...poets are the worst. Their work is hopelessly unphotogenic. Someone sits at a table or lies on a sofa while staring motionless at a wall or ceiling. Once in a while this person writes down seven lines only to cross out one of them fifteen minutes later, and then another hour passes, during which nothing happens ... Who could stand to watch this kind of thing?

I've mentioned inspiration. Contemporary poets answer evasively when asked what it is, and if it actually exists. It's not that they've never known the blessing of this inner impulse. It's just not easy to explain something to someone else that you don't understand yourself.

When I'm asked about this on occasion, I hedge the question too. But my answer is this: inspiration is not the exclusive privilege of poets or artists generally. There is, has been, and will always be a certain group of people whom inspiration visits. It's made up of all those who've consciously chosen their calling and do their job with love and imagination. It may include doctors, teachers, gardeners - and I could list a hundred more professions. Their work becomes one continuous adventure as long as they manage to keep discovering new challenges in it. Difficulties and setbacks never quell their curiosity. A swarm of new questions emerges from every problem they solve. Whatever inspiration is, it's born from a continuous "I don't know."

There aren't many such people. Most of the earth's inhabitants work to get by. They work because they have to. They didn't pick this or that kind of job out of passion; the circumstances of their lives did the choosing for them. Loveless work, boring work, work valued only because others haven't got even that much, however loveless and boring - this is one of the harshest human miseries. And there's no sign that coming centuries will produce any changes for the better as far as this goes.

And so, though I may deny poets their monopoly on inspiration, I still place them in a select group of Fortune's darlings.

At this point, though, certain doubts may arise in my audience. All sorts of torturers, dictators, fanatics, and demagogues struggling for power by way of a few loudly shouted slogans also enjoy their jobs, and they too perform their duties with inventive fervor. Well, yes, but they "know." They know, and whatever they know is enough for them once and for all. They don't want to find out about anything else, since that might diminish their arguments' force. And any knowledge that doesn't lead to new questions quickly dies out: it fails to maintain the temperature required for sustaining life. In the most extreme cases, cases well known from ancient and modern history, it even poses a lethal threat to society.

This is why I value that little phrase "I don't know" so highly. It's small, but it flies on mighty wings. It expands our lives to include the spaces within us as well as those outer expanses in which our tiny Earth hangs suspended. If Isaac Newton had never said to himself "I don't know," the apples in his little orchard might have dropped to the ground like hailstones and at best he would have stooped to pick them up and gobble them with gusto. Had my compatriot Marie Sklodowska-Curie never said to herself "I don't know", she probably would have wound up teaching chemistry at some private high school for young ladies from good families, and would have ended her days performing this otherwise perfectly respectable job. But she kept on saying "I don't know," and these words led her, not just once but twice, to Stockholm, where restless, questing spirits are occasionally rewarded with the Nobel Prize.

Un poète, si c'est un vrai poète, se doit lui aussi de répéter : " Je ne sais pas. " Dans chaque nouveau poème, il tente d'y répondre, mais après chaque point final un nouveau doute l'envahit, une nouvelle hésitation; conviction qu'il s'agit une fois de plus d'une réponse provisioire et absolument insuffisante. Alors il recommence, encore et encore, jusqu'à ce qu'un jour les docteurs ès lettres saisissent d'un énorme trombone toutes ces preuves de son insatisfaction de soi, et les appellent son oeuvre.

Je rêve parfois de situations impossibles. J'imagine par exemple, dans mon effronterie, que j'ai l'occasion de m'entretenir avec l'Ecclésiaste, auteur d'une, ô combien poignante, lamentation sur la vanité de toutes les entreprises humaines. Je lui fais une profonde révérence, car c'est un des poètes les plus importants — du moins pour moi. Et puis, je saisis sa main. " Rien de nouveau sous le soleil ", as-tu dit, Ecclésiaste. Et pourtant, toi-même, tu es né nouveau sous le soleil, car avant toi personne ne l'avait écrit. Et nouveaux sont tous tes lecteurs, car pouvaient-ils le lire avant toi ? De même, le cyprès à l'ombre duquel tu es assis ne pousse pas depuis l'aube de l'univers. Il fut engendré par un autre cyprès, semblable au tien, mais pas tout à fait le même. Et j'aimerais te demander, Ecclésiaste, as-tu le désir d'écrire quelque chose de nouveau sous le soleil ? Quelque chose qui complétera tes réflexions ? ou bien aurais-tu plûtot envie, malgré tout, d'en réfuter certaines ? Dans ton grand poème, tu n'as pas oublié la joie — quelle importance, au fond, qu'elle soit passagère ! Et si ton prochain poème, nouveau sous le soleil, lui était consacré ? As-tu déjà pris quelques notes, fait de premières esquisses ? Tu ne peux tout de même pas m'annoncer : " Voilà, j'ai tout dit, je n'ai plus rien à ajouter. " Aucun poète au monde ne peut dire une chose pareille, d'autant moins un immense, comme toi.

Car le monde, quoi que nous en pensions, effrayé par son immensité et par le spectacle de notre impuissance, pleins s'amertume face à son indifférence à l'égard de ceux qui souffrent, humains, animaux, plantes peut-être ( car qui peut nous garantir qu'elles sont libres de toute souffrance ? ); quoi que nous pensions de ces espaces infinis traversés par le rayonnement des étoiles, autour desquelles nous découvrons aujourd'hui de nouvelles planètes, déjà mortes ? encore mortes ? — nul ne le sait; quoi que nous puissions dire de cet incommensurable théâtre pour lequel on nous accorde, il est vrai, un billet d'entrée, mais dont la validité est si ridicule; quoi que nous puissions penser de ce monde — il est quand même étonnant. 

Néanmoins, dans ce mot d'"étonnant", un piège logique nous guette. Nous nous étonnons des choses qui s'écartent d'une norme connue et généralement admise, d'une évidence à laquelle nous sommes habitués. Or, il n'existe aucun monde normal et évident. Notre étonnement est autonome, et ne procède d'aucune comparaison.

D'accord, dans notre langague courant, qui ne s'interroge pas sur chaque mot qui l'emploie, nous disons tous : " vie ordinaire ", "ordre normal des choses". Mais dans la langue de la poésie, où chaque mot est soigneusement pesé, rien n'est jamais ordinaire ni normal. Pas une pierre, et pas un nuage au dessus. Pas un jour, et pas une nuit après. Et, par-dessus tout, pas une quelconque existence en ce monde.

Il semblerait que les poètes auront toujours beaucoup de travail.

Wisława Szymborska (1923-2012) 

(extrait) Discours prononcé devant l'Académie Nobel (7 décembre 1996)

You see, this is a very interesting paradoxical use of power. The idea is that many people on your planet have a very strong control of information. They have, first and foremost, used that control of information to make it appear as if they actually control more than they do. So the idea is that when individuals, and again it does not mean that you should not be aware that individuals may have negative intentions, but when many individuals go to the extremes of starting to look into what you call “conspiracy theories”, and they assign these powers, these abilities to do the things that you are all afraid they can do to these people, you are thus then GIVING THEM THAT ABILITY. So, the great "joke” from those people attempting to give you that impression is that the people that are attempting to be whistleblowers are actually their greatest advertisers. Because they make people believe that they actually have the ability to do more than they do. That’s the joke. A Sith joke.

So lighten up on yourselves. Don’t give them the power, and you will shift your vibration to a parallel reality in which they don’t even exist eventually. That’s how you “change the world”. You don’t change the world you’re in, you change yourself, through your actions, through your knowingness, through your energy, through your being, through your behaviours. And you shift yourself to a parallel world that is already more reflective of the change that you have made in yourself.

Darth Vader

What is it we are questing for? It is the fulfillment of that which is potential in each of us. Questing for it is not an ego trip; it is an adventure to bring into fulfillment your gift to the world, which is yourself. There’s nothing you can do that’s more important than being fulfilled. You become a sign, you become a signal, transparent to transcendence; in this way, you will find, live, and become a realization of your own personal myth.

Joseph Campbell

We have to talk about liberating minds as well as liberating societies

Angela Yvonne Davis

“Addiction is the most powerful psychic enemy of humanity’s desire for God.” 

“Addiction is a deep seated form of idolatry. The objects of our addictions become our false gods. These are what we worship, what we attend to, where we give our time and energy, instead of love. Addiction, then, displaces and supplants God’s love as the source and object of our deepest true desire.” 

“Addiction is a state of compulsion, obsession, or preoccupation that enslaves a person’s will and desire. Addiction sidetracks and eclipses the energy of our deepest, truest desire for love and goodness.”

“To be alive is to be addicted and to be alive and addicted is to stand in need of grace.” 

“Grace is our only hope for dealing with addiction, the only power that can truly vanquish its destructiveness. Grace is the invincible advocate of freedom and the absolute expression of perfect love. It is a gift that we are free to ignore, reject, ask for, or simply accept. It is often given in spite of our intentions and errors.” 

“...when grace is so clearly given unrequested, uninvited, even undeserved, there can be no 

authentic response but gratitude and awe.” 

ssshhh

 

Smoking Typewriters

I've met God and she's a shrink