2009.08.17,18 Ars PROSAICA

"Poetry for prose is like a film frame for cinematography".

So this hypothesis, which is partially true, affirms that a poem is just an instant of a poet's ego. But how long can this instance be? Or its echo? Couldn't it span across more frames? Anyway, from my angle, a "standard" poem is a longer or shorter state of mind (an epic is an exception hence; or let's take The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, where there's a long series of events too)

I said "partially". Because we can either take Aeneid, or a poem with two lines. At the upper extreme, an epic national poem cannot express solely a frame of the lyrical ego's thoughts. It cannot be only a moment, a temporary feeling for the poet. On the other hand, at the lower extreme, an "I woke up/ and the Sun was smiling at me" poem is definitely a transient moment though; it only marks fugitive states of mind.

My thesis is:
Poetry is enclosed by its form (prosody, rhyme, verse etc.) and its usual sizes: there are more leftover parts of the poet's mind than he managed to express in the poem. And this limitation leads to hermeticism/esoterism.

2009.08.13 Fulfilment of the Revery

I've always seen you more attractive
Than you had been seconds before.
You've always made me recollecting
All my best times I could explore.

You never lie, you never cheat,
You gave yourself to me complete;
You filled my dreams just as you are,
You quenched my thirst sweetly bizarre.

You've always drawn me into frenzy
In moments that I hadn't hoped
To bring me into ecstasy;
I only now know how I coped.

I've always found you more attractive;
You never lie, you never cheat,
You gave yourself to me complete,
Guitar of low-pitched dreams I've had.

2:10-3:00 am

2009.07.27,31; 2009.08.02, 08 My Brain on the World Vol II: Egotism>Socialising>Relationship>Lyrism>Kitsch

How to Get from Selfishness to either Friendship or Love, or towards Lyrism or Kitsch

-De amicitia (On Friendship) - (I don't wish to rewrite Cicero's work)

Premise: Friendships = simply the sums of intersections of interests.

Maybe I'm one of the infinite ones who told that, but I'm only trying to check beliefs, as this is wanted to be an essay. Anyway, it would help for those who disregard that friendships are relationships based only on advantages to be obtained by one from each other; for those who try to over-civilise the actual meaning of true human relationships and to categorise and standardise them into books dedicated especially to good manners, do-it-like-this and don't-do-it-like-that, the Bible, ethics (a very bad-defined relative concept for me) a.s.o.
There are two sides along the barricade: extreme Christians who pretend disinterested love and disinterested friendship and the others who see any kind of human socialising as strictly depending on clear true interests. I could say there are some other people who reproach the socially/ erotically related ones with a concealed profit. And that is the ridiculous and blamable matter. Personally, I am more towards the second side. How could they doubtedly ask their selves whether his lover has an advantage of the relationship? Of course it's the sexual need which has to be satisfied, the financial safety both sometimes mixed with less and less estimated feelings. Or perhaps I'm misled not seeing that the question is on money, whether one partner wants the other's money or not. If that were the worry, then it's a matter of expressing how they conceive love's benefits in their mind. And that was only a concern that minuscule people have, as if there were two categories of humans: those who seek advantages, and those who are careless about their own lives; as if only evil minds were selfish while honourable spirits had no trajectory of life.
I once heard a teacher of logic who told us that we all are selfish, an idea that I have been quite influenced by since.

* *
*

-Ars amandi (The Art of Loving)- sung in stanzas, put on staff for millennia

At times, the abysses between us shout so heavily and loud, that some people get hurt. And our selfishness does the same and crumbles the apparent similarities that we have, making us more dissociated; finally ending up paranoids.
While we are remote universes, we tend to isolate our selves from society. Some are despairproof, some are not given a shield against life lessons by whomever force or deity you want. The latter ones might be considered they don't have enough experience.
When two abysses cross each other, one of the happiest results is lyrism, maybe all we remain with after a true relationship. From a later point in life, we notice that all those who have loved make poems. We might ask ourselves sometimes "Hmm, would grandpa create something artistic?" And we discover that this ability is rather common. It's not that popular belief about a poet who is a mad genius; they might be like that, but the most of them - trust me - are regular beings, as far as I can tell.

Kitsch vs. Art

A problem is that some people vulgarise art, reducing it to the expression of a business, like "I give something, I certainly have to receive something". Even though the equation can be reduced like this, it is actually a kitsch, like we can see out of the post 90's so-called R & B, then rap, hip hop, last, but not least - generally Balkanic jack ass manele and genres like these, where the poetry of the songs is perverted or absent; and it's no surprise they fit major audience, since they contain easy and shallow lyrics, adapted to lazy minds. How could there be art that only speaks of fame, wealth, sex, pretended respect and wisdom, foolish pride? It's mostly the same motif dressed with a more or less similar coat adapted to local (sub-)culture in order to simply be sold. And that would do for a definition.

Or there can be original artists - on the other side - that are motivated whether by money, fame, vanity, the wish to impress someone else. For instance, Tolstoi wrote for money at a certain point, some musicians compose for the sake of a beloved one (or more than one at a time, that corresponds no longer to love, you know); and it would also be a stupidity to deny that many artists start from poverty; (but that's the principle of deep art from misery - a painkiller, an eraser for those negative experiences out of the conscience).
In some other cases, people dislike showing off they are lyric or metaphysical, especially men, as they feel their selves more pragmatic.

And above these all there comes freedom: of being an introvert, an isolated freak, a so-called musician, an emo, an anonymous artist, a great poet, singer, instrument player; or just applying the principle ignorance is bliss:

Would that be a solution to an unsatisfiable knowledge?

{I don't know why I'm answering it myself or if there's going to be someone who dare [sic!] to read this. It's also just an alternative}
"Maybe" Nietzsche wasn't happier than an old country woman who has a sufficient perfect crop and her man and children close. {Well I know I have a mania to contradict many ideas and also myself, but... This also raises another giant question from a huge field of thinking: what kind of happiness are we talking about? Maybe not the religious one, but some simpler one, and if people perceive it as welfare then they don't ask their selves "hmm is my happiness what I should seek?" I'm saying this as a result of one of my recollections about echoing typical voices like "Well, if I don't have food how can I enjoy art?" which actually concretes in "You can't understand what money is" ("Tu nu stii ce-i ala ban"); though, why should we accuse those people for their way of thinking? Actually, I've been hating this type of ignorance. Instead, I'm applying the above statement in learning - and I'd apply it in teaching if it were the case - like some kind of passive tolerant acquisition of knowledge; not uninterested, but more self-planned: e.g. regarding my "efforts" of learning Catalan and Spanish I would do it like in fact children acquire them, with no teacher}

Which one do you choose?

2009.08.07 It's Present day (Satyr for "nemo")

Pass the concrete jungle (x4 whispered)

Pass the concrete jungle
If you find escape.
Seek your roots eternal,
Unless you wanna ro_______t

Let your mind decay,
Throw your thoughts away,
And on your birthday
We'll buy you a brain.

When thinking is painful,
Throw your thoughts away,
Don't mind about the city,
It buries you each day.

Let your mind decay,
Squeeze your thoughts enchained,
And on your birthday
We'll buy you a brain.

Let your body stink,
And your skin will choke;
On the Child's Day
We'll buy you a soap/ All you need's a soap.

Let your mind decay,
All your thoughts unchain
And on your birthday
We'll buy you a brain.

~ 1 AM

(possible attempt of lyrics for a song inspired by a guitar-drum-bass line made by a friend)

2009.07.24 Non-sense Longing

You'll be still for one more moment,
Fairy of the dreams I had.
We'll be true one to each other,
Let me chase you like I wish.

Widow chasing is far better than reaching their flesh, when they can sting, you know. But now I'm chasing extravaganza.
And that was the "poem" about nothing; the absolution of zero; the objectivation of the null. If there were a productive absurd/ non-sense, then let's say:

'That takes my thought to a non-sense place'
'I'm already there', said the lad,
'I am the ghoul beneath your pillow,
I am the ghoul under your bed'

Let's assume I go on with this absurdity; but to me it's like a fear of the non-sense. I'm one of those "oameni cu frica de ridicol" ("people who fear the ridicule") from an essay of Mircea Eliade. I had been wishing to make a kind of experiment with absurd ideas, like a vertigo of non-related words, just to see what it leads to, like a thought salad I had been lately concerned with. And it really represents an important question for me.

And you, haven't you been wandering around these questions? Haven't you thought of experimenting that vertigo of thoughts? Or haven't you felt that fear of the absurd the further you grew old?