Archive for May, 2008

Eli and Whitman rumbled down the mountain like distant thunder rolling in for a summer afternoon storm. Every year on the summer solstice, as the life giving sun sits high on its northern throne, Thursday City holds the Longest Day Festival. The highlight of the festival is the popcorn shrimp eating contest followed by the Pick-Off. The Pick-Off is a musical contest in which bands compete in any genre of instrumental music for Thursday City supremacy. There are three expert judges, honored guests and/or celebrities, and the crowd’s vote counts for 25% of the total. Every year either Eli or Whitman has won the popcorn shrimp eating contest, and they have won the Pick-Off for the past four years with their band “Cotton Gin.” There are no contenders expected to challenge the eating reign, but with Gracey Kallifracks back in town the city is buzzing with excitement in regards to the Pick-Off.

Original post by Jehosephat Sunrays

I recently called Joshua Ray Stephens book ‘The Moth or the Flame’ a ‘magical’ book. In a mail he asked me if I meant what I was saying, but of course I didn’t define what I meant with ‘magical’. Perhaps I should say ‘magickal’ as some people do, to differentiate from the Disney sort of magic, but I have always found that a somewhat daft way of differentiating. It was started once by Aleister Crowley, I think, a man who was as irritating as he was interesting. When I was a teenager, around 15 or so, I read all books i could get my hands on about the occult. For years and years I exclusively read books about occultism, science fiction and higher physics. At some point I finished most books and kind of distilled what I found interesting: on the ‘occult’ subject those were Crowley, Gurdjieff and Casteneda.

Now, of course that was a teenage fascination. Obsession, even, and I threw away almost all my occult books when I moved to Turkey because I could hardly bear reading them later on anyway. I had long since moved on to philosophy and poetry, and most occult works are simply not well crafted enough to keep my interest. Nonetheless these three people did play a role in the formation of my world-view, and many years of practicing their techniques taught me that the mind can be mastered in ways not taught in conventional sciences. I have practiced a range of techniques for more than 15 years, including asana yoga, hatha yoga, ceremonial magic, astral work, kabbalah, kundalini, castanedian techniques and so on. But ‘occult literature’ never interested me after I passed my 21st birthday. Whatever good these techniques are, the instruction manuals will always be just that, instruction manuals. And instruction manuals ain’t literature.

So, what the ‘mob’ defines as ‘magical books’ ain’t magical books for me. I really detest most ‘occult art’ and ‘magical books’ and for a good reason: good art is always magical, so whomever calls a work ‘magical poetry’ is somewhat insane or doesn’t know what poetry is. Yet, the same isn’t true about books. One simply can’t say that ‘all books are magical’ – that’d be a nonsensical statement.

A truly magical book is a rare phenomenon. It’s the synergy that does the trick: the design, the words, the shape, the colors, the intent put in it. A magical book is a very concentrated expression of someones essence. I feel that Joshua created something like that with ‘The Moth or The Flame’ – it’s a very special work that is very carefully crafted. Maybe we should rather call it a ‘grimoire’, I have always liked that word much better.

I keep practicing my skills and techniques, I spend about one to two hours a day on them. It’s greatly efficient since these skills allow me to completely renew or change my own energy levels. This is an extremely useful skill to have: recently I have been almost in a permanent state of being mind-blown by just about everything that surrounds me. But when I want to read magical books I have no use of ‘occult literature’ and neither do I have any desire for ‘occultists’, frankly: they are a rather irritating and small minded crowd. They are simply unwilling to question their own premises, which is the first requirement of any sort of progress. Besides, all occult forums I have occasionally visited banned me usually within a few days time, which I take as as good a sign of enlightenment as anything else.

The Belgian newspaper BN De Stem today had an article about, yes, the marginal role of poetry in the modern world. It seems impossible for journalists and critics to write about any other theme when it relates to poetry, ever since the 60′s. For almost 50 years we can read about two or three articles a month about ‘the marginalization of poetry’, ‘does poetry have a future’, etc. etc. I wrote a guideline for poetry discussion on Loewak one month ago, which I will now internationalize since the problem seems to rear its ugly head almost everywhere:

A short international guideline for Academic poetry discussion

Dear reader/academic/critic:

This is the new short international guideline for Academic poetry discussion around the globe. For the next 50 years please first consult following list of themes and debating items if you are planning an Academic discussion night about poetry or an article:

1. Does poetry have a future?
2. Do literary magazines, readers, books, words, poets, have a future?
3. What is the future of poetry debate as such?
4. Do these sort of questions have a future?
5. If poetry would have a future, would we be there to witness it?
6. Is the poet the future of his own poetics, or not?
7. How much future can a poetry debate bear?
8. If we want to face the future of poetry, do we have to look forward?
9. Where does the future start and poetry end and vice versa?
10. Is the future really comprehensive enough?

This free guideline for Academics worldwide is presented to you for endless citation. As you can see some mild variations crept in regarding the themes that have dominated the last 50 years of poetry debate worldwide, but that’s the sound of progress, gentlemen. The sound of the future.


Footnote: if there’s anything *marginal* it’s these academics and critics that have no imagination whatsoever when they discuss over or write about poetry.

Loewak is joined by a new author today, the British poet James Sheard, author of the book ‘Scattering Eva‘ shortlisted for a Forward Prize and the Glenn Dimplex Award.

He’s also founder and prominent member of the Poetburo.

Martijn�s post reminded me of a parable from Kierkegaard, which is not about journalism per se but use your analogical mind, please.

From The Present Age:
�If I tried to imagine the public as a particular person� I should perhaps think of one of the Roman emperors, a large well-fed figure, suffering from boredom, looking only for the sensual intoxication of laughter, since the divine gift of wit is not earthly enough. And so for a change he wanders about, indolent rather than bad, but with a negative desire to dominate. Every one who has read the classical authors knows how many things a Caesar could try out in order to kill time. In the same way the public keeps a dog to amuse it. That dog is the sum of the literary world. If there is someone superior to the rest, perhaps even a great man, the dog is set on him and the fun begins. The dog goes for him, snapping and tearing at his coattails, allowing itself every possible ill-mannered familiarity�until the public tires, and says it may stop. That is an example of how the public levels. Their betters and superiors in strength are mishandled�and the dog remains a dog which even the public despises. The levelling is therefore done by a third party; a non-existent public leveling with the help of a third party which in its insignificance is less than nothing, being already more than leveled…. The public is unrepentant, for it is not they who own the dog�they only subscribe. They neither set the dog on any one, nor whistle it off�directly. If asked they would answer: the dog is not mine, it has no master. And if the dog had to be killed they would say: it was a really good thing that bad-tempered dog was put down, every one wanted it killed�even the subscribers.�

Pleased to have the opportunity to post on this weblog. I am Jacques Bretard, a French cultural philosopher and art critic.� I am a neohumanist. In my opinion the human race and individuals in particular need to become open source just like software moves in this direction. The human being as such is 99% software, since the body and its bodily functions do not classify as ‘human’ – a dead person is not a person, not a human anymore. What we define as human is the software inside, the programmed entity in the brain.

Until this point our societies have, however, moved towards privitized software development for human brain deployment.� These private institutions are called ‘schools’. The human mind is programmed partly in our schools and partly in family conditions. All of these are private institutions, sometimes with some government control in case of most schools.

I am, however, of the opinion that these conditions are deplorable. The education system is failing worldwide because of the privitisation of the programming. We need to make the programming of the human brain an open source project. This means that we have to abandon the teacher model altogether and replace teachers with software. At this point we have to define what an ‘open source human’ is versus a privatized human. Let me explain:

The open source human is a human that exists only in as far as it interacts and improves itself. The open source human cannot refuse such improvement because a refusal to improve is a refusal to be open source. The open source human is infinitely expendable with plugins and bots. The propagandized private human, who thinks he is an individual, sees the open source human as a danger to its society. He thinks only he or teachers he chooses can work on his brain. What software can decide for itself which programmers can work on it? Utter nonsense, dangerous situation. We need to be able to improve the brain programming of everyone to save this world from total annihilation by privatised idiocy.

I have developed a program for this, we call it ‘The Neohumanist Open Source Project’. Our object is to de-propagandize people who mistakenly think they are individuals who can choose their own programmers. In our program we show them the only choice they have is always a programmed one. I will write more about this Neohumanist program later on.