The glory of youth is the glory of illusion, the specter of unlimited possibilities in a world as magnificently mysterious and thrilling as it is daunting.
And to this, and to Garcia's line, "Can the human spirit feel free enough to create anything while the noxious fumes of globalist control and murder — yes, murder — predominate?"
I cut'n'paste the following Aldous Huxley poem which blew my mind the other day (found on a Substack called 'Poetic Outlaws' - highly recommended!):
It’s dark because you are trying too hard.
Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly.
Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply.
Just lightly let things happen and
lightly cope with them.
I was so preposterously serious in those days,
such a humorless little prig.
Lightly, lightly – it’s the best advice ever given me.
Dr Emanuel thank you as ever for showing in your own words the transcendence. You are, among a few others, the sustenance - amplifying infinitely - for the thriving, and for humanity's rebirthing, amidst and borne of the chaos. It seems to me there are energies of light and vibrations and frequency beyond the physical realm; of powers beyond our imaginings. These are the energies you channel; in very many ways more than the artists you reference. I wonder how they'd have coped and inspired today. Far less beautifully than you, is my belief. Thank you. Love and peace. Alan
Indeed Manny...the Spectrum was the place! Chuckled to think you had a way to sneak in...I remember seeing Frank Sinatra there in his nadir: Just terrible, but my Mum and Dad took me along 'cause ol' Frankie-boy was their shining star.
After he left the stage I bolted outside as people clapped for an encore just in time to witness his limo shoot up and out of the basement garage. I remember thinking, "what an ungracious, inconsiderate bastard".
I was fortunate enough to have seen and heard Frank there when he was still fabulous ... and at many other venues! The Spectrum was in my neighborhood ...
Sadly, as history shows, totalitarianism always stamps on culture and liquidates any potential revolt by culling the intellectual class, the very same ones who inspire the arts and culture. Mao's cultural (sic) revolution, the inversion and replacement of true culture and spiritual identity with state derived drivel and mind control, is it seems always implemented. No matter where, when, or by whom, the same hidden hand leaves its' bloody palm print.
One positive thing the plandemic has produced is the open revelation of the depth and spread of the rot permeating all sectors of the establishment.
One area I was not aware of, but I get the hint you are well aware of Doc, is the corruption by Pharma of the mental health sciences.
Wow, that you got to see all those performers for free! I saw Aretha for free in the fading light of the Detroit River, sun going down across the water and glinting from her sequined dress. She was already ill and had to stop mid-song, but she was singing, free, for her people.
This utterly prevalent idea that poetry changes nothing and is a form of mental cheesecake (Steven Pinker) is a sort of antithetical version of the huge debates about it that went on for centuries, beginning with Plato, calling it a danger to the clear mind. I would argue the opposite, that it does change the world and minds, and that is why arts and literary institutions are gagged with Soviet Realism-esque ideology, and people are too fearful to let their minds dip into the source, the collective unconscious, the dream world, as what they write may contain ideological errors. We need a publishing house where people can post their poems under nom de plumes.
Just to get started on that hypothesis read The Neural Lyre: Poetic meter, the brain and time
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?contentId=60259 Our adversaries are trying to bomb us back into tribalism, and bloody chimp frenzies, and homo habilis tormenting prey to tenderize it before the invention of fire, so we go back to the first hominin mothers on the savannah whose infants can't cling as they must be born earlier to a bipedal mom (Ellen Dissanyake), so the mothers begin calling to the infants, and from that comes music and poetry and ritual and community solidarity. If you think music is just entertainment, watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyZQf0p73QM&t=98s.
This lament might be a call to arms New Zealand Doctor! And dark triad types and oligarchs and Cluster B and ideologically possessed people won't even see it, it is a realm invisible to them!
Keep writing poetry please. The people who read poetry are uninhibited souls who understand its significance. At any rate, poetry is written at the altar of poetry. It's not written to please xy or z. Today's lack of respect for poetry is an example of how insignificant the ability of expressing ourselves by trying to master our very own language has become.
Your piece today reminded me of this passage from Huxley's Brave New World - which eerily echoes our present situation. The architects (and their proposed 'Reset' for humanity has been simmering on the back burner for at least a century) of our 'Brave New World' want a humanity that is cold, dead, flat, passionless, ignorant, indifferent and above all compliant...very compliant.
Here is the passage at labourious length:
Mustapha Mond shook hands with all three of them; but it was to the Savage that he addressed himself. “So you don’t much like civilization, Mr. Savage,” he said.
The Savage looked at him. He had been prepared to lie, to bluster, to remain sullenly unresponsive; but, reassured by the good-humoured intelligence of the Controller’s face, he decided to tell the truth, straightforwardly. “No.” He shook his head.
Bernard started and looked horrified. What would the Controller think? To be labelled as the friend of a man who said that he didn’t like civilization—said it openly and, of all people, to the Controller—it was terrible. “But, John,” he began. A look from Mustapha Mond reduced him to an abject silence.
“Of course,” the Savage went on to admit, “there are some very nice things. All that music in the air, for instance …”
“Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments will hum about my ears and sometimes voices.”
The Savage’s face lit up with a sudden pleasure. “Have you read it too?” he asked. “I thought nobody knew about that book here, in England.”
“Almost nobody. I’m one of the very few. It’s prohibited, you see. But as I make the laws here, I can also break them. With impunity, Mr. Marx,” he added, turning to Bernard. “Which I’m afraid you can’t do.”
Bernard sank into a yet more hopeless misery.
“But why is it prohibited?” asked the Savage. In the excitement of meeting a man who had read Shakespeare he had momentarily forgotten everything else.
The Controller shrugged his shoulders. “Because it’s old; that’s the chief reason. We haven’t any use for old things here.”
“Even when they’re beautiful?”
“Particularly when they’re beautiful. Beauty’s attractive, and we don’t want people to be attracted by old things. We want them to like the new ones.”
“But the new ones are so stupid and horrible. Those plays, where there’s nothing but helicopters flying about and you feel the people kissing.” He made a grimace. “Goats and monkeys!” Only in Othello’s word could he find an adequate vehicle for his contempt and hatred.
“Nice tame animals, anyhow,” the Controller murmured parenthetically.
“Why don’t you let them see Othello instead?”
“I’ve told you; it’s old. Besides, they couldn’t understand it.”
Yes, that was true. He remembered how Helmholtz had laughed at Romeo and Juliet. “Well then,” he said, after a pause, “something new that’s like Othello, and that they could understand.”
“That’s what we’ve all been wanting to write,” said Helmholtz, breaking a long silence.
“And it’s what you never will write,” said the Controller. “Because, if it were really like Othello nobody could understand it, however new it might be. And if were new, it couldn’t possibly be like Othello.”
“Why not?”
“Yes, why not?” Helmholtz repeated. He too was forgetting the unpleasant realities of the situation. Green with anxiety and apprehension, only Bernard remembered them; the others ignored him. “Why not?”
“Because our world is not the same as Othello’s world. You can’t make flivvers without steel—and you can’t make tragedies without social instability. The world’s stable now. People are happy; they get what they want, and they never want what they can’t get. They’re well off; they’re safe; they’re never ill; they’re not afraid of death; they’re blissfully ignorant of passion and old age; they’re plagued with no mothers or fathers; they’ve got no wives, or children, or lovers to feel strongly about; they’re so conditioned that they practically can’t help behaving as they ought to behave. And if anything should go wrong, there’s soma. Which you go and chuck out of the window in the name of liberty, Mr. Savage. Liberty!” He laughed. “Expecting Deltas to know what liberty is! And now expecting them to understand Othello! My good boy!”
The Savage was silent for a little. “All the same,” he insisted obstinately, “Othello‘s good, Othello‘s better than those feelies.”
“Of course it is,” the Controller agreed. “But that’s the price we have to pay for stability. You’ve got to choose between happiness and what people used to call high art. We’ve sacrificed the high art. We have the feelies and the scent organ instead.”
“But they don’t mean anything.”
“They mean themselves; they mean a lot of agreeable sensations to the audience.”
“But they’re … they’re told by an idiot.”
The Controller laughed. “You’re not being very polite to your friend, Mr. Watson. One of our most distinguished Emotional Engineers …”
“But he’s right,” said Helmholtz gloomily. “Because it is idiotic. Writing when there’s nothing to say …”
“Precisely. But that requires the most enormous ingenuity. You’re making flivvers out of the absolute minimum of steel—works of art out of practically nothing but pure sensation.”
The Savage shook his head. “It all seems to me quite horrible.”
“Of course it does. Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the over-compensations for misery. And, of course, stability isn’t nearly so spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand.”
“I suppose not,” said the Savage after a silence. “But need it be quite so bad as those twins?” He passed his hand over his eyes as though he were trying to wipe away the remembered image of those long rows of identical midgets at the assembling tables, those queued-up twin-herds at the entrance to the Brentford monorail station, those human maggots swarming round Linda’s bed of death, the endlessly repeated face of his assailants. He looked at his bandaged left hand and shuddered. “Horrible!”
“But how useful! I see you don’t like our Bokanovsky Groups; but, I assure you, they’re the foundation on which everything else is built. They’re the gyroscope that stabilizes the rocket plane of state on its unswerving course.” The deep voice thrillingly vibrated; the gesticulating hand implied all space and the onrush of the irresistible machine. Mustapha Mond’s oratory was almost up to synthetic standards.
“I was wondering,” said the Savage, “why you had them at all—seeing that you can get whatever you want out of those bottles. Why don’t you make everybody an Alpha Double Plus while you’re about it?”
Mustapha Mond laughed. “Because we have no wish to have our throats cut,” he answered. “We believe in happiness and stability. A society of Alphas couldn’t fail to be unstable and miserable. Imagine a factory staffed by Alphas—that is to say by separate and unrelated individuals of good heredity and conditioned so as to be capable (within limits) of making a free choice and assuming responsibilities. Imagine it!” he repeated.
The Savage tried to imagine it, not very successfully.
“It’s an absurdity. An Alpha-decanted, Alpha-conditioned man would go mad if he had to do Epsilon Semi-Moron work—go mad, or start smashing things up. Alphas can be completely socialized—but only on condition that you make them do Alpha work. Only an Epsilon can be expected to make Epsilon sacrifices, for the good reason that for him they aren’t sacrifices; they’re the line of least resistance. His conditioning has laid down rails along which he’s got to run. He can’t help himself; he’s foredoomed. Even after decanting, he’s still inside a bottle—an invisible bottle of infantile and embryonic fixations. Each one of us, of course,” the Controller meditatively continued, “goes through life inside a bottle. But if we happen to be Alphas, our bottles are, relatively speaking, enormous. We should suffer acutely if we were confined in a narrower space. You cannot pour upper-caste champagne-surrogate into lower-caste bottles. It’s obvious theoretically. But it has also been proved in actual practice. The result of the Cyprus experiment was convincing.”
We need to nurture the arts for the good of our souls. Poetry, music, song that contains poetry and music, these seem to me the closest to a complete human utterance that reaches our highest level of awareness. We must nurture it, along with all the arts that awaken our souls. Guard the flame!
Dear Dr Garcia, You gave me much to think about and I've just put some of my thoughts into a substack article that is like a reply. Hope you are able to have a look at it.
Dr G, you ask a very important question: can poetry survive when creation requires freedom? How is genuine art realized in a tyrannical environment of unprecedented proportion?
How, indeed? Tyranny has never been moderate. Its proportions have always been and are always far-reaching. Tyranny is like a mirror whose reflection can be small or large. However, the source of the image is hell itself.
"Breath and vision and the daringness to believe in the truth of the word — they will never die away" Agreed! I say Amen to that!
"But they require sustenance to thrive."
What kind of sustenance? Sometimes, all that's needed, eventually, all that's needed, is to strike only one meager, single match to light a fire. Perhaps breath and vision require instead a lack of sustenance. I am not arguing with you; I am merely pondering the issue you raised; I am contemplating possibilities. Art requires a kick in the ass, otherwise known as "inspiration." Beyond that, art requires peace and daringness, but how can these be found when tyrants lurk about?
And here is the following, a true story of the man who once wrote poetry under the darkest of circumstances. I hadn't planned to relate it in a lyrical manner, but I could find no other way to give the account.
Panagoulis
He was tortured. Dragged back to his cell, he collapsed on the floor.
There was no chair, no mattress — only the necessary bucket stood in a corner, half full. The cement walls were thick, the room was permanently dim, and the windows— well, the architect hadn't considered them necessary.
Always, he was beaten until he bled. The red substance escaping through his skin became his ink. Sometimes, the unorthodox ink coagulated before he was finished. For a notebook, he had the cement walls.
His secret poetry, his communion.
Years later, he tasted the bursting sweetness of liberty when a general amnesty was decreed.
He was killed in a manufactured vehicular accident.
Name:
Alexandros Panagoulis, 1939-1976
Poetry:
A longing, a necessity, lines of blood edging beyond dimness towards the infinite.
Thank you for sharing your perspective on this topic. You are truly gifted with your words. The thought of loss of the musical and poetic arts, among others, is so grief filled. Having experienced such art forms triggers a deep nostalgia and gratitude and indescribable sadness with the thought of losing it. It has added such depth to life. I feel we need them.
If history reveals any truth it appears that even under tyranny and adversity, and perhaps even because of them, the creative effervescence of the irrepressible human spirit is surprisingly and continuously reborn. Axiomatically, 'hope springs eternal'.
Poetry will never end. It is the expression of the soul through words. As yet, no one has stolen our souls and those that have sold theirs were never the type to write poetry anyway.
'Dead Poets Society' is a very famous movie ... and Steve Jobs is famous for saying to John Scully (at Pepsi) 'Are you going to make sugary water for the rest of your life ... or come with me ... and change the World' ...
As to Schrodinger ... he had a very famous cat ... in a box ... dead or alive ... you have to open the box ... to find out ... but ... until you do ... the cat ... is both ... dead ... and ... alive!
I still don't know if I've 'pulled' ... and you're coming with me ... to change the World ... ('Yes!' ... was a ... dead? ... or alive? ... answer)
And I hardly think poetry or mine in particular is sugary water. If it doesn't land with you, that's okay.
Sometimes poetry, for me at least, is a way to process something.
And maybe Emanuel was simply grieving. And neither you nor I could see that.
I would guess the cat is dead. And I know the movie.
Some think beating others over the head with this and that will affect change. (although sometimes those who think that don't take kindly to the same treatment)
And sometimes poetry has a way to get right into it.
Maybe a story of a brutal rape, being held down against one's will and having the life choked out of them.
I really will have to reign in my wit/sense of humor in future when you're around Elizabeth ... and I will be certain to ... because being called a 'meanie' has left me bleeding on the steps of Substack ... like Caligula ... and like Macbeth ... I am a poor player ... that struts and frets his hour on the stage ... and then is heard no more ...
My entire post was based on - my witty (I thought so anyway!) first post to the Doc ... tongue in cheek having him on about talking about poetry ... when the World ... is literally ... on fire ... and your reply 'Yes!' ... which I was trying to ... again ('witty') tell you ... didn't really tell me what your pronouns are ... if you get my drift ...
My post had ... nothing ... zilch ... to do with your poem ... except for the word 'box' ... which included in the phrase 'Couldn't snag my box' ... made it quite a turn of speech ...
Roses are red
Violets are blue
Bill Gates and Fauci
Have plans to kill you
Roses are red,
Violets are blue.
Bill Gates and Fauci can get fucked.
I despise them so much, I'm not even going to make it rhyme.
And to this, and to Garcia's line, "Can the human spirit feel free enough to create anything while the noxious fumes of globalist control and murder — yes, murder — predominate?"
I cut'n'paste the following Aldous Huxley poem which blew my mind the other day (found on a Substack called 'Poetic Outlaws' - highly recommended!):
It’s dark because you are trying too hard.
Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly.
Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply.
Just lightly let things happen and
lightly cope with them.
I was so preposterously serious in those days,
such a humorless little prig.
Lightly, lightly – it’s the best advice ever given me.
When it comes to dying even.
Nothing ponderous, or portentous, or emphatic.
No rhetoric, no tremolos, no self conscious
persona putting on its celebrated imitation
of Christ or Little Nell.
And of course, no theology, no metaphysics.
Just the fact of dying and the fact
of the clear light.
So throw away your baggage and go forward.
There are quicksands all about you,
sucking at your feet,
trying to suck you down into fear and
self-pity and despair.
That’s why you must walk so lightly.
Lightly my darling, on tiptoes and no luggage,
not even a sponge bag, completely unencumbered.
You forgot 'lightly into the cattle car.'
And if I made a joke about your surname would you take that lightly too? Because I would mean it lightly. :)
With a name like mine, how thick do you think my skin already is?
Lol
Oh oh, I've got another riff.
(off roses are red, violets are blue....)
And while you are sleeping I'll sink my teeth into you!
Cardboard cutouts falling down
Who's the next to come to town?
Dr Emanuel thank you as ever for showing in your own words the transcendence. You are, among a few others, the sustenance - amplifying infinitely - for the thriving, and for humanity's rebirthing, amidst and borne of the chaos. It seems to me there are energies of light and vibrations and frequency beyond the physical realm; of powers beyond our imaginings. These are the energies you channel; in very many ways more than the artists you reference. I wonder how they'd have coped and inspired today. Far less beautifully than you, is my belief. Thank you. Love and peace. Alan
You are far too kind dear soul, thank you.
Indeed Manny...the Spectrum was the place! Chuckled to think you had a way to sneak in...I remember seeing Frank Sinatra there in his nadir: Just terrible, but my Mum and Dad took me along 'cause ol' Frankie-boy was their shining star.
After he left the stage I bolted outside as people clapped for an encore just in time to witness his limo shoot up and out of the basement garage. I remember thinking, "what an ungracious, inconsiderate bastard".
I was fortunate enough to have seen and heard Frank there when he was still fabulous ... and at many other venues! The Spectrum was in my neighborhood ...
LOL!!! That was Frank in his nadir, but in his youth ... a different story. May the Spectrum rest in peace.
Sadly, as history shows, totalitarianism always stamps on culture and liquidates any potential revolt by culling the intellectual class, the very same ones who inspire the arts and culture. Mao's cultural (sic) revolution, the inversion and replacement of true culture and spiritual identity with state derived drivel and mind control, is it seems always implemented. No matter where, when, or by whom, the same hidden hand leaves its' bloody palm print.
One positive thing the plandemic has produced is the open revelation of the depth and spread of the rot permeating all sectors of the establishment.
One area I was not aware of, but I get the hint you are well aware of Doc, is the corruption by Pharma of the mental health sciences.
Worth a watch. https://www.bitchute.com/video/YEINu5rvvOYL/
Very well said, thank you!
Wow, that you got to see all those performers for free! I saw Aretha for free in the fading light of the Detroit River, sun going down across the water and glinting from her sequined dress. She was already ill and had to stop mid-song, but she was singing, free, for her people.
This utterly prevalent idea that poetry changes nothing and is a form of mental cheesecake (Steven Pinker) is a sort of antithetical version of the huge debates about it that went on for centuries, beginning with Plato, calling it a danger to the clear mind. I would argue the opposite, that it does change the world and minds, and that is why arts and literary institutions are gagged with Soviet Realism-esque ideology, and people are too fearful to let their minds dip into the source, the collective unconscious, the dream world, as what they write may contain ideological errors. We need a publishing house where people can post their poems under nom de plumes.
Just to get started on that hypothesis read The Neural Lyre: Poetic meter, the brain and time
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?contentId=60259 Our adversaries are trying to bomb us back into tribalism, and bloody chimp frenzies, and homo habilis tormenting prey to tenderize it before the invention of fire, so we go back to the first hominin mothers on the savannah whose infants can't cling as they must be born earlier to a bipedal mom (Ellen Dissanyake), so the mothers begin calling to the infants, and from that comes music and poetry and ritual and community solidarity. If you think music is just entertainment, watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyZQf0p73QM&t=98s.
This lament might be a call to arms New Zealand Doctor! And dark triad types and oligarchs and Cluster B and ideologically possessed people won't even see it, it is a realm invisible to them!
Thank you so much for this .... yes, the dark triad oligarchs can't see or feel poetry -- maybe that's our great advantage?
Oh WOW !!! Henry and hi music !!! That is incredible !! Thank you s very much.
https://redpillpoems.substack.com/p/propaganda-by-numbers
The Red Pill Poet is relevant and good and hardly known.
It would appear that people do not want to read poetry.
https://redpillpoems.substack.com/p/pc
very few people read poetry . I still write it in the hopes that there will be a poetry-loving posterity someday .......
Keep writing poetry please. The people who read poetry are uninhibited souls who understand its significance. At any rate, poetry is written at the altar of poetry. It's not written to please xy or z. Today's lack of respect for poetry is an example of how insignificant the ability of expressing ourselves by trying to master our very own language has become.
Your piece today reminded me of this passage from Huxley's Brave New World - which eerily echoes our present situation. The architects (and their proposed 'Reset' for humanity has been simmering on the back burner for at least a century) of our 'Brave New World' want a humanity that is cold, dead, flat, passionless, ignorant, indifferent and above all compliant...very compliant.
Here is the passage at labourious length:
Mustapha Mond shook hands with all three of them; but it was to the Savage that he addressed himself. “So you don’t much like civilization, Mr. Savage,” he said.
The Savage looked at him. He had been prepared to lie, to bluster, to remain sullenly unresponsive; but, reassured by the good-humoured intelligence of the Controller’s face, he decided to tell the truth, straightforwardly. “No.” He shook his head.
Bernard started and looked horrified. What would the Controller think? To be labelled as the friend of a man who said that he didn’t like civilization—said it openly and, of all people, to the Controller—it was terrible. “But, John,” he began. A look from Mustapha Mond reduced him to an abject silence.
“Of course,” the Savage went on to admit, “there are some very nice things. All that music in the air, for instance …”
“Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments will hum about my ears and sometimes voices.”
The Savage’s face lit up with a sudden pleasure. “Have you read it too?” he asked. “I thought nobody knew about that book here, in England.”
“Almost nobody. I’m one of the very few. It’s prohibited, you see. But as I make the laws here, I can also break them. With impunity, Mr. Marx,” he added, turning to Bernard. “Which I’m afraid you can’t do.”
Bernard sank into a yet more hopeless misery.
“But why is it prohibited?” asked the Savage. In the excitement of meeting a man who had read Shakespeare he had momentarily forgotten everything else.
The Controller shrugged his shoulders. “Because it’s old; that’s the chief reason. We haven’t any use for old things here.”
“Even when they’re beautiful?”
“Particularly when they’re beautiful. Beauty’s attractive, and we don’t want people to be attracted by old things. We want them to like the new ones.”
“But the new ones are so stupid and horrible. Those plays, where there’s nothing but helicopters flying about and you feel the people kissing.” He made a grimace. “Goats and monkeys!” Only in Othello’s word could he find an adequate vehicle for his contempt and hatred.
“Nice tame animals, anyhow,” the Controller murmured parenthetically.
“Why don’t you let them see Othello instead?”
“I’ve told you; it’s old. Besides, they couldn’t understand it.”
Yes, that was true. He remembered how Helmholtz had laughed at Romeo and Juliet. “Well then,” he said, after a pause, “something new that’s like Othello, and that they could understand.”
“That’s what we’ve all been wanting to write,” said Helmholtz, breaking a long silence.
“And it’s what you never will write,” said the Controller. “Because, if it were really like Othello nobody could understand it, however new it might be. And if were new, it couldn’t possibly be like Othello.”
“Why not?”
“Yes, why not?” Helmholtz repeated. He too was forgetting the unpleasant realities of the situation. Green with anxiety and apprehension, only Bernard remembered them; the others ignored him. “Why not?”
“Because our world is not the same as Othello’s world. You can’t make flivvers without steel—and you can’t make tragedies without social instability. The world’s stable now. People are happy; they get what they want, and they never want what they can’t get. They’re well off; they’re safe; they’re never ill; they’re not afraid of death; they’re blissfully ignorant of passion and old age; they’re plagued with no mothers or fathers; they’ve got no wives, or children, or lovers to feel strongly about; they’re so conditioned that they practically can’t help behaving as they ought to behave. And if anything should go wrong, there’s soma. Which you go and chuck out of the window in the name of liberty, Mr. Savage. Liberty!” He laughed. “Expecting Deltas to know what liberty is! And now expecting them to understand Othello! My good boy!”
The Savage was silent for a little. “All the same,” he insisted obstinately, “Othello‘s good, Othello‘s better than those feelies.”
“Of course it is,” the Controller agreed. “But that’s the price we have to pay for stability. You’ve got to choose between happiness and what people used to call high art. We’ve sacrificed the high art. We have the feelies and the scent organ instead.”
“But they don’t mean anything.”
“They mean themselves; they mean a lot of agreeable sensations to the audience.”
“But they’re … they’re told by an idiot.”
The Controller laughed. “You’re not being very polite to your friend, Mr. Watson. One of our most distinguished Emotional Engineers …”
“But he’s right,” said Helmholtz gloomily. “Because it is idiotic. Writing when there’s nothing to say …”
“Precisely. But that requires the most enormous ingenuity. You’re making flivvers out of the absolute minimum of steel—works of art out of practically nothing but pure sensation.”
The Savage shook his head. “It all seems to me quite horrible.”
“Of course it does. Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the over-compensations for misery. And, of course, stability isn’t nearly so spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand.”
“I suppose not,” said the Savage after a silence. “But need it be quite so bad as those twins?” He passed his hand over his eyes as though he were trying to wipe away the remembered image of those long rows of identical midgets at the assembling tables, those queued-up twin-herds at the entrance to the Brentford monorail station, those human maggots swarming round Linda’s bed of death, the endlessly repeated face of his assailants. He looked at his bandaged left hand and shuddered. “Horrible!”
“But how useful! I see you don’t like our Bokanovsky Groups; but, I assure you, they’re the foundation on which everything else is built. They’re the gyroscope that stabilizes the rocket plane of state on its unswerving course.” The deep voice thrillingly vibrated; the gesticulating hand implied all space and the onrush of the irresistible machine. Mustapha Mond’s oratory was almost up to synthetic standards.
“I was wondering,” said the Savage, “why you had them at all—seeing that you can get whatever you want out of those bottles. Why don’t you make everybody an Alpha Double Plus while you’re about it?”
Mustapha Mond laughed. “Because we have no wish to have our throats cut,” he answered. “We believe in happiness and stability. A society of Alphas couldn’t fail to be unstable and miserable. Imagine a factory staffed by Alphas—that is to say by separate and unrelated individuals of good heredity and conditioned so as to be capable (within limits) of making a free choice and assuming responsibilities. Imagine it!” he repeated.
The Savage tried to imagine it, not very successfully.
“It’s an absurdity. An Alpha-decanted, Alpha-conditioned man would go mad if he had to do Epsilon Semi-Moron work—go mad, or start smashing things up. Alphas can be completely socialized—but only on condition that you make them do Alpha work. Only an Epsilon can be expected to make Epsilon sacrifices, for the good reason that for him they aren’t sacrifices; they’re the line of least resistance. His conditioning has laid down rails along which he’s got to run. He can’t help himself; he’s foredoomed. Even after decanting, he’s still inside a bottle—an invisible bottle of infantile and embryonic fixations. Each one of us, of course,” the Controller meditatively continued, “goes through life inside a bottle. But if we happen to be Alphas, our bottles are, relatively speaking, enormous. We should suffer acutely if we were confined in a narrower space. You cannot pour upper-caste champagne-surrogate into lower-caste bottles. It’s obvious theoretically. But it has also been proved in actual practice. The result of the Cyprus experiment was convincing.”
Loved it. Esp.: "Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the over-compensations for misery. [...] Happiness is never grand.”
I especially loved your post too because my first reaction above was... a Huxley poem.
We need to nurture the arts for the good of our souls. Poetry, music, song that contains poetry and music, these seem to me the closest to a complete human utterance that reaches our highest level of awareness. We must nurture it, along with all the arts that awaken our souls. Guard the flame!
Dear Dr Garcia, You gave me much to think about and I've just put some of my thoughts into a substack article that is like a reply. Hope you are able to have a look at it.
https://michaelburton999.substack.com/p/is-poetry-possible-a-reply-to-dr
A beautiful response, I am privileged to have moved you to write. Thank you.
The Academy of Music is hallowed ground!
Dr G, you ask a very important question: can poetry survive when creation requires freedom? How is genuine art realized in a tyrannical environment of unprecedented proportion?
How, indeed? Tyranny has never been moderate. Its proportions have always been and are always far-reaching. Tyranny is like a mirror whose reflection can be small or large. However, the source of the image is hell itself.
"Breath and vision and the daringness to believe in the truth of the word — they will never die away" Agreed! I say Amen to that!
"But they require sustenance to thrive."
What kind of sustenance? Sometimes, all that's needed, eventually, all that's needed, is to strike only one meager, single match to light a fire. Perhaps breath and vision require instead a lack of sustenance. I am not arguing with you; I am merely pondering the issue you raised; I am contemplating possibilities. Art requires a kick in the ass, otherwise known as "inspiration." Beyond that, art requires peace and daringness, but how can these be found when tyrants lurk about?
And here is the following, a true story of the man who once wrote poetry under the darkest of circumstances. I hadn't planned to relate it in a lyrical manner, but I could find no other way to give the account.
Panagoulis
He was tortured. Dragged back to his cell, he collapsed on the floor.
There was no chair, no mattress — only the necessary bucket stood in a corner, half full. The cement walls were thick, the room was permanently dim, and the windows— well, the architect hadn't considered them necessary.
Always, he was beaten until he bled. The red substance escaping through his skin became his ink. Sometimes, the unorthodox ink coagulated before he was finished. For a notebook, he had the cement walls.
His secret poetry, his communion.
Years later, he tasted the bursting sweetness of liberty when a general amnesty was decreed.
He was killed in a manufactured vehicular accident.
Name:
Alexandros Panagoulis, 1939-1976
Poetry:
A longing, a necessity, lines of blood edging beyond dimness towards the infinite.
Thank you for the immense and profound commentary ... and for the example of Panagoulis!
Thank you right back at you!
Thank you for sharing your perspective on this topic. You are truly gifted with your words. The thought of loss of the musical and poetic arts, among others, is so grief filled. Having experienced such art forms triggers a deep nostalgia and gratitude and indescribable sadness with the thought of losing it. It has added such depth to life. I feel we need them.
We certainly do -- thank you for your very kind and moving words.
If history reveals any truth it appears that even under tyranny and adversity, and perhaps even because of them, the creative effervescence of the irrepressible human spirit is surprisingly and continuously reborn. Axiomatically, 'hope springs eternal'.
I hope you are right!
Poetry will never end. It is the expression of the soul through words. As yet, no one has stolen our souls and those that have sold theirs were never the type to write poetry anyway.
Believe me, if 'they' believed in souls they would definitely try to steal them!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=peo0LcUiGZk&embeds_referring_euri=https%3A%2F%2Fgrasshoppper.substack.com%2F&feature=emb_logo
MariGolds, my poems ,with song structure and singing
Doc ... what are you on about ...
'Are you going to spend your life in 'The Dead Poets Society' ... or come with me ... and change the World?'
regards
pb
I'm hard at work behind the scenes.
You need to get out more Doc ...
'Carpe Diem O Captain! My Captain!'
pb
Imagine... a life outside the public eye!
::Looks like I can't snag my own box::
________________________
The Story of The Beautiful Man
(and I apologize at the start because I do know there is something different)
His capability for thought was astounding, mesmerizing.
His ability to love beautiful.
His ability to acknowledge deeply felt.
But he held on too tight.
And he contracted so severely with no idea he had.
Triggered and reeling, thrashing about. Slinging arrows as if his very being depended on it.
And maybe it did, maybe it did.
Yet there was another way.
A way he didn't know and couldn't see. (maybe glimpsed in the rear view mirror on a rainy day)
And then he forgot what he had done. The cruelest twist of all. The foundation laid completely gone.
If he had been violent, he forgot.
If he was verbally abusive, he forgot.
All was sunshine and roses, the 'nice guy' t-shirt neatly tucked in.
This is a story of hereditary trauma.
This is a story of the unintegrated man.
Would that I could just reach out my hand and change it.
Would that I could.
______________________
Yes!
You're no help at all Schrodinger ...
Dead ... or Alive ...
pb
Now who's Schrodinger?
And why are you being a meanie?
You didn't like my piece? (It wasn't about Emanuel)
Oh dear!
First the Doc ... then you Elizabeth ...
Poetry in Motion!
'Dead Poets Society' is a very famous movie ... and Steve Jobs is famous for saying to John Scully (at Pepsi) 'Are you going to make sugary water for the rest of your life ... or come with me ... and change the World' ...
As to Schrodinger ... he had a very famous cat ... in a box ... dead or alive ... you have to open the box ... to find out ... but ... until you do ... the cat ... is both ... dead ... and ... alive!
I still don't know if I've 'pulled' ... and you're coming with me ... to change the World ... ('Yes!' ... was a ... dead? ... or alive? ... answer)
Snagged my box ... sorry ...
Me ... a meanie ... Never!
You ... and the Doc ... need to get out more ...
Here's to changing the World ... and Poetry ...
regards
pb
So do tell, how are you changing the world?
And I hardly think poetry or mine in particular is sugary water. If it doesn't land with you, that's okay.
Sometimes poetry, for me at least, is a way to process something.
And maybe Emanuel was simply grieving. And neither you nor I could see that.
I would guess the cat is dead. And I know the movie.
Some think beating others over the head with this and that will affect change. (although sometimes those who think that don't take kindly to the same treatment)
And sometimes poetry has a way to get right into it.
Maybe a story of a brutal rape, being held down against one's will and having the life choked out of them.
Oh dear ... oh dear!
I really will have to reign in my wit/sense of humor in future when you're around Elizabeth ... and I will be certain to ... because being called a 'meanie' has left me bleeding on the steps of Substack ... like Caligula ... and like Macbeth ... I am a poor player ... that struts and frets his hour on the stage ... and then is heard no more ...
My entire post was based on - my witty (I thought so anyway!) first post to the Doc ... tongue in cheek having him on about talking about poetry ... when the World ... is literally ... on fire ... and your reply 'Yes!' ... which I was trying to ... again ('witty') tell you ... didn't really tell me what your pronouns are ... if you get my drift ...
My post had ... nothing ... zilch ... to do with your poem ... except for the word 'box' ... which included in the phrase 'Couldn't snag my box' ... made it quite a turn of speech ...
(Check your poem ... I gave it a 'heart')
regards
pb
I write a bit of poetry if it can be called that.
https://baldmichael.substack.com/p/oh-to-be-in-england-now-that-aprils
https://alphaandomegacloud.wordpress.com/2022/08/11/mary-had-a-little-lamb/
https://baldmichael.substack.com/p/republicans-are-red-democrats-are