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September 22, 2006
What Never Happened
"I am the genius of myself, the poietes who composes the sentences I speak and the actions I take." Finite and Infinite Games, James. P. Carse
“Now who shall say I have not done an original thing!” Edgar Allen Poe
Chronically, I am assessing my life, thus far--regarding it, up close and at a distance like it was a slow train going by, with many cars, more each year added to the front and the end, as not only memories but expectations become more resounding; slowly enough goes this train, indeed, that I can often run a few cars back, or forward, and make adjustments in the cargo there. And I can get back to man the throttle before anyone knows I am gone. Yet this train goes fast enough to provide me with the enjoyable sense that I am also a passenger, or sightseer, on this same journey.
But sometimes, no matter what I have accomplished, or prepared for, or how inevitable a future seemed, it happens that I find myself having to conclude that, in regards to one of my long-term expectations, well--it just didn’t happen. I realise that something I had assumed would happen has gone by, and can never be. Rare emotions, in regard to the never occurring, must be invented, for this non-occasion--then they too are liable to be fleeting. One can do this indolently, or giddily, or despairing. It is only one of those “infinite games” my old NYU professor, James Carse, tried to establish, as having the character of the sacred, while maintaining the appearance of play. But--and almost every sentence has a jag in it, you’ve noticed!, just around the bend and somewhere down the tracks, it is . . . not there. And now I confess it: one thing, long and jam-packed full of surprises as life is, I never expected not to happen is the opportunity to deliver that acceptance speech, which I long ago drafted, before a reverentially hushed audience of at least, let’s say, eight or nine hundred people with their hands suspended in the air, ready to applaud, in receipt of the Pulitzer Prize for poetry.
Or maybe it was the Nobel Prize for Literature. .No, I think it was poetry, actually, that was always my strong suit. In any case, the most important thing was not the words of the acceptance speech, but the graciousness, the palpable heartfelt emotion with which I gazed upon my public. That is what I knew I would be able to pull off with utmost style and sincerity. Probably no recipient of this prize would ever have struck the audience in quite the way I would, as appreciative of them, the humble readers and willing fans. That I was deserving for my work, that didn’t worry me; it was occasion itself I had long anticipated, and which would require my special attention.
Well, this apparently is not going to happen. And no strategy can make it happen, certainly not the obvious one of pretending to not expect it any longer--that is not what I am trying to do here! No, it can no longer come up and surprise me, I have exhausted the possibility of it--so to speak. No, I mean, yes, this I simply have realised will never happen, it is off the drawing board, nowhere around the bend--employ whatever metaphor you like, this simply is not in the cards. Metaphors are all there is to describe this phenomena (metaphors and pseudo-scientific jargon), for it is now in the category of . . . thin air. Me and the Pulitzer Prize do not collide, or collude, neither in the year 1989 (when frankly, folks, I really deserved every laurel), or the year 2009, which, significantly is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Edgar Allen Poe--who hardly got his due shakes either! Lord, Poe was scandalised, robbed, beaten up and pushed in an alley, and his books published by his worst enemy. I certainly am not complaining for something so puny as lack of worldly recognition.
Far from it. I am just using this example to introduce a category of reflection we all should indulge in, and enjoy at our leisure--the nearly infinite leisure we all have at our disposal in those spacious, mostly empty heads of ours. The activity of systematically considering what has not happened. It is most refreshing! It makes you realise, for the most part, what a set of hackneyed dreams and unoriginal goals you always had. And thought is invisible, and it takes no time really. The things you are doing in time you can do at the same time, anyway--most of them. So run with it. Life allows for nearly infinite idle speculation. It is pure indulgent imagination.
Putting words to it, well that does takes time, and ages you eventually, so not everybody wants to indulge in it. You’d end up looking like a person who probably has a long convoluted history, and accomplishments and defeats, who probably received at least a few laurels!
The reason I now know for a fact that I will never be thanking some slick younger fellow for the Pulitzer Prize, is simply because I finally recognised that I eliminated myself from contention, long ago, during that fertile decade when I actually wrote the poetry. Frequently, now I ask myself, which would you rather have? The poetry, or the prize? Well, listen:
“The cause of his misfortune is that the dream
Of truth, the empty head of dreaming, the
Plaintive note of dying, is already consigned
To glory in the syllables of another time--
To this bright splashed terrain, to the hand
That says: Over there!--to the light that
Sweeps the floor, and the novel construction
I put upon your pain. As if the angels never
Sang in contradiction, and no other instruction
Every plagued the men of old, in tones like
The music falling late in the snowfall--and
To the oblivion of the erring human record.”
from part 3, The Modern Epoch
Edward Williams
N.B. Readers of these Lectures have by and large already determined that its author, the redoubtable, that is to say wholly fictional, Mortimer Shy, is the same as the poet Edward Williams. While the same he may be in some sense of contiguous physical being, to put it as we like to say pseudo-scientifically, the absolutely different he may also be, in that Shy seems to have left his youthful poet self in the dust. Merely quoting him now and then, making to back up his own sometimes insupportable theories. Shy is so determinedly a digressive and disorganised prose writer that it seems vengeful, nearly spiteful!, towards the spirit of the abandoned Williams, who was so blissfully unaware of his supremacy; and it makes me (who is suddenly neither of these fellows!) think that perhaps the old legend of the “inner child” has been reversed in this generation. For what we see emerging is a new race of witty old men, who boldly shine and are not easily traceable to any known type of historical humanity.
N.B.B The newly sprung existence of the webblog THE ALL-POETRY NOTEBOOK, which unblinkingly publishes one poem by Edward Williams after another, relieved only by mysterious paintings and photographs, must have something to do with the timing, and torturous tone, of these remarks.
Posted by mortimer at 05:14 PM | Comments (5532)
September 12, 2006
“You Can Hang Back, or Fight Your Best On the Front Lines”
Initially, when Red Rick told me he couldn’t afford to go to the Bob Dylan Show, at Frontier Field, I was just a little taken aback, kind of snubbed I guess, since when I heard Bob Dylan was coming to Rochester I put it right on my mental calendar and got a ticket practically the first hour they were available. I figured certainly all my friends who were die-hard Dylan fans would be going, and this would be an event, on August 30th, that would put a mark on the summer, so to speak. But Red Rick was flinching at the $49.00 ticket price, hanging his head and crying poverty. Initially, as I say, when he told me that at Monty’s, I just stood there and hung my head with him, stumped really as to why someone who many times had heaped such praise on the singer couldn’t scrape up that amount of money to see his idol in person.
The very next time I attempted to discuss the coming Dylan concert with another friend at this neighborhood bar, Andy Lowton (nicknames will suffice here), I got the same thing from him. Andy wasn’t going either because he couldn’t afford it. Again, I was taken aback, and left flat-footed; by this time I even had my tickets for myself and my wife, and was preparing to buy a third for an out-of-town friend who was coming through. With Red Rick I had thought, well he’s in a funk and will come around by the concert itself, and with Andy, who I have seen happily drop as much money in one night at this very bar, I figured he would be pulled in to this historic event as it drew near also.
But neither of them changed their attitude, and each become even more fixed in their determination to miss it; and two or three efforts on my part to prod them not only failed but redounded accusingly on myself. Why did it matter to me, whether these friends of mine went to this show? I found that I was burning with resentment, now, at their behavior, and this resentment wouldn’t go away. Instead it grew to the point where I was scornful of them, and anyone else who couldn’t “afford” to see a concert that compared in price to exactly ten Guiness draft beers, and a bag of peanuts. I became so high-minded, with comparisons like this, that I vowed to not even brag about the Show afterwards, and certainly not listen to their predictable lamentations and further excuses as to why they weren’t there. Nor to indulge in any description of it, to give them the slightest vicarious experience of it, but, if the subject were to come up, act as if it is too painful to for me to talk about. Because, evidently, some crime has been committed in regards to this Bob Dylan Show. I would deprive them utterly.
And the more I think about it, the more furious I become with these so-called fans of his and friends of mine. For what they have done is more than fail to be entertained themselves.. They have shirked continuing responsibility for the whole music culture they pretend to be a part of. Is that too harsh? I can make it worse.They have avoided planting a memory in their own experience that would, if they could admit it, have caused them endless profound trouble. Dylan would have gotten to them, brought them out of the shadows . . .
And here I have hit upon the real reason these laggards, these cowards!, did not go to the Bob Dylan Show, which was right down the street. It was to avoid responsibility, and being put in the difficult position of having to be positive, maybe inspired and full of praise. The whole thing promised to get in the way of their confirmed pessimism, their own status as outsiders. Can’t afford to see that many Dylan fans (5,500) all in one place, at one time! Such a bulwark in their memory they would be unable to defeat, with puny cynicism. Can’t afford it? Indeed. Can’t emotionally afford it, is the story.
For us, in the days after significant reverberations were happening. Another friend at the bar gave me a T-shirt which has a most fitting quote on the back, from Dylan’s new album, Modern Times: “You can hang back, or fight your best on the front lines.” That says it! It's from the song “Working Man Blues”. And another musician friend of my wife came up with a bootleg recording of the night itself, which I promptly copied to my computer and made several new copies for people . . . those not fortunate enough to be in Rochester! No copies are going to those who were too cheap. Or maybe I will relent, and try to coach them back into being strong people. But the point is, this kind of event is precisely not just a two hour night-out that costs $45.00 a ticket. It is a gateway to a world, hinging on establishing a memory, and earning the ability to say, “I was there.” The event then keeps accumulating. It's the sort of thing you really don’t want to be on the wrong side of, saying, “yeah, I wish I’d been there.” Or, “it was too expensive!” Gazing down at your hundred dollar sneakers.
Am I making too much of this? I hope so. Refusing to participate, you shut down several futures, for yourself and for others. Some things, if you stake them, are guaranteed to become larger and larger. Unless, to quote from another expandable, prophetic, parabolic, equivocal Dylan lyric, you are haplessly going to be, perpetually: “One day older, and a dollar short.” (Tweedley-Dum & Tweedley-Dee”)
Posted by mortimer at 10:12 PM | Comments (3094)
September 02, 2006
New Definition of Consciousness
“Consciousness is a specific ability, a talent; an apparatus for thought attached mysteriously to a person that not only has nothing to do with that person’s intelligence, but is devoted to undermining it, insofar as it can make them aware of what is happening to them. It is what produces the record of life. It is the watcher.”
Now, sitting at my desk, frightfully awake, I wish I knew who said that. For several years, starting no doubt just about the time I took a conscious break from writing those thousand-line poems, with titles like “One Soul Diverted,” and “The Devil in Close Company”, I have called my running, sprawling, inconclusive writing pad: THE ALL POETRY NOTEBOOK. In defiance of the fact that there is not a scintilla of recognisable “poetry” in it.. But this absence of verse in the all-poetry notebook is a conscious irony--you see, meant to indicate that the content of these notebooks is tending towards poetry, if and when a poet could be found. And this rationalises alot of stuff, I must say, particularly those entries which deal with subjects seemingly doomed to indifferent science, and impersonal philosophy. Entries I keep vary greatly, and are sometimes quoted from articles encountered in direct research. What happens is, though I usually put quotes around them, I might forget to include the names of the poor grubbers who wrote.
In other words, I am indifferent to the sources of these bits and pieces, but can applaud here that someone else wrote the thing above. Which means maybe you should try reading it again. Then, try the following, also with impunity. If you become inclined to refute it, be my guest, I am the humble collector.
“Consciousness is not a mental function achieved by humans in the development of the species, but an unexplainable sidelight ability, possessed by a person, whose purpose is entirely teleological. If biology thinks it can account for it, it is welcome, well, to go on thinking that as long as it wants.”
After the laughter dies down, I admit, yes, I copied that quote down too, and neglected to cite the source at the time, also. Maybe some cataclysm occurred shortly thereafter, knocking this article out of my mind and the precise line of inquiry which caused me to be reading it. So I cannot piece it together from memory; but no, it is not swimming around in the dark lagoon of my unconscious brain, seeking the right neural transmitter, at all. It is more like if I take a drive out to the Mall I might find it, on a scrap of paper swirling in an oil slick. Or if I get out of this swivel chair and go down to the sidewalk I might see this shocking enigma: "Ceci n'est pas une pipe," indeed. But a painted sewer pipe.
One can have a consciousness, which is a talent, and not use it. It can become like the appendix., and doctors can remove it. "Look here," the doctor says, " we have a man who actually thinks his brain causes him to think!" One can feel like a fifth wheel. Consciousness, according to this new definition, is outside the mind. It is a rocky road, dark forests and sand dunes are there to be traversed, and frequently one is falling through empty space--such is terrain! Notes are scrawled sideways on yellow pads--I think I said that. The record of life is entered with tortuous slowness word by word as if by an amnesiac. Consciousness is a struggle, like reaching for an adjusting the rear-view mirror in my car as I wheel onto my street and think to see the September light, creating the street behind me. I seem to be always just getting started, with this new ability to think. Thinking is repetition. And that sense that you are an observer--that is the whole point of life!
It is obvious that when speaking of consciousness, trying to define it, I have a source. That is certainly the funniest thing I have ever said. “Sure you do, honey,” says my wife, swabbing my forehead with a cold towel. I am always acting like I just got beaten in a ten round fight, and am lucky to be still alive. And I can check the accuracy of my definition, I mean my own pulse, without moving a muscle. One of the functions of consciousness itself is to humourous reassert your own existence.
Sure, it is always mine, this consciousness is tied to my sense of self, and how that happens is also unexplainable. But they are not the same thing.And I do not want to say it is merely the accumulation and eventual familiarity that causes the identity and revisitation of myself. Nor it it the pathetic “still small voice” of infantile literature. It is a unique monument that has been honed through time, now, and I, the product of my consciousness, become more odd and accomplished everyday. Also, I can imagine that I might still have a self if all content and memory was stripped away from me The point it, it is not dependent on the quality or quantity of stuff attached to it. Similarly, the existence of consciousness itself is not the result of an evolution that has brought the mind to a higher and more survival-oriented plane. As said, it is a sidelight ability, and can go unused because the ability is not the same as the content garnered by that ability . . .
In fact the consciousness I have is savage, though forgiving, and pointed in its opinions and is not at all promoting either longevity or strength as related to me as a specimen (hate that word!) of humanity. It is doggedly in pursuit of meaning. It is all meaning, and when you trace meaning back to its origins it does not even go through the body. Meaning follows from the mystery of life, and is thus so religiously oriented that it has notions of an imperious will, and self-sacrifice--in order to obtain such meaning. Consciousness in this case is dedicated to meaning, which it somehow thinks it can recognise and gather, even while lacking the overriding answer to its condition existentially.
Consciousness! Not a finely tuned adjunct to perception, or a propellant for the student in psychology, or, egads!, a full-scale course in the history and paradoxes of philosophy. For consciousness is what makes truth apparent. It is all about truth to begin with.
Posted by mortimer at 08:14 PM | Comments (4131)