The Spleen of I

The dozen or so anti-abortionists at Yonge&Bloor yesterday, scattered around each corner.  Why are they always so horribly dressed … and ugly?  Their signs argue against abortion but their fashion and faces argue for it.

Recently I’m lounging around Nathan Phillips Square, somewhat slovenly.  A horde of Christians (over 80 of them) descend, offering brown bag lunches to the homeless, a group in which I seem to be temporarily included.  They all look as if they have just been bused in from Iowa or Alberta.  Scrubbed and stupid.  Hay still in their asses, James Dobson on their phones.  One line from Pascal would kill them.  I almost take a bag (I’m smoking a Montecristo for crissake) from spite (I’m offered 4 lunches, from various Scrubbies) but can’t even rouse enough emotion to extend my hand.  I watch my smoke curl up to heaven, like a prayer.

POST-TRAUMATIC STRESS OF AN AESTHETIC KIND

The Christian’s antagonism toward evolution became clear to me recently ... and, in becoming clear, became necessary also.  For there are antagonisms built into the universe’s marrow that are so central to it if they were to go missing, our worlds would have no choice but to collapse.  There are a few antagonisms factory-woven into the wet towel of existence that they must become a meditation for those of us given to futilely care about what we seem to be.

What, then, is the Christian’s fatal objection to the migration of humans from simians?  Why the angst and spittle?  Why not laughter?

It is this.  The Christian objects to the visible expression of the negation of itself.  (It lacks the imagination to see its negation prior to its visible expression.)  This lack is one of the reasons for its objection and also for its being a Christian.

This visible expression could not become visible—at least to the Christian—until a certain mass had developed.  And what mass is required before the Christian can see!

The mass in this case is the widespread acceptance of science-based evolutionary theory which, at its spiritual core, reveals the possibility of the evolution of consciousness, which is also to say the evolution of god.  The Christian looks at the possibility of the human—even sees or reads about the partial incarnation of such possibility—and speedily retreats to its defense of creation … but a creation by an externalized other—breeding guilt and war on internalized creation (the internalized other):  most importantly, refusing the possibility of placing creation in its proper place:  a place without locus, neither external nor internal, without nameable or visible source—forcing the human into maintaining itself as creature.  (None of this is new of course:  20th and late 19th century [and before, in various modes] thought and art are riddled with variations of these themes.)

This is the crux, though:  the Christian opposes evolution in order to maintain its denial of the human and the advocacy of the simian.  Christianity is a gargantuan comic edifice erected to perpetuate the human as ape.  Religion, in this case, is the social and verbal construct necessary to maintain and grow the Christian’s fear of light—which is to say, of thought, imagination, and beauty.

The Christian, as that which strives to be the consummate ape, violently opposes any idea that might pull itself out of itself, that might suggest the possibility of being something other than ape, the reek and howl of nature, the limits of a puerile imagination.

So the Christian (and by Christian we must mean the majority of secularists today, who have taken on the deep values of the Christian while denying its superficial artifacts, who even assume the doctrine of evolution (as they have been effectively, dumbly, enculturated into its acceptance while opposing, in practice, evolution’s central mantras and orientations) and the artist have become opposed—the one devoted to maintenance and land, the other to vision and water.

But all this is saying nothing more than Baudelaire, Blake, or Kierkegaard.  Or, for that matter, Heraclitus, if he could have.

THE AGNOSTICISM OF SPIRIT & FLESH

So the day is here that artists are persecuted and die for art—which is to say, the vision of their psyches (collectively, the emerging vision of the human psyche, our aesthetic DNA, our mapping of the divine)—even as the religious once died for their god (and why psychology is religion’s paltry replacement).  Yet the present persecution is more subtle than the past one.  The persecutors have learned.  They no longer waste their time killing those they fear (they have learned that they prefer their killing virtual); rather, they structure the home in which the artists have to live (society) in such a way as to suffocate the artists, allowing some random ones to breathe long enough to produce sufficient current product to use for their amusement, even as the Coliseum’s slaughters were used for the Romans’ amusement.  They have learned.  And yet they haven’t.  (Naturally.  Always this dual movement.)  What they haven’t learned—what they never can—is the primordial power of the Spirit as it hovers on the waters,  perhaps present—and this is surely the base of human hope—even when what we presently call humans are not.

SYMBOLEZE

The aesthetic language is Symboleze.  It stands, distinctive, in its own family within the larger family of the groups of languages people speak.  It stands alone, but in a different dimension.  A Symboleze speaker does not need to translate Symboleze into other languages for internal understanding; she or he only needs to do so when communicating with non-Symboleze speakers (the majority).  But this translation can involve much effort.  (So, however, is building a country called Symbol, dominated by Symboleze speakers.  Wouldn’t this be the new Palestine, the new Jerusalem?  Could it be a physical republic?  Might this be the core war of the upcoming millennia?  Or will it fatefully be a virtual land, dispersed through time and space, almost disregarding them, its citizens united through their common exile.)

The dictionary of Symboleze is art itself.  Most of what is called art simply builds on and explores existing definitions.  But now and then a symbol is added, modified, removed.  This act of significant addition, subtraction, division, multiplication (the mathematics of Symboleze, the geometry of art) is what I call art.  The fiddling with what exists I call craft (including the reference to the cunning and politic inherent in the necessity of craft, which remains wedded to society in ways art cannot.  [Art rather flings and swoops.])

The artist’s desire is to communicate in Symboleze as much as possible; efforts in other languages (efforts which are unfortunately required to obtain money, to feed and clothe and shelter oneself, but these just to once again communicate in Symboleze) quickly become exhausting.

I greatly desire to speak Symboleze and speak about speaking Symboleze.  It is my first tongue.  My aesthetic work orbits around the seeking of a word, the word, word … a word to describe my condition of being a citizen of Symbol.  If I say Theodore Wallace has Asperger’s, people say, Ah!, and adapt (or don’t adapt, but have the opportunity to).  I would (perhaps) like to self-identify as having a condition also.  You’ll have to excuse me, I’ve been diagnosed with Existence.  There, see, see, it’s a real condition, it’s been validated by the experts, it’s on page 4,723 of DSM-17.

But.  My aesthetic work orbits equally around resisting the finding of a word, the word, word.  Around resisting a label, a condition.  For if the center is named, it falls apart.  The fish must not be allowed to leave the deep.  Symbol must not become a physical republic, must not be brought to earth.  Exile is the artist’s natural home.  The aesthetic diaspora is the same as the Fall.

Meanwhile, the insecure, afraid and inexperienced label me labels for their convenience, to enable them to proceed with the bolstering, the solidifying, of the name “normal” to their diseases, to enable them to mask their inability to speak Symboleze, to ennoble their pride in not being exiled, for belonging fully on earth.

RANDOM CHEESIES FOR THE URBAN SLUG

Švankmajer’s Spiklenci Slasti (Conspirators of Pleasure, 1996).  A riveting exuberant litany of human kink.  Fittingly filtered through the master’s peculiarly transcendent comic-horror lens.  A visual metaphor of our very individual absurd existential circumscriptions, which we inevitably take so seriously.

Apply a poetic principle to politics:  the good politician would minimize adjectives, using primarily verbs and nouns …

Emotional unintelligence.  Accessing my heart/emotions is no different in major respects than accessing my body.  I give permission to whomever I give permission to, based on their ability to possess and wield the right keys in combination with the present configuration of my doors and locks.  Some people are sexual sluts, sharing their bodies liberally; others are emotional sluts, liberally sharing their hearts.  At least I can receive certain pleasures from the sexual slut.  But the emotional slut is typically a bore, expecting me to join it in an orgy of tedious thought-splaying and heart-humping … though it has shown almost no tact, wit, intelligence, technique, or talent.  As for me, I shall be emotionally seduced by those who have the capacity to emotionally seduce me.  I shall not assume their paltry names or be swayed by their emotional tyrannies.

The tao:  seeming as being, fragmentation as health, detachment as compassion, no-action as action,    silence as communication, regress as progress, no-desire as desire.

[And, to conclude, as some other lunatic and liar said, there are also many other things which I did and thought that if they should all be written even the world itself could not contain the books.  Amen.]