Tag: Literature

Pursuing what Eludes…Borrowing : Blanchot / Bataille

On By NW FilbertIn Art, Georges Bataille, life, Literature, Maurice Blanchot, meaning, Reality2 Comments

“Perhaps dread is always the more powerful; 

perhaps the joy granted to the only animal that knows it is not eternal is poisoned from the very beginning.”

Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe – Ending & Unending Agony: On Maurice Blanchot

reading dead profile

“Indeed, man is always in pursuit of an authentic sovereignty…We shall see that in a number of ways he continued to pursue what forever eluded him.  The essential thing is that one cannot attain it consciously and seek it, because seeking distances it.  And yet I can believe that nothing is given us that is not given in that equivocal manner…”

“Thus, at all costs, man must live at the moment that he really dies, or he must live with the impression of really dying.”

“INDEED, NOTHING IS LESS ANIMAL THAN FICTION…”

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“It is not Hegel alone, it is all of humanity which everywhere always sought, obliquely, to seize what death both gave and took away from humanity”
“In order for a person to reveal himself ultimately to himself, he would have to die, but he would have to do it while living – watching himself ceasing to be…”

government-logo-US-Library-0018-1383-brand

“Man does not live by bread alone, but also by the comedies with which he willingly deceives himself.

In Man it is the animal, it is the natural being, which eats.  But Man takes part in rites and performances.

OR ELSE HE CAN READ:

to the extent that it is sovereign – authentic – LITERATURE prolongs in him the haunting magic of performances, tragic or comic.”

Georges Bataille – Hegel, Death & Sacrifice

The Loving(?) [dis]Organization of Fire

On By NW FilbertIn Art, creative writing, desire, Experimenctes, Literature, love, meaning, PowerLeave a comment

for lispector

“and it came, with its long passageways without end”

-Clarice Lispector, Soulstorm –

and then again, the words, the words they came, presently, fluently, astonishingly as miracles, your body, the languid haunches – temptations, always – your breasts – these letters, formed in the hands…you, you, you, all of you, and I want/ed, I want, I am wanting to grapple, devour and subsume, consume (no, never!) you, but utterly – to the end – to everything – a swallow and fire and drowning and drought – to eviscerate, desiccate, absorb – to thorough you. I want to thorough.  I want to you, thoroughly.  Yes, that is what.  That is the who what am I?  The always when and every how – I want you thoroughly, but not you as realized by or digested in or taken or given or experienced thoroughly (without remainder) but rather

What I am saying (without remainder) What I mean is, what I am saying, shouting, quite silently shrieving, shrieking, screeing, WHAT I CRAVE REVEALING ENTIRELY BY RAVAGING TO END…

I WANT TO YOU.

And I want you to want to me, as mad, as madly, as terribly and

I am ravenous now, each instant and you for starving for me (I’d like that – have me)

but yes and I am having taking giving receiving AND YOU.

I do not understand.

It maddens, controls,

frees.

And this is what I mean.

In hopes that I was born for this…

for Hallie

Media

On By NW FilbertIn change, creative writing, Current Reading, Literature, Media, TechnologyLeave a comment

So…fascinating and intriguing things are being done…

Kafka’s Wound – Will Self

Writing Outside Philosophy: An Interview with Simon Critchley » 3:AM Magazine

On By NW FilbertIn Current Reading, Experience, human, Literature, meaning, PhilosophyLeave a comment

I am extremely honored and anticipating studies this summer with the guidance and instruction of Simon Critchley.  If you attend to this interview, you will probably notice the many resonances and ideas I “sense” and look forward to engaging…Simon Critchley

Writing Outside Philosophy: An Interview with Simon Critchley » 3:AM Magazine.

From Laszlo Krasznahorkai: “Like a ninja.”

On By NW FilbertIn Current Reading, fiction, Language, meaning, Writing13 Comments

“In this system, nothing is more dangerous for an artist than success”

Laszlo

“Who made artists believe that art can be practiced only ‘successfully’?  Who made them believe that for a book to reach its goal and its readers, the ‘taste-makers’ are absolutely necessary?  How could they have allowed the critics, the editors, the owners of the chain bookstores, and so on, have so much power?  And who made them believe that they are truly artists?  Artists have come to believe that they, too, just like other people, need money and fame, money and fame for everyday life, moreover for being able to lead a lifestyle; and that these two repugnant things are seen as necessary for everything is not only tragic but ridiculous as well.  What kind of artist or writer lives like that?  Who is going to believe even a single line written?  What kind of esteem can the art of our age garner for itself after even one such bout of deal-making?  No, the artist’s needs are few: let there be something for him to eat and a place to live, and then every day he should circumambulate the city and country, like mendicants of old.  Nothing whatever can be more important for him than his own personal dignity, and this is exactly what he loses forever after the very first deal-making transaction…And so what do I recommend?  The taste of failure in place of success, poverty instead of wealth, anonymity in place of renown.  For now, utter concealment as opposed to publicity, perfect camouflage to the point of invisibility, because what the artist who lives in personal freedom and independence finds himself confronting today is unbelievably strong, and seems invincible…above all else, an artist must be cautious.  Like a ninja.”

LK

all excerpts taken from a powerful volume of Music & Literature:

MandL-Kraz

A book review of sorts –

On By NW FilbertIn Book Review, creative writing, Language, Literature, meaning, WritingLeave a comment

A “Book Review” – complements The Whole Hurly-Burly

Vila-Matas - Dublinesque

Dublinesque

By Enrique Vila-Matas

            We are able to “keep up appearances” – some habitual collage of identities – for quite a long time.

I don’t have ANYthing to say, to speak of, when I encounter – READ – the work of a great writer / a great written work [or writerS – the book above is in translation, and that by two others].  Alas.

Broken.  Spellbound.  With nothing to add, say, profess, testify – unable to stop speaking.

: Literature, no?

The frozen sea within me (fraud, image, appearance, presentation, mis-representation) AXED?

It feels that way: like being stumped in a crucial interview by a question one never expected – exposed – somewhere beyond your bones – on into some uncanny…

Like that.

So I read, with the feeling of partaking of fine food outstripping my station.  So tasteful, delicious and exquisite that the experience teeters at throw-up or orgasm…nearly too much pleasure…too much exposure…too much experience.

And the concomitant deflation, flattened, realizing that I am none of something, perhaps too many of somethings,

disordered, disorganized, confused.

Undone.

Vulnerable and laid bare – with nothing showing.

I am not that

Frightening (terrifying even, at some level) and freeing (or, unknown, unpredictable, possible).

Potential, unlikely, impossible to prove or ascertain – uncertainty – unknowable

to my ‘self’ in my body, as a name, or a father, a partner, a person, a friend.

A cipher.  Undeserving of accolades or attributions, unaware of facts or characteristics –

just a long train of habits,

histories, perceptions and behaviors.  A long, long trail of showing up…taking space…acting…AS.

With nothing else: not more-than or without, not subterfuge or false, no accomplishments or occurrences in lieu of AS.

The residue of NOTHING.

Bereft then, but not of substance.  Empty, but not of force.  Simply laid bare, examined, investigated…

…and found wanting.

I stare.

There are things I can perform, ways I interact, roles fulfilled, tasks achieved, conversations replete with reactions and response,

but that is all.

I have a shape, I’ve garnered knowledge, mastered speech and comprehension, can use my cock, can analyze, interpret and produce.  Can keep alive and support others, draft language and record.  Able to run, walk, sit, stand.  To do, make, say and think.  In other words – TO BE – and be HUMAN (passably), but undefined, unqualified, ephemerally labeled, nothing “sticking,” “fitted,” by which I might be “called.”

Just a human lacking content, wriggling survival as a beast.  An educated beast.  And unwitting, unaware and unforeseen.

AN EMPTY ‘I’.  (Replace with senses – it means the same).  A processing thing, operative organism – a complex or compound of certain circumstances, situations, affordances, of contexts.  But nothing special, just unique.  An additional example of a being.

Being false.  In sense of veiled, covered over, costumed and behaved.  Or misbehaved, rankly naked, shown-up short, struggling by.

It doesn’t matter as a seem or even category, division, or multi-ply.  Can’t reach zero, can’t be counted, a kind of circumstance of pi.  A virtual reality that’s not quite real, not loved quite right to rub it so.

A becoming, misshapen, and clumsily adorned, fooling-no-one.  There is no one.  Only you.  Me.  Us.

“an unleashing of erroneous energy”

Derivative and fake.  A mistake, mistake uncalled-for and unnecessary, and untoward.  A simple “me.”  Empty.  Formed.

An empty ‘I’ inside myself (shelf, shell).

In any order, or, perhaps,

on shuffle

5/5/15

Imagin-I-Native Kind of Writing

On By NW FilbertIn Language, meaning, Writing1 Comment

Ouroboros

 Imaginative that there capture

Spring Forward – Saving Daylight

On By NW FilbertIn Art, creative writing, life, meaning, Music, Philosophy, Poetry2 Comments

Flow-Stainless-Sculptures-001

Taken with a feeling of grandeur: a premonitory greatness arising with convergence.  There are uncertainty principles and the bafflings of mathematics as one ranges across scales.  Relationships over time and fictional emissions, philosophies, transpositions of experience…and sometimes, somehow, they inextricably and irreducibly link up, reciprocally foster…and generate moments of novelty.  Perhaps this is indicated with the term emergence.  There is music, too, and emotion.

A sense of sense.  Of universal process in which one plays a micro-part, participation.  For the time – being and becoming seem joined.  There may be love, generation, sometimes even intuition of revelation.  Simply processes – ongoing self-organization – of “selves,” and smaller and larger collective, complex, and dynamic systems.

Something like “meaning,” I suggest.  Nobody gets what I mean.

Which represents entropy.  Things falling apart even as they arise, conjoin…together.

Things I do not mind.  Emergence / entropy … it’s all dynamic – which is what I’m thankful for in the now.  “Alive” perhaps we’d call it, un-“dead,” – a state I’m thrilled to avoid.

****

Of course there’s a “Her,” and a “Them,” or “they,” – my spouse/partner/girlfriend/significance-of-Other … and the offspring numbering 1-4 – the “matterings that matter” in me… my hand and body, pen and paper, & the complicated processes between that emit some strange result.

Physics tells me “strange attractors” (at that relational scale), I suppose it’s literature’s “muse,” romance’s “one,” the what-fors and what-nots equaling “It,” equaling “unknown,” equaling “that to which things tend.”  Optimization, in a sense (if only a fantastical one).

Depending on the color of the glasses.  What hole is peered through, by whom, from what angle.  Perspective.  Outlook.  Relation.  Some mean free path I’m on.  Perhaps now a ‘we.’

“I” feels uncomfortable, unnatural.  The idea there might be a group-of-me consoles.  If only one (other, more).  If only a “you — too?!”

i'm_nobody_who_are_you2– Emily Dickinson

something like that.

Dancing like cancer survivors…

At least grateful we’re experiencing

That’s a sort of Spring-Forward, is it not?

Resources

On By NW FilbertIn Current Reading, human, life, Literature, meaning, Writing1 Comment

One of the many reasons (words-turned-to-meanings) he’s tattooed on my veins…

Jabes

Provisionally, some fiction

On By NW FilbertIn creative writing, Current Reading, dreaming, Experimenctes, fiction, meaning1 Comment

PROVISIONALLY

– a novel? –

We untiringly construct the world in order that the hidden dissolution, the universal corruption that governs what ‘is’ should be forgotten [Death, or its refusal] in favor of a clear and defined coherence of notions and objects, relations and forms…

-Maurice Blanchot-

Thought and writing weave an apprenticeship…

…it will not hold, meaning and words, it will not hold.

-Dan Beachy-Quick & Matthew Ghoulish-

our limited mode of access to reality

-Laurie Scheck-

The novel hurled to the ground breaks into verse and achieves a perfect synthesis

-Ben Lerner-

each page a fractured, beating thing

-Laurie Scheck-

He woke far too early, and could not back to sleep.  Even slumber.  Broken into verse.  Eyes needled with discomfort, asking for their closing, refusing to stay shut.  And her.  Her, the one pushing away, the one who woke him, the one asking him to ‘please move farther’ when there is no room.  And so he enters a deep – after a fashion, or of a sort – a sleepy sleepless land, an engagement like great fiction.

Without synthesis and not unbroken, but scattered in its way, as insomnia might be, like stars, like sky, the bewilderment of travel.  An apprenticeship in weaving.  The dreaming in the waking.  Age-old questions, rich and beautiful: unanswered.  The meaning and the words continue refusing to hold.  Something “like” that, unlikably.

our words are so light that they keep opening out into questions…

…when you affirm, you still question

-Maurice Blanchot-