FB Post – 9/28

[Kortney]

Quote –

“What the eye doesn’t see, the heart doesn’t grieve over.” – Aleister Crowley

Original Painting –

The Persistence of Memory by Salvador Dalí
1931. Oil on canvas

Salvador Dalí frequently described his paintings as “hand painted dream photographs.” He based this seaside landscape on the cliffs in his home region of Catalonia, Spain. The ants and melting clocks are recognizable images that Dalí placed in an unfamiliar context or rendered in an unfamiliar way. The large central creature comprised of a deformed nose and eye was drawn from Dalí’s imagination, although it has frequently been interpreted as a self-portrait. Its long eyelashes seem insect-like; what may or may not be a tongue oozes from its nose like a fat snail from its shell.

Time is the theme here, from the melting watches to the decay implied by the swarming ants. Mastering what he called “the usual paralyzing tricks of eye-fooling,” Dalí painted this work with “the most imperialist fury of precision,” but only, he said, “to systematize confusion and thus to help discredit completely the world of reality.” There is, however, a nod to the real: the distant golden cliffs are those on the coast of Catalonia, Dalí’s home.

Reference

[Kortney]

Personally, I love this quote and I love the idea of it. It’s a different way of white lies/not telling the full truth to help people. Which personally I don’t do, or appreciate, but I mean… it’s gonna make for an interesting emotional reading on people.

[Chelsea]

Oh yea, @kortneydarling. I didn’t even think about this as a form of manipulation from others. It struck me as something we do to ourselves. Consciously or subconsciously choosing not to see what’s right in front of us because we know it would suck.

[Megan]

I didn’t think about it that way either – my take was very literal, what is literally not seen, perhaps even not real, isn’t grieved over.

[Cristen]

I’m also going to venture that the shift to surrealist art is tied into a continued blurring or full on breakdown of the lines between what we thought was real vs fiction. Yikes.

[Addison]

Approaching this from a purely grasping at straws POV, which is likely unrelated here (as most “looking back at Tension” things have been), this is just what it looks like on paper –

The Persistence of Memory: asking us to look back at memory. Things remembered from the past.

The Crowley quote: Early in The Tension Experience, there were quotes from different philosophers, one quote was from Crowley. Working on sourcing that quote now, archives of the old Tension site aren’t cooperating with rn…

But there was another Aleister inside Tension, Aleister Gordon. He was someone on the “inside” of the OOA that would occasionally leak info, set us up with detractors, and was one of the key players in the initial removal of the fourth wall. III eventually removed him from the organization. It’s possible that he’s not _dead_ dead, but following III “taking care of him,” he went dark.

[Megan]

@mike said I killed him with my feelings.

[Robert Fuller]

I find the juxtaposition of the words and image interesting. One is saying that only our present reality affects us, and the other is questioning reality itself. It sends my brain into a loop.

[Lauren Bello]

I am curious if there is anything in particular we should be “grieving”.

Some interpretations:

1) We have heard of the horrors of the retreats, but because we haven’t seen them for ourselves, we do not fully empathize with or grieve for retreat victims. Only once we have seen the retreats for ourselves will we be moved to action. Meanwhile, OSDM gets away with it.

2) Most of us did not see Joyce’s body. Therefore, we are not properly grieving; Mason has been allowed to get away with something.

3) We did not see what happened to Jenna, and therefore did not ask too many questions when something horrible appeared to happen to her. Joyce was thus allowed to get away with something.

There are more interpretations than that, and probably much more to be grieved, but in general I wonder – is this a reproach? Have we allowed something to pass by and become memory without truly reacting? Simply because we did not see it for ourselves?

[Robert Fuller]

@daela Joyce was the first thing that crossed my mind, and I think you’re right with the other examples. It’s like it’s a call to be more emotionally present. But then, everything seems like a reproach lately.

[Author]

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