<nettime> there's a beat fascism?

[Jack Shea <jshea@dial.pipex.com>]

You make me happy, Rinaldo.  I don't know exactly why but it makes me feel
good to read what you write even though I don't understand half of it. 
You have some crazy ideas!  As a drinker of oriental philosophy all I can
say is that for me it is an antidote to the mind-control mass hypnosis of
science, politics, media, art and religion.  The philosophy, the authentic
juice, is within the religion, at the core.  Like in science.  Read
Einstein and Hiroshima becomes an even greater travesty, if such a thing
is possible.  A beautiful idea gets turned into a meat grinder.  You no
doubt remember the Borgia popes.  Corrupt devils all.  But their evils
don't erase the truths spoken and lived by Jesus.  I did some research
into world religions some years ago and discovered that the essence of
every single one of them, without exception, was a recognition of light as
synonymous with truth.  Not a metaphor for truth but truth itself.  Think
about that one for awhile.  Anyway, the hierarchies, silly costumes and
Monty Python funny walks which devolve once the words of great teachers
like Jesus fall into the hands of us folks whose mothers weren't virgins
is just the visible evidence of human frailty, stupidity, greed and
short-sightedness.  Girls just wanna have fun! 

Siddhartha was a warrior king.  But Buddha was not Siddhartha.  Buddha...I
can't say it without laughing at myself.  Buddha is The Eagle's
Emanations, big light fibers stretching throughout the universe infinitely
in every direction hooking us all up on the greatest internet fabric
imaginable.  Email all the time, thumpa thumpa thumpa, keeping the heart
going, gobbling us up at road's end.  I don't pretend to understand it but
it appeals to my sense of the cosmic, the ridiculous, and on a root level
I believe it's real.  Too much communion wine maybe in my altar boy days,
too many special effects blockbusters now. 

For me, when poets start talking politics I leave the room.  The whole
idea of knocking down nuclear states with iambic pentameter or beat
chant-chorus is absurd.  The pen is mightier than the sword only when in
the hands of Bruce Lee or Jean-Claude van Damme.  In hand to hand mortal
combat the guy with the Bic always loses to the guy with the Kalashnikov. 
Now poets as prophets is a different thing.  The writing on the wall!  But
states collapse from their own weight, not because we throw the alphabet
at them.  The fabric of society is so dense, with so much momentum, we're
all really just along for the ride.  Even the guys who think they have
their hands on the wheel.  Especially the guys who think they have their
hands on the wheel. 

I look at guys like Nietzsche as interesting examples of human capability. 
I look at everyone that way.  A little Shakespeare please:  "Life is but a
walking shadow, a poor player who struts and frets his hour upon the stage
and then is heard no more.  It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound
and fury, signifying nothing."  That last "nothing" resounds like the
biggest bell in creation, full of echoes and tingling mystery.  Strangely
satisfying.  A very oriental idea when you think about it, from the mighty
pen of an Elizabethan Englishman who never left England.  OK, OK, the pen
is pretty mighty in certain hands. 

But I draw the line at Beethoven!  You leave him alone!  He was deaf for
God's sake!  He transcribed the voices of angels!  And check out an Arthur
Miller play called "Playing For Time".  It's about a group of Jewish
female inmates at a Nazi concentration camp who had all been members of a
symphony orchestra before their imprisonment.  With their heads shaved,
dressed in those horrible uniforms, they played Beethoven ...and Vivaldi,
Rinaldo, Vivaldi...to the concentration camp officials and saved their
lives thereby, and survived to have families and children.  The pleasure
they gave their jailors through Beethoven's music got them through.  True
story. 

So long buddy, Jack


---
#  distributed via nettime-l : no commercial use without permission
#  <nettime> is a closed moderated mailinglist for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: majordomo@desk.nl and "info nettime-l" in the msg body
#  URL: http://www.desk.nl/~nettime/  contact: nettime-owner@desk.nl