a thread for mundane ironists

[b]Philosophy Tweets

“Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most.” Fyodor Dostoevsky[/b]

Believe it or not however there are exceptions.

"Metaphysicians are musicians without musical ability.” Rudolf Carnap

Name that tune.

“Despite their pretensions, all of them, the “Fourth International,” “anarchists”, and “ultra-leftists,” are but historical memories, minute scabs on the wounds of the working class, destined to be shed as the new skin readies itself in the depths of its tissues.” Cornelius Castoriadis

Tell that to Donald Trump.

"Revolution does not mean torrents of blood, the taking of the Winter Palace, and so on. Revolution means a radical transformation of society’s institutions. In this sense, I certainly am a revolutionary.” Cornelius Castoriadis

Me too. Once. And look at the world today.

“All things are subject to interpretation whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.” Friedrich Nietzsche

I’ll bet that’s still true.

“He had learned the worst lesson that life can teach — that it makes no sense.” Philip Roth

On the other hand, does that?

[b]Martha Graham

The secret to dancing is that it is about everything except dancing.[/b]

Why do people say things like this, he wondered.

Some men have thousands of reasons why they cannot do what they want to, when all they need is one reason why they can.

Next up: Some women.

What people in the world think of you is really none of your business.

Unless, of course, they either do or do not act on it.

People have asked me why I chose to be a dancer. I did not choose. I was chosen to be a dancer, and with that, you live all your life.

Mystical enough for you?

A dancer, more than any other human being, dies two deaths: the first, the physical when the powerfully trained body will no longer respond as you would wish. After all, I choreographed for myself. I never choreographed what I could not do. I changed steps in Medea and other ballets to accommodate the change. But I knew. And it haunted me. I only wanted to dance.

Biological imperatives as it were.

No artist is ahead of his time. He is his time; it is just that others are behind the times.

And philosophers?

[b]Stefan Zweig

Why is it that the stupidest people are always the most good-natured?[/b]

Ignorance is bliss?

In chess, as a purely intellectual game, where randomness is excluded, - for someone to play against himself is absurd … It is as paradoxical, as attempting to jump over his own shadow.

So, is this true? And how about checkers?

…for the more a man restricts himself the closer he is, conversely, to infinity.

If he does say so himself.

Ah, how fatefully swift is the move from one feeling to another.

So, how fateful was yours?

Art knows no happier moment than the opportunity to show the symmetry of an extreme, during that moment of spheric harmony when the dissonance dissolves for the blink of an eye, dissolves into a blissful harmony, when the most extreme opposites, coming together from the greatest alienation, fleetingly touch with lips of the word and of love.

He doesn’t take the words right out of my mouth.

In their overestimation of the role of civilization, the humanists misunderstand the primary forces of the world of primitive human drives with their untamable violence. With their optimistic view of the role of culture, they trivialize the terrifying, hardly solvable problems of mass hatred and of the great passionate psychoses of the human race.

You come to understand this a decade at a time.

[b]Werner Twertzog

If only the coronavirus could be killed by automatic weapons in elementary schools.[/b]

Only one way to find out.

The judgment of history does not bring back the dead.

You know, literally.

History does not repeat itself, but cliches do, by definition.

Gotta love those definitions!

Never admonish a despot about lies and cruelty, for they are the rewards of power.

If only [so far] historically.

I perform my own stunts. And I am my own ancestor.

Can you say that?

No, Chief Brody,
We do not need “A bigger boat.”
We need, instead,
A more comprehensive
Eschatology.

A bigger soul in other words.

[b]Eva Green

Most of the women in film are there to be beautiful to the man.[/b]

Well, none of that here thank god.

I’ve always felt a bit weird, very shy.

No, we don’t expect you to understand.

I think British men build up the idea of us French girls having some magic extra sex appeal so much, they lose their heads. I can’t really understand the whole thing - but it makes me laugh. It’s such a cliche to think all French girls are well dressed, elegant, sophisticated and sexy. Some are utter slobs, I promise you that.

That’s good to know, right?

I didn’t know about the Bond girl thing. I was approached very quickly, boom, boom, boom, it happened.

Reality. Not much you can do about that.

I’m worried because of my mother, she’s going to see my performance and she’s quite hard. She’s going to see me naked. And my Dad, woah. Yeah, they’re going to see me like a woman, you know?

Reality. Not much you can do about that.

At the end of the day, I choose something that makes my heart beat, that I can relate to, that’s very complex, or human.

I’d hoped she’d say that.

[b]Mikhail Baryshnikov

The problem is not making up the steps but deciding which ones to keep.[/b]

Hey, like we do with words!
Well, some of us.

Your body actually reminds you about your age and your injuries – the body has a stronger memory than your mind.

Among other things [here and now]: “no shit”.

I am not the first straight dancer or the last.

Probably true, isn’t it?

I cannot stand authority.

And he is still around not to.

A country like Belgium, or socialist countries in central Europe spend more money on art education than the United States, which is a really puzzling thought.

Let’s deconstruct this. You know, if it’s still true.

I don’t drink milk, and I don’t eat bread, pasta or rice. But I eat a lot of meat, chicken, fish and salads.

So, what does this explain?

[b]Existential Comics

Conservative politicians are already talking about banning TikTok of all things, because it is “controlled” by China. Imagine when a billion Chinese nationals are on every website defending their government. Free speech in America means only our propaganda is allowed to exist.[/b]

So, is this worth resolving?

“A lot of bad things happened in the early years of the Soviet Union, so we should never try communism again.” — people from a capitalist country that was founded on genocide and slavery.

So, is worth resolving?

Watch out, the far left is indoctrinating our youth with radical ideas such as “actually, it’s bad for people to die because they can’t afford health insurance” and “what if a handful of billionaires didn’t control everything?”

On the other hand, the class struggle…it’s back: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=195848&start=25

I don’t know who needs to hear this, but the fact that people were mean to you on the internet does not constitute a crisis in the principle of free speech.

Except here of course.

Most people’s lives would change a lot more dramatically if they could vote for who their boss is, rather than vote for who goes to Washington.

Hey, how about here?!

Ever wanted to give up all your possessions and live the life of simplicity, like Thoreau?
Well, my brother did just that. Ten years ago. And he still is, living off as little as $3000 a year.

Uh, good for him?

[b]Robert Musil

Anything that endures over time sacrifices its ability to make an impression.[/b]

You wouldn’t think so, would you?
Must be an intellectual thing.

… the novel is called upon like no other art form to incorporate the intellectual content of an age.

On the other hand, seen the best seller lists of late?

For only fools, fanatics, and mental cases can stand living at the highest pitch of soul; a sane person must be content with declaring that life would not be worth living without a spark of that mysterious fire.

How about this: I’ll help you find your soul if you’ll help me find mine.

The proverbial notion of historical distance consists in our having lost ninety-five of every hundred original facts, so the remaining ones can be arranged however one likes.

Going back, say, thousands of years.

… there is no such thing as a rational world and a separate irrational world, but only one world containing both.

Not to mention the other way around.

His answers were quite often like that. When she spoke of beauty, he spoke of the fatty tissue supporting the epidermis. When she mentioned love, he responded with the statistical curve that indicates the automatic rise and fall in the annual birthrate. When she spoke of the great figures in art, he traced the chain of borrowings that links these figures to one another.

That Mars/Venus thing again.

[b]John Sayles

I’ve always felt like I was on the margins. Once upon a time that’s what independent used to mean.[/b]

What’s it mean today? Also, what should it mean?

Assumptions allow the best in life to pass you by.

You know, if only down through the ages.

I don’t have a social agenda. I just don’t choose to ignore what’s in front of me.

In other words, a political agenda.

The hardest thing about movie acting is that if you’re playing a character who changes within the movie, you’ve got to do that, but you’ve got to do it out of sequence, because we never have gotten to shoot in sequence, and that’s really, really tough.

Wow, he thought, I guess that’s true.

We just said, ‘Okay, you’re in the movie. Bring what you would bring for a three-day weekend and I hope you like the way you look in it because once you’re on camera, that’s your wardrobe.’ But it worked; it worked and we were very surprised.

Return of the Secaucus 7, I’m guessing. As opposed to, say Eight Men Out.

I like to act. I work for scale. I don’t have an acting agent. I’m in the book.

Let’s work for scale here.

[b]Doth

What you do at night is between you & your anxiety[/b]

Yeah, it would have to be that way.

I respect the moon because it controls two of our most precious elements, oceans and wolves.

Well, the moon and…the stars?

Be the reason why she speaks a dead language in bed.

You know, other than Latin.

My sexual orientation is an overgrown greenhouse on a haunted estate during a thunderstorm.

Yo, LGBT!

Sex is cool but have you ever laid down in a graveyard just for practice.

Actually, no, not yet.

Be the reason why the lights flicker when you enter a room.

Do the lights flicker here when I post?

[b]John Cage

All I know about method is that when I am not working I sometimes think I know something, but when I am working, it is quite clear I know nothing.[/b]

Not unlike ours here.

Which is more musical, a truck passing by a factory or a truck passing by a music school? Are the people inside the school musical and the ones outside unmusical? What if the ones inside can’t hear very well, would that change my question?

Let’s move on…

I never had a hat, never wore one, but recently was given a brown suede duck-hunting hat. The moment I put it on I realized I was starved for a hat. I kept it warm by putting it on my head. I made plans to wear it especially when I was going to do any thinking. Somewhere in Virginia, I lost my hat.

Next up: his suspenders.

Artists talk a lot about freedom. So, recalling the expression “free as a bird,” Morton Feldman went to a park one day and spent some time watching our feathered friends. When he came back, he said, "You know? They’re not free: they’re fighting over bits of food.

What some call, “the brute facticity of life”.

I am trying to check my habits of seeing, to counter them for the sake of greater freshness. I am trying to be unfamiliar with what I’m doing.

Well, maybe later.

When we separate music from life we get is art.

Ever try that with philosophy?

[b]Terry Eagleton

It is easy to see why a diversity of cultures should confront power with a problem. If culture is about plurality, power is about unity. How can it sell itself simultaneously to a whole range of life forms without being fatally diluted?[/b]

The rest is, among other things, history.

All propaganda or popularization involves a putting of the complex into the simple, but such a move is instantly deconstructive. For if the complex can be put into the simple, then it cannot be as complex as it seemed in the first place; and if the simple can be an adequate medium of such complexity, then it cannot after all be as simple as all that.

Tough one, eh?

It is true that some liberals and humanists, along with the laid-back Danes, deny the existence of evil. This is largely because they regard the word ‘evil’ as a device for demonising those who are really nothing more than socially unfortunate.

He wondered: What if it goes even deeper than that?

The truth is that the past exists no more than the future, even though it feels as though it does.

My guess: there’s a reason for that.

There seems to be something in humanity which will not bow meekly to the insolence of power.

There also seems to be something that does.

Evil may be ‘unscientific’ but so is a song or a smile.

Really, don’t get me started.

[b]God

Which is more oppressive to the human breath and spirit: a mask on the mouth or a knee on the neck? There’s a right answer here.[/b]

You know, if God’s a liberal.

…then Adam and Eve had kids. And their kids fucked each other and had kids. And those fucked each other and had kids. And you are the result.

Comments, anyone?

None of this makes any sense, it really doesn’t.

That can’t be good.

I’m no Hindu, but they have a concept called karma that I’ve really started getting into.

He’s no Buddhist either.

Once you die that’s it.

Now do you believe it?

The President of the United States is a fucking piece of shit.

Now do you believe it?

[b]Ottessa Moshfegh

People truly engaged in life have messy houses.[/b]

Cars too.

Rejection, I have found, can be the only antidote to delusion.

Been there, haven’t you?

Oh, sleep. Nothing else could ever bring me such pleasure, such freedom, the power to feel and move and think and imagine, safe from the miseries of my waking consciousness.

I finally figured this out. You know, unfortunately.

The notion of my future suddenly snapped into focus: it didn’t exist yet.

Or is that the good news?

I was both relieved and irritated when Reva showed up, the way you’d feel if someone interrupted you in the middle of suicide.

For me it was Sharon.

It was lunacy, this idea, that I could sleep myself into a new life. Preposterous. But there I was, approaching the depths of my journey.

Cue the brandy.

[b]Karl Kraus

There is a cultural taste which tries very hard to get rid of the lice in a fur coat. There is another which tolerates the lice and thinks the coat can be worn with them in it. And finally there is a taste which regards the lice as the most important thing about the coat and consequently places the coat at the lice’s disposal.[/b]

What’s the moral of this story?

The real truths are those that can be invented.

Not unlike the lies.

I am not for women but against men.

Among other things, that’s perfect.

Humanity and bestiality: when will the former finally be uttered with the flavor of hate and the latter with the flavor of love? Does a lion tear his fellow lion to pieces?

Among other things, huh?

In case of doubt, decide in favor of what is correct.

Ask Mr. Objectivist in other words.

In a hollow head there is much room for knowledge.

Let’s stuff a few of them here.

[b]God

THE COVID 19

Trump
Bolsonaro
Modi
Khamenei
Duterte
Johnson
López Obrador
Erdoğan
Maduro
Xi
Morrison
Salman
Vučić
Jokowi
Duque
Putin
Piñera
Karen
Me[/b]

You tell me.

I know it feels like the world is starting to spiral out of control, but it was never in control.

He ought to know, He created it.

This hoax needs to stop killing people.

And what if it’s not a hoax?!

FACT:
Covid, like everything in the universe, only exists once you or someone close to you is personally affected by it.
Until then it is imaginary, and other people’s empirical observations of it can be dismissed as a hoax.

The very definition of logic.

This universe used to be really funny until it got all political.

And, I suspect, not just on this planet.

The most useful thing about people is their biodegradability.

Not counting the soul of course.

[b]Wim Wenders

Final cut is overrated. Only fools keep insisting on always having the final word. The wise swallow their pride in order to get to the best possible cut.[/b]

How might that be apllicable here?

The most important question for me when I begin working on a film is where to start.

And here begining a post: why to start.

The Yanks have colonized our subconscious.

The McYanks in particular.

There are a lot of things that dancers can do that actors cannot and actors can do that dancers cannot.

Or: There are a lot of things that scientists can do that philosophers cannot and philosophers can do that scientists cannot.

Before you say cut, wait 5 seconds.

Or: Before you click on submit, wait 5 seconds. At a minimum.

It’s a great lesson in modesty that you realize you’re illiterate in a field that you think you’re an expert in.

He’s talking about me, isn’t he?

[b]Karl Ove Knausgard

I’m not interested in the words or the meaning of the words. I’m interested in disappearing in it completely, to not be aware of yourself at all. That’s the way music works for me. It’s purely emotional. It goes straight to the heart. There are no explanations. That’s just it.[/b]

As it should be.

Saying what you believe others want to hear is, of course, a form of lying.

So you better be good at it.

And it’s a disquieting thought that not even the past is done with, even that continues to change, as if in reality there is only one time, for everything, one time for every purpose under heaven. One single second, one single landscape, in which what happens activates and deactivates what has already happened in endless chain reactions, like the processes that take place in the brain, perhaps, where cells suddenly bloom and die away, all according to the way the winds of consciousness are blowing.

I couldn’t have said it better myself. Though not for lack of trying.

For me, personally, it is very important that the days are exactly the same, so I have routines. I do the same thing every day.

Me too. In fact I’m doing it now.

I have a longing for fiction — to try to believe in it and to disappear into it.

Actually, this is a real condition.

Shame tells you when you’ve gone too far. Then you try if it’s okay to go too far. And it might be so that shame was right. You can never, never know that.

With shame one size never fits all.

[b]tiny nietzsche

consensual abyss[/b]

Cue ecmandu?

find a mountain, find yourself a mountain to die on

Or, if it’s closer, a molehill.

don’t let science stand in the way of dying

Let alone philosophy.

most of the fatalists I know are just lazy

Could it really be that simple?

turns out it was me that was broken the whole time

Yo, dasein!

I sexually identify with mercury in retrograde

Yo, Jacob: refinery29.com/en-us/2020/0 … ng-effects

[b]Jeffrey Eugenides

Biology gives you a brain. Life turns it into a mind.[/b]

Unless of course to nature it’s all the same.

It was one of those humid days when the atmosphere gets confused. Sitting on the porch, you could feel it: the air wishing it was water.

Here, today, in Baltimore, for example.

Can you see me? All of me? Probably not. No one ever really has.

And then there’s my take on it.

There comes a moment, when you get lost in the woods, when the woods begin to feel like home.

Or, here, lost in the words.

Depression is like a bruise that never goes away. A bruise in your mind. You just got to be careful not to touch it where it hurts. It’s always there, though.

I know that mine is.

There are some books that reached through the noise of life to grab you by the collar and speak only of the truest things.

In fact, I once believed that myself.