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| Wise words brother. You and I both know that deep down, you and Ripley are right. For all of the erectile potency of the hammer and its wrath, at the end of the day, it's still about force, domination, and will to power--yes, even in the name of righteousness, actually, most often in the name of righteousness. I saw an interesting movie today. My sister's friend woke me up around noon--not proud of that--asking if I wanted to come with them to the movies. I said sure, still groggy--one of those up till 6:30AM nights--anyway, she and my sister took me to Mona Lisa Smile, with trick-ass Julia Roberts. I really liked her in the movie, and I think I won't speak of her in a snotty way anymore. Definitely a prototypical girls coming of age story, and aside from the look I got from the dude who takes tickets, I liked it. So there's a scene in which a snotty aristocratic waspy girl starts callin this other girl--who they want us to like--a slut, and nobody likes you and all that shit. But the girl she's yelling at just saw the snotty one's husband out with another girl the night before--scandalous. Whooo boy, that's some scandalous shit. So you're thinking she's about to tear right back into the snotty one with something like, "Fuck you bitch! I saw your man about bang some slut out by a dumpster. Yeah take that. You been tryin to make everyone miserable and now you gotta eat it. And the girl's got bigger tits than you too! That's right there it is, unhhh." But you know what, while she's being called a slut and told that nobody likes her, she walks over and hugs the girl, who starts breakin down cryin, talkin bout he doesn't love me anymore, he doesn't sleep with me. It was good movie work, cuz you want retribution, you want the reckoning, bring down the fury on this bitch. But no, you get a wake-up call, you are assuming that the little aristocrat is a demonic force. She's scared and sad and angry, and therefore, desires to inflict pain. She is no demonic force. The interesting thing is that her mother is so crusty and rigid that it would take Moses himself to bust through that aggrandized profanity. But this girl, if you came down with the fire, you would push her into a corner, she is too strong to accept defeat, yet she is not too cold to feel pain, love, hope. If you keep pushing her in a corner, eventually she will become her mother. So brother, you are right, the fire will not convert. The question is whether that means the fire has no purpose at all. What if the fire is meant not to convert but to energize the believers. When a brother is tired and weak, and questioning his way, if you set him in front of Dr. Martin Luther the King talkin about "I might not get there with you, but we as a people will get to the Promised Land!" That just might be the jump start he needed. | | |
| How much, oh how much I strangled my spirit in angry contortions to be a prophet of the hammer, philosophizing with a hammer, poeticizing with a hammer, taking that hammer to the world with the mistaken belief that the only way my visions could exist was if I destroyed all others first.
It was back in that summer of the art party. One of the artists featured there was a short, abstract artist named Ripley. His paintings were subconscious and his practice in mysticism was authentic and intergrated. Towards the end of the summer, it was another wild Friday night in our house of Dionysian revelry. As usual, most of the queer culture scene was immersed in their own addiction of social-politiking and sexual objectifying one another. Meanwhile, Clint's mind was burning with the fire of marijuana perspective and his inner child was outraged at the scene around him. Out comes the hammer, out comes projection after projection ingeniusly spoken in the craze of a Portishead party. And all of a sudden, I realize Ripley is here. He calls me aside and says I am taking the wrong approach to awakening people. I am caught off-guard, my pride is wounded, but my soul is touched that someone approach me on that level, because the scene around me never did. "What am I doing," I asked Ripley. "You are being too much like a hammer. It's better to be like water. Hammering is what nailed people asleep in their boxes to begin with." The summer went on. I moved out of the house. I have never seen Ripley again.
Over a year later, during my first week in Budapest, I visited the grave of Gul Baba, a sufi saint enshrined here in Hungary. I took along a magician's stone that my girlfriend gave me. What is a magician's stone? I don't know - the snotty punk-ass love-and-light hippies at the new age store were too proud to tell her, because she wasn't a "magician." Hammering aside, I placed the stone on Gul Baba's grave and asked him to bless it. It was a clear, dry day outside, but once I asked him, drops of rain began to fall on my head. Nowhere around me, just on my head. A blackbird came circling down, landed on top of the shrine, and cawed at me three times...
No rain the rest of the day. I am walking home to the hotel, and I remember the morning's ceremony with Gul Baba, and there, rain begans to fall. Rain, water.
The next day I am standing under Burger King smoking a cigarette. The sun is out bright. No scientific dismissals possible today. I quitely say hello to the spirit of Gul Baba, thinking - there's no way you can pull some magic shit off today, brother. And, then, yes, water starts dripping randomly from the roof of Burger King onto my head. Nowhere else is water running from the roof. People move out of the way not to get wet, but I just stand there, surrendered, feeling the water dampen my head and clothes.
And so, amigos, it is not a story about magic, but a story about one man who can't stop hammering and is told time and time again the necessity of water.
Water, run, water erode, water weep, water do not punish, do not fix, do not fight, just move to what is natural.
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| How much, oh how much I strangled my spirit in angry contortions to be a prophet of the hammer, philosophizing with a hammer, poeticizing with a hammer, taking that hammer to the world with the mistaken belief that the only way my visions could exist was if I destroyed all others first.
It was back in that summer of the art party. One of the artists featured there was a short, abstract artist named Ripley. His paintings were subconscious and his practice in mysticism was authentic and intergrated. Towards the end of the summer, it was another wild Friday night in our house of Dionysian revelry. As usual, most of the queer culture scene was immersed in their own addiction of social-politiking and sexual objectifying one another. Meanwhile, Clint's mind was burning with the fire of marijuana perspective and his inner child was outraged at the scene around him. Out comes the hammer, out comes projection after projection ingeniusly spoken in the craze of a Portishead party. And all of a sudden, I realize Ripley is here. He calls me aside and says I am taking the wrong approach to awakening people. I am caught off-guard, my pride is wounded, but my soul is touched that someone approach me on that level, because the scene around me never did. "What am I doing," I asked Ripley. "You are being too much like a hammer. It's better to be like water. Hammering is what nailed people asleep in their boxes to begin with." The summer went on. I moved out of the house. I have never seen Ripley again.
Over a year later, during my first week in Budapest, I visited the grave of Gul Baba, a sufi saint enshrined here in Hungary. I took along a magician's stone that my girlfriend gave me. What is a magician's stone? I don't know - the snotty punk-ass love-and-light hippies at the new age store were too proud to tell her, because she wasn't a "magician." Hammering aside, I placed the stone on Gul Baba's grave and asked him to bless it. It was a clear, dry day outside, but once I asked him, drops of rain began to fall on my head. Nowhere around me, just on my head. A blackbird came circling down, landed on top of the shrine, and cawed at me three times...
No rain the rest of the day. I am walking home to the hotel, and I remember the morning's ceremony with Gul Baba, and there, rain begans to fall. Rain, water.
The next day I am standing under Burger King smoking a cigarette. The sun is out bright. No scientific dismissals possible today. I quitely say hello to the spirit of Gul Baba, thinking - there's no way you can pull some magic shit off today, brother. And, then, yes, water starts dripping randomly from the roof of Burger King onto my head. Nowhere else is water running from the roof. People move out of the way not to get wet, but I just stand there, surrendered, feeling the water dampen my head and clothes.
And so, amigos, it is not a story about magic, but a story about one man who can't stop hammering and is told time and time again the necessity of water.
Water, run, water erode, water weep, water do not punish, do not fix, do not fight, just move to what is natural.
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| Clint: This will be a timeless, spaceless field where seeds are planted in the eternal, an altar where pearls are laid to bear future fruit, a plane of solid black, indestructible matter in that confusing, delirious realm where life becomes death and death becomes life and both spin back and forth until nothing is left of frantic attachment and control-driven demands, just a simultaneous falling and rising and spinning - the motions of the sea, the invisible current of rivers running and standing still at the same time - and this, this the black duende, the moan of beautiful agony that arises from the roots, the soil, the rock, that bends trees down in the dead of night and as you look at their hanging green leaves you know they, too, are in sorrow, in lament, in the dark waltz that plays as souls march across cemeteries to the land beyond, the dark waltz that plays as babies wail their first tears, the dark waltz that plays when the teenage boy bleeds his first heartache, the dark waltz that is the nexus, the crossroads, the threshold between life and death, the dark waltz that when honed into the bones sings in the best of us as pure, pure, pure beautiful, pure beautiful solemn melodies of being forever ENRAPTURED.
I want to be enraptured, with down-spinning gravity and humble acceptance and deep soul-gut passion. That is all I want. And I know it now because of our weblog! So put this up, put everthing up, and we will have a good good healthy torque-building, soul-strengthening mighty good time of it, brother!
Amen! | | |
| I just had a thought. Preachers want to build something. They want to get out there and talk about how something's good, and how I'm gonna build on this thing, stake a claim, and make a stand. Let me create a category which I'm gonna call the 'realm of the spirit'. This used to be a top priority for western thinkers. I don't think it is right now; I think in the organized religious sector, there are no doubt some inspiring folk keepin it real, but their voices are drowned out by the 2:00AM televangelists. And don't get me wrong, I'm not tryin to go back to the good ol' days of expulsions, pograms, forced conversions, inquisitions, etc. I'm talkin about a noticeable lack of interest in agitating the spirit in a productive way. It's interesting because it is not a lack of desire for this agitation; you can show me the most pomo know-it-all hepcat, too cool for school, and pouring out disdain for everything and everyone like it was Bud at a biker rally, and I tell you what, with the right stimulus--I don't know, perhaps a meeting with HH (His Holiness the Dalai Lama) or rest-in-peace the former Lubuvitcher Rebber, or even a been-around-the block lumberjack, who's got a sparkle in his eye, like he's hiding something from the rest of us; one of these cats will melt the walls this dude has spent so much time building, and for a moment, you will see that this hipster does not really want to posture his life, and his statement as one which has totally dismissed wonder, community, tryin-and-failin-and-tryin-again-to-get-it-right. The point is, I think everyone deep down wants to agitate the spirit to raise up and do some good, so what stops this from being an important topic of conversation. There's an obstacle--at least one--which Nietzches rightfully brought to our attention. "Philosophizing with a hammer" is the second half of the title of his Twilight of the Idols. Now I can dig that shit had gotten out of control, the dogma that is, both philosophical and religious. So I've got alot of love for brother Nietzsche, who slowly went from idol to idol, seeing what was hollow. The problem is, his hammer, plus the attitude of this punk-ass angry fool, could be wielded self-righteously to destroy even the overcomings that Nietzsche came to affirm. This hammer has been wielded by every chump that wants to score some quick points on someone tryin to build something. It's easy as hell, too. Nietzsche's hammer has fallen into the wrong hands. And for this reason, people are scared. They're so scared that they join the bandwagon of profanity, close up their spirit, and follow venomous mediocrity. | | |
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