Autonomy

My philosophy (pretty much conclusively, actually) is that if you're not busy doing or saying something important, you should be concentrating your efforts on listening, and learning. So I'm always "learning", even when I'm supposed to be busy doing things. And I say things more or less by accident, except for when I force myself to write, like here.

This is going to be one of those tangential posts I warned you about in the title of this blog and in the introductory post but then never really delivered. I am a total mess, and I would like to now try and explore this mess, in as unmethodical a way as possible.

William Wordsworth wrote a poem once. It was called Ruth, about a six-year-old of the same name, and a stanza from it got me focused for a while the other day on what was upsetting me:


"Beneath her father's roof, alone
She seemed to live; her thoughts her own;
Herself her own delight;
Pleased with herself, nor sad, nor gay;
And, passing thus the live-long day,
She grew to woman's height."


I like the fact her whole childhood is spent in this reclusive independence - that she never recovers from the insult (her mother's just died and been replaced); I like the matter-of-fact way in which it's presented. To me she's a heroic figure, a little reminiscent of Vincent (bottom of page) in terms of her blunt unwillingness to "accept" reality at the price of rejecting parts of herself.

Edgar Allan Poe himself (who features prominently in Vincent) seems a very good example of what I'm talking about. His claim to fame was, apparently, his mastery of the recurring themes of the macabre, mystery, and melancholy in his stories. But, read today, his terror tales are quaint, his whodunnits frankly stupid, and his stories of human misery, though not exactly unaffecting, more noteworthy for their general grandiloquence. Or maybe that's just me.

In any case, he gives the distinct impression of a young boy very excited about his ability to use big words, show off his deductive skills and tell scary stories over the campfire with the flashlight half under his chin. In other words, he gives enthusiastic voice to what most of us adults only secretly want to do, both by what he conveys and by what he occupies his time with, much like Vincent, and Ruth.

These people, more often fictional than not, truly inspire me. And the thing is, it's not so obvious that I shouldn't be one of them. I was a prime example of everything this represents until about the age of 14. I had something of a crisis of identity when I discovered that other people and my effect on them are part of what makes me who I am, and have spent most of my time since trying anxiously to make sure I notice people, and their reactions to me, hence the "listening" I mentioned earlier.

But the truth is I can't do it. I don't particularly care about "people". I'm not talking about misanthropy - or I guess if the previous sentence was misread the way I mean I'd actually be implying sociopathy, so not that either - but about the level of attention and place in my heart for the reactions of the anonymous collective, of strangers, of "the general public", of any group. I couldn't give a flying fuck. It's probably inborn. I can't help not giving two shits about facile appraisals of my character and conduct. That's why it never makes any impact no matter how positive and is so extraordinarily simple to deflect when it isn't. It's all just a mental construct, with no impetus of its own, kept alive purely on my stupidity.

The idea behind writing this blog was to inch in the direction of presenting myself - of introducing myself, really - through what makes me who I am rather than what makes me easy for other people to deal with. I think the mistake was in the decision to go in inches. It's not a question of balance, like people keep telling me. You don't divide your life between being alive and pleasing other people. The situations that require outright fakery are rare and extreme. A lot of the time you'll obscure the truth or embellish it because it seems useful to get a certain reaction out of people, but it's almost never something you owe them. You do and say what you want and refrain from doing or saying that which you don't.

Basically, fuck everybody.

A Heart Like the Ocean, Mysterious and Dark

"...You have greatness, she continued, but Mr Ramsay has none of it. He is petty, selfish, vain, egotistical; he is spoilt; he is a tyrant; he wears Mrs. Ramsay to death; but he has what you (she addressed Mr. Bankes) have not; a fiery unworldliness..." - Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse.


As you may or may not have noticed, I've been undergoing some form of identity restructuring over the past year or so. I have rejected - completely - Judaism and Zionism and embraced in their stead and as their replacement, as it were, the more universal and humanistic Taoism and democracy.

But something is missing.


Being a part of the Jewish people or the Zionist enterprise means more than just lending your support to a particular hierarchy of values. To use a problematic expression whose dubiousness is probably actually appropriate here, it ennobles you. It gives you a sense of participation in something that transcends space and time; of a metaphysical mission; but it does something more too. Something that the metaphysical missions of Taoism and democracy don't quite suffice for.


Going back a few (okay, many) centuries to the ancient Greek civilisation about which I know remarkably little, we encounter a curious phenomenon.

It's called Greek mythology, though I suppose at the time it was called the history and reality of life among the gods, and no, I'm not about to compare it to monotheistic religion, at least not directly, but to make the point that a civilisation presumably not entirely composed of complete idiots, chose to base their "hierarchy of values" on a system more or less congenitally devoid of both morality and reason.

This argument would be neutralised in the eyes of those who assert that both morality and reason are relative concepts, but I contend that the Greek gods were arseholes by any standards, and doubt that many people anywhere at any time would honestly disagree with me, including the ancient Greeks.

As for reason, it is perhaps less clear-cut, but the fruits of Greek civilisation suggest that they conducted themselves far more responsibly and adultly than their gods did, and in any case, Olympian gods are never exactly made out to be paragons of wisdom, unless I'm forgetting some stories - in stark contrast to, say, the monotheistic God.


So what did the Greek Gods have going for them? The conventional explanation I at least always seem to encounter is that they helped explain away annoying things like natural disasters and bad harvests and military defeats and kept people from going into Woody Allenesque funks over how small and insignificant they were.

That's probably true, but another central aspect of Greek mythology is that the stories are really fucking cool. And not even action-movie, bombastic cool, but an understated, morally ambiguous, film-noir cool. There is an aspect to this cool that is rooted in the unknown - in the irretrievably mysterious, so that the Olympian gods, just like the Abrahamic god, appeal to us not only because of what they explain, but also because of what they render romantically mysterious. They embrace and promote a Something Elseness.


This institution isn't exactly neglected by the secular world, and in fact it's admired, but from afar. It's called art, and normal people dip into its fruits once in a while usually because they feel they ought to or as a means to relax, and sometimes because they missed it and enjoy it for its own sake.

Weird bohemian types spend their whole lives wallowing in it, exploring, pontificating; most importantly creating, even if nobody else ever shows interest or satisfaction in it.

I say "pontificating" dismissively, but that's actually the activity I want to consider here. Exploring or creating is between you and the artist or audience, respectively. Pontificating, or speaking Artsy-Fartsy, or communicating in idiosyncratic emotion, is between you and the people in your life. Your loved or liked or at least acquainted ones, with names and faces that you recognise and mean something to you individually.

Most people respond negatively, with varying degrees of intensity, to Something Elseness, unless it comes in a framework where they were expecting it, like religion or art. Even philosophy usually meets people's resentment. There's an automatic aversion and alarm at this sentiment, possibly to do with the scientific revolution, but I won't get ahead of myself.

People who behave strangely are considered to be behaving wrongly, regardless of the actual effect their behaviour has on people. It is a significant leap to be able to continue in the face of this criticism, which is often superficial and easily forgotten by the criticiser later, but it's a leap you must make if you want to be an independent person, free of arbitrary and harmful allegiances, and have a chance of self-fulfillment and happiness.

This is what I was trying to talk about a few posts back with trying to impose on life your aesthetic sensibilities. I'm beginning to think that it's less in what you do than in what you say, or at least in what you express. If you say something to somebody and they look at you bewildered, that is a positive development. And it is this point that I can't seem to convince myself of or even properly present to other people. I wonder if this signifies a change.


Bob Dylan's album Desire is a great example of this, and probably what first got me thinking about this business way back when. Three of the songs on it (Hurricane and Sara are fairly well known) are his colourful and emotive romanticisations of real people and real events. The one I quoted in the post title isn't, as far as I know, but seems to illustrate my point pretty well, especially when you consider that if the protagonists were real, they'd most probably lead a miserable and monotonous existence.

Have at you:




One More Cup of Coffee (Valley Below)

Your breath is sweet
Your eyes are like two jewels in the sky
Your back is straight your hair is smooth
On the pillow where you lie
But I don't sense affection
Nor gratitude or love
Your loyalty is not to me
But to the stars above

One more cup of coffee for the road
One more cup of coffee 'fore I go.
To the valley below.

Your daddy he's an outlaw
And a wanderer by trade
He'll teach you how to pick and choose
And how to throw the blade
He oversees his kingdom
So no stranger does intrude
His voice it trembles as he calls out
For another plate of food.

One more cup of coffee for the road
One more cup of coffee 'fore I go.
To the valley below.

Your sister sees the future
Like your mama and yourself
You've never learned to read or write
There's no books upon your shelf
And your pleasure knows no limits
Your voice is like a meadowlark
But your heart is like an ocean
Mysterious and dark.

One more cup of coffee for the road
One more cup of coffee 'fore I go.
To the valley below.