160 lines
7.4 KiB
Plaintext
160 lines
7.4 KiB
Plaintext
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Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 7 Num. 11
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======================================
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("Quid coniuratio est?")
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THE NEW MORAL ORDER
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The Poems and Essays of David Martin
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Reviewed by Brian Francis Redman
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I think David Martin, a.k.a. "D.C. Dave" is on the right track.
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The November 1995 Conspiracy Nation Newsletter, "Tales of Dead
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Foster", alludes to the literary qualities of some conspiracy
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theories. Just when books are written saying that "literature is
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dead," along comes a whole new genre disproving the idea. And the
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ever-expanding "Tales of Dead Foster" are, I think, a sub-genre
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among the "growth industry of the '90s," conspiracy theories.
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When I first began covering the various conspiratologist theses,
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I had to, early on, confront the worry: "What if none of this is
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true?" What I realized then was that, hey, even if it's all
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bullsh**, at least they're great stories. (However, I should
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emphasize that I happen to consider much of the literature to be
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*fact*.)
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Conspiracy theories are where fact meets fiction: some are fact,
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some are fiction, and some are a little of both. But *the* thing
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about them is their current fertility. Just at the time academic
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literati are sighing in their ivory towers about the hopelessness
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of it all, the American genius for invention makes the fake ennui
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of the professoriate and their sycophants, finally, meaningless.
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I think these elegant, bored poseurs of the academy will wake up
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in the next decade and "discover" that quite a lot was going on
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right under their noses in the "dead" '90s.
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Dave Martin has carried the above to its next logical step: he
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has branched out into poetry. His is the first "conspiracy
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poetry" I have seen. Let's hope there is more of it. (While we're
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at it, why not a "conspiracy theater"? Someone may someday put
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together a play called "Dead Foster", or whatever. It could start
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with a park, a man walking through it, and light filtering
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through the leaves. The man could then stand at the bottom of a
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45-degree berm, shoot himself with a 1913 Colt revolver, lie down
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perfectly straight, place his arms straight out by his sides, and
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then die.)
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Martin is, among other things, a "poet of Dead Foster"; Foster's
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death has, as it were, caused him to burst forth in song. But
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these are not joyous songs but rather songs of grief and anger.
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The poet is unrelenting as he hammers on his theme:
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By law,
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Our top of the line law enforcement agency
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Should have got the designation.
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So how
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Did the woefully inadequate Park Police
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Come to do the investigation?
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And that is exactly where Martin falls down: too often, his poems
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are just mathematical formulae that rhyme; statistical essays
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with good rhythm. Art, in this reviewer's opinion, is *not* the
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language of facts and logic; it is the language of the emotions,
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something subtle that lives only so long as it transcends
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definition. The Russian philosopher P.D. Ouspensky says this very
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thing in his great work, *Tertium Organum*:
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The content of emotional experiences can never be wholly
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fitted into concepts or ideas and, therefore, can never be
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correctly and exactly expressed in words. The interpretation
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of emotional experiences and emotional understanding is the
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aim of art. Thus, in art we find the first experiments in a
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language of the future.
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All art consists in understanding and representing these
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elusive differences. Art sees more and further than we do.
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Art is already a *beginning of vision*. It sees much more
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than the most perfect apparatus.
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At the same time we know that not everything can be expressed
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in words. Therefore, not everything can be logical to us; a
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great many things are essentially outside logic. Feelings,
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emotions, and religion are outside of the domain of logic.
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All art is a complete illogicality.
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Ouspensky goes on to add that art, besides being a language of
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the emotions, also embraces intuition. He sees it as a superior
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way of seeing.
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Ouspensky's *Tertium Organum* deals heavily with the so-called
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"fourth dimension." Art is the language of the fourth dimension:
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when it lives in the fourth dimension, it is art; when it either
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does not reach that dimension or is analyzed down from there by
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inwardly dead yet gleaming literati bent on three-
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dimensionalizing the creation -- then it is not art but
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"something else". Being myself what I call a "de-frocked grad
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student" -- having once studied literature -- I am familiar with how
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academics normally preoccupy themselves with performing
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dissections of still-breathing masterpieces. Bent on pigeonholing
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the works of genius, they too often cannot see the forest for the
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trees and wind up killing the very thing they ostensibly try to
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understand. Art belongs to the fourth dimension. When you analyze
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it to death, you kill it -- but perhaps that's just what the
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inwardly dead yet gleaming literati secretly want.
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"D.C. Dave" however is not so hopeless as that. In this, his
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first book of what it is hoped are more to come, he is taking his
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first steps away from sledgehammer logic and toward what cannot
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be fully told on this plane -- the Truth. At times, he succeeds
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in *The New Moral Order*. He is at his best when he is able to
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escape his too-dominant brain and open up a bit, letting his
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heart speak:
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Killdeers swooping over stone-strewn hills,
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Embankments embellished with daffodils,
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Show horses grazing in meadows serene,
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And sycamores clustered in every ravine,
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This is old Virginia.
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Passages like the above give hope that Dave will grow towards his
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true voice.
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Other plusses about Martin's first book are that his poems rhyme
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and you can understand them. Martin writes for the People and not
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just to please the snobs. Martin is not, thank God, part of that
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incestuous clique. That, his populist sympathies, gives hope that
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he will grow over the years into one of our great American voices.
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(*The New Moral Order* by David Martin. DCD Publishers, PO Box
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222381, Chantilly, VA 22022-2381. $11.95. Please add $3.00 per
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copy for mail orders.)
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Aperi os tuum muto, et causis omnium filiorum qui pertranseunt.
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Aperi os tuum, decerne quod justum est, et judica inopem et
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pauperem. -- Liber Proverbiorum XXXI: 8-9
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