Yeah, it’s been that kind of day. I’m aspiring to restlessness but I think forlorn is the right word. At least it starts with the right letter. I was trying to hunt down the phrase Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart and was trying not to cheat, turned out I didn’t find it by cheating but by accident, I mean the context for me. What I did find was some sort of disturbing things about, well, people.
Yeah, I know, we’re on high terror alert and they are closing down embassies; until they start keeping me in that loop though I’m not going to armchair quarterback that. I haven’t actually read Nietzsche in over thirty years, so I don’t remember the exact quote but that’s the first disturbing thing; at least the first ten Google hits should agree on the quote, right? In my head it’s something like ‘If you stare too long into the abyss the abyss stares into you’ and that’s close enough for me. How did that come up searching Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart? Good f—um forlorn question. Disturbing bit number two.
But what really had me bugged was reading Q & A on “what it means”. In the bad old days you couldn’t even get on a newsgroup if you drooled and couldn’t do anything beyond clicking on the pretty pretty picture. I mean sure, there were always savants, computer wizards that were genius with numbers but dumbasses with words, but those people know that about themselves and don’t or didn’t try answering word questions. It’s painful to watch philosophy 101 unfold before your eyes.
I never considered Nietzsche an overtly cryptic motherforlorner, but, you know, his native tongue was something I can stumble through if I don’t like a translation --- oh shit, one of the coolest things I ever saw anyone working on, or rather heard them working on, was this buddy of mine translating a mid-Italian tetrameter epic poem into English, he didn’t speak Italian, but it was beautiful. He was doing it by feel. --- So I think the quote is out of context, even in my own head. Out of context it’s a pretty cool three dimensional little piece of pondering. Disturbance three; how could so many motherfuckers wring dishwater out of a pristine mountain stream? In context, if I remember correctly, he meant, basically, Fight the monster long enough and you become the monster. Even still there is room for some play, as in; study the monster long enough and you give the monster a chance to study you. Still more fun out of context, expands what abyss might mean exactly. Oh. I had to delete some. I meant to add here, possible not too disturbing part one or at least point five; In that context it might explain why it came up under Our Beloved revolutionary Sweetheart, except that leads to disturbing three and a half --- I ran the search again and it came up with the context of Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart (which still has to be at least once removed from the real context) and no Nietzsche at all. And yes, amazon told me how many new and used copies were available and for what price and in which formats.
So, the real disturbing bit aka disturbing bit part four, is the same old grind; the dumbing down of America, although, honestly boys and girls, we are not the only English speaking motherfuckers on the world wide web. I pray to all that’s sacred that Deutsch newsgroups have more intelligent Nietzsche discussions. Not because I hope the nutty Germans are the only people not dumbing down, but, you know … Hmmm, maybe not. That’s like saying American newsgroups have more intelligent discourse on Jeffersonian democracy. Shit even half of you literate motherfuckers are tittering at discourse because it might be that one word for “doing it”.
The thing is I like the idea of someone struggling with the meaning of that on their own a whole lot better than dropping it like a piece of brain into a zombie tank. I guess I’m thinking of kids, teens, people discovering a sense of curiosity surreptitiously, developing a style of critical thinking as though it were some act of high treason or sedition. It’s a lot more interesting way of feeling the elephant. Asking what passes as a newsgroup these days is like watching a surfer boy picking up chicks by picking out a few bar chords on a sears and roebuck guitar and singing earnest lyrics; painful. Itchy. Uncomfortable.
Oh. Not trying to be cryptic myself. There’s an old parable about a merchant ship bringing an elephant to a kingdom that had never seen one so the king sends his blind wise men to go take a look, they each feel a different part of the elephant. The point of the parable is something like it’s all a matter of perception with a winking dig at the king (e.g. you want perspective you should go see for yourself) and at least one version appeals to a four year olds sense of humor (“You can trust me your majesty, it’s like a giant rope from heaven, tug on it and the sky opens up with poop”). That’s a compliment, there are grand and noble people who have lived and died without ever doing anything as profound as making a four year old laugh.
That’s what I meant by feeling the elephant. I like the idea of a curious teen feeling that elephant on his own. Googling elephant to look at the picture is not only much less romantic and much more mundane but it’s also like staking curiosity in the heart. I submit even if you’ve seen thousands of pictures of elephants, if you have the opportunity to feel one you should do it. I’d even suggest you break into a zoo, but that’d be illegal. To be more concrete about it; even if some motherfucker tells you the quote is from Friedrich Nietzsche and tells you what it means, you should go read Nietzsche yourself or quit asking questions about shit you don’t bother thinking about yourself.
Huh. That all came out a bit more, I don’t know, smug? than I was looking for. I’m going to stay with four year olds for a minute because I already brought them up. I think every artist (I mean painters) has gone through a period where they really try hard to capture the essence of a four year olds scribbling. There’s an openness and honesty in children’s drawings, and sure, every four year old except yours sucks and it’s just scribbling, but yours is genius. I’m going to skip my own opinion and just state that it takes a masterful adult to unlearn everything they know about design and paint like a child. If I were forced at gunpoint to teach philosophy to teenagers, that’d be my suggestion; approach it like you were ten years younger and not ten years older. Approach it with a sense of wonder and curiosity, not smugness or boredom, or, you know, go do something useful like play a pick-up game or tell poop parables to four year olds.
Oh, the context I was looking for with Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart? Camper Van Beethoven album. Of course y’all knew that, right? I could have sworn I saw y’all explaining that in a chat room (e.g. This is Joe Stalin’s Cadillac, Joe Stalin’s Cadillac, we’re drivin’ round the block in Stalin’s Cadillac) (of course a few of you quoted exhuming McCarthy, right species wrong genus).
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