If, as the ancients recorded, the gods flew around in aerial chariots, what then does that say about the nature of the gods? Similarly, if Jehova God traveled in a “pillar of cloud by day, pillar of fire by night”, doesn’t that suggest that He (or at least his messengers) use technology in a similar way to humans?
Monthly Archives: February 2012
DADA Manifesto – Hugo Ball (1916)
Dada is a new tendency in art. One can tell this from the fact that until now nobody knew anything about it, and tomorrow everyone in Zurich will be talking about it. Dada comes from the dictionary. it is terribly simple. In French it means “hobby horse.” In German it means “good-by,” “Get off my back,” “Be seeing you sometime.” In Romanian: “Yes, indeed, you are right, that’s it. But of course, yes, definitely, right.” And so forth.
An international word. Just a word, and the word a movement. Very easy to understand. Quite terribly simple. To make of it an artistic tendency must mean that one is anticipating complications. Dada psychology, dada Germany cum indigestion and fog paroxysm, dada literature, dada bourgeoisie, and yourselves, honored poets, who are always writing with words but never writing the word itself, who are always writing around the actual point. Dada world war without end, dada revolution without beginning, dada, you friends and also-poets, esteemed sirs, manufacturers, and evangelists. Dada Tzara, dada Huelsenbeck, dada m’dada, dada m’dada dada mhm, dada dere dada, dada Hue, dada Tza.
How does one achieve eternal bliss? By saying dada. How does one become famous? By saying dada. With a noble gesture and delicate propriety. Till one goes crazy. Till one loses consciousness. How can one get rid of everything that smack of journalism, worms, everything nice and right, blinkered, moralistic, europeanized, enervated? By saying dada. Dada is the world soul, dada is the pawnshop. Dada is the world’s best lily-milk soap. Dada Mr. Rubiner, dada Mr. Korrodi. Dada Mr. Anastasius Lilienstein.
In plain language: the hospitality of the Swiss is something to be profoundly appreciated. And in questions of aesthetics the key is quality.
I shall be reading poems that are meant to dispense with conventional language, no less, and to have done with it. Dada Johann Fuschgang Goethe, Dada Stendhal. Dada Dalai Lama, Buddha, Bible and Nietzsche. Dada m’dada. Dada mhm dada da. It’s a question of connections, and of loosening them up a bit to start with. I don’t want words that other people have invented. All the words are other people’s inventions. I want my own stuff, my own rhythm, and vowels and consonants too, matching the rhythm and all my own. If this pulsation in seven yards long, I want words for it that are seven yards long. Mr. Schulz’s words are only two and a half centimeters long.
It will serve to show how articulated language comes into being. I let the vowels fool around. I let the vowels quite simply occur, as a cat miaows… Words emerge, shoulders of words, legs, arms, hands of words. Au, oi, uh. One shouldn’t let too many words out. A line of poetry is a chance to get rid of all the filth that clings to this accursed language, as if put there by stockbrokers’ hands, hands worn smooth by coins. I want the word where it ends and begins. Dada is the heart of words.
Each thing has its word, but the word has become a thing by itself. Why shouldn’t I find it? Why can’t a tree be called Pluplusch, and Pluplubasch when it has been raining? The word, the word, the word outside your domain, your stuffiness, this laughable impotence, your stupendous smugness, outside all the parrotry of your self-evident limitedness. The word, gentlement, is a public concern of the first importance.
From Rumi
The following was sent to me by my friend John. It is from the Persian poet Rumi:
Define and narrow me, you starve yourself of yourself.
Nail me down in a box of cold words, that box is your coffin.
I do not know who I am.
I am in astounded lucid confusion.
I am not a Christian, I am not a Jew, I am not a Zoroastrian,
And I am not even a Muslim.
I do not belong to the land, or to any known or unknown sea.
Nature cannot own or claim me, nor can heaven,
Nor can India, China, Bulgaria,
My birthplace is placelessness,
My sign to have and give no sign.
You say you see my mouth, ears, eyes, nose – they are not mine.
I am the life of life.
I am that cat, this stone, no one.
I have thrown duality away like an old dishrag,
I see and know all times and worlds,
As one, one, always one.
So what do I have to do to get you to admit who is speaking?
Admit it and change everything!
This is your own voice echoing off the walls of God.
Spring Heeled Jack Returns?
A sighting of a dark figure running across a road in England has been described as the second coming of “Spring Heeled Jack”, the elusive phantasm that leaped over rooftops in Victorian England, breathing “blue flame” and terrifying wirnesses with his fiery red eyes.
Jack has variously been described as a Victorian prankster, and an occult horror straight from another dimension. Of course, comparisons can be drawn betrween Jack and other paranormal phantasms such as the West Virginia “Mothman.” Whatever the case, here is the article about the recent sighting:
From the Bhagavad Gita
“The foolish disregard me, when clad in human semblance.”
The Time-Defying Serpent
On that final day
Will we stand,
Like supplicants
In a temple of light,
While still they fly
In naked splendor
Lighting up the worlds?
Did your hooked cross
Spill blood into the firmament
For Eve, while dragon
Borne of woman
Measured the distance
Between constellations?
Do they yawn below,
Or beckon from above?
Children of God,
Or of the Python?
Mighty snake eating its own tail,
Ourobouros,
The time-defying serpent hissed
Into the yawning void.
Ofra Haza – “Yerushalaim Shel Zahav”
Still one of the most beautiful pieces of music ever written.
