[i sound my barbaric yawp.]
Apr. 14th, 2005 08:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
reenkaHaving downloaded yet another Fruits Basket music vid, I was basking in the joy of loving Kyou, whose over-the-top anger makes my heart all aflutter... and this led me to think about how I love angry, bitter songs (just today, I was drooling over Radiohead and Linkin Park in one breath just 'cause they're so loudly angst-filled) & perpetually angry (male) characters in general.... Which led to me thinking (again) how I alone seem in love with the notion of Draco's anger post-OoTP sometimes... okay, a lot of times.... Which led me to thinking about how I can fall for the biggest jerk, fictional or not, just because they're so full of rage and passion, either directed at the world or just one person (or just me, most amazingly).
People often go on about how there's a lack of reason and clear thinking in the world, and that's true, but.... I can't help but feel that knowledge & reason is nothing without the burning passion to master it. There's a lack of passion that I see around me... a lack of sheer unfiltered intense emotion, fully honest & unstoppable. I realize that to me, that sort of thing is like crack (i.e., it fries my brain-cells but I find it addictive), and that it's not healthy to go around high on life all the time (it would wear most people out, anyway)... Few people seem truly loud even without speaking, and so viscerally full of existence that it's like a look from them is as startling as a scream. That is probably for the best, actually, but....
Sometimes I think that a large part of why I've lived my life with my nose buried in books is because I can't find that sort of larger than life emotion exhibited by the people I generally see around me. I suppose these are the people other people follow-- the people who're unique enough to become leaders or outcasts or rock-stars, revolutionaries or war-mongers. Me... I'm not looking to follow anyone like that, I just want to experience that brand of pure honesty-- 'cause it's not really like most people lie, it's just that their truths and half-truths aren't deeply felt enough to really matter, somehow. I don't know.
The more I say things like that, the more I realize how much at odds these desires are with the functioning of polite society. Perhaps this is partly why I've always felt at odds with society in general. Civilization does need to be civilized, doesn't it. Finding deeper meaning in that (besides continued survival, not to be underestimated) seems to be the only difficulty.
Some people turn to religion for this, don't they? They want something huge and overpowering and meaningful, something they feel isn't quite within the range of humanity-- something that is bigger than they are, so their lives of quiet desperation appear to make -sense- somehow in context. Others turn to art, or the allure of pure knowledge, or the attainment of power, sex or drugs-- but to me, all of that isn't enough, not without the driving passion fueling it. Sometimes it seems like all of life is hollow without a fierce stream of emotion to fill it with meaning.
For instance, though I love almost everything to do with sexuality, I can't go out and seek to apply it to whoever seems appealing, 'cause... most of those people, though attractive, wouldn't fill the gap. They wouldn't be honest enough, intense enough, fierce enough, naked enough.... It would be pleasant to interact with them, but then, porn is also "pleasant". It's not that there's something wrong with them though-- this is more about me; about wanting something that makes me unable to keep living the surface life-- that forces me to wake up, to feel, to dream, to scream out my own existence in response to the other's screaming. And that's why I read fantasy & stories about love, and listen to loud music, and watch movies, which are so vivid and imitative of reality while they escape it-- because they force that basic, honest emotional response pretty consistently. But most of all, it's why I'm driven to poetry.
So that's why I wouldn't want to either follow or just watch such a person as a leader or an outcast, I guess... why friendship wouldn't apply and even sex would be beside the point. Because my reaction to that primal scream of existence coming from their hearts is... to scream right back, joyfully. I am here too, brother. The only thing left would be the poetry we'd make-- as all life becomes poetry. From Kyou to Walt Whitman, that's what I'm talking about... for though I've met neither, I do so love them.
The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab and my loitering.
I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,
I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.
The last scud of day holds back for me,
It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow'd wilds,
It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk.
I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun,
I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.
I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.
You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fibre your blood.
Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.
~~Walt Whitman
People often go on about how there's a lack of reason and clear thinking in the world, and that's true, but.... I can't help but feel that knowledge & reason is nothing without the burning passion to master it. There's a lack of passion that I see around me... a lack of sheer unfiltered intense emotion, fully honest & unstoppable. I realize that to me, that sort of thing is like crack (i.e., it fries my brain-cells but I find it addictive), and that it's not healthy to go around high on life all the time (it would wear most people out, anyway)... Few people seem truly loud even without speaking, and so viscerally full of existence that it's like a look from them is as startling as a scream. That is probably for the best, actually, but....
Sometimes I think that a large part of why I've lived my life with my nose buried in books is because I can't find that sort of larger than life emotion exhibited by the people I generally see around me. I suppose these are the people other people follow-- the people who're unique enough to become leaders or outcasts or rock-stars, revolutionaries or war-mongers. Me... I'm not looking to follow anyone like that, I just want to experience that brand of pure honesty-- 'cause it's not really like most people lie, it's just that their truths and half-truths aren't deeply felt enough to really matter, somehow. I don't know.
The more I say things like that, the more I realize how much at odds these desires are with the functioning of polite society. Perhaps this is partly why I've always felt at odds with society in general. Civilization does need to be civilized, doesn't it. Finding deeper meaning in that (besides continued survival, not to be underestimated) seems to be the only difficulty.
Some people turn to religion for this, don't they? They want something huge and overpowering and meaningful, something they feel isn't quite within the range of humanity-- something that is bigger than they are, so their lives of quiet desperation appear to make -sense- somehow in context. Others turn to art, or the allure of pure knowledge, or the attainment of power, sex or drugs-- but to me, all of that isn't enough, not without the driving passion fueling it. Sometimes it seems like all of life is hollow without a fierce stream of emotion to fill it with meaning.
For instance, though I love almost everything to do with sexuality, I can't go out and seek to apply it to whoever seems appealing, 'cause... most of those people, though attractive, wouldn't fill the gap. They wouldn't be honest enough, intense enough, fierce enough, naked enough.... It would be pleasant to interact with them, but then, porn is also "pleasant". It's not that there's something wrong with them though-- this is more about me; about wanting something that makes me unable to keep living the surface life-- that forces me to wake up, to feel, to dream, to scream out my own existence in response to the other's screaming. And that's why I read fantasy & stories about love, and listen to loud music, and watch movies, which are so vivid and imitative of reality while they escape it-- because they force that basic, honest emotional response pretty consistently. But most of all, it's why I'm driven to poetry.
So that's why I wouldn't want to either follow or just watch such a person as a leader or an outcast, I guess... why friendship wouldn't apply and even sex would be beside the point. Because my reaction to that primal scream of existence coming from their hearts is... to scream right back, joyfully. I am here too, brother. The only thing left would be the poetry we'd make-- as all life becomes poetry. From Kyou to Walt Whitman, that's what I'm talking about... for though I've met neither, I do so love them.
The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab and my loitering.
I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,
I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.
The last scud of day holds back for me,
It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow'd wilds,
It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk.
I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun,
I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.
I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.
You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fibre your blood.
Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.
~~Walt Whitman
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no subject
Date: 2005-04-15 04:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-04-15 08:11 am (UTC)This is a wonderfully poetic essay. I hope you don't mind me lurking at you.