for thinking people
December 23, 2017
I don’t want to reveal my exact age, but I am not young. I am not old, either – although, perhaps this latter claim would automatically categorize me as old. In any case, I am at an age where I can look back and have a concept of nostalgia, of memories, of childhood.
I also have an uncannily good memory – which is a blessing for a writer. This memory is in fact multi-layered: Not only do I remember the past, but I remember myself in the past thinking about the past.
December 22, 2017
Note: this article is based on my doctoral dissertation, “Time is Everything with Him”: The Concept of the Eternal Now in Nineteenth-Century Gothic, which can be downloaded (for free) from the repository of the Tampere University Press. For a list of my other academic publications, see here.
Arthur Schopenhauer states in his 1818 The World as Will and Representation that “[the present], empirically apprehended, is the most fleeting of all … [It] constantly becomes and passes away, in that it either has been already or is still to come” (Schopenhauer 1969, 279).
The metaphysical spectrality of this undefinably small present, this malleable here-and-now, seems to exist in a conflicting relationship with the sheer weight of reality it seems to carry. Human consciousness possesses epistemological access to the present that is uniquely more reliable than that of the past or the future.
The reason is that these “contain mere concepts and phantasms … The present alone is that which always exists” (Schopenhauer 1969, 279). I refer to this present, the borders of which are ambiguous, as the eternal now or the eternal present.
December 20, 2017
Let’s talk about mediocrity. Let’s talk about art, too. I’m looking at the charts for the week of April 30, 2016. The song at the top is a song by Rihanna (feat. Drake) called “Work”. Let’s take a look at the lyrics.
Work, work, work, work, work, work
He said me haffi
Work, work, work, work, work, work!
He see me do me
Dirt, dirt, dirt, dirt, dirt, dirt!
So me put in
Work, work, work, work, work, work
When you ah gon’
Learn, learn, learn, learn, learn
Meh nuh care if him
Hurt, hurt, hurt, hurt, hurting
Now, let’s take a look at the song that was at the top of the list in the same week 30 years ago. I discover it was “5150” by Van Halen. Let’s take a look at the lyrics of that song.
The love in me is never straight and narrow
Unless the love is tried and true
You take a chance with new beginnings
Still we try, win or lose, take the highs
With the blues
It might not be something that would raise Samuel Coleridge from his grave, but hey, I doubt it would make him roll over in it, either.
