Creativity

Photo montage includes a photo by Cliff Johnson on Unsplash

Here's the thing disco kids, you aren't what you think you are and, more importantly, you may be what you think you aren't. I was convinced for a good three weeks once that I was a cicada but turned out I was a philosopher having a dream I was a cricket, so not even delusional in the correct frickin' language.

In other, more relevant news, I've written novels, although I'm not actually a novelist and blogged although I am not a blogger. I am, however, a "creative", and because I spend a lot of time in front of the keyboard I got the impression I was some kind of writer.

I did go to acting college and I learned to act but realised that I liked the idea of regular Monday to Friday 9 to 5 work, so I didn't pursue it further. I still hear interviews with actors talking about the jewellery they keep close to remind them of the family that their career is deemed more important than and don't regret the call I made.

Then, for a while, I hit my stride with a podcast I put together with some long-time co-conspirators. Check it out, although I can't tell you where in our archive to begin because I haven't yet put my finger on where the quality bar hit "peak" so you'll just have to peruse for yourselves.

The really important thing is that nowhere, in any of this, did I particularly consider myself a Discordian. If you're creative then unacknowledged Discordianism is only holding you back. As recorded elsewhere I had cause to reconsider my relationship with all things Erisian round about the end of summer.

Once you start to engage with your own spiritual engine things go a bit nutty. Since September I have published an epic tome about alchemy, Vodun and Celtic bugaboos, and re-invigorated my love of audio recording projects. This ongoing process has generally instigated a new lease of creative life.

Of course, that could have happened without a newfound respect for ultimate chaos, but... you know... that's kind of the point of ultimate chaos. I could bore you with a rundown of weird little quirks of coinkydink that prompted this repointing and repurposing but these are my omens, not yours, all can be rationally explained away easily enough. They have meaning because they meant something to me. So they aren't really for sharing.

If you are creative and think you are not Discordian I would submit that you are probably wrong about that. Ultimate chaos is the wellspring of magical creativity. It's probably the wellspring of a lot else, but I am creative so that is how it works for me.

Don't fall into the trap of thinking that chaos gives a gift intended to make you wealthy. Chaos understands that wealth is a system that is anti-chaos and will only be issued to those who will burn it on a remote Scottish island in tribute to chaos itself. The gift is the gift and I would far rather be fecund than loaded, loaded would be nice but to be barren of fresh ideas is beneath dead to me.

Chaos does for me. It did for me when I didn't embrace it consciously but it performs better, in my opinion, now that I do. I don't know what will happen next with any great certainty but I do know that I have read the stars in the sky from the deck of my sloop and set a heading for peculiar waters. Whatever happens amongst those isles unseen may throw up a lot of experiences, but the experience of being bored won't be one of them.

Sri Syadasti,

The Monkey

I'm Not A Blogger

Photo montage includes a photo by Glen Noble from Unsplash

No, seriously, I'm not, however much this particular internet artefact may attempt to convince you otherwise. I have a blog, sure, conceded and admitted. But I am not a blogger. Bloggers, to my mind, are people who devote their time and attention to producing blog content of a quality where that content stands alone. The blog, as Hamlet would probably say if he knew about blogs, is the thing*.

My blog is not the thing. If I'm honest I don't think novels are the thing either. I love writing novels but, of late, I like writing them in order to have material to turn into audio books. Audio content, ah, well, that might very well be the thing... more on that to follow.

All of this is a roundabout way to lead up to me saying that the days of "three massive content pieces every week" are going on hold now. However, dear reader, you should not presume a return to the days of "one post a year" because that's no good either.

I think where we want to be is regular check-ins and progress updates and maybe two serious content pieces every month, tangentially riffing off the content I have going on at the time.

So, I hear nobody clamouring to know, whither Discordianism? Is that last year's news. No, not at all. I credit my recent good fortunes in the well-spring of chaotic creativity entirely to my renewed interest in the Erisian principle and the Holy Chao. Since re-discovering Discordianism I have got Starfall done and published, pulled some eyeballs into this blog, which, at the end of the day is a blog, in the original sense of the word.

For those now puzzled, what I mean to say is, the early days of blogging allowed the blog producer the liberty to be as random as they wished to be in the content. It's only in later times that you have "food bloggers" or "tech bloggers" or "society bloggers". The idea in the early days was that a blog was an ongoing public journal that would go from cabbages to kings.

I am still running this joint on that basis, people are queuing up to tell me I'm doing my marketing wrong, but I've come to realise this misses the point. If I wanted to "market" with the objective of selling as much as possible indiscriminately then I guess I could. But that's not the kind of doodad I make.

I have never made a secret that the things I cherish most are things like my copy of Over The Edge which I bought after the system had lived it's short beautiful life and passed, long since, out of print. I love it because it speaks right to the core of me. So it took me 15 years from first publication to find it and embrace it, so what. I am the message in a bottle guy. I don't want a thousand bottles to reach a bunch of randoms, I want one bottle to reach the right person.

That's not a way to get rich but it's the way to connect nodes in the great global chaosphere. And that's what I am looking to do. I am a mystic, not a magician. It's all about understanding, it's not at all about power. For which reason, I realise I need to devote the little power I have carefully and, currently, the blog is sucking up too much resource. So, expect less carefully crafted content bombs but I am here, and I do check this and you can reach me, not that anyone has.

Now I'm off to start cooking some audio, it'll be ready in 2018 so you have plenty of time to clear your ears.

Sri Syadasti,

The Monkey

*Which has sent my mind off onto a tangent where I imagine proto-emo grandaddy of all emo kids Hamlet writing long screeds into his LiveJournal about how Claudius is a bastard and Gertrude just doesn't get him. "Oh, God," he would write, "my soul is a cavern of inky despair. Ophelia caught my eye in the courtyard earlier. Doesn't she know she's a popular girl? She and I could never have a meaningful relationship because all she cares about is lipstick and flowers. Going to hang out with Laertes later and listen to some My Chemical Romance. Mood: Contemplating The Void."

Discordian Vodun Online

Excuse my concerns all leaking together, but my post about the difficulty of making a connection to vodun for someone born and raised in the UK took a little more time than I had anticipated. Even so, this would seem like as fine a time as any to mention that I am writing a good deal about vodun at present as it forms the centre of my upcoming novel.

As it happens putting the book out there now, instead of racing to get it published when it was mostly done a few years ago seems to have been a wise choice. The experience is opening up my experience in ways both Discordian and in a broader spirituality.

If anyone was in doubt that Eris created the internet then the concept that it is a technology that it puts a white mostly-Welsh guy who rarely leaves the UK in direct contact with an authentic Louisiana houngan and you have to admit that the chaos is strong with this tech.

Okay, but as we have to disbelieve everything we read how do I KNOW he's an authentic houngan? Well, how does he know I'm an authentic pope? Here's the thing, I know that vodun is deep and serious because it is dangerous. Not just dangerous in an Angel Heart, bite off a chicken head way but in a sanity bending, perception altering way.

This is the problem the multiple-Pope doctrine of Discordianism is all about. Spirituality should be like knife-juggling or sword swallowing. Before you go to a party and offer to share with everyone your really sweet party trick where you escape from an airtight safe in under two minutes with your hands cuffed you better be pretty sure you're an escapologist. It is evident Houdini was taking more risks than any given vicar.

In Discordianism the whole Pope thing is an illustration that many religions attach very little weight to the assumption of a place high on the spiritual food chain. This is probably an extended hangover from the times when church and state ran in parallel power structures and any corrupt rich asshole could be a power player in the church wielding dogma as a blunt instrument.

In reality you don't want to represent as something you aren't when it comes to spiritual matters. As vodun represents an apparent spiritual tradition that treats the world of spirit with the respect it deserves. From what I know you wouldn't want to represent as a houngan if you actually weren't.

Hell, I don't go to dinner parties and shoot my mouth off about being a pope, for a start everyone is. Deeper, though, my serious consideration of all things Discordian has only begun very recently. I'm not ready to wear the hot dog belt bucket and golden apple lapel badge just yet*.

There are too many people claiming to be the spiritual hotline at the present time. I do think that the original wave of Discordianism fell at the start of this wave. Marshall McLuhan identified the potential in the mass-media and electronic expansion of communications. But any time before about 1998 was too soon to call the potential power of the internet, which is like the power of the mass media on steroids.

I think that poets and artists have taken a massive beating in terms of their relevance and purpose these days, a time when people can attain some sort of notoriety by doing something vaguely interesting on YouTube. When you consider that Andy Warhol couldn't possibly have known the scope of his assertion about everyone being famous for 15 minutes you begin to appreciate what that purpose is.

Warhol's art attracted attention, that attention gave him a platform. If he'd been doing what he was doing now his soup cans would have been on DeviantArt and his aphorisms would have been mashed up with satirical photo juxtapositions and shared on instagram. The tools to be a prophet have been democratised to the point that they have experienced a severe devaluation.

As anyone can claim to be anything they want when you can only talk to them on social media so the currency of making those claims has taken a hit given all the counterfeit claims. All that's really happened though is a raising of the bar. If you want a platform now building it isn't the problem, the problem is using it amongst the forest of competing platforms that exist.

The current environment of people screaming in echo chambers doesn't nullify the one whispered thread of actual wisdom. A mass of people listening to white noise does not mean that the message has been compromised. All that's happened is that the terrain has changed. Now the whispered message can be delivered to active recipients, listening itself was passive when the availability of platforms was scarce. Rapidly the business of listening has become active and personal, Discordianism has been right there waiting because Discordianism admits we're all popes and that you have to disbelieve everything you read. These are not just idle statements, they are the pronouncements of a prophet who didn't even know what he was seeing and attained his insight through his own spiritual process of chewing on paradoxes and shifting his own perspective.

If we are all popes we all have to do that. Active listening is contemplation of the bigger picture. Learning to separate out the wisdom from the white noise is everybody's job. And then Discordianism reminds us "The white noise is wisdom, and the wisdom is white noise, now what you gonna do?"

From this perspective vodun is another way to approach perception, and as it's pretty unique it's a valuable one at that. I have found my own vodun experiences so far to remind me how little I know and how daunting the change in thought can prove to be. I am grateful. For these are things we should never forget.

* There is no official formal attire that marks one out as a Discordian**, but if I were to set a precedent it would definitely be the belt buckle and lapel badge.
** And if anyone claimed there was it would be the job of all Discordians to refute it.

The Discordian Problem

The Discordian in the room is not hard to spot. They're the one sitting in the corner by themselves laughing at everyone else.

I think that's the core of the Discordian problem. In my every day life I am about to start work on a "very important project" this is a project that could have a big impact on people's every day lives and improve the quality of life for many. When you're a member of the big bearded sky daddy club doing something of merit is consolidated by your laminated pass to the holy of holies. You integrate the spiritual with the mundane via the instrument of religion.

So when you have a joke religion that's not a joke, or is it? No. Only joking it's serious. Seriously joking.

Is it a joke or is it serious?

Yes.

It becomes enough of a problem working out how you feel about your ambivalent membership of this church in the first place. I mean, you're the frickin' pope of this so-called (no, definitely is) religion and you don't even know whether it's real. Also, you're probably not a joiner. You know that the guy saying "Hey, follow me!" is probably leading you off a cliff. The guy that says "You can trust me" just wants to clear out your bank account. People who make promises are the kind of people who fail and break promises.

Basically, you're a pope alone, you're not going to encourage anyone else to sign up.

The wisdom of this is that most religions don't help you to keep perspective, or, at least, they should but they are very, very bad at it. Most religions have a propensity to bypass their safe guards and fuel dangerous amounts of self-serious egotism and destruction.

Actually Discordianism is not exempt from this, a lot of Discordians are insecure, cynical trolls who exist to gross you out, point and laugh, not necessarily in that order. What Discordianism does right is that it points you towards the more rewarding parts of its own practice equally badly.

Don't get me wrong Discordianism is really hard. Other religions are built to be user-friendly by asking you to surrender, Discordianism is not user-friendly and reminds you to never surrender.

All of which leads to the biggest problem of all. How does Discordianism come into practice? Posting cool memes and laughing at stuff is fine, but how do you actively do things in a Discordian manner?

Sacredness is essential to faith practice, but in Discordianism sacredness is pretty stupid. The best way to worship Eris is to be deeply suspicious of worshipping anyone, especially that crafty looking goddess juggling apples in the corner and laughing at everybody.

The first practice of Discordianism is confusion. So if you're confused right now, feeling I've left a bunch of questions and no real answers, you are doing it right.

Which is just as well, because never forget, you're the pope.

Don't Believe Everything You Read

"So, what, this is a Discordianism blog now?" the voice asked.

My response is thus:

Two sequential posts on a topic do not a theme make. However, I think that what's surfacing in my consciousness is a recognition and appreciation of what Discordianism has done for me, what it could do for others, why it's so relevant in 2017 and why it would seem someone needs to attempt to make sense out of the whole thing.

The hilarious thing is that Discordianism exists in a soup of zen paradoxes. Discordianist dogma teaches that seeking to increase order merely increases chaos and that the good Discordian does not believe anything they read.

I can't disagree with any of that. So I provide, for your reading pleasure, a short piece that attempts to make sense of this paradox problem that appears to defeat Discordianism even as it begins.

Let's begin with the problem that, if you consider yourself Discordian, or "possibly" Discordian then, by default, you shouldn't believe this post, because you are reading it. That's actually pretty sound advice. If you believe something because you have read it you need some kind of psychological intervention, or to read the next sentence. You really should send me a couple of hundred quid, it's the right thing to do.

The point is that it is essential not to read something and incorporate it automatically into the body of your world view as if it automatically has a right to be there. If the thing you have read makes you angry, it is because you believe it. If the thing you have read makes you scared, it is because you believe it. If the thing you have read makes you happy, it is because you believe it.

It is outside of your immediate emotional response that you will find the worth of the written word. If you have that emotional response it means that there is a part of you that believes it, but it also means that there is a part of you that thinks it has understood what it has read.

Discordians know two things here. One, is that understanding does not equal belief. The other is that one pretty good indicator that you haven't understood the message put out by another is that you believe you have understood it.

Once you have run the material you have read through the process of:

a) understanding that you don't understand it and that therefore
b) you cannot possibly believe it

you have left only one thing. That thing is the degree to which the thing which is written is harmonic with your own set of beliefs. The safer a written thing makes you feel the more sympathetic you are to it. All this means is that you should attempt to disbelieve it even harder than the things that you find easy to be disbelieved.

Whatever you actually cannot get rid of, no matter how hard you try, is part of your personal truth. If you feel that this discovery is worth sharing go ahead and write it down safe in the knowledge that no one will really understand it.

Note that after reading my thorough decomposition of the notion of not believing everything you read you may feel too confused to now read anything at all. This is the second paradox at work. My article seeks to increase order, but in doing so it has just deepened your own inner chaos. This is to be expected.

If one can call to mind that chaos and order are both illusory perceptions of a single continuum you will understand that the more confused you feel the less confused you actually are. The fear you feel is exactly identical to the momentary sinking sensation you get when you wake up in the morning and remember who you are.

If time mattered then in the next article I will take a look at why time doesn't matter. I hope you enjoyed it and will enjoy the upcoming article about disbelieving everything you read, which you just read.