I feel myself struggle with the writing.
Like an other is inside of me, a ghostly shell around my heart, a collar around the neck of my dog against which I press and feel the tension of…of…of something there. Something. That something dressed up as discipline, ego, control, a psychodrama of reality brushing up against an abstract reality, itself.
I got told to stop writing abstractly if I ever dream to be understood, to physicalize, realize, ground myself on the earth in the details and habits of life, man.
The authoritarian consumer says to the artist “conform, warp your world to fit the standards we craft.”
I had initially wanted to talk about Blake, old one name Blake, mythopoeia, and the like. This one line in particular catches me – “Without Contraries is no progression. Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to human existence.”
Wow, now that caught me. I stopped reading after that. Put my book down. Thought. I know, thought. Reason and Energy. Reason and Energy. Why would he put those two at ends with each other? Cold reason and hot energy. Controlled reason and chaotic energy. Cause for thought. I research that Blake goes on to expand upon this immensely in his prophetic books (wicked name), which I excited now at the chance to pick-up.
I realize the problem is that this writing, my writing, is indulgent, written primarily with concern to me, a tool for my seeing spells unfurl into the universe and watch how they roll and hum, but is totally disregardant of you. Too much author, too little audience. All writing is ego, but I must trick you by using tricks you’ve seen before so you’ll grow sleepy and a sucker to my greater charm.
You will not just give something different a chance, because time is precious and good chances are it will seem shit. Evil. A waste of time. Let the paid and critics and the needing-to-be heard duke it out and decide amongst themselves who The Great is, the mighty hand of the market dictate where my time is most worthily spent.
I know when I try I can get you, you see, I can trick you if I cared about parlor tricks. Our life lacks clear meaning as we eliminate all the threats, so the commoners need evermore entertainment. So, then, is it my duty to entertain? To help distract those of us not in pursuit of the higher aims, pillaging the frontiers of science: space and the mind. Perhaps this drive towards entertainment will help us unlock secrets of the mind as we more and more move out of personhood.
We’re all just trying to understand our existence, get by on our island, calibrate to the gravities. Who is to say I am not messianic? I’m certainly messy (and manic).
“ From these contraries spring what the religious call Good & Evil. Good is the passive that obeys Reason. Evil is the active springing from Energy.
Good is Heaven. Evil is Hell. “ William Blake – The Marriage of Heaven and Hell