Not again! (Flippancy aint Humour, folks)

I don't know how many times I have to stress this.

Many times, I guess.

The principle is simple: Flippancy and Humour stand at opposite ends of a spectrum. They are not the same thing. The only way in which they are related is that some real people happen to laugh at flippancy and mockery and slander. At one time, them were fightin words. Now, them's deseperate attempts to get a giggle out of someone. It's not surprising. As soon as people had nothing else they believed in, there was nothing to laugh at anymore. Effective humour requires contrast. The contrast of mockery is reverence. Without reverence in society, in the viewers themselves, the mockery can't be tweaked so as to be funny, because there's no normative point with which to contrast. So people had to invent impossible scenes in which they mocked and slandered stereotypes which were no longer believed in or even held to be true anymore.

Without the dim possibility of a real Big Foot stomping about at large, and real believers stomping about after him, there's no 'humour' in making mock Big Foot stories or media.

But flippancy has moved far past masquerading as humour. It's moved far past its lack of contrast for any deep effect. It's begun to take sadistic, gloating delight in putting down others with whom the comedy makers may harshly disagree (or imagine their viewers will), or in denigrating people whom one may disrespect (usually from a considerable distance, since little real worldview dialogue is current and popular in the world). So this new 'laughter' is actually the same thing as dismissive cruelty, since the cosmetic smiles are cracked in ignorance - in ignorance of the one or the thing which is mocked. Good humour requires audience knowledge and does not rely on ignorance nor disrespect!

Mockery is reactionary. It has no fixed and founded ground of its own making - it relies on the Other in order to make a point. But it's ceased to understand, love, or even vaguely respect the Other. Mockery is meant to whip people into a sort of frenzy. It just so happens that people post 1970s in particular associate such frenzy with fun and laughter! People became so depressed that they couldn't laugh unless they entered into a sort of mindless, unanalytical frenzy. So now anyone and anything possible is a prey of flippancy: the Holocaust, Slavery, people being tortured in Guantanamo Bay, live pets and animals who have accidents (self-injurious) on film, marching protesters believing in a cause, racial and religious stereotypes (by far the most innocent among the kinds of predation going on).

You see, for those who don't believe in anything, it causes them fear, loss, insecurity, irritability. They need to assuage their paralysis and cowardice by mocking and deriding others.

And they don't do so with RESPECT. True humour always contains an element of dignity and respect (cf. Fawlty Towers). False humour relies heavily on DISRESPECT. The creators of such comedy use disrespect because they're people with disrespectful, angry, insecure insides. They can't get through their day without cracking up laughing at something - and now they have to root around for things to laugh at, so miserable, dry and empty and black have their lives become!

It's no wonder they seek out 'comedy'. They find it so hard to laugh at *anything* anymore - and that's because they've become people of desensitivity and disbelief. For those who don't believe in the wonder of the world, there's very very little left to smile or laugh at. True humour always contains a very tiny element of joy - a joy which creeps up on you, stings you under your funnybone, and helps you see that Absurdity is Beautiful because Absurdity is Normative and Innocent and Wonderful! False humour is a cover-up for depression, tunnel-vision, myopia, misery.

So laughs are people's dope now - they no longer are deep laughs. For deep laughter requires contrast with something that is innocent, pure, solemn, true. And the contrast is done with dignity, not with a desire to torture, mock or destroy.

The present laughs are not gotten by virtue of the contents of the comedy, but by the aura, the presentation by means of which the comedy strains to exist and please: i.e., the commentator's tone of voice, his (often flippant, flabbergasted, teasing) facial expressions, his timing, his environment, the use of clever sounds and shapes to startle the viewer. But when the raw substance and contents of the slander and mockery (of other human beings) are examined, there's very little found to be 'funny' in such contents. A dry transcription of most comedy movies out today would lend even more credence to that.

But credence from whom?

That's the real connivance, why distinctions from viewers can't be made. Comedy is a perception, and perception (not contents) is the quickest and easiest thing to manipulate and corrupt. For those who have no beliefs, all their perceptions are skewed as well.

NpH

Currants from Corinth

Speak in tongues,
utter from angel lips,
murmur from man’s mouth.
Let your harp
cut and carp,
strut with strings.
Echo with your gong
Pierce with your pipe
Singe with your sound.
Muse without music,
Lilt without love,
Sear with sheer pitch,
Resound with din,
Pound.
Prophesy, fair one.
Crack all mysteries,
Sack all books,
Crush all mountains,
Mash them aside
with wiley will,
with fractioned faith.
Fling off, doff, your wealth,
Pile the poor with monies.
Your house stands bare,
a coffin of bones,
alone
without love.

Love is patient
Love is kind,
envy-less
boast-less,
unpumped with airy pride.
Unpeeled, it pervades,
Deals in substance.
Secure, it sucks no blood.
Love relishes in right,
Shoots blanks at felonies.
It blots out the page
of Wrongs,
won’t demand to damn.
It erodes the record of villainy.
Blithely, forgets how to blame,
minds only what is good.
Seeks past itself,
wrathless melts,
prideless, dights,
dignifies.

It flees the dark,
Comes out of hiding,
shamelessly sides
with truth.
It preserves and wards,
serves.

It trembles with trust,
beyond proof,
beyond pain,
past doubt.
It’s high on hope,
perduring despair.
It walks both oasis
and waste.

It cheats Death.

Where tongues tease –
they’ll peter out,
teeter,
ceasing all sound.
Lungs expire,
dwindle.
Fickle flames,
once kindled,
smoulder.
The wisdom,
once filling,
now fails and fades.

We know but bits,
the chaff of ages.
The wind blows dust
away.
You soothesay tomorrow,
but the tale will turn,
wind another way.

One-hearted,
Undepleted
in grown completion,
the child’s clamor
changes to conjugal Song.

The child whines,
wallows in wants –
mounts on its demands.
Once grown, unalone,
the suckling sighs,
needs no milk,
milks life back into man.
The young thing grows,
groans in pain,
goes gallant in love,
and grand.
Seeing, she
gains face.
Caught in corridors
of mirrors,
he fights for unmirrored sight.
The narcissist annihilates,
slips herself in shards
of shiny glass,
reflections estranged,
manged,
cracked.
Set free,
her self sees face to face.
She knows bits,
He knows parts.
Their vision reaches, split.
Eyes strain to see and know.
We love in part,
We see all split.
Love will defeat
all fracture.

The giver of life,
maker of face,
knows fully our fibers,
threads them through.
We’re fully seen, fully loved.
One day we’ll fully know.


Inspired by 1 Corinthians 13

Gad Hab

When the fig tree won't spring buds
When the vine won't swell with grapes
When the hives of honey fail
When the olives lack and languish
When the fields unfold no food
When the lambs won't throng my pen,
When the calves won't fill my stalls,
Yet,
Still,
Then even more,
I'll rejoice in my LORD,
Exult in my saving God.
God, my maker, is my strength.
He makes my feet gad,
go glad like deer hooves.
He lets me leap high on the heights !

Taken from Habakkuk 3

Kindlestroke

I taught Israel to walk,
took her by her arms --
she didn't know I weened her.
I drew her with cords,
gentle as mother,
led her by bands of love.
I lightened her neck,
took off her yoke,
stooped to her
and fed her.
How can I give her up?
How can I hand her over?
My heart turns over within me --
All my compassions kindle !
I won't live out my anger --
I'll let it run off.
I'll lift her from her grave,
bear her from her bier,
replace her pall with bridal cloth.
Her I won't see will-broken--
for I am God, not a man,
the Sacred One in your midst.
I'll put off my wringing strength,
I'll put on my healing stroke.

Taken from Hosea 11

Cher-ish Chase

Missing you and springromp in bunnyhumpwoods,
woodwandering for rare rabbitrutting.
I loove you longday toothsomely.
Damedovey woveybelle bolsters my boyheart.
Newmorning steptraces are laced with laughs.
Smile-leaping little lad lurches with longing.
Innocent scent and sight make goldlight.
Laughter runs rippling.
Hands, hinderless, hold unslipping.
My head swims smitten by care-bee swarm round my honeyhead.
Goodbye-beegirl bye-girl blisskisses tuck me in in my Be-ing.
Drearless sweetdream wraps me.
Lovewoven, I lay me down.

A Gale of Goidelic

http://www.myspace.com/brianohairt

Do listen over Ta na Paipeir dha Saighneail (Irish) and Puirt a Beul (Scots Gaelic).

My heart is mastered by my Goidelic songmaster.

The Limits of Political Capital

http://www.facebook.com/ext/share.php?sid=87967853109&h=ytYvP&u=ckb0Z&ref=nf

The Identity Crisis of Mouse

Last night, I dreamt about a mouse who wanted to become a human being. She grew bigger and bigger in her cage, then leaped out one day up my shirt sleeve. I untucked her, then she shapeshifted into a woman. I escorted her around a city, trying to find a human mate for her. She wanted someone who believed in her mouse story.

Demon-Limbs. The Anatomy of Death

During the morning of June 6th, I dreamt. Within my dream, an American friend of mine came to visit and wished to be put up in my room. It was 10am (the very clock-time of my dream) and I was still sleepy and told him I wished to go back to sleep. He said he was tired as well.

Before we slept, I told him the tale of an earlier dream I'd had an hour or two ago - a dream itself broken by waking up in my very room for real at 9:30am before falling back asleep and continuing to dream about meeting this guest.

I made my guest a bed and he lay down very tired. As he reclined, I noticed he had an extra set of arms with claws. The arms moved involuntarily and were attached thinly like insect legs to a thorax. The two appendages were bloody, like flesh and muscle without skin, and the muscles were hard and ripply, but emaciated.

"Would you like me to take these off you?" I asked him, welling up with horror and pity. "Yeah", he feebly answered, and seemed on the verge of weeping, but he was too tired and doped - like one beset with a parasite - to cry at all. He fell fast asleep.

I looked around and saw an open pocket knife with a sharp edge. It lay folded open. I picked it up, took a deep breath, and with all my will I cut through the right demon-arm. "This is my room, this is my body, this is god's temple, this is holy ground, this is sacred created humanity in my care. You will have no house here." I hewed at the second limb and saw with relief how the knife cut through the shoulder joint like bread. I was nearly in tears in my desire to set him free, to see him rid of these ghastly, parasitic limbs.

There they lay wriggling and dying beside him - his Morbid Anatomy amputated. His very identity surged back into his bloodstream, feeding his own arms and legs, feet and hands.

I drew the covers off him to staunch the blood and make sure he was alright. He slept like a kitten, breathing deep, barely stirring. Then I saw in fear and terror that his lower body lay amputated beneath him, severed from his top half by the hip. His hip came narrow and wasplike together, not at all the sound Son of Adam my friend had one time been.

I saw that both his feet lay severed from his body - fragmented, isolated, soul-less, alone . . . 'specialised'. His Morbid Anatomy would not sustain his very life. I looked on him, afraid he would awake, terrified he would not wake. He lay dying.

He lay there, made up of no more than head and trunk. All limbs had fallen off. It was as if a Sex-Insect had transposed itself on his body like a succubus and bitten through his life-limbs. I recalled that above the bed of one of my female friends hung such an Insect: merciless, identity-less, hard, cruel, and with heaving muscles like that of man in sad and desperate sexual intercourse. But the figure was nothing more than a nervous system, lost to love, lost to romance, lost to emotion, lost to the bliss of created purpose.

I looked upon the friend I'd tried to save. My heart beat faster and faster. I knew I would now be regarded as a criminal for my hospital house venture. I'd failed. I'd hewn off the cancer, but killed the cancer addict with its removal. I'd sought to heal him, heal anyone, of the evil that stole away their power to love. He didn't know what ailed him. He'd needed and wanted help but was too weak to even ask for it. He'd enjoyed those limbs for a while, until he realised they were not a part of his own body.

As I woke up I knew what he was. He was a corrupted American in a crumbling Babylon - and he stood for every prey American in large and looming symbolism. If the cancer, if the predator Demon-Limbs were removed from such an infected soul, the person would die! I knew I'd doctored and loved and tried to save them, but they had not Will left to want to be healed of an advanced disease - so advanced it felt like nourishment and stimulation itself. Those people I most had loved had become dependent upon something that was sucking their life away. To sever that connexion was to kill the person. Such a salvation was as sad as the rosewood stake through an incipient Vampire's heart. But even a staked Vampire finds joy beyond the Grave, release from pain and lust - from the need to fill his gap with the souls of others.

He was a Vampire.

She was a Vampire too.

How I loved him. How I loved her. If only she would find her face. Then she could face me, feel love, keep love, feed love, jump in jubilance.

Her Anatomy had no wholeness.

Soul-less limbs wriggled, clutched, multiplied.

The people, hypnotised, magnetically fascinated, stare upon their extra writhing limbs.