In Praise Of Folly

From - In Praise Of Folly

Since the human race insists on being completely crazy – since everybody from the Pope down to the humblest of village priests – from the richest of men to the most miserable of paupers – from the fine lady in her silks down to the slut in her calico dressing-gown – since the whole world has firmly set its heart against using its God-given brain but insists upon letting itself be entirely guided by its greed, its vanity, and its ignorance, why in the name of a reasonable Deity should the few truly intelligent people waste so much of their time and their effort in trying to change the human race into something it never wanted to be?

Dionysus

Running through the woods, mad with ecstacy. We got lost in the rain while trying to forget the pain Kronos bestowed upon us in his chaotic rage. We fell upon our knees before the serpents vine, as we drenched out bodies in wine. Everything was clear, we now knew. I was Dyionysus!

The essence of god - by Baruch Spinoza

Proposition 1: A substance is prior in nature to its affections.

Proposition 2: Two substances having different attributes have nothing in common with one another. (In other words, if two substances differ in nature, then they have nothing in common).

Proposition 3: If things have nothing in common with one another, one of them cannot be the cause of the other.

Proposition 4: Two or more distinct things are distinguished from one another, either by a difference in the attributes [i.e., the natures or essences] of the substances or by a difference in their affections [i.e., their accidental properties].

Proposition 5: In nature, there cannot be two or more substances of the same nature or attribute.

Proposition 6: One substance cannot be produced by another substance.

Proposition 7: It pertains to the nature of a substance to exist.

Proposition 8: Every substance is necessarily infinite.

Proposition 9: The more reality or being each thing has, the more attributes belong to it.

Proposition 10: Each attribute of a substance must be conceived through itself.

Proposition 11: God, or a substance consisting of infinite attributes, each of which expresses eternal and infinite essence, necessarily exists. (The proof of this proposition consists simply in the classic “ontological proof for God's existence”. Spinoza writes that “if you deny this, conceive, if you can, that God does not exist. Therefore, by axiom 7 [‘If a thing can be conceived as not existing, its essence does not involve existence’], his essence does not involve existence. But this, by proposition 7, is absurd. Therefore, God necessarily exists, q.e.d.”)

Proposition 12: No attribute of a substance can be truly conceived from which it follows that the substance can be divided.

Proposition 13: A substance which is absolutely infinite is indivisible.

Proposition 14: Except God, no substance can be or be conceived.

Metalcore

From a forum on death and black metal comes this amazingly accurate definition of metalcore

A post-metal genre which rejects the metal style of narrative composition for the post-hardcore style of intense unrelated diversity, borrowing riffs from rock, funk, jazz, metal, emo, punk and playing them in odd tempi and with abrupt changes.

Melodic metal with a lot of breakdowns, but most people lump so many different styles in with it that you can’t really say. Most of it (the stuff I call metalcore anyway) is gateway stuff, kind of the next step up from radio rock.

Metalcore today is something completely different, It still fuses Hardcore and Metal (General Metal, NOT Thrash).. But it has a modern twist on it and focuses on the "Post" aspects so it bearly resembles the early sounds of Metalcore.

What I mean is that bands like Earth Crisis and Strife started working with a thicker more metallic guitar sound, adding groove to their music and using (very striped down) metal style break downs. At the time people were calling it “metallic hardcore”. Those elements are mainly the parts of hardcore that survive in today’s metalcore.

You can't tell me that the trendcore bands of today are using breakdowns in the same manner and DM and thrash bands of the 80's and 90's.

Music that uses the metal skillset to write hardcore-style songs.

Metalcore takes the worst aspects of emo and nu-metal [not that there's many good aspects in the first place] and adds diluted melodic death metal with simple, radio-friendly riffs and catchy verse-chorus form.


melody + screams

melody + clean vox

chugging syncopation

sweep sweep sweep

chugging syncopation

back into melody + vocals

another breakdown

sweep sweep sweep


To me metalcore is just a bunch of newer bands with younger kids who know they have a very discriminating potential older audience who is versed in all the genres and the history of metal. As these youngsters create, they write with the aim to please absolutely fuckin' everybody within the same song. So in any given tune, i can hear Carcass/Arch Enemy, Pantera, Iron Maiden, Korn, Evanessance, Testament and Biohazard. All the genres are covered mostly and they think they've successfully blended them all to create a new style and therefore not only appease, but win over the elite. In other words, songs that make no fuckin' sense musically to those who think genres should maintain some boundaries within which one must operate.

Great movie lines

One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest : “But I tried, didn’t I? Goddamnit, at least I did that.”

Patton : “Now I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.”

The Good, The Bad And The Ugly : “When you have to shoot, shoot. Don’t talk.”

Jeremiah johnson : “Where you headed?” “Same place you are, Jeremiah: hell, in the end”

Ghostbusters : “Ray, when someone asks you if you’re a god, you say ‘YES!’”

The Outsiders : “Stay gold, Ponyboy, stay gold.”

Manchurian Candidate : “There are two kinds of people in this world: Those that enter a room and turn the television set on, and those that enter a room and turn the television set off.”

The Usual Suspects : "A man can convince anyone he's somebody else, but never himself."

Shamans

Think about another world, one where no one perceives reality based on any idealistic or moral standards. A world where our view upon reality is based on self exploration, madness, embracing the continuity of nature , the laws of nature we are bound by and the chaotic world that gives birth both to beauty and love.

I believe this is a world schizophrenics live in. As well as shamans who'm live lives of extreme enlightenment in a world where nothing is bound by fear and hatred, but by love, beauty, death and horror.

But how do WE observe reality? Do we use our minds to calculate the existence of the phisical world around us? Or do we use measurements of morality and ideals set by both religions and civilization before us? Or by scientific measurements?

In my mind reality should be viewed as a whole, one action set into motion by another, you must acknowledge everything there is, not matter how horrifying it might be (death and suffering spring into beauty). Let your consciousness bread into a new world which you aren't the center of, break free into another dimension where there is a reality with out you and a you with out a reality. Do not pray to a god that lives in another world beyond this world. Praise the world you live in, act by its laws, embrace it's chaos and beauty and then you will be free.

I am you with another mask and you are me in another form.

"If there is a reality with out me, there is a me with out reality." - Matthew

Lewis Carroll

One day Alice came to a fork in the road and saw a Cheshire cat in a tree. "Which road do I take?" she asked. "Where do you want to go?" was his response. "I don't know," Alice answered. "Then," said the cat, "it doesn't matter."

- Lewis Carroll

Coffee

Tonight, during the consumption of coffee. A friend asked why I "wasn't over there".

Alex : Man why aren't you over there with them? Is something wrong?

Me : What? Why would something be wrong?

Alex : I don't know man, she's over there you're over here.

Me : No no no. I don't want to barge into their party, you know?

Alex : What?

Me : You know, like would you go to a party if you weren't invited?

Alex : Yes. Last night!

Me : Yeah I do that to. Ok, that wasn't a good example.

Alex : Nooo.

Me : Ok I got it! I don't want to be an american.

Alex : What do you mean?

Me : Were the americans invited into Iraq?!

Alex : HAHAHAHAHA!

Me : See my point?

Alcohol and writers

Why is it that most great writers were practically alcoholics?

A small example :

Lord Byron - “Man being reasonable must get drunk; The best of life is but intoxication; Glory, the grape, love, gold."

Dylan Thomas - "An alcoholic is someone you don't like who drinks as much as you do."

Edger Allen Poe - "I have absolutely no pleasure in the stimulants in which I sometimes so madly indulge. It has not been in the pursuit of pleasure that I have periled life and reputation and reason. It has been the desperate attempt to escape from torturing memories, from a sense of insupportable loneliness and a dread of some strange impending doom."

William Faulkner - "First you take a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you."

Ernest Hemingway - "An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools."

It's always been that writing such great works must be a job of mad men. And the only way mad men can calm their thoughts is through the use of alcohol (Jim Morrison might be a great example as well).

As I write this I also have consumed a few glasses of Jack Daniels, not because it may or may not help me write, but because I just like bourbon.

Cure for depression

Hahahahaha, Well I have to agree to some degree.

Drugs

Drugs

Here's a list of some of the drugs i want to do within the next 3 years

Lsd

Mescaline

Shrooms

Amphetamines

Poppers

Salvia

It's been almost a year since I wrote this. Scratched amphetamines and poppers of the list since that shit scares the fuck out of me now and poppers just seem useless at this point. Still haven't taken any steps towards acquiring any of the substances on this list, apart from lsd (since Brandon still doesn't want to get me my fucking acid already!).

Letter to the Countess Teresa Guiccioli

"I love you, and you love me, - at least, you say so, and act as if you did so, which last is a great consolation in all events. But I more than love you, and cannot cease to love you.
Think of me, sometimes, when the Alps and the ocean divide us, - but they never will, unless you wish it."

-Lord Byron

P.S.

P.S. Could not you and I contrive to meet this spring? Could not you take a run here alone?

Work Station

Where i spent the last 24 hours drinking beer, watching movies, reading poetry, blogs and books.

Dylan Thomas

And death shall have no dominion.

Dead men naked they shall be one

With the man in the wind and the west moon;

When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,

They shall have stars at elbow and foot;

Though they go mad they shall be sane,

Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;

Though lovers be lost love shall not;

And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.

Under the windings of the sea

They lying long shall not die windily;

Twisting on racks when sinews give way,

Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;

Faith in their hands shall snap in two,

And the unicorn evils run them through;

Split all ends up they shan't crack;

And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.

No more may gulls cry at their ears

Or waves break loud on the seashores;

Where blew a flower may a flower no more

Lift its head to the blows of the rain;

Though they be mad and dead as nails,

Heads of the characters hammer through daisies;

Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,

And death shall have no dominion.

Lord Byron - Darkness

I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguished, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;
Morn came and went -and came, and brought no day,
And men forgot their passions in the dread
Of this their desolation; and all hearts
Were chilled into a selfish prayer for light;
And they did live by watchfires -and the thrones,
The palaces of crowned kings -the huts,
The habitations of all things which dwell,
Were burnt for beacons; cities were consumed,
And men were gathered round their blazing homes
To look once more into each other's face;
Happy were those which dwelt within the eye
Of the volcanoes, and their mountain-torch;
A fearful hope was all the world contained;
Forests were set on fire -but hour by hour
They fell and faded -and the crackling trunks
Extinguished with a crash -and all was black.
The brows of men by the despairing light
Wore an unearthly aspect, as by fits
The flashes fell upon them: some lay down
And hid their eyes and wept; and some did rest
Their chins upon their clenched hands, and smiled;
And others hurried to and fro, and fed
Their funeral piles with fuel, and looked up
With mad disquietude on the dull sky,
The pall of a past world; and then again
With curses cast them down upon the dust,
And gnashed their teeth and howled; the wild birds shrieked,
And, terrified, did flutter on the ground,
And flap their useless wings; the wildest brutes
Came tame and tremulous; and vipers crawled
And twined themselves among the multitude,
Hissing, but stingless -they were slain for food;
And War, which for a moment was no more,
Did glut himself again; -a meal was bought
With blood, and each sate sullenly apart
Gorging himself in gloom: no love was left;
All earth was but one thought -and that was death,
Immediate and inglorious; and the pang
Of famine fed upon all entrails -men
Died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh;
The meagre by the meagre were devoured,
Even dogs assailed their masters, all save one,
And he was faithful to a corse, and kept
The birds and beasts and famished men at bay,
Till hunger clung them, or the drooping dead
Lured their lank jaws; himself sought out no food,
But with a piteous and perpetual moan,
And a quick desolate cry, licking the hand
Which answered not with a caress -he died.
The crowd was famished by degrees; but two
Of an enormous city did survive,
And they were enemies: they met beside
The dying embers of an altar-place
Where had been heaped a mass of holy things
For an unholy usage: they raked up,
And shivering scraped with their cold skeleton hands
The feeble ashes, and their feeble breath
Blew for a little life, and made a flame
Which was a mockery; then they lifted up
Their eyes as it grew lighter, and beheld
Each other's aspects -saw, and shrieked, and died -
Even of their mutual hideousness they died,
Unknowing who he was upon whose brow
Famine had written Fiend. The world was void,
The populous and the powerful was a lump,
Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless -
A lump of death -a chaos of hard clay.
The rivers, lakes, and ocean all stood still,
And nothing stirred within their silent depths;
Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea,
And their masts fell down piecemeal; as they dropped
They slept on the abyss without a surge -
The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave,
The Moon, their mistress, had expired before;
The winds were withered in the stagnant air,
And the clouds perished! Darkness had no need
Of aid from them -She was the Universe!

Prayer

Vijay Prozak

Jim Morrison used to have a routine where he would take as many substances as his body could handle, then get up in front of an audience and throw himself as close to a shamanistic state as he could achieve, and he would begin ranting, using as his anchor rhythm the line, "You cannot petition the Lord through prayer." His goal was not to be areligious, because of all people in rock, Morrison was one of the mostreligious, but his point was this: divinity is not something that comes down to answer human pleas. Divinity is something that you access, as a state of mind within yourself, and then use to formulate long term plans and ideas.

I have no shame in admitting that I pray almost daily. There is no getting down on one's needs, and there is no single God to whom I appeal. It is not in sadness that I do this, or in fear, but in joy. I don't go to a church. I walk to the nearest patch of trees and I exhalt their spirit, I feel their strength, and as much as I can achieve, I share the feeling of life with them. It is both meditation, and prayer, and it does not involve humility on my part, nor theirs. They do not even have to be aware of my presence, nor would I want them to do so. However, it is the form of aesthetic contemplation that Schopenhauer found as being a manifestation of pure Will itself; it is understanding the order of the cosmos, realizing that I am an agent of it, and vowing on my grave and forefathers to act it out in the only meaningful sense of honor: to do what is right in the universe so that all growth is ascendant, or moving toward enhanced states of harmonious order.

Oddly, one should be sober for such prayer, as it will take your entire soul and indeed, transform it, but as that soul came from the same cosmos thus life-force that produced the trees, it will not change anything, but rather develop it and give it reason to see its own strength, and to make its own value choices. While some petition gods they hope will help them, or pray for a new cow or a better parking space, the way those who are not superstitious pray is to find comradeship among the gods and among the task gods and men share. After all, if the cosmos is one thing - which by all appearances and the continuity of structure among it, it is - humans and gods and trees alike are its agents, being formed of its structure and design and conducting its activity. The far-east philosophies see this activity as a source of frustration, because cleaning the dishes and finding a way to feed yourself and other tasks of life are ultimately tedious, but to look at the whole of the cosmos is to look at the long-term, and from this, to peer directly into the meaning behind such activity in a way that one transcends the boredom and stupefactive repetition of maintaining life. Christianity, as a bridge between these extremes, views life as terrible and immoral and thus suggests that the only salvation comes through making an order of God on Earth, but this order is distinct from an existing order, being based entirely in the concept of the equality of human souls. To my mind, whatever divinity inhabits the earth does not care for individuals as much as individualexperience, and thus openly endorses the evolutionary practice of letting the weaker die out so the survivors, in the future, are stronger and thus have better lives.

Accordingly, it makes little sense to think one would petition the Lord in prayer, as everything any Lord could grant is already here, and dependent upon the action of the individual in adaptation to nature itself. We are in the driver's seat, and we are in control here; if we act in harmony with the methods of nature, we will achieve results that are well-adapted to our world, and thus a long-term success, even if we incur total personal loss as a result. That personal loss is inconsequential compared with achieving the goal. Thus why would one pray?

I can only answer in personal metaphor: I go to the trees because of all things on earth, they are the most focused on their goal, which is the sun. They grow and thrive regardless of suffering, hardship, personal death or despair, and for that reason are more eternal in countenance than human beings. Their action asserts personal growth in the context of the whole, and they are content to live by the laws of nature, in which some trees will die so that the forest is healthy. Their focus is on the sun, on growing, and on getting stronger with every generation. This kind of spirituality is eternal. By all means, pray - but never confuse cosmic prayer with getting down on your knees and begging.

E.l.f. Silverlocke

Dionysus.
You have kissed all the ladies of our court
And made them mad with love.
The maidens shy away at your touch,
Eyes wide, like deer a-frighted.
But modest matrons, at your words,
Blush, tremble, drop all reserve,
Are harlots turned.

You enflame my very soul
That I do look all ways
With the eyes of Love.
Your glamour lies upon me like a sheen --
Men kiss me on the street.
You have wrought Babylon in Arcady
And we are not the same.
If you lift your little finger
We'll all do it in the road.

Lord Byron - Prometheus

ITAN! to whose immortal eyes

The sufferings of mortality,

Seen in their sad reality,

Were not as things that gods despise;

What was thy pity's recompense?

A silent suffering, and intense;

The rock, the vulture, and the chain,

All that the proud can feel of pain,

The agony they do not show,

The suffocating sense of woe,

Which speaks but in its loneliness,

And then is jealous lest the sky

Should have a listener, nor will sigh

Until its voice is echoless.

Titan! to thee the strife was given

Between the suffering and the will,

Which torture where they cannot kill;

And the inexorable Heaven,

And the deaf tyranny of Fate,

The ruling principle of Hate,

Which for its pleasure doth create

The things it may annihilate,

Refus'd thee even the boon to die:

The wretched gift Eternity

Was thine--and thou hast borne it well.

All that the Thunderer wrung from thee

Was but the menace which flung back

On him the torments of thy rack;

The fate thou didst so well foresee,

But would not to appease him tell;

And in thy Silence was his Sentence,

And in his Soul a vain repentance,

And evil dread so ill dissembled,

That in his hand the lightnings trembled.

Thy Godlike crime was to be kind,

To render with thy precepts less

The sum of human wretchedness,

And strengthen Man with his own mind;

But baffled as thou wert from high,

Still in thy patient energy,

In the endurance, and repulse

Of thine impenetrable Spirit,

Which Earth and Heaven could not convulse,

A mighty lesson we inherit:

Thou art a symbol and a sign

To Mortals of their fate and force;

Like thee, Man is in part divine,

A troubled stream from a pure source;

And Man in portions can foresee

His own funereal destiny;

His wretchedness, and his resistance,

And his sad unallied existence:

To which his Spirit may oppose

Itself--and equal to all woes,

And a firm will, and a deep sense,

Which even in torture can descry

Its own concenter'd recompense,

Triumphant where it dares defy,

And making Death a Victory.

• 
  
• 

Leonard Cohen part 3

Song ("I almost went to bed ...")

I almost went to bed
without remembering
the four white violets
I put in the button-hole
of your green sweater

and how i kissed you then
and you kissed me
shy as though I'd
never been your lover

Leonard Cohen part 2

I Long to Hold Some Lady

I long to hold some lady
For my love is far away,
And will not come tomorrow
And was not here today.

There is no flesh so perfect
As on my lady's bone,
And yet it seems so distant
When I am all alone:

As though she were a masterpiece
In some castled town,
That pilgrims come to visit
And priests to copy down.

Alas, I cannot travel
To a love I have so deep
Or sleep too close beside
A love I want to keep.

But I long to hold some lady,
For flesh is warm and sweet.
Cold skeletons go marching
Each night beside my feet.