thought through song.

After i wrote my last blog on how we should rid ourselves of hollow distraction and resort back to the Golden Age, and a John Prine song came to mind. Here is a you tube link of this song: Spanish Pipe dream (blow up your tv).
one thing though, in this song where he says, "throw away your paper" i dont think he was going on the tangent i was earlier (important to note that i don't actually believe this but) that all literature is a waste of time, rather i think meant just the newspaper because i mean, what is news today really anyway?
Also the other line, that i at first had quarrels with was "try to find Jesus on your own" I remember first thinking "what's this guy a Jesus freak?" but then i remembered that no, John Prine is the man, and the importance is in the lines: "on your own" meaning, find spirituality independently, the way you see it...what a cool guy.

Kill Your TV

-This picture i found, is actually an illustration from probably my favorite book in high school The Monkey Wrench Gang. (For those of you who may have read it -i think thats Doc Sarvis- and damn straight for reading such a good book).

an interesting and amazing thing happened to me today: my TV stopped working. At first i felt robbed, distraught...bored. I tried tin foil, moving the bunny ears around but nothing would restore picture to the one of the four channels i receive. Having no other thing to do, and run to the end of my procrastination rope, i picked up Don Quixote and at first sort of got my feet wet, and ended up just diving in, completely submerged. I now -though i really knew all along- understood what Carly meant when she said that Don Quixote is better than anything on television. Damn was she right, i realize i waste so much time watching horribly dumb shit on TV. And i don't even watch that much TV! but i realized even a half hour, is a half hour not only wasted but half hour of toxin pumped numbly into my face. I do admit that from time to time PBS, throws some pretty good material at it. but its no saving stone.

a side note thats unfortunately depressing: It dawned on me that old Matty Arnold was correct yet possible didn't see the extent of his implications when he said,"More and more mankind will discover that we have to turn to poetry to interpret life for us, to console us, to sustain us. Without poetry, our science will appear incomplete; and most of what now passes with us for religion and philosophy will be replaced by poetry. " how beautiful a world this would be if that were the case, however i don't think he could have foreseen the invention of television for if you look into almost any household, you would see that this statement is true if the TV were the substitute. If money isn't our religion of the masses than TV certainly is.

-back to what i was saying: I've really just found myself in the throws of this book, and when i needed a break i found my hands drifting towards all the unfinished Hemingway i had laying around the house.
One thing though, despite all this jubilation i felt while reading, i realized that i was missing out on something. today while i read and did other schoolwork, all of my friends hiked and skied Bridger. I realize what i was doing was important, but in a sense it was almost as false an experience as watch television. This is the same mentality that Don Quixote shares, although hes obviously well read, he is a man of action. or as he put it on page 475
"no longer does anyone ride out of this forest and into those mountains, and from there tread upon a bare and desolate beach...
...now, however, sloth triumphs over diligence, idleness over work, vice over virtue, arrogance over valor, and theory over the practice of arms which lived an shone only in the Golden Age."

This got me to thinking, if we are to believe as we've learned in class that the ages have steadily declined from Golden to Chaos despite the rise of "technology" then wouldn't it be most noble to resist all technology and resort back to our primal origins? is this blog somehow unconsciously touching upon daemons? if this is all true, are poets all liars as Plato says? and alas...will writing this defense be harder if I'm thinking like this?

In xanadu did Kubla Khan

In class on monday we began talking about the Cave of Montesinos, and amidst the discussion and reading the passage i could not help but being reminded of STC's Kubla Khan or: A vision in a dream: a fragment. Just the description of the cave itself held the same enchantment of the poem, rather i feel the poem held much more. Which is why it stuck out so profoundly. In class we talked of being lost in a book, the poem is in this sense more rich of a piece of work then say a novel for it is a small poem, yet its chasms range measureless to man. I think that the density of it is rooted far more deep/dank in the aesthetic than a windy novel can be, as with Joan's infatuation with pound, i feel the same here. I'm not sure if it's because of my knowledge of the origins of the poem - it came to Coleridge in an opium dream- but the poem itself reads like opium, it reads like a dark cave, a glowing meadow draped in velvet or something. as with many experiences especially pertaining to poetry its hard to describe what it makes you feel, so i suggest reading it, or hearing's on this youtube link i found where David Olney -not that big of a fan, but a good folk singer- gives a dramatic rendition.

sometimes a great notion

Given this assignment, obviously it began as a little hard to really whittle down the material into one point, one point of significance that we or I could call a touchstone. It then came to me that the most important passage i could conjure would have to be the first. The one i lost my literary virginity to...so to speak. Not in the sense it was the first piece of work that i ever read, rather it was the first i truly read and more importantly truly felt, because there is a distinct and profound difference between reading and experiencing a work.
Well the passage i chose is from Sometimes a Great Notion, for those of you who are not familiar it would be hard to appriciate but to give you some insight the story is a modern tragic about an Oregon logging family. The passage deals with the death of Joby, a hilarious character thats hard not to admire for his goodwill and general innocence/ignorance.

I want to go to my new home and put on the clean suntans
Jan's ironing for me and have the twins sit on my belly and
Squeaky show us what she drew today in drawing. And all
them things. I want...cranberries and mincemeat. Oh yeah!
And sweet potatoes with marshmallows-don't laugh- with
marshmallows baked on top and turkey...Don't laugh I want
it again! Don't you laugh it ain't funny never to taste sweet
potatoes baked with marshmallows on top again!

This point in the story is the first time I felt actually emotionally moved while reading, i must have been in six grade crying over a fictional character during silent reading. The passage is -for me- so sad/hilarious/fear and awe inspiring. The last thing you want to see is Joby die, but its so funny to think that hes about to drown, and he can't stop laughing because he keeps thinking of what a sight it would be to see his cousin Hank blowing air into his mouth, as if they were kissing, he can't get over that. Anyway the only way one could really understand what this passage meant would not be for me to paraphrase, rather to read the text itself.

However, this moment was the first, in which i experienced, rather than read literature.