Quentin S. Crisp Quotes
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I also remember a line from a song by Smog [Bill Callahan], which seems to describe the experience of a town-dweller moving to the country: "I was raised in a pit of snakes/Blink your eyes - I was raised on cake."
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Apart from the underlying mystery of all things, there is also another possible specific mystery in this situation: Why did I become so interested in Buddhism, Zen and so on? I seem to have a Buddhist voice in my head, and someone asked me about this recently, saying he was intrigued.
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I think I'm probably too close to the seventies to be able to analyse them (it?) effectively.
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[My muse] feels nostalgic for Japan, and, perhaps strangely, for the pioneer days of America.
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I suppose I could say that to be interested in innocence already suggests a remove from innocence, perhaps a longing for something that is lost.
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This is the strange thing about existing in time. As [Philip] Larkin puts it, "truly, though our element is time, we are not used to the strange perspectives open at each moment of our lives" - something like that.
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I was born in the seventies, age of bad haircuts and grainy colour photos.
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I went for a walk in the rain. Recently, whenever it rains, I feel like I want to go for a walk.
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It would be hard to say that exactly, but antinatalism is a reality in my life, not just an interesting idea. I can feel it in the chilled and weary marrow of my bones.
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On the other hand, the seventies were drab. That is, I am utterly fascinated by the fifties and sixties.
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In the meditation, of course, the question is repeated and repeated until you run out of answers - or so I hear.
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More or less the first thing that comes into my head is that some people are always looking for what they want to do in life and never finding it. I'm not one of those people. It has been very obvious to me from an early age who I am, and this has been tied up with creativity, and, specifically, with writing.
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There's a strong aspect of Buddhism which is geared towards ending all fertility.
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I feel almost as if I had been born in a vacuum of innocence, and then had to come to terms with the fact that actually, I was born into the middle of history - the rather grimy normality of the 70s, which did, indeed, retain some traces of human innocence, but were also girded about by the demons of experience.
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When I think back on it, I have a sense of relaxation, as if in the seventies no one had to try to be anyone other than who they were. I'm sure that's not really true, but that's how I remember it, and I suppose it might be relatively true.
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You might call this innocence. I had a sense of another world that had not been spoken of to me.
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I've never been baptised.
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If future history is not to be just one damned thing after another in space, then what we really have to do is in some way overcome this linear experience of time that makes all existence a quest for something that will never be found.And philosophies such as Zen seem to hint that this is possible.
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The research reading I did for Fascination and Liberation included some Jung, and I noticed that he had a similar impression of Buddhism to myself, that, if it weren't for certain qualifying clauses, the philosophy would be downright suicidal.
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I have a bit of a struggle with some aspects of or forms of Buddhism, but Zen I find to be mainly congenial.
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I suppose what I can say is that I do feel I have a natural spiritual sensibility.
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This is part of the fundamental character of Buddhism that I find problematic - that it is not interested in anything. Hence the 'Fascination' in the title of the essay, the fascination of art and creativity, stands in opposition to what is called 'Liberation'.
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Anyway, to cut off one's biological dreams seems to me the most fundamental form of psychic castration that you could imagine.
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In terms of what is expressed, antinatalism is a strong presence, not always explicit, in what I write.