an essay by Russell Soloman
(posted with his permission)
There is an insouciant use of "madness" as
spontaneous
creativity or intuitive leaping, which makes the
ordinary "real life"
logic nervous. This "madness" is used as relish,
as charm,
"You lovely mad person!"
This is because of the low level of awareness in
most logic,
which is two valued--right and wrong--moral,
biblical, absolute.
Someone is trying to be the nail in the head, or
hit the nail on
the head. He has been decreed to, commanded, he
does not
have his own perceptions: he is taking orders.
Someone who
does have his own universe and his own judgment seems "mad"
to him. Thus we have
the usual reality battles, which all battles
are--over reality. (And probably over misunderstood
words.)
The word "madness" is loose and figurative and
means all kinds
of things because
the language has so few words for free beings,
not usually being
employed in freeing them, or talking about them
in a positive way. Thus a free, happy being must be
"mad." And
slave-maker psychiatrists will hasten to name a
"disorder" for it.
And earlier, priests had "witchcraft" and "heresy"
and secular
boiling in oil aimed
against free beings. These days we have
child-drugging to
prevent freedom of thought and expression.
Enforced reality is a big business. "Mad, crazy, mentally ill"
are used to
invalidate.
"If you don't agree, you must be mad," is the usual formula for the
invalidation of personal realities, especially the
higher ones. Then
we ironically admire this "madness" and make the
word a good
quality. But tossed into this is the tinge of evil
in much madness,
as in certain popular arts, as in racism, so you
have people trying
to be beautiful by destruction. They are "mad" in
the sense of evil
purposes showing up in public and causing
harm. But they may
be
charming and may hold high office, may wear
beautiful uniforms;
however, they can not bring life to fellow
man; they can't talk to you
or their families,
nor even their fellow politicians or comrades in
arms.
Madness is easy to see by its result: pollution
of the mind, cadavers
underfoot, continual deficit borrowing
against the future that may not
come if killed by the knife of "profit," raped by
actual madness.
"Madness" is being pressed into use to account for
conditions
"out of range of
usual reality." But there are upper ranges and lower
ranges. There is
also one's own universe in good condition and in
bad condition.
There is in "madness" a hint of disapproval; the
word
is trying to
defend an agreed upon social, or moral order. But
it also
tries to tell
of high states of
freedom, not approved of by the "legal"
owners of
reality.
It must account for the ocean of viewpoints and
infinity of ideas, for
which this word, even if joyously
figurative, can not account. What do
we call the roll of the eyes when we hear
our leader tell us he is making
a "surge" by killing more people, and this "surge"
will bring order and
agreement? How about "mad-eye-roll," or
"folderol"?
In the "madness" can, worms wiggle and begin to
seem like life in
its infinity of
emotional tones and valuable actions; its not so valuable
destructions; its fun qualities, and its
insane and unlawful grip on the
realities of
man.
Don't assume that I am promoting "madness" even if
I like "madness,"
in its upper ranges of joy and creation and
insouciance and spirit of play,
inspired delight. There is such a thing as the
exact truth of something,
and that usually is
a free, uncoerced view of isness. An isness, no matter
how it got there, IS
WHAT IS. Ability to make and compute with isnesses
without twisting
their necks and making them lie and calling them
"freedom"
when they are murder, etc., is a useful basis for
action
among fluid
realities. So is the ability to communicate and to grant
beingness to others. This is all obvious, so I should shut
up about it.
Okay, don't get mad, you lovely "mad" person. You
are "crazy," and that
is what I like about
you. "Crazy," as in unique, aesthetic, original, joyous,
one of a kind, not duplicated in any catalogue of
mediocrity, valuable
in your deepest god. I pray that I may intimately
be connected by being
with you, know you, enjoy you, take "flitter"
baths in your laugh, niggle-
higgle in your sparks of thought. (Where
are the words for the potential
infinities of co-existence--the ones that do not
decay into "natural law"?)
After exhilaration the language quits, or gets real
solemn about god and
the Other-Causation that made you, that keeps the
lid on your divinity
and won't let you
"go mad" up here, because you will wreck the universe.
And you would, given half the joyous glint and huge
free view that this
might require. So we
keep the lid on original thought and the saying of it.
Who wants your truth
when I have mine, and let's fight about it and have
war parties. Mm,
blood and guts, the hors d'oeuvres of despair. Reality
as usual. I have
enough trouble with this morning without you mucking it up
with desperate needs. See how language works better
when angry and
not as well in the heartbeat of your
presence?
For that we need poetry.
For days I have been seeing
the galaxy at noon. The stars
are all there, and the planet
falls among them carrying our
small bodies.
It rained in the night and my
face is washed clean of stars.
I am looking for the time not
here yet where we can talk
under the shady branches of
languages with brain light,
touch light.
You know everything and I want
to feel it running on my brain skin,
taking root in my tapestries and
flowering into white horses, manes
dazzling the white roses' jealous
thorns.
I hold you in a wish for pure time,
slow release of buds to blossoms,
I invent slow springtime, sparks of
water which is thought. A sip of
serene infinities as we speak.
I miss your native life forms.
Put on a grasshopper body and
we will go leaping,
drooling grass
sap from our jaws, kissing light
with our huge eyes.
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