This blog is three books in the process of being written, in the form of initial drafts of the sections, posted in the intended order, a project for which the overall name is Explorations. The three books are a continuation from Hidden Valleys: Haunted by the Future (Zero Books - 2015), and also from On Vanishing Land, an audio-essay made by myself and Mark Fisher (released by Hyperdub/Flatlines on 26th July, 2019 - https://hyperdub.net).
Explorations: Zone Horizon (1 - 18)
Explorations: The Second Sphere of Action (19 - 30)
Explorations: Through the Forest, the River (31 - 50)
One of Mark Fisher’s crucial statements was this:
"You come to be in a mortifying structure that precedes you. You only have a lifetime to escape."
A view is broken open here of a life (the pre-sent structure that you came to be within) as a something like a burning building, where what varies is the way in which it burns. It is necessary to bring into focus the direction of the escape, and the nature of the flames which burn the buildings. It is necessary to take up Spinoza's idea that people do not kill themselves, but are killed by something outside them which got in: we have to understand the imposed, internalised eco-system of reactive forces that is placed within us very early in our lives, and we have to understand that there can be extreme danger for those people energised enough by the direction of the escape to start leaving the building. As Deleuze said “artists are the tightrope walkers of the spirit.”
Ordinary
reality cannot see the direction of the escape – the journey into the
part of the Outside that can be characterised in terms of love, lucidity, freedom
and wider realities.
And it also cannot see the imposed, internal eco-system of reactive-forces, which all too easily (especially under circumstances of extreme social reactiveness across the planet) can go from one of its
chronic modalities to one of its acute, more obviously deadly manifestations.
People settle into a personalised formation of actions which are connected to a construct of their life as in some sense a movement of success or integrity or good sense, or a movement toward success (generally both). This formation and its associated construct is a modality of ordinary-reality
existence, which everybody makes into their own form, so that it is singular,
and in a grim sense ‘fits’ them. But the fundamental fact is that this modality
does not fit at all. It is not that this modality is something which is nearly as good as the bliss of becoming
increasingly an expression of Love-and-Freedom. Instead, it is all along the
zombie twin of the movement into the Future.
It is time to perceive in unbroken, minutes-long worlds of perception –
which is to say that it is time to reach a sustained perception which will lead
to abstract-perception; that is, to lucidity. It is time to have the courage for adventurous experiences that can develop unexpectedly into events that jolt you awake. It is time to find works which transmit a dreaming that is also a world of outsights - of views toward the wider and deeper levels of the world. It is time to wake up, and feel
the zombie twin dissipating like vapour in sunlight.
The way forward is the serenity of learning to perceive (serene, even when other aspects of your life are a painful turmoil), and it is the simplicity of doing less each day of what was never you. And yes, we only have a short amount of time in which to achieve this escape. It's a good idea to start now.
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https://www.nts.live/shows/guests/episodes/mark-fisher-justin-barton-londonunderlondon-15th-october-2024
https://www.urbanomic.com/document/londonunderlondon/
