I am moved by fancies that are curled around these images, and cling, the notion of some infinitely gentle, infinitely suffering thing.

Wilhelm Worringer articulated that in the periods where people tend to lack an epistemology that makes their world manageable, they withdraw from the appearances of a world they do not understand and take refuge in art that is abstract, art that tends to create emotional detachment. This was true of the late 19th nineteenth and early 20^th century, a modern age that witnessed the dethronement of Locke and Descartes; when artists shifted from a dualist position to one which saw mind and matter as aspects of a single world. ‘The modernist effort to record the phenomena of perception’, wrote critic Pericles Lewis, ‘differed from the traditional understanding that art represented a reality outside the mind.’  At the forefront of this revolutionary move were writers,  James Joyce and T.S. Eliot.

In his dissertation and in parts of “East Coker,” Eliot’s preoccupation with both the impossibility and the inevitability of epistemology stands out.  He speaks of the importance of trying to use words and calls each attempt at understanding, “a different kind of failure.”  He claims that separating the explainer and the explanation is an impossible dream, comparable to tying knots in the wind.  Eliot’s famously regarded ‘objective correlative’ is consequently based on a combination of both objectivity and subjectivity, on concealing and simultaneously revealing a world in which direct transcripts are impossible.  Works such as the Waste Land, similar to Joyce’s Ulysses, abandon the principles governing point of view and narrative, they are works designed to subvert the idea of a beginning, a middle and an end. 

H.G Wells speaks of the idea of a fourth dimension in space, from which it would be possible to move around in time as one moves around in space.  This dimension was used by Eliot and Joyce to liberate themselves from traditional concepts of plot and structure.  The space between the artist and his object collapses, and similarly, the space between the reader and the object also disappears.

Eliot’s work, for example, is overflowing with unbreakable syntax; his narration steps back and takes on the role of the ‘invisible poet.’  He adds a dimension in which his work is self-reflexive, and incorporates the larger subject of the crisis in Western culture into the process of reading.   The outside world is internalized and attuned to the narrator’s consciousness and the surroundings take on human or living characteristics, the “half-deserted streets muttering”, or the fog rubbing “it’s back upon the windowpanes.”

Equally, the partial glimpes of any given object in the Waste Land, the highly evident instability of dissolving and overlapping abandons the traditional assumption of wholeness.  Eliot presents many broken perspectives on cities in and out of time, and these many partial-fleeting perspectives in turn lead to the formation of an abstract city in the mind of his reader collaborator.

F.H Bradley, the focus of Eliot’s dissertation, redefined subject and object as aspects of experience and maintained that, because mental focus is always moving, the world as we see it is akin to an optical illusion.  Hence, in Eliot’s poetry, there is an incapability to make contact with anything that is not self-projected; we see only his linguistic echo and the reverberation of his words, a conjoining, in essence of the inner and the outer,  “you dozed and watched the night revealing the thousand sordid images of which your soul was constituted.”

Eliot saw reality as determined and constituted by the self.  With Bradley’s help, he arrived at a vision of a Kaleidoscope world, continuously breaking and reforming.  Hence, Tristan, Isolde, the hyacinth lovers, and all of the pained figures in the Wasteland can be seen as manifestations of himself.  The external life, seen as a dreamlike nightmare, adds to the disconnected quality of the whole poem.  The ‘unreal’ city makes allusions to Dante’s inferno, ‘hypocrite lecteur’ to Baudelaire’s fleur de mal.  The prophet Tiresius, through his incapacity to be relieved of the burden of experience, is the living embodiment of pain. Eliot seeks parallels between the seen and the watcher, he privatizes external sensations to form the one agony, that of life.

Eliot and Joyce’s fascination by contemporary accounts of the primitive mind, which unlike the modern mind, tended to be non-dualistic, goes far to illustrate their substantive standpoint. Eliot took his original epigraph for the Waste Land form Conrad’s heart of darkness because of, as he claims, Conrad’s awareness of the difference between relational and transcendent experience.  Conrad leads us to believe that Kurtz never escapes the dualism of the modern mind and yet as he is dying, he finds unity and complete knowledge, he experiences a transcendent moment and glimpses, from the boundary between life and death, “the horror, the horror” and the heart of darkness.

Eliot was of course, reading Joyce’s Ulysses as the Wasteland was forming in his mind, and in several ways, Joyce served as Eliot’s contemporary inspiration.  He illustrated the importance of giving words a life of their own.  Joyce felt that only through language could he express fully the secret life of the mind and body, providing a revaluation of the world, joining all things read and thought with things encountered.  As he proceeded with each book, schemes grew more complex in the course of embracing more and more of the world.  In Ulysses, the profusion of everything within and around comprises a whole generation.  Its mode of expression seems to deprive it of any single perspective, or of any implied narrator. 

Such incongruity is also visible in Portrait, in the tension between the consciousness of the artist and his language, in the questions that arise of the relationship between personal vision and artistic convention.  Portrait points to an ambiguous title, ‘the artist’ conjures up visions of Joyce himself and a gap thus opens for the reader collaborator, between the experience of the artist as a displaced author and his ability to master experience in the text.    It is important to note that in the first of the three versions of Portrait, Joyce avoided giving any name to his protagonist, he referred to him merely as ‘the subject of this portrait’, ‘the sensitive’, or simply ‘he’.  He wished to express a disdain for mere names in the depiction of a character that had only archetypal significance.  Therein, Stephen attempts throughout the novel, to transcend language, to project literature into real life.   He wishes “to meet in the real world the unsubstantial image which his soul so constantly beheld.”

He furthermore expresses irritation with the view that form in art is tied to the manner in which an artist perceives his object, with the belief that being a good artist ultimately depends on the ability to separate one’s self from the object one is imitating. Stephen must accordingly decide between language as a reflection of the external world and language as a mirror of an inner world of rhythm and emotion

“He drew a phrase from his treasure and spoke it softly to himself:

 - A day of dappled seaborne clouds.

The phrase and the day and the scene harmonized in a chord.  Words. Was it their colours? … No, it was not their colours:  it was the poise and balance of the period itself… he drew less pleasure from the glowing sensible world through the prism of language many-coloured and richly storied than from the contemplation of an inner world of individual emotions mirrored perfectly in a lucid supple periodic prose.”

The subjectivism of Joyce was attacked severely by difference aspects of the socio-political world, particularly Marxist critics.  In Ulysses, Joyce was accused of abandoning society and history, of reducing objective reality to chaos and retreat, and of giving up the task of trying to understand society, “history, said Stephen, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.”  Ulysses, said Radek, is “a heap of dung, crawling with worms, photographed by a cinema apparatus through a microscope.” 

It is, perhaps, painful to be awakened from a vision as to be born.  But this notion of some infinitely gentle, infinitely suffering thing projecting itself upon the page, upon our eyes and mind can only be regarded as true.  It is honest, and it will never fall short of innovative. This leads me to conclude that it is only through the zone of consciousness, in which one can in actuality, express one’s self. We owe a lot to the Eliots and Joyces of the world.

Anonymous

So I found this letter on an old PC of mine, and I think it’s just brilliant.  But I can’t remember for the life of me who it’s from, or even when.  There’s no name on it and no date, I must have just saved it for future reference.  If you wrote this please get in touch, my memory has never failed me before but on this occasion, time has trumped it.  I don’t know anyone from Ann Arbor, so I assume it’s a creative piece..

‘There is never what it’s like here
here right now it’s been hot, humid, sweaty but a very liberal town… ann arbor is… get caught smoking weed pot in public and it’s a $50 fine… paid like a parking ticket… 
done many things… 
the trekking guide gig came about as a result of my wanting to study with great lamas. 
I write: 

I want to write you a poem where the words have hands that will move across y’r body in slow endless strokes, 
heating your insides and soothing your skin, 
until you are covered by a warm mist and are torn between 
deep contentment and aching desire 
until you sink slowly to your bed and begin gently rocking, 
until you softly open and close your hands and you 
whisper my name 

wrote a novel called “They gave us everything we wanted and what they didn’t give us we took” 

I paint as well… 
first degree as a painter 
third degree black belt painter 
music is just an extension, but been doing that too all my life.’

2005

Some letter from my 16 year old self to present self. Feels like it was only yesterday, to be honest. 

‘Were all your stars out? Were you busy writing your heart out?’

Dear reader, 

At this moment in time, I clutch very tightly my pristine copy of Salinger’s introduction to Seymour in my hand. It is a time where a small group of us have just formed the beginnings of an obsession with post war American literature, the beatniks and the Dharma bums, significantly, any person or group with the title of non-conformist attached to their name. You, or rather I have just completed an English exam, and I’m feeling good about it.

Why am I here? Oh dear reader, in this extraordinary piece of prose, your bohemian teenage author is attempting to open your eyes to her, and to yourself. As is often the case with most unintended biographical pieces, I shall apologise in advance, as my good friend Buddy Glass did, for all the self-righteous wit, criticism and sweeping statements that you will see throughout this ambiguous pledge; you must be aware that I have been known to make such futile and extensive remarks in my writing and was more than usually criticised for doing so by my history teachers. But I have always been and forever shall remain a narrator, and that makes us alike in the most simplistic form, we never converse in tactics, we disintegrate in our own analysis. Oh how melodramatic I am! Don’t fear, my points will be revealed, if gradually.

First, I guess it is imperative that I decide on what I am actually trying to say and avoid continuously going off on one of my frequent tangents. I find that one of the few things we have left in the world, apart from our own interpretation of it, is our subsequent portrayal. You and I do this through writing. We have reached a time where reality has never been more real, and hope is escaping at increasing speed everyday.  Each person is repressed by the echoes of tomorrow and as compensation for our undeniable muteness, and without fear of appearing too garrulous ourselves we seek solace in the one thing which- alongside a kind of comfort, is figuratively speaking a method of enlightening the apparent unacquainted.

So I had been reading this specific Salinger book a couple of days before the exam, and although the subject area would not be commonly compared to that of my paper, I remember clearly the strong feeling I had that the protagonist in the story was some sort of omniscient genius, and I obtained the widespread feeling most readers acquire when they are lost in a book they feel ardently about, that the protagonist and inevitably the writer; was me. Do you remember?

I find what I am going to write next quite embarrassing, so let us quickly adhere to the subject of this letter, the subject which I have sat behind a computer screen discussing for hours on end with writers, who frankly speaking- and I apologise for my crudeness, are so quick to judge and embark on what they see as their profound and noble literary journey, that they are unaware that what they are presenting to me so bravely is an identical replica of that which has been fed to them.

But I do admit that there are two extremes of this group, these writers of which I feel it is essential to mention, because without knowing it – and at this point I feel I am unintentionally making them out to be mere naïve delusionals – they have sculpted a dispute amongst themselves, and, from a personal perspective, there is no better time than present for settling this. There is the pretentious kind of course who lose themselves in self-appraisal, and there is the critical kind who feed off damning the self-appraised.   Oh, you may ask, what has this to do with anything in the whole scheme of things, but don’t you see, it is the foundations of every vowel, continence and syllable on this page?

That opening quote which I used so freely is what I quickly noted down in the margin of my exam paper that humid afternoon, and it is what my eyes inquisitively, incessantly glanced at every other minute to remind me of the reason the pen was actually in my hand. It would be quite a picture moment, including the routine scraping of pencils of those sitting in front and alongside me, had it not been for the pressure, not of – and this may surprise you- getting a high grade, but of proving to myself that inspiration is the key to success, the pressure of allowing myself some remaining dignity in comprehending a prudent sense of judgement, specifically regarding this particular man whom you know so well, Seymour Glass.

It is that which my thoughts amounted to in what seemed to me a battle between myself and the iconic literature students of today, as they customarily lectured the world on garrulousness.  To outline the main thrust of the argument, I will with blind courage quote an anonymous source, and to fear the worst this could be quite a discomfit for the reader, but it does not embarrass me therefore I hope you can also see it for what it is.  I am sorry for pressing this quote upon you, I only feel that while, and maybe for the first time I have your complete attention, I should  attempt to make full use of it before it fledges.

‘Writers are those established authors and journalists who make a viable living from their work. As are those who aren’t quite as established yet or aren’t full-time writers, but perhaps have a few pieces of work published here and there. Those are writers. No friggin wannabe’s. The wannabe’s go around introducing themselves as writers, when really they’re as much a writer as I would be a doctor by putting a plaster on a cut. It’s ridiculous. You are NOT a writer, simply by putting pen to paper. I am NOT a poet by writing that. It’s not for the individual to decide that they are a writer or an artist or what. You can write, and you paint.. but you cant name yourself something that perhaps only you enjoy reading or viewing. Being creative and expressing yourself is one thing, but titling yourself like that is plain conceited. If everyone who picked up a pen or a paintbrush called themselves a writer or artist, it takes something away from the establishment of writing and art itself. You may be a very good writer and artist, but until your work has been viewed and accredited by others, how can you know if you’re good enough to be called a writer or an artist. If no one wants to know about it other than yourself, you’re not a writer. You’re a writer, in that you’re physically writing, but not a Writer. Maybe this is a definitional disagreement we have, you must see literature in some really literal sense, I see it as more prestigious. “I’M A WRITER AND I’M POET!! WOO! WORSHIP ME!! I HAVE AN IDENTITY!!’’’

Even as I read back over that,  my thoughts  scramble frivolously to despair. My God, I must admit, the time in which I have contemplated writing this evocative and confessional piece of prose seems never ending. I believe it may be blatant at such a crucial moment in time that conversation, be it with friends or strangers does me no honourable justice, and I seek solace in confidently believing, if slightly to a naïve degree, that I can compensate for my lack of accurate communication through words. At this final juncture in a distinct era of my life, I can’t help but maintain a fairly strong belief that my statements, be they sensible or not are herewith, unlike me, in a safe transitory period.   I, myself am stuck between two divergent ages, and the more I say dear reader, the more I fear for the consequences of my words, but I nevertheless obtain the security of knowing that this is a tear-eyed goodbye. I have important choices to make, but I cling onto onto the hope, be it original or through some form of false adamancy, that I will remain with you in the years to come.

Tomorrow shall be another ordinary day for you and I, but I hope that by the end of this particular note  (or whatever it could be called) we arrive at some form of coinciding, or at least on my part, epiphanic adieu, and if you choose fit to see it; maybe commencement of a newly enlightened vision. And so, at this point, I leave my thoughts bare for you, so you may see them for what they are.  Know now, dear reader that above anything else you may ever choose to do or adhere to, you will never, I repeat, never be a writer by profession, but my God, you will always be a writer by religion.  Please do not forget this.

Yours truly,

An old friend.

We’re boozed up to be free

Twas a springly dawn in which we stood
In linefuls by the beating drums,

And we marched wistfully with all behind
To fields of sodomy, inclined.

Surly hearts reduced to crumbs
That spread halfway across the land.

Where an artist is disheartened he gives heart to humanity

I remember once, I was in a crowd,
By a city half-submerged in sea,
An ancient city, almost in ruins,
Dragging down with it the best in me.

I remember seeing you on a hill,
Far away from the crowd, looking strong,
And I walked towards you, where it was warmer,
Away from grey and away from wrong.

I remember that well, and I’ll never forget
The way everyone was looking out to sea,
The way I turned around and saw you there,
And knew that you would let me be.

You were the only person around in colour,
So I stood next to you and held your hand,
We watched the crowd leave the shore in boats
Accepting that we would never understand.

You squeezed my hand when I said I missed it,
Those days, the company, and you,
And as the city sunk even lower,
You replied that you did love me too.

You irritate me so much

that I can’t help but want to want you.  

You bug me, you annoy me, 

you irk me so much so

that I can’t help but want to want you.

You refuse me, 

you confuse me,

you play me so much so

that I can’t help but want to want you.

He grew up in a Catholic place
That taught him much of fear and virtue,
And if you asked him he would tell you
He’s never failed to save his face.
He pummels to his promised passions
But blankets with a certain eye,
What he seems to prick and seems to pry
In the most mannerly of fashions.

He sits up dreaming in the back
Of that which he can demand of some,
What he can possess in lives to come
And which the some do seem to lack.
He gets these thoughts deep in his head
Of opportunities to pursue,
He wants to see them through and through
Until the last shadow is dead.
And when it’s gone he’ll try again
Through wit and reminiscence
And talk of God’s prudent omniscience 
To relive the sun and rain.

Our minds are similar I see,
He delves through what is thin and deep,
But in his work he’s half asleep
And remembers nothing of what is free.
If I could dream the dream I’ve carved
And express how much it means to me,
I’d paint a picture for him to see
Just how much his present self is starved.
But he doesn’t listen to my strife,
Wants what is his, but I want mine,
And that would be perfectly fine
If I wasn’t living for his life.

The morning dawn resolves around a 
fainting wind that blows along the street,
awry and losing focus before tumbling 
heavy by my fumbling feet.

The harsh sun that rises to confirm
an endless list of images that
reel across my peeking eyes,
pokes and begs for recognition, but
gives up too soon and quickly dies 
with the drawing of the curtains.

All’s quiet on the roads and groves
that bend around the fragments of a
never-ending, nether night,
few smashed bottles, an earing 
and some keys play to the musing light.

Leave me be, i declare, to my repentant misery,
to the memory and madness of my few hours past,
there were scraps, of which i’m sure, and sorry 
pinings that did not last.

Beneath the feet and fantasy that assured the 
night of fleeting deals, I lay my heart and
watched it roam tight-pressed amongst the
stamping heels.
My heart and I both knew the moment, that
our aching conscience would be short-spent,
a meeting of a pair of eyes, brief greetings and
what I never meant, but always seemed 
to utter.

I wanted to tell you, at the end of the street,
before we said goodbye and before you
broke my stare, as the last lamps turned off, and
the night buses retired to God knows where,
as the final scream of pleasure or pain chased us
down around the corner, and someone somewhere
turned in bed to face the wall instead,
that i really do care for you.

But with the fall of the sky i came to falter
and slowly die, and now
a new day leans in against my window,
the weight of which makes the whole room 
creak, the rush and revelation of the hour
malignly invites me into a fresh-faced week,
and one which I surely cannot fathom.

You ask of me to tick your fickle list, of your collection
of tits-out snaps that match your ons when lights are off.
So many flashing fancies on the internet, but please don’t
puff your chest out like you’re the first I ever met.
I have to break it to you, dear darling, we’re completely
misaligned. If you believe you’ve lured me to a secret lust,
then you’ve been largely confined to your usual sort
of wide-eyed women, and ambitious fans.

There’s something quite off-putting about an able charmer 
armed in ego, with his cards out on the table, stressing
that it’s all just a bit of a laugh. What’s funny is your methods,
how you soft-spokenly beguile me for your biddings. 
There’s a madness in your endeavours, so much so it makes 
you brittle, and just a little unsubstantial. 

If I wanted to flog myself off for a man to wank off to, for 
the details of the inches, and just how hard
it is to get up on a Monday morning, I’d count my losses and 
bet that my time would be wilder spent on Chatroulette.
I’m gonna have to pass on the crassness of your claims.

Fall of Rome

You fed me words, and I wanted to feel it,
I wanted to be it but in the end, I was the lie,
Never understanding and never understood,
Merely a drug of choice to fill your lifeless sky.

I cant think much on anything, but think too much of us,
Questions of why, and where, of everything we shared
And why you were ever scared.

I never once considered the shadow of it all,
Your bent body, half in dark, and the other pressing upon me
The value of it all.

You promised the world, that together we could save it, 
And yet all you bore was your eyes rolled back,
The scent of whiskey on your breath, and not much more.

We got on so well, in our silence meeting,
Two partners in our denial fleeting,
But the Pope is dead, the dream has fallen through
I should have known better than to place my hope in you.

Don’t now weigh the stars and rivers
Against some form of make-belief,
Don’t pick-pocket my stars and run my rivers of relief,
Until they’ve been strung out and hung to dry.

Being loveless in this city is a downright pity,
The current’s too strong to keep me afloat,
And the rest of it is all just too sad, like sand
Running through my fingers, and sinking my boat.

Some people run forever until they run into a wall,
I thought we’d agreed that we were tired of it all,
Were we merely conversing on a hopeless revolution?

There are no other means to live on, but to live.