Stream 18 - A Philosophy of Ideas.

Everything is unlimited and infinitely complex until a man speaks of it - the words we use to try to explain the inexplicable (which is everything) are always futile; however, that is our business, to find an idea - which is merely a limiting filtration of the infinite universe - of the most value, and of the least untruth. We must disillusion ourselves first, and then carefully and cleverly create our own illusion, suspending our disbelief. It may be that we must demolish these castles we construct in the air a thousand thousand times before we may create one that we think it not insulting to our integrity to dwell in.

3:50 pm 16th February ‘08

Stream 17 - Music

I am nothing I am nothing I am nothing I am nothing. I can be anything I want to be, and consequently I am nothing. I do like music though, and sometimes I close my eyes grow to feeling full, given over to the tides of beauty, its ebb and flow. I can live by that, rolling in the surf.

10:50am 12 February ‘08

Stream 16 - Lethe and beyond.

Response to a girl’s translation of Baudelaire’s poem about ‘Lethe’ and her conclusion that
‘I don't even have any lethe right now... oh well, I shall look at the world with bored poet's eyes and not care, for nothing can affect me anymore’

3:06pm Feb 9th ‘08 -->
everyone must cross the lethe in the end.
really good poem - it's very like that 'laissez moi respirer longtemps longtemps l'odeur de tes cheveux etc' one.
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8:17pm 9th Feb ‘08
oh and the bored icy melancholia is the symptom of being free by dint of having nothing to lose - it is an attainment of total self mastery, having nothing to care about - some people try to be like icarus, (or stephen dedalus in joyce's portrait of the artsit as a young man), aesthetically free and dwell in the rarefied atmospheres of their own mind without being moved by any exterior essences, but gravity always wins (in the words of thom yorke) just like reality always wins and people's mind will always plunge down into the sea, and that sensory storm called life, and be moved, so i suppose enjoy your flight while you can, everyone's wings melt, and waxing lyrical you will plunge into reality and, if you can, which is the tricky business of real life, you will do it well and be happy and find something to care about, which tenders us towards the other end of the scale from freedom to surrender - for like religious faith or total love, these are the opposites of freedom, where you give yourself up and choose to be moved by the forces of the world, by your own emotions or by those of another, rather than to move freely in spite of the actualities of existence, and to work an icy mastery over yourself. There you have the ideals to which people tend, either freedom or surrender, both are unattainable, because in between those to polar ends is that little thing, which will always reassert itself, reassuringly, frustratingly, called reality.
of course that probably doesn't help but that's what i think about stuff at the moment...of course it's only a philosophical model which can never be true, it can only help us to trick ourselves into thinking that we can understand, but of course the world will always exceed the embrace of the words we use to comprehend it.
drink up, i say.
x

Stream 15 - Light, Night and Images

Ah now yes here I could have such images in the unseen rush towards midnight even in the night such bright images even in the light such dark visions what need for electricity we have our own binary minds yes on off switch and there’s a language of our own see here now gothic dark spider webbed spiny carriage rattling along over uneven cobbles and the whole thing like bats wings sneaking through streets toward exquisite murder or pain or pleasure some orgiastic opium den what was is priapic yes maybe anyway that’s one image maybe another some glint in the distance yes now it rushes or I rush towards that bright valley sweeping through stone capped mountains and studded with gems of light yes the whole glorious bowl a crown of glory anointing this world and there some fellow on his horse all glinted and armed and armoured and breathing beneath the hung metal of his suit there’s flesh there and a torsion and a feeling of feeling a feeling of lightness and freedom and a smile upon his lips and the air flashing all around under the hung branches with catkins all around and some wonderful image of a woman on the banks of a hidden lake or pool hahh there you have images I suppose and yet here’s an ordinary sight yes there you are hung lamp slunk with your sixty watt bulb yes sixty watt max max and no more my friend I’m sorry but you will never blaze with light, although you play your part

Midnight 1st-2nd February ‘08

Stream 14 - Freedom Scale and Squirrel Dance

So so last night yes what a moment lying there totally abstracted and I just drifted off in my mind all time and space rejected and well Icarian hah come on sammy you jest no no I don’t yes I’m afraid you I do I didn’t drift but I was there predominantly in my mind and discussed or rather spoke spoke on on about some new aesthetic philosophy and things, that living for us must be conducted in a conscious, skilful and painfully frustrating choice between the two poles, freedom, where your self is the most important thing, yes you reject everything around you and refuse to be moved even by your own emotions and certainly not by those of others and obviously you reject time and society and all other prescriptions I mean anyone with half a mind knows you must reject them at birth (although there is a skill and subtle reason to reassume them on one’s own ground) and so yes that’s freedom it’s cold abstracted and its icarus rising rising into the more and more rarefied strata where air dissipates and you rise even above that and you reject perhaps even your own body and self and so there at the height of that you break free from gravity, which is reality, and find yourself, burned up in brilliance, as a sentient and triumphant essence in space, that is the ultimate tangent of freedom, and it must be ecstatic - and yet unattainable, for as sure as icarus burned up and plunged back into the seas of reality just so we cannot really escape this world and this life in which we are born and to which perhaps, sadly, we must defer to be moved by its forces - but there may be no harm perhaps is striving skyward and to master or reject the world and the self…it’s lonely up there though, yes…and at the other end of this scale is total surrender, glorious, it is faith it is love, it is to plunge willingly and to drown in the sea of life and diffuse yourself to the fishes and tides, yes you see faith and love require surrender I know that, but I can never know surrender, sad sad burning triumphant cold lonely and sad, and all my own making haha what larks, nonetheless you see total faith and surrender and acceptance of the world and deference to its moving forces is also unattainable because you will always have your mind and spirit and body and a will that desires not to be diffused, as shelley said yes yes from the moment we are born there is a something in us at odds with nothingness and dissipation, so there you go and you see living as a sliding scale on the one end freedom and on the other surrender - so what, and this is the question for us, so what is in the middle? Well that is life, yes that is life and the skill in living comes in choosing on ones own autonomous ground where you shall settle on the scale between freedom and surrender to the forces of life you see and I think this is important even the most abstracted free aesthetes need something real and need some other heart to beat by theirs even if it is only to compare the undeniable beating of their own, and perhaps a middle way, despicable to the binary mind, is what we must seek, that is the subtlety and the skill and the pain of living, and it’s a game I suppose, hah, what errant storm petrels we straining between earth and heaven.

5:30pm 1st February ‘08

So yes there you are - I think it explains things. Anyway I went out today woke up so late and went out afoot with a vision wrapped in my tablerug cloak feeling like I could fly yes like I remember childhood and all those dreams of flight hah what times mmm, anyway so I went down to the meadows and there was a fine sunset and the cold hanging in the air and a few joggers crunching up and down on the gravel but mostly there was me and so I went strolling down the lane and I remember some tree with beautiful baubles on like some Chinese castle festooned with stellar lamps anyway that was beautiful and so went on on to this lovely spot where I’ve sat before, all ivied crackling trees and crunching dead leaves stirring with spring even on this first day of February and the whole thing an abode of squirrels yet in the middle some serpentine concrete block which I felt as an agent of a concrete world I would sit on and read so as not to disturb this natural squirrel world but they were whirling around all about like children it was wonderful to watch they are so agile and move in bounds more graceful and free than the joggers who were moving in to a wider gyre around my mind they are the slaves of gravity poor people yes gravity always wins but there I was amongst these flying free squirrels and read my Icarian stephen essay and was amused and then read some doors of perception which was fascinating and I resolved to spend much of my life on mescaline but no yet anyway because I saw the squirrels dancing around this bursting crop of crocuses and that was fine fine no need to wrack my brains to see that and to see the beauty, although it was interesting that Huxley had the same idea about life as I did about joyce’s portrait, all the necessary rejections of everything for an aesthetic free perception and again my mind soared as once in childhood dreams up to the heights of abstraction what a wonderful world abstraction anyway I think these thoughts and images will wing me through the next few months beautifully haha I love that eliot I am moved by fancies that are curled around these images and cling the notion of some infinitely gentle infinitely suffering thing, yeah why not so so there I was and walked back wrapped in the same cloak and saw all around the promise of those green driving spear thrusts of spring flowers, ah there’s something so crisp in them so new and fresh so ready to be crushed but even then there’s a relish in it all bedabbled with dew and fresh fresh fine wonderful laughter and so I passed on out of the cold spring sunset and under the eaves and up the stairs and into my room where I found, warming my hands to the task, that the raggle taggle gypsies were playing.

5:40pm Jan 1st ‘08