Douglas Mercer
June 8 2024
They say that poets and philosophers rule the world and they are right; in our secluded alcoves we do our sorcery and spin our word webs in relative obscurity until the bandwidth become infinite and all the channels are tuned into with a crystalline clarity and the sound and the vision are perfect; the man on the street will call scoff at it but the man on the street is the kindling of history and gets thrown on the fire as failed fodder when the time is right. They say that poets and philosophers narrate the future and they are right there too; supposedly it takes about one hundred years for our words to take effect, though that time span dwindles to the breaking point as the asymptotes close in. This vaunting of the word in the coteries of time and then spilling them over to the general view is the way that the god works or operates. The way the god decided to work in this (the only) instance was to publicize his word through popular song (“soon we will be song”/Holderlin 1802). By, say, 1960, the god had a standing reserve or a pool of thought which more than met its needs, everything was right and ready as rain. But the downside of philosophy is it is the private game preserve of the few, is esoteric and arcane, and is an acquired taste (caviar to the general Hamlet 1603). But everyone must acquire it for the creator is the ruler of the earth and to the ends of the earth his realm will extend; he works by the word and to spread the word to the world he had to force it into the public consciousness, however transitory or fleeting, however the world will see it as a “lyric” and not as the voice of the one who is most high handed. For in the end the world will be electrified; and electric music came into prominence around, say, 1965. The network of prophecy operated at fever pitch for about ten years and then sporadically for another quarter a century or so and has since died (the day the music died) only to be revived and revivified now in explication.
Bohemian Rhapsody
Bohemian: vaguely disreputable, epater le bourgeois, arty, art world, an enclave away from the normal, a congeries of free spirits. Shakespeare (shake spear, shake spirit) famously gave Bohemia a seacoast—or infamously—as if Shakespeare of all people did not know exactly what he was doing—ludicrous notion. For without the fantasy coast how does the lost one make her ever more famous escape? The word must not be landlocked but must have a free outlet to the sea. Bohemia is the world of unconventional and often controversial artists.
Rhapsody: effusive or extravagant discourse, an emotional declamation, an utterance of pure beauty in miscellaneous form often of an improvisatory character. A rhapsode or rhapsodist was for the Greeks a public professional performer of poetry. Wrapped, rapt as in a trance of divine madness. A raptor is a bird (or word) of prey.
Is this the real life?
Or is this just fantasy?
Eternal question. What is real? War is wirklich? (Rilke 1922), what is it?, war is real, war is what works. Plato liked to say that the world we see is not the real world but that the real world is like the flickering of shadows in the grotto, a supersensory world beyond or above the world of the senses (sensory or immersive world). Phenomena and noumenon, the world in our mind and the thing in itself. By his raving end Nietzsche was saying that reality is an illusion, a trick of the eyes or a flame of the mind; the truth is that the world we inhabit is very real but is becoming more real by the second (that is it was less real when you started to read this sentence but more real by the time you finished), becoming is not a change of equal states but a change in quality, and an ascent up the ladder at least for those who seize each moment of time. In the end of course a flat state of reality ensues, and a real bird sings, and if you wonder how I know a little bird of paradise told me last night, word is bird, words take flight in the upper air (ether).
We are caught in a landslide
Landslide: the world of becoming, of falling. “I saw my reflection in a snow covered hill but a landslide tore it down.” Concept of death or destruction of collapsing and what we are caught in by our having been thrown in to the world, everything is passing away.
No escape from reality.
Solid wisdom. Cornerstone of thought. Reality is the universal court of appeal which suffers no revisions to its vision; though in its state of apotheosis a minute will reverse it but then that will be reality too. One can escape from a labyrinth but not reality; if you try to it will be like the quicksand you find yourself in.
So far the song has posited a rather dire situation; man does not know whether to turn this way or that; on all sides is confusion and unclairty; man does not know which way to go or look, he can trust nothing and does not know where his ground is; he suffers change and seems to be heading headlong to a universal dust pile and this cycle of not knowing and death and delusion cannot be eloped from or eluded. Thankfully there is a solution and a rather simple one at that all thing considered, all things being equal.
Open your eyes
You have a face with a view. The eyes are part of the brain and they are marvelous instruments, but of course it’s old hat by now that one may “see but not “see.” As with the brain, the heart, and the ears the eyes have one pesky and unfortunate design flaw: for them to work you have to use them.
Look up to the skies and see.
Looking is the most important thing; looking is all we do in eternity. To look is to position one’s gaze correctly in focus for while it is (at times) easy enough to see what is right under one’s nose it is more difficult to know where to point it; for now where to look (just so you know) is in the sky, the home and the residence and the domicile of the gods. And when one looks to the gods in their eternal habitation what ensues is: you see. When you do you will escape from your landslide; not escape from reality but enter into it as your final and best abode. See? And though it is a plunge there is no need for anyone to toss themselves into the sea; Theseus may have been chary with his love but we have not neglected to turn our masts from black to white.
The Real Life
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Douglas Mercer
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