"We poked along the high trails, wandered through the grasslands, let the mountain wind blow away flat-land cares."

~ Theodore Roethke, excerpted from The Wild Cascades Forgotten Parkland

lights.

Totally random. The other night just wondering whatever happened to Interpol. Turns out they've been putting together a self-titled fourth release due out next month. And have the song above out for free download and distribution (smart). Joy Division-ish and dark as hell Paul Banks' pleading baritone just like the Interpol we have come to know. It took a few listens but is now on repeat.




Is now on repeat.







Is now on repeat.

and a final reprieve.

"Everything is impermanent: thoughts, lives, mountains, stars."

~ Gary Snyder, pulled from North Cascades Crest by James Martin

an infinite regress.

Aristotle argued that knowing does not necessitate a paradox because some knowledge does not depend on demonstration.

To explain he writes ~

“Some hold that, owing to the necessity of knowing the primary premises, there is no scientific knowledge. Others think there is, but that all truths are demonstrable. Neither doctrine is either true or a necessary deduction from the premises. The first school, assuming that there is no way of knowing other than by demonstration, maintain that an infinite regress is involved, on the ground that if behind the prior stands no primary, we could not know the posterior through the prior (wherein they are right, for one cannot traverse an infinite series): if on the other hand – they say – the series terminates and there are primary premises, yet these are unknowable because incapable of demonstration, which according to them is the only form of knowledge. And since thus one cannot know the primary premises, knowledge of the conclusions which follow from them is not pure scientific knowledge nor properly knowing at all, but rests on the mere supposition that the premises are true. The other party agree with them as regards knowing, holding that it is only possible by demonstration, but they see no difficulty in holding that all truths are demonstrated, on the ground that demonstration may be circular and reciprocal.

Our own doctrine is that not all knowledge is demonstrative: on the contrary, knowledge of the immediate premises is independent of demonstration. (The necessity of this is obvious; for since we must know the prior premises from which the demonstration is drawn, and since the regress must end in immediate truths, those truths must be indemonstrable.) Such, then, is our doctrine, and in addition we maintain that besides scientific knowledge there is its originative source which enables us to recognize the definitions.”

~ Aristotle, Posterior Analytics (Book 1, Part 3)

And of course with all of this in part comes a theme. It seems I cannot help it. Two themes actually. Both enormous. Both exploding. Raging. F-sharp minor. Progressions. Over and over. A Bechstein enormous sound here in my living room windows open eyes no doubt blocks away rolling what the F is all that racket!? An enormous orchestration. An enormous symphonic choir. All going on this in my head tonight must quiet but cannot. Cannot. So I must apologize.

lying out underneath a blanket of stars.

On requisite walk tonight. The neighborhood quiets down. I see them. There they are. The Big Dipper. Polaris. Cassiopeia. Leo. I saw them last night too. Only last night there were more. Millions more. Those same constellations were there too of course but lost in the magnitude. Wrapped in down just a sleeping pad tossed on the rocks next to Upper Silent Lake buried high and deep in North Cascades National Park. The shadows of Fisher Peak and the immense north face of Black Peak hanging glaciers and all rising to the west. I just laid there staring. Counted twelve meteors leftovers from the Perseid a couple leaving trails behind them after they had disintegrated in atmospheres invisible. I could not help but to stare overwhelmed the Milky Way arcing overhead tracing its way across a pitch black night sky all of it there to remind me of how small I am. The vastness and immensity of it all. How many billions of light years had the light from that star traveled to reach me? Billions. Of how we are all spinning out of control but stabilized by the sight of the stars just covering me as if to say at least one of them out there I have traveled three-point-seven billion light years to reach you so do not forget that. Yes you are small. Yes you are weak. Yes you are frail. Sometimes you try. Sometimes you fail. But do not forget that.

Do not forget that.

ferocity.

This is part of the mess. This is just the introduction. This is nothing.

And there is an MP3 linked here in case the player does not work.

I must now finish the piano cacophony that comes in after this introduction. And then the rebuilding and utter crescendo of all the instruments this all just came to me by accident out of nowhere like everything else of course and at last then the ending symphonic and slow and beautiful and haunting and wonderful probably only to me but that is okay key signature and tempo changes and a Bechstein in a corner alone and an orchestra and all of this shit once in my head then in Logic now out there.

cheers

this mess i hear.

For whatever reason it just looks messy. It is messy. And I cannot seem to get the arpeggio or the huge massive minor theme or the quiet simplistic motif or the interlude or the cadenza or the looping synths or the strings or the strains of a Bechstein then huge triple forte chords or the samples or the ending out of my head.

... someday I will actually finish this mess.