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.]
