The secret to Borges' prodigious reading is here, that he regarded everything as a branch of fantastic literature. This for me is a kind of ideal, it's what I want to access because once unlocked all texts become charmed and reading biology or geology is as magical as reading poetry.
And then as adjunct that the world rests on these fictions which are arbitrary and can be exchanged. That there are a billion ways to dream the world.
yeah thats an idea that gotten into my head since joining here. that poetry pays attention to everything because it can find resonance in everything, no matter how dry or supposedly antithetical to poetry. but in way that's exactly what i've always loved about dreams. how even stuff you never payed active attention to turns out to have resonance and magic."The poet is only distinguished from the crank - and the distinction is very difficult to discern - because the poet avoids literal belief. All becomes metaphor and image, and there is no real division between history and myth. Neither should be taken literally. The poetic tradition flows within this liminal state. It can be traced in history, it can be traced in myth, it can be traced in biography, in ecology, in geology, but the thread is lost when it is taken too literally. It is an inside joke of the most dangerous cosmic tricksters passed down only to those in the know, and those who know are precisely those who have seen and touched it. And when it is touched, it is discovered everywhere."
as I was going to point out in version's morton feldman thread, stockhausen once told feldman "your music could be a moment in my music". maybe that's the issue with minimalism and proper tunes generally. they impose as permanent constraints what could be only temporary ones in a romantic context. for example, proper tunes-ism dictates that you always need a catchy hook. non-pop music can have that, but it doesn't have to at all times. you're free to invent your own rules and go wherever you want. the downside is that this dilutes focus on perfecting Proper elements, which is why proper tunes can often be more compelling in practice that other stuff.
but the potential to assimilate the strengths of proper tunes is why I'd put myself fully in the romantic camp. your music could be a moment in my music.
i like the insight that it’s not just that these things aren’t literally the same, it’s that the difference can create a portal effect. a “flawed” copy doesn’t just exist alongside the original, it can also open up an entire “flawed”—new, different—universe. through the looking glass.Borges is creeped out by mirrors. Both the mirror and the encyclopaedia exist as extensions of the world as reproductions of the world but also as other worlds and doorways into other worlds and things get odd when they start to diverge, your own reflection starts acting independently, refuses to mimic your movements, the encyclopaedia sprouts new regions of the world, meticulously accounted for, from their poetry to their mathematics.
so what i would say is, absorb this information if you must, but then do something interesting with it. make something up. a fun game we can play or something.
As a rule people want to understand things so they can dismiss them. Or they want to understand them to gain status,or to add ammunition to a debate club arsenal.
Those things are not very useful to me. But I do find it useful to create disjunctions and I find it useful to create decelerations, intensifications, various modulations of experience and consciousness. Ways to trip up, humble, awe, humiliate, that irritating relentlessly verbal part of the self that wants to understand things, defeat them, flatten them and move triumphantly onwards
I group rilke in with those two as well. Similiar grey morality in the face of infinityBorges sometimes strikes me as Lovecraft minus the horror. His stories often end with some sort of revelation, but there's no descent into madness or horrifying abyss. You're just confronted with some sort of phenomena, sleight of hand or even just time and space, and there's no indication whether it's good or bad - it just is.
WtfI group rilke in with those two as well. Similiar grey morality in the face of infinity
"Hostile" only in the sense of not conducive to our happiness/sanity/survival. In the scheme of things, it's "nothing personal".Lovecraft seems to view cosmic indifference as hostile whereas Borges seems to view it as neutral.
I dont understand. This seems self evident to me.