Dear diary,
Is one form truly better than another? I’m thinking about what the judges call rap versus what the judges call poetry. Or what appeared first on television versus what appeared first in the movie theater. Or sheep versus wolf versus fox.
All I can do is report how things seem to me; I don’t know if this counts as my own prejudice, or as innocent observations of culture, or moony thoughts from a moon person... So on second thought, I won’t give my own individual take. I’ll put on my lab coat and safety goggles, and tease up my hair, and go interview the multitudes. (To tease means to make one’s hair to look fuller and bigger by combing it in a special way.) Thus will I acquire trustworthy data.
After surveying ten thousand times ten thousand earthlings, I have discovered that rap is indeed thought to be a lower form than poetry, and that movies are better than TV shows, and that sheep rank higher than wolves but wolves beat foxes. And, when asked to elaborate on their choice, the multitudes said that foxes seem smaller and more cunning than wolves, which makes them suspect because wiliness is a trait acquired only by those who are dishonest, for if you have the truth on your side, you’ll have no reason to sneak around and trick folks; also when you’re big and strong like a wolf, you look more appealing on television, and this tends to win votes. Yet sheep, the multitudes told me, take the crown because they’re so cute; plus they’re useful, although soon their jobs will all be taken by little remote-controlled buggies.
But as for rap, isn’t it a subsection of poetry? I mean, what is rap: it’s spoken language, ultimately. So why would it be inferior to poetry? Maybe it is potentially equal to poetry, but every instance offered up so far has fallen short of that potential. OK, then what about movies: they can be shown on the “small screen” of television, and I suppose you could project a TV show on to the “big screen” in a theater; so why does one format trump the other? Again, it’s maybe because the people who make movies are consciously competing with excellent artists like Erich von Stroheim, Fritz Lang, Orson Welles, Werner Herzog, and the entire French New Wave; whereas television production crews are only competing with sitcoms and game shows.
And I remember back in the olden days, when electronic social networking was en vogue, I would see postings from these young, fresh, new, visual artists: they would create art solely to be shown online, on the Internet, on the computer screen. (I do not mean painters or sketch artists who share photographs of their work: for in that case the art exists in reality, outside of the Internet, and what the online viewer beholds is an approximation; contrariwise I refer to those who make art ON a computer, BY a computer, FOR a computerized world – in this case, there is no artwork other than the file on the drive; even a hard copy printout would represent but a rough estimate.) I always wondered about this practice. It seemed sad to me. But why should it be sad? Well because the things that inhabit the online world are so short-lived; and I prefer art that lasts longer than a lifetime. And yet why? Who cares? Even the pyramids and statues made of hardest stone will someday crumble; so, being that everything eventually ends, why attach any value to longevity? Hmm, yes, I see your point. I’m convinced now: To create work and share it online is not an act to be ashamed of. That’s why I make pictures and fasten them to the top of these blogs that I write. It’s just a way of passing the time till you die. Your only job, once you find that you’ve had the misfortune of being born, is to decay and expire. You don’t even have to do it with any style.
But when we look back into the past, we see dreadful Roman soldiers, and we see dreadful German soldiers. Now today we have these U.S. troops: are they dreadful? Who can say? Does anyone know how the present-day military behaves, compared to the troopers of the past? And if you’re a soldier, is it good or bad to be dreadful? Part of my mind thinks that dreadfulness is an attribute much sought-after among the mercenaries, because your job as a warrior is to strike the fear of Zeus into your foeman, and to make them die of fright, as I did to THE TRUTH in yesterday’s post. Yet we also use the word “dreadful” to denote artworks that fail to suit our fancy. But I can’t imagine that trained killers would wish to be thought of as beautiful. Perhaps I’m wrong.
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It’s kind of scary to begin repairing your house. When you cut away a section of your wall, you fear that something might jump out and bite you. Something has been hiding, living comfortably behind the corrupted boards, within the rotted wood, the dirty wet insulation, and this being, whether bug or mammal or fiend, will not take kindly to your destroying its habitat. That’s the thing about environmental damage: it’s all relative. (Or is it?) I was thinking that we might destroy the planet, in the sense that it would become uninhabitable for humankind, yet other living things would still find it supportable. But maybe there’s a point where flat zero, nothing at all can live. And what do I mean by “live”? Do I mean “move around”? Because lava moves around; electrons move around, and what substance does not contain lava and electrons! So everything lives; ergo: everything is holy. What is the most common substance in our universe? Nobody knows, but let’s guess that it’s hydrogen. Now, what subatomic particles conspire to make hydrogen? Well I haven’t peered into the soul of every single hydrogen atom in my collection, but most of the ones I’ve captured contain a proton and an electron. So what are we to conclude from the nearly total absence of neutrons among our hydrogen samples? We are to conclude that neutrons do not move and therefore have no life in them: they are the entropy particle: thus, if we eliminate them from our world, the Everlasting shall wipe away all tears from all eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things will ALL have passed away. Your lifetime membership is renewed. [Rev. 21:4]
Sorry about this bad-joke post. I’m exhausted from the weekend’s repair work, and I needed to let myself escape away from sense for at least an entry. We have this wall in our bedroom that was damaged by water long ago, before the day we moved in, and we’ve lived here for years and yet never fixed it; but yesterday I tore the carpet out of that room, and I plan to extract the rotten portions of that wall and replace them. And insect carcasses litter the floor. And it stinks.
- Hydro: from the Greek word for water. Gen: from the Greek word for born. Hydrogen: water-born.
- Oxy: from the Greek for sharp. (Long ago, in a country far away or, depending on your outlook, not too far from America, French scientists assured their pre-Internet villages that oxygen was the essential component in the formation of acids.) Oxygen: acid-born.
- Niter: a white, gray, or colorless mineral of potassium nitrate used in making gunpowder. Also called saltpeter. (Latin nitrum, from Greek nitron, from Egyptian ntr.)
In the beginning was the bang; and the bang was big. Nitrogenesis.
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