http://www.wsu.edu/~dee/CHPHIL/LAOTZU.HTM

43

The softest thing in the world2 dashes against and overcomes the hardest; that which has no substantial existence3 enters where there is no crevice. I know hereby what advantage belongs to doing nothing.
There are few in the world who attain to the teaching without words, and the advantage arising from non-action.

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67

. . . I have three precious things which I prize and hold fast to. The first is gentleness; the second is economy; and the third is avoiding taking precedence over others. With that gentleness I can be bold; with that economy I can be liberal; avoiding taking precedence over others, I can become the vessel of the highest honor. These days men give up gentleness and are all for being bold; they give up economy, and are all for liberality; they are all in last place, and seek only to be in the first place. The end of all these things is death.
Gentleness is sure to be victorious even in battle, and maintain its ground firmly. Heaven will save its possessor: his very gentleness will save him.
---



non-action? its not good enough any more. foucault, saying truth is not the prize of spiritual enlightenment or whatever he said. i don't want to grow up, because i don't want to be hardened to things that sometimes people take for granted in order to work or be successful. but i don't want to be so pathetically childish that i can't do anything. i want to be practical, and in some ways unsentimental, so that it isn't just caring, but helping someone. some things are black and white, people being used as slaves... there must be something to do that helps an individual person, one at a time. if i'm so scared of being smug about it, or being wrong, all i have to do is somehow stop looking for other people to like me, or care about me having a story, and to do that somehow without becoming horrible and aggressively unfriendly about not talking about myself to them. because talking to people more is the only way to get less shit, and get more able to do the things that might be better than doing nothing. also i would have to stop thinking about 'saving the world'.
but i'm not practical and i am almost always wrong, and i am not capable of asking anybody to do something or listen to me. its selfish, but i certainly would be a lot less unhappy if i stopped hoping to get anything at all, even the chance to give something. but how can i carry on doing nothing, and stop other things altogether to try and have even less and less effect on anyone, without dying (which would be a bad idea now because it would be pointlessly hurtful to m+d, at least less than quietly getting on with something)? can i ever do something that isn't a mistake?
no.. but never mind.

sometimes i think my life might just be a list of things made up by paul morley.
http://www.rocklistmusic.co.uk/steveparker/paulmorley.htm

http://all-story.com/issues.cgi?action=show_story&story_id=292

"Are you angry? Punch a pillow. Was it satisfying? Not hardly. These days people are too angry for punching. What you might try is stabbing. Take an old pillow and lay it on the front lawn. Stab it with a big pointy knife. Again and again and again. Stab hard enough for the point of the knife to go into the ground. Stab until the pillow is gone and you are just stabbing the Earth, again and again, as if you want to kill it for continuing to spin, as if you are getting revenge for having to live on this planet, day after day, alone."

the bit in isobel after "a simple excuse" in the back aaaaoooooooh dropping down until about 4.27.
its like something less subtle from donnie darko too.
that's another sound like the part from love will tear us apart and captain beefheart and the other things. it has some meaning just because it shows up in a lot of places, what ever that drop is (in isobel), and sliding down to it.

what i want is when colin the zebra took me outside to show me the sound his shoes made on the hard ground. i want that to happen to me, and to do it to other people.

"The people that I'm with aren't just people that I thought it would be good to be in a band with because they look cute and we might sell a bunch of records," Malat (from Love Life) says. "They're people that I think are extremely talented, and being with them makes me four times stronger."

http://www.lcdf.org/indeterminacy/s.cgi
john cage indeterminacy .41

Artists talk a
lot about
freedom.

So,

recalling the expression
“free as a bird,”
Morton Feldman
went to a park one
day and spent
some time
watching our feathered friends.


When he
came back,
he said,
“You
know?
They’re not
free:
they’re fighting
over bits of food.”

i like how when you try writing music in a particular way it can seem too hard to do at the time but you keep trying and then give up or get it wrong, but then a while later when you are doing something else you notice you have done exaclty what you were trying to work out before but hadn't been able to. i don't think it is an accident, i think it is how some things become habit without you realising it.
or when you try to understand a piece of music and you can't work it out, then you listen to it later and realise you know how to make something like that.