - comparative primitives of the temperament, and to my mind Ingres is the creator often of a rather prissy, bloodless 'perfection', with the above painting, Odalisque with a Slave a rather typical example of what might be termed his frequent exercises in porcelain erotica. His desire for simple classical certainty fits neatly the mentioned doll-like nature of the two women, neither of whom offers the faintest threat of possessing any volatile, awkward inner life, inaccessible to the artist. 

And to cement the point, another beautiful, if slightly oddly shaped, doll La Grande Odalisque

In keeping with Ingres' apparent sense of the world, his style remained roughly a constant through his career. He wrote, "I am a conservator of good doctrine, and not an innovator." Such a mind is not seeking breakthroughs to intenser vision, or the like; such a desire being at odds with the classical type to whom all should be clear and simple in self-contained perfection, rather than elusive, and difficult. And in terms of this classical ideal of clarity, this also explains Oedipus' extremely violent and ludicrous self-punishing for the crime - through no real fault of his own - of transgressing the desired form of absolute order integral to his culture. 

A greater painting by Ingres above, The Valpincon Bather, though the greater worth could be to a large extent down to where we are viewing the bather from, and were her face to be in view, she would most likely be revealed to be just another human doll.

And below Ingres, Rain Steam and Speed the Great Western Railway, by Turner, an artist actualising perhaps diametrically contrary psychological, spiritual aspects of the human condition. For Ingres, truth is contained firmly within the particulars of existence, especially within their physical form which offers its essence up meekly to the draughtman skills of the artist, and elusive inner reality is almost wholly non-existent. Such simple rational clarity is anathema to Turner, and his art, especially as he progressed, produces little in the way of drawing skills at all, and becomes at times squalls of virtual abstraction. Truth for him is a much more dangerous animal.
One could say there are two poles of temptation here: for the Ingres type, stagnation through excessive order, and for the Turner type a falling over from order into shapeless chaos.
For Turner the too solid flesh of the world dissolves into what might appear to be chaos, which brings to mind Blake's line, "As I was walking among the fires of hell, delighted with the enjoyments of Genius; which to Angels look like torment and insanity". Also Nietzsche's words, "You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star."

(This was all written a while back, not posted as what follows is a bit shoddy, and for some reason, still extant, I don't feel like working on finishing it. I might feel sufficiently motivated in some future time, but here it is anyway)

One could describe Turner's greatest works as involving the dissolving of an unsatisfactory constricting sense of order, of life contained within an intellectual false form, where 'truth' is too easily and risklessly attained by a rationalising mind, falsely sure of itself and its surroundings. Simply dissolving an unsatisfying sense of order in itself merely leaves us with unformed chaos, however, and it is the greatness of Turner's finest works to unify the particulars of life within a more intense vision. Turner's is not a New Age calendar vision of truth, with spirituality softly presenting itself to a gentle awakening soul. That would simply be an updated version of Ingres' soft-focus classicism. Turner is in violent opposition to such a comforting order too cheaply arrived at, which quickly rings false and emanates the banal.


Thomas Mann from Doctor Faustus:

I find there is something uncomfortable about standing eye-to-eye with greatness; it is a test of courage- can one really endure that gaze?

This inhuman majesty certainly intrinsic to Turner's greatest works, but it would be ridiculous to make such test of courage claims about Ingres' soft-focus classicism.

Interview

You've written many books.
Yes.
Quite a few in fact.
Yes.
What is it you like about books?
The marriage of form and content.
Could you mention some of your favourite books?
Death in Stilletos and Countdown to Terror.
Two of your own of course.
Yes.
Any others?
The Hungry Cannibal.
Another one of your own. Excellent. And you've a new book coming out next month.
Yes.
Called?
Love in Autumn.
Any advice for young writers?
Know your verbs.
Thank you, you've been a great interviewee.
Any time.

Establishing Guilt

A somewhat Kafkaesque recently flashed in my mind while in a supermarket and the visual stimulus of a surveillance camera entered my mind, and that creative thought being that these technological mechanisms were metaphysical instruments of justice. In earlier religious times, confession was where, as suggested by the word, people confessed their crimes, and this to the metaphysical justice system was the principle means of establishing the individual's degree of guilt. For obvious reasons, not an infallible system for the divine bureaucracy, but still ingenious - getting the individual to inform on himself; so ingenious perhaps as to be a clear manifestation of its divine origin. [This messed up Philip Dick/Kafka interpretation is to add, simply for the sake of this fictional piece - it’s not my real view!]

In the post Industrial Revolution age, the religious era declines in proportion to the increase of the as man's capacity to enter pseudo or virtual worlds of his own imagining, and so the confessional system of establishing guilt has suffered greatly. However, with the technological era has come new means of accumulating data on the individual, and the various devices now inhabiting the world such as computers, phones, surveillance cameras, are part of a metaphysical surveillance network to perform the old duties of the confessional.

This naturally a thought-piece, but interestingly it brought to mind something distinctly similar in tone, and that is the American governmental body, the Information Awareness Office, and its desire to have total information awareness . The Information Awareness Office (IAO) was established by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the research and development agency of the United States Department of Defense, in January 2002 to bring together several DARPA projects focused on applying information technology to counter transnational threats to national security. The IAO mission was to "imagine, develop, apply, integrate, demonstrate and transition information technologies, components and prototype, closed-loop, information systems that will counter asymmetric threats by achieving total information awareness", which prosaically means absolute knowledge by 'the state' of the details of its citizens' lives. Following public criticism that the development and deployment of these technologies could potentially lead to a mass surveillance system, the IAO was defunded by Congress in 2003, although several of the projects run under IAO have continued under different funding. A rose by any other name.

And what was the logo for this totalitarian body? Quelle surprise, the old masonic All-Seeing Eye on the pyramid, with the Latin phrase scientia potentia est proudly adorned beneath. "For also knowledge itself is power." Yes, knowledge and power for whom?

Colours of Paradise

Anyone deserves the West who arrives with fresh energy to break up the deadly, antiseptic boredom of its civilization.
Joseph Roth- The Wandering Jews.

This West, particularly the English speaking West, under the sway of truthless materialism, produces practically nothing of any merit in film. Even its supposedly best, most acclaimed films like There Will Be Blood are in real artistic terms, lifeless. Such films a series of transcribed set-pieces, the gap between the written scene and the visual film minimal. Everything is functional, utilitarian, nothing organic and alive, despite the wonders a Daniel Day Lewis can perform. The West uses technology, inevitably given its hypnotising ambient ideologies, as mechanisms for producing unreality.
Thankfully, however, there are infusions of fresh energy to break up Roth's deadly lifelessness, and one such film is the Iranian Colours of Paradise, somewhat reminiscent of Sanjit Ray's Apu films. Watching films like this and the French-ArmenianVodka Lemon, and contrast with the lifelessness of the West's effluences, it is inescapable that the economic first world is in its sense of living life the third world. The West's ( speaking in broad terms) films are not art. They do not exist within the autonomous language of film, for which to exist as art must intimately relate to awareness of the living moment. The living moment is a foreign element to the West's unreality, and so its filmic art not art at all. Functional, arid while the Iranian director Majid Majidi has the living moment as his natural element, as of course it should for all. Technical knowledge is essential obviously for art, but this living awareness is the real primordial ground, on which everything depends.

Hypothetical Book Review

This book has changed my life in the sense that if I were not reading it I would have been doing something else. It is admittedly a shit book, but that is a minor quibble. It is also deeply relevant to today's world and the lives we live now.

The Authorities

An interesting use of language is that of 'the authorities', in the sense of those who possess and administer worldly power. Attempting to lift the word out of the soporific of the everyday usage, it seems best to fit as a throwback to an ancient religiously stratified society. Those at the apex of power are The Authorities: the possessors of mysterious hidden knowledge denied to the lumpen masses, which encloses these Authorities within a circle of power. That knowledge which is within this circle is what places them above the profane, and by necessity invisible to the profane. One could imagine Borges writing a short story on a similar theme.

Bertrand de Jouvenel writes:
The phenomenon called authority is at once more ancient and more fundamental than the phenomenon called state; the natural ascendancy of some men over others is the principle of all human organizations and all human advances.
While an online dictionary leads us back to the prosaic in describing Authority as
a. The power to enforce laws, exact obedience, command, determine, or judge.
b. One that is invested with this power, especially a government or body of government officials.

What is the connection between Jouvenal's natural ascendency of some men over others, thus rewarding them with their authority, and our modern wielders of worldly power in its various political and economic forms? Authority naturally meaning that those with it are placed above those over whom they wield this authority. Are these people really possessed of a natural ascendancy over others? Certainly interesting to see these Authorities as the equivalent of the ancient priestly class described earlier, self-selected and absolute.

Identity

"I'm a humanist."
"Are you? I'm a human."

The Castles

Many brave knights, bound by allegiance to Truth, tried to storm that great edifice, the Castle of Stupidity & Falseness. However, all efforts have predictably floundered as stupidity and falseness are their own defence, against which truth is powerless. Needles to say, the inhabitants were convinced the often insanely convoluted edifices of their stupidity were the most profound of human formulations, and proof of their progressive genius.

Our devoted knights met with similar results at the close ally of the Castle of Stupidity- the Castle of Misery. These benevolent assailants imagined they would be greeted joyfully as they liberated the inhabitants of Misery from their walled domain, but no. The inhabitants had poured themselves into their bitterness, and in it lay their very existence. He who threatened to take it away was a liar, a denier of the very ground of reality. The inhabitants sneered at the knights, accused them of vapidity and laughed at their promise of a kingdom of profundity and love. They had the best of reasons justifying their unhappiness and ignorance. "This is existence. We have tasted it, it is real." The very existence of their misery was its own proof as the substance of existence, and to say otherwise pure escapism.

Eventually and reluctantly the knights of glowing countenance moved on once it became fully clear that their efforts were wasted, and that they were themselves beginning to be infected by the unhappy malaise. Though they were pleased to find the odd inhabitant of the castle join their number, their desertion attended to by howls of derision from the most loyal.

Unreliable Narrator

I'm sorry it offends anyone but I make no apologies for what I write here. One of these things below.

I suffer from a traumatic artistic and spiritual quandary. When I try to pour forth my thoughts in the form of the written word, I find to my dismay words and thoughts other than those desired being crystallised in physical form, as if a second will were commandeering my will and channeling it into avenues distinct from the ones desired. I set my arm in motion and unknown contrary thoughts are produced. This emanation of thoughts that are not my own occurs with such infallible relentlessness that it cannot be attributed to deficiencies in the means of expression. Perhaps I am but one self-enclosed 'self' within a myriad of other selves within this mind-body organism.
This hijacking of my intent of course applies to all these words, including these. What I intended to write was quite different.