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Matt4n.com
Matt Foran's Practice Space
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- Waitin 4 a Hurricane (Hurricane Earl Medley)http://matt4n.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/waitin4ahurricane-hurricane-earl-medley.mp3 when x r tough 2 (and times are rough) Created January 25, 2010 12:09 PM Modified August 18, 2010 2:31 PMnice to meet you 2 (walt/waltz) 12510 Salesman is a 1969 direct cinema documentary that follows 4 salesmen as they travel across the country trying to sell expensive Bibles door-to-door in low-income neighborhoods. theme for Wednesday august 25 2 I've almost died 4x Matt Foran's 4th Near Death Experience8.24.10 Jtown Massacre821.10 Next Year let's make it different (MASSACREOF1983)81710
This song slipped off the top my head, I make up the words as I go along. andthemoonslippedoutmymind.mp381610
http://matt4n.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/when-the-end-of-my-life-comes-all-i-will-hope-people-will-say-oh-he-was-a-lawyer.mp3
stam4dnonemergency 7410
nelsoncall 7410
matt4n.com theme (1234) 6110
bm a e with intro
g loop
bm-a loop
I was never good at all these things
everything that rises must fall
honest abe
according to my records
digerido2
em7 fast track
onaleathercouch 42110
a d at the 7th fret
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twasmarch16th&ididntherefromu(31608)
youre dead where you are(3108)
it’s a new year (howd he do)
it’s a banjo tuning (61708)
listen to with headphones
when-things-start-to-fall-apart-in-a-scary-drunken-way
Cover Songs: 
Covering wilco's war on war mashed up with audio from war made easy.
war on war made easy
imagine43110
theunderdog
my-sweet-lordsbuddha-vishnu-dalai-lama-jesus-christ-dionysus-odysseus.mp3
exitmusic4afilmin2tackyentrancemusic.mp3
the xra Δing
(somisunderstood((wilco)theband))
call-you-on-sunday-morning-mothers-day
thislandwasmade4uandme.mp3
ashesofamerican-flagsjt
Slackers:
lennon-song
goodxpt2
john-lennon-interview-1969
ebertfestsynechdocheQandA
retainer retainer
fantastic mr fox
sky blue sky to me
greenwich village blues
the blood -
chronicles of the sweet life- Himeji...There's this thing I've grown accustomed to over the last 4 months, something I dub travel sickness. It's not exactly a sickness per se, but it's this feeling of moving on...something new approaching, a new country and new adventure on the horizon and spending the last hours and minutes somewhere about to be left behind. I find I see coun […]
- Himeji...
The Angel is My Watermark By Henry Miller
Astronomers Maybe Sleeping By Matt Foran
You purchase $3 tickets to the stamford observatory from two high school girls sitting in front of an old Telescope. They tell you that telescope was made during World War II. It looks like it. It sits in front of a black and white picture of itself flanked by a 4-5 boy scouts. You climb 3 flights of stairs lined with yellow concrete walls that remind you of your middle school. Flyers are taped to the walls and tell you stuff you can't do once you're in the room with the telescope. It is a an intimate room, a perfectly circular atrium, and in the middle, is THE telescope. It reminds you of Dr. Evil's giant laser beam. There are two old old men. They are the astronomers. The one without the beard tells you the only job he's ever had is operating Stamford's 2 telescopes. For 50 years, he answers. The bearded one instructs you to look in a viewing hole.
He tells you that fuzzy light in the middle of the screen is a galaxy 48 million light years away. "So I am looking at something 48 million years ago in the past?" Yes. "You know you could be showing me anything right now, and I wouldn't know the difference. You could just be making this up." Yes, I could. "Can I ask you two a personal question?" Sure, go ahead. "Do you believe in God?" "He does," he responds, pointing his thumb at the other astronomer..."I don't."
I met Justin, at the observatory last night, and asked him if anyone ever told him he looked like Jeff Tweedy. They hadn't. He let me take his picture. I instructed him to smile as widely as he possibly could, to see if it would match this Spin Magazine cover.
Excerpts from my 4th grade autobiography
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http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/chicago7/Foranclose.html
Closing Arguments on Behalf of the Government by Mr. Foran
MR. FORAN: May it please the Court, counsel, ladies and gentlemen of the jury: The recognition of the truth, which is your job, is a very strange thing. There is a real difference between intellectualism and intelligence. Intellectualism leaves out something that intelligence often had and what it really is is a kind of a part of the human spirit. You know many men will be highly intellectual and yet they will have absolutely terrible judgment.
When you stop and think of it. among the twelve of you there is certainly somewhere in excess of four hundred years of human intelligence and instinct, and that is a lot, and that is important. . . .
Much of the concept of the assault by the defendants on the Government's case is: Would anybody do some of these wild things? Most people wouldn't. But those defendants would.
Some of the things that the Government's witnesses testified that some of these defendants did were pretty wild things, and it would be hard to believe that most people, most decent people, would ever do anything like it. Is it so hard to believe that these men would do it?
Has any one of you, for instance, noticed how in the last few days as we reach the end of the case and it comes before for decision, the sudden quieting in the courtroom, the sudden respect, the sudden decency that we see in this courtroom? For that, are we to forget the four-and-a-half months of what we saw?
The defendants in this case---first of all, they kind of argued in a very strange way that there was no violence planned by these defendants at the Democratic Convention.
Since they have no evidence that violence wasn't planned, the way they argue it is that they say Bock, Frapolly, and Oklepek and Pierson lied. They state that they lied categorically. They said, "Because Bock, Frapolly, Pierson, and Oklepek were undercover agents for the police or newspapers, and therefore, they cannot be honest men.
Now how dare anybody argue that kind of a gross statement? Some of the bravest and the best men of all the world, certainly in law enforcement, have made their contributions while they were undercover. That statement is a libel and a slander on every FBI agent, every Federal narcotics agent, every single solitary policeman who goes out alone and unprotected into some dangerous area of society to try to find out information that is helpful to his government. It is a slander on every military intelligence man, every Navy intelligence man who does the same thing.
There is something that is very interesting, and I bet you haven't noticed it.
The August 9 meeting, you remember that meeting was at Mobilization headquarters. There was a lot of talk and a lot of planning at that meeting. Frapolly, Bock, and Oklepek were all there. So were Dellinger, Davis, Hayden, Weiner, Froines, and Hoffman.
All three of the Government witnesses testified that the march routes to the Amphitheatre were discussed. All agreed that the dangers of the march routes were discussed. All agreed that mill-ins in the Loop were planned during that week: disruptions, blocking cars driving down the street, smashing windows, shut the Loop down, generally make havoc in the Loop area, setting small fires---and, by the way, it all happened.
All of those things that I just mentioned happened on Wednesday of Convention week, and all of them happened in the downtown area right at Michigan and Balbo.
You know, they were saying, "What did they plan that happened?" Well, everything. That was a pretty good shot on the first big meeting.
In addition to the defendants, who else was there at that meeting? Bosciano, Radford, Baker, Steve Buff, and about eight other people. Where are they? If Bock and Frapolly and Oklepek were lying, why weren't they in here testifying that something else was said at that meeting, or that Davis was telling the truth about what he said was said at that meeting. Where are they?
Buff took the witness stand, and they didn't even ask him about the meeting. They didn't even ask him.
The reason that none of the friends and pals of these defendants that were at those meetings didn't come in here and testify or, if they did, ignored the meetings, was because Bock, Frapolly and Oklepek were telling the truth, and if they talked about those meetings on the witness stand, they would have no choice, they would either have to back Bock and Frapolly and Oklepek or they would have to lie. They were at those meetings planning and organizing for the violence that they were going to instigate and incite in Chicago.
And when all that organizing and planning was completed, the time to start the execution of the plan had arrived.
The first thing they had to do is they had to keep this crowd of people getting excited, getting into trouble, but not so much trouble that they would run into a mass arrest situation before Wednesday because they needed the crowd on Wednesday if they were going to have their big confrontation.
And so what they decided---and stop and think of it, remember at the beginning of this case they were calling them all by diminutive names, Rennie and Abbie and Jerry, trying to pretend they were young kids. These are highly sophisticated, highly educated men, every one of them. They are not kids. Davis, the youngest one, took the witness stand. He is twenty-nine. These are highly sophisticated, educated men and they are evil men.
(laughter)
THE COURT: Mr. Marshal.
MR. FORAN: What they have in mind they need to be sophisticated for and they need to be highly educated for because what they have in mind is what Davis told you he had in mind. It is no judgment of mine. Davis told ' you from that witness stand after two-and-a-half days of the toughest cross-examination I was ever involved in because he was so smart and so clever and so alert, but at last he told you "Revolution. Insurrection." And he told you---I am not---you heard it right from the witness stand.
And so these sophisticated men decided that the first thing that they had to do was to test the police. They had to find out what they could do, where they would be stepping too far, you know, where they would run into trouble.
So the first march they had on Sunday they sent the whole--most of them went down opposite the Hilton Hotel. They had an orderly legal march, legal picketing, and there was absolutely no trouble.
Remember Davis back at that August 9 meeting, "We'll lure the McCarthy kids and other young people with music and sex and try to hold the park." And all of this was done the first night. The first night they carried out that plan. But to carry out the big plan they had to generate more heat the next day so that by Wednesday the psychological training ground of this crowd and the psychological torture of the police, that combination would have reached the proper mix for what they had in mind for Wednesday night.
Say you are in the park after 11:00 p.m., and the law says you are supposed to go; a policeman says, "Leave." You say, "Hell, no." He has only two choices, doesn't he? He either has to walk away from you and not enforce the law, or he has to use whatever physical force is necessary to make you leave.
So, he reaches down-say he takes you by the arm. Then what do you do? You scream, "Let me alone! Let me alone! Police brutality!" And you start wrestling around. Then he had again only two choices. Either he had to physically subdue you right there on the spot, or he had to get help in order to carry you out.
MR. KUNSTLER: There is no evidence of that at all, your Honor. Mr. Foran is making up a story here. I object, your Honor.
THE COURT: I overrule your objection. You may continue, sir.
MR. FORAN: If the police get tough and wrongfully---and it is wrong for a policeman to say, "This man is not going to go," so he cracks him, that is wrong. He shouldn't do that. But say he does it, which they do, policemen do that, then the crowd takes that as total justification to attack the police with rocks and bottles. and to say, "We are defending ourselves."
The technique is simple, and it can fit any situation, and you have seen it fit situations in this courtroom.
Somebody violates the regulation of this courtroom, and the marshal asks him to leave, and he won't, so he takes him by the arm, "Aaaaccchhh! Dirty rotten marshal!" And that had happened, and that is the way it is done, and it is done. You know, this is done in complicated situations and in simple situations.
Monday night in Lincoln Park as the curfew approached, there was Rubin, "Arm yourselves with anything you can. Now is the time to make our stand." Earlier, he had been doing the same thing. That is the night they built the barricade, just like they planned on August 9.
It was a rough night in the park. There was gas. Davis is there on the bullhorn. He is shouting encouragement to the crowd to "Fight the pigs" and "Hold the park," committing a criminal act, by the way, inciting a crowd. He had just left his cohort, Hayden, downtown. who had been arrested near the Hilton . . . .
Rubin, as usual, was in the park on Tuesday. He gives a speech to the crowd telling them to take this country away from the people who run it. "Take to the streets in small groups," just as he told Pierson that the Viet Cong had done, and he finished up his revolution exhortation with, "See you in the streets."
These are criminal acts. They are urging people to violence.
Seale followed on the podium with a wild speech telling the crowd to "Get their pieces and barbecue that pork." And we are supposed to wonder, you know, it doesn't mean what it means. That is what the argument is. "It doesn't mean what it means." Of course, you know what it means. "You get your gun and you kill a policeman." That is what is means. It is as obvious as anything from the context of the speech. You heard the whole speech. To say anything else is ridiculous. It is calling black white.
Up at the park, again, Tuesday night, over and over again, the police were saying, "Clear the park. Clear the park." Finally, at 12:30 A.M., the police moved forward again, and again they were met with a hail of missiles. This time, Froines was right up in the front line, throwing rocks and stones himself.
The police really let them have it with tear gas that night. They had a dispenser, and there was a lot of gas, and the crowd got out quickly. I don't know, maybe that is a better way, but I don't know. There was a lot of gas. It is a temporary bad feeling, but at least nobody gets hurt. Maybe it is a better way.
The battle plan that had been talked about by Davis on August 9, was almost ready. Young people had been moved into the park. They fought and resisted the police.
And now the time had come to start shifting the scene down to the downtown area, and just as they planned, the Hilton area was going to be the focus of the next action.
The crowd was pretty heated and pretty militant, and it gad been whipped up really in Lincoln Park, starting way back on August 13 with all of these things, wit at crazy snake dancing, and with the skirmish lines. To be trained in karate is something because karate is a vicious thing. If you are any good at it, you can kill somebody with it. It is a vicious way to fight.
The police had been taunted and insulted and attacked until the weak ones among them, and there are plenty of weak policemen, were losing their professionalism. and they were ripe to be driven into joining some of these participants in rioting.
And then they have that meeting in Mobilization headquarters the next morning where they set it up with a kind of---well, it is a combination of "the massive action with the cutting edge of resistance." They used it successfully at the Pentagon and they were now going to transfer it into the practicalities of Chicago.
Dellinger, Davis, Hayden, Froines, Weiner and Rubin all leave to do their various jobs.
The meeting started at the Bandshell. Dellinger was running the public show up on the stage and Davis was giving instructions to his marshals out behind that refreshment stand, those marshals who, as Froines said, were a lot better street fighters than they ever were what marshals are supposed to be.
He says "Disperse the police. Reduce their effectiveness."
Others of the militant group were seen preparing their vicious, filthy weapons--- bags of urine, pointed sticks, sharpening tiles.
The mood of those militants in that crowd was shown real quickly when that flag came down to half-mast. When that flag came down and those six policemen went in to arrest the man, they were grossly attacked by that crowd.
And the honesty of the defense is pointed out most clearly by the argument of counsel that they were throwing their lunches at the police and that these were picnickers throwing lunches at the police. These weren't picnickers unless those picnickers eat rocks and bottles for lunch.
Rubin in his volatile way had been caught up in the excitement and he was in there pitching, "Kill the pigs. Kill the pigs."
But Dellinger and Davis were a lot cooler than that. They let them continue for a while. It went on for about fifteen minutes and then they cooled it down because it was still daylight and things were---you know, it wasn't quite ready yet. And that's when Davis got hit. Look at this picture in the jury room. He's got a cut on his head and he's bleeding some and he's smiling and he looks very alert and he doesn't look like he's going to fall unconscious to me.
The thing that you have got to recognize is that you have to tie the Bandshell back to that meeting Wednesday morning. Exactly what was planned at that meeting Wednesday morning happened at the Bandshell.
A diversionary march was set up by Dellinger. Another action was set up by Dellinger. As I said earlier, I think like a ventriloquist he used Tom Neumann. Neumann's name had been talked about that morning at that meeting at the Mobilization office as one of the speakers. Neumann was one of the men. The plan was made there at that meeting.
You can gather a whole bunch of people, most of them don't want to riot, but maybe want to protest, maybe want to get in on the act, maybe want to have some fun, maybe want to fight policemen. You gather enough people together, and you have some people who are dedicated to causing public disorder for serious purposes. You don't need a big crowd. And that is what these people always try to do. They tried to shift it off on all youth. They are talking about our children.
There are millions of kids who, naturally, if we could only remember how it is---you know, you resent authority, you are impatient for change, you want to fix things up. Maybe you are very sensitive and you feel the horrors of racism which is a real cancer in the American character, there is no question about that. You feel a terrible frustration of a terribly difficult war that maybe as a young kid you are going to have to serve in. Sure, you don't like things like that.
There is another thing about a kid, if we all remember, that you have an attraction to evil. Evil is exciting and evil is interesting, and plenty of kids have a fascination for it. It is knowledge of kids like that that these sophisticated, educated psychology majors know about. They know about kids, and they know how to draw the kids together and maneuver them, and use them to accomplish their purposes. Kids in the 60s, you know, are disillusioned. There is no question about that. They feel that John Kennedy went, Bobby Kennedy went, Martin Luther King went---they were all killed---and the kids do feel that the lights have gone out in Camelot, the banners are furled, and the parade is over.
These guys take advantage of them. They take advantage of it personally, intentionally, evilly, and to corrupt those kids, and they use them, and they use them for their purposes and for their intents. And you know, what are their purposes and intents?
Well, they tell you, these men tell you this, and this is what troubles me, that some of the things you can really taste.
What is their intent? And this is their own words: "To disrupt. To pin delegates in the Convention hall. To clog streets. To force the use of troops. To have actions so militant the Guard will have to be used. To have war in the streets until there is peace in Vietnam. To intimidate the establishment so much it will smash the city. Thousands and thousands of people perform disruptive actions in Chicago. Tear this City apart. Fuck up the Convention. Send them out. We'll start the revolution now. Do they want to fight? The United States is an outlaw nation which had broken all the rules so peace demonstrators can break all the rules. Violate all the laws. Go to jail. Disrupt the United States Government in every way that you can. See you in Chicago."
And these men would have you believe that the issue in this case is whether or not they really wanted permits.
Public authority is supposed to stand handcuffed and mute in the face of people like that and say, "We will let you police yourselves"? How Would public authority feel if they let that park be full of young kids through that Convention with no policemen, with no one watching them? What about the rape and the bad trips and worse that public authority would be responsible for if it had?
They tried to give us this bunk that they wanted to talk about racism and the war and they wanted a counter-convention. They didn't do anything but look for a confrontation with the police. What they looked for was a fight, and all that permits had to do with it was where was the fight going to be, and that's all.
And they are sophisticated and they are smart and they are well-educated. And they are as evil as they can be. . . .
Riots are an intolerable threat to every American and those who lead others to defy the law must feel the full force of the law." You know who said that? Senator Bob Kennedy said that, who they tried to adopt.
"In a government of law and not of men, no man, no mob, however unruly or boisterous, is entitled to defy the law."
Do you know who said that? John Kennedy.
The lights in that Camelot kids believe in needn't go out. The banners can snap in the spring breeze. The parade will never be over if people will remember, and I go back to this quote, what Thomas Jefferson said, "Obedience to the law is the major part of patriotism." These seven men have been proven guilty beyond any doubt. They didn't attack the planning they were charged with. They did not say it didn't happen. The are guilty beyond any doubt at all of the charges contained in the indictments against them.
You people are obligated by your oath to fulfill your obligation without fear, favor, or sympathy. Do your duty.
CHICAGO 7 TRIAL HOMEPAGE What are Master-pieces and why are there so few of them?
by Gertrude Stein (1874-1946)
I WAS almost going to talk this lecture and not write and read it because all the lectures that I have written and read in America have been printed and although possibly for you they might even being read be as if they had not been printed still there is something about what has been written having been printed which makes it no longer the property of the one who wrote it and therefore there is no more reason why the writer should say it out loud than anybody else and therefore one does not. Therefore I was going to talk to you but actually it is impossible to talk about master-pieces and what they are because talking essentially has nothing to do with creation. I talk a lot I like to talk and I talk even more than that I may say I talk most of the time and I listen a fair amount too and as I have said the essence of being a genius is to be able to talk and listen to listen while talking and talk while listening but and this is very important very important indeed talking has nothing to do with creation. What are master-pieces and why after all are there so few of them. You may say after all there are a good many of them but in any kind of proportion with everything that anybody who does anything is doing there are really very few of them. All this summer I meditated and wrote about this subject and it finally came to be a discussion of the relation of human nature and the human mind and identity. The thing one gradually comes to find out is that one has no identity that is when one is in the act of doing anything. Identity is recognition, you know who you are because you and others remember anything about yourself but essentially you are not that when you are doing anything. I am I because my little dog knows me but, creatively speaking the little dog knowing that you are you and your recognising that he knows, that is what destroys creation. That is what makes school. Picasso once remarked I do not care who it is that has or does influence me as long as it is not myself. It is very difficult so difficult that it always has been difficult but even more difficult now to know what is the relation of human nature to the human mind because one has to know what is the relation of the act of creation to the subject the creator uses to create that thing. There is a great deal of nonsense talked about the subject of anything. After all there is always the same subject there are the things you see and there are human beings and animal beings and everybody you might say since the beginning of time knows practically commencing at the beginning and going to the end everything about these things. After all any woman in any village or men either if you like or even children know as much of human psychology as any writer that ever lived. After all there are things you do know each one in his or her way knows all of them and it is not this knowledge that makes master-pieces. Not at all not at all at all. Those who recognise master-pieces say that is the reason but it is not. It is not the way Hamlet reacts to his father's ghost that makes the master-piece, he might have reacted according to Shakespeare in a dozen other ways and everybody would have been as much impressed by the psychology of it. But there is no psychology in it, that is not probably the way any young man would react to the ghost of his father and there is no particular reason why they should. If it were the way a young man could react to the ghost of his father then that would be something anybody in any village would know they could talk about it talk about it endlessly but that would not make a master-piece and that brings us once more back to the subject of identity. At any moment when you are you you are you without the memory of yourself because if you remember yourself while you are you you are not for purposes of creating you. This is so important because it has so much to do with the question of a writer to his audience. One of the things that I discovered in lecturing was that gradually one ceased to hear what one said one heard what the audience hears one say, that is the reason that oratory is practically never a master-piece very rarely and very rarely history, because history deals with people who are orators who hear not what they are not what they say but what their audience hears them say. It is very interesting that letter writing has the same difficulty, the letter writes what the other person is to hear and so entity does not exist there are two present instead of one and so once again creation breaks down. I once wrote in writing I write for myself and strangers but that was merely a literary formalism for if I did write for myself and strangers if I did I would not really be writing because already then identity would take the place of entity. It is awfully difficult, action is direct and effective but after all action is necessary and anything that is necessary has to do with human nature and not with the human mind. Therefore a master-piece has essentially not to be necessary, it has to be that is it has to exist but it does not have to be necessary it is not in response to necessity as action is because the minute it is necessary it has in it no possibility of going on.
To come back to what a master-piece has as its subject. In writing about painting I said that a picture exists for and in itself and the painter has to use objects landscapes and people as a way the only way that he is able to get the picture to exist. That is every one's trouble and particularly the trouble just now when every one who writes or paints has gotten to be abnormally conscious of the things he uses that is the events the people the objects and the landscapes and fundamentally the minute one is conscious deeply conscious of these things as a subject the interest in them does not exist.
You can tell that so well in the difficulty of writing novels or poetry these days. The tradition has always been that you may more or less describe the things that happen you imagine them of course but you more or less describe the things that happen but nowadays everybody all day long knows what is happening and so what is happening is not really interesting, one knows it by radios cinemas newspapers biographies autobiographies until what is happening does not really thrill any one, it excites them a little but it does not really thrill them. The painter can no longer say that what he does is as the world looks to him because he cannot look at the world any more, it has been photographed too much and he has to say that he does something else. In former times a painter said he painted what he saw of course he didn't but anyway he could say it, now he does not want to say it because seeing it is not interesting. This has something to do with masterpieces and why there are so few of them but not everything.
So you see why talking has nothing to do with creation, talking is really human nature as it is and human nature has nothing to do with master-pieces. It is very curious but the detective story which is you might say the only really modern novel form that has come into existence gets rid of human nature by having the man dead to begin with the hero is dead to begin with and so you have so to speak got rid of the event before the book begins. There is another very curious thing about detective stories. In real life people are interested in the crime more than they are in detection, it is the crime that is the thing the shock the thrill the horror but in the story it is the detection that holds the interest and that is natural enough because the necessity as far as action is concerned is the dead man, it is another function that has very little to do with human nature that makes the detection interesting. And so always it is true that the master-piece has nothing to do with human nature or with identity, it has to do with the human mind and the entity that is with a thing in itself and not in relation. The moment it is in relation it is common knowledge and anybody can feel and know it and it is not a master-piece. At the same time every one in a curious way sooner or later does feel the reality of a master-piece. The thing in itself of which the human nature is only its clothing does hold the attention. I have meditated a great deal about that. Another curious thing about master-pieces is, nobody when it is created there is in the thing that we call the human mind something that makes it hold itself just the same. The manner and habits of Bible times or Greek or Chinese have nothing to do with ours today but the masterpieces exist just the same and they do not exist because of their identity, that is what any one remembering then remembered then, they do not exist by human nature because everybody always knows everything there is to know about human nature, they exist because they came to be as something that is an end in itself and in that respect it is opposed to the business of living which is relation and necessity. That is what a master-piece is not although it may easily be what a master-piece talks about. It is another one of the curious difficulties a master-piece has that is to begin and end, because actually a master-piece does not do that it does not begin and end if it did it would be of necessity and in relation and that is just what a master-piece is not. Everybody worries about that just now everybody that is what makes them talk about abstract and worry about punctuation and capitals and small letters and what a history is. Everybody worries about that not because everybody knows what a master-piece is but because a certain number have found out what a master-piece is not. Even the very master-pieces have always been very bothered about beginning and ending because essentially that is what a master-piece is not. And yet after all like the subject of human nature master-pieces have to use beginning and ending to become existing. Well anyway anybody who is trying to do anything today is desperately not having a beginning and an ending but nevertheless in some way one does have to stop. I stop.
I do not know whether I have made any of this very clear, it is clear, but unfortunately I have written it all down all summer and in spite of everything I am now remembering and when you remember it is never clear. This is what makes secondary writing, it is remembering, it is very curious you begin to write something and suddenly you remember something and if you continue to remember your writing gets very confused. If you do not remember while you are writing, it may seem confused to others but actually it is clear and eventually that clarity will be clear, that is what a master-piece is, but if you remember while you are writing it will seem clear at the time to any one but the clarity will go out of it that is what a master-piece is not.
All this sounds awfully complicated but it is not complicated at all, it is just what happens. Any of you when you write you try to remember what you are about to write and you will see immediately how lifeless the writing becomes that is why expository writing is so dull because it is all remembered, that is why illustration is so dull because you remember what somebody looked like and you make your illustration look like it. The minute your memory functions while you are doing anything it may be very popular but actually it is dull. And that is what a master-piece is not, it may be unwelcome but it is never dull.
And so then why are there so few of them. There are so few of them because mostly people live in identity and memory that is when they think. They know they are they because their little dog knows them, and so they are not an entity but an identity. And being so memory is necessary to make them exist and so they cannot create master-pieces. It has been said of geniuses that they are eternally young. I once said what is the use of being a boy if you are going to grow up to be a man, the boy and the man have nothing to do with each other, except in respect to memory and identity, and if they have anything to do with each other in respect to memory and identity then they will never produce a master-piece. Do you do you understand well it really does not make much difference because after all master-pieces are what they are and the reason why is that there are very few of them. The reason why is any of you try it just not to be you are you because your little dog knows you. The second you are you because your little dog knows you you cannot make a masterpiece and that is all of that.
It is not extremely difficult not to have identity but it is extremely difficult the knowing not having identity. One might say it is impossible but that it is not impossible is proved by the existence of master-pieces which are just that. They are knowing that there is no identity and producing while identity is not.
That is what a master-piece is.
And so we do know what a master-piece is and we also know why there are so few of them. Everything is against them. Everything that makes life go on makes identity and everything that makes identity is of necessity a necessity. And the pleasures of life as well as the necessities help the necessity of identity. The pleasures that are soothing all have to do with identity and the pleasures that are exciting all have to do with identity and moreover there is all the pride and vanity which play about master-pieces as well as about every one and these too all have to do with identity, and so naturally it is natural that there is more identity that one knows about than anything else one knows about and the worst of all is that the only thing that any one thinks about is identity and thinking is something that does so nearly need to be memory and if it is then of course it has nothing to do with a master-piece.
But what can a master-piece be about mostly it is about identity and all it does and in being so it must not have any. I was just thinking about anything and in thinking about anything I saw something. In seeing that thing shall we see it without it turning into identity, the moment is not a moment and the sight is not the thing seen and yet it is. Moments are not important because of course master-pieces have no more time than they have identity although time like identity is what they concern themselves about of course that is what they do concern themselves about.
Once when one has said what one says it is not true or too true. That is what is the trouble with time. That is what makes what women say truer than what men say. That is undoubtedly what is the trouble with time and always in its relation to master-pieces. I once said that nothing could bother me more than the way a thing goes dead once it has been said. And if it does it it is because of there being this trouble about time.
Time is very important in connection with master-pieces, of course it makes identity time does make identity and identity does stop the creation of master-pieces. But time does something by itself to interfere with the creation of masterpieces as well as being part of what makes identity. If you do not keep remembering yourself you have no identity and if you have no time you do not keep remembering yourself and as you remember yourself you do not create anybody can and does know that.
Think about how you create if you do create you do not remember yourself as you do create. And yet time and identity is what you tell about as you create only while you create they do not exist. That is really what it is.
And do you create yes if you exist but time and identity do not exist. We live in time and identity but as we are we do not know time and identity everybody knows that quite simply. It is so simple that anybody does know that. But to know what one knows is frightening to live what one lives is soothing and though everybody likes to be frightened what they really have to have is soothing and so the master-pieces are so few not that the master-pieces themselves are frightening no of course not because if the creator of the master-piece is frightened then he does not exist without the memory of time and identity, and insofar as he is that then he is frightened and insofar as he is frightened the master-piece does not exist, it looks like it and it feels like it, but the memory of the fright destroys it as a master-piece. Robinson Crusoe and the footstep of the man Friday is one of the most perfect examples of the non-existence of time and identity which makes a master-piece. I hope you do see what I mean but any way everybody who knows about Robinson Crusoe and the footstep of Friday knows that that is true. There is no time and identity in the way it happened and that is why there is no fright.
And so there are very few master-pieces of course there are very few master-pieces because to be able to know that is not to have identity and time but not to mind talking as if there was because it does not interfere with anything and to go on being not as if there were no time and identity but as if there were and at the same time existing without time and identity is so very simple that it is difficult to have many who are that. And of course that is what a master-piece is and that is why there are so few of them and anybody really anybody can know that.
What is the use of being a boy if you are going to grow up to be a man. And what is the use there is no use from the standpoint of master-pieces there is no use. Anybody can really know that.
There is really no use in being a boy if you are going to grow up to be a man because then man and boy you can be certain that that is continuing and a master-piece does not continue it is as it is but it does not continue. It is very interesting that no one is content with being a man and boy but he must also be a son and a father and the fact that they all die has something to do with time but it has nothing to do with a master-piece. The word timely as used in our speech is very interesting but you can any one can see that it has nothing to do with master-pieces we all readily know that. The word timely tells that master-pieces have nothing to do with time.
It is very interesting to have it be inside one that never as you know yourself you know yourself without looking and feeling and looking and feeling make it be that you are some one you have seen. If you have seen any one you know them as you see them whether it is yourself or any other one and so the identity consists in recognition and in recognising you lose identity because after all nobody looks as they look like, they do not look like that we all know that of ourselves and of any one. And therefore in every way it is a trouble and so you write anybody does write to confirm what any one is and the more one does the more one looks like what one was and in being so identity is made more so and that identity is not what any one can have as a thing to be but as a thing to see. And it being a thing to see no master-piece can see what it can see if it does then it is timely and as it is timely it is not a master-piece.
There are so many things to say. If there was no identity no one could be governed, but everybody is governed by everybody and that is why they make no master-pieces, and also why governing has nothing to do with master-pieces it has completely to do with identity but it has nothing to do with master-pieces. And that is why governing is occupying but not interesting, governments are occupying but not interesting because master-pieces are exactly what they are not.
There is another thing to say. When you are writing before there is an audience anything written is as important as any other thing and you cherish anything and everything that you have written. After the audience begins, naturally they create something that is they create you, and so not everything is so important, something is more important than another thing, which was not true when you were you that is when you were not you as your little dog knows you.
And so there we are and there is so much to say but anyway I do not say that there is no doubt that master-pieces are master-pieces in that way and there are very few of them.
