When One Mask Is Never Enough

Friedrich Nietzsche: “Danger in riches. — Only (s)he who has spirit ought to have possessions: otherwise possessions are a public danger. For the possessor who does not know how to make use of the free time which his possessions could purchase him will always continue to strive after possessions: this striving will constitute his entertainment, his strategy in his war against boredom. Thus in the end the moderate possessions that would suffice the man of spirit are transformed into actual riches – riches which are in fact the glittering product of spiritual dependence and poverty. They only appear quite different from what their wretched origin would lead one to expect because they are able to mask themselves with art and culture: for they are, of course, able to purchase masks. By this means they arouse envy in the poorer and the uncultivated – who at bottom are envying culture and fail to recognize the masks as masks – and gradually prepare a social revolution: for gilded vulgarity and histrionic self-inflation in a supposed ‘enjoyment of culture’ instil into the latter the idea ‘it is only a matter of money’ – whereas, while it is to some extent a matter of money, it is much more a matter of spirit.”  - Aphorism no 310, pages 283/4 from 'Human all too Human; A Book for Free Spirits' (1996) by Frederick Nietzsche   

Picture Set Of The Month - September - The Album Art Of Sun Ra

Sun Ra (1914-93) was America's best kept
secret and the leading exponent of free jazz
from the times of his earliest recordings in the 1940's.  

His first recordings were blues singles but he hit
stride with his Arkestra jazz LP 'Sun Song' in 1957.
Here is an informed article with plenty more of the
record sleeves that so illustrate his sense of space. 

He was a conscientious objector in WW2 and settled 
on doing forestry work in lieu of military service,
White psychiatrists described him as 'Sexually
perverted and a well educated coloured intellectual'.  

Here is a 1976 live version of familiar tune
'Take the A train', which illustrates the avante garde
nature of black futurism, his gift to Black America.
by Sun Ra and his Arkestra 

 

How Real Hell is....

Depends on where you live in Europe
or the UK. That said belief an any sort of afterlife
or in Heaven/Nirvana/Paradise is either a sign
of the comfort that richest award themselves
or of extreme naivety about the world we live in.

Finally this survey tells us nothing about how much
Hell might have invested in us through making us
disbelieve in it, to varying degrees, whilst waiting
to make itself real at the end of human experience.   

 

Reverse Your Own Way Into The Future

Because the past never really goes away, anyway....

 

An Anthropologist Writes....

One group says they believe in purity,
and socially security for families,
through marriage where the father
owns all the property by himself
and directs the values of the family
because they cannot direct themselves,
all with anyone ever calling it 'Patriarchy'.

They say they believe in Creationism,
a hierarchy where God tells the man,
to tell his wife and children
that root and branch, man,
woman and their offspring 
who have to be above the animals
and the plants, of which they live
that live and die with no regard
to property, or buying or selling
not even when men trap, eat,
and and sell them to other men.

The other group are men
who believe in evolution
in order to accept the sensuality
that family values says cannot exist
in 'do not touch' type societies.

There 'family values' are law,
the whole of the law,
and nothing but the law,
but in secret these men celebrate
their (r)evolutionary sensuality, 
denying even the temptation
to voyeurism, a warping of their creed, 
that 'family values' invites,
and never admitting that what they do
has a name, where it's name is 'cottaging'.

The family values they hide from
mean that the part they share less
are their lips which respond
to the gentlest of shared movements.

Legion

 Safe in psychiatric hospital

I had placed four friendly plastic bags,
Which once held loving gifts of fruit,
Chocolate, magazines, flowers.
Firmly over my head
In the cloakroom of the locked ward.
Like Legion, I wrestled with the demons.
Tramp, tramp tramping through my brain.
A legion was a Roman Regiment of
Six thousand troops.
Show me a more accurate picture of mental illness.

After my failed cloakroom debacle on the ward,
The self harming  (….razors, needles, fire)
Young girls aged 14 to 21,
And I were irresistibly drawn together,
Our hollow eyes locked in a nightmare of understanding.
They mothering my ageing self with
Hugs, toffees under the pillow,
Carefully drawn pictures,
The delicate offering of painting my fingernails
In shocking pink.
Caught tears at two in the morning.
Legion, in among the tombs, watching his demons
Crashing via two thousand pigs over the Gadarene cliffs;
The relief of it! echoed later as he sits,
Clothed and in his right mind,
Calmly.
By the side of Jesus.
Who is to say that an echoing miracle was not begun in my mind,
(But slowly)
By that small regiment of unlikely,
Oh so young, self-scarred angels
In the locked ward?
After all
Here I am sitting, calmly, writing poetry once more.

By Belfast author, poet and Christian activist Sylvia Sands, about whom I wish I knew more from here. 

An Articulate Comedian Writes....