this fruit mind your step __________ sin | dios __________ people are people so are people so people people so people are so people are people |
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Have you ever seen fire in zero gravity...it's beautiful...it's like liquid...it slides all over everything...comes up in waves.
xyz = 1
The Genealogy of Morals…or…Nietzsche, Still Dead. How about the Genealogy of:
Do you need rooting powder to propagate a meme?
René Girard’s anthropology…by Allison & Wiki…the jury is still out…also, the three modalities in Thomistic anthropology.
elastic love in NoWay Valley
scared weird little guys
who don't know why
they do what they have to do
darkened two way mirror mind
Garden of Maya exalt Eve
caring sells
It is human to receive an impression of something, but it is doubtful if anybody ever received a post-impression of anything. —Chesterton
An impressionist painting is a composed of a multitude of colored dots and smears (the metaphorical trees), and when the viewer takes a step back he’s able to see the impression, whether portrait or landscape (the metaphorical forest).
First comes the internal impression, then the constituent parts that compose the impression are organized, and then the external impression is conveyed.
But is it art? No, it’s not just art; it’s all communication
Who are you?
Some of your parts
The sum of your parts
Something beyond the sum of your parts
Bumper stickers…buttons too…are insidious. They are iconic and viral bites of political and cultural manipulation. As forms of speech, they are free, but not freeing. Their messages frame debate in rigid and narrow ways…that stunted debate in turn sets the mind in rigid and narrow ways, and keeps public discourse in bondage.
The BS series is intended to point out the absurdity of stunted speech and thought, especially by inverting it…to document examples……to show how thought is framed…to question the internal authority of the statements…to have fun.
“=” is a bold declarative statement, but what…exactly…is being boldly declared here? This work aims to encourage people to be critical of the implications and inferences of the original HRC bumper sticker.
What are the differences in meaning between equality, equal, equivalent…sameness? The ontological and anthropological debate gets framed inversely, and a questioning of the results of that is then framed as a shutting down thought and expression instead of the opening up that it is. Is there a correct answer to "="? Is that answer a dogma? How are dissenters to this dogma misunderstood, marginalized, and demonized? In a larger Dadaist exposition, any combination of mathematical operators and/or punctuation marks will do…more or less… |
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Premodern art portrayed objects and subjects. Early modern art began the process of deconstructing and abstracting so as to portray the essences of objects and subjects. Later modern and postmodern art then portrayed interpretations of objects and subjects as well as to construct narratives. The meaning became separated from the portrayed form at times to such an extent that an explanation of the work became integral to an exposition of the work.
Since it appears that content and form are separable and not dependent on one another, then why have form at all? Let's call it transmodernism, and is it the new direction, or is this merely life imitating artist (simulated reality becoming reality)? Is choosing necessary?
PST, inspired by Mel Gibson and the Pants, is born from the break up of The Three Cocqs on this day...last Friday actually. PST is intended to be a band in the sense that it will produce lyrics, but unlike a traditional band, it will be unlikely to produce music or to perform. It is also envisioned that PST will employ multimedia, where necessary, as an integral rather than supplementary part of its output...essentially a multi modal vehicle.
Who are you? What do you want? These are fundamental and unwittingly binary questions…light & dark, yin & yang, ping & pong. My thanks to the Vorlons & Shadows.
What do you want? Do you determine first what your desires are, and then shape your identity accordingly?
Who are you? Do you determine first what your identity is, and then shape your desires accordingly?
Which question you ask will determine your life paradigm, will frame your mindset, and will map your fate.
direct potential
fun delusion
hypnotic operator
dressing up
cre·mas·ter
Based on the original meanings of the word cremaster, processes surrounding sexual generation, metamorphosis, and continual differentiation are central to the series concept. In this 2nd in a series of 5:
The episode focuses on Gary Gilmore, his girlfriend Nicole, his parents' meeting with a fortune teller, his final homicide at a gas station, and his execution symbolized by a rodeo on the Bonneville Salt Flats. A phone call is made to Gary by the lead singer of Morbid Angel in a studio with Slayer drummer, Dave Lombardo, playing to the drone of bees, a scene said to refer to Gilmore's last phone call from Johnny Cash. The film also connects Gilmore to Harry Houdini (played by Norman Mailer, writer of Gilmore's story The Executioner's Song) and his meeting with Baby Faye Lafoe (represented as Gilmore's grandmother and supposed spiritual medium).
No way, that was not Johnny Cash...never has a film been so inaccessible. If it hadn’t been for the Walker film curator who set up the film, the experience would have been completely unintelligible. Within the framework of Barney’s narrative, the various visual metaphors take shape. It’s really only these metaphors...and the cinematography...that I can speak to.
I’ll limit my self to recounting bees and execution. Bees, beeswax, and hexagons are everywhere, as well as conceptually, masters and drones. This symbolism points to biologic as well as social differentiation. Execution also deals with such differentiations. Gilmore’s execution...in actuality by firing squad...is depicted as a rodeo bull ride. The sequence was brilliant.
The bull funneled through the chutes was very evocative of guiding the condemned to their execution...
...reminded me of Selma’s execution played by Barney’s wife Björk in Dancer in the Dark.
Barney/Gilmore in a prison stripes rodeo/prison jumpsuit bound to his bull...
...Björk/Selma hooded and strapped to the board at the gallows.
Released from the gate...lurched out of the chute...slowly succumbing to weight and to death...
...released from the gate...lurched through the trap door...immediately succumbing to weight and to death.
Gilmore metamorphosed...
...brown paper packages tied up with strings; these are a few of my favorite things.
Clever or not, I’m not sure whether it is I who’s panning this film. Ultimately, it was simply too obtuse, which apparently a saying a lot for me, but it has proven fodder for discussion ever since. It is Barney himself who pans...in, out, over...all so slowly. Whether, this technique was supposed to have had any significance to the story telling is uncertain, but it became intrusive. Otherwise, there is a simultaneous quality of lucidity and dream. Hard focus of surreal sequences and soft lighting of the immovably real.
...Le Charme Discret de la Bourgeoisie...a French film by the Spanish Surrealist Luis Buñuel. Interesting.
How old was this movie? I've never heard of it.
1972. It was a film that didn't have a plot so much as a premise, and when it was "fin" I was like, ok...I get it...I think.
Ha ha—that's why Fred doesn't like most French movies. He thinks they're too psychological.
Psychological: true in that what you see is not what you get. That is the motions of the plot were really incidental to what the point was...and the point was rather subtle at that. But also sometimes psychological is equated with complex, and this film was on the contrary rather simple in the end.
It was interesting, because since Buñuel is noted as a Surrealist/Dadaist...and I had seen one of his whacked-out earlier films (Un Chien Andalou — 1929, and that Marxist screed Las Hurdes — 1933)...I was expecting surreal to be trippy and in your face. Instead what it was about was the absurd and absurd situations...representing the absurdity of the bourgeoisie...especially the absurdity of form over content.
There, now I've done it: I gave away the secret.
Hmm, I almost understand what you are saying—
The western way of thinking tends to equate nothingness with nonexistence or annihilation, which of course makes nothingness an unattractive proposition. It also has the scent of atheism, and so is rejected as alien or contrary. But it would seem that the eastern way of thinking conceives of nothingness differently. Nothing would be more precisely understood as ‘no-thing’, or that is, stateless Being infinitely beyond any attributableness. This is simply extreme negative (apophatic) theology. So then, achieving nothingness isn’t nonexistence, it’s attainment of great knowledge of that no-thing.
And this way of conceptualizing God certainly isn’t alien to western thinking. The Via Negativa, in a less rigid form, is the theology of Byzantine and Oriental Christianity...God the ineffable. Latin Christianity (as well as the endless stream of sects that have split off from it) tends to employ cataphatic theologies, or the theology of attributes...a God of things. But even that isn’t so clear cut. The Byzantines and Orientals share the same creed (which paints God as things) with the Latins. Also the Latins have a deep tradition of the Via Negativa as seen in the mysticism of The Cloud of Unknowing or St. John of the Cross’ The Dark Night of the Soul. Also, while God is the unmanifest no-thing, he is also the manifest incarnation. More so, God places attributes on himself: God manifests himself in archetypes like lover, father, or judge; and God manifests himself in matter in a very real way like a flame, a son, or bread.
Says Kermit the Frog, it isn’t easy being green. Sometimes it’s micromanaging pseudo-science, and sometimes it’s a new way of thinking.
The High Line: converting an abandoned elevated rail structure in Manhattan, being reclaimed by nature, into a public green space.
Black Maps: environmentally impacted aerial landscapes as abstract art.
The Dwell Home: a green, modern residential design competition. Not what modern was or what modern is, but what modern will be…that bowl.
Those who sacrifice to other gods will go to those gods. The ancestor worshipers will go to their ancestors. Those who worship the elemental powers and spirits will go to them. So, also, My devotees will come to Me.
What of the self-worshipers, shall they go to themselves...eternity constructed
of infinite iterations of self and nothing more. What manner of hell is this; and so too the demoniac shall go to the demons.
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At rest, I lie in a hammock.
The hammock rocks fixed to the tall pines. The tall pines sway in the wind rooted to rock. The plates of rock shift over the surface of Terra. Terra spins on its axis... ...a terrestrial sphere orbiting Sol. Sol too revolves around the center of the Milky Way. The Milky Way races away from the universal... ...point of singularity. |
There are many similarities between the world’s religions, so much so that some think that all religions are just different paths to the same end. As a result, new ways of thinking and new religions have been constructed to promote this ideal such as New Age spirituality or the Bahá'í faith. But do all of the many paths lead to the same place? I don’t think that they do, because while there might be so many superficial or even uncanny similarities, there are also many fundamental and mutually exclusivizing differences.
It’s difficult for any nondevotee to really understand another’s religion. Krishna said, "Having gained this knowledge, one quickly attains supreme peace or liberation. The irrational, the faithless, and the disbeliever perishes. There is neither this world, nor the world beyond, nor happiness for the disbeliever." On a simpler level what I think he’s saying is that even if you read the scripture and study the religion, if you don’t have the faith, you just won’t "get it". This would be applicable to any religion, but there is more to it than this. Religion is not only about what one studies and believes, it is not only about what one does and how one lives, it is about Who one loves and how one gives them devotion and service.
This is just as true in Christianity as it is in Hinduism, but I think that it is helpful to begin by thinking of Hinduism as really more of a cultural framework (than a singular religion) in which are found many varying schools of thought, religions* (yogas**), and cults***.
*religion comes from Latin and means to bind, so a religion is a system in which someone is bound by and to that which and to whom they believe (see cult 3). This does not need to imply the supernatural in any way, as based on this definition scientism, humanism, atheism, etc are all beliefs that bind conscience and behavior and can therefore be construed as religions. However, the most common context for religion is spiritual or supernatural and so is a system of how one is bound to or united with a god or spirit. In Christianity, for example, we hear Jesus say, "take up my yoke upon you, and learn of me."
**yoga comes from Sanskrit and means to yoke, so from an etymological standpoint, religion and yoga are equivalent. This is particularly true when yoga is used in its broadest sense where it is the process of attaining union with the Ultimate Reality. But there are also many types or schools of yoga. Of particular interest in this context is bhatki yoga, which is the spiritual practice of rendering loving devotion to God. Many in the west are also familiar with hatha yoga, which involves physical and mental exercises practiced so as to order the mind, command the body, and control the passions. For some this is the end in itself, but in the greater context of yoga, these exercises are part of the discipline of devotion and the process toward union.
***cult should always be used in the nonpejorative sense: 1. formal religious veneration; 2. a system of religious beliefs and ritual; 3. a great devotion to a person (deity), idea, or object.
The reason why one should think of Hinduisms instead of simply Hinduism is because there are so many fundamental differences in cosmology, theology, and praxis between the various schools, but instead of looking at this time at these differences within Hinduism, I’m more interested in looking at the first fundamental difference between Christianity and Hinduism.
What is the value of the material universe? The Judeo-Christian view on matter is "and God saw all the things that he had made, and they were very good. And the evening and morning were the sixth day." Since this is the end of the "sixth day", we know that includes every aspect of the created universe including that uniquely spiritual-material being...the human person.
Now not everyone thinks that matter is so good. There have been many sects, who have believed that matter, and therefore the universe is either profoundly flawed or even evil, and that the person is essentially solely a spiritual being who is trapped in a human body, i.e. degenerate or evil matter. Within the western traditions, Gnostics (Manicheans, Bogomils, Albigensians (Cathars), and Waldensians) are some sects that have held some combination of such beliefs. Carried to the extreme, such beliefs have perpetuated an encouragement of sodomy, contraception, and abortion for the purpose of preventing spiritual beings from being incarnated into matter and even encouraged suicide and euthanasia for the purpose of liberating spirits from their material existence. Christianity has rejected all of these means and all of these ends, although some protestant sects have backtracked on this rejection in the past century.
Indeed, Christianity is centered upon an incarnate God...a God who saw that His creation was essentially good, yet in need of redemption, and assumed form within it. Back to Hinduism, we also see a tradition of the Ultimate Reality or Supreme Personality of Godhead assuming material, human form millions of times. Since it’s unlikely that divinity would pollute itself with something that is essentially evil, it then would then be reasonable that the Hindu view is that matter is not evil. However, and this is a big however, common to probably most schools of Hindu and also Buddhist thought, is the concept of maya in which the material world is a lesser reality and a form of illusion to be overcome. This leads to the common view and goal in both Hinduism and Buddhism of the final release of the individual soul from any reincarnation into material existence. What this in turn results in varies by school. For some it is the extinction and absorption of the personality into either nothingness or into Godhead, and for others it involves the preservation of the personality while achieving union with Godhead. In contrast, Christianity teaches the resurrection of the material body into a glorified form, while also preserving the personality and achieving union with God.
There’s a lot more to the matter of matter, and there are many more religions to survey for differences, but the important thing to take notice of in this brief survey is that the understanding of the very nature of the universe and the human body is fundamentally and radically different in various religions, whether these things are essentially good, neutral, or evil is of no little difference. Returning to the question do all of the many paths lead to the same place? Well, the various paths usually state where they believe they lead, and we can see that some paths claim to lead to different, similar, or the same place. Since there’s a world of difference between annihilation and a personalist union with God, why then, should anyone maintain that all paths lead to the same end?
