massive, yes. poetry, anger, community, the schizoid enters a crowd.
Got a nuanced and intelligent response today from Richard Lopez, to this weekend’s blog:
"one must reserve the right to say 'no' to a given work. but I prefer Senor Borges formula for reading, which is that I failed the book. anger is useful only if to construct a positive alternative. when Mr Lydon sang, "anger is an energy" it is useful to remember that he stopped using the confrontational moniker Johnny Rotten to his birth name of John Lydon, a jump from societal alienation and stagnation of the Sex Pistols to the larger, commercial, culture located in PiL, Ltd. so then the irony of his statement "anger is an energy" is perhaps a bit muted. at any rate, anger works best when the culture is so flat that it needs to be kicked in the balls to get it going again. just last weekend I heard on the radio, for the first time ever, the Angry Somoans song "Right Side of My Mind," an early 80s punk band known for its crassness and love of cussing. great song, and it sure beats the hell outta contemporary pop-punk bands of today because when the Somoans were practicing their art the culture itself was dead, radio was a wasteland, tv sucked and so forth. and the punks of the 80s had no chance in hell to ever hear themselves on fm radio (with a few small exceptions), for example, see X's song "The Unheard Music." now what does it say about society that a song from the underground is given airplay 20 yrs later? I dunno, but I'm sure the Somoans, wherever they are, are probably laughing themselves silly. anyway, writing is large and I find there is so much good stuff to read I rarely feel anger. because there is a great quantity of good writing and writers in the small presses, online and in print, that there is greater cause to celebrate than not. only when poetry becomes so much a pose would I think that the anger Mr Lydon speaks is useful."
There is quite a lot here to respond to. First, my sadness that Richard has disabled the coments screen on his blog, which makes it harder for me to contact him on his blog – which i would have done several times. Should I email you Richard? I sense that in some blogs the comments screen has gone awry, or been a distraction, but I do relish its pungency – and it can lead to great conversations. Check out Jim’s post earlier this month on reading Williams and Stevens. Shit – almost 30 comments last time I checked. Blogging lacks the orality – frequent interruption, eye contact, physical spontaniety etc., of a conversation, but it can lead to a still powerful exchange – if more measured, distant, detailed (i.e. crafted) – of words, and is great fucking writing practice to boot. So I am very thankful for this online community, available even while I am sitting in a cubicle or, as now, with brilliant afternoon Cali sun streaming in the high window over our lil study.
Now what about anger? I may differ with Richard in the sense that somehow the airwaves have improved in the last 20 yrs (this seems implicit, if perhaps not designed, in his response). We have gone from Fleetwood Mac to – what? – Dave Matthews? I used to HATE this culture, which is why i sported years of purple hair (so certainly a shout out to Richard for the Samoans and the great X – SoCal represent – and likewise, the new sanitized punk stuff doesn’t do it for me, the energy – both the raw celebration and the defiance – has moved on, no longer sounds or looks that way, though I did see a great chocolate mohawk on a dyke in castro the other day) – but now, I don’t know, it offers nothing to me. If it offers anything (and I still do feel it shoved up against my face in advertisements, in fashions and attitudes, social etiquette and assumptions, not to mention cutlural end products like movies, TV shows, pop ballads) it reminds me, again and again, that this is the fabric of capital, American capital, this is our culture, our psyche, in which I am entwined, sometimes a discontent, sometimes a (often ironic, sometimes naive) participant (not that a discontent is somehow not a participant). So I see a continuing need to awaken anger consciously, to stir things (me included) up and reclaim a lot of the raw edges and wounds in our culture, to explore them, call attention to their continuing soreness, sharpness, to the cultural and personal delusions and makeup on this particular manifestation of empty space. Conscious anger is rare in our airwaves, and at our dinner tables. Something vital is sapped then – read a few protest poems to mark their chartings of anger – how often is it overly stiff and flatly projective, or inarticulate/limply implosive – how often does it hit a stride both savage and compassionate – a wake up call?
Here’s where a constructive anger might start: Today I was noting how very explicitly the underlining of male sexual desire in advertising (which of course is a prime motor of all commerical cultural products as well) enhances not only the fetishizing of my desire through some seemingly unrelated product (a Michelob) but my general consciousness of sexual desire as well. Surrounded in this culture that continually sells me this fantasy of fucking some gorgeous moaning female body as a great thing, an ultimate goal and reward – not even to be with her, a real live woman, but to obtain a "live" representation of a fantastic ideal (my ideal – and to be with her for me): some airbrushed curvy model in a bikini with a bucket of beer between her legs. And that’s an obvious one.
In that it is annoying that our culture eggs on my unsatisfiable lusts, in that it seduces me to continually further perversify them, to see them as natural, implict, unquestioned, it sews manifold havoc. Including distracting me from my own male experience (constantly defered onto some unavailable other attainable (so the logic runs) only through my fluency and mastery of culture and that means the continuing, steady consumption of its products).
That’s somewhat overstated, but the logic's there. And this also sews havoc in male friendships, and between the sexes. It amps up my inability to walk down the street without noting each and every attractive female body (in a hot week in a young city – like SF, there are many) as a desired object - its exhausting, this desire, and uncomfortable. I can’t blame this culture for my own (distracted, annoying) desires and experience (noting women pass has felt like i am literally being tugged out of my own body – a real drag), but I can see its complicity, how it is, in a very real sense, my enemy and opponent in this arena, and so many others. Its not so much national no-buy day, as a desire for international no-buy life, a desire to push consumption (incl. of women, sex) to the back of the agenda, out of the gleaming Hummer driver’s seat. So I can become angry, I can cultivate an anger, an aggressive distaste, and articulate that, for this side of our cultural production. I can label it, I can argue and present it, it’s a place I can speak from – with anger, with that power running through.
As a buddhist, this oppositionality is useful – if our consumer culture is my enemy, wonderful, I can learn from it. I think, in this conscious sense, the same relation applies to poetry. As juvenile as many SofQ/post-avant debates can become, there is a real dojo sharpening of our shared practices available in this split – if we let it be so. Otherwise, its covert or overt snipping, subterfuge, acts of war.
If you are like me, you’ve probably lost how this relates to Richard’s comment. It more relates off it. But here’s where Richard ends:
"anyway, writing is large and I find there is so much good stuff to read I rarely feel anger. because there is a great quantity of good writing and writers in the small presses, online and in print, that there is greater cause to celebrate than not. only when poetry becomes so much a pose would I think that the anger Mr Lydon speaks is useful."
This sounds spot on. Yet... My own commitment to poetry wavers. Especially in my reading of it. I am leary of how a bumbling, unconscious person (me?), bound by their habits, opens a book and becomes a savvy, fluent reader. I am uncomfortable with this “but poetry is important!” faith that underlies it. I am not sure I see it as that different – but certainly less social – than the way many religious believers are so sensitive to matters of doctrine, but once the sermon is over, resume their other, prior and dominant faith, their ignorant habits. As you can see, I have a poetry complex. The ease and relaxed way in which Richard is writing about poetry – I don’t feel that. I'm torn. I may envy the adept, the fluent reader, but to me this is tough work – its an edge, a big I don’t know which I am trying to stick with. Trying to. I haven’t read much lately, so why am I even talking about this? Why do I care? What kind of investment is it? I guess I ask that question of all of us – whats the investment in writing, in reading, in poetry? Is it ca-reer (work-identity?)? A home, friends, a safe nest in the hostile world? Is it really a practice we take up to transform our life, our world?
Unlike Richard’s text, I know –as a reader, I still am tugged and turned by the status, the lineage, the pedigree and pedastal of art – i hate how its important, and other corners of life are not. I hate witnessing that shift in others, and in – most of all – myself. That’s a soruce of anger, an anger I feel, again and again, a frustration w/ and on the page. As much as I know what Borges means, I do not accept his terms: I am not failing the text (which sounds too Christian by far too me, not to mention, ah, an exact instance of this very elevation of important works) – I am battling it, or bouncing off it, and sometimes passionately in love with it. And I am puzzled – why the bounce, the frustration, repulsion, why all the passion and fuss? I think, in all this conflict, I am discovering my own authority as a reader/writer, as an artist, even as a citizen, what the heck, man and human too. Finding my own strength, learning to trust my own instincts and repsonses. Not, essentially, through some rebellious usurping or trashing of other authorities (though that happens), but by coming to witness how other authorities have become me, how my multitude doesn’t recognize how it is now free-standing, how my own power relations are perverse, heirarchical, war-making. And, from that – sore – place, begining the work of making peace, including the work of saying no to larger coercive structures in our culture (and in my self). Only out of this recognition can I joyfully, attentively, freely read and write. It is not easy work.
So I am hearing what Richard writes of, what Jim is getting into, what Ron daily returns to. Bit by bit, moving into and through this experience. In a very real way, here on the blog, in prose, I am feeling more fluent, alert, able. Home sweet home (hopefully a portable one).
So it’s a jumble of questions. I am making them public here, let me know if you have a place in this, it is certainly lonely – if okay, i it must be so – to do it alone.
"one must reserve the right to say 'no' to a given work. but I prefer Senor Borges formula for reading, which is that I failed the book. anger is useful only if to construct a positive alternative. when Mr Lydon sang, "anger is an energy" it is useful to remember that he stopped using the confrontational moniker Johnny Rotten to his birth name of John Lydon, a jump from societal alienation and stagnation of the Sex Pistols to the larger, commercial, culture located in PiL, Ltd. so then the irony of his statement "anger is an energy" is perhaps a bit muted. at any rate, anger works best when the culture is so flat that it needs to be kicked in the balls to get it going again. just last weekend I heard on the radio, for the first time ever, the Angry Somoans song "Right Side of My Mind," an early 80s punk band known for its crassness and love of cussing. great song, and it sure beats the hell outta contemporary pop-punk bands of today because when the Somoans were practicing their art the culture itself was dead, radio was a wasteland, tv sucked and so forth. and the punks of the 80s had no chance in hell to ever hear themselves on fm radio (with a few small exceptions), for example, see X's song "The Unheard Music." now what does it say about society that a song from the underground is given airplay 20 yrs later? I dunno, but I'm sure the Somoans, wherever they are, are probably laughing themselves silly. anyway, writing is large and I find there is so much good stuff to read I rarely feel anger. because there is a great quantity of good writing and writers in the small presses, online and in print, that there is greater cause to celebrate than not. only when poetry becomes so much a pose would I think that the anger Mr Lydon speaks is useful."
There is quite a lot here to respond to. First, my sadness that Richard has disabled the coments screen on his blog, which makes it harder for me to contact him on his blog – which i would have done several times. Should I email you Richard? I sense that in some blogs the comments screen has gone awry, or been a distraction, but I do relish its pungency – and it can lead to great conversations. Check out Jim’s post earlier this month on reading Williams and Stevens. Shit – almost 30 comments last time I checked. Blogging lacks the orality – frequent interruption, eye contact, physical spontaniety etc., of a conversation, but it can lead to a still powerful exchange – if more measured, distant, detailed (i.e. crafted) – of words, and is great fucking writing practice to boot. So I am very thankful for this online community, available even while I am sitting in a cubicle or, as now, with brilliant afternoon Cali sun streaming in the high window over our lil study.
Now what about anger? I may differ with Richard in the sense that somehow the airwaves have improved in the last 20 yrs (this seems implicit, if perhaps not designed, in his response). We have gone from Fleetwood Mac to – what? – Dave Matthews? I used to HATE this culture, which is why i sported years of purple hair (so certainly a shout out to Richard for the Samoans and the great X – SoCal represent – and likewise, the new sanitized punk stuff doesn’t do it for me, the energy – both the raw celebration and the defiance – has moved on, no longer sounds or looks that way, though I did see a great chocolate mohawk on a dyke in castro the other day) – but now, I don’t know, it offers nothing to me. If it offers anything (and I still do feel it shoved up against my face in advertisements, in fashions and attitudes, social etiquette and assumptions, not to mention cutlural end products like movies, TV shows, pop ballads) it reminds me, again and again, that this is the fabric of capital, American capital, this is our culture, our psyche, in which I am entwined, sometimes a discontent, sometimes a (often ironic, sometimes naive) participant (not that a discontent is somehow not a participant). So I see a continuing need to awaken anger consciously, to stir things (me included) up and reclaim a lot of the raw edges and wounds in our culture, to explore them, call attention to their continuing soreness, sharpness, to the cultural and personal delusions and makeup on this particular manifestation of empty space. Conscious anger is rare in our airwaves, and at our dinner tables. Something vital is sapped then – read a few protest poems to mark their chartings of anger – how often is it overly stiff and flatly projective, or inarticulate/limply implosive – how often does it hit a stride both savage and compassionate – a wake up call?
Here’s where a constructive anger might start: Today I was noting how very explicitly the underlining of male sexual desire in advertising (which of course is a prime motor of all commerical cultural products as well) enhances not only the fetishizing of my desire through some seemingly unrelated product (a Michelob) but my general consciousness of sexual desire as well. Surrounded in this culture that continually sells me this fantasy of fucking some gorgeous moaning female body as a great thing, an ultimate goal and reward – not even to be with her, a real live woman, but to obtain a "live" representation of a fantastic ideal (my ideal – and to be with her for me): some airbrushed curvy model in a bikini with a bucket of beer between her legs. And that’s an obvious one.
In that it is annoying that our culture eggs on my unsatisfiable lusts, in that it seduces me to continually further perversify them, to see them as natural, implict, unquestioned, it sews manifold havoc. Including distracting me from my own male experience (constantly defered onto some unavailable other attainable (so the logic runs) only through my fluency and mastery of culture and that means the continuing, steady consumption of its products).
That’s somewhat overstated, but the logic's there. And this also sews havoc in male friendships, and between the sexes. It amps up my inability to walk down the street without noting each and every attractive female body (in a hot week in a young city – like SF, there are many) as a desired object - its exhausting, this desire, and uncomfortable. I can’t blame this culture for my own (distracted, annoying) desires and experience (noting women pass has felt like i am literally being tugged out of my own body – a real drag), but I can see its complicity, how it is, in a very real sense, my enemy and opponent in this arena, and so many others. Its not so much national no-buy day, as a desire for international no-buy life, a desire to push consumption (incl. of women, sex) to the back of the agenda, out of the gleaming Hummer driver’s seat. So I can become angry, I can cultivate an anger, an aggressive distaste, and articulate that, for this side of our cultural production. I can label it, I can argue and present it, it’s a place I can speak from – with anger, with that power running through.
As a buddhist, this oppositionality is useful – if our consumer culture is my enemy, wonderful, I can learn from it. I think, in this conscious sense, the same relation applies to poetry. As juvenile as many SofQ/post-avant debates can become, there is a real dojo sharpening of our shared practices available in this split – if we let it be so. Otherwise, its covert or overt snipping, subterfuge, acts of war.
If you are like me, you’ve probably lost how this relates to Richard’s comment. It more relates off it. But here’s where Richard ends:
"anyway, writing is large and I find there is so much good stuff to read I rarely feel anger. because there is a great quantity of good writing and writers in the small presses, online and in print, that there is greater cause to celebrate than not. only when poetry becomes so much a pose would I think that the anger Mr Lydon speaks is useful."
This sounds spot on. Yet... My own commitment to poetry wavers. Especially in my reading of it. I am leary of how a bumbling, unconscious person (me?), bound by their habits, opens a book and becomes a savvy, fluent reader. I am uncomfortable with this “but poetry is important!” faith that underlies it. I am not sure I see it as that different – but certainly less social – than the way many religious believers are so sensitive to matters of doctrine, but once the sermon is over, resume their other, prior and dominant faith, their ignorant habits. As you can see, I have a poetry complex. The ease and relaxed way in which Richard is writing about poetry – I don’t feel that. I'm torn. I may envy the adept, the fluent reader, but to me this is tough work – its an edge, a big I don’t know which I am trying to stick with. Trying to. I haven’t read much lately, so why am I even talking about this? Why do I care? What kind of investment is it? I guess I ask that question of all of us – whats the investment in writing, in reading, in poetry? Is it ca-reer (work-identity?)? A home, friends, a safe nest in the hostile world? Is it really a practice we take up to transform our life, our world?
Unlike Richard’s text, I know –as a reader, I still am tugged and turned by the status, the lineage, the pedigree and pedastal of art – i hate how its important, and other corners of life are not. I hate witnessing that shift in others, and in – most of all – myself. That’s a soruce of anger, an anger I feel, again and again, a frustration w/ and on the page. As much as I know what Borges means, I do not accept his terms: I am not failing the text (which sounds too Christian by far too me, not to mention, ah, an exact instance of this very elevation of important works) – I am battling it, or bouncing off it, and sometimes passionately in love with it. And I am puzzled – why the bounce, the frustration, repulsion, why all the passion and fuss? I think, in all this conflict, I am discovering my own authority as a reader/writer, as an artist, even as a citizen, what the heck, man and human too. Finding my own strength, learning to trust my own instincts and repsonses. Not, essentially, through some rebellious usurping or trashing of other authorities (though that happens), but by coming to witness how other authorities have become me, how my multitude doesn’t recognize how it is now free-standing, how my own power relations are perverse, heirarchical, war-making. And, from that – sore – place, begining the work of making peace, including the work of saying no to larger coercive structures in our culture (and in my self). Only out of this recognition can I joyfully, attentively, freely read and write. It is not easy work.
So I am hearing what Richard writes of, what Jim is getting into, what Ron daily returns to. Bit by bit, moving into and through this experience. In a very real way, here on the blog, in prose, I am feeling more fluent, alert, able. Home sweet home (hopefully a portable one).
So it’s a jumble of questions. I am making them public here, let me know if you have a place in this, it is certainly lonely – if okay, i it must be so – to do it alone.
posted by Kyle at 5:01 PM
6 Comments:
absolutely email me. you've touched upon a myriad of subjects that I often think about in my writing/living. should we cultivate an anger within our writing/reading then I would like to see a catullan kind of poetics, one that eschews bullshit, but insists on life's sensuality, the pleasures to be had and gained in living. you touch upon something dear to my thinking, the nature of desire, and how that desire is commodified in our culture, thus denaturing it in order to purchase some product or service on the order that we can become the illusion that used to sell us that product or service. yet I can't help but consider that the very products, computer and software, I use, that has been sold to me thru our capitalist society, are the items I use to blog, to write and email poet-friends and family. would it be that is a definition of the postmodern condition? and what of the language I've inherited I use within my culture, both in my speaking and writing. writing is not a career, in any sense, so then if poetry matters, at least to those who engage in it, who love it, and think that it can indeed change lives and thought, how does one make it a life. anger is productive, but in a limited way, since poetry becomes a way of living, to be always angry means one may become embittered. one may become embittered anyway, but I find poetry is best approached with love. a harder thing to cultivate. I recall back in my undergrad days I was reading quite a lot of Phillip K. Dick, and found a remarkable diary of his published with the title _Exegesis_ which foregrounded Dick's gnosticism, his repeated search for the divine within the detritus. and so he suggested that we spread love, and empathy, because these are the hardest to cultivate and sustain, and therefore better for the human enterprise. I know this might sound like hippy horse dookie, but I do think love, and pleasure, grounded in the knowledge that human kind is capable of great evils, is worth writing towards. oh yeah, I did make it sound that the Angry Samoans on the radio today would seem like the wasteland that is radio is better today then 20 yrs ago. not so, commercial radio is as crappy now as it was then. it may even be worse today. I do think it is funny that the pressures that influenced what was on fm radio 10 to 20 yrs ago, have ceased, and what was once considered the most malignant form of music then, punk and rap, are now pretty tame compared with the caca on the air now.
Not to think correctively, but positively!
Let us turn to XXXXX XXXX:
"...it must be stated so that people are always implied. Then the work always becomes great. People are not always sought out in too intimate a detail. You must include all people. You just must be 'yourself'. The belief in 'it' is your best service, working towards it, expressing it. The more you can get this expression of inspiration out to express, the more art it is, the more you want to exist, the more you must adhere to the laws of nature -otherwise expression will destroy itself. It must be strong in itself, not an affectation with momentary satisfaction...
"If for instance you sense the nature of children who look at everything as if they were going to destroy it -those forces in them- that intimateness- the spontaneity of participation, where it exists, if you sense this, you also sense that a thing is 'made' to be incomplete for play...
Compare this with XXXXX' work on his multiples, the demand of the "water bottles" -to throw away their caps as far from you as possible, to dump the water, to destroy the initial structure of the sculpture. Then in the rejection of doing so, leaving the work incomplete, or in doing so, following XXXXX' instructions, leaving the work incomplete, splitting it, mutating it -the importance of action, the importance of dichotomy!
Again turning to XXXXX XXXX:
"The more deeply a thing is engaged in the unmeasurable, the more deeply lasting is its value."
richard - as to commodity culture, thats what i meant by backseating it - sure, we still acquire, but it is no longer the driving force, the dominant idea, that somehow acquisition of new/other makes for good. and, alongside our use andlvoe of the objects of our culture, couldn't we develop a more detailed, on-going critique of their workings? the symbology of advertisingis effective, but it is endlessly reductive towards what it sells. likewise language - its acceptance as a transparent commodity (even futher, its radical naturalization) is interrogated only at the margins of our culture - in some spiritual and artistic pursuits, in the courtroom and the psychologists couch (and often between lovers). but - the norm - is it is accepted as a universal currency. so the critique of words, a recognition of the limits of language, of its coercive powers, needs to sit beside its blatant usefullness and libratory possibilities.
i am thinking of how when i was a kid, people would see me reading a book and respond - invariably - in the positive. and i have seen this for others - as if reading itself was a transcendent good. its this type of horseshit thinking i would call attention to - incredibly sloppy.
and love, well, from my position, i take the cultivating of love and compassion for granted. its been foregrounded in my work so far as to become a nuisance, to corrupt itself, and to rot under my force of trying to make more love, more love, more love. unless i clear room for anger, for the possibility of conflict, a lack of resolution between differences, my efforts towards love and ocmpassion are crippled,they become a bias, they become "nice" they become a burden.
and i have felt them so. anger, as a path, is a more explosive energy, and i don't rely on explosives. i use them rarely. but i will not be able to get by without summoning that power.
'odi et ami' I find always useful. hating and loving are concommittant properties within the same person. I recall a song covered by the great Husker Du, '8 miles high' originally done by The Byrds. only that is is ramped up in speed and greatly distorted guitar work in Husker Du's version, so when Bob Mould gets near the last 3rd of the song he can no longer sing, but instead screams, bathetic screaming, an anger that transmutes the pain into a classic Aristotelian (sp?) dounemount of catharsis. because my own interpretation of this version is the anger and frustration of coming of age in reaganamerica, where the hippy ideals of peace, love and understanding (e. costello) have been blunted into corporate greed, the 'greed is good' manifesto spoken of by Micheal Milken in the 80s.
that anger clears the air, and helps generate lovingkindness, and compassion. for these are the forms of love I mean. I am an aging punk who realize that anger, the sort of anger epitomized by the worst of the punk bands now, like Blink 182, is merely a pose, and that kind of pose can be deadly to serious art.
and I dunno what serious art is. I think pop songs are equal to well-written poems. the same goes for movies, and trash culture, all of which I love. I see no distinction between hi and lo art. if poetry is serious to you (the larger, community, 'you) then poetry becomes a matter of life and death. and yes, it is a religious calling. and that calling is important only to those who deem it so. not for many, many others in our culture who don't give a shit about poetry. and why should they? but that is another subject altogether. I do know that most people hunger for meaningful language, and find it mostly in pop songs and so on.
and the meaning of reading? is it a good in itself. I can't answer that, tho I do think you've hit another nail in that most people engage in bullshit thinking, concieved wisdom, and all that tripe.
an excellent discussion.
'odi et ami' I find always useful. hating and loving are concommittant properties within the same person. I recall a song covered by the great Husker Du, '8 miles high' originally done by The Byrds. only that is is ramped up in speed and greatly distorted guitar work in Husker Du's version, so when Bob Mould gets near the last 3rd of the song he can no longer sing, but instead screams, bathetic screaming, an anger that transmutes the pain into a classic Aristotelian (sp?) dounemount of catharsis. because my own interpretation of this version is the anger and frustration of coming of age in reaganamerica, where the hippy ideals of peace, love and understanding (e. costello) have been blunted into corporate greed, the 'greed is good' manifesto spoken of by Micheal Milken in the 80s.
that anger clears the air, and helps generate lovingkindness, and compassion. for these are the forms of love I mean. I am an aging punk who realize that anger, the sort of anger epitomized by the worst of the punk bands now, like Blink 182, is merely a pose, and that kind of pose can be deadly to serious art.
and I dunno what serious art is. I think pop songs are equal to well-written poems. the same goes for movies, and trash culture, all of which I love. I see no distinction between hi and lo art. if poetry is serious to you (the larger, community, 'you) then poetry becomes a matter of life and death. and yes, it is a religious calling. and that calling is important only to those who deem it so. not for many, many others in our culture who don't give a shit about poetry. and why should they? but that is another subject altogether. I do know that most people hunger for meaningful language, and find it mostly in pop songs and so on.
and the meaning of reading? is it a good in itself. I can't answer that, tho I do think you've hit another nail in that most people engage in bullshit thinking, concieved wisdom, and all that tripe.
an excellent discussion.
sorry for the double posting. don't know what happened, only that my desktop was dowloading an update and I wanted to get us much in and posted before the computer needed to be restarted to complete the update. anyway, did want to add that I always thougth of Borges generousity, and I do think that he did believe in 'important works' why not?, in his reading of varied texts is tied to his gnosticism, not Christian charity, or what have you, where tho there my be important books, there is no greatest, since this is an imperfect world, populated by flawed beings, created by fucked-up gods. I can't verify if Borges was indeed gnostic, not read much criticism on him in ages, only that is one way I read him, much like why I find Dick's work so appealing.
as the great costello asked, '(what's so funny) 'bout peace, love and understanding'
Richard
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