14
The symphony started out with a few good ideas,
but the longer it went on the more the composer seemed to be running out of
them until, towards the end, one was grimly hanging on and wishing the music
would hurry up and finish. Alas, as though from perversity, it seemed to take
an eternity to do so! The longer one had to persevere with its want of
interesting ideas, the more contemptuous of it one became. I began by thinking
it was the work of a contemporary composer, possibly British, but it turned out
I was wrong. Just another horribly tedious overblown composition by what I took
to be a brass-ridden jerk, who turned out to be none other than Gustav Mahler.
And the symphony in question was his seventh.
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The day, none too smart, was weak and bleak as
I looked out of the window and wondered how long it would take to turn strong
and allow me to sing my song without appearing pretentious or obliged to sink
into a dirge that would be no more than a reflection of where the day was now
at, without the consolation of promise or trust.
The river of my imagination rushed headlong
towards the yawning precipice, but appeared to recoil on the brink of
annihilation as though in dread of what lay ahead, before plunging over the
edge into the cauldron of foaming spray from which there would be no return. I
stared aghast as the fall claimed its water and the heaving flanks of what was
once a proud river capsized into the descent that rapidly ensued. With heaving
flanks, I say, the river had rushed towards its nemesis, plunging over the
precipice into the raging cauldron that ceaselessly and mercilessly churned
whatever water fell into its rapacious clutches with a frenzy born of
desperation, before the rapids took over and carried away the foaming remnants
of the once-proud river without so much as a moment's hesitation.
Only men of a certain stamp can live with the
windy cries and plaintive moans that, like so many agitated ghosts, command
these attic heights so far removed from worldly norms and the stolid
complacency down below. Philosophers and poets accustomed to metaphysical
musings on gusts of windswept thought!
Where once I took a philosophical
approach to poetry, I have since taken a poetic approach to philosophy, like
Nietzsche before me, the philosopher-artist par excellence.
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Are not the Mozarts,
the Beethovens, the Brahmses
of our day if any such there be not those who are at the cutting edge of
instrumental technology, using the most up-to-date or efficacious means to
compose and perform their music? Hardly writers for the
conventional or classical orchestra, with its acoustic limitations, but users
of electric or electronic instruments, including, not least, guitars and
keyboards. And what goes for composers must surely apply to writers and
artists as well?
The question for writers is whether their
writing is a liberation from self or a journey towards self, which is a
distinction, I would guess, between objectivity and subjectivity, female and
male creative values, whether in regard to drama (female objectivity) or
fiction (pseudo-female pseudo-objectivity) on the one hand, or to poetry
(pseudo-male pseudo-subjectivity) or philosophy (male subjectivity) on the
other hand. For me, writing has increasingly become, with the passing of time,
a journey to self, as to self-realization. Hence Centretruths Inner Journeys to the Centre of Truth, which is to be found in
the self of the metaphysical male.
Those who don't write with gender in mind are
akin to androgynous liberals who tend to regard people as the same,
irrespective of gender. Either that, or they unconsciously write from a male or
a female standpoint for other males or females without being in the least aware
of it, overlooking the fact that many if not most females in the male case and
males in the female case will not be served by their writings but, in all
probability, will be left cold or simply alienated.
Writing with gender in mind is even now
comparatively rare, albeit we live in a post-atomic age in which the atom has
already been split and, in consequence, it behoves those of us at the cutting
edge of literature or literary productions to reflect that fact, with
predilections which are appropriately post-worldly and even
pro-otherworldly/pseudo-netherworldly in their
accommodation of a gender-divisible Saint and (neutralized) Dragon-like
structure comprised of metaphysics and pseudo-metachemistry,
with the former unequivocally hegemonic over the latter in view of the triumph
of transcendentalist ideals. World overcoming, to use a Nietzschean
expression, cannot be effected except on the basis of an approach to thinking,
as to writing, which is post-atomic and therefore arguably orientated towards a
protonic/pseudo-photonic detachment from neutronic and electronic complications of the sort which
make for worldly atomicity.
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If the 'common man' female as well as male
wasn't generally so detestable, it would be easier or, at any rate, less
difficult to sympathize with him. Alas, it is a rare talent that makes the
welfare of the 'common man' his raison d'κtre, actually doing something to help
him or at least acting in the belief that what he does is actually helping him rather than simply interfering or
reflecting a delusional ideological standpoint orientated towards 'world
betterment', a term that doesn't imply 'world overcoming' but, rather, some
presumed improvement of how things actually are in the world generally, without
putting the emphasis upon otherworldly values. In other
words, a secular ideal that, in the nature of such ideals, can only be false.
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