The pit.

[Corpsey]

Maybe it isn't offtopic, insofar as these moments of lucidity are the polar opposite of the pit.

 

[luka]

Right, so it's then a process of trying to work out why, what does it require from me? What does it want?

 

[luka]

How can I cultivate that mode of consciousness, how can I feed that embryonic self, strengthen it, make it more real than just a fleeting presence

 

[luka]

It's not an intellectual process. It's full body awareness and involvement. It requires the entirety of your being. You have to place yourself inside the poem. You can't use your brain to gain entry.

 

[luka]

But ultimately you took the path of wealth and worldly success so this road is now closed to you. You have fine silks and linens, delicacies delectable and exotic.

 

[luka]

A flat screen tv the size of a hockey pitch

 

[luka]

Just Eat on speed dial.

 

[Corpsey]

Yes I do love material things.

And a big flat screen TV blunts your sensibilities to less obviously instantly stimulating things like poems. A poem isn't going to hit my g spot in seconds like Skyrim.

 

[luka]

Life is a Game of Choice and Consequence. You chose wealth and worldly success and now you are locked in your gilded cage so don't moan about it to us lot. Just get on with it. The Lads are going up river, into the heart of the jungle. You won't be hearing from us any more.

 

[Corpsey]

Hanging out at the edge of the jungle it's hard to tell is that jungle actually good, is it really fecund in there or is it shit and the people in it are deluded? Certainly life outside the jungle lacks a certain something.

 

[luka]

God has no time for ummers and ahers. You have to choose. Or you will will die still sitting on the fence, neither one thing or the other, then you will go to hell.

 

[luka]

Screaming and writhing in hellfire for eternity. That's almost certainly what will happen to you I'd wager.

 

[Corpsey]

There's a circle in Dante's inferno of uhmmers and ahhers. It's quite near the top, near purgatory, so it isn't so bad as the others, but it's still hell.

 

[Corpsey]

Shit or get off the pit.

 

[Corpsey]

This image I was looking at in a book just now and I don't need weed to feel disturbed and energised by it. But you see how extreme it is. How extreme images needed to become in the mid 20th century to cut through, and even more so now.

 

[luka]

Quite easy to see that image is merely comical. Quite easy to see it as a Simpsons image or something.

 

[Leo]

Quite easy to see that image is merely comical. Quite easy to see it as a Simpsons image or something.

most of that series is pretty impactful in real life.

perhaps the better depiction of the pit is his studio.

 

[luka]

Depends what mood your in. All the bacon stuff has a cartoonish aspect.

 

[IdleRich]

It's a typical trope in children's literature/fantasy that the hero is reluctantly dragged out of their pit by Gandalf or whoever and compelled to have an exciting colourful life. Maybe in all literature. Would be interesting to compare how often you get a protagonist who drags themselves out of bed and has an adventure of their own volition.

Yeah... Milo in the Phantom Tollbooth receives it purely to drag him out of his boredom. In The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen they find Alan Quatermain in an opium den and drag him out and clean him up. Good point, it happens a lot but it's not that often remarked on as a trope (that I've seen anyway).

 

[mvuent]

it's my default state. i agree with corpsey in that i also tend to look for an emotional spark--a wakeup call to return to the world of agency and finite time. (agency bc you don't really do anything noticeable while you're in the pit, and finite time bc you become sort of oblivious to its passage in this state.)

personally, i've found that the spark isn't always something positive. sometimes what should be heartening can cause you to sink deeper, and what should be disheartening can jolt you out. seeing people you like flourishing can inspire you, but if you're really stuck it can make things worse because you feel like you're falling out of their orbit, or, more depressingly, were never really in it to begin with. by contrast, seeing someone really fuck up, or seeing people you don't like doing the things that you should be doing, sometimes can actually be what you need to get in motion.

tbh that last point is the main appeal of Resident Advisor Brooklyn & Berlin, NTS London, etc. for me. i'll see some rich kids getting interviewed about their latest music and think "if even they put in the work to make something, surely i can, too?" it's an embarrassingly petty spark generation method but it works pretty consistently when i remember it, lol.