Lately I've been listening to John Frusciante's album "The Empyrean", a) because I've been reading interviews with him about the album, which makes it more interesting for me, and also b) because the loose thematic theme seems to tie in well with where I'm at.
As he puts it, the album is all about how giving up and failing ultimately help you reach higher than you would have, until you finally reach "the Empyrean", the highest point in heaven. Along the way, you descend back into madness.
The older I get, the more clearly I'm able to visualize these two states. In other words, there were times when I was in them, but I didn't know what they were. Now they come with all sorts of pictures, tastes, smells, and ideas.
The first part, to me, feels like being in the ground. Now, there's different types of earth. There's warm, rich, loamy soil-- and there's cold, sterile, ground, blasted with radiation or oozing with fetid muck. Sometimes you immerse yourself into the swamp and swim around in the brackish water with the alligators and nematodes. That's all right, it's fertile and organic.
But oh children, I have to tell you, there are places I don't know what they are. This one time I was a hollow person and all this disgusting water kept rushing through me. I was tied to a table by an insect doctor and his lipless nurse. They kept forcing sludge through me in belching waves. The most common occurrence then was when all the skin would slough off me and the only thing that was left was a huge, hollow-eyed bird skull, perched like a plague doctor. Those two black hollow circles are the most persistent symbol.
But that was a while ago. I clambered out of the metallic wastes eventually and found a safe, if unremarkable, plain where I could rest. Eventually, I decided to build a staircase out of my bones and start climbing it.
Now, I've managed, after cracking open my chest many times to pluck out more ribs to make stairs and then growing new ones, to find what I think is a new platform. My eyes are just peeking above the rim of it and I can hardly believe my eyes. I didn't really even believe that such a thing existed. It'll probably take me a while just to adjust to the knowledge of there even being such a place. (I think some people have been on that platform their entire lives, even, maybe). It's a great, white and black tower. Mathematics and clean lines help me build it and it's free from slime and spiderwebs. I've even grown to like climbing and my curiosity to see where it goes is building.
I guess what I wanted to say is: not feeling like a failure is an unbelievably liberating feeling, and I highly recommend it if you haven't tried it yet.
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
In Which I Spaz Out
I watched a clip of Louis CK on Conan, talking about how people were impatient and unappreciative of the incredible advances in technology that they take advantage of every day, and how nobody today was happy about it. Couple things:
1) Well, of course! There's a huge part of the human organism that is like the anti-Buddha, in that its entire being and concept is to want. As David Foster Wallace described in his essay on the pleasure cruise that he took,the entirety of this part of us is devoted to dissatisfaction. In response to any pleasure or gratification, it will simply adjust its needs upwards until it once again arrives at its usual state of grasping greediness. The fact that the next generation of phones is a little faster or shinier or better at maintaining a WiFi connection has absolute fuck-all to do with satisfying this pleasure-principle, because it cannot ever be fully satisfied.
2) Was anyone really so ephebic as to think that our ability to manipulate little packets of data in better ways would contribute to overall human happiness? He's upset that technological progress has had little to no effect on what is essentially an organic/spiritual problem?
3) Happiness is itself a state of disequilibrium. As far as I know, our bodies just don't have enough dopamine or serotonin to be "happy" all the time. Nor are we set up to be "sad" all the time. What is sustainable, I think, is serenity, peace, understanding, contentment. So expecting society in general to be "happy" is kind of unrealistic, I feel. (What you can do is act and behave in ways that make your life more conducive to happiness. You are the garden, moments of joy are little butterflies that come and visit. You don't get upset when butterflies fly away-- you know they come and they go. If conditions are right, they'll be back).
4) It's all very well to point to people who are surly, childish, impatient, general pains in the ass-- lord knows they exist in droves-- but that's only part of it. We have to at least come up with some ideas for making things better. (In fairness to Louis CK, I didn't watch the entirety of the clip. It's possible that he has dozens of good ideas for making peoples' lives better). To jump to an unrelated point, it's kind of how I feel about people who are smug about their atheism because they've just come up with it. OK, there's no God. Are you just going to stop there? You've reached the end of all thought and there's nothing further to glean? Nah, man, you've got to keep going. People are immature and greedy, they complain about trifles, they feel entitled to all pleasures-- all right, and then what? Where do we go from there?
1) Well, of course! There's a huge part of the human organism that is like the anti-Buddha, in that its entire being and concept is to want. As David Foster Wallace described in his essay on the pleasure cruise that he took,the entirety of this part of us is devoted to dissatisfaction. In response to any pleasure or gratification, it will simply adjust its needs upwards until it once again arrives at its usual state of grasping greediness. The fact that the next generation of phones is a little faster or shinier or better at maintaining a WiFi connection has absolute fuck-all to do with satisfying this pleasure-principle, because it cannot ever be fully satisfied.
2) Was anyone really so ephebic as to think that our ability to manipulate little packets of data in better ways would contribute to overall human happiness? He's upset that technological progress has had little to no effect on what is essentially an organic/spiritual problem?
3) Happiness is itself a state of disequilibrium. As far as I know, our bodies just don't have enough dopamine or serotonin to be "happy" all the time. Nor are we set up to be "sad" all the time. What is sustainable, I think, is serenity, peace, understanding, contentment. So expecting society in general to be "happy" is kind of unrealistic, I feel. (What you can do is act and behave in ways that make your life more conducive to happiness. You are the garden, moments of joy are little butterflies that come and visit. You don't get upset when butterflies fly away-- you know they come and they go. If conditions are right, they'll be back).
4) It's all very well to point to people who are surly, childish, impatient, general pains in the ass-- lord knows they exist in droves-- but that's only part of it. We have to at least come up with some ideas for making things better. (In fairness to Louis CK, I didn't watch the entirety of the clip. It's possible that he has dozens of good ideas for making peoples' lives better). To jump to an unrelated point, it's kind of how I feel about people who are smug about their atheism because they've just come up with it. OK, there's no God. Are you just going to stop there? You've reached the end of all thought and there's nothing further to glean? Nah, man, you've got to keep going. People are immature and greedy, they complain about trifles, they feel entitled to all pleasures-- all right, and then what? Where do we go from there?
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