The balance―not between left and right, not between thick and thin, but between heart and mind, action and retrospection, young and old, form and spirit―will send the Liberty to new heights!
by Joey Clark
[dropcap size=small]A[/dropcap]s the seasons continue their wintery drift towards spring, the political pendulums of the world are swinging to and fro–between cynics and sentimentalists, between jackasses and pachyderms, between those ever-present clowns to the left of me and jokers to right.
And today I’m here to say: they all wish to seduce you.
Gird your loins! Hopefully, we can turn this matter on its head, gird no more, and let our loins hang low in joyous revelry as we become the seducers ourselves. I would not tarry too long though, else the clocks may start striking thirteen in an ominous way.
I point to two types of characters so as to reveal two points of tension–the first serving as a warning and the second as a machete in the jungle, as a pathbreaker.
As you probably already know, the battle for your heart and mind began long before you sprung into being, and I am afraid those barbarians who worship at the altar of state power are at the gates, if not already among us, seeking to tempt you, commission you, and even, conscript you in an eager embrace, in an unholy union, in an unwitting metamorphosis the likes of the nymph, Salmacis, forcing herself upon the beautiful Hermaphroditus and merging with him for all time with the blessing of the gods (I allude to this tale for androgynous reasons that will become clearer in a moment.)
Most forms of seduction are the art of concealing the truth by gilding it with unexpected overtures, bold gestures, and myths of power and mystery, i.e. seduction is itself usually a game of tension–a contest full of the playful lying and delightful vagary of a successful inside joke between strangers. As the Bunburyist par excellence, Algernon Moncrief, says to his dear friend Jack, “The very essence of romance is uncertainty. If I ever get married, I’ll certainly try to forget the fact.”
As far as bunburying goes, I (a self-proclaimed Bunburyist mind you) think seduction can be bunburying at its best (as opposed to seduction being politics at its worst.) The essence of bunburying is, after all, the artistic lie done for the sake of pleasure and the affirmation of life–whether success or failure comes at the end of an affair is of no significance.
Bunburyist seduction: it is eros infused with the smirking smack of a fool’s all too innocent pose for one hoping to engage in such a naughty world. This is not to say all Bunburyists are created equal. Nor are all Bunburyists great seducers or even seducers at all. Bunburyists are unabashedly pliable and vague in that way. No, as it is with many techniques, there is good bunburying and bad bunburying just as there is good shtupping and bad shtupping. It depends on the individual.
But one need not be a Bunburyist to be a good seducer or a seducer at all. Seduction is truly a universal art.
Most seducers are amoral but that is not to say they don’t have standards. They certainly expect something in return from those they dazzle, and it is an unfortunate something, often never living up to the seducer’s initial promises; thus, most seducers are inherently tragic in their dalliances. They, unfortunately, see seduction as a matter akin to conquest rather than one of free trade. They seek pleasure in power. As a man born posthumously once said, they seek happiness in, “…The feeling that power increases–that resistance is overcome. Not contentment, but more power; not peace at any price, but war; not virtue, but efficiency…”
Dare I say, what Dionysians most seducers are! I’ve seen more and more among the liberty lovers the more I look. The Dionysian, in a word, he is “change.” He is emotional. He exploits opportunity at every turn even if it means breaking with customs of old and smashing icons, even his own.
But not all seducers are Dionysians (please, spare me your contempt from beyond the grave, Herr Nietzsche.) In fact, one of the greatest types of seducers is the person who can tell the truth and make it seem like a fantasy. The truth as a lucid dream. The truth as psilocybin. The truth as myth-making. These particular seducers expect nothing in return for this fantastical gift. They merely hope to steer others’ eyes to the fleeting, yet beautiful possibilities of the world. They do not merely promise future happiness; they show happiness in the moment. They are contentment even in struggle. They are not always artists, but they are forever works of art themselves. They take and make man’s diversions into their own point and purpose of life and show to the world that life need not be seen as a chronic case of crash and burn but as a parade!
Behold the Dandy!
Allow me now to enlist Baudelaire to do the heavy lifting for me at this time:
“Contrary to what a lot of thoughtless people seem to believe, dandyism is not even an excessive delight in clothes and material elegance. For the perfect dandy, these things are no more than the symbol of the aristocratic superiority of his mind. Thus, in his eyes, enamored as he is above all of distinction, perfection in dress consists in absolute simplicity, which is, indeed, the best way of being distinguished. What then can this passion be, which has crystallized into a doctrine, and has formed a number of outstanding devotees, this unwritten code that has molded so proud a brotherhood? It is, above all, the burning desire to create a personal form of originality, within the external limits of social conventions. It is a kind of cult of the ego which can still survive the pursuit of that form of happiness to be found in others, in woman for example; which can even survive what are called illusions. It is the pleasure of causing surprise in others, and the proud satisfaction of never showing any oneself. A dandy may be blasé, he may even suffer pain, but in the latter case he will keep smiling, like the Spartan under the bite of the fox.”
This, ladies and gentlemen and all those in between, is the thinking and working gal’s Dandy. The modern Hermaphroditus stripped naked of all myth except that which he creates herself.
If you look keen enough and earnest enough, you will see there are male and female dandies among us, serving as shining examples of a healthy aristocratic notion of distance and difference in an age plague by mob mentalities, passing passions of pooblic opinion, and other conquests of mass democracy.
And if you keep looking in your keen and earnest manner, you will most likely see the Dandy playing music alongside the liberty loving Dionysians. The Dandy and the Dionysian carrying on through thick and thin, both winking that art is the way to change the world for the better. But where the Dionysian in a hot and heavy way says, “art for the sake of power!” the Dandy says in a fanciful way, “art for art’s sake!”
This relationship is exactly where I find my points of tension: (1) the volatile relationship of Dandy and Dionysian and (2) the eternal reminder that one should stop to contemplate the good life through reason, i.e. balance the intoxicated emotion and brashness of the Dionysian with the soothing dreamscape balm of the Apollonian.
The Dandy–though personally balanced in emotion, thought, and gender–does not always elicit such a balance in others. In fact, the Dandy is as much bumfuzzling as she is captivating, and thus, she may very well inspire the Dionysian in a wicked way–say, by lifting up his sensitive spirit to never before reached heights of heaven on earth with the effect of only creating a greater, more painful fall back down to our everyday hellfire.
This is no hypothetical. She, the Dandy, was in fact Lou Andreas-Salomé. And he, the Dionysian, was Friedrich Nietzsche. As told in Robert Greene’s The Art of Seduction, Nietzsche was “overwhelmed” by Salomé, particularly her eyes in the midst of their passionate conversations together. Nietzsche longed to marry her immediately and proposed multiple times. She, being the aloof dandy that she was, decline his proposals despite the uncommon ideas they held in common and his unquestionable passion for her and those ideas.
Robert Greene concludes his story, crediting much (perhaps, too much) to Salomé’s influence over Nietzsche :
“Her firm, uncompromising manner only deepened the spell she cast over him, as did her hint of cruelty. When she finally left him, making it clear that she had no intention of marrying him, Nietzsche was devastated. As an antidote to his pain, he wrote Thus Spake Zarathustra, a book full of sublimated eroticism and deeply inspired by his talks with her. From then on Salomé was known throughout Europe as the woman who broke Nietzsche’s heart.”
Whether or not Salomé (there is by the way, a wonderful anti-Puritan play of the same name by that massive dandy and Bunburyist, Oscar Wilde) should be credited so heavily with inspiring Nietzsche’s Zarathustra is questionable. H. L. Mencken in his The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche doesn’t seem to think the credit is due, describing the contrast between the two great minds as “grotesque” and citing Nietzsche’s sister, who supposedly called Salomé’s biography of her brother “a fabric of well-meant, but ridiculous errors and misrepresentations.”
Despite the opaqueness of this history, I find the point still stands. The tension between our modern, liberty-professing dandies and dionysians is volatile to the point of being destructive. But overall, I find the two should meet. They should know, however, there is a hefty chance of hangover whenever the two meet–physically, psychologically, and spiritually.
Thus, this is why I point to my second point of tension with perhaps too bold a statement: bring on the dionysians, even those who are quick to war. Bring them into Liberty’s embrace and show them–before they make too much of a mess of things–the movement’s history, economics, political theorists, artists, poets, so on and so forth. Sooth their passion with the balm of the contemplative approach.
It is this balance, not between left and right, not between thick and thin, but between heart and mind, action and retrospection, young and old, form and spirit that will send the Liberty to new heights!
For example, before the apollonians can truly implement, say, the legalization of drugs by pushing legislation and making intellectual arguments to such an end, I say, the dionysians must first be using the drugs. One bong rip is worth a hundred cost-benefit analyses and ten thousand reviews of the literature–though it is, in my opinion, best when one engages in both analyses and toking. The intelligent and driven are drug takers.
Relish the in-fighting, enjoy the tension within one’s community! Just be sure to make the fights and the heart breaks are worthy of a thinking person and remember victory is not certain. The world is often a tragic place. Our fates are not fully ours to weave.
What we can weave is a community defined in theory, heroic action, and retrospection. A community so compelling, a culture so original, a new aristocracy that does not rely on the gun, but on the radical pose that Liberty is the best standard for creating multitudes of diverse, creative, and prosperous peoples and that the State is our enemy because it is not only cruel for petty reasons but ugly while thinking itself beautiful–a selfish giant who enjoys nothing he controls.
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