Re: beyond:what, or whom?

[Michael Preston <michpres@erols.com>]

Wow, great, (:><:),...
I'm a dime-store lover of wisdom too. So I'm compelled to try to answer 
David Torn's questions, and hopefully enrich his good words, with some 
rhetoric of my own, and ideas and advice that I've learned and sometimes 
taken from others. David Torn wrote, among other things:

1.> can we get beyond our *own* limitations in this chosen medium? even 
>those limitations that seem fenced & barriered by what we (possibly: 
>>mistakenly) assume to be our heroes boundaries?

Yeah, well, "just" choose to believe that the world is a work of art 
continually giving birth to itself, and that you are an artist, a 
creator in this world, an ACTIVE accomplice in this *ex nihilo* 
art/birth process. 

Also, take the PASSIVE, seemingly detached, approach to the 
world-as-work-of-art-continually-giving-birth-to-itself and stand back, 
in awed rapture, to absorb and reflect on the veiled mysteries which the
world-as-work-of-art reveals to you as truths. Try your best to avoid 
making idols of the truths you find revealed or the folks who seem to be 
involved in transmitting those truths. But, get to know those folks; 
spend some mutually-agreed-upon time sitting at their feet, wrestling 
with 'em, and climbing up on their shoulders, for the view.
 
Do the ACTIVE thing a lot more than the PASSIVE thing. 

In all this activity and passivity be ever on the lookout for 
opportunities to experience ecstacy *ekstasis*: to be taken out of your 
old self by the power of strangeness and beauty while you are becoming 
somehow new: transcending your situation, emerging into a new time and 
space with new possibilities for creation.

2.> can we aspire to something of more lasting value than feeding the 
>harsh fecundity of a two-headed, two-dimensional societal beast with 
>>it's continual this-vs.-thatting?

I think that David Torn is answering "yes" to question 2 in this piece:

 >it's possible for one to consider one's attempts @ >>going
>beyond fripp<< as something other than merely a more "intellectual" 
>>version of the "faster-louder-higher" or >>battle of the bands<< 
>>syndromes; it's possible to transform this "negative" energy of 
>>(oftimes, contained) competition into a vital force with which to fuel 
>>one's abilities to receive & transmit soundwaves that benefit oneself & 
>>one's listeners: broadening the bandwidth, allowing the fragile, 
>>fracturing shell of ego-centrism to meld gracefully w/the entire 
>>remaining pantheon of innumerable internal beings/symbols, & step down: 
>>at least, for a minute: from its surreptitiously usurped throne.

There's a creative impulse in the act of negation. But the  
this-vs.-thatting process (if I'm reading openly enough) joylessly lacks 
an ability to refer to and nurture this creative impulse so it ends up 
eating its own children; it really seems ego-hurtful. Imposing 
distinctions, making boundaries, drawing borderlines, and other negative 
acts are essential to furthering the 
world-as-work-of-art-continually-giving-birth-to-itself process. 
Something of value will always emerge from this negativity, but whatever 
it is, it may not last long.

 >(i mean, cripes, one day yer life-as-you-know-it goes, na?!)

Thanks, (and requisite dime-store philospher apologies for my 
blathering) to David Torn, and the rest of the insightful risk-taking 
loopers.
Preston