Tenses, Deformable Activities, New Health (Self-released)

Receive my instruction, and not silver; and knowledge rather than choice gold. For wisdom is better than rubies; and all the things that may be desired are not to be compared to it. —Proverbs 8:10-11

A merry heart doeth good like a medicine: but a broken spirit drieth the bones. —Proverbs 17:22

Although he was also an accomplished composer and librettist, a literary critic, and author of more than 30 works of fiction, the novelist Anthony Burgess was undoubtedly best known for his 1962 book, A Clockwork Orange, which the acclaimed director Stanley Kubrick in 1971 adapted into a masterpiece of 20^th century science-fiction cinema.

It was, however, his preceding novel, entitled One Hand Clapping, written in 1961 and published under the pen name Joseph Kell, that cemented Burgess’s reputation for sharply critiquing contemporary consumerist culture.

The story follows the rise and fall of Janet Shirley and her husband, Howard, the latter of whom works as a used car salesman and discovers that his photographic memory and gift for clairvoyance could make the couple a small fortune.

Howard appears as a contestant on a TV quiz show and wins the jackpot, which he parlays placing bets on racehorses. The pair then embark upon a deluxe world tour, a middle-class couple partaking for the first time in the finest material things life has to offer.

Gradually, Howard grows disillusioned nonetheless with shallow luxury and becomes convinced that civilization is approaching an apocalypse, concluding that the couple should commit tandem suicide to escape an even worse fate.

Who decides our deaths, when, and most importantly, how, is the paramount moral question.

Fiona Nguyen, Gymnopédies, Pangée Pangée, 12 September – 2 November 2024

Tragically, Anthony Burgess’s mother and elder sister both died in 1918, one week apart, in suburban Manchester during Britain’s worst wave of what was known colloquially at the time as the Spanish Flu.

That pandemic received its name not because the virus originated in Spain, but rather because its neighbouring embattled nations — France, the U.K., and Italy — all suppressed bad news during World War I in order to maintain public morale. Spanish media outlets, though, did not, reporting widely on the outbreaks that may have originated as far away as the U.S. state of Kansas.

During the 2020 Coronavirus pandemic, America’s then-president Donald Trump frequently referred in the media to SARS-CoV-2 as the “China virus” — and more offensively, “Kung Flu” — claiming in a 2021 New York Times article, “It’s not racist at all. It comes from China.”

Yet, a century earlier, every country was racist. The French press called it “American flu;” the Germans named it “Flanders fever;” the Brazilians said it was “German flu;” the Poles dubbed it “Bolshevik disease;” and African nations referred to it as “White man’s sickness.”

Payare Conducts Schoenberg’s Gurre-Lieder, Maison Symphonique, 11 September 2024

“Lord God, your heavenly hosts endlessly sing your praise, but you badly need somebody to tell you where you are wrong. And who, pray, will be so daring?” — Waldemar

According to the Book of Genesis, God created man in His own image.

This doesn’t mean that humankind superficially looks like God — “image” in this sense could perhaps more accurately be translated as “nature” or “spirit.” Humans are Godlike in our behavioural tendencies.

So, when we ask, for example, why a just God would allow cruelty and suffering in the world, we need only look at our own nature and spirit, which allows cruelty and suffering in the world. Daily, we unproblematically ignore and maybe even encourage cruelty and suffering in our midst.

Humans are capable of perpetuating life. We are beings endowed with memory, and foresight, and choice, and spiritual intelligence. Our best instincts approach divinity. And yet, we are only as good as our worst impulses. The phrase, ‘no one is free until everyone is free’ ultimately exemplifies this.

Lemongrab with Birds of Prrrey, Mulch, and Shunk, Van Horne Underpass, 12 September 2024

In the Book of Job, God allows Satan to test His only truly faithful servant by subjecting him to the most unbearable suffering.

Inherent in this parable is that God Himself is vulnerable to temptation — the temptation of scrutinizing His own creation. If God were truly faithful, He would demonstrate unconditional faith in Job, just as Job demonstrates unconditional faith in God.

The Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung in his 1952 book Answer to Job confronts this paradox by challenging God’s intentions. God’s “readiness to deliver Job into Satan’s murderous hands,” writes Jung, “proves that he doubts Job precisely because he projects his own tendency to unfaithfulness upon a scapegoat.” Mankind is tormented with self-doubt because God is.

“To believe that God is the Summum Bonum,” Jung concludes, “is impossible for a reflecting consciousness.” To believe that humans are, conversely, seems impossible for a jealous God.

“Where wast thou when I laid the foundation of the earth?” God rhetorically demands of Job. The question now is, where was God when the earth’s foundation cracked?

Death Tennis with Cockfight and Basil No!, Hemisphere Gauche, 7 September 2024

One of God’s most astute modern observers, Werner Herzog, writes at the end of his book, Conquest of the Useless: “I looked around, and there was the jungle, manifesting the same seething hatred, wrathful and steaming, while the river flowed by in majestic indifference and scornful condescension, ignoring everything: the plight of man, the burden of dreams, and the torments of time.”

In fact, we have most likely created God in our own image and not the other way around. God, as well as every other earthly concept, is a product of our perception and our inability to reconcile our desire for complete control with that which is transcendent and unknowable. Nature is beyond moral judgement, beyond reason and reproach, and we have no other option but to fear it.

Wisdom is nothing more nor less than that which eludes our grasp.◼︎

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_{Cover image: Fiona Nguyen, Gymnopédies gallery view, Pangée Pangée. Photographed for NicheMTL.}