Life is not static. Philosophically, I think we should break out of all the routes, all the boxes, break down the sides. A comic spirit demands that we break from formula, break out of program, and there are some familiar ways to do it and then some radical or unknown ways. I suppose I am preoccupied with this theme because the characters I admire in my own imagination and the characters I would like to make myself be break out of things. They break out of all restrictions. They even break out of their blood. They break out of the mixture in their blood. They break out of invented cultures and repression. I think it's a spiritual quest in a way. I don't feel that it's transcendence--or escape as transcendence. That's not the theme I'm after, but I'm after an idea of the comic, that the adventures of living and the strategies of survival are chances. They're mysteries because they're left to chance. Life is a chance, all life is a chance. And that's a comic spirit. A tragic spirit is to trudge down the same trial, try to build a better path, make another fortune, build another monument and contribute it to a museum and establish more institutions to disguise our mortality. I consider all of that a formula to control and oppress--not evil, not in an evil manner, but it does control. So, I feel this need to break out of the measures that people make.
Monday, January 23, 2012
Vizenor on the Cosmic Significance of the Comic
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I think it's quite profound that the trickster is allowed and encouraged to break moral and cultural molds. Even our predominately monotheistic society sometimes gets caught up in good and evil as separate entities and forget that their inner workings are connected. I can't get over how modern such ancient traditions still seem.
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