Off the Top of My Head

What is an idea? An idea is a portent, an echo, an aura, a scent, an indication, a clue.

Philosophers are sleuths.

Artists are executioners.

Three Conversations, circa 1989

if you want to live in South America   a $25 an hour job   remember I was telling you   sure   a jiggle   relationship should   shamefully   and you’ve got the competition on the weekend   it just it just blows my mind away how much material   there is not a disagreement   as long as they’re advertising   I suppose it’s for the same reason   we have also fought very hard to execute   in their description of it   kill all your children   this is a danger   invited   we all we actually   we have to also fight with people   therefore you didn’t   my mother   uh and   exactly   this is the logical gap I never   see we couldn’t   had a good time   I mean   demonstration   the indigineous people of the rainforest   maybe they’re related by male bonding   differences   destroy the entire foundation   his father had at the same time   to me I think that   I don’t generally   let’s look ahead to what this demonstration   if the Americans   also swearing thank god you’re allowed to do that   Anti-Fascist   they don’t know any better   but he gives the you know the essential   basis for a United Front   Exxon and all the other people responsible   you know   we have people   would your name go down in history?   then again   that capitalism can be reformed   #3 was Will It Burn? by   it’s ok   this demonstration   stock-in-trade phrases for the year   everything is moderation but the thing is you don’t think of it in terms of moderation anymore   Democratic   couple of great shows on CBC radio   the other one   a chance to   whatever my Walkman is stuck at   I’ve got a Classics   South America   really? AM?   got a class cancelled today   well what I see   wanna hear something funny?   is there any one company that would truly offend you?   join the Demonstration   it’s not gonna be outstanding or anything   without getting into that whole male thing   some people to serve during the time of the Demonstration   put in 70 or 80 hours a week   an innocent muffin   people from 12 to 4 well one thing I’ll say is there is a phone number on the other side should we require Marshalls thing is Hezbollah is no friend of ours or friend of yours in front of the United Nations Joint Defense of the United Front Demonstration Common Enemy similarly in our Anti-Fascist Demonstrations people who are very different from us politically do you want to formally endorse something of an attempt make a note here Resolution Organization would you care to take to take a copy of this with you show your Comrades give the Press would you like to War of the Cities

Retrieved from File 13

Where interests converge, no conspiracy is necessary.

Humans Are

1. Animals. This world made us and we are made of it. Our first circumstance and our last is physicality, extension in an extended world, being in a hard, resistant, recalcitrant, unjustified and unforgiving existence. I do not call this existence intractable, however. We manipulate it constantly and may end it at any time.

2. Subjects. We are aware of the world and, if marginally mature, aware of this awareness, self-conscious. With this come identity and distinction, time, place, wish and regret, near, far and never, totem and other, the concept of life and the meaning of death. The hands at Lascaux are our hands.

3. Talkers. Articulated, rule-governed systems of signs allow us a vast range of expression and communication, storage and development, and with these the cultural wherewithal to withstand and manipulate the unforgiving, primarily through the invention of ourselves as:

4. Users. By extending ourselves through levers of every shape, size, constitution and design, we expand our reach, and the purposes it serves, exponentially.

5. Choosers. Intention informs our every act. No goal is necessary, no success or failure mandated, no value guaranteed, no reference transparent once refracted through the prism of human attitude. Whether willing to admit it or not, people decide the course of their animal biographies.

6. Creators. A free, conscious, communicative and utilitarian animal will make what it wants, want what it needs, and need what it makes for as long as the world sustains this circle. When the circle breaks, we will decide to want, need and make different things. When creation is impossible, we will have been destroyed.

7. Cowards. Undetermined, we invent determinism. Unfounded, we demand foundations. Unrestrained, we shackle ourselves and each other. There is no value so small, no act so ineffective, no distinction so subtle nor decision so raw that we will not attempt to justify them transcendentally as necessities, as things imposed upon us, demanded by a will or power or logic or understanding or being greater than our own. We are the littlest gods ever made.
 

De Anima

"The Abbot gently stroked the supple leather of the book he was reading. He fancied it yielded beneath his palm like the flank of some peaceable grazing creature. Could leather be cured of its curing? Could the sightless hides be reassembled, clasps turn to bells, the branded spines grow tails again?

"He would lose first those books bound in vellum, for the bindings would turn back to stomachs and digest the contents. Or the shelves would grow into a hedge and keep out the hand that reached for knowledge.

"He replaced the book while he still had access to the shelves, before its covers might twist from his grasp with new-born awkwardness, trailing from embryonic gums a voided spittle of silent language."

                                                --John Fuller, Flying to Nowhere, p.76

A Visit from Aunty Metaphysical

Monet captured, utilized, mourned the tragic gap between the phenomenal and the noumenal. He stirred his hands childishly in appearances at the expense of reality. He mistook the apparent for the real. He discovered the reality of appearance. He preferred sensuous experience to objects because the sensuous is pleasant or easy or because he was too sophisticated or stupid or vile to appreciate permanent and fundamental values. Monet found wisdom in considered reflection on otherwise fleeting impressions. Monet needed glasses. Monet saw through the myth of the noumenal to the organizing function of human perception. He painted the very structure of the human brain. He painted souls.

What does Aunty say?

Monet painted pictures.