for Eric Chaet
The real scandal of the education systems
is that the rejects, the overlooked, and defensive self-excluders
don't learn how to budget, how to eat well and cheaply,
don't even learn how to entertain themselves
(movie audiences and the video-game market might decrease),
and so they end up gambling, drinking, escaping from grindingly-sad
boredom, seeking some kind of brief respite, release
by dodgy drugs, 'committing' petty crimes...
or simply going mad.
from Eric:
ReplyDeleteAnthony -
It's a very good what-it-is, which is an essay about the size of a
sonnet. It's wise, it's true, it's useful. To me--I'm not
speculating--it's useful to me.
What to call such a thing?
Nietzsche produced many books of such things, strung together like
beads, e.g., Human, All Too Human, which, while full of outrageous
stupidities, too, with very bad consequences--are mainly treasures of
liberating wisdom.
A bit shorter, they'd be aphorisms.
But they're not aphorisms, seems to me. (Nietzsche sprinkled true
aphorisms thru his books, too.)
But having no name for them is no reason to attach a put-down name to
them.
Attaching a put-down name to them a scandal, too.
What you have produced is an excellent thing. Seems to me that, tho
the effect would be counterproductive, it would be better to call it,
A Short Excellent Thing, or A Short Excellent Articulation About
Something You'd Probably Benefit From Considering.
Let's figure out what to call such things, if we can, & produce them,
as we're able. (Of course, it will be just as difficult to figure
something truly useful & not otherwise being articulated in this
form, as in any other.)
You say that the rejects & defensive self-excluders don't know how to
entertain themselves. I have trouble entertaining myself. So much
that used to amuse me doesn't any more.
So, write about, please, how to amuse oneself. Of course, don't just
indulge yourself, & don't repeat what you've said elsewhere--unless
you can now say it much better, more concisely, for instance, as in
this form we have no name for. I wouldn't be surprised if you can
now say a lot that you previously said in more nebulous form, groping
for what you were trying to say, in a briefer, more powerful way.
(Does it seem to you I, too, have named what I've done, my so-called
poems, in a deprecating way, that mis-serves them? I was trying to
separate what I'm doing from the millions of flaccid things that
don't go margin to margin that are being produced by academic poets &
their ilk by the tens of thousands, all these recent decades. Maybe
you'd help me come up with a better name for them? Of course, now
that I've been calling them what I've been calling them, for years,
I'd lose some audience--they're few, I'm guessing between a dozen &
two dozen, but there might be secret hundreds, so far, but precious---
by changing the way to access them. So, however imperfect, I'll
probably stick with "so-called poems." But you're embarking, if
you're embarking, on a new little prosaic series, that needs to be
named as carefully as a baby you adore, no?
Eric -
ReplyDeleteHERE IS A SECOND SECTION
And what can they do ? They've been sucked dry
by 'the system'. I was lucky. I dropped out early
but read books avidly, made friends easily, was interested
in trees and plants and stones, in all sorts of things because
my brain has always been active. Their brains were clobbered
perhaps even before they were born. Subject to peer-pressure,
contempt from 'the system' and its mealy-mouthed teachers,
they can't imagine writing a blog. They can grow marijuana
in the loft or the bathroom (one of my Reject friends does that
but of course smokes far too much of it, and drinks as well, and
bets on the horses). They can move into dealing. But they have
had all creativity bludgeoned out of them - by peer-pressure
as well as 'the system'. Their brains have shut down,
they are like hulks in a harbour, barely afloat.
They are true zombies, victims of vampires
paid well to judge them - and find them wanting.
But they can vote...