Comments on: Becoming-comet /2008/03/becoming-comet/ THE FREE ASSOCIATION Fri, 13 Nov 2015 11:17:04 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.7.3 By: keir /2008/03/becoming-comet/#comment-110 Sat, 08 Mar 2008 23:21:50 +0000 http://freelyassociating.org/2008/03/becoming-comet/#comment-110 In some ways I think that everyday is what’s really injurious, in which case the problem might be one of re-entry. The need for depressurisation chambers. But this quote from Brian Massumi is really helpful for thinking this through:

“”Well I think that joy is not the same thing as happiness. Just like good for Nietzsche is not the opposite of evil, joy for Spinoza (or ‘gaiety’ in Nietzche’s vocabulary) is not the opposite of unhappy. It’s on a different axis. Joy can be very disruptive, it can even be very painful. What I think Spinoza and Nietzsche are getting at is joy as affirmation, an assuming by the body of its potentials, its assuming of a posture that intensifies its powers of existence. The moment of joy is the co-presence of those potentials, in the context of a bodily becoming. That can be an experience that overcomes you…

It’s liberating, but at the same time the charge of that potential
can become unbearable and can actually destroy. Artaud himself was destroyed by it, he ended up mad, and so did Nietzsche.”

]]> By: brian /2008/03/becoming-comet/#comment-109 Wed, 05 Mar 2008 22:52:36 +0000 http://freelyassociating.org/2008/03/becoming-comet/#comment-109 That’s a blinding quote. I think we need to work out how it relates to the theme of durability that’s been kicking around this blog for a few months. There’s something enormously destructive (in individual terms) about opening our bodies up to those forces. John Lydon’s a great example, although you could just as well point to John of Leyden. Becoming supernova means letting rip. But isn’t there a tension here? I’m getting old, my bones are creaking, I have kids… it’s no wonder I’m also drawn to the notion of “sticking around”. Sometimes that means keeping my feet on the ground or (mixing metaphors) keeping one foot in, one foot out.

But if I think about the way we Free Associators have kept at it, it’s not just been a question of pig-headedness (although that has helped). It’s also about keeping ourselves open. We live through events that scar us. Maybe that scar tissue can re-connect us, in a different time and place, to new forces similar to those that ripped us before. The secret of a long life is offering those wounds up, to be re-opened again and again and again…

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