Friday, September 30, 2011
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Sunday, September 25, 2011
Radical Empiricism
"Just so, I maintain, does a given undivided portion of experience, taken in one context of associates, play the part of a knower, of a state of mind, of 'consciousness'; while in a different context the same undivided bit of experience plays the part of a thing known, of an objective 'content.' In a word, in one group it figures as a thought, in another group as a thing. And, since it can figure in both groups simultaneously we have every right to speak of it as subjective and objective, both at once".
- William James
Ralph Waldo Emerson's Immortalised Experience of Nature Mysticism
"Went yesterday to Cambridge and spent most of the day at Mount Auburn [Cemetery]; got my luncheon at Fresh Pond, and went back again to the woods. After much wandering and seeing many things, four snakes gliding up and down a hollow for no purpose that I could see not to eat, not for love, but only gliding; then a whole bed of Hepatica triloba, cousins of the Anemone, all blue and beautiful, but constrained by niggard nature to wear their last year's faded jacket of leaves; then a black-capped titmouse, who came upon a tree, and when I would know his name, sang chick-a-dee-dee; then a far-off tree full of clamorous birds, I know not what, but you might hear them half a mile. I forsook the tombs, and found a sunny hollow where the east wind would not blow, and lay down against the side of a tree to most happy beholdings. At least I opened my eyes and let what would pass through them into the soul. I saw no more my relation, how near and petty, to Cambridge or Boston; I heeded no more what minute or hour our Massachusetts clocks might indicate I saw only the noble earth on which I was born, with the great Star which warms and enlightens it. I saw the clouds that hang their significant drapery over us. It was Day that was all Heaven said. The pines glittered with their innumerable green needles in the light, and seemed to challenge me to read their riddle. The drab oak-leaves of the last year turned their little somersets and lay still again. And the wind bustled high overhead in the forest top. This gay and grand architecture, from the vault to the moss and lichen on which I lay, who shall explain to me the laws of its proportions and adornments?"
- Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journal, April 11, 1834
Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Perhaps the time is already come when it ought to be, and will be, something else; when the sluggard intellect of this continent will look from under its iron lids and fill the postponed expectation of the world with something better than the exertions of mechanical skill. Our day of dependence, our long apprenticeship to the learning of other lands, draws to a close".
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Re:Stacks
(c) RebekaJane - In the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Chaldean myth, the character Utnapishtim releases a dove and a raven to find land, however, the dove merely circles and returns. Only then does Utnapishtim send forth the raven, who does not return. Utnapishtim extrapolates from this that the raven has found land, which is why it hasn't returned.
Everything that happens is from now on
These lines open re: stacks, the final song on Bon Iver’s debut, For Emma, Forever Ago. Kumran (usually spelled ‘Qumran’) is the site where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in 1947. It symbolizes a personal catharsis for Justin Vernon, the band’s sole member; Vernon retreated to his father’s Wisconsin log cabin for three months to record the album, chop wood, and generally be alone. He explains the Kumran metaphor himself here:
When they found them it changed the whole course of Christianity, whether people wanted to know it or not. A lot of people chose to ignore it, a lot of people decided to run with it, and for many people it destroyed their faith, so I think I was just looking at it as a metaphor for whatever happens after that is new shit.
The song also hints at a slow shedding of the skin, rather than a complete catharsis. In the last verse, Vernon sings:
This is not the sound of a new man or crispy realization
It’s the sound of the unlocking and the lift away
Your love will be safe with me
It’s not a ‘crispy realization’ or a click of a lock in the door - a clean break from the past. In the final line he says that some of the past’s love will continue with him, like a pendant or a memory that won’t fade.
Not convinced? Vernon’s mom, Justine Vernon (real name, we assume), totally agrees. In this very adorable feature featuring several indie rock moms she says, “To me, it is not about getting over things and moving forward, it is about going through the sadness, taking some of it with you and being made whole because of it. I cry every time I listen to it”.
What ís good enough for Mrs. Vernon is good enough for us.
(courtesy of Wordsworth)
Re:Stacks – Bon Iver – For, Emma. Forever Ago.
This my excavation and today is Kumran
Everything that happens is from now on
This is pouring rain
This is paralyzed
I keep throwing it down two hundred at a time
It's hard to find it when you knew it
When your money's gone
And you're drunk as hell
On your back with your racks as the stacks as your load
In the back and the racks and the stacks are your load
In the back with your racks and you're unstacking your load
I've twisting to the sun I needed to replace
The fountain in the front yard is rusted out
All my love was down
In a frozen ground
There's a black crow sitting across from me; his wiry legs are crossed
And he's dangling my keys he even fakes a toss
Whatever could it be
That has brought me to this loss?
On your back with your racks as the stacks as your load
In the back and the racks and the stacks of your load
In the back with your racks and you're unstacking your load
This is not the sound of a new man or crispy realization
It's the sound of the unlocking and the lift away
Your love will be
Safe with me
A perfect re-birthday present.
http://www.thepresentparticiple.blogspot.com
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
The Calm
from The Storm Before the Calm, released 10 August 2011
I let you in, I showed you round, I talked you up
But things got bad and you just said that I'm too much
I know now the distance made your heart fade
You're always sad, always down but you never cry
And always smart, always knowing but you're never wise
I know now that having makes your heart stray
Next time I go I won't come back
And I'll be taking all I've lacked and I will
You'll be needing me but I'll be leaving your heart
Your heart's gone down
http://www.thepresentparticiple.blogspot.com
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
Beautiful Introduction to the book American Transcendentalism
"In 1869, Louisa May Alcott, under the cognomen Tribulation Periwinkle, submitted to the Springfield (Massachusetts) Republican a tongue-in-cheek letter with the "Latest News from Concord," Massachusetts. The town had long been associated with such residents as Ralph Waldo Emerson; her father, Bronson Alcott; and other representatives of the Transcendentalist movement that had flourished in New England thirty years before. "No gossip concerning this immortal town seems to be considered too trivial for the public," she observed, and thus she thought it her duty to add "the last rumor afloat."
Her humorous report was filled with jokes and puns today accessible mainly to scholars but in her time in common circulation. A new hotel was about to be established, she reported, called the Sphinx's Head, where "pilgrims to this modern Mecca" would be entertained in the most hospitable and appropriate style. "Walden water, aesthetic tea, and 'wine that never grew in the belly of the grape'" would be on tap for the refreshment of thirsty guests. "Wild apples by the bushel, orphic acorns by the peck, and Hawthorne's pumpkins, in the shape of pies," could be had "at philosophic prices." The accommodations themselves were special, for the inn would be furnished "with Alcott's rustic furniture, the beds made of Thoreau's pine boughs, and the sacred fires fed from the Emersonian woodpile." Moreover, the thoughtful proprietors would provide telescopes for those who wished "to watch the soarings of the Oversoul, when visible." The innkeeper would supply, gratis, samples of "Autumn Tints, Mosses from the Manse, Rhodora, and herbs from the Garden," as well as "photographs of the faces divine which have conferred immortality upon one of the dullest little towns in Massachusetts."
Most important to those eager to catch a glimpse of the community's famous residents (who by this time included Alcott herself), the hotel also would provide a daily bulletin to announce "the most favorable hours for beholding the various lions" who still roamed Concord's landscape. It would look something like this:
Emerson will walk at 4 p.m.
Alcott will converse from 8 a.m. till 11 p.m.
Channing may be seen with the naked eye at sunset.
The new Hermit will grind his meal at noon, precisely.
The ladies of Concord will not be exhibited on Sundays.
The need for such an establishment, Periwinkle concluded, had been long and deeply felt, especially because each spring brought "with the robins, a flock of reporters" who, like the inquisitive birds, "roost upon Concordian fences, chirp on Concordian door-steps, and hop over Concordian fields and hills, scratching vigorously, as if hoping to unearth a new specimen from what is popularly believed to be the hot-bed of genius."
Sunday, September 18, 2011
Thursday, September 15, 2011
Tree Of Life
I took heart in this depiction of the sephirot and main hindu chakras side by side. If you click it, it gets a lot bigger! ;-D
Pinchbeck thorough Marx and Levi-Strauss...
"The dialectical process that creased the possessive mind-set of the capitalist and the 'rational' outlook of the technocrat requires destruction of the premodern vestiges of communal and animistic beliefs, whether these beliefs were found in isolated pockets of Europe or in the indigenous populations of the New World. This destruction was part of the process that Karl Marx described as the alienation of all of our physical and intellectual senses into one sense: the sense of having.
Of course, "the sense of having" is not really a sense – it is an illusion of fulfilment that seems to extent outside of the self.
Modernism created a profound shift in the way we use our senses. In his book Myth and Meaning, Levi-Strauss admitted his initial shock when he discovered that Indian tribesmen were able to see the planet Venus in daylight, with the naked eye – "something that to me would be utterly impossible and incredible". But he learned from astronomers that it was feasible, and he found ancient accounts of Western navigators with the same ability. "Today we use less and we use more of our mental capacity than we did in the past," he realised. We have sacrificed perceptual capacities for other mental abilities – to concentrate on a computer screen while sitting in a cubicle for many hours at a stretch (something those Indians would find "utterly impossible and incredible"), or to shut off multiple levels of awareness as we drive a car in heavy traffic. In other words, we are brought up within a system that teaches us to postpone, defer, and eliminate most incoming sense data in favour of a future reward. We live in a feedback loop of perpetual postponement. For the most part, we are not even aware of what we have lost".
- Daniel Pinchbeck
The Mind and the Vagrant Senses
"The mind is attached as by an elastic cord to the vagrant senses".
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
Henry Miller
"The goal of life is not to possess power but to radiate it".
- Henry Miller
Another Fantastic Passage from Pinchbeck's Breaking Open The Head
"Piece by piece, the pattern of my past began to flare up in my mind. For the next several hours, I forgot about the tribesmen watching me. I was witnessing a "memory theater", a scrupulous replaying of all the elements of my early life – my parents' separation, my father's absence from my childhood, the imprint of my mother's loneliness and depression, my own solitude and love of reading, the many months I spent in a hospital bed at the age of eleven with a bacterial infection in my spine. I went back to the secret, baroque sources of childhood nightmare and fantasy – the primal fear of the monsters under the bed, the cave of darkness inside the closet, I saw the desperate, desolate parts of my life and the flashes of power and invention that were also mine. Separate from myself, yet enclosed within myself, I followed the traces of the being that I was, that was given to me, as it unfolds over time.
Laid out for me was the entire, intricate process of my self-development. The process was complex yet ultimately organic. The extension of the self was, I realized, a natural process, akin to the blossoming of a plant. While a plant extends towards the sun throughout its life, human beings evolve internally. We rise up and flourish, or become stunted, involuted, as we react to the forces that press against us. Our growth takes place in the invisible realm of our mental space, and the unreachable sun we rise toward is knowledge – of the self and the Universe.
Henry James once described human consciousness as "a helpless jelly poured into a mold". Iboga compelled me to perceive the exact shape of that mold; at the same time, it allowed me to escape that sense of helplessness. I felt a mingling of wonder, sorrow and freedom. By letting me perceive the shape of my past self, Iboga also seemed to be freeing me from the burden of that past. The action of the medicine actually was – as I had heard it described but wouldn't believe – the equivalent of ten years of psychoanalysis compacted into one interminable night…
… Through Iboga, I recognized my existing self as the product of all the physical and psychological forces that had acted upon me. Yet there seemed to be something beyond all of it, something that was "mine," an energy projected from outside of my biographical destiny. That energy was the self – and the self's tremendous capacity for transformation".
- Daniel Pinchbeck
Temple of Transition
Dear Temple of Transition from Ian MacKenzie on Vimeo.
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
Accepting the Little Demons
"Whenever a thing is done for the first time, it releases a little demon".
- Emily Dickinson
RT@TrishNowland
Monday, September 12, 2011
"Waking is a Dialectical Moment..."
"[Walter] Benjamin describes awakening as a historical and generational process as well as an individual one. History is the effort made by each age to bring the "not-yet conscious knowledge of what has been" into awareness. Waking is a "dialectical moment" suspended between the dreamworld of the past and the transformative energy locked within the present".
- Daniel Pinchbeck.
For the Bay Area...
Fave:
All my little plans and schemes,
lost like some forgotten dreams.
Seems that all I really was doing
was waitin' for you.
Just like little girls and boys,
playing with their little toys.
Seems like all we really were doing
was waitin' for love.
Don't need to be alone,
No need to be alone.
It's real love, it's real,
Yes it's real love, it's real.
From this moment on I know,
exactly where my life will go.
Seems that all I really was doing
was waitin' for love.
Don't need to be afraid,
No need to be afraid.
It's real love, it's real,
Yes it's real love, it's real.
Thought I'd been in love before,
but in my heart I wanted more.
Seems like all I really was doing
was waitin' for you.
Don't to be alone,
No need to be alone.
It's real love, yeah it's real,
It's real love, it's real,
Yes, it's real love, it's real,
It's real love, it's real,
Yes it's real love, it's real,
It's real love, it's real,
Yes it's real love, it's real,
It's real love, it's real,
Yes it's real love....
Second Fave:
Third Fave:
Saturday, September 10, 2011
Little
So you just put me away
I'm something you don't need now but just might one day
There's nothing much for me to say
I'll probly say it all once you have gone away
When you're too tired to raise your little head
Just raise your little hand instead
I know it still doesn't seem glad
But this is my first song in years that isn't sad
I heard you singing through the wall
I told you that it wasn't any good at all
When you're too tired to raise your little head
Just raise your little hand instead
from The Storm Before the Calm, released 10 August 2011
Friday, September 9, 2011
Band of Horses @ The Fillmore in San Francisco
Can't wait for this excellent twist of fate tomorrow night...
http://www.thepresentparticiple.blogspot.com
My Favourite Quotations so far from Breaking Open The Head
"Being prepared to receive what thought is not prepared to think is what deserves the name of thinking". - Jean-Francois Lyotard
"Whenever there is a reaching down into innermost experience, into the nucleus of personality, most people are overcome by fear and many run away. The risk of inner experience, the adventure of the spirit, is in any case alien to most human beings. The possibility that such experience might have psychic reality is anathema to them". - Carl Jung
"People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own soul". - Carl Jung
"The reader, the thinker, the flaneur, are types of illuminati just as much as the opium eater, the dreamer, the ecstatic. Not to mention that most terrible drug - ourselves - which we take in solitude". - Walter Benjamin
"Our age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchres of the fathers. It writes biographies, histories, and criticism. The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs? Embosomed for a season in nature, whose floods of life stream around and through us, and invite us by the powers they supply, to action proportioned to nature, why should we grope among the dry bones of the past, or put the living generation into masquerade out of its faded wardrobe? The sun shines to-day also. There is more wool and flax in the fields. There are new lands, new men, new thoughts. Let us demand our own works and laws and worship". - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
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