Creepypasta

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to the group on 19 May 2015.

Let the children... by Victor-Surge on DeviantArt

Incidentally, our story has a lot of potentially creepypasta fare embedded in it. The whole summer pilot program venturing down into the steam tunnels, reading drafts of Yeats's "Second Coming," catching glimpses the terrible beast Farthington had warned about,

sometimes swaggering in the distance up ahead of us in the dim intermittent rays of our flashlights, sometimes turning around suddenly to face us, its human physiognomy smiling to reveal a terrifying array of lion's teeth.

See the original post here.

Also, the idea of Carlton/Steffi inside the Sea Devil suit. Jawless or not?

As with creepypasta in general, I'd love for our story to eventually encourage the type of underground fan fiction, fanart, and cosplay that tend to proliferate around these threadbare stories. I don't know how all that starts, but it's almost like too much involvement by the initiating artist can actually inhibit its growth. This, of course, is the open source paradigm in a nutshell. Also that of King Arthur, whose legend grows as his reality recedes from view.

I just remembered and looked up the Slender Man meme, which was started as a thread on the Something Awful Internet forum, namely, a contest to doctor everyday photos to look terrifying. It relies on the exact same dynamism as our project.

As the author of the linked article states,

Slenderman highlights the strength and weaknesses of the Internet simultaneously...Of course when Victor Surge first created him, he was just a creepy picture with minimal back story. Now he is a cultural phenomenon and terrorises the dreams and thoughts of many.  What makes Slenderman a fascinating study is that he is the the personification of how modern myths work. At the core of Slenderman, most of us know he is created. You can trace back his history to specific posts and websites. The Internet ruins the myth but at the same time, the Internet gives it an authenticity and connectivity that continually builds upon it. 

The strength of this meme comes from its ambiguity, which has been part of the reason why I have been so reluctant to go on record with a lot of specific details we sketch out on the blog. At times, this kind of clarifying impulse seems to trespass on the minds of would-be co-creators. Interestingly, I've always seen our performances as running a similar risk, especially when characters lose their indefinitude. I don't think it needs to be that way; our attempts to justify our invariably less than ideal configurations (e.g. like Friday, making an inexplicably young J.J. Lazarus into Joseph Lazarus III) allows us to avoid painting ourselves into an ontological corner.

A Character in the Movie Called Life

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Allison to the group on 14 May 2015.

Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche

I tend to compartmentalize theories and philosophies from the people that birthed them.

Generally I pick out males, because (1) they dominate the field and (2) as a product of a male dominated major where we were taught the works of white males predominantly, they are what is in my arsenal.

However, I revere my mentor for being an ardent and progressive feminist, who took things like the works of men, critiqued them for having the wrong projections about women, but also taught them because they hold an important space in the academy, namely, more recent philosophy (written by men) has gotten really good at pinpointing the problem with men. But it’s often few and far between, because who is doing existentialism these days? Probably me and like three other people talking about Sartre and Camus at book club. Most people are worried about artificial intelligence and cognitive science. Nietzsche had a sort of female apprentice, Lou Salome, who was brilliant. His sister, though, was kind of a nutcase.

Judith Butler is excellent and I always read her work in conjunction with existentialism and its meshing with our surroundings, namely, the other and the work of drag (as in drag queens). The manipulation of gender roles and identities is so important to understanding how we form our own identities. For her, the other is a given and necessary component of our freely chosen existence. You mentioned violence--Zizek, of course, disagrees and views the other as horrifically invasive and penetrating (intentionally phallic). I am sometimes torn between these two camps. The way I have reconciled it to myself is that we are free to move in the world and take up various identities, but we are never free of the other. However much we may try to embrace our individuality, it is trumped by our human requirement to be in communities.

Now, does this mean the eternal recurrence would only work in an individualistic vacuum? Not at all. eternal recurrence of the same to me falls on a linear vision of time, not a looping spiral. We are a character in the movie called life and if we are to watch the movie (as I like to think we might do in purgatory), we would be able to see ourselves making individual movements contingent on the moves of others. I view the role of others, as I wrote in my thesis, as catastrophic and harmful to the movements, but a necessary evil. In my opinion, most interpretations of the eternal recurrence are too basic--they focus is on how time works, not on the meaning and identity derived over time.

This Existentialist Boys' Club

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to the group on 14 May 2015.

Andrea Dworkin appearing on the television programme After Dark on 21 May 1988

I'm not married to Irigaray either by the way (she's like 85 years old). I just put it out there because (1) it ties together about 10 or 11 threads we've been talking about recently and (2) I'm fascinated that people were writing philosophy in 1991.

You've got to be a straight-up fool to bring that (essentialist) Koolaid to a grown (existentialist) woman's party. I'm guessing a Simone de Beauvoir would have smacked that into the cheap seats.

But it sounds like you're bringing in a lot of men to take her out. Are they just rigidly trying to recapitulate their shriveled old male projects in themselves (excuse my French)? Or is it all an even playing field and they just happen to be men? I somehow happened across this quote in recent weeks, from even more radical feminist, Andrea Dworkin:

We think that we live in a heterosexual society because most men are fixated on women as sexual objects; but, in fact, we live in a homosexual society because all credible transactions of power, authority, and authenticity take place among men; all transactions based on equity and individuality take place among men. Men are real; therefore, all real relationship is between men; all real communication is between men; all real reciprocity is between men; all real mutuality is between men.

As I look at the all-male, all-white AP English reading list that has been bequeathed to me by my two female predecessors, I sometimes wonder about this existential boys' club with its rigidly white male philosophical subject/tragic hero suffering against the backdrop of nonwhite, non-male minor characters. I like this Dworkin quote too:

Feminist art is not some tiny creek running off the great river of real art. It is not some crack in an otherwise flawless stone. It is, quite spectacularly I think, art which is not based on the subjugation of one half of the species. It is art which will take the great human themes--love, death, heroism, suffering, history itself--and render them fully human. It may also, though perhaps our imaginations are so mutilated now that we are incapable even of the ambition, introduce a new theme, one as great and as rich as those others--should we call it "joy"?

Although I'm way beyond my depth now, I see some essentialism creeping into these articulations in the phrases "render them fully human" and "introduce a new theme...'joy.'" And I think I know exactly what she is talking about here too, but I will likely sound like an a-hole trying to express my understanding of what she means, because elsewhere she seems to express herself in very non-essentialist terms.

But I have to admit, I see how this idea that Nietzsche's eternal return could be seen as striving toward a fundamentally sterile, asexual, or even--as Dworkin might assert--homosexual recapitulation of oneself and one's projects.

Practice Notes

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to the group on 8 May 2015.



This is first and foremost for little Joseph Lazarus III--some notes from today's practice.

Father suggested a little percussive wah-wah style guitar for the vamp at the end of "Hey Rome." Here's one of the all-time best uses of that ever: "Love's Theme" by Barry White.

I also think what J.J. was doing with "Hey Rome" today was cool--sounded a lot like the guitar work on Stevie Wonder's "Superwoman (Where Were You When I Needed You)" (Tone so dry you can hear the strings rattle! Cued up solos here and here). Don't necessarily want soloing, but those repeated climbing scale/pull-off figures he keeps throwing in. Also, from earlier in the song, those high, lilting octave chords.

Although this is quite different, Will and I are channeling Stereolab on the one-chord 5th-chord vamp between "Majesty" and "The Ladder." Like "Jenny Ondioline," it should gradually crescendo with each passing iteration, getting up to a high level of intensity by the end. Instead of this hammer-on, Russ was doing some Who-like sus4 stuff to give some texture/variety. Also, can take some inspiration from their "Three-Dee Melody."

On another topic, we pointed out that the verse for "The Ladder" uses the same basic progression as "Hold On" by Eddie Money, although mine always goes to the top of the progression. I think you can just hang out on a D while on the D-string you go D, F#, A, Bb. Give it a try. You can give the Jimmy Lyon driving strumming rhythm a try, otherwise, just need one hard down stroke on the one (While we're dreaming, I want "Tokyo Nights" to be the exact midpoint between "Two Tickets to Paradise" and "Hollywood Nights." Will you'll need to track down a percussionist!)

Max, can you send the video of "The Ladder" arrangement we recorded today?

Finally, Will, we wanted to know what everyone should wear next Friday. I am going for the all-white tennis/country club look (or mental hospital).

Listen to the whole playlist here.

Grace Slick's Baby

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to the group on 13 May 2015.

Grace Slick, mother Virginia Wing, and daughter China

Okay, that all made me feel all vertiginous with consciousness. I feel like Grace Slick's baby right now...or Dorothy Day's...or Mary Oliver's...Grandma, help me!

Guess she's one of them. I'm going to puke now...

To answer your question partially (partial credit?), I think all sorts of things can exist in the present, but none of them - sadly, sadly - have anything to do with stardom or storing up treasures. Music, contemplation, loving service, bricks, breathing, kissing the ground, crucifixion - yes, all these things can exist here and now. But I sense none of these is what the mind - fed on past and future, on virtual realities and on dreams of indefinitude - craves in its craven state. So it cowers in the darkness of the postscenium, becomes another rib in the radiating proscenium.

seeking the indefinite not the infinite
seeking knology not knowledge
seeking parthenogenesis not rebirth

We begin to hint at that insidious phenomenon by which we devalue those lovely beings that can populate the scenium, the individual bricks by which we build the Kingdom of God - music, prayer, breathing, service, children, faith, hope, love - in favor of some dream of permanence that doesn't exist anywhere and which young people rightly realize cannot be built.

And by what slight of hand does this firmest of ground become illusory, impractical, implausible, ethereal? Said another way, by what slight of hand do we depopulate the present?

And by what slight of hand do we disappear into past and future, into post- and proscenium, into regrets and ambitions, such that dreams of status and storing up treasures seems so real, so practical, so sensible, so sane, and not what it truly is sub specie aeternatis - utter and absolute insanity? Insanity of insanities!

I'm asking everyone, but this reminds me of Allison's work!

Formula for human greatness not amor fati but amor alterius?

I read this yesterday as I was researching Groundhog Day for AP English, which we're watching in the days after the exam (yes, that's where I got the word parthenogenesis). Some might reject her feminist reading of Nietzsche as too essentialist:

This gives us a clue that Luce Irigaray (1930-) is perhaps the right philosopher to furnish us with the key for unlocking the mysteries of Groundhog Day. Irigaray agrees with the conventional view of Nietzsche that his eternal recurrence concerns the return of the same, but objects to this view on the grounds that it’s a sterile thought that excludes any notion of ‘the other’. She writes, “The eternal recurrence – what is that but the will to recapitulate all projects within yourself?” (Marine Lover of Friedrich Nietzsche, 1991). In other words, recurrence is entirely self-referential, akin to a cloning process. We might think of it as a type of parthenogenesis, or ‘auto-birth’: it provides men with the ability to give birth to themselves over and over again, thus denying the role of the female as lover and mother. 

Irigaray wishes above all else to promote the value of the other, which she largely conceives in female terms, in opposition to the traditional philosophical subject that she considers rigidly male and masculine. She says, “For, in the other, you are changed. Become other, and without recurrence.” In Groundhog Day, it’s Phil Connors’ love for Rita, his female colleague (played by Andie MacDowell) that proves decisive. By immersing himself in ‘otherness’ – by learning everything that makes MacDowell’s character tick – he is transformed. He sheds his old sexist, masculine carapace, and emerges as a far more rounded human being, in touch with his feminine side (his ‘inner other’). As soon as he has fully achieved this, he’s released from recurrence, thus seemingly endorsing Irigaray’s view.

A Revolution of the Heart

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Liza to the group on 12 May 2015.

To One, To All Moving Through The Silence With(or with)out Motion

Essay Question:

Do you view this lack of scenium as a story truth or as a happening truth?  While its place in literature is undisputed, does it extend past the pages and transpire into reality for you? Is all that we see or seem but a (screen) dream within a (screen) dream?

For further contemplation, do you believe we, as a collective species occupying space in 2015, can ever truly engage in the present moment? If yes, do we still - despite our greatest efforts - look like novices compared to Dorothy Day and her mindfulness, to Rilke and his capacity to embrace the transient nature of life, to Emerson and his patient procession through this transience? If so, why? If not, why still?  Do you believe in what Jean-Pierre de Caussade called “the sacrament of the present moment”? Do you agree with Rumi, that “there are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground”?

If you affirmatively have faith in (wo)man’s ability to be present, is this attentiveness not, in some measure, as triumphant a reversal as that which is turbulent?  Why wait for the transformation to happen to us?  Why not happen to the transformation? How about now? Not in five minutes. Not tomorrow. Not when it's convenient.
But
right
now.
Be present.
Yes, you.
You through the screen in the chair.

As Dorothy Day wrote in Loaves and Fishes,

The greatest challenge of the day is: how to bring about a revolution of the heart, a revolution which has to start with each one of us?  When we begin to take the lowest place, to wash the feet of others, to love our brothers with that burning love, that passion, which led to the cross, then we can truly say, ‘Now I have begun.’

If not now, when?

The text continues,

One of the greatest evils of the day among those outside the proximity of the suffering poor is their sense of futility.  Young people say, ‘What good can one person do?  What is the sense of our small effort?’ They cannot see that we must lay one brick at a time, take one step at a time; we can be responsible only for the action of the present moment but we can beg for an increase of love in our hearts that will vitalize and transform all our individual actions, and know that God will take them and multiply them, as Jesus multiplied the loaves and fishes.

I leave you with this recording of Mary Oliver reciting one of my most loved poems, The Fourth Sign of the Zodiac (part 3).

I warn you: There is so much to admire, so much to weep over.

So why not listen to it immediately?

Did you listen?  Did you weep?
Lovely. You’ve been attentive, after all.

Class dismissed.

Be ignited, or be gone,

Liza

P.S. I’ve not yet “finished” my Sea Devil Mascot sketch, so in the meantime, here’s a picture I painted in undergrad of Dorothy Day.  May it guide you through your days one brick at a time.

A City Built to Music

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to Liza and the group on 11 May 2015.



Liza,

Awesome.

I'm glad that made sense.

More notes, none of which can be full fledged at this point. I'm articulating a lot of these ideas inside Arthurian legend and theory right now.

This idea that Arthur is "The Once and Future King," suggests that he exists in the past and the future, but not the present; that there is a postscenium and a proscenium, but potentially no scenium, that is, no stage and/or nothing happening on stage. I can't remember what critic said it right now, but one idea hinted at in Tennyson's Idylls is that of Arthur's nonexistence.

This kind of existence (existing only in the past and in the future) is central to the idea of the turbulent reversals.

What happens in the Information Age is that these two entities begin to predominate. Nothing is new; everything is a reference, a remix, a a response, resound, a repost, a retweet, etc. Indeed, Will and I shaped this story by cobbling together other stories, explaining it in terms of ideas, people, stories, and situations that have already come and gone. Although that process has sometimes resulted in a clearer picture (okay, maybe not), that clarity is always clarity about the future, about how we will do this or will do that. Nothing materializes in the present--with the exception of one thing:

Music.

In his prose notes for the Idylls, Tennyson writes of Camelot as a "city built to music." Notice how the city itself is a waking dream:

And the day was one of driving showers: & as they drew near to Camelot sometimes the city gleam'd out at top while the rest of it was hidden, sometimes only the middle of it was seen, sometimes only the great gate of Arthur at the bottom & sometimes it disappeared altogether.

And the two that were with Gareth were amazed & said to him Lo now my lord let us go no further for we have heard that this is a city of enchanters & was built by Fairy Kings and Queens.

And the other said There is no such city: it is a vision.

But Gareth brought them to the great Gate: & there was no gate like it under heaven: for the deeds of Arthur were sculptured there in strange types & old & new was mingled together so that it made a man dizzy to look at it.

And there came a blast of music from the town & the three started back & now they have been frightened with this music nor care to go in.

They are greeted by Merlin, who states

...for truly O son this city was built by a fairy king & many fairy Queens & they came from out of the cleft of a mountain toward the sunrise; & they built it to the sound of their harps & as thou sayst it is enchanted & nothing in it is what it seems, saving the King & many hold the city is real & the King is unreal; & take thou of him for if thou pass under this gateway thou wilt become subject to this enchantment...for the city is built to music, & therefore not built at all, & therefore built for ever

...which, I think, is the basis for the Starship song.

Everything Now is Measured by After

The following is an excerpt of an 11 May 2015 email exchange between Art, Liza, and the group.

Go Sea Devils!

Art:

Hey Liza! 

I was thinking about your excellent drawing from a couple days ago and it got me thinking of how that could be a great post. 

Although your style isn't like this at all, I love this photos and text way of talking through a piece of art for a few reasons, the biggest being that it conforms to that meta, diegetical, frames-within-frames, proscenium-arches-radiating-out-from-the-stage style of our "narrative." Unlike the linked page, however, your drawings would actually benefit from not being a finished draft! I told Will a long time back that one of my favorite things about growing up in the late 80s/early 90s was how many "box sets" of bands came out, and invariably, they would have such wonderful artifacts--photos, ticket stubs, lyrics scribbled on napkins or hotel stationary--such that these large liner note booklets became almost more interesting than the music itself. Now, it gets a little complicated that some of these things predated what happened on stage (scribbled lyrics = postscenium?), but still, there's a preferencing of what surrounds the thing--its radiations as it were--over the thing itself. 

In other words, talking about the thing--preferably the unfinished thing--is better than the thing itself. Perhaps because Plato-like we stay closer to the ideal that we have glimpsed than if this were ever fully actualized. 

One area that I wanted to ask you about was Farthington's (or Steffi's?) sea devil mascot suit. I want something inspired by but not plagiarizing this, something that could be plausibly used in an actual sports arena capacity, but would strike everyone as just the slightest bit off, somewhat more so than in this photo. 

Art

Liza:

Greetings, 

Count me on board with all of this (good thing, too, for I'd hate to be overboard with the lurking CD-evils!).  In particular, the interplay of photo and text, of visual and aural, of medium and message.    

I've been thinking a great deal lately about a related interplay of sorts: the interplay of the Benefactor's scribbled horror-raps (think: text - aural - Realm of the Ear) and the cave walls (think: "photo" - visual - Kingdom of the Eye).  

For a variety of reasons, I believe a proximal encounter with such a spectacle carries the overwhelming potential for transcendence and this "turbulent reversal" of which you frequentlynspeak. Even for a polyfocal digital audience. Better yet, especially for a polyfocal digital audience.  

Throw in nature's ambient instrumentation as the soundtrack, and we're suddenly standing before the altar of what Walter Benjamin calls "the hierarchical pinnacle of aesthetic experiences." 

I've plenty more I want to write, but, for now, all I've time and energy left to scribble is: I'll get to scribbling StefFiarthington's sea devil tomorrow.  

And, 

I'll write what I want to write right now after Thursday. In the days after Thursday.  

Those will be the days after. Everything now is measured by after. (Don DeLillo, Falling Man) 

Later, 

Liza  

Farthington's Voicemail: We Are Going to Be, Say, and write

A treasure trove of Carlton Farthington's voicemails has been made available to the blog.  At the request of researchers, enthusiasts, law enforcement agencies, and other followers of the project, voice-to-text transcriptions have been published as-is rather than edited for sense.  We hope that this will better capture the texture of the spoken word, rendering it more accessible and/or flexible for the diverse purposes of our audience.

4/17/15 3:26 PM 7 weeks ago

Alright. And, and so continuing know if I have got cut off for us, call and and I think. Thursday. It's concerning that comes from. I think books. Free of. The Republic. About the dangers says many sis, and and hollow entering into you know fully entering into these roles of people who our not Birch U. S. We'll have some major problems, is problematic. It is one of the reasons why Why with. That. That books. Does that we need to install, ohh. It's from The Republic. Is, that issue with units this, which is, that you don't want to the indicating people who are not virtue. S. And so that we kill or pretty much any sort of performance art. You know, so given tragedy and You know your repeat. I was good. Gets with him giving you know pretty clear explanation. Usually at the pain every play. Having a character come out and explain things to and having pretty clear, resolutions. So on and so forth. So, and, and I think that that's a concern for us because this is. Hey, we've set a Christian or Catholic, post modern work and we can be in danger, and I think that. Even and even when you look at some of the more in stupid works of fiction music. Thanks. I'll appreciate it. In our teenage You can see what the issue is we can't. Really knack come in with the dave 6 snacking at the end we do need to add some point. 6. Yes, but everything that our characters are doing that is not. Virtuoso everything that our characters are doing this info. Everything that our characters are, are doing that is You know, kind of a big U. S or or contingent on this or that. We need to bring clarity today. And and that we need trying to preemptive fleet to show hall. We Are Going To Be, Say, and write that in And and we almost know how every single plot is gonna turn out, it's gonna turn out with. Scott, saving us at, everything's.

Farthington's Voicemail: dial hectic

A treasure trove of Carlton Farthington's voicemails has been made available to the blog.  At the request of researchers, enthusiasts, law enforcement agencies, and other followers of the project, voice-to-text transcriptions have been published as-is rather than edited for sense.  We hope that this will better capture the texture of the spoken word, rendering it more accessible and/or flexible for the diverse purposes of our audience.

4/17/15 3:21 PM 7 weeks ago

Hello just calling you again and and trying to get some starts off my chest. I suppose about where the project is headed. Hi Big One other thing and you know so the last one. I talked about. Kind of makes a lot of 4 threads and streams and and some of the communication difficulties back go along with that. All right now I'm talking about another dichotomy or dial hectic. For dial logic or whatever it is. I don't know what their car after that I call. Is. Z many assistance. Dear Jesus and and the whole thing, where, we house. A couple people are pretty much died Jetta call. In terms of what they are trying to do. I think that would probably fall. Mostly to, Alison and will and Yeah, I did call sir to a large extent me that I, but I do engaged in that quite a bit, which is just, X. Delaney what's The project is about. It never really entering into any the roles. I mean we'd rather than we all have that the medical 5 to us even one set of not been involved in any project certain people to greater or lesser extent. So, for example. Some of my emails can be or some of my communications, just in general can be that you had a call in the just trying to talking about the project and explain certain aspects of the project. Or at least trying to explain certain aspects of the projects And And then I think the other aspect, and I am telling you know telling storytelling calling the story, it not be coming part of the story. But of course we have, that lunatic aspect as well. There Will and I have played. The rule and he's actually gonna performance and so there's that aspect. But I think. Also, in the Communications I. I tend to from time to time slip and 2 more often than that, hey. Carlton Farthington. And if so, like what I'm saying is not bringing any sort of diet get a call. Light, to the narrative. Our or explaining anything or making myself clear, or coming from some object is being point tell you from some objective standpoint. But rather, entering into that role. And if.

Farthington's Voicemail: Signs of my mind

A treasure trove of Carlton Farthington's voicemails has been made available to the blog.  At the request of researchers, enthusiasts, law enforcement agencies, and other followers of the project, voice-to-text transcriptions have been published as-is rather than edited for sense.  We hope that this will better capture the texture of the spoken word, rendering it more accessible and/or flexible for the diverse purposes of our audience.

4/17/15 3:17 PM 7 weeks ago

Hello just wanted to talk a little bit about some of the things that are coming up. Now that we have so many people that involves kinesthetic that so many people, but we've gone so One, and that was just kind of an account. Signs of my mind and then two with Will and me and and then finally, with these two others. Alison and Liza, and some of what is happening. As a result of that. I think one of the main metaphors that we've had previously to this electronic metaphors that are imposed on us by the media that we choose. The done. The threats It's that you get an email or I was more specifically, gmail. And and having that threaded discussion. The has been some up man. It's Paul. I think just between well and I am. And now we're opening it up 2 lives. And And I was in and it and it's cable and we all the actually, i think it's not so much and we'll be in its use. Or or any other way that it's That kind of happening. But it's just like in thinking about it in and and imagining that you know someone is composed and something in And I know, cool. My responding to. Who am I sending this to go and my replying to who it is carbon copied who is blind copied on the palesta blind copied yet, but I mean, there are some options here. In terms of who is being addressed at any given point. It'd is in addition to having that metaphor this case read it also has a metaphor of the Stream now which is one of the metaphors, they obviously U C S to the social media. You Know ideas going past and ideas, better now. I was returned. Trying to replied to something that's already been said and then you know some other people said things before you and the idea is kind of moved on. Moved downstream. And then you have something to say that it's probably not entirely relevant, hey anymore. And so mixing these two metaphors the sporadic and the stream Because, has complicated matters, somewhat. But I'm not saying in necessarily a horrible way. I mean it was some of our bumping up against. Our at the constraints that are part and parcel about the program or at the project. Rather, is trying to point out. And so I just wanted to start talking about that and bring that up. And consider that. So gonna talk about a couple other things Boy next couple calls about some.

Is is What's Being!

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to the group on 17 April 2015.



After our recent exchange on Facebook, I think this is a pretty important thread to start following. The Sizzler promotional commercial truly opened up a whole new world of possibilities for me.

I think we've gone through a bit of a platonic process: first it was just you and me, then we opened things to Allison and Liza, now it's supposed to universalize.

We've talked about the pros and cons of going the cult route vs. that of the large-group awareness training organization. I think the Sizzler video settles it: LGAT all the way.

And, like Sizzler, a "restaurant within a restaurant" is where it all starts.

The flip side of this spark of inspiration is the ongoing frustration that our growth has been incremental at best. Without forgetting about the music, I think we need to change our tactics. We've been leading with the band when we should be leading with the organization, figuring out what this whole Knology thing is and getting people to join it.

Why can't we involve others, they who would sell all their belongings and join Knology in a heartbeat? Buy them a loose-fitting tunics and tambourines!

Glasnost!

Some other topics: It's been a while since we've talked about Iceland and why it's so important. Obviously there's the element of Journey to the Center of the Earth, also Captain Walton's frame story from Frankenstein. Check out this story about the sMars simulation. I'd like to have a moment where some seafaring vessel becomes encased in ice like the Belgica. Maybe in the process of piloting the Ericsson from Tokyo to Iceland?

Back in Ann Arbor, my housemates and I had something we called "The Whitewater Tapes," recordings made by a secret commission appointed to investigate the Whitewater scandal. Something went wrong and they were later found dead having interred themselves in a school bus (dubbed "The Lincoln Bus") beneath the White House. All those tapes were lost.

Is is what's being!

Introducing Liza!

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Liza to the group on 17 April 2015.

Hello Allison, Arthur, Carlton, Will, Will, and any of the others hiding amongst us,

What a full room we have here!

Here I am, at long last. Here I have been all along.

As you will soon see, my presence in this project will be much like that of a fly on the wall. Even in the long intervals that are likely to pass by without any buzzing on my end, know that I am watching, reading, interpreting, and reflecting on your messages. Once I've digested them as best I can, I will swoop in, impose my character(s)' rationality on what Art has called the “primordial wildness of [your collective] scribbles," and fly off once more. Never mistake my silence for disinterest. On the contrary, understand that it is only through the emptiness of the silence that I discover the joy of the noise. Though Allison is light-years ahead of me on her journey through The Sweet World, I’d like to think the degrees of our excitement are equally matched.

While on the subject of Allison – hello! Though we’ve never been in direct communication with one another, I already feel, in some sense, like I know you. Instead of filing my taxes last night, I spent my evening bouncing back and forth between Civilization and its Discontents, Leaves of Grass, and your thesis. I’m yet to make a significant dent in it, but I can already tell that every atom belonging to me as “legend” also belongs to you.

To all of you, really. What great company I’ve stumbled my way into.

I’m tempted to call you members of what Vonnegut’s Books of Bokonon would describe as my karass, but I won’t. Whereas Bokonists derive their life's meaning from foma - shameless untruths - I attribute the entanglement of our lives to our mutual interest in deriving life's meaning from transcendent Truth. A force exists in our communication that is far beyond us; there is a deeper meaning in it than any of us can perhaps currently fathom.

I dig this idea of understanding the meaning through the medium. As we discuss our potential roles in this project, I've been thinking a great deal about how the indefinite process of contextualizing the essence of these roles in turn enlightens our existence both inside and outside the Sweet World. Through this lens, it’s interesting to consider the dialectic of the Apollonian and the Dionysian - this sense that we clarify our confusion in the journey through the interplay of these oppositional forces.

In response to a message I sent to Will last night regarding my own bewildering journey to restore order to the chaos that saturates our public education system, he sent me a passage from Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Thursday that further highlights this unifying duality. What I’ve ultimately deduced from all of it is that the meaning of each of our respective roles in this project and beyond has been distorted by what Chesterton calls “an engine of torture."

The purpose of the Sweet World - from my own understanding at least - is to provide us a space in which to translate this meaning not despite this distortion but through this distortion. If the lodestone that Art mentioned confuses our identities, then it is really the most clarifying force there is in our route to understanding our identities.

When I wrote last night's message to Will, I had not yet read through the entirety of this e-mail thread. Now that I have, the line between my purpose in life and my purpose in this project has been reduced to a dash. It is through my daily struggles to contextualize my transcendent purpose amongst grave misfortune that I’ve discovered an inherently meaningful connection to the contextualization of my role in this project.

After writing said message, it dawned on me that I didn’t so much write it as I did sit down at my typewriter and bleed it into being. Though most writers seem to disagree on the attribution of this paraphrased quote, they (maybe) unanimously agree on its merits.To write in such a way, we must abandon our mortal vulnerability  by ripping open our wounds. To look upon these wounds with rapture instead of lamentation is to have paved a clearer channel between the earthly and the divine. It is to, as Coleridge says, "build that dome in air."

I often think Detroit could be one of our earthly channels into the divine. Whenever I hear someone refer to it as a "blank canvas," I want to shake my fist at the sky in horror that they don't see it for what it really is: the Sistine Chapel of the Midwest.

Though Nietzsche uses this blood-writing metaphor to promote earthly elevation of the Übermensch over the Untermensch, I’ve decontextualized parts of it below in order to support the above idea:

“Of all that is written, I love only what a person hath written with his blood. Write with blood and thou wilt find that blood is spirit."

"He that writeth in blood and proverbs doth not want to be read, but learnt by heart.”

My decontextualization of this is that our willingness to suffer into Truth is not for worldly pleasure - that of the head - but rather to satiate our yearning for the divinely transcendent - that of the heart.

The text concludes: “Now am I light, now do I fly; now do I see myself under myself. Now there danceth a God in me.”

So, in a sense, this is how we define ourselves in opposition with ourselves: we can either give into the temptations of man, exalting ourselves to übermensch, or we can remain steadfast in our rejection of these temptations, isolating ourselves as the untermensch.

As the fly on the wall, it seems apparent that Art and Will are not writing The Sweet World into existence, but rather bleeding it into existence. In my decontextualization of Nietzsche, this is indicative that God is dancing through you.

With this dance as my aim, I prioritize the process over the purpose. Through a certain lens, this process is our purpose. The difficulty then lies not in understanding, but in discovering the courage through our confusion to present our woundedness to the world as Jesus did. Though this will inevitably yield more wounds in the short term, the moment we fixate our gaze on the gore despite our worldly instinct to avert our eyes is the moment we will see Beauty and know Truth. As Rumi says, “The wound is the place where the light enters [us].”

In keeping our veins open, we will come to see the light that will guide us into the caves. It is this light that will not only illuminate The Benefactor's horror-raps etched on the crumbling walls, but that will keep our eyes steady on them despite all impulse to look away. Though this is all lofty idealism at best, I have trouble envisioning a better alternative than this in combusting “the engine of torture."

On that note, it appears as though I’ve rambled my way to the edge once more. Perhaps the edge of the cliffs is where the Sweet World exists. After all, if you're an outlier of the world, you're an inhabitant of the Sweet World.

As my favorite secular-humanist once said,

“I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over.  Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can’t see from the center.”

Until my next swoop,

Liza

Robert Fripp-Caliber Equipment

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to the group on 14 April 2015.

Robert Fripp with his equipment

Some quick feedback on your thesis!

I've been doing my usual discursive style of reading and found something (not the only thing!) on page 84:

"The individual is both dedicated to its existence in the life-world...and to an unachievable end or telos."

To me this statement strains toward the mystery of the cross. And being that Christ is the Word Incarnate, our attempts at communication--more so than any other activity--participate in this mystery. To me this is the critical moment in Camus's Sisyphus, Nietzsche's Yea-Sayer, but most definitively in the person of Christ.

And it's a critical concern of the project, striving toward this totality, especially as we attempt to communicate it. The form that it normally takes is endeavoring to express some transcendent ideal in the midst of perplexity, limitations, insecurities, regrets, and/or constraints (or, in my case, babies and malfunctioning musical equipment). The critical moment, though, is not a "transitional conflict," as Mooney suggests in the context of Kierkegaard's spheres, but rather the very medium through which our transcendence is expressed.

I'm a little more Camusian in my "acceptance" of these mostly frustrating facts; more constant revolt than amor fati, and worlds away from Christ's seven words. But nonetheless I understand that these constraints have been the OCCASION for my self-expression, more so than any Robert Fripp-caliber equipment, a live-in nanny, and life-time tech support on all my electronics.

The cross is where that seemingly impossible reconciliation happens and, inasmuch as we are baptized into that reality, we mystically participate in it, especially when it comes to communication.

Enjoying it by the way!

A Polylogic Epistolary Novel

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to the group on 13 April 2015.

Christ on the Cross with Mary, John and Mary Magdalene

Allison,

I'm looking forward to reading your thesis. Thanks for sharing that!

I concur with Will that you should structure things whatever way you want. One of the preoccupations of the project is a McLuhanish concept of how different modes of communication influence the message ("the medium is the message," but not quite as much of an equation in our case). For me, my communications have included

• Emails with Will
• Voice-to-text transcriptions of messages left on Farthington's voicemail
• Text-to-voice transcriptions of The Principles of Theory: A Systematic Approach to Ideas
• mp3s of song fragments
• YouTube videos of song ideas (one while eating a bowl of cereal)
• Open letters to Philip Glass and Iceland (the latter in Icelandic as rendered by Google Translate)
• Google+ Hangouts with Will

Like you, I think I "understand it for the most part," and I strive to communicate my understanding inside each of these modes of communication. The effort involved in trying to explain myself to others is salutary, both to the project and to me personally. I choose the one that seems to get me closest to expressing the truth, a collision between the facts of my current situation and the transcendent vision I imagine. Actually for a while there, my main mode of expression was Farthington's voicemail, calling on my way home from work or while walking around with Francis. While that medium might not have made for the most exciting blog posts, it did deepen my understanding of the project.

Of course, we can also take into account all sorts of human considerations: insecurities, perplexity, compulsivity, constraints--all of these influence the mode of communication. There are times when I can't play music, times when I can't sit down at the computer, times when something is broken, times when I don't have time, times when I force the issue. Going along with the Nietzschean concept of the eternal return (The Return of Arthur White, after all!), I've tried to wall myself up in those moments and circumstances and not go out to some transcendent horizon where I will have all the tools at my disposal. I think we try to make whatever utterance we are capable of making, communicating with one another the best we can. Trying to make it as good and coherent as possible, of course, but not waiting for anything like clarity.

And I can't quite wrap my words around what I'm saying here...but with all due reverence...this is how the project can in some way participate in the mystery of the cross.

I'm thinking along the lines of the seven last words of Christ: continuing to speak words of that strive at meaning, recognizing but never acquiescing or capitulating the limits it encounters. Something in the collision of those two antitheticals is the "goal" of the project. I think this is not unlike what you discovered in writing your thesis: "I wrote the piece not unlike the blog as a reflection of my own grappling with my identity and significance, which I eventually concluded is inherently meaningful in its own end."

Another critical aspect of the project is that it is dialogic.

The Principles of Theory was written as a series of emails between me and my friend at U of M, [NAME REDACTED]. It wasn't until I reconnected with Will again that the project came back into existence. It does not exist as a monologue. I say that we're working on a kind of postmodern epistolary novel. And now we're moving from it being a dialogic epistolary novel to it being a polylogic epistolary novel.

As far as your audience, that's just us for the most part. But I think you can imagine other audiences...more in that transcendent dimension that refuses to acquiesce to limits it encounters. For example, my Twitter account is basically where I have been trying to engage the people of Iceland, following them and tweeting at them and using the hashtag #Iceland and #ConcertforIceland. This is still very much in its early stages because I haven't had much time to devote to it. To fully engage that audience serves as a counterfeit of communication, one of several abysses into which our varied characters can fall.