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Sunday 7 March 2010

Blue Oblivion




I
Paint on a plane surface is like the cosmic fire-dust.

The visibility of the world, on every level, is 'art'.
But we designate the higher levels as real art.
All coming-into-appearance, all phenomena, is a creation.
Art is all that matters.
The submerged reality - untouched reality - is beyond our ken and only intimated, dimly.
We seek it as philosophers, but we can only touch it as artists.
Each man is an artist when he dreams and when he experiences dreamless sleep he is a philosopher.
II
Words are greatly overrated.
So far separated from the depths that they are supposed to relate.
This is the tragedy of man - he knows that 'talk is cheap'.
Judge only by deeds if ye must.
But then there is music.
Music is the art of agony; music is derived from screaming. Most music originated by trying to placate hostile deities,music originated by trying to placate hostile deities, and screaming in fear and screaming in supplication are not so very far removed. Music is the child of all that.”
[Percy Grainger]



III
He is not a composer, he is an improviser - he cannot plan ahead.



IV
The pessimism of the Blues
 Some Aryans in times of crisis [i.e. when the Apollonian forms had over-reached themselves and failed] turned to Negro forms of expression in order to produce the 'barbarian Dionysian' [remember that Nietzsche distinguished that
from the 'Greek Dionysian' in his 'The Birth of Tragedy'].

Without Blues and Jazz, this primal and pure Dionysian could not have been rediscovered by Aryans. He could not have produced the Aryan form that is Metal [where Negrid barbarian Dionysian Blues elements synthesise with Aryan
Apollonian Baroque elements], for instance.





V
Art is our metaphysics.

Nietzsche's Apollo/Dionysos dichotomy is endlessly valid here.

In rock music - particularly in metal - we have an expression of the barbaric
Dionysian. Just as in Classical and Renaissance art we have the Apollonian.

We must dwell on these forms - and on poetry too.





VI
Before the beginning there must be death; death precedes; death allows.
The last has to be experienced first.


I will my own death to create the beginning.



VII
 Worshipping strange gods ...


"Fall down now, strange gods are coming"
[JDM]







VIII
The Mystery
All is metaphor, poetry ...
All is interpretation and translation ...
But the text ... the 'reality' is lacking.
This is the mystery.



IXDie Sonne sinkt

Gilded cheerfulness, come!
sweetest, secretest
foretaste of death!
- Did I run my course too quickly?
Only now, when my foot has grown weary,
does your glance overtake me.

Only playing of waves around.
Whatever was hard
has shrunk into blue oblivion -
my boat now lies idle
Storm and voyaging - all forgotten now!
Desire and hope and drowned,
smooth lie soul and sea.

Seventh solitude!
Never such sweet
security, never such
sunlight warmth ...
[Nietzsche, The Sun Sinks, section 3]

Hollingdale says the above is a description of Nietzsche's own death, or what he hopes his death will be like ...
[Dithyrambs of Dionysus translated by Hollingdale, London, Anvil Press 1984]



XNow —
Between two voids
One who is twisted,
A question mark,
A weary enigma —
An enigma for birds of prey ...
[Nietzsche]


We are each of us the hunter and the hunted - self-feasters, self-fleers.
Insanity's abyss lurks even within the rational mind; and as consciousness expands, so too the war between the inhering dark chthonic forces and the Olympian light intensifies.
This is why consciousness is normally closed down, and blinkered - one's back is deliberately turned on 'the war that one is'.
Stupidity is cowardice.
Dionysos was portrayed by the Greeks as an alien force irrupting into the Hellenic; and yet he was in reality as Greek as Apollo [if not more so].
Wilful increase of Vision is therefore tantamount to a terrifying and unwanted invitation to madness.
A Madness which gatecrashes Vision and makes inevitable the subsequent struggle to expel its dark insanity.
A blacknesse which threatens to blight the light of Vision; a blacknesse borne of the Self.
So I say we must fight against Dionysos just as we must fight against the Negroid invasion of Aryan lands.
Why then did Nietzsche identify himself with Dionysos?
Simply because the Apollonian forces had become to prevalent themselves.
Too much light; to much reason; sane all-too sane.
But we live in a different age; an age of madness.
We live in the age of the White Negro.
We live in an all-too Dionysian age.
We live in the midst of a Bacchic maelstrom.
Blood crazed Maenads are everywhere, tearing us limb from limb.
The black snake's venom threatens to poison and muddy our golden blood.
Therefore we must look - not to Dionysos - but to Apollo.
We must be disciples of the Delphic god once more.
This is the 'truth' that my 'dark night of the soul' gave me.
Ptah!







XI
Nietzsche knew that the direction his philosophy needed to take was a psychological one ... he realised this all too late and it took others to 'continue' the thought.
Unfortunately, the absurdities of Freud etc., do scant justice to that thought. Or at least, the Freudianism as presented by NO Brown in 'Life Against Death'. Brown has this Freudianism feed back into Nietzsche so that a new Nietzsche emerges, one bent on abolishing 'repression' etc., [which conflicts with WP etc.,]




XII
The psychic house

Our environment is 'peopled' - a thick wall of people and their (our) embedded and projected psyches wattles our reality. That is life and death - that is what we fight, flee, fear and cling to. Somehow, psyches are projected; dense population increases that psychic swarm. Magic is right, here. My philosophy, a combination of Machiavelli and magic.
Magic is the power I cannot understand. Machiavellianism is the power that I can.




XIII 
The fundamental question of metaphysics:
Why is there something instead of nothing?

There is always something rather than nothing, even to the extent that we are unable to conceptualise 'nothing'.
This is the premiss of the question.
The question then steps forward from this premiss to ask 'why' this is the case.
It suggests that there must/might be a 'reason' for this.
Of course, we need to examine what a 'thing' is to us so that we can be sure as to what constitutes 'some things 'and no 'things'.
Is it inherent in the nature of things that they exist?
If it is so obvious that there are always things then why do humans so often feel that there is also a state of no-things?
Why do they find nothingness even when they look into things?
Why does the void stare out at them?
How do concepts such as poverty, lack etc., arise?
Why is is that the thingness life seems to be in a constant state of decay, decline, destruction, death, lack and nothingness?
So the question really addresses this.
It might be phrased as:
'given that there is always somethingness, why do I ex-perience nothingness?' Why, despite ex-perience, is there some-thing rather than no-thing?







XIV
Absolute music


XV
Everything is enveloped by the symbolic order

Economics, money etc., is part of this order.

Pound's usura ...

The symbolic value of gold and silver.

The symbolism of politics, and of religion ...

The harsh symbolism that decides life or death.

What is beyond symbolism?

What is fact, what is text?

Power ...
Force ...

The text is always lacking - there is only palimpsest, interpretation, commentary.
We know not what we are talking about.

Where is in-form-ation?

The will of power as symbol.

Do we doubt power?









XVI
The distinctions between sacred/secular, irrational/rational are largely spurious -
the sacred and the irrational linger long and envelop the so-called secular and rational.


XVII
Life is infected with a kind of magic - I say infected as well as enchanted - it is a magic we cannot control.
The magician, therefore, is always a charlatan.
But then so is the scientist who denies magic.
 


XVIII
Is art anything else but emotion?
Music is the most emotional art form ...



XIX
After Dionysian binges we need periodic Apollonian restraint.

We can only know the Dionysian by philosophical reflection - itself Apollonian. Perhaps this very seeking was the beginning of philosophy.






XX
What "cannot be thought?"
Can everything be said?
The what chance of saying what cannot be thought?
Can emptyness be thought?
Only if it is thought in relation to a fulness.
An emptyness is a thoughtlessness.
Or is emptyness pure thought without being?
Thought devoid of thought.




XXI
From Pythagoras onwards, we have known that the mechanics of music is rational - Socratic. It is the rush [Rausch] behind music that is the Dionysian, not the music itself.

Music generates myth. [Nietzsche]

If Dionysian music is timeless it has no rhythm and it has infinite duration. It is the noise of existence and continues therefore for as long as existence continues.
It is like the eternal flame and when it splutters into silence then all existence has ended.
Then the Coda.

Music which is cacophony - that is nearer to the god.

The god is unendurable.





XXII
Reversal.
Don't be ruled by your emotions.
Rule your emotions.
Presence of mind.
Emotions are the outcome of consciousness, not vice versa!


If emotions are a disease, then the healthy man is above emotion.
The primal Dionysian is pure, healthy.
It meets with the golden Apolline and becomes a disease.
It becomes an emotion.
Emotions are a disease.
Mankind is borne from the diseased emotions.
To get to a pure health, beyond all emotions.
To approximate the primal Dionysian.
Empty-fulness.
Beyond existence and non-existence.
The Camusian Stranger does not allow his emotions to colour events.
The crime of non-passion.




XXIII
The self-overcoming: rid yourself of all possessions - and the ultimate possession - is it not you yourself?




XXIV
Dark energy



Tradition originates with the gods, not with men.

Men transmit the tradition but through the process of 'Chinese whispers' the transmission does become corrupted and diluted.

Therefore one must always return to the deepest tradition in order to connect to the gods.

Modernism is distant from the gods.

Tradition has within it the sense that all the *positive* Growth that is possible has already been achieved by the great ancestors.
[I say 'positive' because Growth in itself is not always good].

This is why Tradition is viewed as more valuable than modern experience, because Tradition contains within it all positive possibilities and has actually exhausted them all.

Therefore if man only explores the Tradition he is guaranteed positive Growth.

In other words, the concept of *open-ended* evolutionary Growth is outside the purview of Tradition - and is therefore dangerous.



 
XXV 
The runes need to be the device which breaks through into the subconscious realms - irrational devices - they can have nothing to do with 'writing', but must be symbols, wild.

The runes partake of reversals - revaluations. But some of them are impervious to this.

The Runes are 'mysteries'.
They are therefore a 'secret': an 'initiation'.
The Runes Hide.
They with-hold themselves.
No man can Know the Runes in Whole.
The Runes though, beseech our Knowing.
The Runes then are your Hard Task.
Thanks be to Odin.



XXVI
I certainly feel strange and even e- stranged at times ...
Certainly difference, and defer-ance, is something that I keenly feel, like estrangenment and endarkenment .
There is a conflict between the philosophical need of solitudinous self-hood and the political need for gathering com-rade-ship which informs this dynamic.






XXVII
Life is war
The task is to destroy our reality.
 
XXVIII
Dancing through the midnight whirl-pool, formless ....
[Queen of the Highway]
The stuff of primal becoming  does not die out as it is prior to life and death.
Timeless, spaceless, formless.
This is symbolised by the Dionysian.
Parasitcallly the Apolline form-building impulse draws upon this primal stuff
The Apolline is synonymous with time and space: i.e. it makes its appearance on the stage of its own making.
It then creates forms using the raw material of the Dionysian.
The forms which are the most durable are those which are closest to the primal matter: the semi-eternal.
The forms created by a synthesis of primal-forms are destined to have short-lives.
But this world of forms is but a lightning flash amongst the all-pervading darkness of formlessness, becoming.
And we who are briefly illumined by the flicker of form are its gods or worms.



XXIX
It is tempting to think that any belief is perspectival - but this is not the case.
The will of power sweeps aside perspectives, while the order of rank abolishes the implicit relativism of strong perspectives.



XXX
Dionysos takes the place of Hestia or Vesta in the Dodekatheon.
The hearth is usurped by wine.





XXXI
Do all psychic things have a physical origin?





XXXII
The destruction of idealism does not entail the triumph of perspectivism.



XXXIII
Could a formless non-individuated becoming perspect?
The problem with Perspective - it limits the impact of grand philosophical statements.


Does *Perspectivism* rule out *the will to power* in Nietzsche's philosophy?
For me, a Perspective [P] always suggests that there is 'something else besides' the P.
There must be other Ps, just as there must be the ability to alter/adjust/reverse, etc.,  Ps.
The world then exceeds a single P which latter could just be a 'narrow chink'; as Blake says:
 "If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern."
So a P always suggests a part-icular and part-ial view-point.
An arche though has more in common with Blake's 'infinite everything'. It says that this, and only this, is the world, "and nothing else besides." In other words, it is the totality of which partial view-points can be made, but which cannot be encompassed by such Ps.
If that is so, then can an arche be known purely by Perspectival seeing? No, because by definition P is a narrow chink and cannot view the infinite everything.
Anarche cannot be known by Per-spective; it requires - at the very least - a Pan-spective, or an Omni-spective.
So if "the world is will to power and nothing else besides", as Nietzsche says it is, then this cannot be known by Perspectivism.
Of course, if the will to power is not an arche, but merely a P, then the will to power cannot be the infinite everything, the world and nothing else besides. But my question involves the assumption that the will to power is an arche.
So by this line of argument, the will to power and P are not resolvable.


Even if the claim that "the world is will to power and nothing else besides"  is considered to be an undogmatic, uncertain hypothesis, it still cannot be considered a Perspectival claim for the reasons I state below.
So the only way to get around this is to suggest that the will to power is a Perspectival claim - but this meets the objections I have already made.
Therefore the problem  remains unresolvable in my view; - but then Nietzsche's philosophy is full of such contradictions.
 

XXXIV
Nietzsche actively phiolosophised via contradictions.
This is not just apparent across the development of his work but even in single works - nay, in single sentences.
Indeed, the most unpopular interpretation of his thought [Bertram's Attempt at a Mythology] dwells on this very notion.
It is this very contradictionism that makes him the greatest philosopher of all time.
Most other philosophers have too often failed in trying to make themselves champions of Aristotle's 'Law of Non-Contradiction'.
To attempt to 'explain away' Nietzsche's mighty contradictory-nature reeks of systematisation.
Going back to the question. Nietzsche's Perspectivism is not the be-all and end-all of his philosophy. It is one of his experiments- attempts - in thought . And therefore must be thought in terms of what a P is - i.e. a particular and partial viewpoint.
P is by definition too limited to make arche-like claims.
Rather, the arche-like claim of the will to power suggests that there are other ways of knowing which are beyond Perspectives and are certainly beyond scientific method(s).
Indeed, there is a mystical [and therefore non-rational] element to Nietzsche's philosophy which was pointed out very early by his one time friend - and near intellectual equal, Lou von Salome.
It is here that non-P forms of knowing occur in Nietzsche's thought - forms of knowing which necessarily contradict P type knowledge.


"Agreed that I am a decadent, I am also the very reverse."
[Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, 'Why I Am So Wise', 2]
 
As Ecce Homo shows, Nietzsche was the best interpreter of Nietzsche.

Nietzsche's own succumbing to a chronic illness shows that he did not 'resolve' this contradiction; he was - and remained - ill/healthy. 

Nietzsche's philosophy was made out of a 'will to health', most certainly.
And Nietzsche himself was congenitally ill; he was also super-abundantly healthy.
He couldn't resolve this contradiction - he wouldn't have wanted to.
Just as he didn't resolve the duality of Apollo/Dionysos.
The fact that Health and Dionysos remain open questions to Nietzscheans show that they were not resolved - nor were they meant to be resolved.
If Nietzsche had 'explained away' all these aporiai then there would be nothing left to do.
Anyway, I have always maintained that Ecce Homo was the best way to approach Nietzsche and find most books 'about' Nietzsche to be a waste of time.
One must at times break out of the hermeneutical vicious circle of interpretation.
Poetry [and poetic inspiration]  is one example of such non-Perspectival knowledge which does just this.

Nietzsche made a very important statement about such inspiration in Ecce Homo. Here Nietzsche was reviewing his own poetic masterpiece,Thus Spake Zarathustra:

"Has anyone at the end of the 19th century a distinct conception of what poets of strong ages called inspiration? If not, I will describe it. - If one had the slightest residue of superstition left in one, one would be hardly able to set aside the idea that one is merely incarnation, merely mouthpiece, merely medium of overwhelming forces. The concept of revelation, in the sense that something suddenly, with unspeakable certainty and subtlety, becomes visible, audible, something that shakes and overturns one to the depths, simply describes the fact. One hears, one does not seek; one takes, one does not ask who gives; a thought flashes up like lightning, with necessity, unfalteringly formed - I have never had any choice. An ecstasy whose tremendous tension sometimes discharges itself in a flood of tears, while one's steps now involuntarily rush along, now involuntarily lag; a complete being outside of oneself with the distinct consciousness of a multitude of subtle shudders and trickles down to one's toes; a depth of happiness in which the most painful and gloomy things appear, not as antithesis, but as conditioned, demanded, as a necessary colour within such a superfluity of light ... [...] Everything is in the highest degree involuntary but takes place as in a tempest of a feeling of freedom, of absoluteness, of power, of divinity ... The involuntary nature of image, of metaphor is the most remarkable thing of all ... [...] It really does seem, to allude to a saying of Zarathustra's, as if the things themselves approached and offered themselves as metaphors ... [...] This is my experience of inspiration; I do not doubt that one has to go back thousands of years to find anyone who could say to me 'it is mine also'. - "
[Nietzsche, EH, TSZ 3, abridged (Hollingdale translation, Penguin 1979 pp. 72-3)]


Clearly this is a brilliantly lucid description of the non-perspectival aspects of poetic inspiration.



XXXV
Evolution of the eye - 'seeing' - sense -





XXXVI
Thought is a fullness





XXXVII
Art as a religion - and yet is not the aesthetic sense sublimated sexuality?
Then sex is the religion ['sex is the spirituality of materialism']
And is not religion sublimated sexuality ...
And is not sexuality itself sublimated will to power?
And what is will to power?
Will of power ...
Ground zero.






XXXVIII
The Apollonian is rational, but not in the logical and theoretical sense, but rather in the visionary sense - the clarity of vision.
As rational as a film is, as a dream is.
As rational as a poem.




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