Futile Horn

06.19.2003 - 11:03 pm (restore your mind)

Ants are fascinating animals. Individually they are strong, but it is as part of the collective that they derive their true strength. When they unite their energies, working together toward a single common goal, they are indestructible.

That's why I've decided on a divide and conquer method. Sure, their mighty exoskeletons make them extremely difficult to crush under the thumb, but the sum of their mass is no match for the sucking power of my vacuum cleaner. You hear that you little bastards? I don't know where you are coming from or how many you got down there, but I can keep cycloning your punk asses till the city generator blows. I got all 900 watts pulsating from my Euro-Pro Bagless Stick Shark honed on terminating your bevel-headed existence. Hello nature. Welcome to the tireless onslaught of THE MACHINE. Bwahahaha!

I saw an old episode of Lois and Clark the other day where I think some cybergenically unfrozen Nazis nearly took over America. Thanks to The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay I am a familiar with how comic book heroes were used to vent anger, frustrations, and anxiety over Nazi activity in Europe, but I have to say this episode failed miserably in whatever aspect of those old pages it was trying to capture. It was embarrassing really.

I like when the superhero with his superfast dexterity and mental ability can type on the keyboard so very quickly that the computer begins to operate a few magnitudes faster than its processor is physically capable of executing commands.

The thought entered my head yesterday that all guitar is Spanish. Anything else is really just some heathen banging out chords.

S'all right, I am comfortable in my heathenism.

Actually, I am feeling extremely discouraged again today as far as music goes. I remember in Plato the obtaining knowledge is preceded by moments of confusion and disorientation (the idea being we need to first learn what it is we don't know). So by a bit of extension I tell myself that despair is a part of all progress. Although right now, it is just self-induced stress inflicted for the vague hope of some future payoff.

I was having a good time with Latin though. I am rereading what I've read of Horace (in the same sense that writing is rewriting, reading is rereading). In one ode, Horace asks a certain woman to stop writing nasty poems about him. He mentions ira, rage, which has just been used in the previous poem in its adjectival form in reference to the wrath of Achilles. Also we hear how Prometheus put the might of the raging lion in our stomachum. This word is used only once elsewhere: gravem Pelidae stomachum cedere nescii, "the harsh anger of the son Peleus, unknowing how to yield," again a reference to the wrath of Achilles. The poem also begins O matre pulchra filia pulchrior, "o daughter more beautiful than her beautiful mother." The commentary says this is a standard address, but I think it also has something to do with the prophecy that the son of Thetis (daughter of Nereus, the speaker of the aforementioned previous poem) would have a son mightier than his father. Lest any god mate with her and produce an offspring that might overthrow the Olympians, she is married to a mortal, Peleus, so that offspring might one day die. (Jupiter is in another poem described as the one "from whom nothing greater than himself is born," which is interesting because he lusted after Thetis' beauty, and only by the prophecy was his kingdom saved.)

This subtext projects the idea the woman's angry verses have all the destructive power of Achilles' wrath, baleful to both ally and enemy. This is very clever, and of course, in its high minded society tone, not to be taken very seriously. What we have instead is the flavor of mock epic, a trivial occurrence described in weighty terms. Which is exactly what Horace tells the general Agrippa is poetic skills are suited for: "I sing of battles -- of bitter maids digging their pared nails into young men." In the previous poem, Horace builds up momentum for portraying epic themes in lyrical form, only in this poem to tear it all down again with this pleasant nonsense.

The first book of odes is a litany of recurring and interwoven themes, very intricate, often beautiful, and ultimately mostly weightless. A last charming stroke is that the final ode is a denunciation of elaborateness. "I hate luxurious pomp!" The cycle of build up and breakdown says: we have endured many hardships, some may still lurk in our future, but you know what, let's get drunk and fuck.

And to that, I say cheers.

Born to play the funky céilí,
Futile Horn