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?

2009.07.01 July Morning Erotophilosophia

-(just another) erotophilosophia-

Moto (sic!): love is more retarded than blind

again at little hours,
when the stream neurons devours

I am the blind who finds himself
In cages of deep locked damnations
Putting true love on a dusty forgot shelf
By never thought abominations.

I am too deaf for caring,
I mute the cares that start from their very root,
It's just that I cannot recall
how to care.

The blind who doesn't see the ocean from the tides,
Who seeks emotion when emotion hides,
Who sought black widows when widows cannibalize,
Who'll never ever learn their dirty prides.

I must be too me,
When I look at ye,
I must be too decayed,
A moth ever hitting the glass
Through which he knows he ain't gonna pass.

The moth just felt the glass oh so intense,
That when he hit the glass he thought he'd get a recompense,
He never learns the voltage could be harming to the wing
He'll always masochistically swing
For the volupty on love's string.

I'm overburdened with homework poetry
Cause, after all, I'm still alive!
And absolution is not a way to be,
It has to follow a decay

I got the license for the feelings firewall
Remember:'God told me I don’t deserve a licensed feelings firewall because I'm too young and I've got to learn from them'?
__________
Or not? Ain't I lying to myself? OK, that's really the end... of this chapter. When will the thrill be over? I hope this not be an original way of saying something typical.

Again, the stream. I guess the thrill is gone... for now

The thrill is gone. The creeps are in their bed.

The final question(s) for you: don't you need a philosophy of love? And haven't you felt at times the vicinity of love and death, when you feel in the same amount that the beloved one needs your love and death at the same time?

2009.07.23 My Brain on the World: Science, Religion, Culture, Art Or What Romania Borrowed Worst from the West and East

2009.07.23 My Brain on the World*: Science, Religion, Culture, Art
Or What Romania Borrowed Worst from the West and East

I can neither ignore, nor agree, or disagree to how our parents and grandparents were indoctrinated with beliefs and appearances of the Romanian socialism ¹; a few have a nostalgia on their impossible communion with the Church, but the thinkings of the most of them became pseudo-pragmatic to sceptical ones: something like I know religion isn't going to bring me my daily bread. Art or books won't either do... OR: I am a Christian, I believe in God, except I don't go to church, but how come Virgin Mary had a child without a Man to... be there in the equation? Then with a kind of pretended satisfaction: Oh, but I liked Russian novels a lot; and Eminescu, and Sadoveanu. We also studied more intensively at school ("Pe vremea noastra... se facea carte.") a.s.o. Isn't it natural to leave books when there are computers, if we don't mention the already old-fashion TV? How would a developing child quit a beautifully coloured PC game or cartoon - which are more at hand for him - and head to the bookshelf? When I say natural, I'm not at all pretending this is the normal way to raise a child, but on the contrary this is simply the logical phenomenon for some generations since the 90's. It is excusable for a child, but not for the parents too. Now I'm not in the mood for child psychology; what I'm trying to reach is that before our so-called 1989 Revolution people simply had less activities (even though the TV programme was exaggeratedly little ²), and in that era of pseudo- scientific progress we really had a more imposing series of intellectual personalities - oppressed as they were, but with greater contribution; though this very oppression led, as suffering leads, to great artistic works. I don't happen to know - to be sincere - what the great figures/ models there were (except, perhaps, the cult of the dictators); I guess it's terror that shaped people's fates, an anti-mechanism through which people formerly differentiated by capitalism had afterward been sharing poverty. I made this calque inspired by one of W. Churchill's great quotes: "The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of misery." I invoked this socialism argument because at that times religion was in a big conflict with science. (Yes, it sounds childish; more precisely, it was the so called scientific development of our country that was supposed to nullify people's beliefs and belief's symbols because they were supposed to only follow the dictator.) The indoctrinator scientist puppets were writing brochures or books like Science and Atheism. This tells all about what they hated most: the believers (and also intellectuals). You could call me Captain Obvious, but these ideas are very expressively described in the essays from Despre lucrurile cu adevarat importante (On Really Important Issues), by Alexandru Paleologu, essays that I really liked in the past few days. The author explains for instance how a society that loses its faith is most likely to be ruled by a tyrant; and it's not about exaggerated belief led to fanaticism. Some of those essays describe how Romanian post-'89 society still suffers a handicap after over half a century with titles such as The Triumph of Oligophreny. A reflection of our current culture status can be reflected in some quotes like this:

Favorite Books
nu prea am pt ca toate care le citesc imi plac (~ I don't have so many 'cause all I read I like~ I'm not able to perfectly translate that, but it's a relative pronoun disagreement)

The book also gave me an interest in finding more information about our last king, Mihai I of Romania, one of the imposing figures that national propaganda made Romanians forget of. And that is all for now about Romanians' fake and blind transition from religion towards exact sciences. And this was the Religion - Science conflict.

Now, I start describing the conflict Science - Art.
Lately, I started creating a repulsion towards those who embrace only exact / experimental / realistic or however-you-like-to-call-them sciences; I must refer to one of my past notes: Those who are set on ground (from the sciences sphere i.e.) tend to transpose their selves into a virtual dimension, for instance in a utopia, in an imagined future. They might sometimes try to get even higher, with the help of addictions and may become junkies. Though, the higher they tend to get, the lower they sink.
Those who live in the clouds (from the humanistic sphere i.e.) tend to return to Earth, to reality. They might sometimes quit addictions, quit being junkies. It is them who, despite trying to settle with their roots deeper into the ground, they might rise on peaks never imagined before... Maybe. And this also springs from Paleologu's op. cit. that had an impact on me, making this discrepancy between realistic and humanistic people more obvious for me. He quoted stereotypes of the 90's like "With philology you couldn't get a job nowadays, the most important is electronics/ mathematics etc. (<In ziua de azi> e nevoie de electronisti. Nu mai faci nimic cu filologia.)" Partially true. He hated that "in ziua de azi" (=nowadays). After the 2000's, I guess, this became "Informatics (which means IT or computer science) is the future. You won't earn your money from philology/art etc". Also partially true.

Regarding philologists, artists or other similar people, the truth is you have to be really, but really good, if not a genius; if you are a mediocre artist, you are just another clown between clowns. You'll shake your tricks in vain if the audience throws with mud at you. Like one of my notable friends said: when you're a musician, you have to release a good song. After that, if you don't want to remain in the shadow, you have to release something remarkably better. I believe the audience needs the "clowns" too. Unless you are a national talent, the saying with the starvation warning will remain an axiom. And that is how that "partially" could be defined. Maybe I'm over-pleading for philologists, because I feel like being in front of a culture tribunal.

Regarding another branch of art, writing, I lately created a sort of repulsion towards poems too. Yes, you could freely call me ignorant, but it's a temporary belief; I think I'll be in a belief change for all of my life. The repulsion is explained in something like this: I think poetry makes ideas and feelings hide behind the stanzas and lyrics and words. During creation, the poet loses a noticeable quantity of what he/she had wanted to express.

During those times I would also hear people saying "That who knows two or three foreign languages will easily find something for a living". Oh, but I like hearing that; because I liked English; French started being more familiar to me, people would warmly then recommend me an ambassador, diplomat - or something like this - job. The truth is it only remained an enthusiasm.

These days I also personally know educated people from the realistic sphere (I don't want to sound like speaking about aliens) who present a paradox, I could say. They also belong to the majority that asks "So... Why did you choose the Faculty of Philology? You'll definitely become a teacher, am I right?" And again this same obsessive imperative, which sounds like a nightmare.

The conflict Homo universalis - Specialization states: "You must have cultura generala³" or "What will you do when someone asks you what the capital of West Samoa is?" In my first school there was a quote "It is far better to know something about everything than to know all about one thing." On the Internet I found that it is of Blaise Pascal: "Puisqu'on ne peut être universel en sachant tout ce qui se peut sur tout, il faut savoir peu de tout. Car il est bien plus beau de savoir quelque chose de tout que de savoir tout d'une chose; cette universalité est la plus belle. Si on pouvait avoir les deux, encore mieux" It intrigues me: what is this Romanian "cultura generala" that parents and mediocre/average teachers praise so much? The truth is I would like to be an expert in music, linguistics, literature, religion, philosophy, all together, but I'll never be able to. Though, I would agree to the last part: avoir les deux = to be universal and also specialist. "What if you meet someone in the street, and he/she asks you for how long Stefan cel Mare reigned?" First of all, I know his reigning years, because my first school is named after him and in the center of my native city we have his statue. Second, why should someone feel concerned about such a virtual situation?

The conflict Culture - Money or How to be a fool with diploma just for making money. "You must learn in school and graduate a faculty in order to do something for a living" our dear parents would advise us. But not for the sake of culture, but for money. Because some of them repent they didn't achieve goals like these.


____________________________________________________
*The title traces me to a short text that I had to translate in my second semester for an English language course, with an ignorant professor. It sounded like My Brain on God I guess.
1. I couldn't call it communism, as this is an utopia that was supposed to emmerge in West Europe.
2. about two hours containing: news on the Romanian Communist Party's achievements, propaganda for the dictators, and then eventually some bit of entertainment. Then, in weekends, I guess, extra hours of entertainment and a pretty good documentary, http://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleenciclopedia.
3. I won't translate it because it is too rooted in Romanian culture.