Chas Jankélévitch

 

 "Above the lake in the valley and the grove along the hillside, high over the sea

and the passing clouds, and even past the sun!

To the farthest confines of the starry vault

mount, my spirit, wander at your ease

and range exultant through transparent space

like a rugged swimmer reveling in the waves

with an unutterable male delight.

Ascend beyond the sickly atmosphere *

to a higher plane, and purify yourself

by drinking as if it were ambrosia

the fire that fills and fuels Emptiness.

Free from the futile striving and the cares

which dim existence to a realm of mist,

happy is he who wings an upward way

on mighty pinions to the fields of light;

whose thoughts like larks spontaneously rise

into the morning sky; whose flight, unchecked,

outreaches life and readily comprehends

the language of flowers and of all mute things.

- Charles Baudelaire, Elevation

* in some translations, rendered as "miasma"

 

Sylvère Lotringer, "The Dance of Signs"

by Friedrich Nietzsche 

 "Shitting, like death, is a great leveller. It renders beluga caviar indistinguishable from tinned ham, a duchess as creaturely as a dog."

Alex Blasdel

For some reason this quote has reminded me of a Brian Aldiss story I never read but always meant to. In my hazy memory,  Aldiss's speculative train of thought had begun with the fact that religions, in their imagery and their ceremonies, often spiritualize bodily functions like eating (as with the communion wafer) and sex. Aldiss wondered: "well, why not  the excretory functions?". So he spun out a story that imagines a form of religion whose rituals are based around defecation.  

Well, it turns out I have garbled this (read about long long ago, probably in The Visual Encyclopedia of Science Fiction). The novel appears to be Aldiss's early effort, The Dark Light-Years  - originally published in 1964 - and here is a summary of its scenario, which involves a disorienting first-contact between humans and an alien race: 

The Utods are an ancient race who live in a distant galaxy -- they have a highly developed biological system that coincides with the rotation of their planet between three distinct suns. Their social, cultural, and religious beliefs all center on the process (and product) of defecation (no joke), which they see as a gift that symbolizes the ultimate cycle of life where bodies enter the carrion stage and feed the trees on the planet, becoming once again part of the universe. So, the Utods basically sit around in wallows of dirt and shit all day.

They are also giant and kind of hippo-like with six retractable arms and two heads, one that talks and one that shits. They are peaceful, but went through a period of revolution in their culture many generations ago where a sect of Utods shunned defecation for cleanliness, invented all kinds of spaceships and things, but eventually died out in a big war between themselves. The remaining Utods kept the technological knowledge and use it to travel to and colonize other hospitable planets.

The humans run across a pod of Utods in their temporary wallow on a planet they are both exploring. When the Utods say something to the humans (their language sounds like high pitched squeaks and screams and comes from all their orifices), they shoot all but two of the group. A scientist on board on the ship makes them capture the remaining Utods for study instead of shooting them. But are they intelligent?

All the shit really makes it hard for the humans to see the Utods as anything less than animals. All the cleanliness makes it really hard for the Utods to see the humans as an intelligent, thinking race. Both groups are at a standstill and while they have a lot of philosophical discussions about what "intelligent life" really is, neither race really makes a breakthrough.

Another precis: 

The Utods are multi-headed multi-limbed hippo-like mud-wallowing creatures which alternate genders.  They live with their lizard-like parasites in large mud and feces filled ponds which they wallow in and philosophize.  They journey between their planets in seedpod spaceships filled with their own filth.  They feel no pain, are pacifists, and are happy.

Some humans encounter a bunch of them and their seedpod spaceship....  The humans of this future time live in ultra-hygienic conditions eating their synthesized foods and drinking non-alcoholic beverages.... The  complete inability of the humans to communicate with the aliens (who have chosen not to communicate) introduces the main theme of the work:  the humans are so repulsed by the filth of the Utods that they are forced to reevaluate the meaning and criteria of the words/concepts sentience, intelligence, civilization, progress — not only as applied to the aliens but ourselves.  Does our conception of civilization completely exclude all other forms civilization might take?

Here's Aldiss's own gloss: 

A novel written in anger following inhumane experiments on dolphins. Space-going men and women find an alien race, the utods, on a planet alien to both parties. The utods enrich their lives and bodies by wallowing in their own droppings, a ceremony incompatible with terrestrial preconceptions: according to the latter “civilisation is reckoned as the distance man has placed between himself and his excreta”. Result: disaster. A serio-comic novel with diverse multi-national characters exemplifying human madness.

It all reminds me a bit of Bataille and the idea that higher mental faculties are built on, or over, lower bodily ones - the secret proximity of elevation and abjection, the lofty and base materialism.   

Soul and arse. 

Noticeable that none of the covers of these editions attempt to pictorialise the Utods or the defecatory concept - the images are completely unrelated. The original Faber and Faber cover below, the designer makes no attempt at all

I like the way he reprimands himself for not having bought his pale blue pegs from the right shop - “should have been from Lord John or Take Six”. The mod/soul boy obsession with these minutiae is the thing that is most alien to me still. I was once poking around a casuals forum when researching a piece and it was amazing to see how ferociously these middle aged verging on elderly types were arguing about which specific month in a particular year of the mid-80s that a certain shoe came into vogue, or the color of the laces that were de rigeur for that precise patch of time. 30 years on. It’s a kind of mystical investment in consumerism. As an indifferently dressed bourgeois from a bit further into the home counties than Burnt Oak I agree with Toyah - “don’t want to be told what to wear / so long as you’re warm who cares”. Music exists in commodity form but it transcends that and you don’t need to own it to hear it - it’s a common culture. Style culture is all about chasing overpriced stuff that only a few get to put on their bodies, a self-imposed prison of rules and restrictions.

 "If you understood everything I said, you'd be me." 

 - Miles Davis

(via Andrew Parker)

the structure / pay off reminds me a bit of this

Interviewer:  "What is the future of jazz?"

Jazz Legend (tetchily) : "If I knew what the future of jazz was, I'd be playing it already"

I wish I could remember who Jazz Legend was.... I want to say Max Roach but I can find no proof out there this is his quote.