Some philosophy...

“'Oh, my friends,' he sometimes cried in a moment of inspiration, 'you can't imagine the sadness and resentment that fill your soul to overflowing every time a great idea you have long revered as sacred is taken up by some bunglers who drag it out into the street to fools like themselves, and you suddenly come across it in the flea-market unrecognizable, bespattered with mud, set up in a ridiculous fashion, at an absurd angle, without proportion, without harmony, the plaything of stupid children! No! It was different in our time and it wasn't that we strove for. No, no, not that at all. I don't recognize anything anymore... But our day will dawn again, and again we shall put on the right path everything that is tottering and unsteady. Otherwise what is going to happen?'”

p39- 40 The Devils, Fyodor Dostoevsky

I am quite between agreeing with Dostoevsky and some others. See, Dostoevsky's life forced him to see the world in an overshadowed frame but what do we see when mankind has been released and his idealism is made to shimmer and glow? What if his background is different? Can he not bring light that is unseen to others?

“Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away. It is not important that he should mature as soon as an apple-tree or an oak. Shall he turn his spring into summer? If the condition of things which we were made for is not yet, what were any reality which we can substitute? We will not be shipwrecked on a vain reality. Shall we with pains erect a heaven of blue glass over ourselves, though when it is done we shall be sure to gaze still at the true ethereal heaven far above, as if the former were not?”

p210-11, Walden; or, Life in the Woods, Henry David Thoreau

Sometimes one has to wonder, that the world isn't all that a welcoming place if two men can come to such different conclusions. One is despairing and seems lost in the firmament of imagination and the other has found truth in the world around, and has found wealth in a sense of humility and natural understanding. I always prefer the latter, for the latter is a better way to be as far as I can tell myself. The former seems more or less likely to end in self-effacement whereas the latter leads to self-understanding and a sublime vision of the world around ourselves. I thought the comparison needed to be made.

Anyway, I was writing at work the other day. It was really busy and my friend had gone home unwell, but I was absolutely determined to write because I had that urge inside me. I must speculate that if anyway walked past me whilst manically typing at the desk they could have either been frightened or caught up in admiration. So I'll copy it down here, for posterity:

“It is man's consolation that the future is to be a sunrise instead of a sunset.”

- Victor Hugo

To be lucid, to be free of panic and anxiety, is a good way to set a path that is narrow and fair, but it is also to lose a charming aspect of character. In fact, I've always found that the person wearing those worried shoes usually finds most to live for. It's always more excruciating that way but life seems to be at its richest and brightest when one finds calamities and misfortune to overcome. The writer must ask: would the reader prefer a simple and pleasant pastoral or a narrative riddle with moral obscurities and difficult scenes? The same seems to apply to life. My own existence is timid and often frantic, and I often feel perplexed by human nature when compared with inner idealism. I look back at hard scenes and occasions of hopelessness and feel like I have transcended them somewhat. It is difficult to agree with someone when they tell me how good a worry-free life is. It seems like posturing to me. Sure, everyone knows that life can be simple and its fruits can come quite easily, its days being agreeable and pleasant, but is that what makes a man? Is that what makes a life worth living?

Anyway, the question is no longer as pressing as I thought. Life teaches you things as you move forward so I will dwell rather on my own musings on music and literature. Perhaps I will start drawing illustrations again and practice songwriting, or go for exhausting walks in the countryside and enjoy the rawness of the human experience. The most pressing issue is not precisely what I spend my time doing, but that I do something, and that something might later characterize me and make my life more wholesome and meaningful.

“God manifests himself to us in the first degree through the life of the universe, and the second degree through the thought of man. The second manifestation is no less holy than the first. The first is named Nature, the second is named Art.”

- Victor Hugo

Years ago I wrote pieces on songwriting, usually quite self-conscious and referring almost entirely with subjectivity to the music and how it impacted upon me personally. I liked it that way. Too often I read reviews and gather the impression that feelings have come to have approximate measurements and that the intellectual or musical quality is a pivotal element of what matters. That simply isn't always true. Music can sound strange and unusual and still make sense. It can capture the essence of something that cannot be expressed otherwise. Musical expression can make the blind man understand what could never be expressed another way. Ideas and impressions, though not as eloquent as we would like them to be, are valuable regardless. They give us all some ground to stand on.

The growth of humanity seems to be based upon the existence of mutual feeling and a sense of connection. For the illiterate, the overly-reserved, the damaged folks in this world, we have music and plain speaking art all stemming from the same matter. Art exists and flows at first from one insignificant stream into rivers which cut through valleys and then finally roll together into one ocean, and with every year that passes the process continues and the way I understand it, just like the ocean it is there for everyone to finally comprehend. It may be derived from nothing, or from everything. Choose how you would like to look at it. I believe that it comes from a human spirit that craves understanding in this mixed up existence. In these latter days it seems that art has diminished sometimes but has really just taken on a new and unusual form.

I sometimes think that this reflects a symptom of latter-day emptiness and lack of fulfillment. And it doesn't make a beggar of belief, that; the world these days has become a place of diminished self and blasted community. But just because we are going through this change does not mean that it needs to continue. It often happens when we least expect; the radical change that eases an overall pain and sense of degradation and loneliness. Humanity is perhaps lost, but it is far from true that faith is lost as well. It is latent, like a love that has been buried because of an overwhelming feeling of solitude. I believe that humans are linked through spiritual ties so resilient, developed and purposeful that the idea of them becoming meaningless is incredulous to me.

I would like to resists popular notions of respect and adopt a more organic, true-to-life type. That is, human sympathy based on actual compassion rather than the kind that is self-rotational and fixated on certain goals where the gravity is restricted to oneself and a close few. See, that isn't reality, and if I can't live in a reality then I would feel more lost than ever. There are symptoms in our society of emotional and spiritual deterioration, signs of a nervous disposition; signs of a world about to change, a new time yet to dawn. The emptiness around usually encourages a positive change.

The poverty-stricken are always a little wiser than the folks to sail high above, on a wave of false prosperity. Human dignity is always most precious when it is hard to see a future for it, when it is as weak as a sapling trying to survive through a harmful winter. Humanity at its most decent and purposeful moment serves to redeem those folks from situations they shouldn't find themselves in the first place. This all seems simple enough and logical if we try to realize that human dignity and happiness really depends upon the happiness and company of others.

I see man as a brother and a savior, and I see the world as a place to be cultivated and to learn much from. I feel wealthy in my understanding that this life is not the last and is not the only life there is. This life has a purpose and that purpose is philosophy, conversation and essential moments of serenity and feelings of familial connection. The essence of my life may seem narrow and limited to some but when I regard the light upon a horizon and the taste of the morning on my tongue, the magic of music and ideas... Well, I begin to feel that my world is not narrow and limited. It is, as a favorite musician of mine writes, “limitless and pernicious” (Transjordanian Blues, The Mountain Goats). And, though those qualities are foreboding and unpleasant to swallow, they are an essence of life and being which serve a purpose.

One may respond that the purpose is not always pleasant and justice is not always carried out, and the result is can be compared with a solitary and neglected orphan. Or maybe even a child who makes it to become an adult but winds up feeling broken, tethered and worthless. Yes, these illustrations may give us the impression that the world is an unpleasant and uncompromising place to be, but that seems to be the price of existence. And it is much our fault as it is anyone's. Provision is made, it just isn't always shared. The limits seem set so high that cowering in the doorway is all that one might be able to do, never to see the light of day.

As much as can be gathered, the general feeling, the mutual one, is that purpose if what we live for. God is an aura that we live within. God is found in oneself or in the self that we dream of being and seeing in our friends. God is even that essence that we seek and find in our neighbors and strangers. God is that inexplicable, , that unconquerable essence of nature, at once so harmful and belligerent, and all the while calming and capable of offering the only spiritual rest and consolation.