Thursday, August 19, 2010

Like a Dragon after a Pregnant Lady

So many times Briullov and I rolled the thought around with our tongues, with no discernible headway. So did Nietzsche. So did every philosopher the whole world round. Around, around, the imprecise grace of an amateur at the wine-tasting, tuxedo ill-fitting, shirt billowing where it's not drenched in sweat, the thought still rolling, cheeks bulging like the Gallows' man.

The hypothesis: An intellectual must write from a place of discontentment.

Why? Simply because the question of innovation demands the stimulus of unhappiness?

How linguistic does this inquiry become? Can the intellectual be content? Happy? Pleased? Enlightened? Do we not always associated The Enlightened as The Teacher -- yet wouldn't The Enlightened, the most separated from suffering, feel the least need for revolution? If no suffering, whence discontentment, incontinence, unhappiness, displeasure, melancholia -- in short, that state of being de rigueur du homme intelligent?
I've had a recurring nightmare
I was loved for who I am
Missed the opportunity
To be a better man

Do I tell myself: "You will never reach a perfection of happiness, and that's enough to fuel your thought"? Should I search for ways to make myself miserable? When does querying the status quo [because the status is...not...quo], pushing the proverbial envelope, stepping, stage left, out the box - when does inquiry stop and malcontent ideological war-mongering begin?

Riddle me this: Can I, so staunchly refusing to be placed in any box, exercise that same maneuver, separating life-life from intellectual-life? Wasn't one of the first things I ever wrote in this blog that I wanted that never to be the case?

And yet I like being happy.

1 comment:

S.H.S said...

I'm reading "Bright-Sighted" by B. Ehrenreich and loving it. It's all about how "Happiness" has infected america and how it's a disease of Christianity/Capitalism/Scientism. I think you'd like it. It's a good way to feel strong about living without resolutions and positive thinking...