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For something near two years I have been plodding at a luscious, stop-and-smell-the-flowers pace through the copious autobiography of the excellent Ammon Hennacy. This morning I came across an especially sparkling section of memoir-izing; this excerpt I consider a crystallization of the best of Ammon. It deals with a period of his life in which he was living and working at a Catholic Worker house located in the Bowery, New York City. This would have been the mid 1950s:
We are a paper and a movement and a house of hospitality. We are a station where folks who have lost their way stop for a time until they can decide where they want to buy a ticket to--a monastery, the Ford Foundation, a union job, the Carmelites, marriage, or lower down on skid row...
In my early days at 223 Chrystie Street... I got up at 5:00 A.M. and helped pour coffee for the line and scrubbed the slime from the hall and kitchen floor. Some men would come back as much as three times in the line. Often one drunk would preach to the men in the line, telling them that they were all no-good bums.
What kind of people come to us? All sorts of tortured souls who have no other place to go. Peter [Maurin] said that we had to put up with one another the way God puts up with us, and Dorothy [Day] said we loved God as much as we loved the person we loved the least. By this measure I am a failure, and so are the most of us. The only thing is that we have different points of touchiness and tension and different breaking points as to how much of any certain kind of misery we can take. And I suppose we get a "tolerance" toward certain irritations and and added intolerance toward others.
One kind that is especially difficult for me to take is the scrupulous, over-pious person always wanting to put a scapular on me and hovering near the holy water. They are sure to burst out in vituperation a little later. We have had some of the quiet, withdrawn scrupulous types who have generally been good workers in detailed filing, etc. But once they are presented with an emergency their frustration and hatred of life have resulted in their violently attacking whoever is in their way. Then we have the loud-mouth braggart who when drunk would upset everything by his very noise. One such person who has been here for twenty years used to exasperate me by his noise when I was trying to phone, and I said to him, "How long do I have to put up with you?"
"How long do I have to put up with you, you damn intellectual?" he replied.
This is wonderful, for the Catholic Worker is a place for derelicts, and we intellectuals talk pacifism and anarchism and go to Mass. All some of these folks want is one more drink, and in between they have to listen to us.
Showing posts with label Quote. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Quote. Show all posts
Kinds of technology
A while back I submitted this blog to a website that tracks a few basic statistics about it. Having this information available does a couple of things for me: First of all, it makes me a little embarrassed to be blogging, as I get so few visitors. Secondly, it provides me with a good laugh by tracking the google search phrases that bring my random google searcher to one of my posts.
I wanted to take the opportunity to review a few choice selections, in no particular order. Some of them are pretty surprising--I had to go to google and enter a couple of these search phrases myself to confirm that they will actually route you to this blog:
1. "the onion magazine"
I must be one of the few that finds these things funny.
2. "recent top stories"
Shockingly, this blog shows up as the third result for that phrase.
3. "too many sermon podcasts"
I feel for this guy. Perhaps he's part of an emerging constituency of internet browsers who are turning to google for some kind of therapeutic release.
4. "quotes baden powell nation of wasters"
Unfortunately my blog was unable to provide an intrepid browser with the following quote from "Recovering To Success: A Book of Life-Sport for Young Men," by an author named Robert Baden-Powell, who I have never heard of:
"'The world can be made safe for democracy, but democracy will never be safe for the world until the mental loafer is saved from himself.' There are mental loafers and wasters just as much as there are physical wasters, fellows who let themselves be guided by cheap newspapers, persuasive orators, and rotten literature and cinemas."
5. "what does frim look like"
You won't find any pictures of me on here. But you could get close by looking up the old post that discusses my celebrity look-alike.
6. "how to get a frim but and tight legs" (sic)
All time favorite.
7. "kinds of technology", "three kinds of technology", "what are the kinds of technology", and the altruistic "what kinds of technology will help the poor"
This theme, in its many variations, brings in a steady stream of random cyber-guests. What shows up on google is an old post that was made up of a quote from Ted Kaczynski's technology manifesto. My best guess of what these browsers are looking for is quick-n-dirty ideas to work into an essay, maybe for some introductory-level college class in engineering or technology theory. The following answer, provided by Yahoo(!) answers, should do for these purposes: (1) Instructional technology (2) Assistive technology (3) Medical technology (4) Technology productive tools (5) Information technology. However, if you, dear reader, happen to be one such befuddled youngster, please note that in my newly legitimate, google-result-endorsed, blogger opinion, there is no conventional over-simplification of the "kinds" of technology that can justify your question. Technology encompasses all kinds of human creations and therefore contains an infinite amount of possible uses and categories. Certainly there is no authoritative single way to divide technology into "kinds". But, I happen to think Ted's theory is worth repeating. He breaks down technology into two functional categories: tools which can be used independently and those which are dependent on other tools to be used, requiring an ever more complex system to be sustained.
8. "my hands feel heavy"
I wanted to take the opportunity to review a few choice selections, in no particular order. Some of them are pretty surprising--I had to go to google and enter a couple of these search phrases myself to confirm that they will actually route you to this blog:
1. "the onion magazine"
I must be one of the few that finds these things funny.
2. "recent top stories"
Shockingly, this blog shows up as the third result for that phrase.
3. "too many sermon podcasts"
I feel for this guy. Perhaps he's part of an emerging constituency of internet browsers who are turning to google for some kind of therapeutic release.
4. "quotes baden powell nation of wasters"
Unfortunately my blog was unable to provide an intrepid browser with the following quote from "Recovering To Success: A Book of Life-Sport for Young Men," by an author named Robert Baden-Powell, who I have never heard of:
"'The world can be made safe for democracy, but democracy will never be safe for the world until the mental loafer is saved from himself.' There are mental loafers and wasters just as much as there are physical wasters, fellows who let themselves be guided by cheap newspapers, persuasive orators, and rotten literature and cinemas."
5. "what does frim look like"
You won't find any pictures of me on here. But you could get close by looking up the old post that discusses my celebrity look-alike.
6. "how to get a frim but and tight legs" (sic)
All time favorite.
7. "kinds of technology", "three kinds of technology", "what are the kinds of technology", and the altruistic "what kinds of technology will help the poor"
This theme, in its many variations, brings in a steady stream of random cyber-guests. What shows up on google is an old post that was made up of a quote from Ted Kaczynski's technology manifesto. My best guess of what these browsers are looking for is quick-n-dirty ideas to work into an essay, maybe for some introductory-level college class in engineering or technology theory. The following answer, provided by Yahoo(!) answers, should do for these purposes: (1) Instructional technology (2) Assistive technology (3) Medical technology (4) Technology productive tools (5) Information technology. However, if you, dear reader, happen to be one such befuddled youngster, please note that in my newly legitimate, google-result-endorsed, blogger opinion, there is no conventional over-simplification of the "kinds" of technology that can justify your question. Technology encompasses all kinds of human creations and therefore contains an infinite amount of possible uses and categories. Certainly there is no authoritative single way to divide technology into "kinds". But, I happen to think Ted's theory is worth repeating. He breaks down technology into two functional categories: tools which can be used independently and those which are dependent on other tools to be used, requiring an ever more complex system to be sustained.
8. "my hands feel heavy"
“ ”
Werner Herzog says:
"People thought films could cause revolutions or whatever. And it does not. But films might change our perspective of things and ultimately in the long term it may be something valuable. But there is a lot of absurdity involved as well. As you see, it makes me into a clown. And that happens to everyone. Just look at Orson Welles or look at even people like Truffat: They have become clowns... It's because what we do as filmmakers is immaterial. It's only a projection of light. And doing that all your life makes you just a clown. And it's an almost inevitable process... It's illusionist's work and it's just embarrassing to be a filmmaker. To sit here like this... I mean, thank heaven's I don't sit here for my own films. I am sitting here for a film that was made by a friend of mine."
"People thought films could cause revolutions or whatever. And it does not. But films might change our perspective of things and ultimately in the long term it may be something valuable. But there is a lot of absurdity involved as well. As you see, it makes me into a clown. And that happens to everyone. Just look at Orson Welles or look at even people like Truffat: They have become clowns... It's because what we do as filmmakers is immaterial. It's only a projection of light. And doing that all your life makes you just a clown. And it's an almost inevitable process... It's illusionist's work and it's just embarrassing to be a filmmaker. To sit here like this... I mean, thank heaven's I don't sit here for my own films. I am sitting here for a film that was made by a friend of mine."
Obama, Race, The Birthplace of Freedom
I'm about a week and a half behind the election game here, listening to Barack Obama's "race speech" just now on youtube. As a hardline reactionist, I would generally be disposed to dislike any media item so hyped. (More than one ecstatic commentator immediately dubbed it "one of the best speeches in American history"). However, it would not be fair to judge the man exclusively by the imbecility of his groupies--I found the speech itself to be remarkably good, particularly in the calm, even-handedness that marked both content and delivery. Here is the first speech by anyone remotely near the White House in recent memory who didn't appear to be talking down to his audience, who appears to actually be attempting to elevate rather than either denigrate or do damage control on "the national conversation." All things considered, "A More Perfect Union" was an extremely decent speech. All of which is to say that for once a politician is talking in a way that resembles the baseline standard of what a politician should be expected to talk like.
Obama's creation was a "classy" one; effectively and effortlessly transforming his campaign's latest PR hurdle into a balance beam on which might bounce and twirl Great American Themes such as Love, Freedom, Opportunity, and Life. It was ever so graceful at every turn, making concessions to everyone and everything, getting us to put our guards down. I confess, against my better judgment I felt assured and reassured as I listened--it was almost as if the tall, thin, quiet, obscurely effeminate dad that I never had was stroking my hair as I drifted back into a pleasant slumber, having awoken to a terrible nightmare on a stormy night.
Grace and charisma, of course, have their limits of usefulness. Sweet sentiments and boundary-blurring reassurances which mesmerize us on stage may quickly sour when exposed to the harder, clearer light found just outside the convention center: Sure, talk to us about the integrity of the American Dream, with an allusion or two to the need for CHANGE. That "More Perfect Union" sounds pretty nice. And yes, of course we believe in the "Decency And Generosity Of The American People." And what would we do without "Hope In The Next Generation"? Sure, Mr. Obama, lead us onward in that "March For A More Just, More Equal, More Free, More Caring, More Prosperous America."
But let's not get too carried away. We shouldn't make the mistake of completely uprooting this speech from all context, forgetting its pretext and stimulus: the "incendiary" and "divisive" views of one Rev. Jeremiah Wright (Obama's former pastor), views that according to Barack "have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but [also to] denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation; that rightly offend white and black alike."
I took the liberty of reading up on the Reverend's views. Here's a nice summation, nabbed from (his Wikipedia entry):
"Where governments lie, God does not lie. Where governments change, God does not change... And the United States of America government, when it came to treating her citizens of Indian descent fairly, she failed. She put them on reservations. When it came to treating her citizens of Japanese descent fairly, she failed. She put them in internment prison camps. When it came to treating her citizens of African descent fairly, America failed. She put them in chains, the government put them on slave quarters, put them on auction blocks, put them in cotton field, put them in inferior schools, put them in substandard housing, put them in scientific experiments, put them in the lowest paying jobs, put them outside the equal protection of the law, kept them out of their racist bastions of higher education and locked them into positions of hopelessness and helplessness... The government gives them drugs built bigger prisons, passes a three strike law, and then wants us to sing God bless America. No, no, no, not God bless America, God damn America, that's in the Bible, for killing innocent people. God damn America, for treating her citizens as less than human. God damn America, as long as she pretends to act like she is God, and she is supreme."
And here:
If only Reverend Wright was running for office...
I understand the political pressures that require Obama to be a mediator and an ameliorator, to please everyone and thus distance himself from any voices anchored in objectivity or prophetic witness. To many, Barack Obama may be the best available presidential issue-resolution package. But sophistication and even-handedness don't lend themselves to "change" and Wright is the only one coming out of this whole media spectacle with anything resembling audacity.
As long as "political realities" necessitate that any vestiges of an ideal must be softened up and bent into the time-tested mold of vain optimism in order to survive in our nation's capitol, it will be impossible for me to really get excited about Obama's candidacy. Vapid whispers of progress, sweet political nothings, the sickly thin veneer of state religion--is it cynicism to hope for something more?
Obama's creation was a "classy" one; effectively and effortlessly transforming his campaign's latest PR hurdle into a balance beam on which might bounce and twirl Great American Themes such as Love, Freedom, Opportunity, and Life. It was ever so graceful at every turn, making concessions to everyone and everything, getting us to put our guards down. I confess, against my better judgment I felt assured and reassured as I listened--it was almost as if the tall, thin, quiet, obscurely effeminate dad that I never had was stroking my hair as I drifted back into a pleasant slumber, having awoken to a terrible nightmare on a stormy night.
Grace and charisma, of course, have their limits of usefulness. Sweet sentiments and boundary-blurring reassurances which mesmerize us on stage may quickly sour when exposed to the harder, clearer light found just outside the convention center: Sure, talk to us about the integrity of the American Dream, with an allusion or two to the need for CHANGE. That "More Perfect Union" sounds pretty nice. And yes, of course we believe in the "Decency And Generosity Of The American People." And what would we do without "Hope In The Next Generation"? Sure, Mr. Obama, lead us onward in that "March For A More Just, More Equal, More Free, More Caring, More Prosperous America."
But let's not get too carried away. We shouldn't make the mistake of completely uprooting this speech from all context, forgetting its pretext and stimulus: the "incendiary" and "divisive" views of one Rev. Jeremiah Wright (Obama's former pastor), views that according to Barack "have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but [also to] denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation; that rightly offend white and black alike."
I took the liberty of reading up on the Reverend's views. Here's a nice summation, nabbed from (his Wikipedia entry):
"Where governments lie, God does not lie. Where governments change, God does not change... And the United States of America government, when it came to treating her citizens of Indian descent fairly, she failed. She put them on reservations. When it came to treating her citizens of Japanese descent fairly, she failed. She put them in internment prison camps. When it came to treating her citizens of African descent fairly, America failed. She put them in chains, the government put them on slave quarters, put them on auction blocks, put them in cotton field, put them in inferior schools, put them in substandard housing, put them in scientific experiments, put them in the lowest paying jobs, put them outside the equal protection of the law, kept them out of their racist bastions of higher education and locked them into positions of hopelessness and helplessness... The government gives them drugs built bigger prisons, passes a three strike law, and then wants us to sing God bless America. No, no, no, not God bless America, God damn America, that's in the Bible, for killing innocent people. God damn America, for treating her citizens as less than human. God damn America, as long as she pretends to act like she is God, and she is supreme."
And here:
If only Reverend Wright was running for office...
I understand the political pressures that require Obama to be a mediator and an ameliorator, to please everyone and thus distance himself from any voices anchored in objectivity or prophetic witness. To many, Barack Obama may be the best available presidential issue-resolution package. But sophistication and even-handedness don't lend themselves to "change" and Wright is the only one coming out of this whole media spectacle with anything resembling audacity.
As long as "political realities" necessitate that any vestiges of an ideal must be softened up and bent into the time-tested mold of vain optimism in order to survive in our nation's capitol, it will be impossible for me to really get excited about Obama's candidacy. Vapid whispers of progress, sweet political nothings, the sickly thin veneer of state religion--is it cynicism to hope for something more?
Letter from Thomas Merton to James Forest
I like this blog the most when I think of it as a little clearing house for noteworthy items gleaned from the internet and from the physical world--I feel especially useful when I type up something not readily available on the internet, as in the case of the following letter. It is a letter from Thomas Merton to James Forest, the latter of whom is a Catholic activist and founder of the Catholic Peace Fellowship:
Do not depend on the hope of results. When you are doing the sort of work you have taken on, essentially an apostolic work, you may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself. And there too a great deal has to be gone through, as gradually you struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people. The range tends to narrow down, but it gets much more real. In the end, it is the reality of personal relationships that saves everything.
You are fed up with words, and I don't blame you. I am nauseated by them sometimes. I am also, to tell the truth nauseated by ideals and with causes. This sounds like heresy, but I think you will understand what I mean. It is so easy to get engrossed with ideas and slogans and myths that in the end one is left holding the bag, empty, with no trace of meaning left in it. And then the temptation is to yell louder than ever in order to make the meaning be there again by magic. Going through this kind of reaction helps you to guard against this. Your system is complaining of too much verbalizing, and it is right.
...[T]he big results are not in your hands or mine, but they suddenly happen, and we can share in them; but there is no point in building our lives on this personal satisfaction which may be denied us and which after all is not that important.
The next step in the process is for you to see that your own thinking about what you are doing is crucially important. You are probably striving to build yourself an identity in your work, out of your work and your witness. You are using it, so to speak, to protect yourself against nothingness, annihilation. That is not the right use of your work. All the good that you will do will come not from you but from the fact that you have allowed yourself, in the obedience of faith, to be used by God's love. Think of this more and gradually you will be free from the need to prove yourself, and you can be more open to the power that will work through you without your knowing it.
The great thing after all is to live, not to pour our your life in the service of a myth: and we turn the best things into myths. If you can get free from the domination of causes and just serve Christ's truth, you will be able to do more and will be less crushed by the inevitable disappointments...
The real hope, then, is not in something we think we can do, but in God who is making something good out of it in some way we cannot see. If we can do His will, we will be helping in this process. But we will not necessarily know all about it beforehand...
Enough of this...it is at least a gesture...I will keep you in my prayers.
All the best in Christ,
Tom
Do not depend on the hope of results. When you are doing the sort of work you have taken on, essentially an apostolic work, you may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself. And there too a great deal has to be gone through, as gradually you struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people. The range tends to narrow down, but it gets much more real. In the end, it is the reality of personal relationships that saves everything.
You are fed up with words, and I don't blame you. I am nauseated by them sometimes. I am also, to tell the truth nauseated by ideals and with causes. This sounds like heresy, but I think you will understand what I mean. It is so easy to get engrossed with ideas and slogans and myths that in the end one is left holding the bag, empty, with no trace of meaning left in it. And then the temptation is to yell louder than ever in order to make the meaning be there again by magic. Going through this kind of reaction helps you to guard against this. Your system is complaining of too much verbalizing, and it is right.
...[T]he big results are not in your hands or mine, but they suddenly happen, and we can share in them; but there is no point in building our lives on this personal satisfaction which may be denied us and which after all is not that important.
The next step in the process is for you to see that your own thinking about what you are doing is crucially important. You are probably striving to build yourself an identity in your work, out of your work and your witness. You are using it, so to speak, to protect yourself against nothingness, annihilation. That is not the right use of your work. All the good that you will do will come not from you but from the fact that you have allowed yourself, in the obedience of faith, to be used by God's love. Think of this more and gradually you will be free from the need to prove yourself, and you can be more open to the power that will work through you without your knowing it.
The great thing after all is to live, not to pour our your life in the service of a myth: and we turn the best things into myths. If you can get free from the domination of causes and just serve Christ's truth, you will be able to do more and will be less crushed by the inevitable disappointments...
The real hope, then, is not in something we think we can do, but in God who is making something good out of it in some way we cannot see. If we can do His will, we will be helping in this process. But we will not necessarily know all about it beforehand...
Enough of this...it is at least a gesture...I will keep you in my prayers.
All the best in Christ,
Tom
Communism, bad ideas, science fiction
In which we wonder on a couple of excerpts from the wonderfully wonder-free first chapter of Kurt Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions, in which we witness Kurt boiling a world of frustration into a bubbly, gelatinous stew of absurdity:
"When Dwayne Hoover and Kilgore Trout met each other their country was by far the richest and most powerful country on the planet. It had most of the food and minerals and machinery, and it disciplined other countries by threatening to shoot big rockets and them or to drop things on them from airplanes.
"Most other countries didn't have doodley-squat. Many of them weren't even inhabitable anymore. They had too many people and not enough space. They had sold everything that was any good, and there wasn't anything to eat anymore...
"...A lot of the people on the wrecked planet were Communists. They had a theory that what was left of the planet should be shared more or less equally among all the people, who hadn't asked to come to a wrecked planet in the first place... Meanwhile, more babies were arriving all the time--kicking and screaming, yelling for milk. In some places people would actually try to eat mud or such on gravel while babies were being born just a few feet away. And so on.
"Dwayne Hoover's and Kilgore Trout's country, where there was still plenty of everything, was opposed to Communism. It didn't think that Earthlings who had a lot should share it with others unless they really wanted to, and most of them didn't want to. So they didn't have to."
And then a page later:
"The bad ideas were delivered to Dwayne by Kilgore Trout... Here was the core of the bad ideas which Trout gave to Dwayne: Everybody on Earth was a robot, with one exception--Dwayne Hoover.
"Of all the creatures in the Universe, only Dwayne was thinking and feeling and worrying and planning and so on. Nobody else knew what pain was. Nobody else had any choices to make. Everybody else was fully automatic machine, whose purpose was to stimulate Dwayne. Dwayne was a new type of creature being tested by the Creator of the Universe. Only Dwayne had free will.
"Trout did not expect to be believed. He put the bad ideas into a science-fiction novel, and that was where Dwayne found them. The book wasn't addressed to Dwayne alone. Trout had never heard of Dwayne when he wrote it. It was addressed to anybody who happened to open it up. It said to simply anybody, in effect, "Hey--guess what: You're the only creature with free will. How does that make you feel?" And so on.
"It was a tour de force. It was a jeu d'espirit."
"When Dwayne Hoover and Kilgore Trout met each other their country was by far the richest and most powerful country on the planet. It had most of the food and minerals and machinery, and it disciplined other countries by threatening to shoot big rockets and them or to drop things on them from airplanes.
"Most other countries didn't have doodley-squat. Many of them weren't even inhabitable anymore. They had too many people and not enough space. They had sold everything that was any good, and there wasn't anything to eat anymore...
"...A lot of the people on the wrecked planet were Communists. They had a theory that what was left of the planet should be shared more or less equally among all the people, who hadn't asked to come to a wrecked planet in the first place... Meanwhile, more babies were arriving all the time--kicking and screaming, yelling for milk. In some places people would actually try to eat mud or such on gravel while babies were being born just a few feet away. And so on.
"Dwayne Hoover's and Kilgore Trout's country, where there was still plenty of everything, was opposed to Communism. It didn't think that Earthlings who had a lot should share it with others unless they really wanted to, and most of them didn't want to. So they didn't have to."
And then a page later:
"The bad ideas were delivered to Dwayne by Kilgore Trout... Here was the core of the bad ideas which Trout gave to Dwayne: Everybody on Earth was a robot, with one exception--Dwayne Hoover.
"Of all the creatures in the Universe, only Dwayne was thinking and feeling and worrying and planning and so on. Nobody else knew what pain was. Nobody else had any choices to make. Everybody else was fully automatic machine, whose purpose was to stimulate Dwayne. Dwayne was a new type of creature being tested by the Creator of the Universe. Only Dwayne had free will.
"Trout did not expect to be believed. He put the bad ideas into a science-fiction novel, and that was where Dwayne found them. The book wasn't addressed to Dwayne alone. Trout had never heard of Dwayne when he wrote it. It was addressed to anybody who happened to open it up. It said to simply anybody, in effect, "Hey--guess what: You're the only creature with free will. How does that make you feel?" And so on.
"It was a tour de force. It was a jeu d'espirit."
The whole world salivating
Adam Wiltzie, musician, on why it took six years for his band to release an album:
"What I learnt was essentially in the past (or I should say around finishing Tired Sounds) I was pretty fatigued, mentally. I wondered why I felt it was so necessary to make a record every year, or to be in the endless cycle of recording, then touring, and then starting over again. I reckon that, in general, musicians can fool themselves into thinking the whole world salivates for more new music, and the result is letting that false sense of reality push them into releasing music that is not really finished, or just to make the release date their label wants them to make so as to beat the Christmas rush, et cetera. So, some people will pre-suppose that six years is a long time to wait to release a new record. But I do not buy into that assumption."
And later, responding to a question about his influences:
"As I may have said, it is painfully uncomfortable for me to talk about my body of work with any sort of reverence..."
Maybe a portion of the world was salivating for a new Stars of the Lid album. But my hope is that Adam Wiltzie is among a perhaps small number of entertainers who are reasonably suspicious of the dysfunctionally co-dependent relationship of fan and celebrity. Such co-dependent cycles can be broken if one of the two parties are willing to call BS.
"What I learnt was essentially in the past (or I should say around finishing Tired Sounds) I was pretty fatigued, mentally. I wondered why I felt it was so necessary to make a record every year, or to be in the endless cycle of recording, then touring, and then starting over again. I reckon that, in general, musicians can fool themselves into thinking the whole world salivates for more new music, and the result is letting that false sense of reality push them into releasing music that is not really finished, or just to make the release date their label wants them to make so as to beat the Christmas rush, et cetera. So, some people will pre-suppose that six years is a long time to wait to release a new record. But I do not buy into that assumption."
And later, responding to a question about his influences:
"As I may have said, it is painfully uncomfortable for me to talk about my body of work with any sort of reverence..."
Maybe a portion of the world was salivating for a new Stars of the Lid album. But my hope is that Adam Wiltzie is among a perhaps small number of entertainers who are reasonably suspicious of the dysfunctionally co-dependent relationship of fan and celebrity. Such co-dependent cycles can be broken if one of the two parties are willing to call BS.
Three Questions
A fictional character once said:
“Remember then: there is only one time that is important—Now! It is the most important time because it is the only time when we have any power. The most necessary man is he with whom you are, for no man knows whether he will have any dealings with any one else: and the most important affair is, to do him good, because for that purpose alone was man sent into this life!”
It's worth reading Leo Tolstoy's whole short story, of which this quote is the conclusion. The story is called "Three Questions" and it can be found in the Tolstoy compilation "Walk In The Light And Twenty-Three Tales," available here for free because clearly the folks over at the Plough Publishing House have been reading a little too much Tolstoy.
“Remember then: there is only one time that is important—Now! It is the most important time because it is the only time when we have any power. The most necessary man is he with whom you are, for no man knows whether he will have any dealings with any one else: and the most important affair is, to do him good, because for that purpose alone was man sent into this life!”
It's worth reading Leo Tolstoy's whole short story, of which this quote is the conclusion. The story is called "Three Questions" and it can be found in the Tolstoy compilation "Walk In The Light And Twenty-Three Tales," available here for free because clearly the folks over at the Plough Publishing House have been reading a little too much Tolstoy.
“ ”
Dostoyevsky's monk says:
"Love in practice is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams."
"Love in practice is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams."
“ ”
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. says:
"Whom you would change you must first love, and they must know that you love them."
"Whom you would change you must first love, and they must know that you love them."
Dr. Bronner
Dr. Emmanuel H. Bronner says:
"Think and act 10 years ahead! And the man without fault? He's dead! Do one thing at a time, work hard! Get done! Then teach friend and enemy the Moral ABC that unites all mankind free!"
This morning I cleansed myself with a portion of Dr. Bronner's Peppermint Pure Castile Soap (up for sale at your local Trader Joe's). It was refreshing (as always). Of interest is the label, composed by the late Dr. Bronner himself and maintained in its in all of its original, claustrophobic splendour by his sympathetic estate. Now, I am in the habit of using the bar version of the soap, which has a small, fairly utilitarian label. However, for a more interesting and characteristically Dr. Bronner label, take a peek at the smorgasbord of philosophy found on the liquid version of the soap.
"Think and act 10 years ahead! And the man without fault? He's dead! Do one thing at a time, work hard! Get done! Then teach friend and enemy the Moral ABC that unites all mankind free!"
This morning I cleansed myself with a portion of Dr. Bronner's Peppermint Pure Castile Soap (up for sale at your local Trader Joe's). It was refreshing (as always). Of interest is the label, composed by the late Dr. Bronner himself and maintained in its in all of its original, claustrophobic splendour by his sympathetic estate. Now, I am in the habit of using the bar version of the soap, which has a small, fairly utilitarian label. However, for a more interesting and characteristically Dr. Bronner label, take a peek at the smorgasbord of philosophy found on the liquid version of the soap.
Father Aelred
Father Aelred, Benedictine monk and founder of the Monastery of Christ in the Desert, says:
"The monastery is not a refuge, not a solution for dealing with problems of adjustment. Monasticism is a head-on collision with reality, and the more silent, the more solitude, the more head-on it is."
Withdrawal from the world gets all kinds of flack from people. Say what you will, the raw idealistic commitment of classical monasticism inspires respect from me. It attempts to hollow out a space within the dense, destructive weight of a fallen world, pulling at and stretching out an ever-thinning membrane that enforces the boundary between a sin-enslaved existence and one defined by absolute freedom to obey. Forced to admit the inevitably human anchoring in the present fallen world, fanatical monks struggle to live in sync with another, incoming world.
What does a contemplative monk do? Pray. Meditate. In a practical sense, nothing. It is by definition impossible for the entire body of believers to abide in this state and what a malformed body it would be if everyone tried to or wanted to.
Speculatively, we could say that contemplative monasticism is the nervous system of the body of Christ: A network of cells, flowing upwards and inwards, towards that central point of contact with the Brain, convulsing with electric impulses which are the first physical traces of another level of consciousness.
"The monastery is not a refuge, not a solution for dealing with problems of adjustment. Monasticism is a head-on collision with reality, and the more silent, the more solitude, the more head-on it is."
Withdrawal from the world gets all kinds of flack from people. Say what you will, the raw idealistic commitment of classical monasticism inspires respect from me. It attempts to hollow out a space within the dense, destructive weight of a fallen world, pulling at and stretching out an ever-thinning membrane that enforces the boundary between a sin-enslaved existence and one defined by absolute freedom to obey. Forced to admit the inevitably human anchoring in the present fallen world, fanatical monks struggle to live in sync with another, incoming world.
What does a contemplative monk do? Pray. Meditate. In a practical sense, nothing. It is by definition impossible for the entire body of believers to abide in this state and what a malformed body it would be if everyone tried to or wanted to.
Speculatively, we could say that contemplative monasticism is the nervous system of the body of Christ: A network of cells, flowing upwards and inwards, towards that central point of contact with the Brain, convulsing with electric impulses which are the first physical traces of another level of consciousness.
“ ”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer says:
"Let him who cannot be alone beware of community... Let him who is not in community beware of being alone."
"Let him who cannot be alone beware of community... Let him who is not in community beware of being alone."
“ ”
The Buddhist master says:
"If you eat the moment you are hungry, you will never find out what your hunger is for."
"If you eat the moment you are hungry, you will never find out what your hunger is for."
“ ”
Stephanie Coontz says:
"The beginning of the nineteenth century, however, saw a new emphasis on women's innate sexual purity. The older view that women had to be controlled because they were inherently more passionate and prone to moral and sexual error was replaced by the idea that women were asexual beings, who would not respond to sexual overtures unless they had been drugged or depraved from an early age. This cult of female purity encouraged women to internalize limits on their sexual behavior that sixteenth and seventeenth century authorities had imposed by force."
(from "Marriage, a history").
"The beginning of the nineteenth century, however, saw a new emphasis on women's innate sexual purity. The older view that women had to be controlled because they were inherently more passionate and prone to moral and sexual error was replaced by the idea that women were asexual beings, who would not respond to sexual overtures unless they had been drugged or depraved from an early age. This cult of female purity encouraged women to internalize limits on their sexual behavior that sixteenth and seventeenth century authorities had imposed by force."
(from "Marriage, a history").
“ ”
Thomas à Kempis says:
"Blessed is that simplicity that leaves the way of hard questions and goes in the plain and certain way of the commandments of God."
"Blessed is that simplicity that leaves the way of hard questions and goes in the plain and certain way of the commandments of God."
A wet blanket
Here's a few related passages from the last chapter of Thomas Merton's autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain. Most of this chapter is about monastic life. These three excerpts are on the theme of moodiness and how it affects others:
"'Each one of you,' the Father Abbot said, 'will make the community either better or worse. Everything you do will have an influence upon others. It can be a good influence or a bad one. It all depends on you. Our Lord will never refuse you grace...'"
"It can be said, as a general rule, that the greatest saints are seldom the ones whose piety is most evident in their expression when they are kneeling at prayer, and the holiest men in a monastery are almost never the ones who get that exalted look, on feast days, in the choir. The people who gaze up at Our Lady's statue with glistening eyes are very often the ones with the worst tempers."
"[Simple, easily-contented monks] stood at the mean between two extremes. On one hand there were one or two who exagerated everything they did and tried to carry out every rule with scrupulousness that was a travesty of the real thing. They were the ones who seemed to be trying to make themselves saints by sheer effort and concentration--as if the work depended on them, and not even God could help them. But then there were also the ones who did little or nothing to sanctify themselves, as if none of the work depended on them--as if God would come along one day and put a halo on their heads and it would all be over. They followed the others and kept the Rule after a fashion, but as soon as they thought they were sick they started pleading for all the mitigations that they did not already have. And the rest of the time, they fluctuated between a gaity that was noisy and disquieting, and a sullen exasperation that threw a wet blanket over the whole novitiate."
"'Each one of you,' the Father Abbot said, 'will make the community either better or worse. Everything you do will have an influence upon others. It can be a good influence or a bad one. It all depends on you. Our Lord will never refuse you grace...'"
"It can be said, as a general rule, that the greatest saints are seldom the ones whose piety is most evident in their expression when they are kneeling at prayer, and the holiest men in a monastery are almost never the ones who get that exalted look, on feast days, in the choir. The people who gaze up at Our Lady's statue with glistening eyes are very often the ones with the worst tempers."
"[Simple, easily-contented monks] stood at the mean between two extremes. On one hand there were one or two who exagerated everything they did and tried to carry out every rule with scrupulousness that was a travesty of the real thing. They were the ones who seemed to be trying to make themselves saints by sheer effort and concentration--as if the work depended on them, and not even God could help them. But then there were also the ones who did little or nothing to sanctify themselves, as if none of the work depended on them--as if God would come along one day and put a halo on their heads and it would all be over. They followed the others and kept the Rule after a fashion, but as soon as they thought they were sick they started pleading for all the mitigations that they did not already have. And the rest of the time, they fluctuated between a gaity that was noisy and disquieting, and a sullen exasperation that threw a wet blanket over the whole novitiate."
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