Wrote Édouard Levé, translated, in The Paris Review, in something I ran across trying to figure out if he actually did commit suicide, a question I had after reading a puzzlingly worded Metafilter entry:
24. A house designed by a three-year-old is built.Answer to my question: Yes, he did.
1. A book describes works that the author has conceived but not brought into being. 2. The world is drawn from memory. There are missing countries, altered borders.
3. Proust’s head is drawn on a page of In Search of Lost Time. The words tracing out the contour of his face form a grammatically correct sentence.
"Édouard Levé (January 1, 1965 – October 15, 2007, Paris) was a French writer, artist, photographer. His final book, Suicide, although fictional, evokes the suicide of his childhood friend 20 years earlier, which he had also mentioned in "a shocking little addendum, tucked nonchalantly...into Autoportrait." He delivered the manuscript to his editor ten days before he took his own life at 42 years old."
Which drains much of the charm from the project of listing things the author has conceived but not brought into being. For a similar writing project, accomplished much earlier and with greater charm by someone who has lived on and on without committing suicide, read "Grapefruit," by Yoko Ono.
Yoko Ono is 81.
Imagine there’s no heaven. Easy, right? Now imagine letting a goldfish swim across the sky. That wasn’t so hard, was it? Now imagine one thousand suns in the sky at the same time. Then imagine the clouds dripping. Dig a hole in your garden to put them in.
पोस्ट्स
२७ टिप्पण्या:
The problem with eating in deserted restaurants is that sometimes there is a good reason for them to be deserted: because the food sucks.
I like the discussion of poured molten lead at the metafilter link.
Confession: the words "a question I had" were added 15 minutes after writing the post.
Relief felt: No one noticed the ambiguity in the original post and mocked me as I had mocked the WaPo 2 posts down.
The first request is the hardest one. Imagine no heaven? How do you imagine a nullity? Can you imagine "no elephant"? How about "no grass" - not bare soil, not a patch of pavement, but simply, in isolate, "no grass". Our imagination is so object and concept-oriented that even absences are conceivable at the raw level only as fictional constructs.
I mean consider the Neitzchean aphorism "gaze not into the abyss, lest the abyss gaze into you." (Yes, I know that's not the quote, please. The original was in German, better to coin something euphonic than hobble oneself with context.) Superficial grammar and syntax aside, consider the non-existent object performing the actions of a mirror of sentience - the void staring back at the self. We *cannot* look at nothing without eventually imagining something looking back at us. Never mind imagining nothing from something, we can't even perceive nothing without making it something.
Edouard is/was an interesting person. He certainly felt that he was interesting and not boring like most of the people that he had met.
His achilles heel seems to have been a life spent in self medicating drug abuse. I guess that got boring.
I think the exercise of painting, from memory, the same painting for 10 years running and then displaying them all would be very interesting.
I also like the idea of rehanging paintings in a gallery depending on size. I picture them all along a straight hall, and the effect screwing with perspective.
Yoko Ono Sexbot says:
Imagine you are a nail in the wall where a picture once hung; I'll be a blueberry.
"The first request is the hardest one. Imagine no heaven? How do you imagine a nullity?"
When being asked to "imagine there is no ________," one is really being asked to imagine how oneself or others would act, or what changes in human society would result, in the absence of the constraining and/or inspiring presence of _________.
Does the statement "imagine there's no heaven" express a belief that there's no heaven or that there is?
Imagine there's a God who favors people who don't believe in God. Imagine believing in that as a religion.
Why does one push sunglasses to the end of their nose?
tell me if anyone would know who she was or show up to a stage at a festival if she was never married and the widow to John Lennon?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAZTzaQ-sSc&feature=kp
I suppose I not sophisticated enough to enjoy such entertainment.
Imagine there's a God who favors people who don't believe in God. Imagine believing in that as a religion.
That's pretty much the God Jews believe in. He only allows people who don't believe in Him to have Christmas presents and bacon.
I listened to "Shaved Fish." Once. Yoko Ono should be prosecuted as an aural terrorist.
When being asked to "imagine there is no ________," one is really being asked to imagine how oneself or others would act, or what changes in human society would result, in the absence of the constraining and/or inspiring presence of _________.
Yes, of course, because if Yoko Ono, taken on her own merits, is anything, she's dead boring and hipster-conventional as all hell. But take her at her naked word, and deliberately misunderstanding that can produce something, something interesting.
The misunderstanding takes into account recent research into the innate religiosity of man - that even if there were no heaven, and that absence, that void was as plain as the nose on the face of your dearest child - still, the mind of man would project a sort of conceptual heaven upon the great gaping deep-blue void of the sky. Does that mean that there *is* a heaven? Eh. But men seem built by nature and nature's god to see a heaven in the heavens, a god in the simplest and most reductive of materialistic machines.
Does the statement "imagine there's no heaven" express a belief that there's no heaven or that there is?
I would postulate that imagination and belief are not synonymous, although they feel like they're related. I imagine many things, but believe few of them. Is your religion imagination, words or faith? "My words fly up, my thoughts remain below."
Given the context of Ono's statement, wherein the initial imaginative request is followed by increasingly implausible - but to my mind, easier - things to imagine, it kind of sounds like she thinks that heaven is a thing, something to be erased to make her experiment in imagination possible. But I don't think it's necessary to believe one way or the other to commit to the exercise - it's simply a perceptual axiom.
Now imagine one thousand suns in the sky at the same time.
I'm trying, I'm trying, but I'm sure the number is off and I can't help but get distracted by the burning vegetation and dying animals. Best part, no mosquitoes. Downside, the AGW nutballs were right.
"I prefer going to bed to getting up, but I prefer living to dying."
Until he didn't, that is.
"I am an egoist despite myself, I cannot even conceive of being altruistic."
That comes through strongly.
"I do not write memoirs. I do not write novels. I do not write short stories. I do not write plays. I do not write poems. I do not write mysteries. I do not write science fiction. I write fragments. I do not tell stories from things I’ve read or movies I’ve seen, I describe impressions, I make judgments. The modern man I sing."
Fragments, yes, like WG Sebald.
"tell me if anyone would know who she was or show up to a stage at a festival if she was never married and the widow to John Lennon?"
She is a nullity, speaking of nullities.
Now imagine letting a goldfish swim across the sky. That wasn't so hard, was it?
I didn't just imagine it, I actually let him. In fact, I helped him. With a slingshot.
Then imagine the clouds dripping.
Wow, all that imagination, and you come up with rain?
Dig a hole in your garden to put them in.
That was the fate of the goldfish.
Gods all demand our attention called worship. But the ones demanding suicide or other sacrificial killings of friends and families are the worst.
The Muslim's god is better. Black Rock Al only demands sacrificial killings of Infidels when you conquer them and steal their stuff.
Earth gods worshiped at the EPA Cathedral only demand slow starvation and drug resistant new plagues following to remove humans pollution. This is done by withholding carbon based energy resources from the fools.
John Lennon was severely overrated.
On the Internet you can claim with equal credibility to be either God or a dog, but you cannot claim to be non existent. It's impossible to assert that you don't exist because such a statement is proof of your existence. Nonetheless, we will all achieve nullity.
"Rock Lobster"!
Now imagine some Asian woman screeching incoherently and seeing numerous people pretend it's music.
Imagine there’s no heaven. Easy, right? Now imagine letting a goldfish swim across the sky. That wasn’t so hard, was it? Now imagine one thousand suns in the sky at the same time. Then imagine the clouds dripping.
I wonder if that was a joke, since in fact those things require no imagination at all. There is no heaven, if a goldfish is swimming across the sky you can't stop it, if you go out on a clear night you'll see more than a thousand suns in the sky, and hello, rain.
There are a lot more than a thousand suns in sky.
RonF said...
Now imagine some Asian woman screeching incoherently and seeing numerous people pretend it's music.
7/15/14, 1:39 PM
Normally if you make sounds like that at 81, the interns come into your room and up the sedation medication or strap you down to the bed.
I can imagine Yoko Ono having to work for a living. We would never have her art to enjoy. What a loss for the one or two people who give a shit.
Ignorance is Bliss:
Thank you. Just simply, thank you.
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