Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams

"What good is living when you living diseased?" Tffremix

*****

HarperCollinsPublishers

 Comment: In case you did not know.  

The reference in the Tff quote above is to a short story in this collection by Sylvia Plath.

This quote from Plath is used as a description of the book:

"What I fear most, I think, is the death of the imagination.... If I sit still and don't do anything, the world goes on beating like a slack drum, without meaning. We must be moving, working, making dreams to run toward; the poverty of life without dreams is too horrible to imagine."  (Sylvia Plath, from Notebooks, February 1956)

Not very Zen-like you would agree.  But then again Plath was an anguished being who ended her life tragically.

*****

Ps (March 4):

I know that Plath has a considerable body of poems too and I have read a few even though confessional poetry is not my thing - well poetry in general mostly misses my attention.

I read somewhere that some critics say that confessional poetry is solipsistic; I expect the critical reference is to philosophical solipsism by way of highlighting its inward preoccupation. 

In the now almost 7 years that I have been writing here I have taken down posts that tend toward inward preoccupation and I have left a lot more of the same up.

That said, there is no reason behind this post other than the fact that the TFF song from which the quote above is drawn was playing in my car as I made my way to the gym yesterday (lately I only listen to music in the car).

And, I can't get it out of my head so I wrote it here and several caring folks sent me email to ask why.

Thanks kindly for the concern but No I am not depressed and Yes I know we have lost friends to suicide in recent months; this post is just another one of those annoying post-modern affectations.  You know the kind where you make something out of anything and think it relevant.

Kinda like most TFF music.  Mere posturing.

In Postcolonial theory terms such motioning would be said to "signify" nothing, nada and niks.  And in Zen Buddhism terms it would be even devoid of nothing - less than zero.  Utterly meaningless unless of course you wanna go find out more about Plath or listen to the remix of Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams.

You asked and I explained.  :0)

Onward!