selections

"I draw great comfort from the thought that any situation or state is only a becoming, for it is up to me to give it direction, to orient it for better or worse; it is up to me to guide myself be consulting the compass of the moment where, even when distraught, the needle always ends up pointing to the magnetic pole of aliveness...

Cosmgonic myths and initiatory legends suggest the existence of worlds that a timeless fluidity entangles, superposes, locates in hidden recesses where the most certain laws of our Aristotelian sciences and of our geometrical apperception, as inherited from the Great Watchmaker, are abrogated...

Human beings are in a state of creativity twenty-four hours a day. Once revealed, the scheming use of freedom by the mechanisms of domination produces a backlash in the form of an idea of authentic freedom inseparably bound up with individual creativity. The passion to create which issues from the consciousness of constraint can no longer be pressed into the service of production, consumption or organization. (1). Spontaneity is the mode of existence of creativity; not an isolated state, but the unmediated experience of subjectivity. Spontaneity concretizes the passion for creation and is the first moment of its practical realization: the precondition of poetry, of the impulse to change the world in accordance with the demands of radical subjectivity. (2). The qualitative exists wherever creative spontaneity manifests itself. It entails the direct communication of the essential. It is poetry’s chance. A crystallization of possibilities, a multiplier of knowledge and practical potential, and the proper modis operandi of intelligence. Its criteria are sui generis. The qualitative leap precipitates a chain reaction which is to be seen in all revolutionary moments; such a reaction must be awoken by the scandal of free and total creativity. (3). Poetry is the organizer of creative spontaneity to the extent that it reinforces spontaneity’s hold on reality. Poetry is an act which engenders new realities; it is the fulfilment of radical theory, the revolutionary act par excellence"

R.Vaneigem