“meant to detect just how slushed our insides were from too much speech, how blighted we’d become from the language toxin…
The know-it-alls are always the last to know. Β Everyone’s a diagnostician, and everyone’s wrong…”
-Ben Marcus-
“As is usual with me I would not go on with the rest of the story and come back to the difficult sentence later. Β With others it may be different – but when I am that far in a work the story must exist in each word or I cannot go on…”
-Louis Zukofsky-
-Lukas Felzmann-
I know….there’s a LOT of envy fuming out of you readers eyes!
“And those of us, never angels, who are verbal, who ‘on this low, relative ground’ write, those of us who lowly imagine that ascending into print is the maximum reality of experiences? Β May resignation – the virtue to which we must resign ourselves – be with us. Β It will be our destiny to mold ourselves to syntax, to its treacherous chain of events, to the imprecision, the maybes, the too many emphases, the buts, the hemisphere of lies and of darkness in our speech.”
metaphor:Β βControl without Hierarchyβ by Deborah M. Gordonβ¦on some page in a book calledSwarm by Lucas Felzmann:
βA flock of birds turning in the sky is doing something that people donβt know how to do: moving together, beautifully, without a leader or choreographer.Β Itβs a spectacular version of the collective behavior that goes on everywhere, in groups of animals and among cells within our bodiesβ¦Life in all its forms is messy, surprising, and complicated.Β Itβs difficult to imagine how any social group could be organized without any hierarchy.Β We are used to hierarchy as the principle that organizes human institutions.Β Think of companies, armies, governments, orchestras, schools, and clubs β without any person directing another, or having more power than another.Β Although we are so accustomed to hierarchy that we think of it as necessary, it is rare in nature.β
think of language.
Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β what is scattered widely or uniquely ubiquitous β call it βswarm.β
βIββ¦lost.
I know I cannot gather to a grown pillar of I-ness, something you might recognize, could βidentify.β
I know I cannot be where I am as long as βtimeβ and βspaceβ function effectively in my frames of referenceβ¦
I spread.
I swarm.
βI-swarmβ
(the βhumanβ world-situation)
Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Leaving that aside.
How might one (dependent on two or more in order to, well, in order to simply βbeβ)
how might that one (singular mark β β/β) handle (manage? survive?) βitsβ Ache?
βTo be or not to be, that IS the questionβ
(o wise god)
Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β So I splitβ¦upβ¦
I canvas the sky, the context, the landscape, the sitz im leben, in fragments.
I approach, engage, invade the world like shot scattered from the anguished burst of a wombgun.
I found myself in a fairly uncommon (for me) setting this morning, my son was performing a Double Concerto of Bach‘s at a Methodist Church. Β I happened to be there (reading Larry Levis) on “graduation Sunday,” so the message/sermon/interpretation of texts was geared toward the cultivation of wisdom. Β As I listened to the suggestions/advice of a “spiritual authority” figure, to our young/privileged/promising…I was struck again by my personal favorite commencement address I’ve ever come across/heard/read and thought given the Spring of things perhaps it was time to push it out toward eyes and ears wherever I could, again.
Here it is…by a personal hero David Foster Wallace… (and therefore in his honor as well)
“Multiple incompatible hypotheses are needed to provide an adequate account of any phenomenon – aesthetic, material or psychological… which of course means no explanation at all”
If you happen to have curiosity around the function and latitude of the letter “I” in the human realms (as “I” certainly do)…here is a book that delightfully provides an invigorating wealth of instants and instances to consider…
Vanishing PointΒ by Ander Monson
and I recommend it to all levels of readers…highly
Should you have the time…and it requires a bit…I would love to hear responses to the following essay by E.M. Cioran from all you interesting minds I observe! Β Thanks –