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byThursday, December 16, 2010The most potent teaching of silence, by far, was the fallacy of immediacy: how I finally came to appreciate that the pace of our accelerated culture has created the belief that timeliness is of greater worth than quality, and of how this belief, in turn, has led to the ubiquity of mediocrity. Or, more crap and less craft – in half the time. Too often we are sacrificing the beautiful for the immediate; the well-reasoned for the impulsive; the well-felt for the reactive.
In writing many of the entries for The Mute Papers (which were all quite short pieces), I took more time with the editing process than I normally would, and ended up being less satisfied with the outcome. It has clearly been some of my best writing in years – so why the disconnect?
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byTuesday, December 14, 2010Hello there. I’m back on deck in the land of the talking, having decided late last night that I had learned all that I needed to learn from being silent. I did get a lot of great feedback, and I will be posting the wash-up here in days to come. Thank you for sticking with me while I conducted this little experiment, and I hope that you were entertained by the direction the writing took. It took me a different way than I thought I would go (I was initially going to do some straight journalling about not talking), but I wanted to run with all of the magical realism, so I did!
I’ve only spoken two words to other people all day, and I haven’t muttered anything to myself at all. I did sing in the shower though, and that felt great. I’ve been wanting to do that ever since I embarked on the vow. The things that we miss! Anyway, just this little report, and I’ll be back on deck tomorrow, with some “insights”. Toodles.
The Reaper Of Tongues
If you’ve been following The Mute Papers you’ll be familiar with the Reaper character. You may or may not have pinned the character to a concept so I’ll just say that the propaganda of the establishment is very much alive these days, and the fight to secure the loyalties of your heart and your mind is being conducted in earnest, behind the scenes, every second of your life…
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byMonday, December 13, 2010You come to on a cliff’s edge that you recognise only from dreams. Or was it that you remember the edge from life? You’re not certain that you’ve ever been on the edge before. You’re not certain that you’ve ever been far from it, either.
On the other hand, it may not be an edge-type edge. The ground is spongiform. It is of an interesting texture. The cliff is not a cliff. It is a crust…
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bySunday, December 12, 2010Whatever happens in The Abyss, remains in The Abyss, but what the traveller needs to know is this: the universe is a system of illusion and counter-illusion. In the human realm, the Wizard is at work everywhere: behind the controls which animate The Reaper Of Tongues; maintaining the system which feeds The Nightmare Engine; devising new and ever more sinister ways for The Enchantress to win the heart of the everyman. Or everyperson.
Silence is a menagerie. Perhaps, more to the point, silence is a metaphorical zoo. Literally, a zoo for metaphors. It is an interstitial zone; it is an illuminating device; it is a segue, enabling transformation. Silence is also very personal. The experience of silence is like a fingerprint, or the surface of internal organs. No two are the same.
Mostly, though, silence is a great speaker of truth. It is a zoom lens for self-reflection. It is Obama at the podium. It is the glass-bottomed boat in which you can sail over the history of yourself. Of course, this can be as sane as gargling with razors. Damocles was more comfortable. But once you hit on peaceful waters, well, let’s just say that there may be no better way to travel.
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bySaturday, December 11, 2010The mouth yearns to form around a wish that has a perfect fit; to surrender the tongue to arousal; to pull from the visceral depths a swift ejaculate of air and meaning. The breath forms unions between actions and bodies, and in proximity to this we merge with the language – becoming grief; becoming sex; becoming love – becoming the movement and the moved.
To become the language is to be embedded in the womb of pathos; to be part of the torn and the healed, part of the great torment and the greater salvation: to be simultaneously articulated and ineffable. To be understood is a desire deeper than The Abyss itself. To be the wish that a mouth forms around is perfect bliss.
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byFriday, December 10, 2010Ad hominem attacks implode in the jungle. Coarse laughter is the only parry a foe requires to deflect any such attempt. An enemy as heralded as The Reaper Of Tongues demands an arsenal of purest chaos. The Reaper keeps Havoc at heel, unleashed, for such occasion.
The song of The Enchantress breaks the silence, her crooning barely masking the insane drone of waking machinery in the distance. The cloud of hearts rises above the canopy of the jungle, pulled by her song, like a noose of seduction, towards The Nightmare Engine. A constellation of dead autonomy fills the night sky. Each heart is to be fodder, dessicated for the End Of Times, including your own.
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byThursday, December 9, 2010There exists a shadow heart. It has a beat that is imperceptible. The flesh is translucent. It cannot be torn from the viscera and discarded, like offal. It remains separate from the mass of hearts that form a cloud in the jungle.
A shadow heart guards the vestigial self: the Sub-System within the System; the region uncontaminated by the world and the wind; the truly coveted of The Reaper of Tongues…
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byWednesday, December 8, 2010You can be led to believe anything, if you set your mind to it.
The premise – that you are the lurking fiend – is what you are required to believe. If you put an ear to the jungle wind for long enough, soon all you’ll hear is whistling. It becomes the source of all knowledge; the source of every seduction. You can be charmed like a snake in a basket, trained by any fakir who knows the right tune to blow…
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byTuesday, December 7, 2010You may well be the lurking fiend. Waking, you feel that your mouth is a hothouse in which iguanas are bred. That there is a circus you supply the tricks for. That there is a broken language which only you can comprehend.
You may well be the lurking fiend. With your own hand you tore your heart away from its moorings and hurled it into the jungle. This is very troubling. But when you enter the jungle to retrieve it, you become aghast.
The jungle is thick with discarded hearts. The jungle is thick with discarded voices. All along, you have been naive in believing that there is a language only you can understand…
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byMonday, December 6, 2010Estrangement is not jungle. It is open ground – no man’s land between the safety of thickets. To be in full view is to be vulnerable. Where once there was solace, one grasps only at the unrelieving air. There is no foliage for cover; no camouflage from the gaze of a passing jaguar.
Exposed, the heart can be torn from its cavity by any lurking fiend, and hurled to the jungle. Distances blur with plain sight. Heavenly bodies become unreliable guides. The torn heart can wander like a displaced tribe. It does not know it is lost. It is its own beacon.
A murmur from The Abyss, a whisper filtered through the damp earth: to fall completely silent is to lose heart.
The heart is your voice. The heart is the motor of the world.
