Saturday, February 18, 2023

Authenticity is not a moral center. You cannot be your own authority.

Creativity is not a causal process. The work does not become its own creation.

* * *

This one was fun to make. The first strophe about authenticity is somewhat classical, even conservative, and the rather Bergsonian romanticism of the second emerged gradually with some very deliberate pangrammatical craftiness, to yield a subtly radical result.

First, the "moral center" was transposed into a "causal process"; then "your" "being" became a "becoming" (of some as yet unspecified "it" in my notes). After a while "creativity" presented itself as the pangrammatical supplement of "authenticity" (an impersonal becoming to balance that personal sort of being).

It took a walk to identify "the work" as "your" dangerous supplement. (I considered "an art does not become its own work" but I wanted creativity/creation to match authenticity/authority.) At this point I realized that things had gotten outright anti-Oedipal. "It is at work everywhere," as I recall. "Eating, shitting, fucking. What a mistake to ever call it the Id." Not Ego-Id, then, but your-work. Your. Fucking. Work.

Do it.

Wednesday, February 15, 2023

Courage shines.
It brightens the room.

Cowardice hangs in the air.
It stinks.

Tuesday, February 14, 2023

Wisdom is the stillness
of the mind
in which things
are what they are.

Love is the commotion
of the heart
through which we
become ourselves.

Sunday, February 12, 2023

After Ezra Pound

I don’t know how humanity stands it
breaking up without knowing the reason
breaking up knowing the reason
the dwarf morning-glory twines round the grass blade.

Friday, February 10, 2023

Honesty in expression,
decency in comportment.

Wednesday, February 01, 2023

Brutal honesty with oneself,
common decency towards others.