Alex de Campi: Gojira!

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19.12.04 Some Books You Might Enjoy

Just added some new books to The Annotated Alex.

EB White's Poems & Sketches and One Man's Meat. You want to know how to write short stories? Read EB White. New Englander, New Yorker editor, and long-time favourite writer of the de Campi family. From "Calculating Machine", in Poems & Sketches:

"It is my belief that no writer can improve his work until he discards the dulcet notion that the reader is feebleminded, for writing is an act of faith, not a trick of grammar... a writer who questions the capacity of the person at the other end of the line is not a writer at all, merely a schemer. The movies long ago decided that a wider communication should be achieved by a deliberate descent to a lower level, and they walked proudly down until they reached the cellar. Now they are groping for the light switch, hoping to find the way out."

Joseph Campbell's The Hero With A Thousand Faces. I'm a huge fan of Frazer's Golden Bough and the writers it inspired (Joyce; Eliot), so it's no surprise that I adore the natural inheritor to Frazer's mantle. It's not light going; I manage only about 20 pages at a time. But Campbell is a wonderful writer, and the subject matter is fascinating. It does help if you're a complete geek for mythology, which I most definitely am. Campbell on modern tragedy:

"...the magnitude of an art of tragedy more potent (for us) than the Greek finds realisation: the realistic, intimate and variously interesting tragedy of democracy, where the god is beheld crucified in the catastrophes not of the great houses only but of every common home, every scourged and lacerated face. And there is no make-believe about heaven, future bliss, and compensation, to alleviate the bitter majesty, but only utter darkness, the void of unfulfillment, to receive and eat back the lives that have been tossed from the womb only to fail."

And on the symbolism of images of Shiva:

"Briefly: the extended right hand holds the drum, the beat of which is the beat of time, time being the first principle of creation; the extended left holds the flame, which is the flame of the destruction of the created world; the second right hand is held in the gesture of 'fear not,' while the second left, pointing to the lifted left foot, is held in a position symbolising 'elephant' (the elephant is the 'breaker of the way through the jungle of the world', i.e. the divine guide); the right foot is planted on the back of the dwarf, the demon 'Non-Knowing,' which signifies the passage of souls from God into matter, but the left is lifted, showing the release of the soul; the left is the foot to which the 'elephant-hand' is pointing and supplies the reason for the assurance, 'Fear not.' The God's head is balanced, serene and still, in the midst of the dynamism of creation and destruction which is symbolised by the rocking arms and the rhythm of the slowly stamping right heel. This means that at the centre all is still. Shiva's right earring is a man's; his left, a woman's; for God includes and is beyond the pairs of opposites. Shiva's facial expression is neither sorrowful nor joyous, but is the visage of the Unmoved Mover, beyond, yet present within, the world’s bliss and pain...

"The dance posture of the God may be visualised as the symbolic syllable AUM, which is the verbal equivalent of the four states of consciousness and their fields of experience. (A: waking consciousness; U: dream consciousness; M: dreamless sleep; the silence around the sacred syllable is the Unmanifest Transcendent). The God is thus within the worshiper as well as without.

"Such a figure illustrates the function and value of a graven image, and shows why long sermons are unnecessary among idol-worshippers. The devotee is permitted to soak in the meaning of the divine symbol in deep silence and in his own good time... in this way, the whole of life is made into a support for meditation. One lives in the midst of a silent sermon all the time."

Thinking about it, probably not a book for the Red States.

I have also been listening to Doug Young's CD, Laurel Mill, which CDBaby sent me for free with my order for Will Hawkins' debut CD. Laurel Mill is acoustic guitar noodling; deeply un-trendy but good for writing. If you like this sort of thing and don't already own John Fahey's Return of the Repressed, go and rectify this dreadful error immediately.

( 6:03 PM )

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