The Man With the Blue Guitar (Part 1)

Over the weekend I cracked open my bible and began to thumb through it in the effort to discover one simple idea: who is the impossible-possible philosopher that we have constantly discussed in class? Stevens hints at this individual in Two or Three Ideas, when he states:

In an age of disbelief, or, what is the same thing, in a time that is largely humanistic, in one sense or another, it is for the poet to supply the satisfactions of belief, in his measure and in his style... I think of it as a role of the utmost seriousness. It is, for one thing, a spiritual role... To see the gods dispelled in mid-air and dissolve like clouds is one of the great human experiences... It was as if they had never inhabited the earth. There was no crying out for their return. They were not forgotten because they had been part of the glory of the earth (Stevens 841-42).

 Here we are able to see him explain an individual that is supplementing a reality that we can believe in: one that makes the ideals dispelling gods not just something that can be fathomable, but completely and utterly possible. The idea of this poet allows for humankind to exist at an evolved (or Northern, if you will) sense of thought. This works well with what Greenblatt discusses as being one of the major lurcretion functions: understanding the nature of things generates great wonder. This evolution of thought generates the understanding that gods merely stemmed from a primitive conceptualization of the world: we needed them to help us understand what mysteries lie out there. However, as mankind's understanding of the world and its surroundings of what makes it work became more and more sophisticated, our interest and need of them had decreasaed (to a point where arguments center around mono-theism and an all powerful, all knowing God).

If we were to follow this train of thought, then the idea of this impossible-possible philosopher would seem irrevalant, and unnecessary at best. I mean, come on! The idea of someone who can capture feelings that are so monumental that he can cease the belief in deities seems to be something of the past!

And then I read " the Man With the Blue Guitar," and this entire train of thought has subsequently been shattered.

There are currently three thoughts running through my head: what is the importance of blue, when the picture clearly demonstrates a man holding a brown guitar? In a world where polytheism has given way to monotheism, how can one continue to strive towards actions that dispel the gods and dissolve them to non-existence? Finally, the question that started this blog post: who is the impossible possible philosopher? (For that last one, here's a hint: change "guitar" to "box")

Stay tuned for part two..

Post Script: I like comments on my blog posts, even if they completely challenge what ideas I'm trying to present.

Death: The Soul Dies

It would appear that this would constitute, in some way, as a first blog post. And, as fun as it would be to talk about the Lucreation Sublime in Steven's poetry, I'd much rather explore a different avenue of the Sublime that Rio touches on in his blog entry that highlights Greenblatt: the conception of death. The soul dies. There is no afterlife. Death is nothing to us.

In one of my other classes, we have been given the assignment of reading John Green's Looking for Alaska; a text that depicts a high school junior struggling with an identity of self, and ultimately falling in love with a girl who passes away right as he comes to terms with how he actually feels about her: " 'Oh God, Alaska, I love you. I love you,' and the Colonel whispered, 'I'm so sorry, Pudge. I know you did,' and I said, 'No. Not past tense' " (Green 152). It was right about this point in the story that I have had to set the book down, pull up a chair, and start on writing this.

I'm into my second pot of instant brewed coffee now--and there is a marvelous and interesting thing you learn about instant brew coffee when you are on your second pot: it smells like the ambrosia of the mythological gods, yet tastes like what you would expect cardboard (or glue, for those of us who weren't that kid) to taste like--when the connection to the Lucreation Sublime hit me like a ton of bricks.

...Takumi and Lara had faded away, and it was just the three of us--three bodies and two people--the three who knew what had happened and two many layers between all of us, too much keeping us from on another. The Colonel said, 'I just want to save her so bad,' and I said 'Chip, she's gone,' and he said, 'I thought I'd feel her looking down on us, but you're right. She's just gone,' ... She wasn't even a person anymore, just flesh rotting (Green 152).

In a story that is geared towards a youth and adolescent culture, it is amazing how this above quote just screams Lucreation. The narrator shows that, upon death, an individual no longer becomes a subject of the present text, but a moment of the past. As Chip makes the realization that she is "just gone," it pulls attention to two of the Greenblatt statements in italic font: the soul dies, and there is no afterlife. Chip is able to acknowledge that she is not in some spiritual afterlife, looking down on them and trying to give the two boys some form of comfort. She is merely dead. Simple a stated fact, and nothing more.

Green also shows how the third element of the above Greenblatt bullet points is prevalent to this outside, primary source. At the end of the above passage the narrator states that "She wasn't even a person anymore." Of course being dead makes them no longer a member of the living, but how could this make her no longer a person? Again, turning back towards Greenblatt--and in particular, discussing the idea of the swerve and free will--shows that her death makes her void of an ability to administer any amount of free will. Without free will there is no ability to cause a swerve and create, and one of the greatest gifts mankind can offer is the creation of art, thought, philosophy, and more. I ask then, is a person actually a person if they cannot create?

 This is a topic that I hold very dear to me. Having been on the grieving end of a very serious passing of a loved one, I find it very hard to believe that Greenblatt has it correct about death. After all, how can the soul actually die when in fact we are left with fragments of memories and moments in time. Even Green goes on to make a note of this when Chip and Pudge go to help clean out Alaska's (the girl from the above passage) room; "I caught the edge of her scent: wet dirt and grass and cigarette smoke, and beneath that the vestiges of vanilla-scented skin lotion" (Green 153). Alaska has a distinct smell, and one that cannot be mistaken to the narrator as he enters her room. For a moment, the narrator is able to conjure up the essence of her and is able to forget that she is gone, and dull the pain.

Having these connections to what I would call the soul--the very essence, and elements that linger with you--of a person helps add to one of the other elements that Greenblatt discusses: the highest goal of human life is the enhancement of pleasure and the reduction of pain. If having these connections to someone who is dead--someone who no longer has a soul, for it has died--culminates in achieving the highest goal of human life, are they really dead? Has the soul truly been extinguished? After all, the only way you could live on in an oral culture was by being preserved in their stories and acts of great craftsmanship. Does the soul really die when we're dead? Or is this just a delusion, and not a pain of loss?

Only time, and maybe another pot of instant coffee will tell.