WARNING : Experimental prose ahead. Don't read if you're sens...

WARNING : Experimental prose ahead. Don't read if you're sensitive

from: Xal
15 Sep 2007
09:57:40 -0500
87.234.124.13

Insight : Most of the class of interesting writers have an urge to write about writing. I think for instance of Stephen King, who has a most obsessive fixation on the act of writing and the profession of 'author'. I think too of Paul Auster, who features authors of some kind in many of his novels, even going as far as to feature an author called 'Paul Auster' in "The New York Trilogy". I think I know why. It's the ancient idea of recursion, that fascinates me. I have been interested in music and 'oddball writing' for lots of my life. So, there I tend to be attracted to people who incorporate some sense of self-reference in their works : J.S. Bach, Frank Zappa, Doug Hofstadter, Robert Anton Wilson, Richard Strauss...etc...etc.etc...It's also why math fascinates me so much....Read "Gödel, Escher Bach" if you want to understand this. I wonder if this is an universal phenomenon, too in areas that are more remote to my direct interests.....I like reading "normal" weird authors, i.e. those that are not in the "recursion fascinated" people. But they count as 2nd rate in a way. However, I wonder if in those arts there's also a fascination of some of their more prodigious exponents with ideas of recursion. Here I think especially authors like Paul Auster and Stephen King fit in, even though they might not realize it in an explicit way....who knows.... However, the music is so nice....why waste effort in putting those thoughts to paper. You know, in the end it's completely useless anyway, since you're not going to get another person to natively understand YOUR reality tunnel. On the other hand it's interesting anyway, because reading people who express themselves from a passion, teaches you to get to know tham and to kind of see things through their reality tunnel. I think I have this with my favorite artists.....I kind of know some coarse-grained version of what it is to be Frank Zappa. Don't think I'm deranged by using this kind of terminology....Doug Hofstadter uses the exact-same metaphor with regard to coarse-grainedness etc. in "I am a Strange Loop". If he can get away with it, I deserve to, too :) Anyway....there you are. I think one of the things about modern authors is that they were stoned out of their gourd on _some_thing when they wrote their stuff....You need to know how it is to be stoned if you want to understand writing of people like Hunter Thompson, RA Wilson, and I expect also with Joyce....the kind of jumping from association to association and juggling symbols and images around and around and around. This prose is getting weirder.....Spinning out of spinning out of controooooollll It's fun, however, because now we get into the kind of meta-state where you are observing yourself spacing out and writing associativily to the poor sucker who is reading this and wondering what the fuck I was thinking when I wrote this.... Do you see what I mean with recursion ??? Yes you ! I'm talking to you... You will be reading this (have been reading this) and just reading it as some kind of information....like you read a brochure...it's impersonal, dead....only pictures and text. Then suddenly, the brochure starts talking to you. Imagine that ! A brochure starting to talk to you. This must be disturbing. However, it is happening to YOU right now, because I am directing me directly to you now....so pay attention :D I am not making this up, you know.....Stephen King does it an awful lot in his books....just addressing himself directly to you, the reader.....This is an interesting thing about it all : I am now telling directly to YOU a story of how Stephen King addresses himself to YOU, directly. Nevertheless, you don't know me or rather I don'T know whom you will be since there are probably a couple of people who'll read this.....anyway, let's say you don't know me as a person or at all so to speak.....you also don't know Stephen King, and Stephen King doesn't know you.....see what I'm getting at It's all coming down to recursion. Not the blood is the life, but recursion is the life. If you think I've gone mad, think of Jezus.... Not, DON'T think of Jezus....think of something fun. If Jezus is fun for you, think of Jezus....if you're a Yogi, think of nothing at all escept your sore muscles. If you're ca Sufi, think of the Guru riding his donkey through a crows. If you're a Zen Buddhist think about the two of your colleagues who are changing a lamp. Enough....this has gone on long enough..... The (ger)Man with the shaking finger is halting this problem..... We are starting to derail seriously and shoot ourselves up into higher realms of consciousness.....I name it consciousness since it is hyper conscious....Recursively conscious so to speak.....conscious of its own consciousness..... Nothing deranged in this....just re-hashing books I read by 'respected authors'.....so ist's halt.... Don' you think you have been reading something 'seriously' intended as ART here....don't look serious...If you think it's deranged, well it IS deranged, but intentionally so....It is all an experiment in literature. Just basic stuff you learn in 1st semester : Just fiddle with the whole setup, turn some knobs, push some buttons, see what happens. 1% of the time something good happens. 1% of the time something really bad happens. 49% of the time something hilarious happens and you'll have a good laugh. 49% of the time something bad happens, but you gat a good laugh out of it anyway.....100% of the cases you learn something anyway. I don't hope you learnt anything by reading this prose....I hope I damaged your brain enough to start thinking and hashing the crap I've been just re-hashing for yourselves. I wish you nothing but the very best in everything you do....Rehashing Twin Peaks' Major Briggs here, but well-meant anyway.

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