The Professor and the Poet

I'm just confused this morning. I just thought I'd like to note my confusion...

Balthasar Gracian: "We have nothing that is ours except time, which even those without a roof can enjoy." But our experience of time is illusory, and having a roof over our heads, can certainly enhance our enjoyment.

"Orpheus, I know you, welcome my comrade." Welcome to the stupid and stupefying spectacle we call society (flip on the tv, pick up the daily newspaper). I just finished Guy Debord's little missive, "The Society of the Spectacle," it is kind of a slog, dry, abstract, making assertions without concrete examples, talking about the economy, history, the revolution. Much of the language, heavily influenced by Marx seems to be rescued from the dustbin of history.

But of course, his concept of the Spectacle is oh so true. It's so true, it's almost meaningless, it's kind of a cliche. Yes, modern capitalism, (is there really any other system?) has taken us to a new level of economic abstraction. We (the consumers, the spectators) have also become the commodities. What we consume is the spectacle. It consumes us too. The spectacle is more real than reality (reality is just another show?!). Reality, truth, (can we find these things in the madness?) seem false, shallow, unreal, untrue. Makes me just want to go for a long run, clear my head. What can we really trust? What is not spectacle? How do you turn off the show, without turning away from the world?

Oh yes, I have also been reading a book about Jean Cocteau (the French are 'on the outs,' let me seek out everything French!). I'll let the old, (now long dead) Poet have the last words this morning: "...to move this great machine of dreams, to do battle with the angel of light, with the angel of machines, with the angels of space and time, this is work to my measure!"