octopus dishwasher synchronicity
Or perhaps this is one of those projects I intend to do but fail due to a form of pre-emptive entropy, a self-concious Gersham's Law, a menacing phantom you glance out of the corner of your eye when you hear a whispered voice who begs to be written. Is it paranoia of the self that's turning concepts into shadowy threats?
If my projections are just going to be failed approximations, reflections of spiritual destitution, responses from a culture where product is too easily gained and produced and so plasticated and... too easy. It's like a guy who's as big as Schwarznegger even though his diet is mostly fried chicken and his ego is founding on arm-wrestling matches... he has no natural ambition and no oppurtunities to back this up, so he's wrestling with skinny punks and homeys... soon, the process is simple routine: swagger into the bar, a challenge through eye-contact and a sneer... trignometry of table, elbow, sweaty palm - and always the peculiar thrill of the arm slowly titling downward, and he's almost there, so close to that satisfying crunch, to obliterate the hand like a bug, and feel it's skeleton twitching through the flesh. He releases and watches it's death throes in triumph. He's created something here, not so abstract as art, but an intense collision of forces with his own body. It feels sublime. It's like sex, really, but it's his, and nobody can excite the emotions quite so well as he.
Gaddis said he liked to create a problem and solve it. Like taking cliches and making them work (Carpenters Gothic), or writing a novel entirely in real time (JR). I wonder if one his that he had to deal with was being labelled an intelligent individual, eccentrically creative as that, and then confronted with novels such as Gravity's Rainbow and suddenly realising that you're somewhat empty. That shock of recognition that Schwarznegger will get when it's his hand that puts a crack in the bar-room table. Now what? He's impotent, his purpose has been removed. Goes back to the factory, back to the beer, back to the TV. But at least he realises that for every person like him, who could do something, there's a dozen who can't, who never did. What good is conciousness if we don't think about anything? What good is language if we use it to bicker and write shopping lists?
And then again: how can you tell enlightenment apart from nonsensical ramblings?
And how can one artist "succeed" and another "fail"? Why do we judge?
And why do they say "write even if you know it's bad, and you don't feel like it"? When all you get is something bad that you don't feel like doing?
If my projections are just going to be failed approximations, reflections of spiritual destitution, responses from a culture where product is too easily gained and produced and so plasticated and... too easy. It's like a guy who's as big as Schwarznegger even though his diet is mostly fried chicken and his ego is founding on arm-wrestling matches... he has no natural ambition and no oppurtunities to back this up, so he's wrestling with skinny punks and homeys... soon, the process is simple routine: swagger into the bar, a challenge through eye-contact and a sneer... trignometry of table, elbow, sweaty palm - and always the peculiar thrill of the arm slowly titling downward, and he's almost there, so close to that satisfying crunch, to obliterate the hand like a bug, and feel it's skeleton twitching through the flesh. He releases and watches it's death throes in triumph. He's created something here, not so abstract as art, but an intense collision of forces with his own body. It feels sublime. It's like sex, really, but it's his, and nobody can excite the emotions quite so well as he.
Gaddis said he liked to create a problem and solve it. Like taking cliches and making them work (Carpenters Gothic), or writing a novel entirely in real time (JR). I wonder if one his that he had to deal with was being labelled an intelligent individual, eccentrically creative as that, and then confronted with novels such as Gravity's Rainbow and suddenly realising that you're somewhat empty. That shock of recognition that Schwarznegger will get when it's his hand that puts a crack in the bar-room table. Now what? He's impotent, his purpose has been removed. Goes back to the factory, back to the beer, back to the TV. But at least he realises that for every person like him, who could do something, there's a dozen who can't, who never did. What good is conciousness if we don't think about anything? What good is language if we use it to bicker and write shopping lists?
And then again: how can you tell enlightenment apart from nonsensical ramblings?
And how can one artist "succeed" and another "fail"? Why do we judge?
And why do they say "write even if you know it's bad, and you don't feel like it"? When all you get is something bad that you don't feel like doing?