The Authentic Art
6-10-06 The Unpremeditated Act
It is not all those clever words arranged so neatly on The White Page. That is not the ultimate art. This is. My blind beautiful nonchalant slipping out of bed every morning. And then walking to the bathroom to draw a tub full of hot water. Go to the kitchen and get a cup of hot Vitamin C mixture and take that back to my bathtub. Put Joni Mitchell on my radio cassettte. Add some cold water to make my bath water bearably warm. I am set for my first major act of the day. And I tell you this is the purest Art. I know the other examples. Or many of them. I know the international lie posturing as art and being bought & sold as art. And being propagated so at the great & tiny universities where all the knee-jerk penny ante intellectuals hold forth and feed their pupils the same old crap generation after generation-----wrapped in death. It is horse crap. Art is the primordial act of the body. The most perfect primordial act of the body. Not just any old stupid bourgeoise habitual moronic posture. O No. It is the sacred act of love that only the truly honed body can perform to perfection. It might turn out to be a song. But never 50 songs in a row. Because all the song books & the other books are full of lies when it comes to Art. They tell you you need 95 percent garbage in your book to make sure the traces of gold can be distinguished from the crap. That's what the editors & professors say.
I had to kiss Nietzsche good bye as my chief counsellor. Nietzsche was great for Nietzsche but he's no good (that is to say no complete good) for anybody who came after. This is a new generation. Shakespeare & Sophocles are of no major or immediate use to you & me except as digression. Freud is cute but dead. And believe you me once you have done with the beauty of all the theories you know what I mean. It can't pull you through life. Because that beauty is dead in the water. Gone. Nietzsche was the greatest of his era. And still a marvellous entertainer. But it is too late to hide ourselves in the past. He was so far ahead of his time that even today most people don't understand him. But he is past save for all those fools who refused to encounter him in their first education. Here's what put me off concerning Nietzsche. He turned his back on women. He buried himself inside the volcano of history. And history is deadly as Nietzsche knew & proclaimed. But he served Dionysus. I agree in one sense it makes no difference how you get there---to the end of your particular journey. And Nietzsche insisted we follow the one and only heroic path of tragedy. There is no other heroic path. Everything else for Nietzsche is cowardice not only but out & out delusion. The very idea that you can live a life of comfortable family lies and fake dignity & go about your daily tasks with this totally unexamined "philosophy of life" this shallow counterfeit system of custom-worship and idolatrizing of your children-----you see what I mean. This is a form of self-damnation because it leaves out the whole world while replacing it with the cozy habits & comfortable lies of the Western family.
So like G.B. Shaw I saw the folly of the sentimentalization of the family---the lies that had women chasing men to become the authors of children. That was enough. No further tests of nobility or honor were required. Because the society had been so dragged down to the lowest common denominator of "family" that honor and dignity were impossible concepts that you only pulled out of the rag and bone shop of your memory on Memorial Day & 4th of July or the day your son or daughter was inducted into the U.S. Army to go off and murder some fake enemies some place in the world where America had yet to penetrate with its imperial system. You see what I mean? To murder other families just like yours only holding opposite customs with different names for their gods & devils. Then of course mothers and fathers mouthed the superficial words that all clients of fear & intimidation mouth: "honor" & "sacrifice" & "glory" & "sacred" and all the buzz words of flaming patriots everywhere. Dr. Johnson, the ultra conservative British Tory, was accurate when he said: "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel." But I say there is a greater refuge that precedes it. And that is the blind worship of the customs of the family that take priority to all other loyalties in the world including one's devotion to the truth---and I mean here the objective facts of all situations without regard to personal interest. Wars cease once we have that true regard for truth. Then you will examine the Palestinian situation in The Middle East in a true light rather than through the ugly prejudicial eyes of a bigot who believes he has special privileges because of his race. This holds true for every family situation without exception. There is only one undissimulating family-----The Whole Human Race. And there can be no special privileges handed out to members of particular families because they happen to declare themselves specially selected (by God) members of The Chosen Race---any chosen race. No individual family is exempt from The Law: One Family. As Hegel once wrote: The Rational is Real, The Real is Rational. We have yet to come to understand that. This business of one human race with its many members of numerous dispositions---one law holds us all together. So this world has no place for a Race State such as Israel presently is---nor its opposite. Democracy invites every tribe and religion to its table with absolutely equal rights.
It is hard to get rid of Nietzsche if you are a serious person who has ever considered his ideas. It is hard because our society is so loaded yet with the very same ills that brought Nietzsche to many of his conclusions. In other words the romantic or comic or eudaemonistic view of history is a difficult one to dispel from our thinking because tragedy just doesn't taste good to us comfortable relatively unreflective Western hedonists hiding behind the flag of one convenient religion or political party or another for the most part. We are all stuck on The Happy Ending. It just seems like the only "decent" thing we dare teach our children. Your children ask you what happens to people when they die and you must give them an answer that you feel is positive because isn't that what Dr. Spock said or the latest Wisdom Teacher. And so on. But of course the answer is no. You don't have to lie to your children about the difficult questions. You can tell them the truth as far as you know it. Which for me often is 'I don't know.' And I believe this is so for most people much of the time. I do not know the answer to your question. I promise you I shall try to find the correct answer if there ever be such. In the meantime let's be relaxed and consider the evidence together as one immense human family. Let's pool our efforts and share all the profits-----All the prophets!
RLG Copyright 2006
It is not all those clever words arranged so neatly on The White Page. That is not the ultimate art. This is. My blind beautiful nonchalant slipping out of bed every morning. And then walking to the bathroom to draw a tub full of hot water. Go to the kitchen and get a cup of hot Vitamin C mixture and take that back to my bathtub. Put Joni Mitchell on my radio cassettte. Add some cold water to make my bath water bearably warm. I am set for my first major act of the day. And I tell you this is the purest Art. I know the other examples. Or many of them. I know the international lie posturing as art and being bought & sold as art. And being propagated so at the great & tiny universities where all the knee-jerk penny ante intellectuals hold forth and feed their pupils the same old crap generation after generation-----wrapped in death. It is horse crap. Art is the primordial act of the body. The most perfect primordial act of the body. Not just any old stupid bourgeoise habitual moronic posture. O No. It is the sacred act of love that only the truly honed body can perform to perfection. It might turn out to be a song. But never 50 songs in a row. Because all the song books & the other books are full of lies when it comes to Art. They tell you you need 95 percent garbage in your book to make sure the traces of gold can be distinguished from the crap. That's what the editors & professors say.
I had to kiss Nietzsche good bye as my chief counsellor. Nietzsche was great for Nietzsche but he's no good (that is to say no complete good) for anybody who came after. This is a new generation. Shakespeare & Sophocles are of no major or immediate use to you & me except as digression. Freud is cute but dead. And believe you me once you have done with the beauty of all the theories you know what I mean. It can't pull you through life. Because that beauty is dead in the water. Gone. Nietzsche was the greatest of his era. And still a marvellous entertainer. But it is too late to hide ourselves in the past. He was so far ahead of his time that even today most people don't understand him. But he is past save for all those fools who refused to encounter him in their first education. Here's what put me off concerning Nietzsche. He turned his back on women. He buried himself inside the volcano of history. And history is deadly as Nietzsche knew & proclaimed. But he served Dionysus. I agree in one sense it makes no difference how you get there---to the end of your particular journey. And Nietzsche insisted we follow the one and only heroic path of tragedy. There is no other heroic path. Everything else for Nietzsche is cowardice not only but out & out delusion. The very idea that you can live a life of comfortable family lies and fake dignity & go about your daily tasks with this totally unexamined "philosophy of life" this shallow counterfeit system of custom-worship and idolatrizing of your children-----you see what I mean. This is a form of self-damnation because it leaves out the whole world while replacing it with the cozy habits & comfortable lies of the Western family.
So like G.B. Shaw I saw the folly of the sentimentalization of the family---the lies that had women chasing men to become the authors of children. That was enough. No further tests of nobility or honor were required. Because the society had been so dragged down to the lowest common denominator of "family" that honor and dignity were impossible concepts that you only pulled out of the rag and bone shop of your memory on Memorial Day & 4th of July or the day your son or daughter was inducted into the U.S. Army to go off and murder some fake enemies some place in the world where America had yet to penetrate with its imperial system. You see what I mean? To murder other families just like yours only holding opposite customs with different names for their gods & devils. Then of course mothers and fathers mouthed the superficial words that all clients of fear & intimidation mouth: "honor" & "sacrifice" & "glory" & "sacred" and all the buzz words of flaming patriots everywhere. Dr. Johnson, the ultra conservative British Tory, was accurate when he said: "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel." But I say there is a greater refuge that precedes it. And that is the blind worship of the customs of the family that take priority to all other loyalties in the world including one's devotion to the truth---and I mean here the objective facts of all situations without regard to personal interest. Wars cease once we have that true regard for truth. Then you will examine the Palestinian situation in The Middle East in a true light rather than through the ugly prejudicial eyes of a bigot who believes he has special privileges because of his race. This holds true for every family situation without exception. There is only one undissimulating family-----The Whole Human Race. And there can be no special privileges handed out to members of particular families because they happen to declare themselves specially selected (by God) members of The Chosen Race---any chosen race. No individual family is exempt from The Law: One Family. As Hegel once wrote: The Rational is Real, The Real is Rational. We have yet to come to understand that. This business of one human race with its many members of numerous dispositions---one law holds us all together. So this world has no place for a Race State such as Israel presently is---nor its opposite. Democracy invites every tribe and religion to its table with absolutely equal rights.
It is hard to get rid of Nietzsche if you are a serious person who has ever considered his ideas. It is hard because our society is so loaded yet with the very same ills that brought Nietzsche to many of his conclusions. In other words the romantic or comic or eudaemonistic view of history is a difficult one to dispel from our thinking because tragedy just doesn't taste good to us comfortable relatively unreflective Western hedonists hiding behind the flag of one convenient religion or political party or another for the most part. We are all stuck on The Happy Ending. It just seems like the only "decent" thing we dare teach our children. Your children ask you what happens to people when they die and you must give them an answer that you feel is positive because isn't that what Dr. Spock said or the latest Wisdom Teacher. And so on. But of course the answer is no. You don't have to lie to your children about the difficult questions. You can tell them the truth as far as you know it. Which for me often is 'I don't know.' And I believe this is so for most people much of the time. I do not know the answer to your question. I promise you I shall try to find the correct answer if there ever be such. In the meantime let's be relaxed and consider the evidence together as one immense human family. Let's pool our efforts and share all the profits-----All the prophets!
RLG Copyright 2006
posted by rlg at 7:04 PM
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