RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,205
(never rebound, pt. two)
I'd hazard to have to say
that the gist of my living,
or anyone's good living, is
'discovery.' Now, that's a
broad concept, and I'm not
talking Columbus or Einstein.
What I mean to say is more
encapsulated in a phrase
like 'expanding the moment,'
or 'expanding the everyday.'
I think that better captures it.
We don't need those big steps
of discovery by which new
continents were once found -
'discovered' - (now that's a
weird concept, seen here
in a tired, old, bedraggled
world where there's actually
little 'physical' left to be
discovered). Just the other
day someone mentioned to
me how there are 'still people
out there who believe the
Earth is flat.' That flat Earth
reference by her made me
fairly depressed, because in
all actuality the Earth IS flat,
and the least one can do is
admit to that. Perhaps the
'photo' of the Earth shows
something 'round' by the
concept of what we call it
('round'), but that's an easy
fit. Too easy. What's flat about
the world is the perception
of it - a type of flat, planar,
sequential-by-logic plan
that demands the structure
of the everyday; and by that
we get damning logic, captive
minds, demands for precision,
etc. Our world has been made
flat. I can remember long talks
and discussions over this stuff
in the dim corridors of old
NYU and along Eighth Street.
We labored over sandwiches,
beer and booze on material
like this, calling its origination
for us an adjunct of studying
William Blake. That was as
untrue as it may have been true.
He did tend to that direction,
but nothing with him was ever
simple, and to walk away from
studying Blake - whether through
Katherine Raine or Northrop Frye,
was a difficult thing. For any of us
to proclaim productive knowledge
of William Blake was a falsehood,
but it's where ny own flat-Earth
outlook started.
-
It's something of the same quality
by which people consume, gain
possessions, search endlessly
for things they don't need, or visit
foreign lands in that endless quest
for experience and adventure, afar
from where they actually are : the
same sort of flat-earth 'precision'
that makes a person feel that if
he or she is not 'doing' something,
their life is a waste. That, my
friends is flat-earth; another name
for 'standardization.'
-
Asylums. Nuthouses. Looney bins.
Yes, too, I guess the world is full
of that.
-
At the Studio School I used to like
to sculpt in simple white plaster.
It was 1967, and I threw away all
the concepts by which the 'taught'
procedure of plaster sculpting was
done. No metal underframe. No
substructure. No pedestal. It was
mostly mental practice for me to
break the bounds of flat-Earth
thinking. I only have one piece left,
but I did get past the bounds of
all the flat-Earth premise crap
by which all our world society's
are made. The mental world
really has been made 'flat,' but
it's been made flat by those who
wish to control you.
-
Simpler worlds are made of better
things? Yes, that's probably true,
and it's the sort of feel I get, up here,
in a rather farther-off country that
my 'upbringing' had brought me to.
Like flat-earth, a person doesn't
realize things until they are
abandoned. The rigid sustainability
of unfortunate places like urban
Jersey, New York/Philadelphia,
and the like, is that the entrapment
goes unremarked. My new-found
market-parking-lot friends carry
no baggage, are indiscreet, and
care little, from their isolation, for
the rest of the world. I think they
know a little of the past. As we
stand there, some motorcycles roll
by, out of the nearby Baer's
motorcycle place; an ambulance
of some sort blares; any sort of
truck or car is apt to dart about.
It's a funny world, and it's all
accepted, taken with ease as a
flat plane or orderly and procedural
occurrences. Yet, NOT. All of that
is nothing but the perceptual take
of an understanding of the world
as flat. And that flat world is wrong,
the incorrect one, the enforced
perception of logic. The real world
is round, frenzied, without frame or
logic, beyond predictability, and
as wide and as wild as imagination
can take it. That is what I'd tell my
countrified, wide-angled new-image
parking lot friends : Throw it all away,
awake, arise, and go forth.
No comments:
Post a Comment