Fresh Until February First

Dear diary,

I’m agitated. I want to work on something important; I want to contribute to the apotheosis of humankind, but there is no path. Or the path is blocked. Or else I’m already on the path and beyond all the obstacles, but I’ll have to wait too long to meet another traveler.

And when the ass saw the angel of the LORD, she fell down under Balaam: and Balaam’s anger was kindled, and he smote the ass with a staff. [Numbers 22:27]

I formerly thought that the grand task was its own reward. Now I know that it’s not enough to have contributed to X: no, for I demand community while doing so.

Does humanity always have to kill its prophets? Shun its prophets? Isolate its prophets? Why is the wisdom teacher always on the outskirts, up on the mountain? Can’t the sages be integrated? Why does Jesus always have to go out into the desert? Why must the shaman die before we’re willing to buy his advice?

Write an epic so powerful that it becomes the very culture of your nation? So-and-so did it; no one reads it now. Become a prophet so wise that the oppressors assassinate you — you are posthumously crowned your nation’s permanent king. Been there, done that; people only care if you help them get a good parking spot at the mall.

So nowadays not even resurrecting from death is enough – you can attain the best throne in heaven, but you still gotta WORK: you gotta answer those prayers; mollycoddle the sufferers. And they’ll keep having children, don’t worry; you’ve got job security; neediness is planet Earth’s top export. As a country can be “oil rich”, this globe is “poor rich.” It’s like a factory that manufactures poverty.

But that’s off the topic: I wanted to continue along the lines of “Write the best epic? Nobody reads it. Write the finest novel? Nobody reads it. Author the best dramas, with poetry at once humane and divine, so that your accomplishment practically usurps your empire’s Holy Scriptures? A few people will quote you, attributing to you yourself the sentiments of your characters; but most people either ignore you or make fun of you. Compose a poem for the ages; OK, but the average person prefers lyrics from their favorite rap song… or a Christmas jingle… or a soda pop advert…”

Blogging aimlessly, unpopularly, un·mon·e·ti·zed·ly – it’s the only activity that I believe in. I used to believe in the concept of the album of recorded music, but now it seems that music has been euthanized. I know that people still listen to music, but there’s no common culture. I prefer a culture that is shared by all. The type of art that I love always ends up being appreciated by an elite few, exclusively; that’s a conundrum that I am able to live with, but only if it must be so: I hate to start with this sad state being inevitable.

Who attends concertos, symphony orchestras? It’s a different group than the…

And I used to believe in the novel. I still do, to tell the truth; but this form, I fear, has also been hedged off by the current culture. I write in the year 2018. I wish we’d change the way that we measure years: I love the man from Nazareth, but I think there have come and gone individuals of equal importance. Even greater importance. And far superior souls are yet to arise. Take me, for instance. I’m pretty fun: I like to sit and type on a keyboard. Words appear on a page. Pages are bound into books. And books lie in a vault.

Will aliens ever find our damn spacetime capsules? We go to all this trouble shoving memories into decanters canteens and flagons, and we blast them off into the outer darkness, where they orbit planets asteroids and singularities. I fear that nobody will ever open them up. You gotta unscrew their cap and look at their contents, otherwise our act of compiling them and shooting them out there goes unsung. The propagation of spacetime memorial capsules is like the act of contributing to the apotheosis of mankind: you get no satisfaction. It is unlike the task of copulation, which, even if it fails to generate offspring, seems arguably pleasant.

Whistle while you work, saith the slave-driver. I also used to (and still do) believe in poetry. But that’s dead, unless we collectively return from this desert. This glitzy plastic desert of the modern mania known as…

No, I told myself when I began this entry: you are not allowed to type the phrase “global capitalism.” Stop whining about politics: it’s not doing anyone any good; and it’ll ruin your health. Keep focused on the aforesaid spacetime capsules. Silver thermoses circling red dwarfs and yellow dwarfs...

Alright, so what forms are left for me not to believe in? I covered music albums, novels & poetry… Oh yes: cinema! I don’t believe in movies anymore. Have you noticed how they’re all awful now? In bygone decades there was hope that human thought could enter into the audiovisual realm and cause it to blossom. Cinematic artwork is no longer possible. Goodbye, film-poetry. Your bud has been nipped. Only the wasteland of cinematic commerce remains.

No, poetry is still within reach of all the arts; even though they must bow under an ever-heavier commercial yoke to get known, to get their offerings distributed. There will always be the sly maker who hides a personal vision in the financiers’ hobbyhorse. But I’m down on this idea, because I’m sick of relegating all geniuses to the position of king’s fools, or the chef who laces the cake. Why shouldn’t a genius be able to express herself forthrightly?

Actually my final verdict is that I prefer the wily, crafty, sneaky way that artists must work to circumnavigate oppressive regulations, because this struggle facilitates irony and sparks invention. And by “oppressive regulations” I mean hilarious nightmares like the Hayes Code, “the set of industry moral guidelines that was applied to most U.S. motion pictures released by major studios from 1930 to 1968.”

Put it this way: I’d rather kick against the pricks than stumble into another Christendom.

Q&A

I ended my last entry with some questions for an unnamed lecturer (I watched a video online: a guy gave a speech about the history of written communication; then his audience grilled him afterwards – yet, since I didn’t attend the event in person, I could only imagine what I might’ve asked the guy if I’d’ve been there; so I wrote some questions and posted them on my blog); but the lecturer either didn’t see my questions, or he saw them and decided to give me the silent treatment…

Actually, maybe he began to read my blog but then never finished, because bad writing is hard to endure. But that would be the same as not seeing the inquiry…

Anyway, now I’ll attempt to answer myself:

What is your favorite type of literature, I mean, having studied all these obscure and antique texts, what do you like to read for pleasure: novels? essays? poetry? comic books? almanacs?

I love all of the above. But as I explained earlier in this entry, I don’t believe in any of these forms anymore. I no longer trust that they will lure humankind into godhood. Instead, it seems that this species is hellbent on self-slaughter.

And my favorite of the above types of literature is poetry. But I think that novels and essays, when they are at their height, are essentially poetry anyway. Likewise, the most idiosyncratic cinematographs are poems.

Do you prefer prose or verse?

I prefer reading verse; but, as I’m more comfortable trying to break prose, I prefer writing prose. I guess I respect verse too much to be good at breaking it. One must break to make: that is, you’ve got to destroy in order to create: so, if you want to be a maker (which is, as I understand it, what the title “poet” really means at its root), you should choose a form the ruining of which enthuses you. Verse is natural like pure thought or a heartbeat. That’s why I love reading verse. Verse is also a super-perversion of nature: like anti-thought or a vampire who steals blood from others because he’s heartless. That’s why I most love reading verse aloud.

Who are your favorite authors?

Kafka; Whitman; Melville; Blake; certain scribes of the Bible…

But nobody cares about what anybody cares about. My favorite author is whoever writes the subtitles for foreign video games.

Is there a period of time in literature that you enjoy more than other eras?

I guess English & U.S. writing from 1600 to 1900. Around 1600 was Shakespeare and the King James Bible. Then later you get Whitman’s first, self-published Leaves of Grass in 1855. (Am I right about these dates?) And nothing outside of this span is worth considering. I love ancient Athens, too: the pre-Socratics, especially Heraclitus and Diogenes, plus the Athenian dramatists. And the warrior-poet Archilochus. In fact, I love ancient Athens more than any English or U.S. writing (this is a stupid statement cuz I can only read the Greeks in translation): I think that, since the time of the invention of the alphabet, Athens has remained ahead of everything that came after. I also love the idea that, sometime following the reigns of David and Solomon, the person who wrote the narrative portions of the biblical books Genesis, Exodus, & Numbers worked in the academic realm of ancient Israel’s kingdom right alongside whoever wrote the histories of the Books of Samuel (etc.?) – THAT period I love even more than ancient Athens.

What would you choose to read if you were trapped alone on a deserted isle?

I would read nothing. I would curse God and die. Actually I would read the daily newspaper.

No, wait, don’t answer that last question; I have a better one: What would you choose to read if you were scheduled to be put to death in the electric chair, say, one week from now?

I’d continue to re-read “Song of Myself” by Walt Whitman. But I’d do that even if I weren’t on death row. In fact, I read that poem all the time, even tho I’ll never die.

Also: “Of Mere Being” by Wallace Stevens – that’s a very short poem that’s always on my mind, and I think that the centurions who are guarding my jail cell will enjoy hearing me voice it every now and again. They’ll ask me: “What does this poem mean to you, that moves you to recite it for us so often, even prior to your execution: the electric chair is no joke; it’ll fry your brains, literally.” And I answer by paraphrasing the poem itself: “It is not the meaning that makes me feel this way. The bird sings; its feathers shine.” And the prison guards, once I’m all burnt up and dead, will remark: “Who was that masked devil? I suspect there might have been something special about him.”