squeezing out sparks

[gurdonark]

"See no illusions
No martyrs and no kings.
No trains to Heaven,
for the Kingdom lies within"
--Bill Nelson

Andre Breton, the "purist" of the surrealist movement, said that the "simplest Surrealist act" consisted of "going into the street, revolver in hand, and shooting into the crowd for as long as you can". I believe that the time has passed for chic celebrations of violence. If there is a spark within us, it is the spark which permits us to put aside the bloody anthills of our evolutionary development, not the spark that paints its blood on our foreheads.

Comments

[uscwriter.livejournal.com]

Isn't the choice to refrain from violence what separates us from animals? (At least figuratively?) What do we have, if we don't have that spark to be more, to be better, to be...

(I'm going to bed, you've made me think too much tonight...)
KIM

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

I think the choice to refrain from violence is a saving grace for us, whether it be evolution or Grace itself. I think too often we fail to appreciate the importance of simple human dignity and nurturing one another. The recent tragedies called to my mind all those chic things that "rebels" said in the past, and I wish all that 'hip' celebration of violence would all dry up and disintegrate.

[corylus.livejournal.com]

i echo your sentiment but couldn't have said it more succintly or poetically.

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the kind words

[sun-set-bravely.livejournal.com]

That's too bad that Breton said that about shooting people. I like some of his poetry, but I suppose anyone can go way too far in their theorizing.

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

Breton did some really interesting stuff, but he went down so many wrong roads, it seems to me.