The influence of gaslight or electric light on the growth of paraheliotropic trees

Can we still remember what it was like? What the fuck is a protest song? We live in the world of Eternal War, where Demons in the Night come to crash jetplanes into our skyscrapers, where muggers without souls stick knives into soft flesh, where no one is safe, where we die in hospital beds, painful tubes shoved down up and into our orifices — painful — dark – black & bleak, bend and break, crack winds, I am Young, Young Tom O’Bedlam, Methinks its not a journey —

Karl Marx was a law student too, once. Famous law students who left to do some thing better. To stand against the abyss, eyes open into the storm, and face it — pure courage, eyes open — the strong death — without regrets — accepting the truth and denying all falsehoods — singing lyrically — not yet cynical about the heroic path you still might tread — living in this artificial world — constructed out of what, wattle and daub? The roads are paved with boneskulls, says Zeddicus to my right. There to my left sits Michael II Transfigured, Metatron. He cannot talk. He is not there. He has been silenced. There is no comfort. I am other people, I say to myself. You know it don’t you — when you dream, you slip into other people’s minds — I don’t know what time it is; I don’t know what day it is; I am losing my mind; slipping, slipping, falling, slipping, down down down down down — dancing with the words to the music — I’ve strung them on a wire, and pulling it this way, make them dance.

What does this have to do with Nixon? says Jehosophat, sitting above me. There is a whitebearded frog floating in the far left upper corner of my room, hovering just there right beneat the sealing. Wait no — that it isn’t happening now — that happened some other time — impenetrable, they will say this — incommunicable — it is communicable to me — this sick sweet madness — this unrepentant lucre — flowing flowing words — wrestling, dancing with these soft and plastic words and thoughts — the word adorns the thought and the thought adorns the word, coming forth, summoned from memory and thought, two crows on my shoulder, play a game of free association, play the game of ring around the rosy, write to music, wheelwright, craftsman, shipbuilder —

Go down to South Ferry and remind yourself its an island. How many beautiful offices of servants have I been to this sad fall while the world collaspes all around them. Glad I’m not in your seat, says I, America America, this Swan Song’s For You — Dance the Dance of the 21st Century, Shiva. Dance the Dance of the 21sts Century, Shiva. One foot front, then one foot back, kinda like the Electric Slide, or 1990s bar bitzvahs, or 1980s danceparty, a genre of music, Chromeo, who needs that, I need a bassline, an electric guitar, and a song that never ends, no rockstasr pretension, just don’t stop playing — don’t stop playing now — we’re jamming now, brother, we’re jamming now — just sound sound and sense and sound without sense rhyme but no reason — be here now — music perfectly duplicates imitates represents the dimension of time in our lives — but if the speakers are good enough, and your eyes are closed, you can see it, see the different strains of music , see the different instruments, lick of electric guitar, drums, bassline, I am the Great Procrastinator

Ironic, considering the nature of my thoughts these past several days, and chilling, the language of the visual cortex, bright and bloody, glowing on computer screens, placed there by layer and layer of electron combs and filters — I can see what you’re seeing —

http://www.cell.com/neuron/abstract/S0896-6273(08)00958-6

When we see (to pick one sense out of many) we do not see what is seen but rather see what we see. That is, we do not see the object standing or the events unfolding before us, but rather we see our vision of this object or these events. Our vision is chemical, the intricate workings of soft & spongy clockwork (the eye is not just a gelatinous ball of goop), twisting and turning beneath the “light of other days” — old light, stale, shining down — and somehow this chemical vision produces within our heads the illusion of vision — we think we can see the world — but in truth, we live within our skulls.

Even so, we must accept there is most likely some truth to our visions, that these chemical apparitions summoning the outer world must bear some close correlation with the spatial objects beyond our actual perception — refined into something useful by the generations of competitive dying of which we are the heirs.¹

1. Isn’t it strange that we’ve now short-circuited this process by not dying quite so quickly — what does this mean? That natural biological selection has slowed, and that our improvement now lies within our own hands and responsibility.