One thing leads to another, he said, it is our culture. And our history, a history of walkingtalkingwriting that is, which he was also giving.
Certain implicit methodological restraints that need immediate spelling out: We are ignorant (or agnostic if you prefer) from the standpoint of causality. Walking leads to talking leads to… there is a progression but it isn’t what we mean by causality. Whatever it is that happens emerges, and mostly without us knowing it.
At this moment old-fashioned Uncle Wally, always correctly dressed in white shirt, jacket and tie, and wearing his thick soled leather brogue walking shoes, pauses to nod his head, then bending forward, he stoops and extends his left hand as if about to pick a spring meadow flower of stunning brightness, “My thinking is related to theology as blotting paper is related to ink. It is saturated with it. Were one to go by the blotter, however, nothing of what is written would remain.” WB, Arcades Project, Passagen-Werk, # N7, a7.
We are also ignorant in our methodology (but not agnostic in this instance) of any archaic ‘essence’, which could determine a hierarchy or underlying order. Things come in the order we make, that is, all our possible conversations.
Vote, Don’t vote, for example. It is doubtful that we regard any of those who are currently asking for our votes on Election Day on May 6th as people with whom it is possible to have a conversation. That is what the opinion polls are currently saying at any rate. So the accusation is of voter apathy, and the exhortation is for citizens to do their duty. But apathy of course is far from the right word, as José Saramago vigorously agrees (Seeing, Ensiao sobre a Lucidez).
Radical losers; she or he who does not vote. Hans Magnus Enzenberger, also somewhat formally dressed as central European poets generally still are, especially the older generation, but without a tie, points me towards certain sentences in an essay he wrote in 2005 (Der Spiegel, November 7th) with the title ‘The radical loser’. “One thing is certain: the way humanity has organized itself – "capitalism", "competition", "empire", "globalization" – not only does the number of losers increase every day, but as in any large group, fragmentation soon sets in. In a chaotic, unfathomable process, the cohorts of the inferior, the defeated, the victims separate out. The loser may accept his fate and resign himself; the victim may demand satisfaction; the defeated may begin preparing for the next round. But the radical loser isolates himself, becomes invisible, guards his delusion, saves his energy, and waits for his hour to come.”
What hour might that be for her or him? The Enzenberger essay unhappily goes on to lose itself in causality, and a search for archaic ‘essence’, but it reminded me at the outset that the idea of the apolitical poet is a myth. Might the community of those without the community at a certain hour join together in possible conversation? Stunning brightness leads to Leuchten leads to Lucidez.