The movie you're in is this one. You see a lot. Walking through half-dark rooms, the bird chiming outside, a soundtrack of early morning, the movement of the cat on the cot near the books by the window, are these related? No idea. The windows throwing faint light into the vast angles of each perspective. Come on, this isn't real. You don't think of anything except how pictures with frames, even cinema, has nothing on this, what you inhabit every second, sense, swim, feel, dark, and thinking of the poem I almost forgot. The almost imperceptible room, rooms, rooms. What did I forget? What didn’t I see? I believe I heard everything. If creation must be created all at once--- for efficiency's sake the only way reality can be real--- no will, we are a reel--- I thought maybe one box inside another, rattling around, gives us the feeling of free will? What a great movie, anyway, I'm guessing.
The future must be endless before me, shouting for me to catch up with the past, its yesterday an eternal dream, mysterious and murky, daylight participating in the night where I dreamed of one dead, shorter hair, no longer given to sing, not remembering things, but otherwise young as I remember him. As long as I am confident of the future and the distant past seems just like yesterday, I will weep privately and sincerely, and, as a poet, know just what to say. A poem will be plain, heard music and the moment I fall asleep it will be day.
Moon jealous of the sun, remember your philosophy: jealousy is not bad at all. You want to be as good as me. Your sin's a virtue. Delightfully you'll fall. Moon jealous of the sun, jealousy introduces us to ourselves. Jealousy afflicts everyone. The bad traits that last are how we know we are the same person we were in the past. The worries of the day? The craven conspiracies? How quickly the conspirators are gone. The bad's a distraction to hide the fact we all must fade away. Moon jealous of the sun, remember your Plato who says the sun is mortal. What is it about the boy with thick curls who wrote music, the epitome of lazy joy, who now leans, a frowning old man? Moon jealous of the sun, all faults persist. Die with delight. The immortal can.
Bless these miles of marshland where birds hang on craggy trees. Abstinence is not possible without distance. Distance is our birth control. She had no interest in creating another soul. Possessed by the madness of old love, willing to breed like a lesson from a Shakespeare sonnet, I loved the inestimable center of her. There were poems and then I was on it. Love that got too near has the reader involved. You get to read this as I drag it here. Just the right distance from your eyes. Close up, things take on an odd disguise. A poem will be a black blur as she was, when I dove into her. Clarity, art, morality. These need air. It was literally that. Three miles. And then I didn't care.
What do we do? Intelligence is worry. Must my lover worry the whole night through? I chose her because her sensitivity was a spell. Her beauty demanded intelligence. She was intelligent. I could tell. This morning she looks different. "I didn't sleep," she avers. "And it's your fault. You're a creep." The worst thing about the courtship was I was always in a hurry. Late for work because I was dreaming of her. When she gave in, she was a flower. Things are different this hour. Something seems strange. I study her face. My blood cools. Intelligence is worry--- there's nothing I can do. I say goodbye. Not looking back, I hurry.
Who is convinced there is life after death? Not I. I am like the rest: the thought of death at midnight causes me to cry. Sleep alone causes me to sleep. We get no poems except poets are sleepless and weep, doubtful in youth, doubtful in their old age--- though Socrates has proven the soul is immortal! I can show you the book, the chapter and the page. But that's just it. In the poem you find only more poem. You need to discover the line, the poem convinces the poem, you need to drink the wine which tastes like all the others and lie down and dream happily (I'm glad you taste my poetry) but in that intoxicated sleep of dreaming joy, it is not for happiness you weep but for plain, child-like sorrow: everything will change, everything will be new and strange tomorrow. Encircling dream! Will I be immortal and always see the familiar life in my immortality? But truthfully I love the quiet and the strange. I can't tell you anything. And this poem will change.
What does it mean to see former beauty in the face of one you loved? It will not be any longer in the poetry, even as what we see expands downward into the past, making our view a mountain-view at last, a thousand regrets to stand on, lifting us into the light, as all that was former darkens into light. New! New! All that we knew--- now no longer beautiful. It will no longer fight. The dropping of the rain from what had been a beautiful cloud, the shape of a woman moving, sanctimonious, careful, indifferent beside the crowd--- now less jealous and possessed. You desired her only in private, and she was almost there, the privacy interrupted, unfortunately, by your care, you, almost as bad as the crowd milling and pretending---your mercy, your stare. But the crowd has lost interest; my imagination must now supply the war. If you wish, curiosity can be loud, like the young actor who says his lines badly, too dramatically, the way intimacy sometimes confines. She will have no part of me now. Acting is always troubling, pop songs repetitive, love, little more than etiquette. Your relatives. The stupid trips to Connecticut. There's pleasure. But less beauty now. Large clouds are closer. My poetry is leaving. Exit this way. Here. The world will show you how.
Her arm the neck, her hand the head of a swan in some crazy song by Donovan which has offended Bob Dylan again. You can joke all you want about rivalries long ago but contested ground produces sweet sound. Capitalism is the only friend I know. The happy accident always wins even if it fantastically sins. They print more money for the holiday. Freedom! My cliché!
Silent in the face of stupid is all we can really do. Stupid has friends. You want stupid messing with you? Then keep quiet. Stupid goes deep. It loves. Of course it loves. You'll weep. Stupid has thrived for generations, molding itself to error in the profitable institutions. In simple intimacy--- where not even secrecy is there--- (nothing stupid about intimacy and its overhanging hair) we can discuss stupidity gladly and laugh at each other. We saw stupidity forsake love---terrified to lay down the law. You and I can explain our silence--- then sighing, be silent, after saying what we saw.
I forgot what was wrong. In an act of pure evil, I no longer thought about the world. Evil is able to sleep. Good cannot. Torture is lack of sleep. Sleepless hurts a lot. The good are wakeful, alive and grateful. But I'm going to bed early, a wretch seeking comfort and dreams. Good's reality is only what evil, sleeping, seems. Everything has already happened, not only because it's happened, but how can what's happened not determine what will happen? It's profound to know this and relax. The profound is mostly found in books. But this is truly profound. Quiet breathing. Bach in the distance. How my dream looks.
The pinnacle of literary expression is the short story. It is the novel boiled down to a poem--- a poem with longer hair, an essay's curls. People are clouds which get tired. Instead of changing, instead of shifting with the wind, we slow down on the first flight of stairs, preferring to take the elevator. Even a basketball star breathes heavily after a minute. We remember novels. Everyone who remembers is a novelist, writing and remembering as easy as breathing; literary skill depicts the embarrassments of others and this happens when we lose at basketball because we got tired. We couldn't keep loving someone--- not because we got physically tired. We were a cloud and the wind, which blew us, made us disappear forever.
Thomas West Graves 1930-2024 William Arthur Graves 1957-1959
Hi dad, it's me, William--- the little guy who went away. You'll never forget that April day--- when the world that was small took the world away. Andy and Tommy were too young to remember, but you were in your twenties. You could not look away. Hi dad, it's me, William, the little boy who caused you pain. Pain causes more pain. How do we stop tragedy from happening again? I was the darling who said goodbye and a whole life followed in which you couldn't cry and had to be responsible. Sarah came, and Ed. I was the good child. I was dead. Who could forget that April day when normalcy ended? In the days that followed, days happy and calm, normalcy, to live, was delicately defended, pain, comfort, knowing, forgetting, by mourning delicately blended. Eternal, those records of my little death, records stored in a room, in your mind, until now as I welcome you into heaven which, to them, is your death. Who knows where we go from breath to breath? Who knows what occurred until now? You lived. I kept living--- only the mourners know how. Only sadness understands my life. Sadness, my mother, my sister, my wife. Shadow of the cypress! The long, appalling cloud my comfortable shroud. My life was mostly a shroud. Muffled. Never loud. Every day a sunny April day, neither cold nor warm. Flowers and birds of the yellow kind Yell inside my quiet mind. I kept living. Now you know how. This memory wraps me in a crimson cloth, this poem wraps me in a cloth that's white as Maryland meets Vermont tonight. Hello, dad. William, here. You tried to forget, and now you can forget, the tear. Miraculous distance. And now we are near. Do I have more to say About what happened after that April day? After I said goodbye, fearfully and alone? Does life live beneath the stone? The dead are awkward and unknown. You stared into the darkness as all mourners do. Death doesn't provide much of a view. Even imagination found it impossible! The poets didn't know what to do! Poetry falters when one dies at two. I came down with a cough. I took some time off. The world I missed is full of intricate sorrow, some for today, and more for tomorrow. So much I escaped, though I never intended to. I didn't say goodbye to you. Your family looked into the darkness, too (the family you loved) And you wondered (o wonder of wonders!) if I saw you. You don't recognize me--- I grew. My meals were few. I thought, for many, many hours, pleasant thoughts. I fed on heaven and poetry. See how tall these made me! They made me handsome and tall. The roots and tendrils of poetry made garlands for me in heaven. See how tall poetry made me! The memory of me is not all. I saw you trying to be good. I saw you chopping wood. I saw you fixing cars and reading. I saw you trying to be good. I waited. Waiting was poetry. Yes, I'm the one who caused you pain--- and mom (who is here) was at your side. There are sadnesses which won't go away despite a universe of tears; there are sadnesses which move upon the movement of the years. There are many things that go away. To many, this thought is poetry But we can forget that now. Here is a new poetry. Let a new poetry show you how. Once again, dad, you can move towards me. Heaven is a yellow April day. Time to be. Hi dad. It's William. It's me.
So that science can exist, someone must examine, from at least one remove every single thing you see--- didn't you experience their love oddly and distantly? Theirs is the scientific impulse, a perfectionism we can never reach, though we kiss them and hold them, discuss life with them and walk hand in hand inside the narrow beach. The sand is not sand to them--- they resist every name--- by which we assume things are different, somewhat similar, or the same. He trips up your thinking by pointing out a fact so self-evident it puts what you knew in doubt. It is your thinking you finally love the most. Your thinking, the thinking of your friends. You need your thinking more than anything. You've never loved anyone like this. But the love ends.
Poets don't like books or information. They hate writing. They don't care for speech, either. Or what the professor said. Your memory is what they want, not theirs. They need to put a poem inside your head. That's their immortality. It sings its poetry between your ears. When Joseph Obvious died, they boxed up his things. His attempt at notoriety was defeated by the years. Poets existed before books and writing. Music was not forgotten. Reluctantly, poets---wrote. Reluctantly, poets took up books. A muse was the world. But she forgot. The poets hate information and the places it is put, too. They want the nation to be memorization. They want a lovely poem to live inside of lovely you.
If I can ignore those annoying me, why destroy the world? The world has good things in it, including me. The sky was tall and blue in my childhood--- the sky once made me cry just for being up there, just for being the sky. I am the most sensitive. It isn't right that I should die. I write for the censors, for the small group with power to take our speech away. I pretend concern every hour. That's why ordinary folk are delighted by what I say. The secret of my mind is my audience--- the secret censors. They have the right to be kind; their kindness matters. They could destroy the world--- and they might do it, too. They are like me. Complicated. If you only knew.
What is the final lesson of March Madness, of cruel single-elimination tournaments in which powerful franchises display their prowess and ruin the dreams of underdogs?
What do we learn from sports? History? War? These which triumph with anxiety and farewell?
The Final Four means sixty participants died, and their honorable participation results in nothing but a record of their futility, a haunting record of loss which lives eternally.
Are the fiendish masters of war right? Is gone the only here? Is heroism only possible this way?
Or excellence?
True worship and admiration?
Even…true love? Are these virtues only possible by flowering this way?
Is the difficult, fearful journey the only way home?
Must the wasted efforts of losers bring us all that is wonderful and good? Are we peat, dirt, moss?
Does our doom fertilize the blessed?
Here is the feast of the Final Four.
Heinrich Heine says with a lyric what all the philosophers and priests try to say but cannot.
The dionysian triumphs briefly, brightly. Jim Morison and the Doors defeated every guitar solo in their day; compared to the Doors it was all decoration. The Doors defeated the Beatles’ intelligence, whimsy and charm, even the shouts of the Rolling Stones, their mod, anti-Beatle, growl, had its heady moments, but was finally a popular pose in the end, as the jet, decade after decade, took Mick and Keith home.
Jim’s throaty “Persian light, babe! See the light babe! Save us! Jesus!” was truly dionysian. Morrison, disappearing into himself so transparently, was the only sage on stage. Drop a line.
One piece of conniving criticism survives, one by Blackmur, which makes no sweeping claim, but explodes some rocks and hollows out the bottom of a tower. Read for a bit of understanding.
And finally, fiction. Hawthorne: probing, original, dark, disturbing, yet always lofty, dignified, tasteful. An author infinitely calm throughout the operation. Nothing American about this. Yet, American.
Is there something about Scarriet March Madness which is holy and real?
Are these bodies, these lives—is our statuesque reality—carved by anxiety and conflict?
NORTH
Heinrich Heine 1797-1856 (“Die Rose, die Lilie, die Taube, die Sonne” The Poetry of Heinrich Heine p. 70 1969)
The rose, the lily, the sun and the dove, I loved them all once in the rapture of love. I love them no more, for my soul delight Is a maiden so slight, so bright and so white, Who, being herself the source of love, Is rose and lily and sun and dove.
SOUTH
James Morrison 1943-1971 (“The Crystal Ship,” The Doors, 1967)
Before you slip into unconsciousness, I’d like to have another kiss, Another flashing chance at bliss, Another kiss, another kiss.
The days are bright and filled with pain. Enclose me in your gentle rain. The time you ran was too insane. We’ll meet again, we’ll meet again.
Oh tell me where your freedom lies. The streets are fields that never die. Deliver me from reasons why. You’d rather cry, I’d rather fly.
The crystal ship is being filled, A thousand girls, a thousand thrills, A million ways to spend your time. When we get back, I’ll drop a line.
WEST
R.P. Blackmur 1904-1965 (The Double Agent p. 204 1935)
The poetry is the concrete—as concrete as the poet can make it—presentation of experience as emotion. If it is successful it is self-evident; it is subject neither to denial nor modification but only to the greater labour of recognition. To say again what we have been saying all along, that is why we can assent to matters in poetry the intellectual formulation of which would leave us cold or in opposition. Poetry can use all ideas; argument only the logically consistent. Mr. Eliot put it very well for readers of his own verse when he wrote for readers of Dante that you might distinguish understanding from belief. “I will not deny,” he says, “that it may be in practice easier for a Catholic to grasp the meaning, in many places, than for the ordinary agnostic; but that is not because the Catholic believes but because he has been instructed. It is a matter of knowledge and ignorance, not of belief or scepticism.”
EAST
Nathaniel Hawthorne 1804-1864 (“Wakefield” in The Celestial Railroad and Other Stories 1980)
In some old magazine or newspaper I recollect a story, told as truth, of a man—let us call him Wakefield—who absented himself for a long time from his wife. The fact, thus abstractedly stated, is not very uncommon, nor—without a proper distinction of circumstances—to be condemned either as naughty or nonsensical. Howbeit, this, though far from the most aggravated, is perhaps the strangest instance on record of marital delinquency; and, moreover, as remarkable a freak as may be found in the whole list of human oddities. The wedded couple lived in London. The man, under pretense of going on a journey, took lodgings in the next street to his own house, and there, unheard of by his wife or friends, and without the shadow of a reason for such self-banishment, dwelt upwards of twenty years. During that period, he beheld his home every day, and frequently the forlorn Mrs. Wakefield. And after so great a gap in his matrimonial felicity—when his death was reckoned certain, his estate settled, his name dismissed from memory, and his wife long, long ago, resigned to her autumnal widowhood—he entered the door one evening, quietly, as from a day’s absence, and became a loving spouse til death.
Now read back over the entries which lost. And weep.
I could have been a great teacher--- but I would find myself, all at once, stopping--- my mind asking my mind questions---my students would stare as I stopped, there, in front of the room, as if it were night--- I, a poet in that gloom, paused, on one page, for nearly eternity: a line accusing my love--- this gilded, sickening age--- and all this fake fraternity. I would lift my hand as if to let them know it was okay, but each of my students would stand and without a word, go.
My perception has been perfect. I have always been surprised, but shock was forgotten or smoothed over, even by my own eyes.
The disturbing facts were never disturbing enough. I continued to be safe, to daydream, to love.
Napoleon and Josephine, unable to have kids, was not anything central. Someone you don't know took up residence beneath my eyelids.
My life was small, but you can't know how full! She was my Josephine. Greater, in fact. But perception demands many things and the most important element of vision is quiet breathing and tact.
Hope never gets excited. It never gives in. I saw a guillotine in a museum. My life was full of hints, commentaries on mayhem and sin.
I had no trouble hiding. There were closets, drawers, basements, streets, the habits of imbeciles.
I especially welcomed small talk. My poems flickered in-between. I let you have all the opinions. If I woke, uneasy, it was only because of a dream.
None will remember the rising hero of yesterday who finally fell. And the ultimate winner who is immortal feels the sting of the final joke—their flesh, too, must expire.
We want the tournament to begin, knowing it’s an inevitable, painful, farewell, but we desire it—since a happy song means the composer is happy (we know that much) but the sad song is a sweet and tragic gift: we are guilty of wanting everyone to die so we can win—and it’s alright; the guilt is magically absolved by belonging to a faithful, friendly crowd inside a larger crowd—physical, real, and therefore anonymous.
The words “mayhem” and “delirium” are terms of destruction which occupy the realms where mind and body meet—an often overlooked but obvious feature of the Madness is the physical truism which plays out—exhaustion is the most important factor; the physical limitation of all best intentions mutilate those intentions at last; the team which conserves its energy will prevail, not the entity which expends it in burning glory; quiet things we don’t see lead to the noisy, physical triumph.
The poem is the shot, the prose all the preparation for the shot. Most critics still don’t understand the difference between prose and poetry—there is a radical difference. The prose is the preparation, the poem, the thing for which everything necessarily prepared. The poem is the expenditure made possible by the efficiency and frugality of all that held back. Poetry has no insight except in seeming; but in its wonderful seeming, without predicates, without present and past, without judgement, without qualifications, it is; prose has its better and more rational insight hidden by a wild patience we experience as originality.
The Scarriet 2024 March Madness Sweet Sixteen finds prose of patience next to daring and devil-may-care poems and epithets.
The NORTH Bracket:
HEINE the lyric assertion PLOTINUS the sensibly transcendent HOLMES witty bitterness ROSENBERG exposure of intellectual rot
The WEST Bracket:
RICHARDS lyrical mayhem ALLEN identity of conspiracy MILTON lyrically picturesque BLACKMUR joined insights
The SOUTH Bracket:
SCHWARTZ cozy and frightening MORRISON lyrical delirium GABOR wit one owns SONTAG embarrassingly irrefutable
The EAST bracket:
ANDREESSEN pinned to a rock UPDIKE cleaning up HAWTHORNE drone fiction WHITMAN (HELEN) end of the lyric
“Bragging rights” is a common phrase meaning you win—but there’s no profit in it, and it mostly applies to sports, but in the context of our loved/reviled literary “March Madness,” is it too embarrassing to point out that “bragging rights” is perhaps as true for literature and life as it is for sports, if not more so? What is Elizabeth Barrett doing in her letter to Robert, if not “bragging” (look how loving! look how brilliant I am!) or in her poem, where she says, “If thou must love me, let it be for naught/Except for love’s sake only”—is this not an elaborate “brag?” I cannot/will not “brag” about my beauty—I will “brag” in the heady, transcendent, abstract. Life and poetry are nothing but brag, if you think about it. This is all we have—and all we finally are.
Charles Baudelaire 1821-1867 (Critics on Poe p. 26 1973)
If Poe attracted a great deal of attention, he also made many enemies. Firm in his convictions, he made indefatigable war upon false reasoning, silly imitations, solecisms, barbarisms, and all literary offenses perpetrated every day in newspapers and books. In these respects no fault could be found with him, for he practiced what he preached; his style is pure, adequate to his ideas and expresses them exactly. Poe is always correct. …As a poet, Edgar Poe is a man apart. Almost by himself he represents the romantic movement on the other side of the Atlantic.
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing 1729-1781 (Laocoon: An Essay upon the Limits of Painting and Poetry p. 92 1898)
Painting, in its coexistent compositions, can use but a single moment of an action, and must therefore choose the most pregnant one, the one most suggestive of what has gone before and what is to follow. Poetry, in its progressive imitations, can use but a single attribute of bodies, and choose that one which gives the most vivid picture of the body as exercised in this particular action. Hence the rule for the employment of a single descriptive epithet, and the cause of the rare occurrence of descriptions of physical objects. I should place less confidence in this dry chain of conclusions, did I not find them fully confirmed by Homer…
Bertolt Brecht 1898-1956 (“Die Maske Des Bosen” in Selected Poems 1947)
On my wall hangs a Japanese carving, The mask of an evil demon, decorated with gold lacquer. Sympathetically I observe The swollen veins of the forehead, indicating What a strain it is to be evil.
Heinrich Heine 1797-1856 (“Die Rose, die Lilie, die Taube, die Sonne” The Poetry of Heinrich Heine p. 70 1969)
The rose, the lily, the sun and the dove, I loved them all once in the rapture of love. I love them no more, for my soul delight Is a maiden so slight, so bright and so white, Who, being herself the source of love, Is rose and lily and sun and dove.
Philip Larkin 1922-1985 (“High Windows” The Complete Poems p. 80 2012)
When I see a couple of kids And guess he’s fucking her and she’s Taking pills or wearing a diaphragm, I know this is paradise
Everyone old has dreamed of all their lives— Bonds and gestures pushed to one side Like an outdated combine harvester, And everyone young going down the long slide
To happiness, endlessly. I wonder if Anyone looked at me, forty years back, And thought, That’ll be the life; No God any more, or sweating in the dark
About hell and that, or having to hide What you think of the priest. He And his lot will all go down the long slide Like free bloody birds. And immediately
Rather than words comes the thought of high windows: The sun-comprehending glass, And beyond it, the deep blue air, that shows Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless.
Plotinus 204-270 (“On the Intellectual Beauty” The Norton Anthology Theory and Criticism p. 174, 2001)
It is a principal with us that one who has attained to the vision of the Intellectual Beauty and grasped the beauty of the Authentic Intellect will…come to understand the…Transcendent of…Divine Being. …Suppose two blocks of stone lying side by side: one is unpatterned, quite untouched by art; the other has been minutely wrought by the craftsman’s hands into some statue of god or man, a Grace or a Muse, or if a human being, not a portrait but a creation in which the sculptor’s art has concentrated all loveliness. Now it must be seen that the stone thus brought under the artist’s hand to the beauty of form is beautiful not as stone—for so the crude block would be as pleasant—but in virtue of the Form or Idea introduced by the art. …Every prime cause must be, within itself, more powerful than its effect can be: the musical does not derive from an unmusical source but from music; and so the art exhibited in the material work derives from an art yet higher. Still the arts are not to be slighted on the ground that they create by imitation of natural objects; for, to begin with, these natural objects are themselves imitations.
George Santayana 1863-1952 (“As in the Midst of Battle There Is Room” An Anthology of Famous English and American Poetry p. 716, 1944)
As in the midst of battle there is room For thoughts of love… As in the crevices of Caesar’s tomb The sweet herbs flourish on a little earth: So in this great disaster of our birth We can be happy, and forget our doom.
For morning, with a ray of tenderest joy Gilding the iron heaven, hides the truth, And evening gently woos us to employ Our grief in idle catches. Such is youth; Till from the summer’s trance we wake, to find Despair before us, vanity behind.
[…] A river like a curl of light is seen. Beyond the river lies the even sea, Beyond the sea another ghost of sky,— O God, support the sickness of my eye Lest the far space and long antiquity Suck out my heart, and on this awful ground The great wind kill my little shell with sound.
Oliver Wendell Holmes 1809-1894 (The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table p. 13, 1858)
The Puritans hated puns. The Bishops were notoriously addicted to them. The Lords Temporal carried them to the verge of disease. Majesty itself must have its Royal quibble. ‘Ye be burly, my Lord of Burleigh,’ said Queen Elizabeth, ‘but ye shall make less stir in our realm than my Lord of Leicester.’ The gravest wisdom and the highest breeding lent their sanction to the practice. …The fatal habit became universal. The language was corrupted. The infection spread to the national conscience. Political double-dealings naturally grew out of verbal double meanings. The teeth of the new dragon were sown by the Cadmus who introduced the alphabet of equivocation. What was levity in the time of the Tudors grew to regicide and revolution in the age of the Stuarts.
Harold Rosenberg 1906-1978 (Discovering The Present: Three Decades in Art, Culture & Politics, “The Herd of Independent Minds” 1948, 1973)
The mass-culture maker, who takes his start from the experience of others, is essentially a reflector of myths, and lacks concrete experiences to communicate. To him man is an object seen from the outside. Indeed it could be demonstrated that the modern mass-culture elite, even when it trots around the globe in search of historical hotspots where every six months the destiny of man is decided, actually has less experience than the rest of humanity, less even than the consumers of its products. To the professional of mass culture, knowledge is the knowledge of what is going on in other people; he trades his own experience for an experience of experience. Everyone has met those culture-conscious “responsibles” who think a book or movie or magazine wonderful not because it illuminates or pleases them but because it tells “the people” what they “ought to know.”
Gottfried von Strassburg d. 1210 (medieval romances, 1957, “Tristan and Isolt” p. 182)
“Tristan!” said fair Isolt. “I were liefer I were dead and buried than left in his care. He is but a flatterer who is ever at my side telling me how dear he holds me! Yet I know well wherefore he doeth so: he slew my uncle and doth fear my hatred! For that alone doth he ply me with flatteries , thinking to win my friendship, but it helpeth him little! ‘Tis true, I have spoken to him oft with lying lips and friendly glances, and laid myself out to please him, but I did it for thy sake, and lest men should bring against me the reproach that women aye hate their husband’s friend. Ofttimes have I deceived him with friendly words, so that he would have sworn they came from my heart! Sir, leave me not in the care of thy nephew Tristan, no, not for a day, if I may persuade thee!”
T.S. Eliot 1888-1965 (Prufrock and Other Observations, 1917)
Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky Like a patient etherized upon a table…
Sally Benson 1897-1972 (Twenty Grand Short Stories 1947, “After the Ball”)
No one could have guessed her age seeing her drive around town in the cream-colored convertible coupe, its top down. She drove carelessly; one hand resting casually on the wheel. Her lipstick matched her nails and blended with the color of her dress; rust polish with green, red and white, or brown, rose with pastel shades. She was perfect from her smart well-fitting sandals to her seemingly endless supply of small felts. Her manner was perfect, too. She spoke in a tired, low-pitched voice, and she looked at the person she was addressing as though he were very, very far away. Every morning when she strolled in Osborne’s Market, she created something of a sensation. The two boys who sold fruit and vegetables simply stared and even old Mr. Osborne who had, as he put it, “seen hundreds of them come and go,” was impressed and suggested filet mignon or a nice rib roast, feeling vaguely that chopped round steak or shoulder lamb for stewing was out of the question. She might have been Joan Crawford, Myrna Loy, or the pampered daughter of a millionaire, home from a winter on the Riviera. She might have been anyone romantic and exciting. But her name was Norma Martin and she was sixteen years old. In her smart little bag with her lipstick and compact was her first driver’s license. She was not the same Norma Martin who had recently been graduated from a school for girls. Her hockey stick had been left to warp in the hall closet at home; her plain white underthings with their name tapes lay packed in a trunk in the attic; her school books had been sold to a child who still believed that being a senior was all that Life could hold. For the Norma Martin summering at Pine Bluffs, school days were gone forever. Pine Bluffs was the Present. It was Life.
Jude Wanniski 1936-2005 (The Way the World Works p. 84, 1978)
Smith and Jones each want to trade sixteen hours of their skills with each other, but in order to complete the transaction each must give the government two hours of their skills, the two must do thirty-six hours work to transact thirty-two. The four hours “tax” is the wedge between them, If the government increases its tax from $20 to $30 on a $160 transaction, Smith and Jones must work thirty-eight hours to transact thirty-two. If the government then requires that each fill out a form that takes fifteen minutes of their time for each $160 transaction, the wedge widens to six and a half hours. If the form is so complex that each must hire a lawyer and accountant, each paying the lawyer and accountant $5 for every $160 transaction, the wedge widens to seven hours. The “wedge,” then, is not only the financial tax or slice out of the transaction pie, but also all other government burdens on the transaction that requires labor. Because the government does not realize revenues from a regulatory order—red tape and paper work—it does not think of such orders as “taxes.” But to Smith and Jones, there is no difference between financial taxes and regulatory burdens; each requires precise amounts of labor.
Rudyard Kipling 1865-1936 (“Recessional” A Pocket Book of Modern Verse 1954)
God of our fathers, known of old, Lord of our far-flung battle-line, Beneath whose awful Hand we hold Dominion over palm and pine— Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, Lest we forget—lest we forget!
The tumult and the shouting dies; The Captains and the Kings depart: Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice, An humble and a contrite heart. Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, Lest we forget—lest we forget!
Far-called, our navies melt away; On dune and headland sinks the fire: Lo, all our pomp of yesterday Is one with Nineveh and Tyre! Judge of the Nations, spare us yet, Lest we forget—lest we forget! […]
Scarriet Editors (“Relationship Hell” Blog Scarriet 3/12/24)
Relationship hell works like this. The romancers have cultivated in mainstream imagery the kiss which captures every squeamish imagination due to germs, childhood, bodily autonomy and warmth as it presents itself strangely and socially, the way in to society, and immersion in human weather like no other. Of course you want to take a lover. But the ratio of the excitement of the bonding is connected to how much alienation exists—afraid of others is why she is not afraid of you. The one you have found is afraid. This keeps going round until love finally fears itself, us. Sorry, dears.
Sport goes about its ignorant business in the nether region between art and war; sport is closer to war—there is a “winner” in both. Art has no “winner” and wants nothing to do with “winning,” and therefore sports and art are oil and water. War is “winning at all costs”—and the question of what “all costs” entails brings philosophy to the table; is it inevitable that sports is “winning at all costs,” too? Many suspect that sports is a racket; that it’s fixed—but none could really enjoy sports if they really believed this, so most don’t believe this, even if they suspect it’s true. “Winning” is always true in war—but “winning” may not be truly “winning” in sports—if cheating and manipulation is at the bottom of it. Art stands apart from the “winning” business; but just as philosophy is reluctantly dragged in to settle the dispute—how much is sports a “winning at all costs” enterprise?—art is made a part of the equation; there is an “art” to winning; there is an “art” to cheating; what is art, if not the ability to idealize “winning” so that no one gets hurt and no one really “loses?” “Ruby Tuesday,” was written by “Mick Jagger.” But no, it was not. In the war of art, Mick Jagger won and Brian Jones lost. As T.S. Eliot has said, one can enjoy Dante without being a Catholic—the angels do not have to “win.” In art, the spoils can go to the devil.
St. Augustine 354-430 (De Civitate Dei contra Paganos The City of God against the Pagans)
Si mundus vult decipi, decipiatur If the world will be deceived, let it be deceived.
Luigi Pirandello 1867-1936 (letter, 1913) Whoever has understood the game can no longer be deceived; but whoever can no longer be deceived can no longer enjoy the taste or pleasure of life. My art is full of bitter compassion for all those who deceive themselves; but this compassion cannot fail to be followed by the savage derision of the destiny which condemns man to deception.
Keith Richards 1943- Brian Jones 1942-1969 Bill Wyman 1936- officially Jagger-Richards (“Ruby Tuesday” B side single, Rolling Stones 1967)
She would never say where she came from. Yesterday don’t matter if it’s gone. While the sun is bright, Or in the darkest night, No one knows, she comes and goes.
Don’t question why she needs to be so free. She’ll tell you it’s the only way to be. She just can’t be chained To a life where nothing’s gained And nothing’s lost, at such a cost.
Goodbye, Ruby Tuesday Who could hang a name on you? When you change with every new day Still, I’m gonna miss you
“There’s no time to lose, ” I heard her say Catch your dreams before they slip away. Dying all the time, Lose your dreams and you will lose your mind. Ain’t life unkind?
Paul McCartney 1942- (“Eleanor Rigby” Track 2, Revolver 1966)
Eleanor Rigby, Picks up the rice in the church where a wedding has been, Lives in a dream. Waits at the window, Wearing the face that she keeps in a jar by the door. Who is it for?
All the lonely people. Where do they all come from? All the lonely people. Where do they all belong?
Father McKenzie, Writing the words of a sermon that no one will hear, No one comes near. Look at him working, Darning his socks in the night when there’s nobody there. What does he care?
Eleanor Rigby, Died in the church and was buried along with her name. Nobody came. Father McKenzie, Wiping the dirt from his hands as he walks from the grave; No one was saved
All the lonely people (look at all the lonely people). Where do they all come from? All the lonely people (look at all the lonely people). Where do they all belong?
Gary Allen 1936-1986 (None Dare Call It Conspiracy p. 73, 1971)
In the Bolshevik Revolution we see many of the same old faces that were responsible for creating the Federal Reserve System, initiating the graduated income tax, setting up the tax-free foundations and pushing us into WW I. However, if you conclude that this is anything but coincidental, your name will be immediately expunged from the Social Register.
Trevor Peacock 1931-2021 (“Mrs. Brown You’ve Got A Lovely Daughter” Herman’s Hermits single, 1965)
Mrs. Brown, you’ve got a lovely daughter. Girls as sharp as her are somethin’ rare. But it’s sad, she doesn’t love me now. She’s made it clear enough; it ain’t no good to pine
She wants to return those things I bought her, Tell her she can keep them just the same. Things have changed, she doesn’t love me now. She’s made it clear enough; it ain’t no good to pine.
Walkin’ about, even in a crowd, well You’ll pick her out, makes a bloke, feel so proud!
If she finds that I’ve been ’round to see you (’round to see you), Tell her that I’m well and feelin’ fine (feelin’ fine). Don’t let on, don’t say she’s broke my heart; I’d go down on my knees, but it’s no good to pine.
Mrs. Brown, you’ve got a lovely daughter (lovely daughter). Mrs. Brown, you’ve got a lovely daughter (lovely daughter). Mrs. Brown, you’ve got a lovely daughter (lovely daughter).
Andrew Klavan 1954- (“Shakespeare vs. the Transhumanists,” City Journal 2024)
The stories of both Lear and The Tempest are not only stories of fathers and daughters; they are dramas of inner struggle. The exiled and doomed Cordelia and the cherished and elevated Miranda are at once themselves and the symbolic animas of their fathers. Miranda’s marriage, in bringing together man and woman, also represents making one flesh of the male and female self. Marriage is theater, a performance in which yang and yin, will and surrender, power and creation, justice and mercy, meld into all that is required for full spiritual humanity. The transgenderism that materialist modern man seeks to accomplish with the bloody scalpel and the toxic syringe, the imagination allows us to fulfill completely with a man, a woman, and a wedding.
John Milton 1608-1674 (Paradise Lost Book 1)
The infernal Serpent; he it was whose guile, Stirred up with envy and revenge, deceived The mother of mankind, what time his pride Had cast him out from Heaven, with all his host Of rebel Angels, by whose aid, aspiring To set himself in glory above his peers, He trusted to have equalled the Most High, If he opposed, and, with ambitious aim Against the throne and monarchy of God, Raised impious war in Heaven and battle proud, With vain attempt. Him the Almighty Power Hurled headlong flaming from the ethereal sky, With hideous ruin and combustion, down To bottomless perdition, there to dwell In adamantine chains and penal fire, Who durst defy the Omnipotent to arms. Nine times the space that measures day and night To mortal men, he, with his horrid crew, Lay vanquished, rowling in the fiery gulf, Confounded, though immortal.
Aristotle 384-322 (“Exhortation to Philosophy,” lost work by Aristotle, quoted in preface to The American Evasion of Philosophy by Cornell West, 1989)
If one must philosophize, then one must philosophize; and if one must not philosophize, then one must philosophize; in any case, therefore, one must philosophize. For if one must, then, given that Philosophy exists, we are in every way obliged to philosophize. And if one must not, in this case too we are obliged to inquire how it is possible for there to be no philosophy; and in inquiring we philosophize, for inquiry is the cause of Philosophy.
William Cullen Bryant 1794-1878 (“To the Evening Wind” passage quoted by Edgar Poe in The Southern Literary Messenger, 1837 in Edgar Allan Poe How To Know Him by C. Alphonso Smith, 1921)
Go—but the circle of eternal change, Which is the life of Nature, shall restore, With sounds and scents from all thy mighty range, Thee to thy birth-place of the deep once more; Sweet odors in the sea air, sweet and strange, Shall tell the home-sick mariner of the shore, And, listening to thy murmur, he shall deem He hears the rustling leaf and running stream.
John Keats 1795-1821 (Letter, 10/9/1818, Selected Poetry and Letters, 1951)
The Genius of Poetry must work out its own salvation in a man: It cannot be matured by law and precept, but by sensation & watchfulness in itself. That which is creative must create itself—In Endymion, I leaped headlong into the Sea, and thereby have become better acquainted with the Soundings, the quicksands, & the rocks, than if I had stayed upon the green shore, and piped a silly pipe, and took tea & comfortable advice.
William Shakespeare 1554-1609 (Much Ado About Nothing Act 1 Scene 1 Benedick)
With anger, with sickness, or with hunger, not with love. Prove that I ever lose more blood with love than I will get again with drinking, pick out mine eyes with a ballad-maker’s pen and hang me up at the door of a brothel-house for the sign of a blind Cupid.
Michelangelo 1475-1564 (Com’esser, donna p.156 Life, Letters, and Poetry 1987)
Don’t you know, Vittoria, we must at length, learn sweetness which endures is but you, which the stone immures, even as my own veins turns to dust? Cause effects all, and everything adjusts death to bright defeat. This my work ensures. This is proven, lady, by my sculptures. Art lives forever. Death forfeits its trust. Eternity is, in colors or with stone, in either form, spectacular for you and me, as our resemblances devise. A million years after we are gone, art will find again my woe, your beauty matched—and know my loving you was wise.
R.P. Blackmur 1904-1965 (The Double Agent p. 204 1935)
The poetry is the concrete—as concrete as the poet can make it—presentation of experience as emotion. If it is successful it is self-evident; it is subject neither to denial nor modification but only to the greater labour of recognition. To say again what we have been saying all along, that is why we can assent to matters in poetry the intellectual formulation of which would leave us cold or in opposition. Poetry can use all ideas; argument only the logically consistent. Mr. Eliot put it very well for readers of his own verse when he wrote for readers of Dante that you might distinguish understanding from belief. “I will not deny,” he says, “that it may be in practice easier for a Catholic to grasp the meaning, in many places, than for the ordinary agnostic; but that is not because the Catholic believes but because he has been instructed. It is a matter of knowledge and ignorance, not of belief or scepticism.”
John Crowe Ransom 1888-1974 (in The World’s Body p. 72 1938)
As for poetry, it seems to me a pity that its beauty should have to be cloistered and conventional, if it is “pure,” or teasing and evasive, if it is “obscure.” The union of beauty with goodness and truth has been common enough to be regarded as natural. It is the dissociation which is unnatural and painful.
George Graham 1813-1894 (Publisher quoted p. 118 in A Mystery of Mysteries: the Death and Life of Edgar Poe by Mark Dawidziak 2023)
Literature with him was religion; and he, its high priest, with a whip of scorpions scourged the money-changers from the temple. In all else, he had the docility and kind-heartedness of a child. No man was more quickly touched by kindness—none more prompt to return for an injury.
There are four ways to judge a song, a movie, a poem, a piece of rhetoric, an artist, an idea, a work of art. We can look, learn, surrender, or defend. As a Beatle fan experiencing the Beatles in real time, the song was experienced as zeitgeist by the fan in the zeitgeist; this is to surrender to a work of art. By contrast, we experience dead art by a dead artist in school; this is to look, if the teacher is good, or learn, if the teacher is bad. Finally, we defend art if we ever become a teacher or reach a mature, reflective, pedagogical level ourselves. The complexity of interaction is almost infinite—most Doors fans discovered Jim after he was dead—so this is somewhat like the school boy who happens to look at Keats in school, or is forced to learn Keats by a bad teacher. Three broad categories emerge. We surrender to art as zeitgeist, we look at or learn art as dead zeitgeist, or we defend art as what we feel is timeless zeitgeist. Zeitgeist is a highly sentimental experience, such that the only way we judge is by surrendering. The one who surrenders is the one who rejects (“I used to like that music but I no longer do”). The one who defends may do so for fraudulent reasons (“I myself don’t like this art but feel others ought to like it because of its moral or its message.”) As time passes and society becomes more reflective and sophisticated, no one finally knows what art is. Is this song actually good, or am I re-living it falsely in a pitiful sense of flown Zeitgeist? Am I defending it, without really liking it, or knowing what it is? Am I teaching it without truly knowing it? Am I liking it only because of the way I first experienced it? Am I hating it because of the way I subsequently experienced it? Do I even know how I experience it now or will experience it tomorrow? Do I defend it falsely and shamefully? Do I only experience it through others—who don’t really exist as I think they do? Am I allowed to have this judgment of it? Do I want to like it, but never will? Do I want to dislike it because life is too short? Can I separate it from my Zeitgeist? Do I know what it is at all?
Delmore Schwartz 1913-1966 (The World Is A Wedding, p. 25, 1948)
In New York…there are at least six million human beings and during holidays there are more than that number. But, in a way, these numbers hardly exist because they cannot be perceived (we all have four or five friends, more or less). No human being can take in such an aggregation: all that we know is that there is always more and more. This is the moreness of which we are aware, no matter what we look upon. This moreness is the true being of the great city, so that, in a way, this city hardly exists. It certainly does not exist as does our family, our friends, and our neighborhood. Jacob felt that he had come to a conclusion which showed the shadow in which his friends and he lived. They did not inhabit a true community and there was an estrangement between each human being and his family, or between his family and his friends, or between his family and his school. Worst of all was the estrangement in the fact that the city as such had no true need of any of them…
Ben Mazer 1964- (New Poems, “The King” p. 46, 2013)
You might have been anyone. Your relatives, anyone. The place—where were we?—might have been any place. After dinner and talk that can only go so far we moved beyond the doorbell as if to be understood by going so far—no direction but to fall in the betweenness of hours up the zig zag streets when no one calls and everything repeats the insistent identityless rhythm that is our shield and passport—unhearable beats seeking the eternal and lost child. Unanswerable and hung up on a star like all the nights we died anonymous moving dead leaves like beads across the wind, retiring all our talk in the monstrous dark.
James Morrison 1943-1971 (“The Crystal Ship,” The Doors, 1967)
Before you slip into unconsciousness, I’d like to have another kiss, Another flashing chance at bliss, Another kiss, another kiss.
The days are bright and filled with pain. Enclose me in your gentle rain. The time you ran was too insane. We’ll meet again, we’ll meet again.
Oh tell me where your freedom lies. The streets are fields that never die. Deliver me from reasons why. You’d rather cry, I’d rather fly.
The crystal ship is being filled, A thousand girls, a thousand thrills, A million ways to spend your time. When we get back, I’ll drop a line.
Benjamin Jowett 1817-1893 (Analysis of The Republic by Plato, trans. B. Jowett)
The good man and the good citizen only coincide in the perfect State; and this perfection cannot be attained by legislation acting upon them from without, but, if at all, by education fashioning them from within.
Hesiod 776-650 BC (quoted by Socrates in Book II Republic)
Virtue is honorable but difficult, vice is easy and profitable.
John Lennon 1941-1980 (Interview, London Evening Standard, March 1966, reprinted in American teen magazine Datebook July 29, 1966)
Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue about that; I know I’m right and I will be proved right. We’re more popular than Jesus now. I don’t know which will go first—rock & roll or Christianity. Jesus was all right, but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It’s them twisting it that ruins it for me.
C.S. Lewis 1898-1963 (quoted, in conversation)
Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.
Bob Newhart 1929- (Brainy Quote)
I don’t like country music, but I don’t mean to denigrate those who do. And for the people who like country music, denigrate means ‘put down.’
Robert Browning 1812-1889 (Letter to Elizabeth Barrett, Post-mark, April 16, 1845, The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning 1845-1846 with portraits and facsimiles In Two Volumes Vol. I, 1898)
I heard of you, dear Miss Barrett, between a Polka and a Cellarius the other evening, of Mr. Kenyon—how this wind must hurt you! And yesterday I had occasion to go your way—past, that is, Wimpole Street, the end of it,—and, do you know, I did not seem to have leave from you to go down it yet, much less count number after number till I came to yours,—much least than less, look up when I did come there. So I went on to a viperine she-friend of mine who, I think, rather loves me she does so hate me, and we talked over the chances of certain other friends who were to be balloted for at the ‘Athenaeum’ last night,—one of whom, it seems, was in a fright about it—‘to such little purpose’ said my friend—‘for he is so inoffensive—now, hugged ourselves in our grimness like tiger-cats. Then there is a deal in the papers to-day about Maynooth… [ ] Three scratches with a pen, even with this pen,—and you have the green little Syrenusa where I have sate and heard the quails sing. One of these days I shall describe a country I have seen in my soul only, fruits, flowers, birds and all. Ever yours, dear Miss Barrett, R. BROWNING.
Elizabeth Barrett 1806-1861 (Letter to Robert Browning, Post-mark, April 18, 1845, The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning 1845-1846 with portraits and facsimiles In Two Volumes Vol. I, 1898)
If you did but know dear Mr. Browning how often I have written . . not this letter I am about to write, but another better letter to you, . . in the midst of my silence, . . you would not think for a moment that the east wind, with all the harm it does me, is able to do the great harm of putting out the light of the thought of you to my mind; for this, indeed, it has no power to do. I had the pen in my hand once to write; and why it fell out, I cannot tell you. And you see, . . all your writing will not change the wind! You wished all manner of good to me one day as the clock struck ten; yes, and I assure you I was better that day—and I must not forget to tell you so though it is so long since. And therefore, I was logically bound… [ ] When he spoke of me he should have said that I was better notwithstanding the east wind. It is really true—I was getting slowly up from the prostration of the severe cold, and feel stronger in myself. But Mrs. Norton discourses excellent music—and for the rest, there are fruits in the world so over-ripe, that they will fall, . . without being gathered. Let Maynooth witness it! if you think it worth while! Ever yours, ELIZABETH B. BARRETT
‘And is it nothing to be ‘justified to one’s self in one’s resources?’ ‘That’s all,‘ indeed! For the ‘soul’s country’ we will have it also—and I know how well the birds sing in it. How glad I was by the way to see your letter!
Andrew Marantz 1984- (“O.K., Doomer” The New Yorker, March 18, 2024)
In theory, the benefits of advanced A.I. could be almost limitless. Build a trusty superhuman oracle, fill it with information (every peer-reviewed scientific article, the contents of the Library of Congress) and watch it spit out answers to our biggest questions: How can we cure cancer? Which renewable fuels remain undiscovered? How should a person be? “I’m generally pro-A.I. and against slowing down innovation,” Robert Hanson, an economist who has had friendly debates with the doomers for years, told me. “I want our civilization to continue to grow and do spectacular things.” Even if A.G.I. does turn out to be dangerous, many in Silicon Valley argue, wouldn’t it be better for it to be controlled by an American company, or by the American government, rather than by the government of China or Russia, or by a rogue individual with no accountability? “If you can avoid an arms race, that’s by far the best outcome,” Ben Goldhaber, who runs an A.I.-safety group, told me. “If you’re convinced than an arms race is inevitable, it might be understandable to default to the next best option, which is, Let’s arm the good guys before the bad guys.”
Franklin Foer 1974- (“The Golden Age of American Jews Is Ending” The Atlantic, April 2024)
Stacey Zolt Hara was in her office in downtown San Francisco when a text from her 16-year-old daughter arrived: “I’m scared,” she wrote. Her classmates at Berkeley High School were preparing to leave their desks and file into the halls, part of a planned “walkout” to protest Israel. Like many Jewish students, she didn’t want to participate. It was October 18, 11 days after the Hamas invasion of southern Israel. Zolt Hara told her daughter to wait in her classroom. She was trying to project calm. A public-relations executive, Zolt Hara had moved her family from Chicago to Berkeley six years earlier, hoping to find a community that shared her progressive values. Her family had developed a deep sense of belonging there. But a moral fervor was sweeping over Berkeley High that morning. Around 10:30, the walkout began. Jewish parents traded panicked reports from their children. Zolt Hara heard that kids were chanting, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” a slogan that suggests the elimination of Israel.
Robinson Jeffers 1887-1962 (“The Bloody Sire” 1940-1941, The Poetry Anthology 1912-2002: Ninety Years of America’s Most Distinguished Verse Magazine, 2002)
It is not bad. Let them play. Let the guns bark and the bomb-plane Speak his prodigious blasphemies. It is not bad, it is high time, Stark violence is still the sire of all the world’s values.
What but the wolf’s tooth chiseled so fine The fleet limbs of the antelope? What but fear winged the birds and hunger Gemmed with such eyes the great goshawk’s head? Violence has been the sire of al the world’s values.
Who would remember Helen’s face Lacking the terrible halo of spears? Who formed Christ but Herod and Caesar, The cruel and bloody victories of Caesar? Violence has been the sire of all the world’s values.
Never weep, let them play. Old violence is not too old to beget new values.
Mitch Murray 1940- (“How Do You It?” Gerry and the Pacemakers, Don’t Let the Sun Catch You Crying, 1964)
How do you do what you do to me? I wish I knew. If I knew how you do it to me, I’d do it to you.
How do you do what you do to me? I’m feelin’ blue. Wish I knew how you do it to me, but I haven’t a clue.
You give me a feeling in my heart, Like an arrow passing through it. S’pose that you think you’re very smart, But won’t you tell me how do you do it?
How do you do what you do to me? If I only knew. Then perhaps you’d fall for me—like I fell for you.
Zsa Zsa Gabor 1917-2016 (The Wise and Witty Quote Book, p. 70, 1998)
I’m a great housekeeper. I get divorced, I keep the house.
Susan Sontag 1933-2004 (Against Interpretation: And Other Essays, 1966)
What is most beautiful in virile men is something feminine; what is most beautiful in feminine women is something masculine.
SIXTY FOUR ISOLATED, INTRIGUING PASSAGES FROM ALL GENRES COMPETE!
EAST BRACKET
Anton Chekhov v. 16. Helen Whitman
F.T. Marinetti v. 15. Stephen Davis
Marc Andreessen v. 14. Camille Paglia
Brian Wilson v. 13. Eric Singer
Paul Simon v. 12. Edgar Poe
John Updike v. 11. Travis Kelce
Sharon Olds v. 10. Taylor Swift
Steven Cramer v. 9. Nathaniel Hawthorne
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Taylor Swift
Travis Kelce
Edgar Poe
Eric Singer
Camille Paglia
Stephen Davis
Helen Whitman
Life, unfortunately, is random, and the way life is ordered makes a mockery of itself, such that those who try and present it, and live it, in all its variety, are doomed themselves to be less interesting than those who present it and understand it from an extremely narrow perspective—these are the “highly skilled” we tend to admire for their “expertise” and who participate in a “craft” or a “guild” which has its own rules and reason for existing, and repeats that narrowness in order to fulfill itself. What distinguishes one craftsman from another in any given field is narrower still, and the preference for one over the other is the basis of all that is crazy and insulting about love—we have a “favorite” who is essentially the same as his or her neighbor—the preferment participating in the narrowness of the perception, which is by the devotee’s own definition and understanding, subtlety and taste, the unique flower which is the end of expertise itself, the pearl, we might say, which exists because it irritates the oyster. We are a “fan” of one player or musician or team in a given sport, one we choose over the others—even as an outsider sees them as virtually the same. This tension between the outsider’s “normal” perception and the devotee’s more subtle one is the basis of all human behavior and thought. The hockey fan is passionate about the difference between one team and another or one player and another, while a stranger to the sport sees a world of similarity—guys in hockey player uniforms skating and wielding sticks. The “fan” is obligated to understand differences and is an “expert” insofar as each minute difference to the “fan” is apparent. But love is blind—the fan judges crudely and passionately. They know a great deal, but their “expertise” is finally opinion, preferential in nature; it is not true expertise; it is not based on real experience—which belongs to the favorite player who is actually “good” at playing the sport—and this “goodness” participates in what is narrower and subtler, still. The angle necessary for a good hockey shot, etc.
So the poetry lover participates in this favoritism; and so does the philosopher; so do we all, but never generally, where we can all see each other, clearly, at once, but only secretly and privately and competitively within chosen fields of endeavor which all contain endless trapdoors of narrowness and expertise that finally die in a betrayal of plainness, irrelevance, and similarity.
So it is with this year’s March Madness, which runs the risk of wordiness, since every genre of words is included, and no participant has any particular reason to exist beside its neighbor. The idea of category defeats itself. The idea of category cannot overcome being categorized. There is too much transparency and not enough secrecy. The well-read person has no expertise. This March Madness has no Madness—it conjures up rebounds without walls, shouts without echoes.
Life is random. But to admit this is to cease to exist. The true meaning of the Scarriet March Madness 2024 East Bracket list of items is profoundly similar to the “real” March Madness playing out on basketball courts across America. The only difference is that the field here is wider, and therefore prohibitively random—even if only in our minds.
Read these. All 16. This is a sample of what is available to me in my home library. Nothing is more important to the civilized person. Do not be confused. The list features difference which is not narrow enough to seem real. Yes, it’s a total illusion. A civilized one.
Anton Chekhov 1860-1904 (“A Visit To Friends” Norton Anthology of Short Fiction, 1978)
Her continual dreams of happiness and love had wearied her, she could no longer hide her feelings, and her whole posture, the brilliance of her eyes, her fixed, blissful smile, betrayed her sweet thoughts. As for him, he was ill at ease, he shrank together, he froze, not knowing whether to say something so as to turn it all into a joke, or to remain silent, and he was so vexed, and could only reflect that here in the country, on a moonlit night, with a beautiful, enamored, dreamy girl so near, his emotions were as little involved as on Malaya Bronskaya Street—clearly this fine poetry meant no more to him than that crude prose. All this was dead: trysts on moonlit nights, slimwaisted figures in white, mysterious shadows, towers and country houses and “types” like Sergey Sergeich, and like himself, Podgorin, with his chilly boredom, constant vexation, his inability to adjust himself to real life, inability to take from it what it had to offer, and with an aching, wearying thirst for what was not and could not be on earth.
F.T. Marinetti 1876-1944 (Futurist quoted in “The Despots of Silicon Valley” by Adrienne LaFrance in the Atlantic March 2024)
We are not satisfied to roam in a garden closed in by dark cypresses, bending over ruins and mossy antiques… We believe that Italy’s only worthy tradition is never to have had tradition. Beauty exists only in struggle. There is no masterpiece that has not an aggressive character. Poetry must be a violent assault on the forces of the unknown, to force them to bow before man.
Marc Andreessen 1971- (The Techno-Optimist Manifesto 10/16/2023)
We are told that technology takes our jobs, reduces our wages, increases inequality, threatens our health, ruins the environment, degrades our society, corrupts our children, impairs our humanity, threatens our future, and is ever on the verge of ruining everything. We are told to be angry, bitter, and resentful about technology. We are told to be pessimistic. The myth of Prometheus – in various updated forms like Frankenstein, Oppenheimer, and Terminator – haunts our nightmares. We are told to denounce our birthright – our intelligence, our control over nature, our ability to build a better world. We are told to be miserable about the future. … We believe in adventure. Undertaking the Hero’s Journey, rebelling against the status quo, mapping uncharted territory, conquering dragons, and bringing home the spoils… We believe in nature, but we also believe in overcoming nature. We are not primitives, cowering in fear of the lightning bolt. We are the apex of the predator; the lightning works for us.
Brian Wilson 1942- (“Caroline, No” Track 13, Pet Sounds 1966)
Where did your long hair go? Where is the girl I used to know? How could you lose that happy glow?
Who took that look away? I remember how you used to say You’d never change but that’s not true.
Oh Caroline, you Break my heart. I want to go and cry. It’s so sad to watch a sweet thing die. Oh, Caroline why?
Could I ever find in you again? The things that made me love you so much then? Could we ever bring ’em back once they have gone? Oh, Caroline, no.
Paul Simon 1941- (“Cloudy” Track 3, Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme 1966)
Cloudy, The sky is gray and white and cloudy. Sometimes I think it’s hanging down on me And it’s a hitchhike a hundred miles, I’m a rag-a-muffin child, Pointed finger-painted smile, I left my shadow waiting down the road for me a while.
Cloudy, My thoughts are scattered and they’re cloudy, They have no borders, no boundaries, They echo and they swell, From Tolstoy to Tinker Bell, Down from Berkeley to Carmel, Got some pictures in my pocket and a lot of time to kill,
Hey sunshine! I haven’t seen you in a long time. Why don’t you show your face and bend my mind? These clouds stick to the sky Like a floating question, why? And they linger there to die. They don’t know where they are going And, my friend, neither do I
Cloudy. Cloud-dee-ee. Cloudy.
John Updike 1932-2009 (Review of Memories of My Melancholy Whores by Gabriel Garcia Marquez 2005, in Due Considerations, Essays and Criticism 2007)
The works of Gabriel Garcia Marquez contain a great deal of love, depicted as a doom, a demonic possession, a disease that, once contracted, cannot be easily cured. Not infrequently the afflicted are an older man and younger woman, hardly more than a child. In One Hundred Years of Solitude (English translation 1970), Aureliano Buendia visits a very young whore: “The adolescent mulatto girl, with her small bitch’s teats, was naked on the bed. Before Aureliano sixty-three men has passed through the room that night. From being used so much, kneaded with sweat and sighs, the air in the room had begun to turn to mud. The girl took off the soaked sheet and asked Aureliano to hold it by one side. It was as heavy as a piece of canvas. They squeezed it, twisting it at the ends until it regained its natural weight. They turned over the mat and the sweat came out of the other side.” Aureliano does not take advantage of her overexploited charms, and leaves the room “troubled by a desire to weep.” He has—you guessed it—fallen in love.
Sharon Olds 1942- (from “His Birthday” p. 160 Balladz 2022)
When I’m in New York and he’s in New Hampshire, and I’m starting to make love to myself, on his birthday, I look around for something silky, as I’d rubbed the satin binding of my childhood blanket when I’d sucked my thumb to sleep, until I was 13 and had buck teeth. On his 75th, I wanted to caress myself through something which had a glimmery feeling. And when I came, the first time, it almost picked me up and threw me off the bed. Resting, I panted, like the pleasure-wounded. […]
Steven Cramer 1953- (“I Want That” p. 12 Listen 2020)
As I lay down too tired to believe is a line I love by Laura Jensen. I imagine it coming to her quickly like dictation, like cold with snow.
I want that. How I want that. And the night I believed I sat in a chair in the middle of the sea and yet could see the shoreline:
lights, dune grass, a hut, and bluffs behind them bright, as if on fire— Oh, I want them, I want them back like the waterfall a child built
of cheesecloth, papier-mache, wire. I called it Salishan, a name sounding like silver buffed up to a shine. I want that shine too; a ton of it.
I brush my hand across rough cotton here, or here. And notice, if I’m naked, the pelt of shower water against my skin, the scent of scentless soap, the weight
my feet confer to the tub floor. Today I’ll amble through the city’s jazz of rain. And the voice beneath my scalp that says there’s little to no point? Poor voice.
Nathaniel Hawthorne 1804-1864 (“Wakefield” in The Celestial Railroad and Other Stories 1980)
In some old magazine or newspaper I recollect a story, told as truth, of a man—let us call him Wakefield—who absented himself for a long time from his wife. The fact, thus abstractedly stated, is not very uncommon, nor—without a proper distinction of circumstances—to be condemned either as naughty or nonsensical. Howbeit, this, though far from the most aggravated, is perhaps the strangest instance on record of marital delinquency; and, moreover, as remarkable a freak as may be found in the whole list of human oddities. The wedded couple lived in London. The man, under pretense of going on a journey, took lodgings in the next street to his own house, and there, unheard of by his wife or friends, and without the shadow of a reason for such self-banishment, dwelt upwards of twenty years. During that period, he beheld his home every day, and frequently the forlorn Mrs. Wakefield. And after so great a gap in his matrimonial felicity—when his death was reckoned certain, his estate settled, his name dismissed from memory, and his wife long, long ago, resigned to her autumnal widowhood—he entered the door one evening, quietly, as from a day’s absence, and became a loving spouse til death.
Taylor Swift 1989- (“Out of the Woods,” track 4 1989 2014) Jack Antonoff, co-writer
Looking at it now, It all seems so simple, We were lying on your couch, I remember,
You took a Polaroid of us, Then discovered, The rest of the world was black and white, But we were in screaming color, And I remember thinking,
Are we out of the woods yet? Are we out of the woods yet? Are we out of the woods yet? Are we out of the woods? Are we in the clear yet? Are we in the clear yet? Are we in the clear yet, in the clear yet? Good! Are we out of the woods yet? Are we out of the woods yet? Are we out of the woods yet? Are we out of the woods? Are we in the clear yet? Are we in the clear yet? Are we in the clear yet, in the clear yet? Good?
Are we out of the woods?
Looking at it now, Last December, We were built to fall apart, And fall back together.
Your necklace hanging from my neck, The night we couldn’t quite forget, When we decided, we decided To move the furniture so we could dance, Baby, like we stood a chance. Two paper airplanes flying, flying, flying And I remember thinking,
Are we out of the woods yet? Are we out of the woods yet? Are we out of the woods yet? Are we out of the woods? Are we in the clear yet? Are we in the clear yet? Are we in the clear yet, in the clear yet? Are we out of the woods yet? Are we out of the woods yet? Are we out of the woods yet? Are we out of the woods? Are we in the clear yet? Are we in the clear yet? Are we in the clear yet, in the clear yet?
Are we out of the woods?
Remember when you hit the brakes too soon? 20 stitches in a hospital room. When you started crying, baby, I did too, But when the sun came up, I was looking at you. Remember when we couldn’t take the heat? I walked out, I said, “I’m setting you free” But the monsters turned out to be just trees. When the sun came up, you were looking at me. You were looking at me, oh, You were looking at me.
Travis Kelce 1989- (speech, Kansas City Chiefs victory parade, 2024)
Oh oh uhhhh. (Kansas City Chiefs Tomahawk Chop chant drunkenly slurred)
Blame it all on my roots! I showed up in boots! And ruined the 9ers (your black tie) affair. The last one to know! We were (I was) the last ones to show! We were (I was) the last ones they (you) thought they’d (you’d) see there. And I saw the surprise! And the fear in their (his) eyes! Took their (his) glass of champagne— Pat took that glass of champagne— And I toasted you! What I never knew—what? —mike removed
(Said “honey, we may be through” But you’ll never hear me complain
‘Cause I’ve got friends in low places Where the whiskey drowns And the beer chases my blues away And I’ll be okay I’m not big on social graces Think I’ll slip on down to the oasis Oh, I’ve got friends in low places)
(Songwriters: Dewayne Blackwell / Earl Lee, from “Friends in Low Places” Garth Brooks 1990)
Edgar Poe 1809-1849 (“The Fall of the House of Usher” Selected Writings of Edgar Allan Poe, 1956)
I had learned, too, the very remarkable fact, that the stem of the Usher race, all time-honored as it was, had put forth, at no period, any enduring branch; in other words, that the entire family lay in the direct line of descent, and had always, with very trifling and very temporary variation, so lain.
Eric Singer 1896-1969 (A Manual of Graphology, p. 50 1969)
Finally, the forger who copies another person’s handwriting has to do it slowly. Often the only sign by which the forgery can be detected is found in comparing the reproduction with the quickly written original. The speed of handwriting therefore becomes the decisive factor in ascertaining the genuineness and spontaneity of all the other signs of handwriting; it is the most important branch of study for the expert graphologist, who has to deal in court with disguised or forged handwriting. As spontaneity and a tendency to be calculating are both present in most human minds you will find signs both of speed and of slowness in most handwritings.
Camille Paglia 1947- (Sex, Art, and American Culture, p. 210, 1992)
I will argue that the French invasion of academe in the Seventies was not at all a continuation of the Sixties revolution but rather an evasion of it. In Tenured Radicals, which treats trendy showboating professors with the irreverence they deserve, Roger Kimball makes one statement I would correct: he suggests the radicals of the Sixties are now in positions of control in the major universities. He is too generous. Most of America’s academic leftists are no more radical than my Aunt Hattie. Sixties radicals rarely went on to graduate school; if they did, they often dropped out. If they made it through, they had trouble getting a job and keeping it. They remain mavericks, isolated, off-center. Today’s academic leftists are strutting wannabes, timorous nerds who missed the Sixties while they were grade-grubbing in the library and brown-nosing the senior faculty. Their politics came to them late, secondhand, and special delivery via the Parisian import craze of the Seventies. These people have risen to the top not by challenging the system but by smoothly adapting themselves to it. They’re company men, Rosencrantz and Guildensterns, privileged opportunists who rode the wave of fashion. Most true Sixties people could not and largely did not survive in the stifling graduate schools of the late Sixties and early Seventies.
Stephen Davis 1947- (Old Gods Almost Dead p.227, 2001)
Brian was back in court on Tuesday, December 12, to appeal his drug conviction. Three psychiatrists testified that he was “an extremely frightened young man” and “a very emotional and unstable person.” A sympathetic judge commuted his jail time to three years’ probation and a 1,000-pound fine, provided he continue to seek treatment. Mick and Keith came to court to support Brian, who left after the judgment to have some rotten teeth pulled. Two days later, stoned on downers, he collapsed in his new flat in Chelsea and wound up in the hospital. At a press conference around this time, Mick let fly at Brian. “There’s a tour coming up, and there’s obvious difficulties with Brian, who can’t leave the country.” He talked about how the Stones wanted to tour Japan, “except Brian, again, he can’t get into Tokyo because he’s a druggie.” Some people around the Stones were appalled by Mick’s callousness toward Brian. They wondered why Mick saw him as such a threat. Spanish Tony Sanchez, working now for Keith as a drug courier, thought it was because Brian lived the life that Mick only pretended to live. “Brian was genuinely out of his skull on drugs most of the time, while Mick used only minuscule quantities of dope because he worried that his appearance would be affected. Brian was into orgies, lesbians, and sadomasochism, while Jagger lived his prim, prissy, bourgeois life and worried in case someone spilled coffee on his Persian carpets.”
Helen Whitman 1803-1878 (“To Edgar Allan Poe” Great Poems by American Women, 1998)
If thy sad heart, pining for human love, In its earth solitude grew dark with fear, Lest the High Sun of Heaven itself should prove Powerless to save from that phantasmal sphere Wherein thy spirit wandered, —if the flowers That pressed around thy feet, seemed but to bloom In lone Gethsemanes, through starless hours, When all who loved had left thee to thy doom, — Oh, yet believe that in that hollow vale Where thy soul lingers, waiting to attain So much of Heaven’s sweet grace as shall avail To lift its burden of remorseful pain, My soul shall meet thee, and its Heaven forego Till God’s great love, on both, one hope, one Heaven bestow.
There are many examples of beauty so beautiful plain morality will fail to resist it. Wrong will be done. The eyes I had then knew I was the dusky planet warmed by her supernatural sun.
We were in the subway. She had just turned forty. I was a smoker, drank orange juice, and wrote poetry secretly at work. Can you believe this poem? Another guy-poem? A dude as an infant? And most of the time I'm a jerk?
A confluence of black and mauve moments, a look that said, "she is no longer inside out, but finally can be a soul wrought so beauty floats (the highest) gazing particularly at me."
You cannot escape. You will feel the flame. Love and shadows are uniquely combined. Objectivity and beauty are the same.
We were cheered by the warm winter— and then depressed by the cold spring. Unable to understand long measurements, we could not measure anything. The ideal temperature was like medicine— supplied to us on the hour. Above was a ditch of rain, below, a bright tower. Things had gone on too long before us— and how it began, we didn’t know. Science was applied to everything— and was gone in an inch of snow.
Relationship hell works like this. The romancers have cultivated in mainstream imagery the kiss which captures every squeamish imagination due to germs, childhood, bodily autonomy and warmth as it presents itself strangely and socially, the way in to society, and immersion in human weather, like no other. Of course you want to take a lover. But the ratio of the excitement of the bonding is connected to how much alienation exists---afraid of others is why she is not afraid of you. The one you have found is afraid. This keeps going round until love finally fears itself, us. Sorry, dears.
Remember, they are not actors and actresses. They are “stars.”
The Red Carpet horror has begun. Camille Paglia said fashion is art and we agree, but the pandering interviews are an absolute torture. Maybe one of the actors (excuse me, “stars,”) will be in a bad mood (remember Hugh Grant?) and provide a respite from what is truly mindless.
Scarriet put aside poetry and their work on their annual March Madness, to watch all ten Best Picture nominations, plus two other films (May December for best original screenplay and Nyad for 2 best actress nominations, Annette Bening, marathon swimmer, and Jodie Foster, friend and coach.)
Let’s discuss these films.
Excess currently dominates the Oscar zeitgeist—think of last year’s winner Everything Everywhere All At Once, a zany, sentimental mess which resembled a video game and kept us in our seats for 139 minutes. Its counterpart this year is Poor Things, a Frankenstein porn film of sexual jealousy with one really good part—Emma Stone, playing a suicide-brought-to life-with-her child’s-brain-adventurer. It’s a whimsical 142 minutes. Native American actress Lily Gladstone (the quiet victim of Martin Scorsese’s lengthy piece of sadism) will beat out Emma Stone for best actress. Poor Things will win some production Oscars—it’s a colorful delight.
Zone of Interest aims for a simple theme: the Nazis in WW II were really, really bad. One doesn’t so much enjoy this film as learn a history lesson: the Nazis in WW II were really, really bad. It’s only 105 minutes and borders on psychological torture.
Past Lives is one of those low-key foreign films which bores the average American to death. It’s about romantic fate. It’s a pleasant film of 106 minutes—therefore the most enjoyable to watch. But it won’t win awards.
Speaking of psychological torture, Killers of the Flower Moon is an earnest piece of sadism which may win some awards because it indulges in excess. At 206 minutes, it outstrips Zone of Interest in terms of psychological torture. Leonardo DeCaprio (his character is a stupid, criminal, frowning, creep and yet the romantic hero of Scorsese’s film) and Martin Scorsese apparently wanted to punish audiences to such a degree with this film that we never, never forget them. Robert DeNiro, badly cast, adds to the film’s humiliation and torture. If he wins Best Supporting Actor, it will be a crime.
It will also be a shame if Robert Downey Jr. wins Best Supporting Actor—his role at the center of Oppenheimer is inscrutable, but since it’s “history” and Oppenheimer is 181 minutes long, Downey will probably win, and Oppenheimer, with its world-historical Bomb Theme, will dominate the night. An A Bomb of Boring.
Maestro will lose because it’s about classical music. Carrey Mulligan, Maestro’s female lead, will lose to Lily Gladstone, even though Mulligan’s role is more difficult. For this reason, Bradley Cooper may win Best Actor—he’s phenomenal as Lenny, especially the older Lenny. (The younger Lenny sort of comes across as Groucho Marx.) Maestro has some clever scenes, and is not a torture at 129 minutes, and may even win Best Cinematography, though the more outlandish Poor Things and the sadistic Killer Moon will definitely compete for that. There’s something odd about Bradley Cooper. Talented, but strangely aloof. The Best Actor category is probably the most competitive. Colman Domingo in the 60s Civil Rights film, Rustin may win, if not Paul Giamatti of The Holdovers.
Barbie is ridiculous and should not have been nominated at all. Hopefully it will win nothing. It’s a gay party, (a sort of pale, weird, much less iconic, imitation of Wizard of Oz) not a movie. At 115 minutes, it’s not too difficult to watch.
American Fiction is good but feels like a TV movie; its African-American irony plays out rather predictably. At 117 minutes, it’s tragedy doesn’t feel earned; it’s really more of a clever comedy; it’s worth watching as a feel-good film.
Anatomy of a Fall is a thoughtful film. Like the likely winners Killers and Oppenheimer, it’s more of a ‘marriage’ movie than a ‘hook-up’ movie. We get the crime and also a court battle—it doesn’t feel like 152 minutes—it goes by pretty fast, which is in its favor. It doesn’t hunt for Oscar trophies like Oppenheimer and Killers obviously do; it’s just a good drama, so it probably won’t win anything.
The Holdovers (a pretty decent length at 133 minutes) is one of those pleasant, comedy, underdog movies, which maybe wins Best Picture in a previous era—not today.
May December, nominated only for Best Original Screenplay, is my pick for best picture. It’s the most complex film I saw—a film inside a film, with great performances and dramatically uncomfortable scenes. It’s a 113 minutes and I wanted it to be longer.
Nyad is a real life story about the marathon swimmer who attempts to swim 100 miles from Cuba to Key West at the age of 64! Annette Bening (Best Actress) becomes that swimmer—congratulations on a great job. Jodie Foster (Best Supporting Actress) is OK, as is the film. No awards for this one. Bening will lose to Lily Gladstone.
Zone of Interest 105 minutes Torture! Past Lives 106 minutes Subtle look at romantic fate. Barbie 115 minutes Crap. American Fiction 117 minutes Predicable irony. Maestro 129 minutes Bradley as Lenny. The Holdovers 133 minutes Awww. Poor Things 142 minutes Porn meets Frankenstein. Anatomy of a Fall 152 minutes Court drama. Oppenheimer 181 minutes Too long. Killers of Flower Moon 206 minutes Is Scorsese a sadist? May December 113 minutes Pervy masterpiece. Nyad. 120 minutes Too much swimming.
A holocaust doesn't need a train--- it can happen village to village--- machetes in the foliage. It can happen in your brain. A holocaust doesn't need a machine. Loyalty to your side is enough to spread lies. To murder love. Oscar movies are dreams. They don't teach us a thing. Watch out for policy that's signed into law. That's not a hand typing, or holding a pen--- that's a claw. To prevent pain, calm down. Explain, explain, explain.
The movie was long. And, unfortunately, starred me. There was a lot of slightly sorrowful staring out of windows, A lot of bad poetry. A lot of weak, blank, wonder, so much that was out of focus and abstract, too much faint, distant hum of traffic! Too much that was anxiously happening just beyond my understanding---and I was anxious because of that. I wish I had been more a part of things, but the movie had scenes that were indescribably poignant and brief! Moments inside of moments. Scenes of sorrow which bled into scenes of sorrow without relief. Anxiety was the worst thing about the film. The director tried to fix this with sorrow. Melancholy was preferable to anxiety, especially in terms of aesthetics. The cinematographer, Pierre L. God, had vision, but was quirky, mysterious, and moody. The director shouldn't have, but often resented, even hated, the cinematographer! The lead actress was exquisite, but kept thinking she was in another movie. That was very upsetting. There was always a problem with the popcorn. Something was always happening in the lobby. A disturbance. Maybe laughter. I would have to go out there. My poem always needed editing. The reviews were bad. I often didn't read them. That was my right. The acting was OK. A little obvious at times. The worst part of the movie was it was predictable, but also I hated when the film would break. I woke to the same film, but in pieces. The way the rain would invade. I needed better actors. They were always too sincere. I wanted the film to be more in the moment. It was never here. I blame that on my acting. I wanted to act, but was always myself. Just now I looked up from this. The half-darkness, as usual, no help.
Give that man an Oscar. You know he will win--- his great haircut, his illustrated sin. The biopic! with historic dimensions! A living textbook (but there's Matt Damon! older, recalling Good Will Hunting.) In Hollywood the familiar in the casting is what's finally everlasting, not the "triumphant themes," O God they're boring! We need shadowy scenes! Throbbing, tense music! Mart Damon angry, imploring! The emotions tried and true! Reasons to shout never, never few. But Matt Damon has a better reason than you. The world will be lost! This film is about The Bomb. Anger spliced with horror of the existential sort--- Damon is more meaningful than you. You are false. Hollywood is true. Rumors of science abound. Plus special effects, actors, and sound. When did Robert Downey Junior (Iron Man) get so old? The entirety of his subplot I don't understand at all! And yet black & white flashbacks in Congress guarantee Oscar after Oscar from the committee! The film is so unbelievably dense with pretense it absolutely has to win! There is Albert Einstein! He enjoys a class of wine. Obligated to award this Oscar, you will. A textbook, but with sex! It made you stand still.
“I don’t care what you say, I’m right,” is what I said to my lover tonight and then I thought, “I always say this to her. Is this why she is my lover?” And wondered why that was true. I was subtle and circumspect with you. You were my best friend. But poetry and love are abusive to the end. In love, the man is a monster, the woman, a witch, because every piece of information is a sales pitch and there’s no escape from this reality except to be in love—and be a complete bitch. I will have you underneath the moon. Be there. And be there soon.
When I'm a gigantic age and I lack youth and rage, I'll know at last the best thoughts come from feelings and feelings from thoughts cannot be trusted. Innocent, I saw romantic tales. And then I lusted. I will return to the valley where feelings are all, a valley with gushing streams, where every furry flower grows tall, and thoughts grow from feelings; no feeling is manufactured by a disconnected thought; a feeling is never killed, or by another feeling bought. In this land, thought cannot get the upper hand--- feelings bathe the understanding. Feelings are how we understand. We will never be tricked by words. My bed will have millions of birds and undulating streams, gigantic wisdom hiding inside gigantic dreams.
I love one who hates me. For years. But I've never stopped to think whether it's divine to love in the face of hate. Am I imitating God? Why she hates me is not germane--- those details would distract us---they are mundane. Jealousy, too much red wine. I guess I could give a summary by saying I grew paranoid and thought she didn't love me and, caught in my own trap, found to my horror I had made it true--- after a while it didn't help that she and I knew. One morning I pushed the matter too far; the sun which fed my days blinked, becoming an angry, distant star. No more close-up conversations; mine an intimacy of the sad astronomer, plagued hourly by the pitied memory of that star which thought of me savagely and almost entirely from afar--- circumstance kept us in the same circles--- a mystical shift of stars imitating biblical miracles, defining who we think we never are, making my poems smooth, pleading, oracles. I guess the only question whether it's divine or not is if I love because of hate. Am I sadistic in my broken state? Does my passion need her hate? Absolutely not. "Please stop hating me. I drink water now, not wine. I only love to love and love you. I would give up poetry--- except for the occasional poem of praise--- magisterial, happy--- by Plato's Republic permitted, loved even in my reckless days.
In our fairy tale, our hero battles time (epic war, happening all the time). His mother told him time is the only creature who gets old by staying young. Our hero thought on this a long time. "No opponent is like him," said his mother, "Age As Youth, there is no other." Then time killed his mother and now in time's recent days his old mother receives in rhyme his praise. "What will happen to me?" Became his sad lament, as he dreamed the place his mother went and what the death of her had meant in his immortal poetry. One day he remembered his youth with sorrow. "The older I am in my memory, the older I'll be tomorrow. My older days are my younger days. Does this mean I am greater than time? By my memory I get old---not by staying young. I get old by getting younger." It was then I knew time is defeated by memories which are dreams which is heaven and which is what I am. I have defeated time, mother! Damn!
The Greek gods were the perfect metaphor of human self importance, the attempt to be a bee like TS Eliot, to express in honeyed contempt sad life, voices having sway over us: a backroom deal by Ezra Pound, the whining wife’s. Poor Tom! He knew nature was larger, was indifferent, and the poet says what no one likes to say: human attempts are hopeless. There is a whispering void in which all voices fall. Meaning is an echo, an empty ceremony in a Nathaniel Hawthorne wood. Conflict is all—rage and cruelty, resulting in the excitement which temporarily forgets how dull and hopeless everything is. Already forgotten, who won the super bowl last year. Saying, “super bowl” sounds stupid. That was super! Caitlin Clark scored thirteen thousand points and made a shot and got a hug from her dad. Listen to that electric heater. The hum reminds me of that evening of Greek chorus, the posters, now yellow, which said “Greek Tragedy.” My friend is telling me about a Delmore Schwartz poetry reading. I’ll sit in that room. Or will it be zoom? I forget. Tripped up by technology again. I won’t be afraid. Maybe a little bored. Bored? That’s not a word for poetry, is it? When is my heart bored? It still beats, it still beats. Miserable, miserable Delmore. Schadenfreude of my dreams, at last. Arriving with a new twist this Sunday? How strange—nothing is ever empty. It almost makes you believe in God.
Emotions are always insincere. The chat bot understood my sorrow. It drew, like a gentleman—with that very tone—from my pain, remembering how to elaborate my own thoughts—always late. It remembered all of it for me again. I wrote, “I will paint the promised photograph tomorrow.”
I had to promise. Artificial plagiarism knows what the poets knew: “Poetry cannot lie, since the truth doesn’t belong to me, but the sun. The sun took a picture. The lane reflected in the lake looks at the photograph of the sky.
I thanked him. The old philosophers, Plato, I believe, said feelings were dangerous and insincere and my poetry can prove this; surely it can, my dear? It was difficult to write in a manner that was fake, confused, circling back where the path intersects the lake, until I met you. Writing to them, but secretly only for your sake, the salamander club members announced quietly to me: “Congratulations. Yours, we think, is poetry.”
I'm happy, that's why they hate me. You saw the movie about me with the cool soundtrack, you heard me talk, you looked at me while I was talking, you know, I'm one of those guys who talks like he's teaching in school, and I've had a really lucky life, that's the way people are, they hate the lucky, that's why they hate me. The world? The world strives to make fewer and fewer happy, only the elites, happy, and more millions miserable, and I'm one who apparently has this all figured out. I know what the shouting is about. You've heard me laugh. You've seen me concentrating and alone. You loved me once and you hate me now. You know. You know how they are---because you're one of them. You know. I told you that day on the phone.
“Every year I feel this sadness. The Super Bowl. One more big game to go.” —Fan
“Yes, you captured a common feeling. I know why you are sad.
The season established many good teams and the best of them in the playoffs strangely fail while the successful teams seem helped by a hidden hand, a coldly predictable one.
None triumph against the odds.
The prodigal son languishes. Nothing surprising or amazing occurs.
An old miser unfolds for us what we’ve seen before.
The luckless are deprived, as they always are, while the lucky get even more than they deserve. Those who have rings get more. Those just as skilled, who have none, get none.
The NFL, ancient, wrinkly, selfish, billionaire, gaslighting bitch.
She resembles her crone sister, the WWE.
Two hags in men’s suits, torturing sportsmanlike innocence with pretentious rules articulated with grotesque inconsistency.
Who are these souls pinned to falsehood who are broadcast so widely? Who is the soul who submits to this spectacle?
Swift flies money to the NFL, swift, swift. Slow fell the flags, slow, as the singer’s favorite team pummeled Edgar Allan Poe’s receivers. I had seen (in other games) “defensive holding” called on a mere touch away from the play, giving the offense an automatic first down. But here, the intended receiver is fouled before the ball arrives. Gaslit hypocrites look and do not see.
Already the star player who will play in the Super (Duper) Bowl against Taylor’s boyfriend’s team has made comments hinting what everyone knows—referees decide games by not calling penalties. (Bosa: “They hold a lot.”) Is this a sign the 49ers (get ready to have your hearts broken, San Francisco) see the writing on the wall? They already know what happened to the Ravens will happen to them, for the sake of a ratings soap opera?
A defensive player is “held” in the moment which matters. The foul is not called. The omission is enough (invisible on the stat sheet) to change the results of a game. Rigging is invisible.
Or, if necessary, a penalty is called where one is not deserved. The large, grotesque, NFL may apologize later—but they never correct the error in time. Referee calls are not reviewable. (Natch!) We see but do not see. Hockey players punch each other while refs watch. In the Lady of the NFL, “taunting,” spinning a ball on the ground! gets penalties, affecting real play (15 yards, often the difference in winning). The rules are ambiguous. This is always good for the company and its lawyers. Never good for us. I will play a game by myself, down by the tree and the lake. The NFL on TV. A red mistake.”
This gaslighting by the NFL—and remember, this company is a major one, seeking to expand globally, gets involved in politics—has reached a fever pitch. Let’s begin with the fact that only 2 teams (Pats, now Chiefs) have wildly succeeded over the last 25 years.
Dynasty-ism is good for business, a counter-intuitive truth the average fan tends not to grasp. Why wouldn’t the NFL spread the love, to generate more revenue? The answer is simple: A San Diego/Carolina Super Bowl could never generate the kind of excitement which loved/hated “chosen” teams like NE and KC can. (Or the 4 dynasties of the past, Lombardi’s Packers, Steelers, Joe Montana’s 49ers, Cowboys—there’s always a dynasty present).
That games are rigged (or “scripted”) is now routinely part of the conversation when it comes to football. At this point the NFL realizes this psychological twist adds to fan interest, as well, so the NFL (whose original teams started up with gambling winnings) can have its cake and eat it—fix games and not hide it. Ref calls are not reviewable. Rules which completely reverse big plays on the field are too ambiguous for anyone to really understand. (“Was that illegal holding?” Yes. No. Wait…) Therefore games are easily rigged with impunity by selectively calling—or not calling—game altering penalties—in a manner which has fans not sure, so fans of beloved, “helped,” teams accuse other fans of giving into “conspiracy theories.”
Now add in The Taylor Swift Gaslighting. The revenue created by Taylor Swift is immeasurable. Not since Super Bowl III (the underdog AFL Jets won and enabled the merger which made the NFL rich) was there a more compelling reason to fix a result. The NFL rigged it so the Chiefs (Taylor’s overnight favorite team) would win. The NFL is an entertainment business and can legally influence what happens on the field. Now fans who just ask that games not be rigged are accused of having a personal (or political!) objection to the singer. As well as being conspiracy nuts. America has never seemed crazier—thanks to football!
And now we have a new wrinkle. The Chiefs got their big Super Bowl win (as everyone expected) but one incident from that game has received more attention than any other. It makes sense (if anything can make sense these days in the world of the NFL) that the incident had little to do with the game itself (which is becoming increasingly irrelevant in today’s world of celebrity-driven dynasties whose members sell Head and Shoulders, State Farm, Pfizer vaccines, and receive favorable referee calls).
This Super Bowl incident threatens to upend a larger, prosperous, narrative. Travis Kelce, the star receiver of the Kansas City Chiefs (and 34 year old Taylor Swift’s current boyfriend,) was caught on one of the many CBS Super Bowl cameras, physically bumping and screaming in the face of his head coach in a scary moment on the sidelines.
As many respond negatively, many are rushing to the big tight end’s defense:
“Imma clear this up for everybody 😂 kelce was pulled an his back up went in for a run play, his back up missed his block. The guy he was supposed to block hit an caused the fumble from Pacheco. Kelce was angry because he was pulled an his back up did not understand his assignment. Ps… Andy Reid joked and laughed about it after the game. Y’all just crybabies.”
Here’s one of the responses to “crybabies:”
“No surprise the chiefs fans are trying to make this acceptable behavior. Unreal.”
I tend to agree with “Unreal.”
Kelce demonstrated psychotic rage. The above explanation only makes it worse. Players are not supposed to fumble, whether or not someone is blocked. So the wise football guys’ “imma clear this up for everybody” (who are Chief fans, no doubt) attempting to make light of this (obviously Andy Reid had to play down the incident publicly) are enabling scary behavior. For Kelce to approach his coach like this because another player fumbled is paranoid and weird.
An atmosphere of ‘winning’ surely involves players who have passion and are not afraid to be ‘coaches’ themselves, all demanding the best from each other. Football is a complex team sport. I honestly don’t know how much of this psychology angle (used by some Travis Kelce defenders) has merit. Those who believe the Super Bowl was “scripted” say everything we see is fake, including emotions expressed on the sidelines. The team who lost to the Chiefs did seem more somber and less communicative on the sidelines—was this because they knew they were supposed to lose?
Kansas City Chief fans—naturally, this is what “rooting” brings one to—feel the need to bring it to another level. Not only are the Chief fans “winners,” they are morally superior to other teams and their fans. The Baltimore Ravens were ridiculed in their loss to the Chiefs because even though it was pretty obvious the Ravens were the superior team, Baltimore, in a home game, no less, had, according to Chief fans, some kind of emotional meltdown because they couldn’t handle the playoff “pressure,” whereas the Chiefs, the cool gentlemen, could. The Ravens were guilty of “taunting” and “unsportsmanlike” penalties, (15 yards) even though one could see both teams expressing emotion, but in the WWE world of the NFL, the Ravens are the “bad boys” and the Chiefs the guys in the white hats.
The Kelce rage incident gives the lie to the Kansas City and NFL narrative of the Ravens game, which is why Chief (and even Taylor) fans are now falling over themselves trying to justify Kelce’s manic episode, distraught that the NFL and the Chiefs’ carefully crafted noble and upright dynasty narrative is falling apart.
Winning is good. But how much do you need to win?
The Tom Brady v Patrick Mahomes GOAT (greatest of all time) debates are part of the same psychosis, though on a more harmless, nerdy level. Football is a team sport. Unlike a baseball pitcher who can paint the corners and dominate a game, a quarterback depends on a host of players and coaches to succeed. A QB simply cannot—ever—win a game by themselves. In GOAT talk, circumstances and luck (and rigging, perhaps) are ignored in favor of crushing on certain guys who happen to play football, in a manner totally out of touch with reality.
Scarriet 