Dulce et Decorum Est...

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.
Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime . . .
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.

- Wilfred Owen (Thought to have been written between 8 October 1917 and March, 1918)

...and on a Sunnier Note....

I hope my death is not stolen from me
by a fiery blast of Fahrenheit or Celsius
or another calculatable accuracy.

I will gladly relinquish all the pleasures of daily
bread, the pride and dreams of art—even pulse;
but I hope my death will not be taken from me.

Actually, it is a modest policy;
little there to discuss as to solace
or in the way of privacy.

A valued moment of self-possession? Might it be
something to embrace more than to expulse?
I hope my death will not be pried from me.

My end is not to be just a cause in a public sea
of scientists teaming against a disease,
a private point in a welter of piracy.

After all, won’t it fundamentally and rightly
be mine and no one else’s? I hope my death is
not taken from me; better, it be
an appointment kept in a private sea.

- Scott Hightower, "Apocalypse Soliloquy" (1952)

The Looking Glass Existances

Chirality and the Formalized Lacanian Quaternion
Why Question: Why do we encounter the Lacanian subject, the subject of the unconscious, in the very discourse in which it undergoes subjective destitution? (108-109)

Motivational Mechanism: Differences exist in the ways individuals cope with the necessary inconsistencies involved in the act of assuming one and the same universal symbolic feature. (84)

Lacan’s Classic Definition of signifier: that which represents the subject for another signifier. (74)

Symbolic reduplication: The redoubling of an entity into itself and the place it occupies in the structure. (74-75).

Master’s Speech act:
• Level of enunciation versus enunciated content: “A fully realized self contained performative” (76)
• Fantasy emerges to fill the gap between the enunciation and the enunciated content: you are telling me this but why with imperfect fit generating questioning.
o Fantasmatic Formation: Attempts at normalizing the relationship toward the excess.
• The masters discourse relies on the gap between S2 and S1 between the chain of ordinary signifiers and the excessive master signifier.(76)
o Master Signifier: reduction of more complex systems into a simpler holistic response

Position of the agent: (81)
• Master: One who is fully engaged in his speech act…displays an immediate performative efficiency.
• University: Fundamentally disengaged… the self erasing observer and executor of objective laws.
• Hysterical: One whose very existence involves radical doubt… whose very being is sustained by the uncertainty of what he is for the other.
• Analyst: The desubjectivized subject.
o Subjective destitution: Breaks from the vicious cycle of intersubjective dialects of desire and turns into acephalous being of pure drive.
 Acephalous: lacking a governing head or chief.

Primordially repressed: the repression of the secondary signifier i.e. women which then makes its comeback in the return of the repressed. (77)

• Sexual Differences are impossible to symbolize as a symbolic norm. It is because of this gap between the real of sexual difference and the symbolic norms that we have the multitude of perverse forms of sexuality. (82)
o Man: “There are things one should not talk about.” (84)
 Masculine Narrative: “Struggle between the exceptional one and the crowd that follows the universal norm” (108).
o Woman: “One can talk about everything” (84)
 Feminine Narrative: “Shift from the desire to drive. From the entanglement of the other’s desire to the indifference of the desubjectivized being of drive” (108).


Agent Other
Truth Production

Master Signifier S1
Knowledge S2
Subject $
Surplus Enjoyment a

Master Discourse
S1 S2
$ a

University Discourse
S2 a
S1 $

Hysteria Discourse
$ S1
a S2

Analyst Discourse
a $
S2 S1


Matheme of Fantasy: Subject <> surplus enjoyment: $ <> a

Matheme of Perversion: surplus enjoyment – subject: a-$

American Murder Ballads - Twisted Morality Tales?

Memorials to Forever Missing Loved Ones?...or Verbalizing "The Big Other's" Never-Spoken Regrets?

Chronotropic Anachronisms

I knew a man by sight,
A blameless wight,
Who, for a year or more,
Had daily passed my door,
Yet converse none had had with him.

I met him in a lane,
Him and his cane,
About three miles from home,
Where I had chanced to roam,
And volumes stared at him, and he at me.

In a more distant place
I glimpsed his face,
And bowed instinctively;
Starting he bowed to me,
Bowed simultaneously, and passed along.

Next, in a foreign land
I grasped his hand,
And had a social chat,
About this thing and that,
As I had known him well a thousand years.

Late in a wilderness
I shared his mess,
For he had hardships seen,
And I a wanderer been;
He was my bosom friend, and I was his.

And as, methinks, shall all,
Both great and small,
That ever lived on earth,
Early or late their birth,
Stranger and foe, one day each other know.

Henry David Thoreau

3/4-4/3

Polyrhythm is the simultaneous use of two or more conflicting rhythms, that are not readily perceived as deriving from one another, or as simple manifestations of the same meter. The rhythmic conflict may be the basis of an entire piece of music (cross-rhythm), or a momentary disruption. Polyrhythms can be distinguished from irrational rhythms, which can occur within the context of a single part; polyrhythms require at least two rhythms to be played concurrently, one of which is typically an irrational rhythm.Now, "Pass the goddamn butter"

Hot Summer Dreams...

...at 1:10

Speaking in Code; Proairetic and Hermeneutic Lures, Delays and Interruptions

Doing it Yourself

"Ne te quaesiveris extra."

"Man is his own star; and the soul that can
Render an honest and a perfect man,
Commands all light, all influence, all fate;
Nothing to him falls early or too late.
Our acts our angels are, or good or ill,
Our fatal shadows that walk by us still."

Epilogue to Beaumont and Fletcher's Honest Man's Fortune

Cast the bantling on the rocks,
Suckle him with the she-wolf's teat;
Wintered with the hawk and fox,
Power and speed be hands and feet.

RW Emerson, "Self-Reliance"

Dasein's Yin and Yang

Where context becomes everything

Rintrah roars & shakes his fires in the burden'd air;
Hungry clouds swag on the deep
Once meek, and in a perilous path,
The just man kept his course along
The vale of death.
Roses are planted where thorns grow.
And on the barren heath
Sing the honey bees.
Then the perilous path was planted:
And a river, and a spring
On every cliff and tomb;
And on the bleached bones
Red clay brought forth.

Till the villain left the paths of ease,
To walk in perilous paths, and drive
The just man into barren climes.

Now the sneaking serpent walks
In mild humility.
And the just man rages in the wilds
Where lions roam.

Rintrah roars & shakes his fires in the burden'd air;
Hungry clouds swag on the deep.

-William Blake, "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell" (argument)

Losing the Good

For there is nothing which men love but the good. Is there anything?' 'Certainly, I should say, that there is nothing.' 'Then,' she said, 'the simple truth is, that men love the good.' 'Yes,' I said. 'To which must be added that they love the possession of the good?' 'Yes, that must be added.' 'And not only the possession, but the everlasting possession of the good?' 'That must be added too.' 'Then love,' she said, 'may be described generally as the love of the everlasting possession of the good?' 'That is most true.'

Plato, "Symposium"

Moral Paths from Euphony to Cacaphony

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.

- Henry David Thoreau

The Experiments...

What is your name?

The girl squirms, turns toward a ragged boy
standing on her left.
We call her Eva.

Eva. May I call you Eva?

A nod, hint of a smile.

And where are you from?
Silence.
Where were you born?
Confused glance at the boy.
He picks up his cap, rubs his head like an old man.
We're pretty sure she's not from Poland, no way
of knowing, though.

Her parents?
Probably dead, a shrug.

Eva, how did you survive here without
your mother?

She was a twin.

Twin?

Yes, they...keep twins alive here. For a while.

And you, Abram, are you a twin?
For now. My brother's dying over there,
waves toward the infirmary.

Your parents?

Dead. Shot. Wouldn't let us go.
He could be talking about an exam at school.

We need to see my brother
before he dies.
They turn away, hand in hand.

Wait.
I have nothing,
nothing to offer them.
Nothing I can do
to restore their homes, families.
Make them children again.

I dig in my pocket,
find two chocolates.
Shiny gold foil
flashing in the sun.

These are for you.

They accept
with small polite
smiles,
turning back
to the land of the dead.

I watch
as Abram guides Eva
gently around a puddle.

My heart aches.

I turn away.

-Julie Blackwell, "The Twins"

The Solfeggio Frequencies (741Hz)

from Wikipedia

The title (46&2) references an idea first conceived by Carl Jung and later expounded upon by Drunvalo Melchizedek concerning the possibility of reaching a state of evolution at which the body would have two more than the normal 46 total chromosomes and leave a currently disharmonious state. The premise is that humans would deviate from the current state of human DNA which contains 44 autosomes and 2 sex chromosomes. The next step of evolution would likely result in human DNA being reorganized into 46 and 2 chromosomes, according to Melchizedek.

Furthermore, the song references a wish to experience change through the "shadow"; an idea which represents the parts of one's identity that one hates, fears, and represses, this exists as a recurring theme in the work of Carl Jung.

The song is mostly in 4/4 time with some sections of 7/8 in between. In the intro, Danny Carey plays 4 measures of 7/8 on his ride cymbal over the rest of the band playing in 4/4, and they all meet up on the downbeat of the 5th measure in 4/4. During the bridge there are 3 measures of 7/8 followed by one measure of 4/4. During a particular quad fill, the drums are in 3/8, the guitar plays one measure of 9/8 followed by one in 5/8 all while the bass keeps time in 7/8.

Paid Paramours

She's had a long and tragic love life.
Her gifts are on display for all to see.
Her wrath has been the downfall of a few, but she has been the inspiration of many for the longest time.
She is the night sky.
And she is my paramour.

I make it my mission to see her every night.
I ask her all sorts of questions, but she never gives me a direct answer.
Last night I asked her,
'Why can't I feel my heartbeat? '
Her answer was one to stun,
'It is a god given burden for you and a few others to carry, each of you are meant to save someone or something.'

I didn't understand, I thought that the night sky was the only kind goddess around.
But she gave me an answer, and now I know what I am.
I didn't see her again.
I only snuck little peaks at her majestic benevolence and her undying beauty.
She may not be my lover anymore, but she taught me she does not bring the darkest hours.
And while she may be a paramour of my past, she is still my closest friend, physically, mentally, and spiritually.

-Adrian Cordova

The Social/Economic Side of Culture

It is your work in life that is the ultimate seduction.

- Pablo Picasso