Reykjavík Grapevine - 09.10.2009, Blaðsíða 54

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the reykjavík grapevine
Issue 16 — 2009
GOOD NIGHT & GOOD MORNING
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Centerhotels_254x95_grapevine09.pdf 7/1/09 11:51:11 AM
‘People fail to notice what they do when
awake, just as they forget what they
do while asleep.’ Heraclitus, Greek
Philosopher, 535 – 475 BCE
It was probably somewhere around
500 BCE when the Greek philosopher
Heraclitus coined the term Logos: a
fundamental concept intimating that
there is a source and order to the cosmos;
which, in the turn of its own screw,
was interpreted to mean that things
are pretty much as they appear to be. A
hundred years after Heraclitus, Aristotle’s
analytical logic was born, leading the
way for predicate or mathematical logic:
the basis for most current scientific
reasoning, or so the story goes. Here we
are 2,509 years later and we’re still pretty
much stabbing in the dark.
Scientific reason is, of course, fraught
with dichotomies, contradictions and
misinterpretations. Often, what we
originally believe to be the lay of the land
ends up manifesting itself as the most
farcical of theories. Some not-so ancient
civilisation suggested, using their early
principles of logic, that the Earth was flat,
and lay like a pounding heart beating at
the centre of the Universe. For many
hundreds of years, this seemed an entirely
plausible hypothesis. Today we see this as
one of many fallacies of logical reasoning.
But I ask you this: Who knows what
other inconsistencies presently manifest
themselves right under our very own
noses? The Ice Age? Evolution? Relativity?
The Big Bang? Skimmed Milk?
Are we all just perched insect-like on a
gigantic paradox?
Guðrún Hjörleifsdóttir, visionary,
Seer of all things past, present and future,
maintains she can look straight through
walls. She says, “Life is a dream we are
dreaming right now,” and, “all matter
is just energy vibrating at different
wavelengths.” Ergo, if you can somehow
perceive the wavelength, you can see
straight through it. And we all know, you
can do virtually anything in dreams; so
essentially, no limits barred.
Guðrún says that most people can
only see energy when it manifests itself,
when it ‘materialises.’ Doesn’t science
maintain that matter is not form unless so
perceived? Matter is just atoms vibrating
anyway, right? Okay, then let’s stretch this
thought even further, and imagine that
that thing you perceive to be in front of
you is only matter because you accept that
the thing is what it appears to be (as you
would without question, within a dream):
a butterfly, a door, a house, a mountain.
Is it a butterfly, then? Or is it millions
of swirling atoms that look like a butterfly?
Your own mind presents matter to you as
form so that you can interact with it—a
convenient illusion, a symbol of form, so
that, as Guðrún says, “We can manage the
puzzle called life.”
But then hold on to this thought: Life
is but a dream.
According to Guðrún, everything
consists of bundles of energy—molecules,
atoms—organising, splitting apart,
then reorganising into more and more
complex patterns, which is the sublime
nature of the mind of the Universe which,
in turn, is manifested inside your own
consciousness.
Guðrún claims she can see through
matter into its very primeval essence, and
into the past, present and future. As she
explains, “Time is also just a condition of
the mind [a manner of organising things
into neat digestible packets]. Break down
the notion of ego, and you will soon see
that time and matter only exist to give you
hold on your own perceived reality. Past,
present and future are essentially one and
the same thing.”
“Understand that nothing is separate
from your own thoughts. Free yourself
from the shackles of convention, those
self-imposed boundaries, become child-
like, more free. Then, master the mind,
and you essentially have the potential to
control everything in your life.”
The concept is, of course, that
everything exists only because you think
it into existence. In the words of French
philosopher René Descartes: “I think,
therefore I am.”
“A friend of mine, who has passed
on,” she says, “came to me in my dreams
to impart deeper insights, speed up my
learning curve, so to speak. I came to
understand the significance of my third
eye—it’s located at the apex of a triangle
centred above the other two ‘standard’
eyes. It connects me to the universal
mind, helps me to perceive these things.
He also enlightened me on how it is that
some of us hear ‘voices.’ You know, it’s
just like tuning into the right frequency
on the radio.”
I could have sworn she was going to
say that—the pattern proliferates.
And then, she says, “You know it’s
circles within circles: The cycles of life,
of mind and dreams, always go back to
where they begin. Just look at how things
manifest themselves, the geometry of
planets, galaxies, celestial motions.” It’s
all built up like a swirling elliptical fractal,
whereby, no matter how deep you go
into the structure of things, new similar
patterns emerge: a fractal of a fractal of a
fractal, and so on: mirrors within mirrors.
With no limits, what then of logic? The
rational mind?
The philosopher Gottlob Frege, one of
the founders of modern logical thought,
called logic: “the science of the most
general laws of truth.” Twelfth-century
Muslim scholar Averroes, called it: “the
tool for distinguishing between true
and false.” Only, just on what basis of
truth have we been making our rational
judgements? Truth, of course, relies on
the premise that falsehood also exists; if
everything then is a dream, how can there
be either? Does this throw logic right out
the other side?
Through all of this talk with Guðrún,
I believe I may have made the most
singular discovery. Among other things,
Einstein’s great predicate logic proposed
that there was nothing that existed that
could be faster than the speed of light.
Now I know he was wrong. There is
something faster: the speed of mind.
And not to disappoint those who
tuned in last time to Transcendental Part
7. You will recall that Gústi, the soul-
cleanser, was exorcising the spirit who
possessed his own living son. Well, as
a matter of course, Gústi called on the
light-beings who come from the heart of
God, and convinced the offending spirit
to depart this Earth and take the heavenly
light-elevator to the other side. It was a
successful exorcism; and yes, a happy
ending.
But then, as you know, in dreams
anything can happen.
It was the ancient Chinese
philosopher, Kung-sun Lung, who lived
three hundred years before the birth of
Christ, who wrote: “One and one cannot
become two, since neither becomes two.”
Keep that in mind when the going gets
tough.
Radio To The Other Side
In search of the Real McCoy
Words
Marc Vincenz
next time: We attack downtown Reykjavik on late on a Friday night with all manner of pithy metaphysical
questions only a drunk would be dare to answer. You won’t be able to miss me. I’ll be the guy wearing the
neon orange protective clothing, and a badge that reads, “Smile if you believe in elves, huldufólk or ghosts.”
transcendental iceland | Part 8: Fallacies, Paradoxes and Butterfly Logic poetry | Eiríkur Örn Norðdahl
Are you tired of writing your
own damn poems? Does it
feel like you’d rather plunge
through the fiery gates of
hell rather than come up with one more
metaphor/ simile/ aphorism to explain
the human condition? There’s so much
poetry in the world already! So much
language! Why make more?
Now, what if there was a way of mak-
ing a poem without actually having to
resort to our supposedly original ideas?
What if we could simply appropriate
somebody else’s words and call them
our own? Text-piracy, of sorts. Plagia-
rism. Theft. We’ve gotta fight for our
copyright to “party.”
A found poem is a piece of language
reframed. In some cases the pieces were
already poems to begin with, collaged
together in a new context, as in Eliot’s
The Wasteland or Pound’s Cantos; but
in other cases they are bits of overheard
conversation, the text from a commer-
cial or a news story, reframed as po-
etry. Charles Reznikoff’s famous book,
Testimony, is just what it says: slightly
altered texts from American court tran-
scripts. Kenny Goldsmith’s Day is one
issue of the New York Times—word
for word, retyped. The Norwegian poet
Paal Bjelke Andersen is working on
a book of sentences found in the New
Year speeches of Nordic prime min-
isters, including the Icelandic ones.
Icelandic artist Ragnhildur Jóhanns re-
cently published a limited edition book,
Konur 30 og brasilískt (Women 30 and
Brazilian), consisting of sentences lift-
ed from an online forum about women
over thirty and Brazilian wax treat-
ments. Doesn’t that sound fantastic?
Delightful? The language around you
actually runs amok, constantly, all on
its own it seems and needs merely to
be picked up and repeated to forthwith
metamorphose into wonderful poetry.
Now, finding language in a world so
full of it (pun intended) may not seem
like a great challenge for the average
creative mind. Quite the contrary, most
of us wouldn’t mind finding some-
where, anywhere, a quiet place devoid
of language. Some calm resort, a ha-
ven, where we could be free from the
incessant chatter, free from screaming
billboards, blazing televisions and the
latest Top 40 list.
But, as strangely as that may sound,
found poems tend to provide a certain
relief from their own inanity, stupidity,
supposed depth or other imaginable at-
tributes of the given source text. Like
a good piece of adbusting, a decent-to-
brilliant found poem both negates and
amplifies the original text creating a
f lux of meaning and anti-meaning.
An eye in the storm, if you will, where
one is given the possibility to observe
what actually happens within this given
piece of language (or what didn’t hap-
pen, but, in some parallel universe,
might have). Not to mention the irrever-
ent joy that found poems tend to offer,
as well as their quirky insight into the
discourse and thought of a society.
Found poems document the move-
ments of language, rather than imitat-
ing it—found poems leave language
exposed, rather than exposing it. But
trying to follow the way language
moves is an arduous task. Words come
and go, become fashionable and fade
(particularly when enough people have
realised that they indeed have become
fashionable). But certain tendencies are
obvious.
These days, the language that most
Icelanders find themselves submerged
in is legal and economic. Suffering a
financial blitzkrieg does not only bring
with it (rhyme-alert!) oceans of emotion
(throes of woes!), but new additions to
the everyday vocabulary. Concepts like
“debt-equity ratio” are now household
terms, as familiar as milk and honey.
“Restructuring” is more common than
the cold, and “shadow price” is getting
so worn as to verge on being unusable.
We’ve contracted these words from
reading the newspapers, blogs and lis-
tening to pundits who regurgitate each
other’s language as if they were rumi-
nating cows. And you’d think, given
how much they’re thrown about, that
we understand them. Yet it seems, ac-
cording to a survey conducted by the
Icelandic Institute for Financial Liter-
acy, that we don’t. Only a third of Ice-
land’s inhabitants, 18 years and older,
have any understanding of the mere ba-
sic economic concepts. And yet we keep
on yapping as if everyone understands.
Restructuring opportunity costs ac-
cording to the debt-equity ratio of off-
shore shadow prices.
And if reproducing language that
you don’t understand, to people who
understand it even less, isn’t poetry,
then by golly, I don’t know what is.
I’ll Have What
He’s Having