'A Brief Surrealist Essay on Enmity'
Rationalising the hatred you endure, you sigh. Beauty is a crab devoid of brooches. Like Rimbaud's
Ophelia, great visions strangled your words. An axe was held tightly in cold fingers. It struck your
soft neck.
Standing on stage you gaze around. Scent of damp grass swoops like dusk. You are hated because
you are human. Who is hated more than the eternal child?
Words are crystals; they cry out in a tonic symphony. An experiment in colour is something like a
shaft of light in the void of this pitiful verse. When the slug bends, something falls. The cacophony
is unbearable.
Streaky bacon is death. Smell of cooking flesh. Burning life. Killed fortune. Spiritual locusts
devour.
Your heart was always alive. This is what they hate more than anything else.
The crass virtues of this artless world are not for me. Birth is crude, life is crude, death is crude; art
is the exception. What is art? Where does art's soul lie? What is an artist? Enmity is hoarded by
artists just as property is hoarded by the artless. How is enmity connected to artistry?
What is art?
Art consists of three things: beauty, mystery and insight.
Where does art's soul lie?
The soul of art is mystery. Mystery is to art as certainty is to science. Beauty is the body of art;
mystery is the soul; and insight is her mind.
What is an artist?
The artist is the purveyor of art. 'Art conceals the artist far more than it ever reveals him.' Great art
is possessed of mystery more than insight; consequently, any knowledge of the artist's person
gained through insight is buried beneath an avalanche of mystery. When the mystery is sufficient to
eclipse the insight, and when the work of art's beauty simultaneously towers over the mystery, the
end result is an intelligent enigma. This is what artists create.
The artist creates an intelligent enigma and in so doing he reveals and conceals himself. With each
work of art, his mind becomes incrementally elucidated and his soul recedes from view. To the
observer, a true artist possesses no soul.
How is enmity connected to artistry?
A man with no soul inspires fear and loathing. Nothing, except for the artist, is more deplorable to
respectable society than a man with true intelligence. A truly intelligent artist cannot fail to generate
enmity. In fact a truly intelligent artist must generate enmity.
Nothing is more painful than the truth. Whilst truth is not an absolutely essential component of
great art, insight is; truth is the shortest route to insight. Irony may render the truth more palatable.
Humour might even make it acceptable. A magnificent lie may lead to exquisite 'insight' but the
truth will destroy this before the artist's death. If the artist wishes to live forever, he ought to be a
purveyor of truth. Hence, the artist should be familiar with both irony and humour.
When the truth becomes acceptable to society, society is necessarily eroded. What is society but a
specious set of values (the darkness) crying out for a shaft of bright white light to illuminate the
truth? In so doing, art reveals the hypocrisy, destroys those values and leads us inexorably towards a
form of malignant social disarray known as 'the modern world.'
Thus the artist is the enemy of society. He is the enemy of society's men. He is the enemy of
humankind during his lifetime. He becomes the hero of humankind once he has successfully
reshaped society with his peers.
Society hates the true artist but not as much as the true artist hates society.
Good style is to be found somewhere between beauty and gross indecency.
Great art is to be found somewhere between bad art and gross indecency.
The purpose of life is to realise there isn't one.
The purpose of all art is to realise the purpose of life.
The purpose of great art is replace the purpose of life.
This flimsy life is but a flickering flame in the rain. A paving stone tripped me up. I cried.
Morrissey
**100% fake Morrissey
Published on February 13th 2012 on MorrisseysWorld
Thank you for posting this sweet petite..this example has explained the deluded dozen more than anything else I've so far, read.
ReplyDeleteThank you for posting this. I love it. I had a million things to say about this but I have fallen into my glasses of wine and vodka and my insight has deteriorated. In an obvious attempt to escape "life." But, this spoke to me so much.
ReplyDelete"The purpose of life is to realise there isn't one.
The purpose of all art is to realise the purpose of life.
The purpose of great art is replace the purpose of life."
More - society is so mired in pre-set values (by whom are they pre-set? I shudder to think) and in a mass sense, society as a whole appears to long to escape truth, because the truth is often painful, and this why we need the individual. "Values" can corrode the soul, and we need to erode those "values" or "morals" that are damaging, as many predetermined values are. But is anyone listening? Certainly those in power want to hold the pre-set values in place, for control, of course. The individual may despise these values we are force-fed, and most individuals do, and this is where we need those who can speak up, those who can, those with insight, the select few. They are our voices, if they choose to speak, and art will always speak loudest. Art, even when shrouded in mystery, has a way of elucidating the truth.
ReplyDeleteNow I will go crash and sleep off my wine!
I've edited this like 50 times bc I'm drunk... but you see where I'm going? I tried :P
Thanks for sharrrrrring this ... I found it insightful and . . . . TRUE ! !! !! ! The part that hit the core for me, newayyzyzz was "Nothing is more painful than the truth. Whilst truth is not an absolutely essential component of
ReplyDeletegreat art, insight is; truth is the shortest route to insight. Irony may render the truth more palatable.
Humour might even make it acceptable. A magnificent lie may lead to exquisite 'insight' but the
truth will destroy this before the artist's death."
Reading this just reminded me of the firefly event.. .. i don't understand how at one festival he is hated, and then cited a hero at the other. .. people are people, aren't they ?! NONSENSE. Don't they see the hypocrisy? ? ? Okay, i guess the crowd at FYF was HIS fans.. but still, does that mean that they ALL agree with his worldviews ? Idk, I just don't understand the silliness of it (from news perspective).
what i find most intersesting though is.....
To the observer, a true artist possesses no soul.