Some re-encountering of the ideas of Peter Lamborn Wilson, and others.
Today, through a quick Wikipedia check on Charles Fourier, I found myself reminded of the poet/thinker PLM, aka Hakim Bey. My introduction to Hakim Bey's writing came in college, where my religions professor Brian Karafin pointed me in his direction. I've read only a bit of Bey's writing - there was a small booklet of his available to read (but not remove) at the NYPL. I don't remember any of it. There's also some Youtube clips of Bey speaking, a couple of which I've viewed.
He comes across as an intelligent guy, a little nutty perhaps, but not the crazy, fringe-y type that his reputation might suggest. Among dabbling in various Occult-style ideas and philosophies, which vary, by my lights, from loopy to historically and perhaps spiritually important, Wilson has also been embroiled in some controversy over his apparent advocacy of pederasty. I don't know much about the controversy, but it certain casts Wilson in a highly dubious light.
All of that being said, there's an interesting interview I came across here, which also includes insights from Christopher Bamford:
http://brooklynrail.org/2007/12/art/green-hermeticism
The stuff about the "theurgic" in art jumped out at me, as well as this:
"Today, art—and perhaps also even science—has become more or less a form
of self-expression, whereas if you go back far enough into the history
of art or science they always had the theurgic function to heal,
nurture, and care for the whole: the divine-cosmic-earthly-human cosmos.
But for the greatest modern artists, like Cezanne and Braque and Beuys
(and also writers like Joyce and poets like Robert Duncan), it still has
that theurgic function."
This strikes me as particularly relevant to my own artistic pursuits. I've always been a bit leery of the cult of self-expression that dominates the talking about and practice of Modern art. Postmodernism can be seen, at least initially, as an attempt to get around this, but it mostly crumbled (in my own view) into hollow, jargon-laden irrelevance. There's some real potential in these ideas, which take the egotism out of Modern art, and harken back to a more universal, transformative, conception of Art. (It's also true that this strain of aesthetic thinking is present throughout the Modern tradition, but it's often hiding just out of sight.)
Also of interest: Bioremediation, and Paul Stamets.
