'The US is not the only country with advanced short-termism. It merely provides the most egregious example of the disease. This is a world of fast food and short attention spans, of politicians so dominated by a 24/7 news agenda that they have lost the habit of planning for the long term.'
---Larry Eliot, The Guardian.
---Larry Eliot, The Guardian.
'Lacking long-term shared goals, many are turning to what she terms "Pot Noodle love" – easy or instant gratification, in the form of casual sex, short-term trysts and the usual technological suspects: online porn, virtual-reality "girlfriends", anime cartoons. Or else they're opting out altogether and replacing love and sex with other urban pastimes.'
---Abigail Haworth, The Guardian.
'Everything that exists today was imagined long ago'
---Blake.
To be modern is to understand that so much of our lives is fleeting, contingent, that we never step in the same water twice. Everything is universal flux (except that statement, of course). And to talk of identity is mistaken, too, since our lives are just time slices loosely held together (by habit, imagination?). The 'I-today' is not the same as 'I-tomorrow'.
Of course, Lea, Roxana, Sadia, C and fff will know that I think this is utter bullshit and just another expression of the culture of late capitalism. Everything must be dated and everything must have a sell-by or use-by date. So, if you say you love someone today that other person, assuming she hasn't gone totally bonkers, will feel slightly disturbed if 'you' turn to her today and say, sorry but "a kiss is not a kiss, a sigh is not a sigh, as time goes by."
Why is classical music called 'classical'? Why is it that people from different places around the world, and across the centuries, can still appreciate Bach? It might be said that there was never one Bach-the person or the music-since each individual listens to the music in their own unique way. From that, I suppose, we should also admit that no-one knows what the fuck the next person is talking about because everyone understands words in a specific and unrepeatable way.
And what of the will to permanence? Why this profound desire in men and women, as evidenced throughout human history, for stillness, immortality, timelessness (in architecture, poetry, music, love)? Hans Jonas, writing about the loss of the sense of immortality, is right to say that this is an aspect of a fundamental strain running through modernity. If nothing last should we be concerned about its disappearance? At the extreme: if a person is just a random number, why not stamp that number on her forearm and prove it before consigning her to the flames?
It is said that the world is always a floating world, always full of denials, nullifying our concepts, undermining our structures at the roots. Ours is an age that is governed by the idea of 'process' (Arendt), of random mutation, mutable forms, chance accumulations of swirling atoms and ceaseless change. But I, for one, am not so sure. I think Augustine would say that it is our improper desires that makes the world 'the world' (in a negative sense). But if so, it is also true to say that a proper love of the world makes the world a common world, one that we hope endures and that our children will inherit. There is something deeply nihilistic-not in all cases, for sure-about those who think everything is, essentially, new and that past has to be either ripped up or that it will fall away naturally. Such a view is at odds with the whole notion-and it's a central part of spirituality- of remembrance in the Qur'an.
What is that remembering? Not just a memory of love and of loved ones, but also of our origins (an 'absolute past'). In a sense it is a gathering up of what we always knew was true. Culture, history, traditions, rituals and a sense of place-all of the things Simone Weil called "bridges"-are things that warm and nourish the soul if they do not distract one, and are not made into 'idols'. It is no surprise that the fundamentalists-who are really just nihilists-always want to destroy such things. It is only the radically impure who seek such "purity". History sweeps all away and all one can and should aim for in this desert-for that is what the world is to them- is a moment of blinding revelation, a point of truth in a fallen world.
'So let us rush, then, to see the world...It has churches of indescribable beauty raised to gods that have never been seen'; cities whose distant roofs and smokestacks will make your heart leap; ballparks and auditoriums in which people listen to music of the most serious import; and thousands or perhaps even millions of museums where man's drive to celebrate life is recorded. Here the joy of women's breasts...the colors of waters, the shapes of trees, athletes, dreams, houses the shape of ecstasy and dismay, the shape even of an old shoe is celebrated...
They serve steak there on jet planes and dance at sea. They have invented musical instruments to express love, peaceableness; to stir the finest memories and aspirations. They have invented games to catch the hearts of young men. They have ceremonies to exalt the love of men and women. They make their vows to the sound of music and bells. They have invented ways to heat their houses in the winter and cool them in the summer...They have free schools for the pursuit of knowledge, pools to swim in, zoos,..They explore space and the trenches of the sea. '
---John Cheever, The Journals.
'Everything that exists today was imagined long ago'
---Blake.
To be modern is to understand that so much of our lives is fleeting, contingent, that we never step in the same water twice. Everything is universal flux (except that statement, of course). And to talk of identity is mistaken, too, since our lives are just time slices loosely held together (by habit, imagination?). The 'I-today' is not the same as 'I-tomorrow'.
Of course, Lea, Roxana, Sadia, C and fff will know that I think this is utter bullshit and just another expression of the culture of late capitalism. Everything must be dated and everything must have a sell-by or use-by date. So, if you say you love someone today that other person, assuming she hasn't gone totally bonkers, will feel slightly disturbed if 'you' turn to her today and say, sorry but "a kiss is not a kiss, a sigh is not a sigh, as time goes by."
Why is classical music called 'classical'? Why is it that people from different places around the world, and across the centuries, can still appreciate Bach? It might be said that there was never one Bach-the person or the music-since each individual listens to the music in their own unique way. From that, I suppose, we should also admit that no-one knows what the fuck the next person is talking about because everyone understands words in a specific and unrepeatable way.
And what of the will to permanence? Why this profound desire in men and women, as evidenced throughout human history, for stillness, immortality, timelessness (in architecture, poetry, music, love)? Hans Jonas, writing about the loss of the sense of immortality, is right to say that this is an aspect of a fundamental strain running through modernity. If nothing last should we be concerned about its disappearance? At the extreme: if a person is just a random number, why not stamp that number on her forearm and prove it before consigning her to the flames?
It is said that the world is always a floating world, always full of denials, nullifying our concepts, undermining our structures at the roots. Ours is an age that is governed by the idea of 'process' (Arendt), of random mutation, mutable forms, chance accumulations of swirling atoms and ceaseless change. But I, for one, am not so sure. I think Augustine would say that it is our improper desires that makes the world 'the world' (in a negative sense). But if so, it is also true to say that a proper love of the world makes the world a common world, one that we hope endures and that our children will inherit. There is something deeply nihilistic-not in all cases, for sure-about those who think everything is, essentially, new and that past has to be either ripped up or that it will fall away naturally. Such a view is at odds with the whole notion-and it's a central part of spirituality- of remembrance in the Qur'an.
What is that remembering? Not just a memory of love and of loved ones, but also of our origins (an 'absolute past'). In a sense it is a gathering up of what we always knew was true. Culture, history, traditions, rituals and a sense of place-all of the things Simone Weil called "bridges"-are things that warm and nourish the soul if they do not distract one, and are not made into 'idols'. It is no surprise that the fundamentalists-who are really just nihilists-always want to destroy such things. It is only the radically impure who seek such "purity". History sweeps all away and all one can and should aim for in this desert-for that is what the world is to them- is a moment of blinding revelation, a point of truth in a fallen world.
'So let us rush, then, to see the world...It has churches of indescribable beauty raised to gods that have never been seen'; cities whose distant roofs and smokestacks will make your heart leap; ballparks and auditoriums in which people listen to music of the most serious import; and thousands or perhaps even millions of museums where man's drive to celebrate life is recorded. Here the joy of women's breasts...the colors of waters, the shapes of trees, athletes, dreams, houses the shape of ecstasy and dismay, the shape even of an old shoe is celebrated...
They serve steak there on jet planes and dance at sea. They have invented musical instruments to express love, peaceableness; to stir the finest memories and aspirations. They have invented games to catch the hearts of young men. They have ceremonies to exalt the love of men and women. They make their vows to the sound of music and bells. They have invented ways to heat their houses in the winter and cool them in the summer...They have free schools for the pursuit of knowledge, pools to swim in, zoos,..They explore space and the trenches of the sea. '
---John Cheever, The Journals.
3 comments:
a beautiful post, b.
Why this profound desire in men and women, as evidenced throughout human history, for stillness, immortality, timelessness (in architecture, poetry, music, love)?
sometimes i fear our age has managed to discredit even that desire as un-modern and un-desirable
Yes, I fear you may be right,fff. Let's see.
Was going to ask you...do you know of any good books on Bruegel?
Hope all is we'll
As always, thanks for dropping in.
Salams,
K.
good books on Bruegel ... recent ones tend to get very high brow conceptual (to make up for previous generation books relegating him to the folksy-jolly corner).
But always good to read: Friedländer's concise but insightful chapter on Bruegel in his "From Van Eyck to Bruegel"
Best,
fff
Post a Comment