a thread for mundane ironists

[b]Robert Musil

… for the modern soul, for which it is mere child’s play to bridge oceans and continents, there is nothing so impossible as to find the contact with the souls dwelling just around the corner. [/b]

Next up: the postmodern soul.

… we engage in politics because we don’t know anything. This is clearly revealed in the way we go about it. Our parties exist from a fear of theory. The voter fears that one idea can always be contradicted by another. Therefore the parties reciprocally defend themselves against the few old ideas they have inherited. They don’t live from what they promise, but from frustrating the promises of others.

You know, in a roundabout way.

‘True’ and ‘false’ are the evasions of people who never want to arrive at a decision.

Unless, of course, they mean it.

Life is to blame for everything.

If only so far.

Life forms a surface that acts as if it could not be otherwise, but under its skin things are pounding and pulsing.

So, don’t be fooled. By yours, for example.

…there is a particular propensity in the world for people, wherever they appear in great numbers, to permit themselves collectively everything that would be forbidden them individually.

My guess: for better or worse.

[b]Robert Fripp

A mistake is always forgivable, rarely excusable and always unacceptable. [/b]

You know, if you ever actually make one.

There are no mistakes, save one: the failure to learn from a mistake.

You know, if you ever actually make one.

When music appears which only King Crimson can play, then, sooner or later, King Crimson appears to play the music.

On the other hand, how could that not be true?

Understanding is simple. Knowing is complicated.

Why do smart people still say things like this?

To me, art is the capacity to experience one’s innocence: craft is how you get to that point. Maturity in a musician would be the point at which one is innocent at will. At that point the relationship between music and the musician is direct and reliable. The relationship with music is always mysterious: when it works, you can never tell. You can never guarantee when it’s going to work. You can only to put yourself in a place where it’s more likely to happen.

A classic example of trying to talk about music.

We know others to the extent that we know ourselves.

I know what you’re thinking: What if that’s actually true?

[b]Philip Glass

The work I’ve done is the work I know, and the work I do is the work I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m doing.[/b]

On the other hand: wqxr.org/story/231895-top-1 … ecordings/

If you don’t have a basis on which to make the choice, then you don’t have a style at all. You have a series of accidents.

Let’s make that applicable here.

I’m interested in what happens to music when other people use it. Whereas there are composers who don’t like anyone to touch their music, I think people should because they do things I can’t think of.

Let’s make that applicable here.

It doesn’t need to be imagined, it needs to be written down.

And then posted of course.

What came to me as a revelation was the use of rhythm in developing an overall structure in music.

You know, depending on the context.

If you remember your lineage, you will never feel lonely.

On the other hand, I never feel lonely and I abandoned mine.

[b]God

America: where a black man can’t take a knee on a football field for thirty seconds, but a white cop can take a knee on his neck for eight minutes.[/b]

A political prejudice?

I have lost control of the situation.

Up there or down here?

I should probably wrap this up.

Okay, by you?

Sarah Hegazi is here in heaven as My new Vice-President in Charge of Rainbows.
Fuck every last one of you who drove her here.

You decide: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Hegazi

I’m sick and tired of the media being biased against Donald Trump just because he’s a fucking piece of shit.

Let’s make sense of this.

I’m done with America and looking for a new country to bless.
Could it be yours?
Reply with your pitch.
Winning nation receives My eternal bounty forever and ever.
Second-place wins a set of steak knives.

ABC! youtu.be/wVQPY4LlbJ4

[b]Terry Eagleton

Christian faith, as I understand it, is not primarily a matter of signing on for the proposition that there exists a Supreme Being, but the kind of commitment made manifest by a human being at the end of his tether, foundering in darkness, pain, and bewilderment, who nevertheless remains faithful to the promise of a transformative love. [/b]

Sure, why not.

When one emphasizes, as Jacques Derrida once remarked, one always overemphasizes.

Among others, that would be me, right?

Like all the best radical positions, then, mine is a thoroughly traditionalist one.

Let’s explain this. To me for example.

Ivory towers are as rare as bowling alleys in tribal cultures.

No shopping malls either.

It is false to believe that the sun revolves around the earth, but it is not absurd.

That is true, isn’t it?

The government spokesman announces that there is no truth in the charges of widespread corruption within the Cabinet; nobody believes him; he knows that nobody believes him, we know that he knows it, and he knows it too.

That is true, isn’t it?

[b]Delia Owens

I wasn’t aware that words could hold so much. I didn’t know a sentence could be so full.[/b]

Not unlike many here, he harrumphed.

His dad had told him many times that the definition of a real man is one who cries without shame, reads poetry with his heart, feels opera in his soul, and does what’s necessary to defend a woman.

Of course we know better. It’s just plain unnatural.

Why should the injured, the still bleeding, bear the onus of forgiveness?

Survival of the fittest?

There are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot.

Not counting those who can take them or leave them.

She knew the years of isolation had altered her behavior until she was different from others, but it wasn’t her fault she’d been alone. Most of what she knew, she’d learned from the wild. Nature had nurtured, tutored, and protected her when no one else would.

Not many like that still around.

Time ensures children never know their parents young.

Let alone the parts before they were born.

[b]God

Yes, the Confederate flag is a symbol of slavery, racism and oppression, but it’s also a symbol of losers getting their ass kicked.[/b]

Yeah, there is that.
Next up: Vietnam

Try not to take yourself too seriously. After all, you’re an idiot.

And, no, not just you Kid.

I apologize to some of you for the rest of you.

Let’s decide: Is that good enough?

The last person to disband the police was Sting.

God being clever.

America: where minorities, for good reason, fear their kids getting shot, and white people, for no reason, fear their kids getting shots.

God being clever.

Never in human history have I gotten so many prayers from atheists.

Me? No way!

[b]Karl Kraus

It is either a half-truth or a truth and a half.[/b]

Or, here, 1 truth or 0.999…truth.

Sexuality poorly repressed unsettles some families; well repressed, it unsettles the whole world.

Bingo: Wilhelm Reich

A snob is unreliable. The work he praises might just be good.

You know, hypothetically.

An idea’s birth is legitimate if one has the feeling that one is catching oneself plagiarizing oneself.

Next up: An idea’s death.

One of the most widespread diseases is diagnosis.

Or [here]: One of the most widespread hoaxes is diagnosis.

Art is something that is so perfectly clear that no one comprehends it.

Not to mention the other way around.

[b]Sean Penn

There’s a lot of mediocrity being celebrated, and a lot of wonderful stuff being ignored or discouraged. [/b]

Gasp!

I think we all have light and dark inside us.

Gasp?

If you don’t vote, you don’t matter.

I did vote once.

When everything gets answered, it’s fake.

What do you think, a context?

I think life’s an irrational obsession.

Yeah, but only between the cradle and the grave.

What difference do you think you can make, one man in all this madness?

Do you dare tell us?

[b]Isadora Duncan

The dancer of the future will be one whose body & soul have grown so harmoniously together that the natural language of the soul will have become the movement of the body. [/b]

Nope, not yet. Right?

The Dance of the Future will have to become again a high religious art as it was with the Greeks. For art which is not religious is not art, it is mere merchandise

Nope, not yet. Right?

If I could explain, I wouldn’t need to dance!

So, what’s our excuse?

One might say that the American trend of education is to reduce the senses almost to nil.

Of what need are senses to the wage slave?

I would rather live in Russia on black bread and vodka than in the United States at the best hotels. America knows nothing of food, love or art.

Of course she was born and raised in California.

What one has not experienced, one will never understand in print.

See, I told you.

[b]tiny nietzsche

as long as the parallel universe has cereal, I’m good[/b]

For you though it might be something else.

might fuck around and evolve

Like there’s any other way.

retrograde is in retrograde

Finally.

this abyss is hitting different

Let’s explain why.

me: please wear a mask
horse: I am a horse

Yo, Ed!

we should get together sometime and disappoint each other

In other words, not just here.

[b]Nassim Nicholas Taleb

If my detractors knew me better they would hate me even more.[/b]

Now that’s the spirit.

When you beat up someone physically, you get excercise and stress relief; when you assault him verbally on the Internet, you just harm yourself.

Now that’s the spirit?

The characteristic feature of the loser is to bemoan, in general terms, mankind’s flaws, biases, contradictions, and irrationality — without exploiting them for fun and profit.

Starting now, okay?

My biggest problem with modernity may lie in the growing separation of the ethical and the legal.

Also, you can learn to exploit this “for fun and profit.”

My best definition of a nerd: someone who asks you to explain an aphorism.

Wow. That’s not even in my own top ten.

A good maxim allows you to have the last word without even starting a conversation.

Note one.

[b]so sad today

full of emptiness but it’s fine[/b]

Or at least normal.

in a committed relationship with insomnia

I know: you too.

where’s my award for getting out of bed

And then another for staying out.

depression is a liar but it’s a good one

Lots of practice let’s say.

finger me with a black latex glove in a global pandemic

You got it.

i may not sleep at night but at least i have unexplained headaches

Naturally.

[b]Iris Murdoch

…to be understood is not a human right. Even to understand oneself is not a human right.[/b]

Okay, what’s the Bible say?

Of course men play roles, but women play roles too, blanker ones. They have, in the play of life, fewer good lines.

Let’s count them.

He was a sociologist; he had got into an intellectual muddle early on in life and never managed to get out.

Well, they don’t call them the “soft sciences” for nothing.

Hegel says that Truth is a great word and the thing is greater still. With Dave we never seemed to get past the word.

You tell me.

As we live our precarious lives on the brink of the void, constantly coming closer to a state of nonbeing, we are all too often aware of our fragility.

Yo, God!

A death is the most terrible of facts.

I can think of exceptions.

[b]Robert Musil

Layer by layer art strips life bare.[/b]

Mine? Not even close. But point taken.

Philosophers are people who do violence, but have no army at their disposal, and so subjugate the world by locking it into a system.

Intellectually for example.

Mathematics is the source of a wicked intellect that, while making man the lord of the earth, also makes him the slave of the machine.

My guess: If you let it.

We do not have too much intellect and too little soul, but too little intellect in matters of the soul.

For starters, let’s find mine.

He who is allowed to do as he likes will soon run his head into a brick wall out of sheer frustration.

I’ll take my chances, he insisted.

A politician who climbs high over the bodies of the slain is described as vile or great according to the degree of his success.

Yes, but only in the real world.

[b]Philosophy Tweets

“One eye sees, the other feels.” Paul Klee[/b]

Or, for some, the other way around.

“A line is a dot that went for a walk.” Paul Klee

And not just around the block.

“What the eye doesn’t see and the mind doesn’t know, doesn’t exist.” D.H. Lawrence

And not just philosophically.

“I do not believe that a world without evil, preferable in order to ours, is possible; otherwise it would have been preferred. It is necessary to believe that the mixture of evil has produced the greatest possible good…” Gottfried Leibniz

On the other hand, there’s not much that isn’t believed by at least one of us.

“Philosophy consists mostly of kicking up a lot of dust and then complaining that you can’t see anything.” Gottfried Leibniz

Or, here, shit.

“If you are unable to find the truth right where you are, where else do you expect to find it?” Dogen

Where it actually is?

[b]Robert Fripp

I recommend my students not to be professional unless they really have to be. I tell them, ‘If you love music, sell Hoovers or be a plumber. Do something useful with your life.’[/b]

Let’s imagine their reactions.

…a professional musician in a symphony orchestra is playing Beethoven. But this particular orchestra have played this particular chestnut so many times, they can play it in their sleep. Does the genius remain present in the music or not?

Let’s decide if this is a trick question.

My life as a professional musician is a joyless exercise in futility.

Let’s decide if this is a trick answer.

What we hear is the quality of our listening.

Or here the quality of our understanding.

According to USA today, the average length of an attention span of a man in America is 23 minutes.

This time, you Google it.

In terms of an identity, an identity reflects an individuality, by definition. And, if there is a quality present, it is recognizable and it can be named. If you can’t name it, it means you don’t recognize it.

As a philosopher, he’d make a great musician.

[b]Philip Glass

Traditions are imploding and exploding everywhere - everything is coming together, for better or worse, and we can no longer pretend were all living in different worlds because were on different continents. [/b]

Among other things, no fucking way.

But the difference between the little pieces and the big pieces - I’m not actually sure which are the little pieces. With some of the big pieces, it’s a lot of musical running around, whereas the little pieces, you can say everything you want to say.

Next up: big posts, little posts.

I’d say it’s just part of the world that we live in; it’s part of the music world.

You know, like everything else.

I’d say the differences are more interesting than the similarities at this point. Certainly no one would ever mistake my music for Steve Reich’s.

Let alone Steve Roach.

The generation of composers that are just preceded me, people like Karlheinz Stockhausen, Pierre Boulez, and, well, John Cage for that matter, Morton Feldman … That was a kind of experimental music that was very isolated. It had no real public.

Does anyone here not understand why?

I, as a young guy getting out of music school, I didn’t like the prospect of spending my life writing music for about 200 people.

I might have been one of them.

[b]Philosophy Tweets

“I think you should be serious about what you do because this is it. This is the only life you’ve got.” Philip Seymour Hoffman[/b]

And, no doubt, it was the only life that he had.

“Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

And if that was actually true?

“What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

He begged to differ. And then some.

“Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.” Oscar Wilde

So go then!

“Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.” Oscar Wilde

Yo, Mr. Objectivist!

“To hold a pen is to be at war.” Voltaire

Or, here, a keyboard.

[b]John Cage

There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time. There is always something to see, something to hear. In fact, try as we may to make a silence, we cannot.[/b]

And the children of a lesser God?

I can’t understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I’m frightened of the old ones.

Why make a distinction at all?

The act of listening is in fact an act of composing.

Or here: The act of reading is in fact an act of posting.
I know: shudder to think.

When you start working, everybody is in your studio—the past, your friends, enemies, the art world, and above all, your own ideas—all are there. But as you continue painting, they start leaving, one by one, and you are left completely alone. Then, if you are lucky, even you leave.

Let’s make that true here too.

If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, then eight. Then sixteen. Then thirty-two. Eventually one discovers that it is not boring at all.

I dare you to prove this.

If my work is accepted, I must move on to the point where it is not.

No, he really meant it.