Something on Nothing

I've noticed a few classmates this semester applying Shakespeare to Beckett. this is specifically applicable on the subject of nothing. Fletcher's presentations citing the nothing rant in Winters Tale paired with the evocation of Beckett made my heart soar.

And I just have a few things to say about nothing. and a little film about nothing that is perfect.

to start, there is a very interesting distinction Heidegger makes about nothing.
The paradigm is centered on the article we address to nothing. do we imply nothing as no-thing or nothing as Nothing. ie. emptiness, sans all.

an example of this from Heidegger would be the issue

-There is nothing to be afraid of.
-Wrong, there is Nothing to be afraid of.

Beckett often deals with Nothingness. he once said, "Nothing is funnier than unhappiness" now if we apply Heidegger to this statement at what meaning do we come to?

just a thought.

Also, Thomas Wells turned me on to this little clip. perhaps a perfect recapitulation of Waiting for Godot. with muppets.
But the play, brings up the question once again. Often I have heard criticism of Godot in that, "nothing happens"

right.
or wrong, Nothing happens.
How privileged are we to experience Nothing, instead of our usual nothings.

this is seriously one of the best productions i've seen. And I rest that claim on one line, articulated so perfectly here:
"then we'll be...happy."

megoist.

Megoist.

If you ever wanted to know what the meaning of life is or why we are here, I’ll tell you: Every one of us is an egoist.

Not many are willing to accept this, but the biggest (or Best) of us egoists have already and fully embrace it.

Joyce understood remembrance, his transfiguration of the phrase “remember me” into “mememoreme!” perhaps best synthesizes this entire philosophy into one final yawping death rattle.

Ovid rather blatantly exposed his own drive for immortality when he stating
"And now my work is done: no wrath of Jove
nor fire nor sword nor time, which would erode
all things, has power to blot out this poem.
Now when it wills, the fatal day (which has
only the body in its grasp) can end
my years, however long or short their span.
But, with the better part of me, I'll gain
a place that's higher than the stars: my name,
indelible, eternal, will remain.
And everywhere that Roman power has sway,
in all domains the Latins gain, my lines
will be on people's lips; and through all time--
if poets' prophecies are ever right--
my name and fame are sure: I shall have life."

He knew. That’s why we remember him.

Let me recount this realization, my thoughts came to me somewhat erratically, but this is how it all materialized.


My roommates recently bought a Playstation 3, and have been playing it non-stop since it arrived. Being self absorbed, I often scoff at their wasting time. I sit and read and make undermining comments about their incessant virtual life.

Whenever they are playing hockey games, or skiing games I always say, “you know those things are really a lot more fun in real life.”
On the eve of this revelation my roommates were playing a game where you steal cars, run civilians over, and shoot people.
I felt my stock comment maybe inappropriate at this particular juncture.

So I turned my mind inward, and sought sanctum in my meditations.

I began to criticize video games, and virtual worlds. I wondered what is it in human nature that drives us to operate characters outside ourselves. To live vicariously through fictitious figures, fields of dreams. It was almost instantly apparent that video games are hardly the sole venue for this act, this puppet show. The curtain over the world lifted, and I knew: were all at the helm of a vast web of puppet strings, and in turn, we are all at the mercy of an unseen puppeteer.

To begin at our own birth, or better yet: conception lets just examine the beautiful art of utter selfishness.

I don’t think It’s necessary for me to go into detail, but lets just be honest about a few components:

Regardless of your parent’s intent, whether you were planned or not, bastard, or well begotten, there were two moments—well at least one—of your conception that really were solely an egotistical act.

Moving quickly past that, the idea of children is often evoked as the magnum opus of selfless scenarios, but children are possibly the simple most me-driven metamorphosis of all.

Whether we accept it or not, our motive for having children is really our only guaranteed act of prolonging immortality. We come to terms with death, its inevitability and yet we constantly ask our selves, “how can I beat this?”
Then we snap our fingers and say, “Oh! I know I’ll have a baby, and I’ll raise them to be just like me, but smarter, better, faster, and able to do all thing things I wish I could have done."
For proof, simply ask yourself: how much are you becoming your parents?
The answer is shocking.

we may attempt to distance ourselves as far from our family as possible, but we cannont deny we are a product of our parents, and theres before them, ad infintum.

As in Hamlet, mourning over his fathers death is dismissed by the usurping king,
"KING
 87   'Tis sweet and commendable in your nature, Hamlet,
 88   To give these mourning duties to your father:
 89   But, you must know, your father lost a father;
 90   That father lost, lost his, and the survivor bound
 91   In filial obligation for some term
 92   To do obsequious sorrow: but to persever
 93   In obstinate condolement is a course "

Our being begotten, spins our thread of life into a tapestry whose vastness is incomprehensible. Our existance is a continuation of life dating back to the origin of all.
our lineage ferries us across all rivers of history, exploring each tributary of time to the darkest recsesses of that backward abysm. Cavernous libraries slumber under cobweb quilts, attainable only by that echo of an archaic heart. Bloodlines like rivers and deltas seem stagnat untill we here the gulls, re-calling us home.

"But I'm loothing them that's here and all I lothe. Loonely in me loneness. For all their faults. I am passing out. O bitter ending! I'll slip away before they're up. They'll never see. Nor know. Nor miss me. And it's old and old it's sad and old it's sad and weary I go back to you, my cold father, my cold mad father, my cold mad feary father, till the near sight of the mere size of him, the moyles and moyles of it, moananoaning, makes me seasilt saltsick and I rush, my only, into your arms. I see them rising! Save me from those therrble prongs! Two more. Onetwo moremens more. So. Avelaval. My leaves have drifted from me. All. But one clings still. I'll bear it on me. To remind me of. Lff! So soft this morning, ours. Yes. Carry me along, taddy, like you done through the toy fair! If I seen him bearing down on me now under whitespread wings like he'd come from Arkangels, I sink I'd die down over his feet, humbly dumbly, only to washup. Yes, tid. There's where. First. We pass through grass behush the bush to. Whish! A gull. Gulls. Far calls. Coming, far! End here. Us then. Finn, again! Take. Bussoftlhee, mememormee! Till thousendsthee. Lps. The keys to. Given! A way a lone a last a loved a long the
riverrun"


Thus ends and begins again the bit of recirculation. Life coming out of death, out of birth.
We come and go. (there is no end to inquiry and pursuit these words, their endless meanings-- all the world is contained between.)

 the motives for this perpetuation  are indeed selfish, yet it is the way of the world. It is the world itself.


I fear I am veering slightly off course here, but I trust my audience is adept.

Despite the inherent selfishness of the act itself and of Paroles, his speech is poignant in the manner that to deny this act (albeit self fulfilling) is to deny nature, to damn the meaning of life.
‘It is not politic in the commonwealth of nature to preserve virginity. Loss of virginity is rational increase, and there was never virgin got till virginity was first lost. That you were made of is metal to make virgins. Virginity by being once lost may be ten times found; by being ever kept is ever lost. 'Tis too cold a companion. Away with't! 'Tis against the rule of nature. To speak on the part of virginity is to accuse your mothers, which is most infallible disobedience. He that hangs himself is a virgin; virginity murders itself, and should be buried in highways out of all sanctified limit, as a desperate offendress against nature. Virginity breeds mites, much like a cheese, consumes itself to the very paring, and so dies with feeding his own stomach. Besides, virginity is peevish, proud, idle, made of self-love, which is the most inhibited sin in the canon. Keep it not; you cannot choose but lose by't. Out with't! Within ten year it will make itself ten, which is a goodly increase, and the principal itself not much the worse. Away with't! 'Tis a commodity will lose the gloss with lying: the longer kept, the less worth. Off with't while 'tis vendible; answer the time of request. Virginity, like an old courtier, wears her cap out of fashion, richly suited, but unsuitable, just like the brooch and the toothpick, which wear not now. Your date is better in your pie and your porridge than in your cheek; and your virginity, your old virginity, is like one of our French withered pears: it looks ill, it eats drily. Marry, 'tis a withered pear; it was formerly better; marry, yet 'tis a withered pear! Will you anything with it?"

We also must abstain from mental virginity. If we so foolishly belive our minds pure within their own isolated stagnation, we shall never live on, never remembered.
And those whose minds, seeded by all the world will forever flower, they will eternally emerge by virtue of invention, and creation.

Shakespeare is widely criticized as being "un-educated" (swan of Avon) but it is clear his mind mated quite frequently with mythology. Virtually none of Shakespeare's plays would be possible without the sweet caress of Ovid.

Thus begins the exploration of Shakespeare:

Virtually all of Shakespeare's mind babies center around family, real babies. I can see nothing altruistic about any of his plays, nor any of his characters. Tragedy arises from jealousy and greed. Romance is simply the essence wafting off personal desire, it is joyace true, but it is a product of individual need.
And what becomes of a romance other than a family? The family becomes the structure for control. Thus recapitulating the egoism of self duplication. Family throughout Shakespeare represents that dictorial control, and it is re-presented throughout many frames.

When we look at Lear, it is plain to see the self induced wrath of destruction. Lear, unwanting to fully relinquish the throne, establishes a vice-roy kingdom delegated out to assuaging daughters. Whose two-fold tongues praise the bland old Isaac, to horde and inheritance...Tragedy ensues.

Yet what has become of this great egoism?
- a beauty shared amongst all the world.

The Tempest too, falls into this label. Miranda's marriage, the islands sweet song, the storm, the play itself all an orchestration--devised by the Magus Prospero to regain himself.


This thought extrapolated, is easily applied to the cumulative magus himself: Shakespeare. Who like Bottom, requires every role. Though the ends justify the means, his operations were as Ovid's, as Cleopatra's .
To be revered.
To "live on, on fly on, in reflected sky,"
To have immortality.


What's this?
I hear
Shakespeare,
calling on...
pages and stages
"Remember me."

a last.

“And the clash of our cries till we spring to be free” F.W.

I’d just like to preface that what I’ve posted bellow is not easy for me to share, I am not the kind that readily speaks of such issues, or in any way seeks comfort through confession. But purging myself is part of the ritual. And I am so overcome with jubilation--now that the colossus that so long eclipsed my world, has fallen and now lies asunder-- that I'm free of inhibitions.

This is sort of a personal cacophony, poorly written in places and important probably only to me, but it was brought on by this class, by Shakespeare and Dr. Sexson,

 I have felt entombed in dark depths, poured over by the grey still cement of loss.

I’ve buried more family and friends in the past year than I’ve made in the past decade.

I await the turnaround—my re-birth.

But birth never comes, I’m stuck in the: my re. myre. mire.

This bad poem is evidence of my stagnation.

I feel sealed in an early sarcophagus;  adorned with a painted smile.
.
I recede into books, but the solace is superficial and I spend more time watching my hair fall

making parenthetical paragraphs I forget to read.


I sing a song of metamorphosis


and wait.


This coffin is no cocoon.

-          It is no easy thing to feel so lonesome. And I have for some time.

-          I’m reminded of a song by Jackson Browne, (covered by many) entitled These Days

The lyric in minds that has seemed to consume my past year or so, goes thusly:

“Now if I seem to be afraid to live the life that I have made in songs… it’s just that I’ve been losing so long.”

******************************************************************************

Today though, is a happy day. The spell has been lifted.

I have awoken.

"O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall
Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed O my dear"

Now that i've made my way back up those cilffs of fall I realize that mountain peaks are shaped by the voids around them. In order to find myself full again I had to first empty out.

---Phall if you but will, rise you must - F.W. ----

I owe this awakening to the material discussed in class: renewal, redemption.

I have been flooded lately with torrents of happenings, I have for sometime been entirely at the mercy of these elements, yet they show no forbearance. I have felt like Camus' stranger: adrift and exposed, affected by the world.  Often I have thought as Ariel did, "hell is empty and the devils are here." (1.2 Tempest)

Today however I was subjected to an epiphanic tempest. an unveiling of my world that has lifted the weight of woe. Let me attempt to recount:

As I have said, for some time this hollow solitude has left a husk of me—dried, cracked, and sans seed. This is due in large part to the passing of many people quite close to me, two good friends, a lover (my first), a grandmother and most painfully my grandfather.

Perhaps it’s wrong to quantify the hurt, but the passing of my grandfather not only left me devoid of person, but it severed that intangible thread, damned that river of remembrance.

 My ancient cistern has dried.

 The drought had left me feeling barren, and those ceaseless waves of loss seemed to wash away all my castles made of sand.

I endured this erosion.

 I know not how.

I shared Leadbelly’s great notion,

But when I jumped in that river, I instead felt baptized anew.

After class today, I walked with the idea of Shakespeare’s redemption.  

I felt like Prospero, my neglected Milan usurped by the world during a momentary lapse of reason.

My inattention.

I got into my car and put on some tunes that began my metamorphosis.

The power of song induced in me a synesthesia of the emotions.

The first, Here comes the Sun, by the Beatles

And the second, Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen .

And as hallelujah came through my crackling speakers, I witnessed the perfect visage of liberation: a once tangled kite, ripping free from a dying tree, then it soared, soared, skyward.

No words can accurately describe the transformation that I experienced, I felt the overwhelming urge to weep but found my self incapable. Instead I gasped, not short of breath, Instead as if I was breathing for the first time.




This may seem a bit contrived to my readers, but the difference in me is night and day.
It's really not easy to discuss a bought of the blues, but once you rise out of that mire, it is so exalting to experience a new found freedom.


The power of song can be so influential and transformative.
The awe inspired in me at that moment by Cohen truly deserves the so common Keanu colloquialism


It is very easy to be dismissive over the power of music. "it's just a song" is as commonly uttered as "it's just a story".


As with the Tempest, the storm is a farce. Prospero conducts a bewitching upon us all through the aid of Ariel. Prospero admits this, he lifts the curtain as it were,
"These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air,
And, like the baseless fabric of vision,
The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with sleep."
though a performance, there is still no doubting the power of influence it has over the characters. Further, there is no doubting the power of influence it has had over us.




Caliban's famous soliloquy is most readily cited as apex example of this poetic power. He describes most eloquently the awe of illusion.
He like myself is affected by song, by the strange noises of the island. They are no more real than Leonard Cohen was for me. The question of "reality" should heed little regard, instead we must allow our selves to succumb to the sweet song.


Be not afeard. The isle is full of noises,
Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices
That, if I then had waked after long sleep
Will make me sleep again; and then in dreaming
The clouds methought would open and show riches
Ready to drop upon me, that when I waked
I cried to dream again.




In order to dream we must first submit to sleep.




It is that willing suspension of disbelief that unties our moorings and sends us swiftly adrift upon the moon taut tide.




If we follow Proseros redemption, we see the true moment of liberation comes not from the effect of his pageantry. Though through his tempest he regains and restore all, the climactic culmination of all restorative power is initiated by his letting go. By burring his staff and drowning his book.




It is as Lao Tzu said, "When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be."






It is a delicate waltz, a stasis between enchantment and exposure, that the true power of Shakespeare's work radiates.


PROSPERO

Now my charms are all o'erthrown,

And what strength I have’s mine own,

Which is most faint. Now, ’tis true,

I must be here confined by you,

Or sent to Naples. Let me not,

Since I have my dukedom got

And pardoned the deceiver, dwell

In this bare island by your spell,

But release me from my bands

With the help of your good hands.

Gentle breath of yours my sails

Mustfill, or else my project fails,

Which was to please. Now I want

Spirits to enforce, art to enchant,

And my ending is despair,

Unless I be relieved by prayer,

Which pierces so that it assaults

Mercy itself and frees all faults.

As you from crimes would pardoned be,

Let your indulgence set me free.

We must simultaneously loose ourselves, while maintaining focus.

This stasis has been popularized by such films as waking life, with the practice of lucid dreaming.

But it is a far more ancient ritual than that,

its thematics can be traced to the Egyptian and Tibetan Book of the Dead,
My synopsis is quite a hack job, but essentially these books describe the trials one must undergo once dead to pass on peacefully into the afterlife. During the death trial experience, the dead must be entirely awash and enthralled into the experience, but they must maintain a sense of focus, they must remember the way.

To connect all this takes one of those mysterious mental maneuvers. Shakespeare is simultaneously and Enchanter, and Educator and a Dismantler. Like gazing into the many mouths of Krishna we see the world created and destroyed in an instant.

Shakespeare creates these entire vast worlds, which delight and inspire. But a clever curtain is lifted as it falls.

once the play comes to a close, the plays significance is extrapolated exponentially. As in The Wizard of Oz (which I finally have seen) we are meant to see the man behind the curtain. Our doors of perception have been cleansed and we begin to see the world in its infinite self. 
to discover this path we must venture deep, leaving behind only the faintest bread crumb trail.

it is as in finnegans wake, while rushing back to sea of her mad feary father, entirely at the will of the water, yet still and solid in remembrance, "my leaves have drifted from me. All. But one still clings. I'll bear it to me. To remind me of. Lff!" - Finnegans Wake

Chrisitain Nativity in Cymbeline?

I've been prodding around some extra-textual criticism on Cymbeline and I've found an amount of critics claiming a fabric of Christianity, specifically Christ's becoming in  Cymbeline. I, however cannot place this in the text itself. Perhaps Mary is  found in the symbolic image of Imogen in some form of purity, and the manifestation of a God figure is intriguing, but aside from these few weak connections I find this rather unmanifested. So I pose a question to the class, and perhaps it is irrelevant and futile, but do any of you see this theory materializing in Cymbeline? does this have any base?

-just a small point of interjection, but I'm just stuck on this point.

Post-Tragedy in the Tempest

Perhaps a better working title for this blog may be The Tempest: Tragedy Transcended.


I've spent a long time with The Tempest. I mainly spend my time studying the tempest through a looking glass of illusion. I feel this is the accurate way to deal with the play, but lately i've been interested in adding a little depth to my perception.

What i've come to lately, is that  The Tempest is an act of transcendence beyond Shakespeare, beyond the form of tragedy. It is the Post-Tragic.

Reading an essay by Paul Cantor entitled Tragicomedy and the Philosophical Hero, has really been my illuminatory light in these views. In Canto's view, the central tragic plot of the Tempest is only viewed in retrospect,  he states that we, "do not see Prosepero actually undergoing what would normally be a  tragic experience; instead we see him reflecting back upon it."  This idea of Canto's really got me thinking in a new and refreshing way.

We as readers can see that no true tragedy ever materializes during the play. All the various subplots, (caliban and the fools  planned murder, Antiono and Sebations re-attempt) have all been muted, reduced, and eventually thwarted. Prosperos recount of his own usurpation is the closest we can agree on as a full-fruited tragedy, and this is already overcome, past and done. "What sets thou else..." now transcends aestheticism , becoming substance and wholly foundational to this play.

Prospero transcends the form of tragedy, through his illusions. Though he is entirely central to the play, his is removed from nearly every action, his power is wielded vicariously. Like the conductor with his baton, he simultaneously controls and creates all noise  while outside of the orchestra pit.

In this fashion, he is beyond conspirators like Iago who despite clever manipulation still succumb to tragic ends because he is still physically and actively participatory. What makes The Tempest such a master-work of the theater is this removal or transcendence outside the frame of the play.  Canto states, "A dramatist has no trouble portraying the active life on the stage; indeed action is the heart of drama. But Portraying the contemplative life is difficult, because it must of necessity appear passive, static, and dull if not simply ridiculous, when brought on stage." Yet despite Prosperos self removal, he at no point appears static, his is simultaneously central, omniscient, and entirely absent.

Shakespeare very keenly plays with this notion of the failed  in the physical world with his subplot of Caliban Stephano and Alonso. As Canto claims in his essay, "The usurpers are concerned with acquiring the mere trappings of the kingship, not with becoming true kings themselves." This is the attraction to the crown, and not that heaviness of the crown. It applies not only to the failed kingship of Antonio, but more comically and poignantly to the foolishness of Caliban, Stephano and Alonso whose base minds get lost in material distraction, found frolicking in kingly clothing.

an evening with Terry Tempest Williams

Never limit your cultural explorations.

Last night I was given a great opportunity to share an evening with Terry Tempest Williams. I must begin by saying, I did not know virtually anything about her, but what ensued really took me away.

I was expecting a literary discussion, or a forum of scholars. And, though these too were present, the evening consisted of much more. Terry Tempest Williams is an amazing activist, and her discussion last night rode on those winds. She began her talk by referencing one of her closest friends-- Doug Peacock (Hayduke) who happens to be one of my favorite people in the world, and character hero. She regaled the audience with very moving words and stories, and re instated a zeal in myself that I have long forgotten. 

I absolutely must read her work, I felt embarrassed to be one in the crowd who never had.

She is has been called a "western Emerson or Thoreau" and from the brief illumination of her character- I couldn't agree more.

Growing up in New England I was infatuated with Thoreau, Civil Disobedience  and the like.
My parents essentially grew up In Concord Mass, and I would often Visit Thoreau's pond.

Now, to give a true anecdote about EEmerson and Thoreau, that hopefully will educate some of this very western class on very eastern minds, and will hopefully help describe to you my sense of Terry Tempest Williams....

In protest to a poll tax--whose money went to support the Mexican American War-- Henry Davidson Thoreau simply defied government rule, and refused to pay and support this unjust war.
Subsequently he ended up in jail.
His contemporary, Ralph Waldo Emerson visited Thoreau in jail and asked him, "What are you doing in there, Henry?"
Thoreau simply responded, "Waldo, the question is, what are you doing out there?"

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, to discover that I had not lived.

Needful things

The Russian, the Englishman, and the two Irish.