Bohren & der Club of Gore - Dolores
October 8 2008 at 05:42:37 PM
Watch the clock. Its minute hand blurs through the hash marks; can’t even come close to keeping with its progress. Hindus, Buddhists: They share a protracted sense of time. Innumerable parables in existence dealing with the topic. They don’t just think of time as time. But rather as cosmic units, a sort of monadology that rounds out the great matrix of existence. Silk in the eagle’s talons. The Himalayas. Perseverance. Patience. The fuckin’ inevitable. These concerns are not ours. We wish them to be so. They are simple words connoting concepts we may have seen put into practice. We’ve observed patience, perseverance. We’ve felt the sting of the inevitable. We know Wittgenstein was correct when he noted—parenthetically—a word in utterance strikes a note on the keyboard of the imagination. We understood the statement the minute our eyes pass over it. We understand the parable in a similar manner. We understand the eagle, dangling a piece of silk in its talons, flies over the tops of mountains that comprise the Himalayas. We understand the eagle does this repeatedly. Perseverance. Etc. We understand the repeated action eventually wears the mountains down. The inevitable. This painstaking process wears down these mountains; one single unit of cosmic time has elapsed. Patience. Perseverance. The inevitable. Disbelief: Part and parcel to the notion of cosmic time. We understand how many units of cosmic time have passed. Every grain of sand on the banks of the Ganges represents one single unit of cosmic time.
I rarely exercise anymore, Evangelos said. I was playing pick-up games at the Y. The other guys don’t want me there any longer. I showed up; they treated me indifferently. I asked one of them why. He said it was the way I played, how long I took, holding the ball, dribbling repeatedly in one single place, as if to wear down the court. He said watching me play basketball was like watching someone play chess, the same thing—complete with all the mental affectations: staring off into space, methodically massaging my temples, gesturing as if contemplating the ramifications of each move, painfully organizing my whole being, my entire body weight, into severe, acute purpose. He said I might as well have shaved my head and walked in on a bed of nails. It was ridiculous.
I looked across the bar at Evangelos’ books. They fanned out, several of them, all splotched with enigmatic details. It was writing, ancient writing.
I’ve got to—it’s for my Pop. He said to start with the ancient and work my way up. I’ve been at it for six years, and I’ve spent three days on the verbs in this one paragraph—Plato, the Phaedo, on the soul. Psuche, he said, the Greek a gull bursting out of the foam. All potential senses of the verb—I’ll spend days on it. All night I’ll huddle over it, absolute quiet. A small glass of mineral water, some paper, a few very sharp pencils. I want to die like this—anxious, curious, confused, sure of myself, doubtful, triumphant, defeated. Translation is the beginning of the end.
He smiled again, that big yellow grin.
Why do this?
For my dad. He’s old-world. Refuses to speak English. He says it’s the language of money, of simplicity. Tells me Greek is for virtue, for love, for what he calls nothing too much… the middle path, all in moderation, he said, lighting a cigarette. Six years I’ve been at this language, and I’ll die before I understand two-thirds of the syntactical rules. That’s what the game is based on. No rules, no game. No function.
Evangelos laughed, smoke seeped from his nostrils, fanned out from his mouth.
Just the coffee?
Yeah.
Take it . . . go on, just leave with it; I’ll never tell anyone. We’re, like, conspirators. We’ve thought it over. Our concentration won’t ever wane. I could sit through a lecture on Hegel for the rest of my days. All secret terms and correlations.
It’s just coffee, man.
Get out. Fuck you. Get out of here.
[Stewart Voegtlin]
Bohren & der Club of Gore
Dolores
2008
Pias
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Try "some things in some moderation are alright" instead if you want to play it closer to what was initially intended (but then what use is it?). The self-referential application destroys the more common "pan metron ariston" as there is no restrained in "pan" and no restraint in "ariston". Then again, the ancient Greeks were cruel with knowledge. If you tried too hard to make it work, you weren't apparently understanding it. Epistemology & Arete & der Club of Gore.
nice bullshit review. How about something like what the record sounds like, where it fits in their discography and in the current realm of music? Who gives a shit about how you play basketball you fucking solipsist.
Mr. Maxim, you've got the right stuff; you'll go far in life. Don't mind the forest for the trees. Mr. Helm: Hekista ge! Episteme e aisthesis....
Was it the fucking solipsist playing the basketball, or was it Evangelos? If it was Evangelos, the whole solipsism thing goes out the window. Unless Evangelos is a fictional character. But who would know? Only the fucking solipsist can know for sure whether or not he is actually a fucking solipsist, and not some kinda Reporter. Journalist. Fantasist. The rest of us can only toss mud and wonder.
Yeah, the round-baller would be Evangelos.
Plus, as much as I enjoy the notion of no other minds in existence but my own, I responded to Mr. Laughs AKA "Jericho Maxim," which profoundly demonstrates my acceptance of thoughts, experiences, opinions, etc. other than my own. Now, if only the cogito meant something....
No no. Let's say you were a solipsist and still discussed with what appeared to be other people. This doesn't make you less of a solipsist because these other people would be constructs your mind has brought into existence for the exact reason of your interacting with them. They would be vital, but not real (like many internal notions we hold dear). Whereas a very hard stance like fucking solipsism has its own share of peculiarities on closer examination (and really is no fun at parties) the one you picked out is not one of them.
Also I feel a tinge of jealousy over never having been called a 'fucking solipsist'.
I find it alarming that Mr. Helm is dissecting the finer points of your fucking solipsism. As a figment of your imagination, I feel that he has crossed the fucking line.