Posting will be light to non-existent until the metaphysics improve. Indeed, saying anything at all would be stupid and dangerous. I’m sure you understand.
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Comment by Number 6
1 March 12, 2008, 5:14 pm o'clock |
“A still tongue makes a happy life”
“Questions are a burden to others
Answers a prison for oneself”
-Village mottos
Comment by K.J. Webb
2 March 12, 2008, 7:04 pm o'clock |
“Of that of which we cannot speak we must be silent.” - L. Wittgenstein.
“Metaphysics is the science of being qua being.” - Aristotle.
Yet, are we not, John and Number 6, creatures who only define ourselves - only really know ourselves - through speech? Wittgenstein and Aristotle both spoke many words in many volumes, sometimes, paradoxically, recommending speechlessness. That’s a strategy which naturally appeals to talky people. Talkers get sick of talk. However, I am not like that. I have a horror of speechlessness. It smacks of the grave. I never tire of talk, though I often long for it to be better than it is (self’s included).
When I was young a certain kind of guy got a reputation for profundity just by never opening his mouth. Periodic sighs and the striking of decorative attitudes sometimes supplemented the wordlessness. This impressed me. At least until I came to suspect that keeping quiet was a screen: nothing interesting was going on behind that wordless facade. Mute dopiness had no appeal for me at all (nor for Wittgenstein or Aristotle). I grant that silence in strategic doses (which I interpret John’s as being) is part of life’s rhythm. Like the rests in music, such silences render the sounds which precede and follow them resonant. Let the rests, please God, not last so long I forget the tune. Soon enough comes the big sleep and the neverending silence. Clash the cymbal and bang the drum while you await it!
Comment by John K
3 March 13, 2008, 4:14 am o'clock |
I think I understand.
Hang on, good buddy.
Comment by Number 6
4 March 13, 2008, 9:02 am o'clock |
KJ doesn’t seem to understand “irony”, and apparently has never seen any of The Prisoner, thus not getting the references i make…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prisoner
Comment by Number 6
5 March 13, 2008, 9:24 am o'clock |
“Words have meaning. And names have power. The Universe began with a word, you know. But which came first… the word or the thought behind the word? You can’t create language without thought. And you can’t conceive a thought without language. So which created the other… and thus, created the Universe?” -Lorien, “Babylon 5″
Comment by K.J. Webb
6 March 13, 2008, 10:34 am o'clock |
“To talk to you I gotta use words.” - T.S. Eliot.
“For me to understand you, your words gotta make sense.” - K.J. Webb
Just kidding, #6. I like your style, and I do believe you scored a palpable hit upon me. My misspent youth included very little exposure to irony and none at all to “The Prisoner.” Words, we can agree, are talismanic stones - slippery, powerful and gleaming with portent. Hurl them, lob them, caress them, make a castle of them. Use carefully, elegantly, dangerously or beautifully. Never perfunctorily or ideologically - lest babble or Babel befall you.
Comment by Number 6
7 March 13, 2008, 12:05 pm o'clock |
“Understanding is a three-edged sword” -Kosh, “Babylon 5″
(as a musician & synthesist i much prefer music & sound to mere words)
Comment by K.J. Webb
8 March 13, 2008, 12:45 pm o'clock |
“Mere words” is fightin’ words. Nothing can beat words, when used by the masters, for depicting the fullness of human experience in all its subtlety. Music is a glorious thing, a self-contained world of its own, a mainline to the emotional center of things. True, but that’s just another way of calling it a binge, a holiday from life. Not continuously satisfying. We need binges, of course.
Comment by GravelPit
9 March 13, 2008, 1:15 pm o'clock |
It is better to keep one’s mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open it and resolve all doubt. ~Abraham Lincoln
People have to talk about something just to keep their voice boxes in working order so they’ll have good voice boxes in case there’s ever anything really meaningful to say. ~Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Cat’s Cradle
Comment by K.J. Webb
10 March 13, 2008, 3:45 pm o'clock |
But when old Abe opened his mouth the most wonderful of words poured out of it - not just words, but phrases, chains of reasoning, emotional utterances intimately bound to logic. Even Vonnegut got in a few good licks. We’re all tuning up our voices here on earth, in the daily give and take of our lives, for the moment when the stars line up and we’re finally able to say what we want to say in the way we want to say it.