The formalist:
If poetry is the celebration of language by those who imagine themselves clever enough to impress others with their skills then it divides the world. If however poetry is the intellectual celebration of the fight for equilibrium regardless of language then it unites the world.
Getting it:
Is a relative thing as we can tell from listening to the audience in the Ramsey Lewis version of devil and angel. Some get it a little and some get it a lot but the important part is the little chuckle in his voice. He gets it.
Poets who create devils and angels separately like Jim Croce (Big Bad Leroy Brown and Time in a Bottle) or Jimmy Buffet (Let's get drunk and Screw and Come Monday) are more difficult to get I guess. You tend to see only the devils and angels and not the ironic center between.
Simultan:
The Church of Figure it out Yourself
(Faith in Chaos)
Even at my lowest times I can feel the words bubbling inside of me. And I had to get the words down or be overcome by something worst than death. Words not as precious things but as necessary things. Yet when I begin to doubt my ability to work the word, I simply read another writer and then I know I have nothing to worry about. My contest is only with myself, to do it right with power and force and delight and gamble.
As we live we all get caught and torn by various traps. Writing can trap you. Some writers tend to write what has pleased their readers in the past. They hear accolades and believe them. There is only one final judge of writing and that is the writer. When he is swayed by the critics, the editors, the publishers, the readers then he's finished. And of course when he's swayed with his fame and his fortune you can float him down the river with the terds.
If you are going to try go all the way otherwise don't even start. This could mean loosing girlfriends, wives, relatives, jobs and maybe your own mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery, isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And you will do it despite rejection and the worst odds and it will be better than anything else you can imagine.
If you are going to try go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods and the nights will flame with fire and you will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It's the only good fight there is.
Charles Bukowski
Negotiating in the present moment:
Words are the root of all evil. Our most reinforced ritual based on our strongest beliefs. They are used to lie and they betray every nuance of body language and vocal inflection. Most people only pay attention to the words and therefor are constantly being fooled. Words are the root of all evil and trying to make these lying little bastards tell the truth is the good fight.
The Awe of Death:
Bukowski knew very well the ironic center of the immortal soul (he has "Don't Try" on his tombstone). He also well knew the ironic center of the artist, the point where the individual artist meets the collective audience. Where the individual art of discovery dies forever to be replaced by the orgasm of collective discovery. How did he make out in this passage where others like Joplin and Morrison unknowingly fell into the abyss and Woolf teetered on the brink before succumbing and Dickinson avoided altogether? The pain at the death of the individual accompanied by the orgasm at the creation of the collective. This art stuff must come from the female side of the brain, let's go shoot something.
So how do you figure it out yourself (If I didn't have anything to do when I woke up in the morning I would go crazy)?
Your neural pathways are so reinforced by your goal oriented behavior and emotions you probably can't figure it out yourself. You will die a brain dead vegetable without ever experience the bliss of chaos, a bliss that could drive a good microeconomist into catatonia, unless you destroy those neural pathways. Drugs are the easy way but that only works in the short run. You have to destroy all those little rituals that keep time in order to destroy those restricted pathways and open up your brain to whatever else is stored. You will have to dedicate your life to driving out order to get to all those neural pathways ignored after all these years.
What you need is some premature enlightenment and "Fight Club" is a good creation story. From the duality of man to quitting your job to eliminating order to self-destruction it is a good outline to follow. In the end you will find the death of the old individual male order and the transfer of information to a new life with the chaos of a real woman.
The Greatest Generation:
My generation has defined its predecessor as the greatest generation for the sacrifices they made, an orderly way of looking at the past. I think generation Y may be the first generation to achieve greatness in it's own time. Greatness not from sacrifice for a collective future but from being individually in touch with the vitality of the collective in the present moment in its own time.
Videodrom has a Philosophy
Dear Ms. Barr,
I think someday people will have a greater appreciation for your struggle with the media. A good demonstration of the futility of fighting the media in it's own venue and how the media uses the psychology of celebrity to generate drama for free content to sell advertising, not a bad racket. I enjoyed your humor and learned a lot from you so here's one for you Rosie.
Storyteller:
My one ambition in life is to tell a story but somehow I can't write it. A story very similar to "Bonfire of the Vanities", maybe not as well written but about perhaps the largest pack of rat fucking whores assembled to date by the masters and slaves. I don't want the story written for any vain purposes as my bonfire burns as bright as any other but rather as a warning as to what can happen when a culture becomes so bent and twisted by order it no longer contains any shred of common decency. Not being able to write the story myself I will have to rely on future generations. This is where it becomes necessary to have faith in chaos.
through
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Southern Gothic:
It started out as a Rorschach test for the truly deluded but hopefully my research staff found the twisted little brains that create the roots of southern gothic. The primitive inbred rural mindset described in Deliverance I remember so well. I expect the hearsay would make a good southern gothic novel. I always admired Sam Shepherd's work in Southwestern Gothic.
All in all maybe you could say men have heroes and champions and revere the mythology and rituals of order and the centralization of power and women have marriages and revere the mythology and rituals of negotiation and the decentralization of power and maybe sometime it's necessary for one to be ascendant over the other.
Lead This