Weltanschaung

The Philosopher’s Stone

zenothestoic@protonmail.ch

Tag: Catharsis

  • YouTube Trailer

    YouTube Trailer

    Encouraged and enthralled by Kim Kardashian West (not sure where the West comes from) I was wondering whether to record a welcome video for my YouTube Channel.  Or is it called a “trailer”? Or does it matter? How very confusing.

    Young Kim has 1.33 million subscribers and her YouTube channel  seems to be about beauty, make up, white Rolls Royces, proud breasts, enormous bottoms and spending money on consumer goods.

    I currently have 9 subscribers, no white Rolls Royce, a distaste for reality TV and a strong dislike of consumer spending.  And my wife looks nothing like Kim, oddly enough.

    I think Kim must be some sort of American version of our own sweet Essex Girl, but bigger, sexier, more glamorous.

    Oh dear, rambling again.

    So why does a curmudgeonly old misanthrope bother with YouTube and the internet? I can only say that reading a poem out loud and recording it seems to have had an effect on me.

    You have to understand the poem to read it out loud. It makes you concentrate, it makes you appreciate exactly what the poet is trying to tell you.  And provided his message is something you want to hear, the experience is a wonderful one. Whether the listener would say the same is quite a different story.

    This blog is unashamed catharsis. I read and write and ramble and it all means something to me. Well, quite a lot actually. I think the same will be true of YouTube.

    I will not be recording Sylvia Plath. I will not be reading Virginia Wolf. I must stop banging on about the negative and concentrate instead on the wonders of life and universe, for there are many.

    I am sorry for our Sylvia and all like her but I think I must focus on less needy folk, less dire poems. Joy and wonder not misery and introspection.

    And I must give up on politics – I’m no social reformer, simply because I have no idea what we as a society should do. I haven’t a clue what could replace the capitalist model, no idea how to help the world’s poor, and even less intuition as to how the venal of this world might be persuaded to be less so.

    So my Channel – what are my intentions for it? My plans?

    Well, poetry, yes. My favorite bards, some of whom I have not revisited since university. John Donne and the metaphysical poets in particular. Some of Shakespeare’s sonnets.  The War Poets.

    And perhaps a book or two, or at least a reading here and there from some of my favorite texts. A Christmas Carol, Tolkien, CS Lewis. Copyright permitting.

    And exploration of the new, the unfamiliar.  To push my limits outwards, to expand my boundaries.

    And who am I doing all this for? Do I write to be read, do I speak to be heard?  Well, if you so choose, listen to me by all means. But perhaps this journey is primarily my own.

    Perhaps, like a tree in the forest, I may not exist unless I witness myself through word and thought, if not deed. Perhaps my outpourings are themselves a witness to my existence.

    I write, I speak, therefore I am.

  • Catharsis in Writing

    Catharsis in Writing

    The act of self expression in writing seems to provide relief from strong or long repressed emotions – a catharsis.  Whether anybody reads what you have written or not, to formalise in writing your innermost thoughts, your worldview, your grievances, your joys and your sadness brings an incredible freedom, a sense of deep release.

    It seems perhaps that an internal mental expression is not sufficient; a silent inner realisation, however profound, does not provide the same strong cathartic effect as the crafting of the written word, the sentence, the paragraph.

    Perhaps it is because we have to take so much care with the written word; do we really mean this or that? Is that really how we feel? Perhaps it is because the use of language is the only thing which makes thought possible above the banal levels we need for bodily survival.  Language forms an integral part of true consciousness it seems: qualia can no doubt be felt without language but how much more poignant and meaningful to be able to define, express, codify and categorise in actual words what it feels like to be sad or joyful, to experience the deep red glow of a sunset.

    So I think perhaps language is essential for depth in feelings and written language seems to solidify, to realise the internal emotion.

    Does it matter who you are writing for? Perhaps not. Does it matter whether you are read? Perhaps not. It would be unwise indeed to put truly dark thoughts onto paper and into the public domain – but happily I do not have any. Therefore I feel free to write what I choose and to express myself as I see fit.

    In an afternoon well spent yesterday with a cerebral and cultured friend, we discussed the ideal life and wondered what we should have done with our lives while we sat in the late spring sunshine, on deck chairs, in a beautiful and quiet garden.

    Could we have avoided the hustle and ghastliness of our respective careers in law and finance? The grim, difficult and determined people we had to suffer to earn our daily bread.

    He said that to write would have been the way out.  But how few are those blessed with the good fortune of being paid for the endeavour!

    Happily later in life you can benefit from the catharsis of writing without having to count on film rights and tea shirt sales.  I may not have the imagination to write of demons but expressing my own seems good enough.  I don’t need the success of Harry Potter to achieve catharsis nor do I desire the riches of Midas.

  • Why Write a Blog

    Why Write a Blog

    I write because I enjoy writing and to educate myself.  It helps my own understanding of my cranky pet subjects as I try to convey my enthusiasms to my non-existent audience.

    It is highly probable that I will never make a cent out of it but then I find commerce, salesmen and “busy-ness” so indescribably sordid I’m not sure I care. Especially at my age.  Sure, it would be nice to generate some revenue – nothing wrong with that. But advertising and aggressively pushing product is somehow so utterly vulgar and distasteful.

    So I have taken a different course.  If there are books or films I have read and enjoyed I feel no guilt or embarrassment about adding a link to Amazon.com but I certainly don’t want to promote any old tat or to cover my blog with vulgar and thoroughly irritating commerce.

    Equally I feel pretty ambivalent on choosing content for an “audience”:  I will write exactly what I want to write, no more no less. If anybody wants to read it, fine. If they do not – well that’s equally fine. I do not imagine there are hordes of the faithful wishing to hear my cranky and often rather obscure or bad tempered thoughts.

    Self education and self awareness are an important part of it for me. I have been searching for answers to difficult questions my entire life and those answers will come, if at all, by a relentless and dedicated search for truths.

    I am aware that I very often get carried away by what I can only describe as mysticism.  I get carried away by a feeling of awe when I finally understand harmony, or meditate on a mountain or in a lonely Norman Church.

    But my awe is not a religious one. Yes, in a broad sense it is certainly spiritual but not in the sense of some religious nutter or new age fanatic. I would indeed love to hear the voice of god but my god is a very different one. Awe and wonder are to be found in excess in the natural physical world and I believe the universe is strange and wonderful enough without the need to imagine forces any more mysterious than we can discover by rational scientific enquiry.

    Those forces are numinous enough and it is my strongly held conviction that conscious beings will eventually achieve powers and knowledge which would make them godlike anyway.

    So yes, I am writing about subjects which interest me and its largely “scientific” enquiry by an ignorant laymen into the wonders of the universe.  If that sounds arrogant and intolerant – well it probably is. At heart I’m a grumpy old hermit who has lost any desire to “fit in” with what most people would call “normality”.