Contemplatin' the Mysteries

For Daniel Garner et al

The worst words you can hear coming out of my father’s mouth are, “This may sound maudlin…” But halving been Spiritualized, shoved down, knocked around, still lacking for an ideiaIway to keep track to the trace of Anatoly Solonitsyn’s absence from The Sacrifice, why not let’s Let it Come Down with contentement tu attendis Ceremonies of the Hanging.

Let us quote Goethe[i] and Gidget[ii]; Hard Target and Tenet[iii]; Time Bandits[iv] and Blue Velvet[v]; Beckett[vi] and Jimmy Buffet[vii]; Hazlitt[viii] and Hamlet[ix]; Dammit Janet[x] and David Mamet[xi]; Parfitt[xii], Pickpocket[xiii], and You’ve Got Her in Your Pocket[xiv]; Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit[xv] and Mack Sennet[xvi]; Sir A.J. Legget[xvii] and Love Minus Zero No Limit[xviii].

The Substack constituency is no doubt over-served by descriptions of the trivialities and triumphs of the small press writer’s ongoing projeté, titled, often as not: “A Participation Mystique of Transcendental Miserabilism in The Palace of the Parking Lot of Me.”

Quand tu travailles en tant qu’anttendant de parking long enough yet still manage to declare—in your sewing circle with Sue; in your Planet Fitness steam room, seated adjacent to Salvatore—your profession as: ‘writer,’ you face the well-documented range of responses from:

• The not-so-cunningly charmed: “THAT. IS. AMAZING. But, however, do you have a real job, like I do? [Gricpean Implicature: Or is this some long-running, deep-seeded grift, and if so, who is the long-suffering financier of said fraud?]

• Some similarly-adjacent legacy Lifer of the Mind then tries herself in knots elsif he sweats bullets mediating on behalf of your contribution to the commons, you—the auteur behind Slaughtered Vomit Dolls, for all SalveHistoire will ever know.

The only relevant takeaway is that neither of these Harlequins¹ will Look at the Book.

This week I had one of those rare seismic anomalies of universal reinforcement. Daniel Garner of

O.G. Rose

, a Veronafied gentleman if e’er there was one, knowing well that “They do not love that do not show their love” wrote in a typically thoughtful and generous interpretation of my work, sub-headed, no less “A Stunning Model of Language in a World of Large Language Models” which due to the extreme vacancy of my own personne elle parking lot I will give sufficient space to:

It’s important validation coming from Garner, whose opinions are so well formulated and well-informed by a dedication to always read the book that his Omens of Millenium are perennially found to be in Bloom. (such as this discussion of the need for Plato’s cave dweller to willingly leave the cave, rather than to be led…whereas I’m still stuck on why the cave returnee didn’t just high-tail it for the hills, never glancing once at the rubes in the ‘arrearview mirror’…)

A few days previously, my film partner affirmed some of the more ambitious ideas I’ve been having around our animated feature, Ariel. And to make it all tangible and material, Aristotelis Maragkos, with whom I’d discussed publishing his Timekeepers of Eternity dissertation, sent me the above-pictured VHS tape, which, to a man of my transtemporal vintage, is one of the finer objects I might place on a shelf in community with the writers I have read, the filmmakers I’ve handed my psyche over to, and the musicians who have made the parking lot feel like Another Place, Another Time that Bryan Ferry might elevate to a state of grace, or, when necessary Scott Walker might yet raze.

So like my father failing to heed his own precautions, like The Sandman thanking his friend, Chris Farley, and his medium, The Comedy, humour me as I sing some quick Psalms of Imprudence and Ebullience:

Thank you Donald Barthelme for the conversationalists “contemplatin’ the mysteries,’ in The New Music, ‘contemplatin’ the mysteries.” For the Mud Men in Dib. For the Manual for Sons that becomes ever more instructive when dragging The Dead Father, always eager for, “a quick suck of the breast” about:

“The Dead Father was slaying, in a grove of music and musicians. First he slew a harpist and then a performer upon the serpent and also a banger upon the rattle and also a blower of the Persian trumpet and one upon the Indian trumpet and one upon the Hebrew trumpet and one upon the Roman trumpet and one upon the Chinese trumpet of copper-covered wood. Also a blower upon the marrow trumpet and one upon the slide trumpet and one who wearing upon his head the skin of a cat performed upon the menacing murmurous cornu and three blowers on the hunting horn and several blowers of the conch shell and a player of the double aulos and flautists of all descriptions and a Panpiper and a fagotto player and two virtuosos of the quail whistle and a zampogna player whose fingering of the chanters was sweet to the ear and by-the-bye and during the rest period he slew four buzzers and a shawmist and one blower upon the water jar and a clavicytheriumist who was before he slew her a woman, and a stroker of the theorbo and countless nervous-fingered drummers as well as an archlutist, and then whanging his sword this way and that the Dead Father slew a cittern plucker and five lyresmiters and various mandolinists, and slew too a violist and a player of the kit and a picker of the psaltery and a beater of the dulcimer and a hurdy-gurdier and a player of the spike fiddle and sundry kettledrummers and a triangulist and two-score finger cymbal clinkers and a xylophone artist and two gongers and a player of the small semantron who fell with his iron hammer still in his hand and a trictrac specialist and a marimbist and a maracist and a falcon drummer and a sheng blower and a sansa pusher and a manipulator of the gilded ball.
The Dead Father resting with his two hands on the hilt of his sword, which was planted in the red and steaming earth.
My anger, he said proudly.

For Snow White:

“Well chaps first I'd like to say a few vile things more or less at random, not only because it is expected of me but also because I enjoy it.”

For the top bone-man in all the land, you know him, you love him, take him he’s yours, here he is, The King of Jazz, Hokie Mokie himself:

Well I'm the king of jazz now, thought Hokie Mokie to himself as he oiled the slide on his trombone. Hasn't been a 'bone man been king of jazz for many years. But now that Spicy MacLammermoor, the old king, is dead, I guess I'm it. Maybe I better play a few notes out of this window here, to reassure myself.

For Colby’s inevitable come-uppance:

Some of us had been threatening our friend Colby for a long time, because of the way he had been behaving. And now he'd gone too far, so we decided to hang him. Colby argued that just because he had gone too far (he did not deny that he had gone too far) did not mean that he should be subjected to hanging. Going too far, he said, was something everybody did sometimes. We didn't pay much attention to this argument. We asked him what sort of music he would like played at the hanging. He said he'd think about it but it would take him a while to decide. I pointed out that we'd have to know soon, because Howard, who is a conductor, would have to hire and rehearse the musicians and he couldn't begin until he knew what the music was going to be. Colby said he'd always been fond of Ives's Fourth Symphony. Howard said that this was a "delaying tactic" and that everybody knew that the Ives was almost impossible to perform and would involve weeks of rehearsal, and that the size of the orchestra and chorus would put us way over the music budget. "Be reasonable," he said to Colby. Colby said he'd try to think of something a little less exacting.

Thank you, @thomasjockin, for red-pilling me on font families, and Thomas Pynchon, for Mason & Dixon.

“Does Britannia, when she sleeps, dream? Is America her dream?-- in which all that cannot pass in the metropolitan Wakefulness is allow'd Expression away in the restless Slumber of these Provinces, and on West-ward, wherever 'tis not yet mapp'd, nor written down, nor ever, by the majority of Mankind, seen,-- serving as a very Rubbish-Tip for subjunctive Hopes, for all that may yet be true,-- Earthly Paradise, Fountain of Youth, Realms of Prester John, Christ's Kingdom, ever behind the sunset, safe til the next Territory to the West be seen and recorded, measur'd and tied in, back into the Net-Work of Points already known, that slowly triangulates its Way into the Continent, changing all from subjunctive to declarative, reducing Possibilities to Simplicities that serve the ends of Governments,-- winning away from the realm of the Sacred, its Borderlands one by one, and assuming them unto the bare mortal World that is our home, and our Despair.”

Thank you Karl Ove, for reminding us that:

“Few things are harder to visualise than that a cold snowbound landscape, so marrow-chillingly quiet and lifeless, will, within mere months, be green and lush and warm, quivering with all manner of life, from birds warbling and flying through the trees to swarms of insects hanging in scattered clusters in the air. Nothing in the winter landscape presages the scent of sun-warmed heather and moss, trees bursting with sap and thawed lakes ready for spring and summer, nothing presages the feeling of freedom that can come over you when the only white that can be seen is the clouds gliding across the blue sky above the blue water of the rivers gently flowing down to the sea, the perfect, smooth, cool surface, broken now and then by rocks, rapids and bathing bodies. It is not there, it does not exist, everything is white and still, and if the silence is broken it is by a cold wind or a lone crow caw-cawing. But it is coming ... it is coming... One evening in March the snow turns to rain, and the piles of snow collapse. One morning in April there are buds on the trees, and there is a trace of green in the yellow grass. Daffodils appear, white and blue anemones too. Then the warm air stands like a pillar among the trees on the slopes. On sunny inclines buds have burst, here and there cherry trees are in blossom. If you are sixteen years old all of this makes an impression, all of this leaves its mark, for this is the first spring you know is spring, with all your sense you know this is spring, and it is the last, for all coming springs pale in comparison with your first. If, moreover, you are in love, well, then ... then it is merely a question of holding on. Holding on to all the happiness, all the beauty, all the future that resides in everything.”

Thank you Martin Heidegger for asserting, proximally and for the most part, what poets are for now that:

mortals are hardly aware and capable even of their own mortality. Mortals have not yet come into ownership of their own nature. Death withdraws into the enigmatic. The mystery of pain remains veiled. Love has not been learned. But the mortals are. They are, in that there is language. Song still lingers over their destitute land. The singer’s word still keeps to the trace of the holy.

Thank you Terry Malick,

Caveh Zahedi

, Robert Bresson.

Thank you Charlie Franco, publisher of Montag Press, believer in many, enemy of none.

Thank you to the late Siurong Ker, an environmental lawyer publishing the most unique voices she could with Tailwinds Press, as a type of vocation.

Thank you to you, Mr. Bob.

Thank you Philip Glass, with whom let’s leave the penultimate word:

These are the days my friends. And these are the days are my friends. We could get some wind from the sailboat. We could get the railroad for these workers. We could be Frankie. We could be very fresh and clean. Oh these are the days my friends. And these are the days my friends.

1. “Look at the harlequins! [...] All around you. Trees are harlequins, words are harlequins. So are situations and sums. Put two things together—jokes, images—and you get a triple harlequin. Come on! Play! Invent the world! Invent reality!” - Bad Vlad

[i] “What is not started today is never finished tomorrow.” - Goethe

[ii] I don’t want to be a grown-up. I want to stay a teenager forever. II
“You gotta learn to go with the waves.” - Gidget

[iii] “Chance favors the prepared mind.” - Hard Target

[iv] “If I were creating the world, I wouldn’t mess around with butterflies and daffodils. I would've started with lasers, eight o’clock, day one!” – Time Bandits

[v] I’m seeing something that was always hidden. II “Now it’s dark.”

II I’ll show you the world of a strange dream. – Blue Velvet

[vi] “The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new.”, [title] Samuel Beckett

[vii] Take it all in... it's as big as it seems. Count all your blessings. Remember your dreams. – Jimmy Buffett

[viii] “The art of life is to know how to enjoy a little and to endure much.” Hazlitt

[ix] “The time is out of joint; O cursed spite, that ever I was born to set it right.” - Hamlet

[x] The future is ours so let’s plan it. – The Rocky Horror Picture Show

[xi] “People may or may not say what they mean... but they always say something designed to get what they want.”

[xii] Why should I care about my future self any more than about the future of others? – David Mamet

“When I imagine my death, I imagine a future in which I do not exist.” - Parfitt

[xiii] “Why do you think I do this? To live without belonging.” - Pickpocket

[xiv] Nobody ever told you that it was the wrong way
To trick a woman, make her feel she did it her way – You’ve Got Her in Your Pocket, The White Stripes

[xv] “Self-consciousness is desire itself.” II “Self-consciousness is desire itself.” – Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit

[xvi] “A pratfall is better than nothing.” II “If you've seen one Keystone Cops movie, you've seen them all—and yet, you can't stop watching.” II “Tragedy is a close-up; comedy, a long shot.” II “Give the people what they want, but never what they expect.” – Mack Sennett

[xvii] “Superfluidity is not just a property of liquid helium; it is a fundamental phenomenon of quantum mechanics.” -Sir Ian Leggatt

^r “My love she speaks like silence.” II “She knows there’s no success like failure, and that failure’s no success at all.” II“S tatues made of matchsticks crumble into one another.” – Love Minus Zero, No Limit -Bob Dylan