Damyata (control) from The Waste Land

“D A
Damyata: The boat responded
Gaily, to the hand expert with sail and oar
The sea was calm, your heart would have respond Gaily, when invited, beating obedient
To controlling hands”

Thomas Stearns Eliot, from The Waste Land

 

Reappropriating the Word “Authentic”

An interesting thing at the MasT meeting last night, especially for someone who is sensitive to the words people gravitate towards, was the repeated use of the words “real” and “authentic” in regards to how being in an absolute dynamic made one feel.

“Authentic” is especially interesting for me, as it is a key word in Heidegger. And while it’s one that a fair number of so-called Heideggerians avoid as much as possible to me it’s not a concept that can be lifted from Being and Time without leaving the book bereft of much of its import. With authenticity Heidegger is describing a state where one returns from one’s lostness in the world and consumption by the they-self. This consuming by the they-self is not something occasional, accidental, or to be avoided. It is simply a needful mode of being when one’s concerns and cares have to come first, and one cannot take the time to return to a more innate way of being. To make this more understandable, a carpenter may have all kinds of personal quirks and interesting features as a person, may think widely on all types of subjects and experience varied phenomena. But while involved in concernful carpentry he needs to be a carpenter, not just first, but from first to last. For the duration of his being-in-that-mode he cannot be a unique person, he has to be ‘a carpenter’ as fully as possible in order to do the work as well as possible.

Inauthenticity then is not something to be avoided. We all need to be “something” generic for certain periods in order to accomplish what’s needful in our world. It becomes an issue, though, when this temporary self-identification with the generic becomes constant. Out of fear of the realities of one’s authentic self, and very much at root out of fear of one’s mortality, one rushes headlong into pastime after pastime, being “something” generic for the duration of each pastime, and never returning to one’s self.

So it becomes interesting to me that, while in the midst of other “Masters” and “slaves”, at the very moment of apparently being “something” else generic, if not usual, people were talking about the moment of crossing the line into an absolute dynamic as making them feel, for the first time, “real” and “authentic”. While we may don the appelations of “Master” or “slave’, every absolute dynamic, by virtue of its absoluteness, also becomes unique in a certain way. There are plenty of “shoulds” floating about even in such a small community as far as behavioural norms for each role, but these “shoulds” play an insignificant part in the actual life of an M/s partnership. Eventually the reality of an absolute dynamic dictates only that the slave “should” do what the Master wants, whatever that may be, and that the Master “should” do only what the slave needs, whatever that may be.

This isn’t, however, unique to absolute dynamics. It’s simpler in form and therefore perhaps easier to flesh out than in a different type of relationship, but the germ of authenticity can grow within any relationship to the degree that the participants return to themselves, and do the things that are needful for the others, in the particular way that only they, as their own authentic selves, can do them. What I can do for mitda and emmie is not unique to me in any generic sense, but it is only when “I” do those things that they get the feeling of rightness and appropriateness that satisfies and makes one feel that one is where one ought to be. If I remain lost in the they-self that is needful for the work I do, no matter what actions I take that sense of the appropriate will never happen.

 

Hope for the Aged

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There’s hope yet for us ancients. In Manchester United’s yearly endurance test Ryan Giggs, ancient for a soccer player at 34, won over all the younger guys. Not that I’m 34 anymore, I wish. But I guess I can kick a ball around for a few more years yet.

 

Happy 1st or 4th

Yes I’m wishing a happy July 1st to those in Canada and 4th to those in the US.

We’ve been rather busy of late and I haven’t kept up with any blogging whatsoever.  Last weekend we went swimming with a couple in the scene, their kids, and emmie’s son.  It was interesting doing something so vanilla with people one knows primarily in the kink scene.  What does one talk about when kids are around?  The night before that we attended a party at a small ranch (quite a pretty one, with orchards newly planted).  emmie was a little sad that she and I didn’t get a chance to play but we somewhat made up for that last night at a friend’s apartment.

Good friends of ours are thinking of leaving the scene, after having their names etc. posted to a public forum by people with a axe to grind.  I hope they decide to stay but I can understand their reasons for deciding to be more private.

 

First Song Written

I finished up doing the basic arrangements on the first song mitda and I have written together.  The arrangement is very basic, just enough to wrap around the lyrics, but the sound is unique and quite a layered medley of synths.  Damn am I having fun with the new studio.

 

A Tale of Chantix and Psychosis

I’ve been AWOL on the blogging recently, mainly because I tried to quit smoking using Chantix®. Suffice it to say this is not the drug for those with mood stabilization issues. I spent four days that I barely remember in and out of psychosis. Not that I’m saying this drug doesn’t work to help others quit, but for a bipolar with psychosis it’s a recipe for disaster. By Friday I apparently threw up all over the bed, leaving emmie to clean up, which she had terrific difficulty with as she is not fond of bodily fluids. I have no memory of it. I have little memory really of the whole episode – nothing I took helped (and I have a cornucopia of antipsychotic drugs at my disposal) – but finally I slept so much on the last day that I never got around to taking the anti-smoking drug. Lo and behold, I got better, immediately better. Apparently the FDA wants to put a stronger warning on the drug, I say definitely do, and put something in the warning about bipolars, hey, we’re people too!

 

The Absolute Enslavement WIKI

It interestes me that topoi.net is a site dedicated to Lacanian Psychoanalysis. I’m not altogether familiar with Lacan’s work although I know some of his work in the specific area of mathematical topology rather than psychotherapy. It might be an interesting thread for me to follow in the future and perhaps a way of bridging the ontological (specifically, the topology of Being) tendency at work in my writings on Absolute Enslavement and the psychological theories that underlie the writings on Internal Enslavement by Tanos in the UK.

Not that Tanos needs any assistance, lol, although I’m sure he has more traffic for The Slave Register boards than for the Ownership WIKI, the Ownership WIKI remains one of the few internally consistent set of writings on M/s available on the net, and I am highly indebted to it.

There are those malcontents, of course, like myself, who are looking for a less psychological and more philosophical view of M/s. And for those people I set up the Absolute Enslavement WIKI. Have a drop by sometime and take a look around, maybe even add something or correct something I’ve written. It’s open to the public and the M/s public can write, correct, or dispute anything in it. While it gets a good amount of regular traffic and those that do visit linger a while, nobody has so far delurked to add their $0.02 on what the various terms used in M/s really mean.

Mitdasein

 

Stories and Place

I came across a couple of great quotes the other day from a book I’ve read a number of times, but lost somewhere in my travels. The book is called “The Pound Era” by a certain Hugh Kenner and is a work of literary criticism focussed on the modernist writers Pound, Lewis, Eliot and Joyce. “That people live in stories that structure their lives”, and that “they contain the stories people tell themselves.”.

The closer the story one tells oneself comes to how one “is” at root, the closer one is to one’s appropriate place. By place here I mean it in Aristotle’s sense, as the goal of movement, and also in the topological sense that Heidegger uses it ( Topos = Place). As we move in and out of subcultures our personality, the effulgence of the stories we tell ourselves, morphs topologically as we feel more or less “in place”, more or less appropriate.

Is M/s a fiction then, a story emmie and mitda and I tell ourselves? Yes, but no more so than any other lifestyle that others engage in, whether their fiction is to be a politician or a cop or a mother. It is in finding the appropriate place that we appropriate each other and come to share a World.

 

Code of A Herdsman

The Code of a Herdsman by Wyndham Lewis

Lewis was an ‘avant-garde’ all by himself, the greatest pictorial draughtsman of his time, the most controversial prose stylist of our day. Marshall McLuhan

1 N ever maltreat your own intelligence with parables. It is a method of herd hypnotism. Do not send yourself to sleep with the rhythm of the passes that you make. =As an example of herd-hypnotism, German literature is so virulently allegorized that the German never knows whether he is a Kangaroo, a Scythian, or his own sweet self. =You however are a herdsman. That is surely Parable enough.

2 D o not admit cleverness , in any form, into your life. Observe the accomplishment of some people’s signatures! It is the herd-touch.

3 E xploit Stupidity. =Introduce a flatness, where it is required into your commerce. Dull your eye as you affix it on a dull face. =Why do you think George Borrow used such idiotic clichés as ”The beams of the descending luminary — ?” He was a great writer and knew what he was doing. =Mock the herd perpetually with the grimace of its own garrulity or deadness. If it gets out of hand and stampedes towards you, leap onto the sea of mangy backs until the sea is still. That is: cast your mask aside, and spring above them. They cannot see or touch anything above them: they have never realized that their backs — or rather their tops — exist! They will think that you have vanished into Heaven.

4

A s to language: eschew all clichés implying a herd personality. Never allow such terms as Top-Hole, Priceless, or Doggo to pass your lips. Go to the Dictionary if you want an epithet. If you feel eloquent, use that moment to produce a cliché of your own. Cherish your personal vocabulary, however small it is. Use your own epithet as though it were used by a whole nation, if people would have no good reason for otherwise accepting it. Examples of personal epithets:
		That man is abysmal. That is an abysmal book.
						It was prestigious! Here comes that sinister bird!		Borrowed from the French
									He is a sinister card . (Combination of French and 1890 Slang) He has a great deal of sperm . I like a fellow with as much sperm as that.
B orrow from all sides mannerisms or callings or classes to enrich your personal bastion of language. Borrow from the pulpit, from the clattering harangue of the auctioneer, the lawyer’s technicality, the pomposity of the politicians. =Borrow grunts from the fisherman, solecisms from the inhabitants of Merioneth. =”He is a preux, ah, yes-a-preux!” You can say ”ah-yes-a-preux” as though it were one word, accent on the ”yes.”

5 I n accusing yourself, stick to the Code of the Mountain. But crime is alien to a Herdsman’s nature.

6 Y ourself must be your Caste.

7 C herish and develop, side by side, your six most constant indications of different personalities. You will then acquire the potentiality of six men. Leave your front door one day as B; the next march down the street as E. A variety of clothes, hats especially, are of help in this wider dramatization of yourself. Never fall into the vulgarity of being or assuming yourself to be one ego. Each trench must have another one behind it. Each single self — that you manage to be at any given time — must have five at least indifferent to it. You must have a power of indifference of five to one . All the greatest actions in the world have been five parts out of six impersonal in the impulse of their origin. To follow this principle you need only cultivate your memory. You will avoid being the blind man of any moment. B will see what is hidden to D. =(Who were Turgenev’s ”Six Unknown”? Himself .)

8 N ever lie. You cannot be too fastidious about the truth. If you must lie, at least see that you lie so badly that it would not deceive a pea hen. — The world is, however, full of pea hens.

9 S pend some of your spare time every day in hunting your weaknesses, caught from commerce with the herd, as methodically, solemnly and vindictively as a monkey his fleas. You will find yourself swarming with them while you are surrounded by humanity. But you must not bring them up on the mountain. =If you can get another man to assist you — one, that is, honest enough not to pass his own on to you — that is a good arrangement.

Lewis is the most fascinating personality of our time . . . the most distinguished living novelist. T. S. Eliot

10 D o not play with political notions, aristocratisms or the reverse, for that is a compromise with the herd. Do not allow yourself to imagine ”a fine herd though still a herd.” There is no fine herd . The cattle that call themselves ”gentlemen” you will observe to be a little cleaner. It is merely cunning and produced with a product called soap . But you will find no serious difference between them and those vast dismal herds they avoid. Some of them are very dangerous and treacherous. =Be on your guard with the small herd of gentlemen!

11 Y ou will meet with this pitfall: at moments, surrounded by the multitude of unsatisfactory replicas, you will grow confused by a similarity bringing them so near to us. =You will reason, where, from some point of view, the difference is so slight, whether that delicate margin is of the immense importance that we hold it to be: the only thing of importance in fact. =That group of men talking by the fire in your club (you will still remain a member of your club), that party at the theatre, look good enough, you will say. Their skins are fresh, they are well-made, their manners are good. You must then consider what they really are. On closer inspection you know , from unpleasant experience, that they are nothing but limitations and vulgarities of the most irritating description. The devil Nature has painted these sepulchres pink, and covered them with a blasphemous Bond Street distinction. Matter that has not sufficient mind to permeate it grows, as you know, gangrenous and rotten. Animal high spirits, a little but easily exhausted, goodness, is all that they can claim. W hat seduced you from your severity for a moment was the same thing as a dull woman’s good-looks. =This is probably what you will have in front of you. =On the other hand, everywhere you will find a few people, who, although not a mountain people are not herd. =They may be herdsmen gone mad through contact with the herd, and strayed: or through inadequate energy for our task they may be found there: or they may be a hybrid, or they may even be herdsmen temporarily bored with the mountain. (I have a pipe below myself sometimes.) T here are numerous ”other denominations.” Treat them as brothers. Employ them, as opportunity offers, as auxiliaries in your duties. Their society and help will render your task less arduous.

12 A s to women: wherever you can, substitute the society of men. =Treat them kindly, for they suffer from the herd, although of it, and have many of the same contempts as yourself. They are a sort of bastard mountain people. =There must be somewhere a female mountain, a sort of mirage-mountain. I should like to visit it. =But women, and the processes for which they exist, are the arch conjuring trick: and they have the cheap mystery and a good deal of the slipperiness, of the conjuror. =Sodomy should be avoided, as far as possible. It tends to add to the abominable confusion already existing.

13 W herever you meet a shyness that comes out of solitude, (although all solitude is not anti -herd) naiveness, and a patent absence of contamination, the sweetness of mountain water, any of the signs of goodness, you must treat that as sacred, as portions of the mountain. However much you suffer for it, you must defend and exalt it. On the other hand, every child is not simple, and every woman is not weak. =In many cases to champion a female would be like springing to the rescue of a rhinoceros when you notice that it had been attacked by a flea. Chivalrous manners, again, with many women are like tiptoeing into a shed where an ox is sleeping. =Some children, too, rival in nastiness their parents. But you have your orders in this matter. Indifference where there should be nothing but the ‘whole’ eagerness or compunction of your being, is the worst crime in the mountain’s eyes.

14 C onquests have usually been divided from their antitheses, and defeats from conquests, by some casual event. Had Moscow not possessed a governor ready to burn the Kremlin and the hundreds pf palaces accumulated there, peace would have been signed by the Czar at Bonaparte’s entrance. =Had the Llascans persevered for ten days against Cortés, the Aztecs would never have been troubled. Yet Montezuma was right to remain inactive, paralyzed by prophecy. Napoleon was right when he felt that his star was at last a useless one. He had drained it of all its astonishing effulgence. =The hair’s breadth is only the virtuosity of Fate, guiding you along imaginary precipices. =And all the detail is make-believe, anyway. Watch your star soberly and without comment. Do not trouble about the paste-board cliffs!

15 T here are very stringent regulations about the herd keeping off the sides of the mountain. In fact your chief function is to prevent their encroaching. Some, in moments of boredom or vindictiveness, are apt to make rushes for the higher regions. Their instinct fortunately always keeps them in crowds or bands, and their trespassing is soon noticed. Those traps and numerous devices you have seen on the edge of the plain are for use, of course, in the last resort. Do not apply them prematurely. =Not very many herdsmen lose their lives in dealing with the herds.

16 C ontradict yourself. In order to live, you must remain broken up.

17 T he teacher does not have to be , although he has to know : he is the mind imagining, not the executant. The executant, the young svelte, miraculous athlete, the strapping virtuoso, really has to give the illusion of perfection. =Do not expect me to keep in sufficiently good training to perform the feats I recommend. =I usually remain up on the mountain.

18 A bove all this sad commerce with the herd, let something veritably remain ”un peu sur la montagne.” Always come down with masks and thick clothing to the valley where we work. Stagnant gasses from these Yahooesque and rotten herds are more dangerous often than the wandering cylinders that emit them. See you are not caught in them without your mask. =But once returned to our adorable height, forget your sallow task: with great freedom indulge your love. =The terrible processions beneath are not of our making, and are without our pity. Our sacred hill is a volcanic heaven. But the result of its violence is peace. =The unfortunate surge below, even, has moments of peace.

Wyndham Lewis, 1914    

Text re-edited in 1977 by Alan Munton. © 1977 Anne Wyndham Lewis.

 

Catching Up

I have been rather remiss at blogging lately, what with the holidays, dealing with bureaucracy and switching jobs. We have been semi-active in the local scene, attending a play party last night, although we didn’t actually play at the party. The party was alright but rather crowded and wasn’t conducive to a playful feeling for me, we stayed a while and had a few interesting conversations but were headed home by midnight.

It has been a bit of a difficult week for emmie. Between bouts of insecurity and paranoia she has just generally been in a deep depression. She sees the pdoc this week but in the meantime she is upping her Risperdal a little and dropping the Paxil, which seems if anything to have brought her down rather than pushing her up moodwise.

The kid-who-is-18 left January 1 for the army. E. has heard from him once since then, basic training is a busy time. While I like the kid and hope to God that nothing untoward happens to him in the military, it is a relief to get the extra room back and be able to spread out a bit in the house.

I also, through a social networking site, regained contact with a number of people I haven’t seen in over 20 years. Most seem to be doing fairly well, which is nice to see, and one of them fronts a band that will be touring the US this winter, so I will be able to catch up with her at the gig in Austin. Ironically she lives in Los Angeles not far from mitda’s residence when we first met.