Art, Between and Beyond.

No man is an island, so no art is of itself.

And synesthesia between art is the only way to know what art is. How can literature rise without rhythm? How can painting sing without music? How can a tale move without an image? An art walled away, itself to itself, dies.

As poetry comes from music, let that music play on. As music comes from life, let the life live. And in the silence between the notes, consolation. The dreamer will think of clouds, the pragmatist will think on irony; all the while the artist thinks on what is, or was, shall be or should be. And yet all are human, all different, all the same.

What binds us is stronger than what divides us. That is the soft and loud of art: All is one. Chaos to cosmos, Destruction to Creation, Death to life, Night to Day. There is a unity in art that says there is a unity in life. The artist may veil it, he may even refute it. But can we even have the very thought to hold the brush if chaos is total? Form implies order. Form is not possible without order. And so for art to exist, so must order. Therefore there is order. And so art. And therefore art unites people. Art is the fraternity in time and space. And among people. It is the eye into the heart. It is the ear into the nature. It is the vein into the precious, mineral soul.

Let the storm clouds gather, their baleful portent. Let the money-men win. Let the stupid have their victory. Let old gorse prickle. Let all follies have their run (their run will be had). But wherever, whenever man looks up, in, or out and thinks; what he seeks is truth. And truth is always there. Always there. A thing that is, for truth cannot not be. It is a thing that is, not a thing that isn't.

Therefore make art.

There is no war between reason and art. There was never a battle between Rousseau and Hogarth; Jefferson and Beethoven. The battle is, always was, between the Agora and Ideas. Between money and the just city. Between the money, which thinks itself power, and art with its belief in the pursuit of ideas and feeling. Yet, what is man to do? He is a piece of clay. Yet his dreams, the beauty, the soul and the spirit? Can you keep him low? Is he just a consumer? Is the mind too primitive? Ah, there is the irony. Man's hubris is cosmic, his reach far, beyond the planet. Yet there is still no cure for poverty.

And Jupiter is large with no life. And what does it suggest? That, fool is the one who thinks smart and strong are the same? Or big is clever? Or large is life? Fool, our race is full of fools. But it is art, its emancipation, that gives us the view. Informs. Say, we are a scientist lying, in wait of a galaxy to turn, and to prove an hypothesis. Yet, in that wait the artist has already given the answer. That is nature. The artist is unaware of what he has, yet the scientist finds the proof. So a lovely un-scripted alliance exists between them.

Why?

Truth.

Truth is the rhythm of cosmos. Was it thus? Will it be thus? No. It is what is. Is now in perpetuity? No. Truth is evolutionary. It is what is. But only in the moment it is. Is that casuistry? No, the meaning of truth is that which recurs. Pattern is truth. And that is arbitrary, yes. But that which endures is truth. Truth is that which repeats. The question is how many times must it repeat for it to be considered truth. And maybe it is a million. Perhaps a trillion. Or perhaps we decide.

Art loses to money because the Neo-cortex slower than the primitive brain. The artistic, the thinking, the dreaming, the laughing mind, is slower than the fighting, the warring, the territorial, the greedy. That is how our brain is made. The gun has always been mightier than the thought.

Rise above that, and you might avoid repeating catalogue of misery in history.

And, so, we say we are civilized.

If we could organize neurons now, we would throw away the bi-pedal with lightening speed. Man must rise. Or intelligence rise. Out there in the destiny, will intelligence survive? Nothing is possible, in that vein. But why should man be in that destiny? We are destined to end all our thinking, art, life, hope, dream, angle and aim by either our own stupidity, which is inexhaustible, or by the star-death, galaxy-oblivion or cosmic implosion.

What hope of intelligence?

Or are we one of many? Many Comose's, repeating? In a multiverse? Dimension surplus?

Alas, Occam's razor is very sharp. What can be proved is. What can't, isn't. That's the end of it.

It is art that unifies. Music to painting, painting to theatre, theatre to literature, literature to the flowing river. What does it do, it keeps an eye on man. It is the microscope to the heart. It is the overflowing of the breast. It is the sage reflection of the well examined life. It is man, it is him. It is truth, that which recurs. And if it doesn't, it's not truth. C'est Ça.

Maybe one day, intelligence won't rely on the bi-pedal. Could such a mind survive through time? Oh please, take Beethoven with you. Please? Let all stupid things perish, let smart things endure. This is not sophistry but obvious sense. But I plead a case for Beethoven. You will never have better. If there was only one man to whom I could speak, it is Beethoven, as much as man may speak of the deaf.

What diamonds we throw away, and in return, what coal we clutch. Yet why not love each other? Why not forget territory? This is arts humanity. And greed? - don't call it geo-politics. Let's all be long on ideas and short on things, for things are greed. Things are battles. Things are war. Good heavens let us be brothers. For heavens sake let us be brothers.

Things make us primitive. Things make us stupid. It is things that stupefies. The immaterial makes us smarter. The more things, the more will be destroyed.

No. Things are the problem. Oh, cut out the Limbic, cut out the Amygdala. Let's be past those things. Let us be past those things. Because those things are greed and money and power. Intelligence should live with ideas, that way they live with love and without greed. Is all that fine by you?

But if man wants to live sustainably with the world, he has live with its ideas. Not it's things. You in posterity understand, it is sad man now that doesn't.

Perhaps the future of intelligence is formless, thingless.

So you in the future, if you know, arm yourself. Never trust authority. Never a soft code.

And remember, money, greed, wanton, is all the realm of things and, so, unnecessary. And so things that are death disguised, that lead onto death. Oh, what of love?

And all art is connected. As, all life be so. It is to ideas, not things that are our legacy. Why then, you idiots, do you thirst after fools?

And yet, why not you feel our love. You, stupid idiot fool, no-brains, you still need love. And love you will have. Love is yours.

What waits us, is the marriage of art and love.

What waits us, is rising above ourselves.

The Agora

A police force of 300 Scythian slaves carried red ochre-stained ropes to induce the citizens who loitered in the agora of Athens to attend the meetings of the assembly. Anyone with red-stained clothes who was not in the meeting was liable to a penalty. 

The retreat from the Ekklesia to the Agora is a sad, soul-ennervating trend. It is also a dangerous one. If the centre of our debate and politics and what it is to live in the just state is the Neo-Cortex, the Agora is the Limbic. The Agora is the Amygdala. The Agora is fear, because it is greed. Nobility isn't urgent and that's why it loses the fight against fear, against the primitive. So we now live in a time where mass-man, devoid of ideas, cannot stop a Joseph Smith-like fraud, a tin-pot demagogue, a billionaire who at seventy suddenly calls himself a working-class champion, from winning the chair of Washington, Lincoln and FDR.

It isn't that we are so far through the looking-glass. No. And it isn't that the intellectual has lost the debate to the brute, for what is argument against the cudgel. No. And it isn't that the electorate lacks the critical brain. No. It is that money has numbed our brains. Stimulation now comes from things, not ideas. Where once radicals fought for a new republic, searched to the high atmospheres of the self and mind for man's own destiny and drew up a new contract; we, now, invest our minds in the vapid, protean language of capital and purchase. Thinking man weeps - sad, elliptical, drawn-out tears. He sits, with his stinging eyes, sighing over the edge of the sea-touched cliff and hoping with bootless prayers. He knows they won't come to be. The Agora has won.

Or is the answer technology?

Perhaps. Perhaps if the computer matches and ascends beyond human capacity and cupidity. Are we in thrall to money and its superficialities merely because technology is too stupid and forces us down to its level? And so is there hope? Hope that one day technology will make us smart, will stimulate us away from the numbness of things and the fetters of money?

Or is technology always only to be an extension of man?

Revolution has always been scented with youth. Unfettered by the wims of the Agora youth has fought for the best, natively idealistic. Yet where are the young to fight the corruptions of the age? There are some, precious few. But the others are consumed, by things, by money, by the dominion of the market place, by the circus and theatre. By the titillations of the animal. They are taught that satisfaction is better than thinking. They are told not to have ideas, except the onanism of the credit card. They are told not to think but to consume. Always consume. They consider nature something that should produce for them. How then to expect radicals from this? Yet, why not? Nature always throws exceptions. There are some millennials who see the dark clouds gathering, who know their portent and who are prepared to die by their own ardor. This gives us great hope. Hope that man will look to conquer himself against the forces of greed, narrow interest and the diminishing returns of rising consumption and its rising entropy. For who in their conscience would not go to the stake for the good of the species? Who would not be a benefactor of the race, if he could so choose? Why should we surrender the fight to greed? For greed is nothing more than the primitive, the expeditionary force of the conquering primate stealing territory and goods; while thought and ideas are the light that shines in the thinking man's hand.

How much does a lie cost?
How deep are the pockets of liars?

How corrupt are the powerful?
How stupid are the people?

So truth and intelligence are the antidote. And populism and money, the arsenic. This should be in high contrast. Yet our phones and computers and our shopping malls are multicolored, they shade and lull into the sheep-mind. This world isn't for the romantic, the Byronic, the philosopher, the dreamer. Greed is the king and he was installed by cabal when our backs were turned watching the pretty fireworks. The Agora won. The Agora always wins. Only it doesn't if we first learn to conquer ourselves. It is a fool's creed that says, 'it'll all be fine.' Civilisations before us have been wiped out. There's nothing in history that shows things always working out. Why should they now? Do not slide blissful down the ignorant slide, with the casual impulse that 'they' know what they're doing. And that they will make sure the fun fair runs for perpetuity. This is foolish for this reason: Because 'they' are also numb, 'they' are also unstimulated, 'they' are also short on ideas. 'They' are the chef who refuses to eat his own food because he knows its bad. 'They' are also slaves of the Agora.

That is why thinking and art and the freedoms they produces are the balm. And literature is the one thing in our banal age that shines with the force of all its history behind it. And literature is the one thing that will outlive our banal age because it is loud enough to echo into future history. But let not hubris rush on. Man is capable of such high spheres, yet blood gushes and he swirls giddy. We used to believe in the greatness of man. But post-modernism, bless it's happy sweet death, sold us the lie to our disbelieving guts: That all things are relative. Yes, but some things recur, and they are pattern, they are truth. Yes, the cosmos is ever changing and evolving, yes the sun from one angle is different than from another, but you are an absurdist if you think there is no distinction between the pattern and the random. There must be a distinction for this reason: If there is none, nothing holds meaning, words have no meaning. If that is the case, then let our little species on it's small blue dot vanish. Let us not be. Let us anti-be. Let us be anti-existed from time. Either a thing holds value, or there is no value. Either a thing is, or nothing is. Either something is true or all things are lie.

And all the time, the Agora wins.

Then let us fight, let us write, let us dream. Let not the empires of the bloated corporate kings distract us. Let us be pirates and lords unto ourselves in the age of greed. We must merily set our sail for Atlantis and dam the storm, dam their navy, dam their arsenals. We will outfox them. We will vex their plans. We will survive in our sweet minority. We will surround the Agora in a rope of reddened ochre. And we will love and dance and kiss each other in the kindest fraternity.

Our Stupid Tragedy

Stupidity is on the rise, stupidity is in the majority, stupidity is growing powerful. Pseudo-Modernism , the impulsive daughter of Post-Modernism, is giving birth to fruits it doesn't want to but does non-the-less. It is like a cliff that you see from a long distance, your mind is dragged over and in that flight over the precipice a boy's choir serenades your descent.

We know we must stop, we must turn back, we know it, but we are too bored to be wise. Our ancient bellicose ghosts demand we dance naked into the fray. Sensible means sitting in a library. Sensible means socialism. Sensible means curbing all native anger. Sensible means sober. The Neo-Cortex is eons ahead of the Limbic, and that's our tragedy. If we could only cut the out the spear-throwing legacy. Maybe in the future we can. Maybe we get to the future. Maybe the future will look on us as wayward life, maybe it will throw disdain as we do of the sad primitive Neanderthal. See how easy condescension is. But I would rather be known a snob than a fool, any day. 

Yes we want action, we want drama, we want the fight, we want war. All the ancient causes are in us. Yet we also know how we should arrange things, how, practically, we should arrange things. Yet every generation proves how what is sensible, rational, enlightened, Apollonian is instead jettisoned because of a rush of blood, because of the promise of mayhem, a thing which sits deep in everyone's soul. 

At the centre of that bay of blood is the excuse of it - stupidity. It is possible to excuse drunkeness, sloth, perversion, delay and the other failures as a part of the condition. But stupidity, and I state this without any sense of the relativity of the term, is a thing that shows us how far in the future we can go but how far in the past we are strung. And it is the one thing that can eclipse us all, despite our genius and our advance. One act of stupidity can destroy a generation of brilliant gifts. Is that supposed to be our epitaph? Oh do we not have some duty to the cosmos that made us? Oh help us, if it's all to no purpose. And even then, surely the wise arrangement is better than the fool's. But we cannot control this primitive brain. We lust with this primitive body. We burn with primitive heart. Despite what we know yet we long for pillage. Despite our genius yet we destroy ourselves.

In this age we have abandoned all propriety. But I have heard that said in history books. So then it is a generational question. How can we hope to conquer our primitive inheritance. Here is what I say. And only you in posterity can say how close to the mark I am: First, the future of intelligence must not depend on Homo-Sapiens. Second that intelligence cannot be restrained by the bi-pedal and all it's primitive heredity. Third, that intelligence in it's greatest is least constrained by the corporeal - this is no modern idea but rather Platonic. Fourth, that such an intelligence would understand that life has no meaning and no purpose but that in spite of these things a thinking mind would always prefer the superior to the inferior. Fifth, and last, that the thinking mind will always look out to the greater good.

Freedom is the prime point. It gives sanctuary to the stupid, and flame to the noble. We used to have a world were the arrangement was thus: the stupid could have their day, but the smart would rule. For the life of me I couldn't see the problem there. But now we set our standards so that all is equal. I ask, what finer example of stupidity can there be? 

We have a right to examine the world and so by proxy examine ourselves. Yet the the moneymen want beer and circuses. Not because we would examine their fraudulent model, but because it would make us more the thinker and less the consumer, and that would not suit their interests. When will we realize the our enemies are the rich who wish to keep all our hearts and souls in the thralldom of money. When will we realize that that enlightened state is the one which is long on ideas and short on things. Ah but you, in posterity, I hope to all you exist, you know because you are less physical than we. The elite is not our enemy, the enemy is the addiction of money and unchecked greed. Money is an addiction like Nicotine or Cocaine. I don't expect all the sodding proletariat, the great un-hosed, to be sophisticated. I just want a society free of the thralldom and mercenary grubbiness of money. 

It splits the heart and it galls to know where we should be going, and to know that where we are going are in two different directions. Yet are we not an ironic species!? Failure is mixed in with success at every turn. The soul wants to soar, the mind wants stimulation yet animals we are. Well then let the stupid have their bones and their day, but please let them never rule. I am sure that you in posterity would never let the stupid anywhere near a tool of power. I am confident that you in posterity all set a high bar. And that you all understand the proviso that one must prefer the superior to the inferior. 

Now I address you of today. Let me concretize it thus. Because you are stupid, you vote against you're own best interest. Because you're stupid you fail to read the wind. Because you're stupid you fail to understand irony. Because you're stupid you grasp on the crest without knowing which way the current goes. Because you're stupid you won't even know the moment you're 'movement' collapses under the weight of it's own implosion. Because you're stupid you won't even know what it is to have power. Because you don't have the mettle, you will fail. 

But some how, we will survive to you in posterity. Somehow we will, I'm confident. I am certain it will be the hard way, I'm certain it will be in spite of all the selfish interests. Of all the ungenerous and unfeeling, unpitying, racist, bigoted, backward minds, we will overcome. 

Hopeful then we must be. Ready to the fight must we be. Tolerant to a good cause. Open to our fellow. But critical of a bad idea. Sharp to mawkish power. Skeptical of authority. And...weary of the power of stupid.

Life In The Age Of The Banal.

Suppose within the girdle of this earth lies two sub-genres of Dubstep, whose low subsumed divisions make the vast, expanding cosmos, nothing. Piece then their similarities with thought, and try to travel long and far into space and self. How do you find it comrade? Comfortable? Did you learn something? Did the earth shake?

No?

Well...then take a sound probing of the depth. Is it shallow? Oh, it is? But aren't you going to say that profundity is all relative? What is all this depth and shallowness but muck and muck to the miner?
But, flippant person, are you really prepared to say that the difference between Beethoven and Bieber is a question of perspective? Or the difference between Shakespeare and Scrubs is merely a point of angle? Or that the term 'false equivalency' is a lie? Are there not quality differences between? Or separations of value? Because there's surely a flaw in your logic. If all things are relative, then in conclusion nothing has meaning. Words lose their meaning, gesture holds no use, art is a waste of significance. So by your thinking, all things are the same and all things are nothing.

So stupidity is equal to intelligence. Art is equal to the random. High equals low. Soft equals hard. Light equals dark. Deep equals shallow. Is Facebook as good as the mind? Or the instant message as good as the dead sea scrolls? If Einstein meant, by enlightening us with his truth, only to prefer the images of Twitter to Titian, than relatively speaking could I not say I think relativity is, relatively speaking, relative and therefore itself, nothing?

Ah curmudgeon my ancient droog. Dialectic summon! Where does that get us? Well it gets us at the heart of things. That is: Interest. You see the real difference between Beethoven and Bieber, Facebook and Mind is that one is more interesting than the other. And by corollary, one more boring than the other. You, being generous, I'm sure can figure the one from the other for that's not a relative question. For example, how much thought, how much concentration, how much consideration, how much practice went into the comparative music of each other. Significant by any count. And who shall last the longest? Need I spell it out? I understand when you say that none of this matters, it's wind over water and vapors in the sky. But dear sainted brother, are you really going to sponsor a jumped-up arrogant little, stupid monkey-boy over a man who suffered the fate of being deaf to his own art?

If so, then welcome then to the life of boring. Welcome to the age of the cat video. Welcome to the superficial. Welcome to the frivolous. Welcome to the Banal. Goodbye to Socrates and the wisdom that truth is knowing how little you know. Goodbye Confucius and the debts to study, the extension of faculty. Goodbye to Shakespeare and the line, "each man gets what he deserves." For in this world, reward often follows the stupefied. Merit, is what mass-man decides.

Aye there's the rub. Populism is the problem. From the Youtube comments to the Facebook post to the Twitter rant, to the message interchange with emoji to the Instergram pic, to the commonplace to the Yottabytes wasted, to the nights wasted to the black holes that have sunk sad souls, to the trolls to the reality TV proles, to football goals. Is that it? Circuses and bread? Junk food for junk brains? Oye Veh. what a palaver? Therefore I speak to you, yes you, in posterity. Perhaps you are a machine, computer or symbiosis of man and machine. Thank the Muses you are the trustees of intelligence and not our primitive species. Thank the decent, you have, I hope, solved our awful mess. What are apologies in time? So forgive if I don't apologize. But my duty here is to speak of the times, now.

Thus:

- Never underestimate the appeal of the banal, it's measureless attraction.
- Never discount the reach of stupidity.
- Never take for granted the gush for nonsense.
- Never wave off the idiot, infinite are his ways.
- Sigh on and frown, at the pleasures of the crowd.

Our world is long on things but short on ideas. Our culture is infantile, and therefore not free, and more about senses and less about sense. We must live, therefore why shouldn't we shine as we live?  Is my soul just a commercial? Can a romantic survive in the modern world? Should I just jump off something tall right now? What can it matter at all?

Alas, this is the Age of The Banal. No demons to exorcise. No land to till or great thought to mill. And thus also welcome to the age of decline, since we may not have progress without ideas.