The moon is silver.
Its beauty is wonderful.
Life is amazing, like a boat.
I won the life I earned.

--That was my attempt to make a poem as lame and uncreative as possible. What is the point? There is something to be appreciated in lame things....they are honest and unassuming. They aren't showy.
The moon is silver.
Why can't that be a great and creative statement?
Why does one have to say something in a clever way for it to be special?
The moon is silver. That is true. The moon is beautiful, and silver a good thing. The statement is just fine the way it is.

Whats unamazing about a boat? Nothing.
What is interesting about winning a life? Nothing. Why must things be interesting?

How original...I'm questioning some basic tenets of value....wow, I must be some sort of special being to make such special observations. I must be separate from the over-looked nothing. The marvelous insignificant line of text.

I'm beginning to hate value and all its worth.

The value in the most insignificant over-looked drab is the total security in it. It has no self. It has therefor nothing to prove or worry about. It is totally worthless....so it has nothing to lose. It is already in absolute obscurity. It is not bad...bad things are most important of all....to destroy, avoid, condemn, and use as comparison with the good, to make the good better than good, or at least better than bad. I think the bad is what is given the greatest importance of all. Nothing is more important than not being bad, or avoiding the greatest of all badnesses.

Pick up your plain rock and be obscure with it. You won't benefit from it, and therefor you won't be distressed by the little rock. All is well in summerville.

Two more thoughts;
1. Originality has no opposite, except to a conditioned and bored mind.
2. Having a point devalues the essence of a thing....IOW, it implies that nothing is inherently valueble, but only valuable to the degree that it has a point.... that is total vanity since "points" can only point to other points into infinite lapse... making having a point being akin to being pointless.

Again though, being pointless isn't bad as long as you don't limit value to utility.

YOU NEVER GET TO THE POINT.

You made the lines quite dull..good job!
I'm not 100% clear on the context of
the word "value", though. But maybe there
is a sharper term. There is 'value' is the fresh
and original, but I don't think that's what you mean.
Do you mean "established" value?




I think you are on the cusp of some things
that you might not want to preclude accidentally...

-------------being-----------------
Pick up your plain rock and be obscure with it. You won't benefit from it, and therefor you won't be distressed by the little rock. All is well in summerville.
--------------------------------------

-----well, you could become surreal with the rock,
or make it fly through a window or skip..
It's all in what you do with it.
I have a rock I kicked for 2 miles around an
industrial park prking lot.
I guess I am referring to evocation...


-----------being-------------------------
T wo more thoughts;
1. Originality has no opposite, except to a conditioned and bored mind.
--------------------------------------

-------it is kind of "unipolar". Makes it a good
escape route for stuck issues.



-------------being-----------------------------
2. Having a point devalues the essence of a thing....IOW, it implies that nothing is inherently valueble, but only valuable to the degree that it has a point.... that is total vanity since "points" can only point to other points into infinite lapse... making having a point being akin to being pointless.
---------------------------------------------



-------------this helps a little with your 'value' thing.
...maybe like... a fixed point, an established value,
a known role..
and that traps a thing to dullness, single-use..

Is that sort of the drift of it?

You made the lines quite dull..good job!
I'm not 100% clear on the context of
the word "value", though. But maybe there
is a sharper term. There is 'value' is the fresh
and original, but I don't think that's what you mean.
Do you mean "established" value?


It looks like in my garbled rant I was aiming at defacing two types of established value criterions.
Fresh and original... which in my mind relates to value being determined by scarcity... as there is always going to be far more unfresh unoriginal things, according to relative standards. Something can also be original, as in unprecedented, without really being good... but often things are valued as good simply because they are original. I think lots of modern art is a good example of that.

The second type, obviously, is value according to use.

What I'm really condemning here is relative value, in an effort to get to essential value, which I think, like any essence, should be inherent.
I think too much focus on relative value, defaces inherent value.... by trying to be original and showy, we proclaim that the ordinary is somehow inferior. By seeing everything in terms of use, we dishoner things in themselves...demanding that they serve our egoe's purposes.
I guess I'm thinking of things like people. You woudln't want to tell your kid that you only value them to the degree in which they serve a purpose. I think that is how lots of people judge themselves and others though. Everyone (in general) wants to prove that they are important.



I think you are on the cusp of some things
that you might not want to preclude accidentally...


Originality helps keep things moving forward.
Usefulness is useful.
I'm not totally against those values, just their over-emphasis and misplacement(referring again to judging people according to their use)


-----well, you could become surreal with the rock,
or make it fly through a window or skip..
It's all in what you do with it.
I have a rock I kicked for 2 miles around an
industrial park prking lot.
I guess I am referring to evocation...


Thats basically my point. There is value in the simple and ordinary. Many have lost the ability to enjoy a rock because they think kicking it around serves no purpose, or think the rock is nothing special because there are plenty of rocks in the universe.


-------it is kind of "unipolar". Makes it a good
escape route for stuck issues.

escape rout for "stuck issues"?


-------------this helps a little with your 'value' thing.
...maybe like... a fixed point, an established value,
a known role..
and that traps a thing to dullness, single-use..

Is that sort of the drift of it?

Yep. That is one aspect of it.

I'm still trying to distill it..
are these points related:

---It ain't what you do, it's the way that you do it.

---Random sparks and post-modern outburst to
escape jading only kick the base reallity of things
out from under them....so anything said after
that is gratuitous drivel.

---Therefore, it is new ways of thinking about
existing things we should ways, not just some
flatulent tsunami of "new" crap that is just
noise masquerading as meaning.

I hope that is at least in part related.
I've been trying to come up with ways to describe
the subtle difference between good post-modern
art and bad post-modern art, and in seems the
important quality (to me) is that I appreciate
seeing old things new ways, or having thoughts
triggered. Once I stood 4 inches away from a
Pollock, and it was amazing the action in my mind.
From 4 feet away, it was just mush. I read some
Bukowsky poetry, and thought it was just a messed
up bugger making nasty comments. I read some
Ashbery, and my mind got pleasantly twisted.
It seems to all be in the doing of things, not
the crapping out of things.