“The percussed victims of the new technology have invariably muttered cliches about the impracticality of artists and their fanciful preferences. But in the past century, it has come to be generally acknowledged that, in the words of Wyndham Lewis, “The artist is always engaged in writing a detailed history of the future because he is the only person aware of the nature of the present.” Knowledge of this simple fact is now needed for human survival. The ability of the artist to sidestep the bully blow of new technology of any age, and to parry such violence with full awareness, is age-old. Equally age-old is the inability of the percussed victims, who cannot sidestep the new violence, to recognize their need of the artist. To reward and to make celebrities of artists can, also, be a way of ignoring their prophetic work and preventing its timely use for survival. The artist is the man in any field, scientific of humanistic, who grasps the implications of his actions and of new knowledge in his own time. He is the man of integral awareness.”
– Marshall McLuhan, in ‘Understanding Media’
From Wikipedia:
“In societies where freedom of speech was not recognized as a right, the court jester—precisely because anything he said was by definition “a jest” and “the uttering of a fool”—could speak frankly on controversial issues in a way in which anyone else would have been severely punished for. Monarchs understood the usefulness of having such a person at their side. Still, even the jester was not entirely immune from punishment, and he needed to walk a thin line and exercise careful judgment in how far he might go – which required him to be far from a fool, in the modern sense.”
The Poetic Terrorist is an evolution of the Court Jester.
The image above is totally stolen from the Edmonton Fringe Theater Festival, whose slogan this year was ‘Stage a Revolution’. I like it. I think I’d actually rip their logo off if I weren’t afraid some dipshit would sue me for copyright infringement. Still, if anyone can draw me something related to the jester that’s badass enough to be an emblem for the Poetic Terrorist, please, do so. I’ll owe you one!
It is not necessary that you leave the house. Remain at your table and listen.
Do not even listen, only wait.
Do not even wait, be wholly still and alone.
The world will present itself to you for its unmasking, it can do no other, in ecstasy it will writhe at your feet.
- F. Kafka
I am a Digital Bard. Like the bards of old I am an adventurer, a storyteller, traveling musician and a lover of wisdom and intelligence. What has changed? Technology. But the spirit of the Bard lives on and is more important now than it ever was.
I am the Poetic Terrorist…
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A collection of inspiring quotations…
Continued reading >
Consciousness is the greatest trick we ever fell for. Our so called ‘consciousness’ is a flash light in a dark room, which we call Me, Myself and I.
Really we’re the room, the person holding the flashlight, the flashlight, the light, the darkness AND the bullshit.
People tell themselves stories about their quest for consciousness, awakening, enlightenment, ego-transcendence or what have you because the mind needs to make up stories when it’s trying to believe something that is not real.
Real things don’t require stories, or elaboration. They don’t require me to go out and preach about them. The truth doesn’t need defending… how presumptuous!!! That the truth is so fragile and weak a thing that it needs ME as its defender… as if it would suddenly disappear or be effaced forever just because I wasn’t around to protect it… to somehow SHOW it to others, when it’s in plain sight?
Fuck that…
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