What to do with the surprising information that we die? With this fact that strikes consciousness like an asteroid and leaves a crater?
Reason and energy. Reasoning, or I should say our reasoning function is only interesting when it has to funnel and form something, some deeper force. Reasoning without animal energy, without mental electricity is pointless and painful—turning yourself into a computer.
And I can feel the difference between days when my mind is receiving a strong signal and when it has to invent one or imagine one, when it's lying to itself.
I can feel the difference between necessary reasoning and forced reasoning: passionate thinking and nervous calculation.1
Have I not paid proper attention to the gift?
Have I not been a good host for my daemon?
Have I driven him away?
And I have to ask myself on days like today, why is he back?
Why is it back?
Is it the supplements I'm taking?
Is it nicotine?
Is it the spring?
Is it love?
Is it career opportunity?
Is it random?
Part of the excitement in the NYC lit scene this spring is the sense that there's no guard, or the old guard is receding. It's not clear, for the first time in a long time, who has hegemony. Who rules the kingdom, the invisible kingdom of publishing and media and discourse production.
It seems like publishers are throwing around big deals just to remind themselves that they're important. But nobody really knows.
The same thing is happening in theatre.