Popular Culture Review Volume 30, Number 2, Summer 2019 | Page 256

I Am Trying Hard to Follow the Sound : Meditations on Accepting Typhoon ’ s Offerings
when a clairvoyant correctly reads his mind ; it is a memory we see in a flashback to Guido ’ s life as a child when , instead of falling asleep like the other children , he and another boy stare at the eyes in a painted face trying to get them to move by reciting the phrase . “ Asa Nisi Masa .” It is an Italian “ Pig Latin ” version of the word , “ anima ” � “ A-sa NI-si Ma-sa ” � that is , soul . In book III of Aristotle ’ s De Anima , the human mind is said to be special . This is true , perhaps , only if finding meaning in meaninglessness , embracing absurdity as reasonable , is special .
“ RORSCHACH ”’ s meditation on first being born / waking is also about being alive in the modern age�the so-called information age ( which might be better thought of as the age of missing information , as Bill McKibben once wrote ). The transmission over the wire is distorted so that we can barely understand . We cannot look away from our screens , nor from the idea that the eye projects reality onto an inner private screen trapped in our singular heads . This modern life has nothing to do with real logos . Enlightenment reason is not the reason for which Socrates gave his life , drinking up the poison at his execution . But now we are left with only the irrationality of pseudo-science , reading the dregs of the hemlock like tea leaves . The violence of rationality makes itself known all around us and we sadly celebrate it , thinking that the splatter of blood is like a work of art that opens itself to our interpretation , a sanguine ink-blot on an otherwise white light ( er ) life . We know it ’ s not true , but we cling to the lie . And , we go mad .
Still in the dark . We turn to the “ EMPIRICIST ” to try to figure out who we are , from where we came . The Greek foundations of this thought are at war with the Judeo-Christian notion of our mother being sculpted from Adam ’ s pulled rib ,
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