‘the Time-mind’ vs. ‘a philosophy of the eye’

[sus]

Did a cat just walk across your keyboard or something?

He's been out of shape since his return

 

[Mr. Tea]

He's been out of shape since his return

 

[mixed_biscuits]

Unpack it for me boss

One way of looking at maths is that it's the study of structure as such, so you would be stripping the structures that you are focussing on of perhaps distracting cultural fluff in order to see how many of the structural possibilities are being made real.

 

[sus]

I knew it. Useless.

 

[mvuent]

essential reading

Meereschal MacMuhun Moon Child Me 3: Mosaic

All things live, all things are in motion, all things correspond; the magnetic rays emanating from myself or others traverse without obstac...

groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.com

in wild soundscapes bernie krause attributes the following song (rather vaguely) to the pygmy peoples of gabon:

The fish does… HIP
The bird does… VISS
The marmot does… GNAN
I throw myself to the left,
I throw myself to the right,
I act the fish,
Which darts in the water, which darts
Which twists about, which leaps—
All lives, all dances, and all is loud.

when i first read the last line i did a double take because it seemed so familiar. then i remembered the gerard de nerval quote znore uses at the start of the essay above: “all things live, all things are in motion, all things correspond”. could the similarity between the two support znore’s belief that “literature, and in the arts in general but especially within poetry, harbours one of the last remaining pockets of archaic animism”—a core aspect of a universal religion “once present within every ethnic grouping across the planet”?

whether it’s the case or not (i certainly like idea), on an anecdotal level i have found that as i’ve started paying more attention to the sounds of my surroundings over the past few years (as opposed to taking a strictly visual interest), i’ve become increasingly sympathetic to animism. on a perceptual level, it often feels very true to me. obviously the song above centers on sound, and the fuller version of the quote znore uses has references to “secret voices… from the plants, the trees, animals, the meanest insects” and “the starry choir”. a connection between animism and the aural (or perhaps just a more balanced sense-ratio) makes visceral sense.

anyways, if this doctrine of life force in all things has survived in western culture mostly in art and poetry, lewis’ veneration of deadness as an aesthetic virtue is all the more fascinating. as much as it seems (based on the poll) to run counter to our own ideas and instincts, it does have an eerie appeal. just as there’s truth to animism revealed on some kaleidoscope settings, i do think it’s possible to get to an eye-heavy ratio where the world around you seems eternal and still.

i don’t know his art that much but this painting conveys that well, depicting a very transient, dynamic moment in time in a fossilized state. look at the smoke! the way he transforms such a classic exemplar of nebulousness and change into a set of fixed sculptures:

also interesting how the people in the scene are depicted in varying degrees of abstraction. the ones in the background are pure automatons, their limbs mechanical levers, while the other three soldiers look more human, closer to being alive. there's a hint of interior feeling in the one facing the viewer. even if lewis' philosophy of the eye made him an an enemy of naturalism and futurism alike, there's power to it and, wanted or not, nuance.

 

[mvuent]

"Interrelatedness is a common-sense observation. We should remind ourselves that ordinary working people, traditional people ... notice that things are connected. What's not common is the mind-body dualism that begins to come in with monotheism. And the alliance of monotheism with the formation of centralized governance and the national state, that's what's unnatural, and statistically in a minority on earth. The [most common] human experience has been an experience of Animism. Only a small proportion of people on earth have been monotheists... Everybody else in the world is a multifaceted polytheist, animist, or Buddhist who sees things in the world [as alive]."

 

[catalog]

From recent Alex niven book

BLAST asserted that the modern world had 'reared up steel trees where the green ones were lacking', and 'found wider intricacies than those of Nature'.

 

[sus]

sex is suicide

Sex also has important transpersonal dimensions: on the one hand, it is a vehicle for transcending the biological mortality of the individual by leading to new birthl on the other it has deep connections with death. The French actually call sexual orgasm "small death"... (Stanislav Groff)

 

[luka]

The orgasm-death gimmick

 

[Murphy]