Shadow of (Beo)Wulfs

Note: sorry, but, due to my disposition before, during and after putting this post together (including the time on my Letter 32 w/pica), I’ve had to make various corrections to it (the blog post, not the pic text). Thank you for your (worst)reading patience. And BTW, the typed/scanned material in the pic requires less effort to write. Seriously. So much for technology, eh?

Read through my old (college) copy of Beowulf last night – it is part of one of them anthologies of classic lit. Also included (but not in the old anthology) was a bottle/belly full of wine. As the night progressed I also started thinking about one of my old nemeses:  The Cain Tradition. (Which had nothing to do with college.)

Hiccup.

In Beowulf The Cain Tradition is not mentioned – it is instead part of the various/numerous”collegiate” undertakings that are supposed to interpret this ancient text. The thing is, Beowulf haunts me and so too does The Cain Tradition. Either that or both amuse me to the point of boredom (if that’s possible). Still, my motivation with this ancient text and the even more ancient tradition lies NOT in Beowulf and that whole Nordic heroism B.S. but in the whims of the plot generating sub-characters: Grendel and his mother. (Hence what I consider to be The Cain Tradition connection to this ancient story.)

Indeed, the old testament fascinates me. But does it fascinate me as much as it fascinated men (in this case the anonymous author of Beowulf) so long ago? You see, there is so little value in actually learning about humanity these days. Value has become something else, right? But if one gives stories like this, stories stemming out of the chaos that would eventually be the honed and horrid tradition that is today’s monotheistic religious nuttery, well…

Nomatter. Burp

Every once-a-once I get caught up (again) in trying to learn. Some men just get drunk, you know. They call it avoiding or an ersatz for the meaninglessness of life. I think getting drunk is quite the opposite. Shutting down and/or manipulating all those nerve endings with such a variety of fermented juice… Yet I still haven’t tasted mead. But when I read about mead it’s almost as though I (can) taste it. Other than that, I dream of the halls in which it was (all) drunk so many hundreds of years ago – during a time when real men still walked the earth instead of the cowards we have today…

Wait. Hicc…üüüüp. (That’s one of them hiccups that includes stomach phlegm. ;-)

Don’t get me wrong. When I say “real men” regarding a time long past, I am not trying to claim that it/they was/were better. But it does seem that the pagan rituals of Nordic kings and tribes from so long ago held some kind of honor. There was an honor to how they lived and, perhaps, how they died. Therefore, in my il-logic, I am motivated to wonder (at times) if it is the advent of Christianity (as we know it today and as it is so frivolously mentioned in the Beowulf text) that has lead to this less honorable way of living – minus, of course, the blood & guts.

Yes, indeed. The blood & guts of then has been replaced with the comfort of useless eaters today. Or… Well… Maybe… Maybe not.

Whatever. Big gulp.

Rant on.

-tgs-

Whole Luminous

What's in a name?

Like I said, she was something like a nice old bitch. To have met her when I was young would have been better. I’m sure that we would have gotten along out of bed then. But that mother-driving force behind all lust… Where can it lead, you ask? To the stillness or an injection of antibiotics. There is no denying that without her life is that much less than better. She’s since gone the way of all old MILFs and GILFs. Beyond the grave to the firery blades of cosmetic enhancement. There is no denying that this quick, if not immediate relationship lead to something profound. At the least it lead to my brother who is also my son. But I tried to keep that from those that would read what comes from my Olivetti. Yes, indeed, she was, if not in me, than upon me. Yet I still can’t help but to forget her.

Rant on – sometimes.

-tgs-

Expat Creative Nonsense

Nonsense is nonsense, right? Maybe not. But can nonsense be creative?

Many years have passed and I’ve wasted a lot of time thinking about two things: being an expat, being creative. And so I ask: will this foreign living ever end? And: it can’t end because it helps me maintain some level of creativity. Seriously, it took something like ten years before I started to become homesick. The thing is, once you’re always sick, once you start to enjoy the sickness… there’s no going back. Of course, when I say/refer to “creativity” I probably mean something quite different than what is referred to in this study which I recently found via this article at the The Economist:

Cultural Borders and Mental Barriers: The Relationship Between Living Abroad and Creativity (PDF)

The study is interesting. Shame, though, that the PHD dudes that wrote/researched it misunderstand creativity – even though they define creativity in such a scholarly fashion at the beginning. Seriously. I’ve got some news for you/them (them). I’ve defined creativity once or twice. Be assured, my definition is less scholarly.

Creativity is  not what most are accustomed to thinking it is. Seriously – it’s something much bigger, better and never part of useless, meaningless coercive behaviorism that makes up most of  modern western culture today. But don’t get me wrong – I’m not a vocabulary tyrant – nor do I wish to stop the bizzy-body-ness of hobbyists. So please indulge me and pay close attention to what I’m about to write. This is (worst)writing at its worst/best:

Creativity is never about what you do. Creativity is always about what has been done.

I guess that’s why I belittle, in my own elitist kind of way, shit like “arts&crafts” (i.e. hobbies) – which, btw, is code for what The Haves (w/jobs) actually do in their useless corporate lives. (Or maybe it’s not code.) Anyway… Too many people refer to creativity as making-a-living. At the least, we live in a world that can/has easily changed not just the way we use language but also the meaning of everything. But that’s life, right?

When people refer to the meaninglessness of their lives as “creative” I cringe. I mean, don’t get me wrong. Sure, have fun fiddling with shit. I don’t care. But fiddling has nothing to do with doing something that actually has meaning – especially when there are so many examples in both history and (even) our day & age of people who actually do do something useful with their lives – which can be seen, read, felt, etc. I won’t bore you with examples of what I consider to be creative – but I will say this: it has nothing to do with what someone is doing at any particular moment.

So what gets under my gander here (in the pdf above) is what needs to be addressed based on the assumptions made in this scholarly effort by so-called academics that, probably by some coercive power greater than their own (greater than the academic world that financed it), had to address this subject matter. They also, like so many other academics, have to make use of their scholarly titles. But that don’t mean they be right.

Any takers out there that want to cut the academics up to shreds?

Obviously the published study has a corporate bent to it. More obviously the funding to do the research came from somewhere, e.g. just over the corporate rainbow. And that’s OK. I don’t mind. Even if corrupted by corps and the people that work/live for them produce this kind of nonsense, I can still see through it – and even learn something from it. So let’s all call an apple a spade- or an orange a deck of cards – or the other way round. Full stop.

The thing that gets me about this study/article is, after referencing research that comes straight out of MBA case-study bullshit, they compare the creative powers/genius of Hemingway and Beckett to the nonsense of working in a corporation and solving some nitwit problem that stems from inherent dysfunction. I’m not aware, other than perhaps Andy Warhol, where something creative has ever actually been derived from inherent dysfunction.

But I may be wrong – as usual.

Rant on.

-tgs-