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L’esprit de l’escalier (find me)

The Yiddish trepverter (“staircase words”[4]) and the German loan translation Treppenwitz (when used in an English language context[5]) express the same idea as l’esprit de l’escalier. However, in contemporary German Treppenwitz has a different meaning: It refers to events or facts that seem to contradict their own background or context. The frequently used phrase “Treppenwitz der Weltgeschichte” (“staircase joke of world history”) derives from the title of a book by that name by W. Lewis Hertslet[6] and means “a paradox of history”.[7][8]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L’esprit_de_l’escalier

***************************************

I said my ‘goodbyes’ didn’t I?
Seemed so ideal to the outside
Burning and tying on
I should have said it before I….
Before I’d gone,
Before I’d gone,
That’s the wit of the staircase.

Shouldn’t have left me alone
Winchester type paranoid
Atlantic ocean that’s your mind
I should have said it before I…
Before I’d gone,
Before I’d gone,
That’s the wit of the staircase.

Play it come the time we will fall in love
Play it come the time we will fall in love
Play it come the time we will fall in love
Fall in love fall in love falling….

They’ll find me, they’ll find me when I wash up…

They’re out there
I’ve seen them out there
I’m not crazy, I’m not…
Not crying wolf, I’m….
I’m not crazy, I’m not…
I see them out there in the real world, out my window
They’re already in my head now, behind my eyes.

This entry was posted on June 4, 2014 at 11:11 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

25 Responses to “L’esprit de l’escalier (find me)”

  1. LIL_POP_ZEN Says:
    June 5, 2014 at 5:52 am

    Reply
  2. Luna Says:
    June 6, 2014 at 6:06 am

    “…events or facts that seem to contradict their own background or context”

    “The Staircase Joke of World History”

    ************************************
    excerpt TLS ch.3

    The Book of JNDK, according to Henry Corbin’s translation of Theodore Bar Konai is depicted as a call being “sent” or “broadcast” from some origin-point located outside the sphere of linear temporal unfolding, rebounding from the flash-point at the end of History, casting a reflection of itself into the past, creating rippling, patterned modifications in seemingly random cultural artifacts and documents, subverting and overriding preexistent interpretive meaning; connecting the dots on a whole other level, creating an infinite labyrinth of links and correspondences, spiraling outward in the form of a wheel, gathering the fallen sparks into the Ras, The Final Assembly…The Last Statue.

    AELIA LAELIA CRISPIS

    Reply
    • SchadenFreud Says:
      June 6, 2014 at 12:25 pm

      Breakin’ News UPDATE:

      BRITISH LEFT WAFFLES ON FALKLANDS!!

      Reply
    • Konstance Kontraire Says:
      June 6, 2014 at 7:13 pm

      The second problem is that her stories are linear and represent the ephemeral, transitory nature of life. Through her narratives, she is always moving away from a lost past. Her life proceeds, leaving a kind of historical detritus in its wake. This also happens to the society, culture, people, and objects around her. Her existential condition is to constantly be in flight from decay, and yet always rushing toward it. Her life vanishes into the detritus of time, the abyss of time past. The detritus of time is a wolf at her heels.

      Systematic obsolescence by definition defines human identity in terms of death. There is never an accepted culture, but only the detritus from which one might appear. Due to our endless search for cultural progress, decay and death become the frames that define our lives. We cannot define our culture, but only see our post-culture. Our identity is thus defined by our death. She can never see who she is, but only what she was.

      Trapped between the past and future, she lives in a liminal world. Her being is a fleeting instant between desire and the detritus of time. Nothing ever rests because obsolescence is a universality. Desire can never be fulfilled, because fulfillment is inherently obsolete. Faces morph to old faces. Everything morphs to the something unreachable and that decays the minute it is touched. Every doorway opens to another doorway. She is a ghost caught between time past and time future.

      http://www.osborne-conant.org/working-thoughts.htm

      Reply
  3. Phoebe Says:
    June 10, 2014 at 4:22 am

    The human body is not, as it may appear, a solid stable entity, but a continuum of matter (rupa) co-existing with mentality (nama). To know that our very body is tiny kalapas all in a state of change is to know the true nature of change or decay. This change or decay (anicca) occasioned by the continual breakdown and replacement of kalapas, all in a state of combustion, must necessarily be identified as Dukkha, the truth of suffering. It is only when you experience impermanence (anicca) as suffering (dukkha) that you come to the realization of the truth of suffering, the first of the Four Noble Truths basic to the doctrine of the Buddha. Why? Because when you realize the subtle nature of Dukkha from which you cannot escape for a moment, you become truly afraid of, disgusted with, and disinclined towards your very existence as mentality-materiality (namarupa), and look for a way of escape to a state beyond Dukkha, and so to Nibbana, the end of suffering.

    Reply
  4. ARAMCHEK Says:
    June 10, 2014 at 4:29 am

    The Slender Man Revolution

    “…scary and disturbing and kinda different”

    The Slender Man (also known as Slender Man or Slenderman) is a fictional character that originated as an Internet meme created by Something Awful forums user Eric Knudsen (a.k.a. “Victor Surge”) in 2009. It is depicted as resembling a thin, unnaturally tall man with a blank and usually featureless face, wearing a black suit. Stories of the Slender Man commonly feature him stalking, abducting, or traumatizing people, particularly children.[1] The Slender Man is not confined to a single narrative, but appears in many disparate works of fiction, mostly composed online.[2]

    The first video series involving the Slender Man evolved from a post on the Something Awful thread by user “ce gars”. It tells of a fictional film school friend named Alex Kralie, who had stumbled upon something troubling while shooting his first feature-length project, Marble Hornets. The video series, published in found footage style on YouTube, forms an alternate reality game describing the filmers’ fictional experiences with the Slender Man. The ARG also incorporates a Twitter feed and an alternate YouTube channel created by a user named “totheark”.[1][6] Marble Hornets is now one of the most popular Slender Man creations, with over 250,000 followers around the world, and 55 million views.[7] Other Slender Man-themed YouTube serials followed, including EverymanHYBRID and Tribe Twelve.[1]

    On May 31, 2014, two 12-year-old girls in Waukesha, Wisconsin, allegedly held down and stabbed a 12-year-old classmate 19 times; when questioned later by authorities, they reportedly claimed that they wished to commit a murder as a first step to becoming “proxies” (acolytes) of the Slender Man, having read about it online. One of the girls believed Slender Man watches her, can read minds, and teleport.[21] Thanks to the intervention of a passing cyclist, the victim survived the attack. The attackers were charged as adults and are each facing up to 65 years in prison.[22] In a statement to the media, Eric Knudsen said, “I am deeply saddened by the tragedy in Wisconsin and my heart goes out to the families of those affected by this terrible act.” He stated he would be giving no interviews on the topic.[23] In the wake of the attack, the mother of a mentally disturbed 13-year-old girl in Hamilton, Ohio, said that her daughter had attacked her with a knife, and that she had written macabre fiction, some involving Slender Man.[24]

    Though Knudsen himself has given his personal blessing to a number of Slender Man-related projects, it is complicated by the fact that, while he is the character’s creator, a third party holds the options to any adaptations into other media, including film and television.

    The identity of this option holder has not been made public.[19]

    Knudsen himself has argued that his enforcement of copyright has less to do with money than with artistic integrity;

    “I just want something amazing to come off it… something that’s scary and disturbing and kinda different. I would hate for something to come out and just be kinda conventional.”[5]

    [Wouldn’t you?]

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slender_Man#Purportedly_inspired_attacks

    Reply
    • SchadenFreud Says:
      June 11, 2014 at 8:54 am

      MINERS REFUSE TO WORK AFTER DEATH!!

      CEO MAKES OFFER TO SCREW COMPANY SHAREHOLDERS!!

      Reply
    • Nostrildamus Says:
      June 12, 2014 at 7:15 am

      KILLING JOKE

      “When someone offers me a joke, I just say “no thanks”–Dylan

      Batman is, like the new gods, a thought form with a reality and existence beyond the physical, a tulpa brought into being by human imagination. What we see and interact with are merely avatars of Batman. It’s significant that the miniseries was called The Return of Bruce Wayne, and not The Return of Batman: Bruce Wayne may have been lost in time, but Batman was alive and well in the present with his latest avatar, Dick Grayson. And, as the many iterations of Batman in Batman 700 show, there will always be avatars of Batman – “No matter when, no matter where, no matter how dark,” as the issue says.

      Such is the lesson. So Batman, Inc., (Grant) Morrison’s hyper-sigil aimed at metamorphosing us and perfecting the world, goes. Batman is not “just” Bruce Wayne; Batman is not “just” a character in a comic. He is an idea/myth/god/tulpa. You or I could channel him and overcome anti-life too. In a perfect world, everyone everywhere would be a Batman.

      Batman, Inc.

      Batman: The Killing Joke is a one-shot superhero graphic novel written by Alan Moore and drawn by Brian Bolland. It was first published by DC Comics in 1988, and has remained in print since then, having also been reprinted as part of the trade paperback DC Universe: The Stories of Alan Moore.

      Considered by many critics to be the definitive Joker story and one of the best Batman stories ever published…

      The book explores Moore’s assertion that psychologically “Batman and the Joker are mirror images of each other.”[5]

      Along with Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Tim Burton has mentioned that The Killing Joke influenced his film adaptation of Batman: “I was never a giant comic book fan, but I’ve always loved the image of Batman and The Joker. The reason I’ve never been a comic book fan — and I think it started when I was a child — is because I could never tell which box I was supposed to read. I don’t know if it was dyslexia or whatever, but that’s why I loved The Killing Joke, because for the first time I could tell which one to read. It’s my favorite. It’s the first comic I’ve ever loved. And the success of those graphic novels made our ideas more acceptable.”[34]

      Director Christopher Nolan has mentioned that The Killing Joke served as an influence for the version of the Joker appearing in the 2008 feature film The Dark Knight. Heath Ledger, who played the Joker, stated in an interview that he was given a copy of The Killing Joke as reference for the role.[35]

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batman:_The_Killing_Joke

      The bizarre couple, who committed the Las Vegas killings, lived at an apartment at the Oak Tree Apartments, on Bruce Street, near Fremont Street, in downtown Las Vegas.

      What was learned from the couple’s neighbors is that the Millers wanted to cause a Columbine-type situation, and lived in a world involving, yes, Slender Man, The Joker, and other evil fantasy figures.

      The neighbor also told Action News the man would often dress up as the “Joker” and “Slender Man” and the woman would dress up as “Harley Quinn.”

      http://copycateffect.blogspot.com/2014/06/millers.html
      http://copycateffect.blogspot.com/2014/06/slenderman2.html

      Reply
  5. Phoebe Says:
    June 10, 2014 at 4:29 am

    And,
    The “linguistic rationality” of ordinary consciousness simply is not capable of judging the non- ordinary unitive events at the generative core of the world’s religions. Ferrer and Sherman’s (2008) approach to the issue nicely complements Bellah’s (2011), in that while none of them want to dismiss the experiential component of religion all together, all three call attention to the ways in which language and experience mutually transform one another. “In short,” says Bellah (2011), “we cannot disentangle raw experience from cultural form” (p. 12). Rather than seeing this entanglement as an unescapable epistemic limitation, Bellah (2011) argues that religious symbolism is potentially a way of knowing capable of reaching beyond the “dreadful fatalities… [of the]…world of rational response to anxiety and need” (p. 9). In a similar vein, Ferrer and Sherman (2008) call into question the skeptical postmodern claim that non-ordinary religious consciousness is “overdetermined by cultural-linguistic variables” and therefore cannot possibly refer to “translinguistic” realities (p. 29). At the same time, they call for a “resacralization of language,” such that religious symbolism is understood to carry its own “creational weight,” since it arises out of the semioticity of reality itself.

    Reply
  11. Phoebe Says:
    June 11, 2014 at 4:57 am

    Ok, i wasn’t familiar with Alan Moore until the posts above, watched both. Wasn’t familiar with Nowness.com until a random post elsewhere featured video above. Flipping around on it awhile, decided to just refresh to their current home page and, violas! There’s A. Moore on the front page of Nowness,

    Reply
  13. dr_TJ_Eckleburg Says:
    June 11, 2014 at 3:39 pm

    In the backwards part of our country, folks got some mighty peculiar forms of religious expression…

    Reply
  14. TOBORADAROBOT Says:
    June 13, 2014 at 5:49 am

    http://www.lashtal.com/portal/news/113-112-old-news.html

    An article in The Sunday Times (Scotland – 28 December 2003) describes the enormous success of prominent Chaos Magician and admirer of Aleister Crowley, Grant Morrison… I recommend his Lovely Biscuits collection for any Thelemites.

    HE RELIEVED Batman of his trademark cape and winged mask and made the X-Men’s Magneto into a drug addict and mass murderer.

    Now Grant Morrison, the Scottish comic book writer who transformed the images of the world’s best-known super-heroes and villains after September 11, has joined the Hollywood elite by penning his first screenplay for Steven Spielberg’s film company.

    Following the September 11 attacks on New York, Morrison agreed to recast some of the most famous superhero characters to make them more relevant to the changing world.

    In an interview with The Sunday Times he said that there was a demand for them to espouse pacifism and fight global capitalism, discrimination and religious fundamentalism. “The real heroes in the world are those guys who ran into the collapsing buildings of the World Trade Center trying to save lives,” he said.

    “Spiderman wasn’t there and Superman wasn’t there. Those firemen in oilskins and helmets were there, not superhumans in costumes. In the wake of September 11, violent superhumans are not enough any more. We should be putting the current international developments in context rather than just having wrestling matches between colourful characters.”

    [Oh, really? hmmmm…….]

    Reply

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