Epictetian Preachin'

Here we go, here's a little uplift, to match our weather today:



Oooooh, if only "everyday" felt this good!
Going to go eat goose with friends tonight (my idea),
doing research on Stoic philosophy in combination with Foucault's use of their ethical care of the self,
sat in a park where they were mulching Xmas trees, which smelled better than you could possibly imagine.

Well, I won't bore you with all the rest of my "day, people"-- for it is not your duty to mark down and be concerned with my joys and ills, nor mine to fret and tut-tut over yours. As Epictetus tells us:

But the judge condemns you on the charge of impiety. And did not the judges similarly condemn Socrates? Surely it is no concern of yours...
Your father has a certain function, and if he does not perform it, he has destroyed the father in him, the man who loves his offspring, the man of gentleness within him. Do not seek to make him lose anything else on this account...
Again, it is your function to defend yourself firmly, respectfully, without passion. Otherwise, you have destroyed within you the son, the respectful man, the man of honour. What then? Is the judge secure? No; but he too runs just as great a risk. Why, then, are you afraid of what decision he is going to render? What have you to do with another man's evil? (Discourses, Book III, xviii)

So, if I be condemned, I will not let that affect the respect which I hold for myself, nor will it affect my judgment on what a nice fucking day it is.

Tell the World I Feel Proud About 'Cha

To force a smile onto your face, a handful of reasons for minor celebration in Philadelphia this week:

1) You can now stream (at www.tsopsoulradio.com), all hours and all days, the famed "Sound of Philadelphia".

The Sound of Philadelphia (aka TSOP) is associated almost entirely with Gamble and Huff and their label Philadelphia International Records (aka PIR).


Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes, "Tell the World How I Feel About 'Cha Baby"

Philadelphia International Records, of which I have spoken to you before, is proudly displaying their archives, like a musical peacock.

Some of this stuff, I imagine, is otherwise only available on vinyl or even 8-track.
I have already streamed it on my IPhone; it was easy. I had to download an app called Shoutcast, which lets you stream podcasts on a smartphone, more or less.

This is all part of a big push to re-release and promote the great catalog of Philadelphia International Records. This is a back catalog that rivals Motown, no question.
(Do you demand Proof? Scroll my PIR-related archives, or listen to the Shoutcast player embedded above.)


2) The scaffolding is off Philadelphia's city hall, finally. The word "finally" is called for, since this eyesore has been clouding my view of Philly's literal centerpiece for years. As soon as you thought it was down, you realized that it had merely rotated to another side! Scaffolding, of some form or another and on some side or another, has been up since the 80's.
Like the cleaning, the construction of the building dragged on for decades (more info here).
But now both are complete, so tip your hat to Penna and Phila.



3) The hurricane passed without much incident. Sort of a funny thing to note, that an absence, a non-entity, is worth celebrating. But that's how people think, isn't it? People compare purely imaginative "events" (what could have been [= what did not occur] ) and judge which would be really better.

Which of these "never happened" events is better?: if I would have had one samurai sword in 1997,

or two smaller blades in 1999?

Well, it's sort of stupid to even ask. And all such comparisons of purely fictitious entities are just as ridiculous.
You can't respond, "well, the hurricane really might have been worse,"
because in fact, the hurricane really (REAL-ly) Was Not.
There might be degrees of being, but there are not degrees of non-being; that is, there is no meaning in describing things that are not real, as "almost real." And it is yet more foolish to then judge the goodness of these non things, to pick one nothing as "more" something-good than another nothing.

This Is Not A Joke

I've been watching some more movies lately, a few of them Westerns.
Also been listening to almost only old records. A few of them old country.
A nice fit, that.


YouTube video of a fun and funny old tune, "Evil on Your Mind" by Jane Morgan
Download an even better version here: "Evil On Your Mind", Judy Lynn

Most Westerns that I've seen awfully serious, though, and a lot of classic country is joshing, joking around. Not too surprising: why would ('western') film have anything to do with ('country and western') music?
I mean, a silly case in point: old western movies are in black and white; old C'n'W music is neither black'n'white nor in color.
Because music is invisible.
(However, music is not immaterial, or non-physical: sound is nothing but moving air and the vibrations that air causes in your body.)
My point is, the arts don't really have that much in common; they are more distinct than similar.
Which is part of the reason that music doesn't need words, as I boldly and clearly stated in the last post.
Words are poetry, or literature. Music is not poetry, or literature. You don't demand that all your paintings have words in them, do you?



"Keep your Apollonian Narrative off My Dionsysian Body!" That's what I say!

But, that said, if you are going to have words, you might as well tell a story. Country does that: old or new, perennially telling stories. If you must use words, I implore you: instead of mouthing vacuous truisms (which are so vague as to become false), create a character, have interactions that make something happen (but please, don't try to 'make a point', pffff), or at least, crack a joke.

Ideological Pubic Hair: Zizek Enjoins you to Kill All Hippies

Yes, I'm deferring grading, and my super-ego is raging about it.
But you can take a little break with me. Watch the YouTube video below. It is Slavoj Zizek, talking about toilets and pubic hair, and how they both reinforce (or at least symbolize) ideological constraints.
No, honestly, that's what he says.



and yes, I am teaching him, and themes just like these, in my class. Right now -yesterday, tomorrow, which added together are today- in my introduction to philosophy class.
I got the book for free too: B O O M .
I said for a while too that I must be Zizek's secret (whoops, typed "sextet": Freudian Slip!) love child. Because we are both hyper.
I also declared, since he has a bit of a tic where he touches his nose all the time, that he had sucessfully passed through oral, anal, AND phallic stages. Where does that put him?

The Nasal Phase!

THINKING WITHOUT THANKING

If you know me IRL, then you have heard me discuss how I am the Second Coming. The Secular-Second-Coming, that is. I discussed it last night in fact, at Alexi's. But I can never remember all the reasons (so many reasons...) that could prove My Divinity to skeptics.
Even the (Re-)Christ forgets things, okay? (It makes it easier to forgive, BTW!)
Here are the reasons that I always remember:
My name means bearer of christ (and who would bear christ more than the Re-Christ?)
Almost nothing bad ever happens to me
I have stigmata: one from an ACTUAL NAIL going through my hand; the other JUST SHOWED UP ONE DAY and has a way bigger/better scar than the nail one
people love the shit out of me
(with this corrolary: while I love everyone, in my own special -often despising- way, Jesus did not really love ALL THINGS, just all people: I love all things, even Us Weekly and dirt, so that makes me BETTER THAN HIM)
I have a beard


((This is Soutine. It is supposed to be a self-portrait, with a beard, but I see no beard... Well, let's cut him some slack SINCE HE'S DEAD))

But just moments ago, I remembered another one, a really key reason.
Everything in my life is connected in a productive way. I don't mean 'connected' as in "Man, my yoga guru and I are like, totally connected", nor do I mean it in the sense that temporally distant and causally distinct events might be thought to 'mean something' or 'belong' together. I mean that something happens- I hear something, I say something, I see something- and then something else happens- I am told something, I am shown something, I post something- and the connection which is established between the 1st and 2nd thing/event is E P I C.

It's like this:
Went to the Barnes Institute the other day. Saw many painters that were new/s to me. One of those was Pacsin. (others of note were Corot, Rouault, Demuth, Sefarbi, Pippin, Glackens, Karl Priebe, Soutine, Settani, Dimock, Wols, and Gritchenko)
Of these, Pacsin may have impressed me the least -- BUT -- there is a Divine Connection lurking...


I went to my WC today, just as I was thinking about writing a lil' weblo' about the Barnes Foundation
http://www.barnesfoundation.org/
(people gotta know, ya know?). In the WC I have a copy of Hemingway's 'A Moveable Feast'. I don't love Hemingway, by the by, this is just a physically small book that will fit in the WC. (I scavenged it from Villanova Katie.)


One that I got recently, too, which makes me more likely to read it (oh, the backlog of books...).
Plop down for a read and what do you think the very next chapter is called? 'With Pacsin at the Dome', that's what it's called. One and the same Pacsin as of the Barnes.
HAH!
The Supremes were playing on the jukebox (hereafter 'juxe') aka ITunes, which is also weblo' material (Past and Future).
Dr.J
and I were just talking about the Supremes here, and she had this genius insight about how the sample in question basically added a comma ('love child' vs 'love, child...') to the meaning. That changed the meaning from a comment about the status of the child, to a comment about the love this child has for someone else.
Then I read the following in my German book (yes, the book from that OTHER blog).

Friedrich the Great was friends with the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn. Let’s pretend this Matisse below is Friedrich the Great, shall we?






And let’s pretend this Cezanne is a young Moses Mendelssohn.

Mendelssohn invited Friedrich the Great to dinner, and was keeping poor Fred waiting. The Great wrote a note and told his servant to place it on the missing philosopher's plate.
The note reads: "Mendelssohn is an ass. [signed] Friedrich the second."
Mendelssohn finally arrives, reads the note, puts it in his pocket. Friedrich says jovially, 'Hey, Moses, what was that note? What did it say?'
Mendelssohn smiles and loudly reads HIS version of the note:
"Mendelssohn is an ass; Friedrich: the second".
Get it? Change the emphasis/punctuation a little, and The Great is just one of multiple asses. (Also densely connected within Blogville because Chet
probably has read this note in the Official National German Archives- in the original German, no doubt.)


See? I was going to write a blog anyway, and then all these other related things pop up to jiggle my memory box and get themselves inserted into the blog too!
And see how then it got WAY BIGGER and then mutated into a blog about how my blogs can mutate into other, bigger blogs?
And when these things come together in a really big, really effective, really truly awesome way, then we have such a greatness that we have no option other than to declare the birth of a divinity.
OBVIOUSLY

(that's El Greco's version of the vision of my ascension. They're trying to take off my clothes! Gasp/Giggle!)



Now, in no way, shape, or form do I think that my Father is GUIDING these things. There is not something or someone planning/directing/guaranteeing this good-into-Awesome development of reality. No, no, three times no. The new Christ is not a piece of a 'tripartite good', but an equiprimordial 'bipartite AWESOME'. Meaning, that my father does not guide these things, but rather they happen simply as a direct causal effect of the ontological depth of my reality. Holier than thou? NO: REALier than thou. I am, in the strict sense, 'more real' than you are: I have more formal and objective reality than you.

Don't get offended- it's a dirty job, but someone has to be the new improved Christ.

I am 'causa sui' (that means 'self-caused') -here, I say causa sui not as strictly as I said 'more real', but close: I am the primary cause of my own increase in reality. Hence the so-called bipartite awesome: I sprang fully formed from my own forehead- also, just heard Missy Elliot say "I don't brag I mostly boast..." --told you it was all related!!!)



Now, if there is not a transcendent/external cause, but an immanent/internal one (immanent to the caused, even- hence the 'loose-sense causa sui'), then you can understand why I stand in no need of a father. The result being: two parts (me as cause, and, me as effect) not three; and no need to go outside of the connected things to find a 'reason' why they are connected.
(An important corrolary of the above is that no things BELONG together, but that many things can be productively combined, which is precisely the means by which I increase my being).
Diana Ross does not BELONG with Hemingway; but she can (as it turns out- you could not have predicted it!) be placed right alongside, or superimposed upon him, and we can then see an increase in knowledge, power, or being (the three being very nearly synonomous: very tightly related).

(The above is Karl Priebe- admit it: you'd never heard of him either.
That is not ACTUALLY a painting of Diana Ross- her hair is not that bad.)

And, to go back to my love of all things, Jesus was a dirty dirty humanist: people are different than, and better than, things, according to him (Jesus= Augustine here; same diff, right?).
But I know (this would be 'The Newest/Bestest Testament') that people are not different than things: people are simply made up of things.
(Trust Me: Spinoza proved this for us.)

In my case, the things of which I am made up of are :
The Supremes,
Hemingway (just a little Hem though),
a really big and badass bookcase,
asphalt,
a selection of works from the Barnes,
coffee (aw, you could tell by this weblo, huh?),
Missy Elliot,
the day of Sunday,
shoes,
ties,
special-bought shoelaces to ghetto-match with my shirts/hats (yup, made of those too),
etc.
etc.
etc.


The above things have a shit-ton of being or reality (or, perhaps a dick-ton: I am willing to admit when I don't know something- I am a modest little DIVINITY after all), especially when combined.
I am nothing but those things of which I am made.
I am made of the above things
THEREFORE
I have a shit-ton/dick-ton of being.
QED



(DEMUTH- I was probably the most taken with him)

(Demuth again duh)




Degas


Matisse


Modigliani



Toulouse-Lautrec


(It pains me to say this, but most of the above pictures are NOT the ones at the Barnes. It was surprisingly difficult to find pictures of the paintings that I remember online; partly because, beyond the Matisses, and the Picassos, and the Cezannes, the Renoirs, etc., most of these artists are not so well-loved and so well-documented that many would take the time to put up significant numbers of their works.
Plus old museum people are scared of the ones-and-zeros.
The last 4 are at the Barnes Foundation; the Great and the Philosopher are as well; the smoking girl is Picasso's and I think there too.)