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

April 30, 2009

Classical vs. Ultramodern

I seem to have taken a classical turn of late, epitomized by Keat’s Ode, I suppose; let’s not forget that the purpose of electric light on heliotropic trees is to explore the effect of the ultramodern on the human soul, not to sink into the comforting memory of safe and easy Apollonian art, Yeats’ gold Byzantium. Cacaphony, the riots at the Rite of Spring, Spring Theory, and Deep Time and History, the Screams of Car Accidents outside my New York window, the High Definition Apocalypses contained and controlled by the 25-hour TV/Internet newscycle, the coming obsolence of newsprint, digital ink and digital paper, dine and dash mentalities, the New Socialism, the New President, Generation Y growing up and taking our seat on the crazy water ride, water slide, Hunter S. Thompson and David Foster Wallace with a solipsist gun in their mouth, Nihilism and Optimism, Walt Whitman Old and New, the End of Discourse, the Twist of Rhetoric, out-of-work lawyers, fierce beggars, venereal disease, electronic dance music, headphone parties, studio apartments, teenagers sending naked pictures of themselves with their ubiquitous high resolution cell phone cameras, the iphone and the Xbox, headstands and summersaults, psychadelic mushrooms, the 2nd largest city in Vermont, nationalized singing talent show, fat and endless bandwith, three word poems, the new haiku, automatic wordcounts, waterboarding with the American flag, Chrysler is bankrupt, Pig Flu, many lives, heat death of the universe, canceling the moonbase, the speed of light, the relativity of time, brane cosmology, brain surgery, positive and negative externalities, death and taxes, consumer space travel, bankruptcies and great recessions, 2nd act repeats, Karl Marx’s comeback, culture industry collapsing back on itself, a million chittering cells organize and then disorganize, organism then individual, what is law, what is the law, break the law, and scofflaw, information wants to be free, who said that, says Time Warner, a hacker you idiot, the Whole Earth Catalog, and he was right and you were wrong, charge what you want, toll-roads and advertising, the colonization of the human mind, a new kind of fascism, the freedom to starve, absolute poverty, disease, a warming planet, antarctica is melting, polar bears are drowning, trees are getting greener, and the city’s getting hotter and the worm is winding tighter, there are snakes on the plane, Lost is the island of Atlantis, the Garden of Eden is in Bahrain, every fall I put on my Jewhat and go sing in Sumerian, I know where we come from, I don’t know where we’re going, but maybe caves, 30 million Chinese people still do it, if I’m one in a million that means there’s a thousand of me in China, twist and shout, new souls — Before Sunrise and Before Sunset — and don’t trust anyone over thirty unless they’re already dead (Death makes one reliable) and you can’t change the future because the future is what will happen and and and conjunction junction what’s your function — putting words together and that’s my function and television is ubiquitious and computer screens are ubiquitous and cell phones and coffee shops and restaurants and Walmart and the fear of stinking death is ubiquitous – my father had a dog once he was called Ubi, he was the Ubiquitous Dog, because he kept showing up, what’s that supposed to be, profound or something, does the writer in my head make me a schizoid paranoiac? No, I doubt they’re after me, the Black Helicopter Police have bigger fish to fry than me, those Right Wing Crazies, Those Fascist Yahoos, lock up your children the homosexuals are coming, God hates butt-sex, but how does he feel about tit-sex? Unclear. Blowjobs? Blowjobs are ok if the person giving them has a vagina? Why? What does a vagina have to do with a blowjob? An interesting argument, I have there, Young Lawyer. Oh, go, there is studying to do, and more handstands and tumblesaults and summersalts and airplane rides and yogurt. Go, go, go, go, keep going, Ponyboy, stay yellow, Chicken, where we’re going we don’t need roads — oh oh oh, oh oh oh oh.

November 27, 2008

Word of the Day – Orthodox

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/orthodox

From the Greek, orth, meaning straight, and doxa, meaning opinion — straight or correct opinion — the central pillar of a society’s worldview — “don’t upset the orthodoxy” – at its most powerful, the orthodoxy is so prevailing, all-encompassing, and pervasive that individuals within the orthodoxy cannot even see its outlines, for it is the background for the way in which thoughts are constructed. Israel — the Wrestlers — become impossible in this context — and orthodoxy inevitably leads to intellectual ossification. Western culture, with its scientific method and liberal politics, is a new innovation, where the prevailing orthodoxy presumes fallibility, limits to knowledge, and encourages experiment, examination, interrogation — and yet a) this impulse ossifies into an orthodoxy of denial, skepticism, where because nothing is certain, nothing is believed and b) is relegated to its limited sphere because of the underlying power of orthodoxy to stifle dissent — leading to liberalism as a religion, free markets as a dogma, the struggle against socialism as a holy war — and now, to the unrelenting triumphalism of the Post-Cold War Era.

After the autumn, market orthodoxy has been shaken; the victors have been humbled by their hubris. Now, perhaps, during this moment of crisis, some Luther will come to nail his theses on the church door of Wittenberg, and reenact some new reformation that may in turn lead to a new protestant revival.

While the lobotomized sheep and the dull-eyed shepherds worry, and the shepherds begin to grudge the sheep its clothing, those with thought and those with memory may find some opportunity to free themselves, their neighbors, and the world from a metapysical justification that no longer serves —

what shall rise in its place? how long until this too feels the vigor leach from its veins, leaving a new idol for the masses.

A plague on you, Mr. Greenspan. A plague on you, Mr. Bernanke. You have failed us.

May 7, 2008

decline of the west

Once upon a time, the Apollonians built a great mighty stone-city on seven hills, bestride the primal riverstream, and with gave power to their People to pin and subdue the Sunset Lands. Over in the east, in the Land of the Morningstar, a millenia and a half later, the Magians and their desert prophet rose up and shook the sand from their hairs and girded up their loins for holy war —

And the Magians then went to war with the Sons of Apollo, and the Apollonian warchief Freeman the Hammer stopped their charge at the Court of the Martyrs — blunting their teeth, widowmaker —

The galaxy turns again, and the Sons of Apollo gird on their steel and push back against the Magians — and then, the light came to the Sons of Apollo, Mephistopheles in strange corners, whispering secrets and questions — and so we barrel down, no longer Sons of Apollo but now Children of the Faust-Bargain, running, charging, but not seeing the dark-things lurking in the shadows —

And Magians, once sleeping, now rise again, and the Dragonempire from Ancient East is breaking its chains, and the Gate of the North is breaking and broken and the darkness storm clouds are brewing on the edge of the sky —

Twilight of the Gods, Rag’narok, the tragedy of Faust, striving seeking building this future, surrounding ourselves with magical trinkets shining and spinning, thinking of our transcendant singular plane of undying but we shall not go on we shall not achieve it we shall die and pass from the world our work unfinished leaving ruins and memories that may shine a light on new civilizations that come and replace us like we replaced others and our trinkets and baubles will fall by the roadside but these things — the eternal things — they will remain they will survive.

Category: historicalities