the comfortable numbing of art

TH_E P^O_ET AND M^ON_EY

th_e c^omf^ortabl_e n_umbing ^of art  

(in elusive instalments)

As the cliché goes, art no longer has the power to shock.  This is true only in certain respects, however (art is lost if it loses this power, the power though becomes hidden at times).  We might say the cliché is true in content, but not in form—or, rather, in the forms that have been usurped by money and that art has allowed to be usurped; that is, shock remains possible only in the forms that still permit of transgression (yet this is always true:  it is art’s task to seek for the forms that still so permit).

To see these forms, one has to look at the present orthodoxies of art.  There are no heresies in words themselves anymore, no dogmas, no taboos.  I can write about sodomizing the Queen of England in the Vatican, with my mother eating shrunken baby head cereal on a nearby chaise longue and only a puritan would blink.  One can publish anything in the traditional ways (or even the neo-traditional ways, such as e-books) and amuse, titillate, but not truly shock (other than those time-warped in regressive cultural bubbles; those who are still, shall we say, aesthetic cannibals:  The Satanic Verses is a sufficient illustrative case).

What, then, is expected of the writer who wishes to follow in the ancient path of poetry—which is to challenge the collapsed present to see (and there is no more painful or shocking act than sight)? 

Simply this:  that he seek to make his words known in ways, in packages (in non-packages, post-packages, neopackages, apackages), that have not been pre-approved, prefabricated, by our culture.  The new forms for art to explore, in order for it to shock (and not for shock itself, of course, which is a kind of aesthetic pornography, but in order to continually seek itself, which is its task, in the broken glass of the world), are to handle its cradle-to-grave production according to a vision born outside of the expected packages.

(This is what my adefinable book, t⁵, and its forms of release—the secular sadoo and other means [some named, some not; some accessible, some in–)—attempt … and why their means are inseparable from their words, their aesthetics from this psyche.)

            Also why this poet must accept an abyss between words and money, for money is ^the orthodoxy incarnate, the heavenly judgement seat … and poetry, while knowing orthodoxy, must follow the way of vision, the way of the eye …

(I don't speak of shock in the common way, but in the way that one speaks of terror, not in relation to a thief in the night or the blair witch project, but the trial. A soft shock, one that might only be felt if lying on the bedrock of the world.)

In other words, money has been clever, as money can be (in a limited way, a way it markets as unlimited).  It has segmented art, claimed it as a cut of its carcass (even the prime rib of its meat!), created a subdivision within itself through a (hostile?) takeover, a centuries-long M&A; it has defined the book, assumed control over its factors and means of production, and subjugated aesthetics to biography (vision to name), thereby chaining the eye to a rock as opposed to permitting or even facilitating its natural flight.

The joke of course—and if it is not the joke it is at least one of the jokes—is that art’s transgression—even when it is accomplished—is only transgressive to those committed to money’s packages and productions.  Only money permits transgression for only money is sacred.  One detects the devout, the pious, by spotting those for whom transgression is still possible.

Poetry is the deeper sacred, that which can violate itself and not be offended (or at least be offended and also laugh), that which is indistinguishable from (or knowingly bound to) the profane.  It is this indistinguishability, this knowing boundness, that violates money, for money demands separation (of people, buildings, gods, means).

So the most complete poets may be those exceptional ones—Euripides, Chaucer, Shakespeare are obvious examples (who may only be possible at certain convergences of history)—who appear to follow money’s path while following poetry’s, thus mirroring the soul’s peculiar and pyretic navigation through society’s arbitrary labyrinth, money’s middling maze.