I am in love with strangeness for its own sake, which is to me the truest representation of the divine.
Word. so cool - a more abstract notion of the divine. I've historically (in the history of Leila) been petrified of absurdity and strangeness - of things that are contrary to what they appear to be (the mayor in the nightmare before Christmas is the archetypal example of the sort of thing I am referring to). To me, things of this sort have always been untruths, depictions of the way things are not, manipulations of reality as we know it, dishonest. I think this is the natural outgrowth of a childhood composed of sports, church, and family. I was pretty grounded. My head was not in the clouds. Ironically this is what happens in life: we either grow to fear things that are unfamiliar to us or we swing the other way and distance ourselves from the lives we have been brought up in. Sometimes it seems like we do this not because we truly believe that the lives we have been brought up in are false, but because we want to create something that is our own. In this way, the creative imperative ironically obscures our pursuit of truth. Or because we come to learn that life itself is false and we project this onto the practices, rituals, and ways of being that our parents have adopted for us. Anyway, as strange as this sounds, I didn't really encounter art or music or abstract manifestations of creative imaginings until I was almost in college. Well, I guess I encountered them, but I never thought twice about them, never let them touch me. Then, when I did, and when I started experimenting and becoming enthralled by things of absurd natures, I was scared. "OMG life is not what I think it is! I have been prepping myself to live and thrive in a system that could malfunction at any given moment!" I guess I did not want to come to the ultimate realization that life IS absurd. Anyway, this idea is really cool because it means that I don't have to be scared anymore. I don't have to be scared of things that are unfamiliar or dichotomous or contradictory because they may be the truest representations of the divine, of that which cannot be identified, of the unknown. They may be the ultimate way to come to terms with the fact that as hard as we try to become gods ourselves, to manipulate nature or create social structures that dominate the way we think and act or prescribe commerical values to material things, all our attempts are in vain.
I still have to think about the -est at the end of tru.
http://www.stanford.edu/class/h
Maybe this mode of thought is outdated. After all, isn't that what art in the 1920s was all about? Art that was evacuated of figure - a movement that reflected the predominate mode of thought of that period, that there was nothing to figure. Yes and no? Solipsism and all its correspondingly despondent reproductions didn't provide a solution, a new way of looking at the world, just a conclusive argument that private experience can never completely be shared. I've already come to terms with all of this stuff about the world being created and blah blah blah....what I am proposing is something more proactive. something that allows us to use our creative powers for good!
The other cool thing about this idea is that it soooooooo nicely correlates with the direction I want to move in. I love God first and foremost, yes. I love art and theater and writing and music and abstract thought too and sometimes the ideology that religion espouses (not so much the actual doctrines themselves, but I guess the social aspect of it, the lifestyle) makes no room for creativity. But here is a way to embrace everything that I loveeeeeeee, or, rather, to find new reasons to loveeeeeeeeeeeeeee the worlddddddd... always a good thing =D
The simulacrum is not what hides the truth, it is truth that hides the fact that there is none.
Along the same lines, I'm thinking about linearity and how pervasive it is. I'm thinking in terms of geometry and architecture and how the construction of our world into boxes (ie. when you look out the window of a plane everything is square - also..square shaped fields, rectangular buildings, rooms that are square and the furniture that is created with sharp edges and angles in order to fit them, technology - ipods, computers, etc.- books, newspapers, etc.) informs the way we think. The way we think is in a linear, boxy fashion. We categorize things and draw rigid lines around them and view life as a calculated, step-by-step processes from birth until death, at least in the West. I guess to bring up reincarnation or cyclical agricultural cycles or other "circle of life" type dealioz would be a long tangent. Our illnesses or non-physical sicknesses are pinned down to one or a few variables. We love, we live, we think in a linear fashion and I am wondering if this is a product of the way we have visually structured our world. I realize that in order for capitalism to work efficiently it must adhere to this process - from production of whatever is being produced to consumption of that same thing - the process is linear - however, it seems as if this linear mode of thought preceded capitalism. the way our whole world is structured seems to adhere to this principle of linearity. Even the way I have reduced the way I am today to being the product of certain events and circumstances from my past is linear.
What I think is that linearity allows us to be held unaccountable for the destructive behaviors that we constantly allow to shape our lives - it always us to live under the illusion that what we do to ourselves doesn't effect other people, the planet, future generations. And this is reflected in the physical, visual, geometrical way we shape and literally make the globe conform to us.
Anyway...yay I wasn't a hopelessly emotional romantic in this blog!! Which doesn't mean that I am not. I am still steeping with love love love love love love love love, but it is nice to write about other philosophical meanderings, too. It's cool that I am starting to come up with my own philosophy on life, taking into account the lives, the philosophies, the day-to-day interactions and contemporary movements that are real to me and shaping them into some way of living that works for me. The creative imperative drives life forward!
No comments:
Post a Comment