Oh and 2 things.
I got rid of comments, it makes me feel less self-conscious about writing whatever I want. I still want to talk to you if you have anything to say, so email me.
I like the way my skin smells when I wake up after a night in a club. Perfume mixed with my skin, my pheromones, other peoples pheromones (and by that I mean sweat) tequila, the city. Gross, I know, but I feel really great in my body after a night out meeting and talking and dancing.
Stumbled across yr blog, via Sartorialist I think. Was bored, and seeking distractions from writing.
ReplyDeleteReading some stuff you wrote: Yr going to have to choose. You write poetry, and read philosophy. They are inimical.
The reason so much philosophy points back to God (as you say) is because every philosopher in the western tradition wants to do this: organise everything into categories, give the categories a hierarchy, put something at the top of the hierarchy. This happens with every single philosopher from Plato and his "forms" through to Lugwig Wittgenstein, and his "atomic propositions". Both forms of god. Every philosopher you will be asked to read, on a university course, is essentially the same, because they read one another, and passed the method to one another. They set out their system, always decending from, or leading to something irreducible.
(And if ANY of them had any real value, why did every subsequent philosopher rewrite them? If you didnt get to him yet, Richard Rorty is the antidote.)
Creativity on the other hand has nothing to do with this way of thinking, with these methods. Nothing. Art is a way of knowing things, and explaining things, but not based on a so-called rational method. Art is intuitive, packed with emotion, obtuse, jumps from one thing to another, uninterested in explainiung everything, it usually focuses to a pin-prick, dealing with one tiny aspect of one thing. A moment, a thought, a tendancy, an effect.
(Sorry for rant, I am writing about this stuff everyday. It just spills out, almost unbidden.)
Plus.
If you think you feel pain now... wait for some actual loss to accrue. I didnt read that much of yr blog, but I cant see what you are so pained by... still have your parents? Brother. Live in safe part of the world.
(I am spoiled like you. Lucky. But I know people who have had terrible lives – a Cambodian girlfriend, who experienced kidnapping, rape, starvation, divorce, friends and relatives killed, tuberculousis, both parents with HIV, prostitution, and now jail – for killing a mna with her car – in a third world country. Thats misery.)
What you must be suffering from is perfect for making art. Super-sensitivity to everything around you. The need to try and make sense of it. Somehow.
Not that my advice counts for anything, and not that you are asking for any!! (But I cant help myself.) I predict that all philosophers will disappoint you. Drop philosophy; unless you fancy being an academic, and spending a life regurgitating. Only art will stir you, really, girl with Kafka's initial. The only solution to feeling so much is to channel it, use it as a force, make sense of it in making art. Good luck with poetry, since almost no one reads it. Novels are probably where its at... they have that explaining side to them, invoking a world. Anyway. Hope you have a painless day tomorrow.
Quentin
Yeah, yeah, I know that I'm privileged and have nothing "significant" to whine about. It's a blog, though, and I generally consider this to be a good outlet for personal angst. People experience pain and loss in different ways, and I'm not always in control of some of the mental issues I struggle with. So I don't need the hand-slapping from strangers who don't know anything about my life telling me that "I don't know misery." Yeah, I know. I'm fully aware. But people struggle with things every day, from the mundane to the tragic, and that doesn't make anyone's struggles irrelevant. And I communicate it and use 'art' as an outlet, its all I know how to do.
ReplyDeleteI don't think I have to choose between the two areas. I agree they are inimical but I like the tension. I'm studying philosophy AND literature, so I'm used to the discordance, but they also combine in beautiful, insane ways. I'm not really interested in shutting down one area to focus on the other, I don't think that's a very productive choice, I just get frustrated sometimes and communicate it. A lot of continental philosophy and theory (which is mostly what I'm interested in - I strongly dislike analytic philosophy) blurs the lines between literature art and philosophy, as I'm sure you're aware. That's where I want 'philosophy' to go, and that seems to be where it is going.
I don't really care who reads my poetry, to be honest, I don't write deliberately with an audience in mind, and me "making sense of feeling" doesn't take shape in prose, usually. That's not something I can really choose and I'm not going to start writing novels because that's "where its at."
Thank you though, for your thoughts.
Everyone suffers in their own way and when it happens... it hurts. No matter who you are or what circumstances you're in.
ReplyDelete