mixed review 11-19-12 (Rimbaud and Nihilism)

Greetings voidoids it really has been a while, but we're still here aren’t we. It really is wonderful isn't it?
Here we are 2 weeks after the 2012 election a whole new ruleing class rearing reedy to take the helm and drive this titanic empire into one last proud and majestic ice berg. Oh well what did we expect? Change? No, we have learned not to hope for such luxury, no we want the same, the 'Same' is the true king of our electoral system. We all know this intuitively and except it even in the midst of our struggle. This, I say is a deeply nihilistic instinct shared by all sectors of our society. You protest, "no I am resolved to struggle for truth!!!" And I don't deny that, but irony plagues even our deepest convictions, even if we could manage a little consistency in our thought and practice as tax payers we would still be supporters of  death, environmental degradation, the eradication of whole species, infanticide and feticide (abortion), extreme exploitation of both mind and body, extreme decadence of every sort, and even genocide in the traditional sense of the word. Who can maintain integrity in this system? Indeed our most inspired actions can't compare to the destruction we cause as participants in the fundamental meaninglessness of our age, and  extremely savage civilization.

Is this all too much, ah!, I'm just kidding, life is wonderful, and truly everything is eliminated, a never ending overflow of meaning and value, hallelujah! And Amen!

What is a nihilist? Meaninglessness? Documentary film maker Matthew Collings called Arthur Rimbaud a nihilist, I don't know if he really was one, but he certainly plowed into the darkness of human consciousness and serprisingly brought forth fruit, delicious to the ears and mouth.


                                       Arthur Rimbaud's Drunken Morning read by Patti Smith.

Rimbaud was really only a child when he wrote his most famous poems, but as it happens they contain a vast expanse of ageedness. Drunken Morning is an assassin’s poem. It doesn’t murder its subject "my Beautiful! Oh, my Good!" But it announces its far off pending death in the vary presents of its youth and life, that’s Rimbaud's assassin. 

Rimbaud doesn’t seek to win your affections with this poem instead like a propagandist he seeks your terror and resignation. Yes, Rimbaud "promises" "true" love, saying things like "so that we might flourish in our very pure "love", but to Rimbaud, "true love" and terror are one... "It began with a certain disgust, and it ended"... as if hyper-statically united into one essence, this one essence is simple, it is the chaos of all time happening all at once, in the face of one single moment of rapped evaporation, " Since we could not immediately seize upon eternity".

I can remember this thought as a child, that I wasn't going to last forever, and even though I was young I was also vary old, because it was all going to be over very soon. But I am a religious man, and I was a religious child then, so this thought of mortality was fused with a thought of eternity, and so I would turn the coin over, and see the face of eternal life on the other side, and I would then be carried away into a vast expanse of time, never ending and un-defined in its shape, and to my shock this felt like a annihilating fate as wall. I would site in my bed and ponder this for hours and hours, completely terrified by this 'void of heaven.' The 'void of heaven', no one ever told me about the 'void of heaven,' I discovered it on my own, like an explorer far out in some burly wilderness of sea monsters and saber toothed tigers, beasts devouring each other over and over again. I also remember a vision I once had, a day dream really, of walruses piled up 20 feet into the air, all devouring each other, eating each other, over and over again, a true carnival, this picture has fascinated me and terrified me ever sense, not because it's so unreal like a monster on the edge of the world, like some madness creeping up on me, but because I think it is real, in the sense that life is made of death. Even Jesus has alluded to this reality, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit."



I know this bleak path well, but don't think that this is all there is to it. There is a light, because all moments are possibilities of eternity. I mean the pondering of eternity opens to a great meaningless void, yes, but what about the sweet moments of life, what about the great molecular healings of bodies in formation, the turning of sun into chlorophyll, the infinite lapping of ocean waves, these are eternal as well. We've sank just as deeply into these current as any other after all, and did they not take us away into a holy swarm of chaos and divine resolution? There is an angelic exhortation in the simplest of natural repetition, those constant whispers, the beauty of a certain possible future.

The Drunken Boat by Arthur Rimbaud

And Matthew Collings documant of nihilism and Arthur Rimbaud

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Penny Rimbaud of the anarco Punk band CRASS took his name from the precocious 19th centary poet. I love the music of CRASS for its harsh organic chaotic bumbaling diotribes, because its good.

                                         Crass - Christ The Album (UK) (1982) (Full Album)

                                          

Creating voids can also be very unpleasant, sometimes unbearably so, and it can be lethal. I'm not kidding. We're talking about disrupting everything that you think gives your life meaning here!! It's not safe. But on the other hand it can be pleasant, supremely pleasant, the pleasure of real discovery. Revelation!! What I’m talking about here is essentially a leap, almost like a leap of faith. Great joy can be gained from the creation of voids. The trick is making the right kind of space(s) in your life… the right kind of void(s).