En réponse à "In which she thinks of Boulez and the War."

The quotation of Coleridge is one of the most relevant theft I have ever seen you wear, and as always it's impossible to give it this name as it was always born to be pinned by you. The post war periods of the twenty first century are so powerfully summed up in these words: artistic moves going at first outwards and deconstructing what was left by earlier ages by blowing it up (Dada, what else could be more explenatory?), then reconstructing, at first in a move against mechanic (surrealism), then against rationality (dialectic), a picture from the pieces left by civilisation, blown into littler pieces by the moves aforementioned (isn't the subtitle for Adorno's Minima Moralia "Life in pieces"?).
I would add that all this needs war as a fuel, marxism as a motor -in its existence as a tool to denounce and uncover the veil that has been thrown on life- , and therefore see war merely as the cruellest illustration of a catastrophe already enunciated and denounced. In war, we did not see the horror of anormality, but the crualty that normality is pregnant with. Life and mind were biased and divided in pieces way before the war, and the violent reaction of artists blowing up language and rationality, like Spanish anarchists did with the caserns and churches, appears as the only way to deal with a situation that has become the opposite of life, though it would be presomptuous to define what is life.
Hence one realizes that avant-garde and violence are to wed everywhere, all the time, and Coleridge states it straight. But remember that this association is only the answer that has to be given to a violence that goes way deeper and is so hard to defeat because it integrates and ruins those efforts made to overtake it. It is not surprising anymore to read about the spectators in the Royal Albert Hall texting their friends, husbands, and mistresses, chatting while you go through one of the most violent feelings you ever experienced. Just like we talk about Picassos and Manets by discussing their price, or even worst the fact that art must remain a mystery and esoteric. The relationship with art - even say "art" instead of "expression" participates in the tragedy, dividing the whole in parts that have to be evaluated separately and classified - has joined the consumption sphere, and the oeuvre is a mere pretext to judge myself and the other: "which opera did you see?" "Which painter do you love?" "I read this book, fantastic!" In art we value ourselves and others, drape oursleves in a cloth of more or less price, and what is the point of value if it is not to worth something else, be sold or exhanged.
That's why I love -and saying love I say it in a relationship excluding value, if such a thing is possible, but only my recognition of dealing with a human sister, an individual with who I can talk to and share- your piece and many of yours, in that they explore and therefore share a personnal view that is denied of arrière pensées. It is a gift that you write, that you are. Giving being the last shelter for those who want to explore a life that has not been blown into pieces, divided, and ossified in formaldehyd jars. Your struggle so painlessly -it seems to the stranger-, and yet so deeply and generously, to reveal a life that is worth living. This is what touches me so much in your parole. Hence even clumsiness or confusion, though scarcely observed in your writings, sound true and add diversity and perspectives instead of reducing the whole. May you think a little like that concerning my awful grammary and choice of words...

No-nonsense, nonsense, and sense

"No-nonsense" they say, with the disdain that stuns the interlocutor, as a talisman, as an answer to every critic, to every differing voice. With the stone cold tone of medical specialists, they reveal the hard truth and that it is unavoidable.
No-nonsense appears so much going without saying that it seems as vital to enter its presuppositions and reveal what is meant by it.
As many words if not all, it is only defined and appears in opposition to another notion that is of nonsense, and saying this, we can try and elucidate the term. Nonsense is meant as the non essential, the non objective, the non productive. Already we encounter more than one problem with that. If we had answers pertaining to what is essential, objective, productive, we would certainly be by now, a species without a single problem, a world without a gap, filled by means and goals, a perfect circle in other circles. We see how ridiculous a statement of certainty concerning these notions is, if not a religious creed that appears, because of its certainty, uncertain.
If you want to learn about how this miracle of certainty and lack of reaction can happen, I invite you to read the pessimistic lucidity raised by Theodor Adorno's Minima Moralia, in the excerpts 43 and 45. What one can read there is how a biased "objective" is opposed to the "subjective", and therefore how the inversion of the two notions takes place, objectivity becoming the word of the fools, subjectivity the last shelter for sanity. It goes on to say that the "common sense" as opposed to a chimerical opposite of it, is in fact the complete opposite of what we call common sense, in that it is an absolute enterprise of deconstruction of this "common sense". This can be explained by an original lye in the word: common sense has become what is accepted as concensus, based on "rationality" and science, while it should be the letting go of any prejudice to decipher a reality through unbiased eyes.
Let us take the example of a market, that we borrow from Adorno, as we have to acknowledge his intelligence in the choices of illustration, never diminishing the idea, always making it clearer yet more complex. Let us wander around the market in the company of two buyers: who has common sense between the one who chooses the goods according to the merchant's speech and the signs, and the one who always starts by distrusting the surrounding to look at the goods themselves?
Let us not laugh, for we are the first tradesman in many an occasion, if not all.
It is therefore extremely interesting to hear what one says when using "no-nonsense" (the modern prononciation of common sense). This statement lies on a castle we think, the problem being that it is nothing like a real one, as in a personnal one. Lacking time, interest, and opportunities, we rest on a castle that was presented to us as finished and allegedly grounded against every wind. First of all, promises have only the worth we put in them, and an unpersonnal uncertainty built into an immediate certainty should make suspicion arise. But let us say that indeed it is impossible in the twenty-first century to encompass all human knowledge, even dealing with one simple thing. The problem remains, for it is the biggest mistake one can make to believe in an objective eye: science is only the infinitesimal perception of a gigantic reality, if not a veil on reality, hiding it definitely. Who wants to live on a tower built by half blind crazy stubborn architects? Well, us, apparently. Even though they never meant it as a complete world to be lived in, we have taken what scientists told us and made it our bed.
The only escape would be to buil our own shelter, from floor to ceiling, but how much can it take? How long do we have to spend our lives building a modest hut, letting wind go through, with a door that locks so badly we are in perpetual fear of being rippef of all our possessions? Well, all our life is an answer. Isn't it why we are here? Isn't the improvement of our knowledge over ourselves and the world, hence of our power and the world's, hence the push against the territory of suffering (there is no reduction in suffering, it is a univers which we are at the centre of, the borders being our territory of power, we can only dream of inspecting them, and eventually pushing them a little further if possible). But let us ask a question: would you prefer to live in a tower you do not know of any plan, any risk prevention mechanism, anything that is going on in the basement, and also without knowledge of any escape, or in a humble hut you know like you own hands, that you are sure at least the little roof will never fall onto your head, even in the wildest storms, and then even if it falls, that you can escape in one second and build a new one, more resistant?
If you choose the skyscraper, and it is your first right, then do not change and apply the no-nonsense motto wherever you are, whatever you do. But do not scream and shout when a new wind will come and make you fall. Of course you will be welcomed in littler shelters, but who knows if you won't want to congregate and follow a few more mad estate builders?
If you want a hut, prepare yourself and never accept anything, for there is non free meal, even daling with ideas. The tools and materials for this hut are called dialectic and experience, you have to use them always together, one screwing (or throwing away) the plank the other found. Negativitty and criticism is the only way to build a conscience that is personnal and deprived of prejudices as much as can be. It would be ridiculous to add work, for everybody works all the time, some against their borders, some other to lose themselves, it is always work.

Therefore, when one says no-nonsense, it sits on a lie pertaining to the mirage of knowledge, and it is nonsense that is to be seeked, providing if not truth, at least no certainty, otherwise called untruth. In other words, one can fail only by trying not to fail.


I cannot recomand enough the reading of Nietzche's Also sprach Zarathoustra that inspired this text and the person typing now.