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8th of November 2009 09:18
A misses B. Why does A miss B? What is it that A misses? When A is with B, when A thinks of B, A experiences C. The way B makes A feel. The resonance of their particulars. The sounding of their shared memories, the flavor of their experiences. We'll never know if C is just a consequence of B, or only of B and A together, or in A alone -- these questions are moot, since all we know of C is that it is something in A. B has no part of it. B has its own equations. A misses B. B is gone. But it is a gone that is only temporary, A may not experience B directly, A and B may not communicate, but still A feels C when A remembers B. A does not need B to feel C. But no, now B is really gone. A and B will never be together again. B is lost. Now what does A feel? A still feels C, but now A shouldn't feel C. Over B in A's rational mind is an X, a complex, it may seem to be anger or fear or regret but the most important thing it is is a denial: do not think of B. Hold no hope for B. Hope, then. How much does C depend on hope? Hope that memory is not final, that things recur, when we are together we are together forever. And now, without hope, when A feels C, A cannot feel C. The reality principle, the principle that keeps our ideas of the world in tune with the world (keeps our ideas of the world in tune with other people's ideas of the world), swoops down and says You Should Not Feel C. A is torn inside, between the part that feels C, that hopes in it, and the part that feels most poignantly the X. If A goes on feeling C then A abandons the reality principle, A has gone insane. A knows this, still A fights against the X as hard as A fights against C, fights against remembering. C is present to A, C exists, stronger than ever. A must deal with the part of A that continues to exist in spite of externals, A's hope has grown into a malignant body. A must deal with what still exists.
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5th of November 2009 07:40
I've never read the book she's referring to but how exhausting and unrewarding is this idea of "modern" (and how far from "absolutely modern"), to skip right over Art and dig yourself a little cave in Artifice, where you can hold out in adolescent disdain and reduce the world around you to your own emotions. As if it were good enough to feel (not active feeling, passive being felt), which is the main quality of moss or carpeting. "These poems manage to be damp, unmistakably damp. When I read them I feel like I need to go get a towel, and in that sense they are a complete success." Give up the struggle, the war of identification, art from the perspective of life — and be damp. This is worldly self-hedging, of 'modern' to mean sophistication, temperance, neither striving nor failing. Made me go back to the Birth of Tragedy — the naive in art necessarily arising out of suffering and depth of feeling. The naive, the unworldly, the triumph of nature over culture, is not a consolation, it is an illusion that makes glaringly obvious the first illusion, the illusion of reality, reasonableness, comfort. Not a lie that lets you see the truth but a lie that lets you see the lies. Wherever we encounter the “naive” in art, we have to recognize the highest effect of Apollonian culture, which always first has to overthrow the kingdom of the Titans and to kill monsters and, through powerfully deluding images and joyful illusions, has to emerge victorious over the horrific depth of what we observe in the world and the most sensitive capacity for suffering. But how seldom does the naive, that sense of being completely swallowed up in the beauty of appearance, succeed!Call me archaic but we need more of the naive and less of the 'modern.'
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5th of November 2009 06:27
"From this it is clear, that this kind of pleasure in regard to nature is not aesthetical, but rather moral; for it is produced by means of an idea, not immediately through contemplation; also, it by no means depends upon the beauty of forms. What would even a plain flower, a spring, a mossy stone, the chirping of birds, the buzzing of bees, etc., have in itself so charming for us? What could give it any claim upon our love? It is not these objects, it is an idea represented through them, which we love in them. We love in them the quietly working life, the calm effects from out itself, existence under its own laws, the inner necessity, the eternal unity with itself. They are what we were; they are what we ought to become once more." Schiller
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4th of November 2009 12:11
  
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4th of November 2009 00:49
"There is too much to say and not enough time to say it. Nor is there power enough. I am not a good writer. Sometimes I am a very bad writer indeed. There is hardly a successful writer in the field who cannot write circles around me ... but I think of writing as something more organic than words, something closer to being and action. I want to work more and more with a more plastic theatre than the one I have (worked with) before. I have never for one moment doubted that there are people -- millions! -- to say things to. We come to each other, gradually, but with love. It is the short reach of my arms that hinders, not the length and multiplicity of theirs. With love and with honesty, the embrace in inevitable." Tennessee Williams
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