Existential thoughts on Camus

I’m rereading Camus – currently on "The Stranger." As I was out for a walk tonight in what is really “normal” temperature but felt briskly chilly compared to what we’ve been having this year, I remembered, nearly verbatim, his lines in Mersault’s mouth on the last pages:

“For the first time, in that night alive with signs and starts, I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world.” The world cares not whether I am alive or dead and has no world-soul to care, anyway. That thought can be either depressing or gladdening, I realized, depending one what mindset I bring to that thought in advance, what feelings and beliefs I am seeking to be confirmed or denied, and so forth. I felt vaguely but reassuringly comforted by that fact.

And how had Camus reached this point?

“As if that blind rage had washed me clean, rid me of hope,” he says just before the words above. Raw emotion, when undenied, can get us to bedrock within ourselves. I take Camus as saying he has been rid of the hope of false delusions, such as the delusion that the world really gives a damn about Mersault.
And so we go on.

“Finding it so much like myself — so like a brother, really — I felt that I had been happy and was happy again.” Mersault is one with himself after getting stripped of his self-delusions. And so, in a nonmetaphysical way, he can experience a certain degree of oneness with the world at large, as a relative of some sort.

And that leads us to Mersault’s final lines, where Camus lets us know that the homo existentialis always remains in at least partial control of his own emotional fate, if not his physical fate.

“For everything to be consummated, for me to feel less alone, I only had to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate.”

Youth, violence and video games — a personal angle

One of my coworkers was talking in a joking way this morning about how her husband has been playing Grand Theft Auto with their 2-year-old son. She was laughing at describing how he’s learning to “kill hookers.”

I don’t think it’s funny, given that enough evidence exists connecting video game violence and childhood development that she and her husband are setting the child up for later-life aggressive tendencies. But I don’t know what, if anything, to say.

Is Mozart overrated?

Well, it's officially here — it’s the 250th anniversary of Mozart’s birth Saturday, and all the attendant hyperbole and hoopla will get an official kickoff. I’m suggesting it’s not all warranted.

I own nearly 500 classical CDs and can count my Mozart CDs on the fingers of my two hands. He doesn't make the Top 10 of my classical composer playlist. He's certainly not No. 1 or 2. And who is that Top 10? ...

Going by sevens, my Top Seven are Bach, Vivaldi, Beethoven, Brahms, Mahler, Stravinsky and Shostakovich. My Second Seven would be Handel, Schubert, Bruckner, Rachmaninoff, Schnittke, Penderecki, and Elliott Carter, I believe. That second seven is not as written in stone, but Mozart would not make the top seven at all.

Oh, by the way, some of you Mozart idolators might need to listen to some 20th century classical music. Start with the last three I listed. Add some Ernst Krenek. Throw in some late, serialist Stravinsky.

Child prodigy/voluminous output by itself does not make a genius. Saint-Saens was also a child prodigy; why does nobody discuss him like Mozart?

If you pressed me, there are two -- and only two -- must-have works of his; the Symphony No. 40 and the Requiem.

Otherwise, much of his early work was dilletantish salon music.

That said, here in Dallas, the Fine Arts Chamber Players is having a special at the Dallas Museum of Art Saturday. I'll be there.

It's free, and I never say no to free classical music.

Oh, and if you want a classical music birth anniversary to celebrate, circle Sept. 23 on your calendars. That will be the centennial of Shostakovich's birth.

More next week on details of why I think Mozart has gotten to be overrated; it's embargoed for now, as it's my newspaper column for next week.

Who’s hurt, and who’s diseased?

“I’m messed up, and I might mess you up.”

And where have I heard those lines before?
After more than seven years, I still remember.
I still remember Cathey’s self-defense
Cathey’s self-defense that made her sound diseased.

Sound diseased, though, isn’t the same as “felt diseased,” and
Felt diseased is the way I felt
I felt like I was a disease carrier
Carrier of something that could hurt her.

Hurt her? Maybe I could. Maybe I was too close,
Too close to the heart, too close to the defenses,
Defenses that were stout, but perhaps brittle with age,
Brittle with age, with heartache and more.

Age, heartache, and more?
I pulled punches seven years ago, trying to prevent,
To prevent Cathey from running, though I had no chance,
Once she saw I might be serious, though I tried to hide it, she was gone.

Gone? No? Memories of her are still there, and my actions,
My actions seven years ago, from which I learned,
Learned not to do the same thing again,
Again, as I face the same situation, or what seems same or similar.

Similar in situation, but not in response?
If she doesn’t want to share the hurt with me, then I can’t
Can’t continue to share my degree of yearning
Yearning and burning can’t be camouflaged.

I won’t camouflage one thing:
I’m not diseased and I’m not fragile.
Not fragile as china, to be boxed and padded away,
Boxed and padded away, out of sight, sound and mind.

We can’t talk

We can’t talk right now;
She is working on issues and pains
From a past relationship
And says she doesn’t want to hurt me.

I understand, I think, but I don’t like it;
I sympathize, but still yearn,
Yearn for her to change her mind,
And sooner, rather than later.

I feel like my emotions are on hold,
An interest, a budding hope and more,
Waiting, waiting, waiting;
Can't she see the “urgent” on her caller ID?

I wish I could make her understand
That, even if I am projecting my emotions
Onto an unseen her, never yet met,
This is more than normal interest.

But, she doesn’t want to hurt me.
She makes it sound as if she is a carrier
Of the latest exotic disease,
And afraid of infecting me.

Please, hang up the phone on the past.
Get the call blocking for that unwanted caller.
Put me on speed dial. Give me a call.
I'm not afraid of your emotional pain.

I want you.
I want you to talk.
I want you to
Talk to me.

But don’t wait,
Because I won’t
Wait
That long.

I didn’t know he was turning 100; that must have been good drugs indeed

LSD inventor/discoverer Albert Hoffman, due to hit the century mark Jan. 11, reminisced about his discovery and its implications.

Jokes aside, of course, many people turned to LSD as a gateway to spiritual experiences, reputed to be better than mescaline and normally with fewer physical side effects.

Hoffman points out its trials in psychoanalytical work, which of course brings in one Dr. Timothy Leary. Alcoholics Anonymous founder Bill Wilson tried it (in between his séances) and thought it could be used to fight addictions.

But, the spiritual experience is there without LSD (or mescaline, or psilocybin). I’ve undergone self-hypnosis, years ago, and gotten “deep” enough to see spiraling mandala patterns, getting ever brighter as I focused on them, spinning more rapidly, and eventually becoming — a tunnel.

Yes, I was on the pathway to one of the most commonly cited phenomena of a near-death experience. NDE, meet LSD. Both of you, meet brain hardwiring.

At the end of the interview, Hoffman sounds like a New Ager himself, when asked what LSD did for his understanding of death:

When asked if the drug had deepened his understanding of death, he appeared mildly startled and said no. “I go back to where I came from, to where I was before I was born, that's all,” he said.

Well, ’twould be nice if it were true, but since there is no “I” after death (and, arguably, no single “I” while we’re alive), nobody’s going noplace, acid or not.

And, speaking of that (and read my posts here, here, and here) just who was going anywhere on those acid trips, anyway?

This could explain bar pick-ups

Duke University Medical Center researchers have found that alcohol has less of an effect on rats during estrus.

The research shows that alcohol has less neurotransmitter effect on female rats in estrus.

When tipsy females were at their most nimble, during their pre- and postestrous states, the ethanol had 10% less impact on neurotransmitter activity than it did on the drunken males' neurotransmitters. These results suggest that the gender gap in alcohol behavior may have to do with how hormones play into both gender-related and estrous cycle-related changes in central nervous system excitability, the team reports this month in Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research.

Given that we know human females generally have a higher sexual drive during their cycles, the fact that they are less affected by alcohol could have several implications.

Wide-eyed women can be more choosy at the bar as drunken males slobber on them.
Women can remain in control of sexual situations during their period.
Women should be careful of their drinking levels when they are not in their period.
Speculatively, would bisexual women be more straight or more lesbian in their tendencies during their period, seeing other relatively sober women?

~