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 best statements was "we only have a lifetime to escape." And this statement always also carried a faint but powerful suggestion that a 'lifetime' was a negative force-field - a burning building from which you were trying to escape.
In order to find a response to his death I
feel 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 perceive, as
with Spinoza, 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.”
Out beyond ordinary reality there is the planetary expanse of the immediate, spheroambient body without
organs, or World of intent/energy (and you can start to see this by
looking both at the oneirosphere of fictions and religions (etc.), and at the
intent-worlds of humans and other animal beings). Just perceive, with all your
senses, and with a full openness to the nature of what you are perceiving, and
you are starting to travel toward the humans-included planet as body without
organs.
It is an impersonal bliss to walk
in the specific 'Southward' direction that can be found in the outside of
ordinary, deadened reality. And bliss is both energy, and another modality of
time (a time of maximal synthesis, unaffected by the eco-system of
reactive forces, and based ultimately on the degree of intensity of the body). Bliss
is a time of serene exuberance and creativity – a time of undemonstrative expansiveness
where new ways of travelling into the Future are not only perceived, but are
brought into existence.
A ‘lifetime’ as seen from ordinary reality
at best consists of something with a zenith that would be called the time of
your life – a zenith understood in terms of conjugal love, career success,
adventurousness, living in an amazing, inspiring place, etc. But ordinary
reality therefore 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 there is no contradiction here between conjugal love, and the love involved in the escape into the Future).
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.
A ‘life time’ (a pace, a rhythm, a pattern of kinds of
recurrences/habits, a body of projects) 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 – with its time-of-your-life
zenith – 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.
In relation to art Deleuze also says “There is no aesthetic problem
other than the insertion of art into life.” (he says this in the context of the issue of escaping the grinding routines and habituations of ordinary
existence, so that the improvisatory and creative gets into everything). To
this statement, it could be added that in starting to escape from deadened reality there is no philosophical problem other than
the waking of lucidity.
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 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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