I plan/hope to write some notes about art and artists, about Bacon, Freud, Auerbach, Reinhardt, Stella, Newman, Westermann, Hopper and Duncan Wylie as well as a general text about What is a Metaphysical Artist? in the course of this month, I am pseudo-overdue with it, apart from that always jumping between disciplines, but this is a good thing since via such pseudo-circuitous routes (actually hypercycles) you may be able to add more value to the initial stuff in the end. In this context I also studied stuff about the most contemporary art and tried to get it and despite my sensational intelligence and erudition I still feel unsure about how to catch the metaphysics in it (I do not deny that there is some, yet is diffused, haha, the postmodern condition; postmodernity is but an age bygone, New Realism in philosophy may serve as a tool to get the whole structure again and its pseudo-fractal-like geometry, etc.)
“My only misgiving regarding “American Ulysses” is that its length (864 pages) will scare off all but the most enthusiastic Civil War enthusiasts. I hope as many people as possible read this book”
– I think I will read this book, since I also think it is better than the Irish Ulysses (this is easy; the Irish Ulysses is the greatest shit book of all time, next to Finnegan´s Wake).
The true scientist, philosopher, artist – i.e. the truth-seeker – will strive for knowledge about what is already known, but, essentially, strive to look deep into the universe to discover new stars, new galaxies, new worlds. – In doing so, the truth-seeker also looks into himself; a triviality. – New worlds, new illuminations, are to be found in the unexpected, the trivial, on the street, in non-locations (non-lieus, Nicht-Orte) – to which the truth-seeker has a natural bond and solidarity – when the locations of the sublime – to which the truth-seeker also has a natural bond and a natural solidarity -, of course, have been explored as well; the locus of the existential truth is the true individual, the locus of truth of the world is a flower-like domain shifting through totality. – To become the locus of truth the truth-seeker must do what is called to “empty himself”. This means he must study a lot, as much as possible, and then 1) realign it with reality 2) deconstruct it – to gain pure insight, pure perception, pure forms of perception on which he can re-establish pure concepts – therein, he will come into contact with the nullfläche, the primal ground of his own mind, upon which everything else emerges, naturally (the vision of the primal ground is personal and subjective though there are similarities among those visions; it might be a surface of dirty white where no location is distinguished from any other, or, in closer touch with the outside world, an unspectacular ventilation shaft). In an act like this, everything is contained, like in the movements, gestures and actions of children everything is contained about what can ever be said, thought and perceived about those acts, because everything about those acts is authentic, simple and direct, because they incorporate the full potential of the idea of those movements, nothing is hidden, everything is there, such is purity. – This is, then, “the pathless path”. – Some might find a speech like that “a mystery wrapped in an enigma”. That is a good step to begin with. Meditate about that.
„You must have glorious principles implanted in your nature; a clear eye able to see afar off; a great and generous heart, apt to enjoy at any distance; a good and liberal soul prone to delight in the felicity of all; and an infinite delight to be their treasure. Neither is it any prejudice to you that is required. For there is a great difference between a worm and a cherubim. And it more concerneth you to be an illustrious creature than to have the possession of the whole world.“
“ You never enjoy the world aright, till the sea itself floweth in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens, and crowned with the stars; and perceive yourself to be the sole heir of the whole world: and more than so, because men are in it who are every one sole heirs, as well as you. Till you can sing and rejoice and delight in God, as misers do in gold, and kings in sceptres, you never enjoy the world.”
I have read Kant´s Träume eines Geistersehers once again since sooner or later I want to read some Swedenborg. Ahhhh … what an extraordinary stylist Kant was! Yet not as awesome as Hegel! Both, however, are, approximately, the most hilarious stylists in philosphical writing. Swedenborg had a very high IQ, maybe even higher than Kant. Kant, however, claims that Swedenborg is a miserable, drab and dull stylist, and dismisses him all the same. In the appendix of my copy of Träume eines Geistersehers there are some writings also by Swedenborg and I can see that Kant was actually about right, at least concerning the style in those two short passages. But the same thing goes for other illustrious minds of that age, luckily bygone, also quoted in the appendix, including Herder. I like what Swedenborg says about hell. Clever it is. According to Richard Bucke, in his very important but largely forgotten book “Cosmic Consciousness: A Study in the Evolution of the Human Mind”, Bucke surmises that, like Buddha, Jesus, Johannes von Kreuz, Shakespeare, Balzac or Walt Whitman Swedenborg had achieved cosmic consiousness as well. Kant, however, was a man of reason, and someone who solely builds his house on reason (“all brains, no heart”) surely is homosexual, if not pedophile in the brain. Emanuel the hero, Immanuel the fag quod erat demonstrandum
In a book by the knowledgable Pickover, A Beginner´s Guide to Immortality, I have read for the first time about hell-like near death experiences. In popular understanding near death experiences are cozy and ethereal, so it was previously unknown to me that not a few people have NDEs which rather resemble a state of hell or at least purgatory. Since mankind is composed of, say, 15 percent of people who are morally superior, 70 percent who are average and another 15 percent who are morally inferior it should not come as a surprise but as something completely logical respectively as an apparent consequence.
In Pickover´s book Swedenborg is also mentioned and it says:
“In his book “Heaven and Hell”, Swedenborg said that there was no devil, no single ruler of hell … Hell exists because it is the only place in which evil people feel comfortable. In heaven, the evil people would suffocate from the love and the goodness. According to Swedenborg, the creation of Hell was not an act of punishment but of divine mercy. When one dies, a person lives forever in the place that best matches the love the person fostered in his heart while on earth.” (p. 66)
Ahh, the good Lord. Hears everything, sees everything, understands everything.
25 and a half years ago I bought my first metal album: Iron Maiden´s Seventh Son of a Seventh Son. (I came across popular music as a slow learner because I had considered it as vulgar before; then, at 14, I began to listen to Pink Floyd, Kraftwerk and the like, soon became interested in Iron Maiden and other heavy metal bands, because their obscurity attracted me. The first contact I made with Iron Maiden was when I was little and I saw the Piece of Mind LP at the Pro Kaufland when we were shopping, obviously in the early 1980s, the cover with the monster in the rubber room made an impression on me I still remember, ahhhh…) I initially disliked it but soon got into it, and soon got me some other metal records (from Helloween, Motörhead and Iron Maiden, later in 1991 Guns ´n´Roses and Metallica became big shots, etc.). – Seventh Son of a Seventh Son, one of Iron Maiden´s finest works, is a concept album about a person with supernatural powers. The forces of Good and Evil try to manipulate this person and to turn him into an agent for their causes. As it turns out the Seventh Son of a Seventh Son possesses the faculty of clairvoyance and foresees impending doom, yet, like Cassandra, is not taken seriously by people, respectively after the disaster gets all the blame for it. Despite his powers to see through people and through things the Seventh Son of a Seventh Son is not able to foresee his own demise and it remains dubious what he actually has achieved in the human realm – „The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones“, a quote from Shakespeare´s Julius Caesar which serves as a Leitmotif for the whole album. In the end it seems the story of the Seventh Son was only an episode in a seemingly eternal struggle between the forces of Good and Evil. – If we zoom out of this section of the fractal, where Good and Evil are categories of the understanding of man, we progressively refer to the cosmos, of the totality of existence, and their dubious purpose, where it is maybe right to envision forces of constructiveness (energy) and forces of dissolution (entropy) as the deep structure, as the ultimate logos; maybe those forces are conscious and god-like, or they create their own (quasi-) consciousness as they progressively unfold, and who knows if it is not the forces of entropy which guarantee the eternal repetition of the cycle (for instance the Penrosian Cycles of Time)? Or is the state of order we experience just a natural and logical state within an infinite mass of chaos which naturally inhabits finite regions of cosmos, bound to dissolute again? – Such questions are of some interest for humans, and although those interests are usually not very pronounced among people they form the screen on which the shadows of all the other ephemeral interests are projected. It is the call of the genius, who naturally sees all the ephemeral in its cosmic significance, who projects daily struggles into cosmic struggles, who expands finite contexts into the infinite – sometimes for good, sometimes for worse – to establish systems of reference, of meaning. In their final consequences, people will not truly understand them. Apart from that, everyone will understand them. Because they are just natural and soulful, intellectually and emotionally intelligent abstractions of everyday life, of the common life experience.
01 – Moonchild 02 – Infinite Dreams 03 – Can I Play With Madness 04 – The Evil That Men Do 05 – Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son 06 – The Prophecy 07 – The…
Adressing those articles again the health benefits of listening to heavy metal are apparent. Heavy metal is simply better music than what is usually displayed in other genres. It is more intense, more erudite, more sophisticated, more simple and direct, more natural. There is more melody and harmony and more abrasiveness. It involves new ways to express melody and harmony in a dialectics with cacophony. It gets you much more immersed. That is why metal fans have an unusually strong attachment to their music. It is more sincere and demands passion, professionalism and devotion, yet is also more tongue-in-cheek and funny. That is to say it is more multi-faceted and comprehensive; what you see is not what you get, what you get is more. It is also more authentic, i.e. heavy metal fans avoid the psychological downsides of conformism and the unhappiness it involves. If your cognitive type is being a mismatcher you will be naturally more attracted to counterculture; if mismatching is most pronounced you will be most attracted to (the extreme subgenres of) heavy metal. That´s the voice of the outsider, of the individual, not of an anti-conformist quasi-partisan collective as you have it with punk. The truth is to be found there – in the enlightened, enchanted individual that contains most aspects of the world and is therefore in the most perfect state of harmony with the world. Beach Boy´s Pet Sounds or Led Zep´s Physical Graffiti are pretty comphrehensive albums but so are Forbidden´s Green, Grip Inc.´s Incorporated or Inter Amra´s Sky Burial, however the latter are clearly further down the horizon, in a more elevated region in the atmosphere, a higher echelon, closer to the vanishing point of totality. Why keep on insisting on listening to Sun Ra or Pink Floyd, if it is not some weak shit at all, when it is Morbid Angel, Meshuggah or Mitochondrion which give you an impression what music that comes from another planet, originates from or tries to realign with other worlds could look like; or when it is Abyssal who transmit the sound, the signals of the abysmal depth of far outer space (from close to the region where Azathoth dwells)? They expand the frontiers of the human mind, those acts explore new horizons. I do not quite understand how anyone with a brain working at high intensity level cannot be into heavy metal. It is music for schizotypal explorers. Schizotypal usually also is the poetry in metal lyrics, the scattered patterns, the strong lines transporting messages open to interpretation, so that you can establish multiple perspectives on them, a call from the beyond, ahhh … the patterns you can see in those lyrics! Healthy schizotypy involves introversion/introspection, intensity of inner world experience, power to ruminate, creativity and independence, ability to create a new world. It is not a disorder, but the highest level of personhood, of man. And with its lyrics about satan, about gential mutilation, or also with its sincere lyrics about politics, society or the human experience is simply more in touch with reality that the phony shit you can hear on the radio. Being in touch with reality, and mastering it, according to the principle, is good, is healthy. Smell the gravity of the heavy metal.
By the end of last year, enchanted by some new extreme metal releases, I wanted to write the Metapysical Note about Extreme Metal, which I could have already done, but still haven´t since I wanted to involve more contemplation and maybe new insights. But I think I am going to finally write it in November this year. The Metaphysical Note about Extreme Metal will be about how to realign „Western“ and „Eastern“ metaphysics, about how to avoid the negative consequences of both, and it will teach about the overman.
(The idea is that by embracing extreme metal you embrace otherness. By embracing otherness by the means of productive mimesis you get in closer contact with otherness and the apparent shadow realm it involves, as well as the shadow realm you involve yourself. Your consciousness will be broadened and you yourself become deepened. „Western“ metaphysics is concerned with the possibility of solid knowledge, „Eastern“ metaphysics with directly experiencing the faculty of perception itself, the extreme metal experience allows an integration and synthesis of both approaches. As you broaden and deepen yourself by embracing otherness, you will progressively lose the egoic aspects of self, both become a fluid entity as well as a distinct individual entity which does not get lost in the perception of Tao but will, with the knowledge of Tao, operate as a scientist. Finally, in that fractal-like process, everything that is untrue will be sorted out and only the true nature of things will remain. That entity which encapsulates things in that way is, then, the overman.)
The Metaphysical Note about Extreme Metal, together with the Postscripts to the Metaphysical Note about Extreme Metal, will be a very important document in the history of human thought, and of human practice. That will make me unpopular on Facebook again.
Heavy metal music helps fans deal with the idea of their own death, new research suggests. According to a study in the Journal of Psychology of Popular Media, the sense of identity that the death-themed music creates gives listeners meaning to…
A while ago I heard Jon Leifs´ „Geysir“ at the Konzert am Vormittag on the radio. I was initially struck by it and I liked it. Most art, and notably most music, from most composers, is insipid and not completely true. Leifs´ music however is true, it is real, and it is in no way insipid. He originated his own peculiar musical language, his own peculiar style, and it approaches you as something that is completely natural, an expression of nature itself. Few artists are able to develop their own peculiar language. However, whenever someone does, it does not actually strike you as a „composition“, but as something that is completely natural, making forget the huge intellectual and personal effort that lead to such a result. It is as if nature´s boys and girls finally managed to find their way home.
Thereafter, I went to my favorite classic record dealer, Gramola am Graben, to buy some material by Jon. There was only one CD in stock (with the Saga Symphony), the other one, containing „Geysir“, I had to order. The Gramola guy told me that it´d rarely ever happen that someone asks for a record with the compositions of Leifs. The same thing he told me years ago when I wanted to buy records with stuff by Scelsi. Also Scelsi is a transcendent genius who is completely natural, and real. And also Galina Ustvolskaya is of this kind.
At that day I also bought a Yukata at a hipsteresque fashion store in Vienna because two days before I saw a woman with a Yukata who struck me, and told me about from where she bought it. At the fashion store I was told that unfortunately they do not have much else somehow more „eccentric“ and idiosyncratic for men, because men don´t use to buy such things (although the situation is said to be a bit better at their outlet in Berlin). Same old story. I am used to it. I do not buy clothes like the Yukata to look cool, and most of the time I run around wearing casual clothes. I buy them because they are beautiful and it is simply natural to wear them. It is natural beauty, and they give an idea of how more beauty can be brought into this world. People then tell me on the streets how cool I look with those garments. But strangely, they never seem to come to the idea that they could wear such stuff themselves.
We are living in a free, independent, individualistic age. Hail the new age.
I was reading that despite the initial, apparent natural beauty and the striking profoundness of artistry of his music, Jon Leifs had a difficult life and was not understood, respectively rejected by most people. He was born in 1899 and died in 1968 due to cancer. His last composition Hughreysting („Consolationn“) was meant to be his last salute to humanity; in the eyes of Leifs the purpose of art was to console man. In Hughreysting you again seem to have nature exposing itself, directly, without intermediary. You have the flow of being, of existence, of Werden und Vergehen, the hopefulness, the tragic, the elegy transcended into tenderness, at the end a fleeting, but tender and upright memory created by the bright violas as the music dies out. I was having a conversation with the record dealer at Gramola, myself wondering why there is so little interest in music by true and apparent geniuses like Scelsi or Leifs. In Vienna alone there must be thousands or at least hundreds of people receptive for such things. There has been a Scelsi fan page on Facebook with not even 4000 Likes which eventually got deleted, and there is a Wikipedia page on Facebook for Jon Leifs with 263 Likes as well as a Wikipedia page on Facebook for Galina Ustvolskaya with 600 Likes and a fan page with 277 Likes. There is also a group on Facebook named Pretentious Classical Music Elitists with close to 8000 members. When I post music by Scelsi, Ligeti or Grinblat I, on average, get 2 Likes. When I post my writings about Scelsi and Ustvolskaya, I never get any Likes from the Pretentious Elitists. – However, the Gramola guy told me it is part of a more general phenomenon: 15 years ago there was more interest not only in Scelsi and Leifs but in modern classical music in general. So I asked him what people are interested in now. Kommerz, he said (indicating that the interest in the more deviant forms of art has never been genuine and rooted in itself at any time).
HAHAHAHAHA! – We´re living in a ghost world! Which is frighteningly empty! People have no solid, natural access to what is natural and to the eternal categories that reflect true quality! The genius is real, because the genius is a direct expression of nature, communicating with other geniuses across space and across time, across the Continuum. As a conscious agent of nature and nature´s productivity, the genius initiates and creates culture. Culture is then brought down by the priests, the technocrats and the scientists to the level of civilisation. Civilisation is then brought down by the politicians to the level of the government and of the state, and by the businesspeople to the level of commerce. Commerce, per se, is innocent. It reflects the half-conscious realm of the human ego. The human ego strives to realign with nature, in multiple ways, some better and of higher quality, some worse and of lower quality. The striving of man should be to try to to ensure the reproduction of society at a higher level in a world headed for entropy.
“Man erhält nicht von der Wirklichkeit eine Intuition, wenn man nicht ihr Zutrauen durch eine lange Kameradschaft mit ihren Offenbarungen gewonnen hat. Und es handelt sich nicht bloß darum, sich die bedeutsamsten Tatsachen zu eigen machen; man muss eine ungeheure Masse anhäufen und zusammenschmelzen … So nur wird die rohe Stofflichkeit der Tatsachen aufgehoben.”
Henri Bergson, Schöpferische Entwicklung
„Vor allem ist ein großes Feingefühl nötig. Sich alles auf der Welt als Rätsel vorstellen, nicht nur die großen Fragen, die man sich immer wieder gestellt hat – warum die Welt erschaffen wurde, warum wir geboren werden, leben und sterben -, denn vielleicht liegt in all dem, wie ich schon gesagt habe, kein Sinn. Aber das Rätsel mancher Dinge verstehen, die im Allgemeinen als belanglos betrachtet werden. Das Geheimnis mancher Phänomene im Bereich der Gefühle, der Merkmale eines Volkes spüren, so weit kommen, dass man sich sogar die schöpferischen Genies als Dinge vorstellt, als äußerst merkwürdige Dinge, die wir nach allen Seiten drehen und wenden. Auf der Welt leben wie in einem unermesslichen Museum voller Seltsamkeiten, voller wunderlicher, bunt gescheckter Spielsachen, die immer wieder anders aussehen, die wir manchmal kaputt machen, um zu sehen, was drinnen ist, und enttäuscht merken, dass sie leer sind. – Die unsichtbaren Bande, die ein Volk mit seinen Schöpfungen vereinen. – Zum Beispiel, warum die Häuser in Frankreich auf ihre bestimmte Weise gebaut sind und nicht anders; man kann noch so viel Geschichte zitieren; die Gründe nennen, die zu dem oder zu jenem beigetragen haben, man beschreibt, doch erklärt man nichts, aus dem ewigen Grund, dass es nichts zu erklären gibt und das Rätsel doch immer bleibt.“
“I trust not promotions
And I fear not omens
I flee not from slander or poison
There is no death
We´re all immortal – All is immortal
Fear not death at seventeen,
Not at seventy …
There is only reality and light.
There is neither dark, nor death in this, our world.
We´ve reached the beach,
And I am one of those, who pulls the nets in,
When immortality arrives in batches.
Live in a house, and it won´t crumble;
I´ll summon a century at will,
Enter and built my house in it.
That´s why your children and your wives
All share my board
The table serving forefather and grandson:
The future is decided now.
And if I rise my hand,
The five rays will remain to you.
My bones, like beams
Held up each day,
I measured time with a surveyor´s staff,
And passed through it as through the mountains.
I chose a century to my height.
We pressed on South, raising dust in the steppes,
Weeds smoldered, a grasshopper played,
Touching horseshoes and prophesying…
Threatening me with death quite like a monk.
I strapped my fate fast to my saddle,
I rise up in the stirrups
Of the future as a boy.
I am content with my immortality,
With my blood coursing from century to century.
I´d gladly give my life
For a safe corner of warmth.
If life´s swift needle
Did not draw me out, as though I were a thread.”
Watch online six films by the legendary Russian filmmaker, Andrei Tarkovsky: Ivan’s Childhood, Andrei Rublev,…
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