Here I am to cause trouble a full two weeks early.
“Why!?” you ask.
Aha! That is to be revealed deeper into the email… and the reasons may not really be as cool as you think.
First, some very fine music:
Ah yes, Prince Igor Svyatoslavich, a classic example of a person lost to history if it weren’t for the art made in their honor. Sometimes the creation outweighs the figure when it comes to the weight on our daily lives, and while this was Borodin’s final unfinished work, that oboe alone gives it the spirit to compete with some of the greatest pieces of the era; if not of history itself.
A-a-and there I go again running my fingers about music barely anyone cares about these days.
Bless you, Reader. Thank you for putting up with my side-bars. It really is too good of you to pay so much attention to me scribbling away at you every month like this.
With appreciations delivered, let’s start with the cool news of the month.
Get Occult Vengeance for FREE:
Yup, I figured it’s been enough time; probably a good enough reason for a special price.
The mysteries of A’vea are waiting for you to uncover them, as well as a roguish chemist and a very sassy fairy to provide you companionship. I bet you’ll be asking yourself just what happened in this world before long – keep your eyes peeled for secrets!
That’s right, the first book of Soot Knight, (which is also the first book in the epic Rondian Legacy) is now being presented for you with positively no barrier to entry, I mean, unless you want a barrier to entry of some kind.
Oh? Okay then, here goes:
Make me something (a drawing, poem, anything you like), and send it over so I can have something you made; that way, you can feel fully justified in having something that I have made – sounds fair?
Or you could just download them and not talk to me. I understand you’re busy, and you are here for the reading first and foremost, are you not? Consider said “barrier for entry” to be as low or as high as you like.
Also, note that this promo does not require a sign up whatsoever, so feel free to share it with your friends while also keeping them safe from the Minion Horde.
Anyway, you can check out the promos to get the book (as well as others in this promotion if they’re to your taste) by checking out the following links:
And if you just HATE promos, here’s a link straight to the goods: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B083ZHVV1R
It’s only good from the 1st of the month to the 5th, so act fast or miss out.
Please enjoy! (and I look forward to your artistic masterpiece arriving at my inbox sometime 😉 )
Onward!
Reflection: Ars Longa, Vita Brevis
Get ready for a heavier one.
Now this is perhaps an old person thought process, but we can just call it an outlook “tempered with wisdom” to make me feel better about myself, please.
So, what is important in life?
Like really: what is really important?
Are we as thinking, feeling, judging creatures expected to do what is best for ourselves, our society, or our world, or for history first and foremost?
Such a question obviously knocks on the door of other superseding questions, such as “why are we here” and “were we made by something with an expectation for us”.
To all of that, I can only deliver a very gentle toast of the coffee mug; the sort that doesn’t provide a concrete answer, but at least acknowledges that there is supposed to be an answer somewhere cooped up in the regions of philosophy and theology that people tend not to visit on nearly enough, usually because they believe they (or their parents, friends, government, etc.) figured it out already, and as such they’re more or less absolved from using their brains in such a manner as stuffy and time-consuming as “existence philosophy”.
That said, I’m not here to answer that question for anyone today, let alone myself. Most everyone tends to have their own theory, and they tend to be pretty sure of it. On the other hand, there are a few that taut to be “open minded” about how this stuff works, but they are so dogmatic about their open mindedness that it creates a religion all of its own!
Exciting stuff, humans!
How cool it would be to be someone like Chaos and not have to worry about such frivolous questions as “what are we supposed to do for our lives?” and then the follow question “how should we then use our time?”
Quite a quandary, really.
I’ve listened a fair deal through my years, and I’ve heard a few pretty good answers that do appropriately wrestle with some of these issues.
Perhaps family and loyalty is the only thing that matters, but if family matters, then that must also mean that ensure the survival of our species through our own strain must also matter, as with that exception, what else could be important other than one’s own feelings on the matter?
Is it really so crucial to continue whatever you are? Is your answer for that simply because you enjoy existing, or inversely are just afraid of not existing for some reason? I’m no expert on the afterlife, but when you are no longer with us, I feel like it’s a fair bet that you won’t be quite as concerned with the goings-on of our reality anymore. Granted, you could be a ghost or something, but that rounds us back to the “thoughts on what matters” train.
Perhaps feelings itself is the one chief item that should command our attention, and we should simply do what we feel like. This approach, which some like to call hedonism, will continually hold a lion’s share of our population’s interests for as long as wise people fail to inspire other people to greater heights of action. The attractive thing about doing whatever you feel is that it’s always relevant to you; never abstract. If you want to go eat a bunch of pizza and then stop before you feel bad, congratulations, you have discovered the balance called on for such a life.
What is a bit of an issue are all these hedonists that go by another name. There is any number of people you can meet that will claim to follow a creed, but when you peel back their language, culture, and “aesthetic”, you will see their actions for what they truly are: another (naturally and mostly blameless) formation of cells thinking in outstandingly complex ways for its own betterment, and the betterment of those it considers to be “essentially” themselves (i.e. children, family, fellow citizens, close friends).
Perhaps this is a really tacky way of saying that it is tiresome when people do not conduct the appropriate introspection to understand what truly motivates them. One can say they are led by a certain motivation, but their actions will prove that it’s hardly a priority that arrives in the train station of their mind. Yes, it is only an observation, and no, it’s not really fair to act as though the masses are actually so unwashed and foolish. People who assume that we are not all uniquely considerate about our own condition are also those who would lose track of their pride – which is perhaps the greatest downfall of all human failures.
Why, in fact this kind of self-preservation could be said of most primary motivations seen in humans.
Give yourself a moment to think about the great motivators of people. It’s easy to find someone who will kill to eat and feel accepted and reproduce in the name of themselves, god, king, country, creed, class, or otherwise. The rarity lies in those who step over the bounds of their connected self interests, and look out for the right to the true whole, not simply of one’s men, or color, or nation, or way, or who they bow to, or of humanity, or even of the whole world itself.
It’s a great question, and I think this one does have an answer that can satisfy most:
Beauty.
Not the falsehoods of emotion called beauty that persuade people to weep using underhanded emotional ploys, but the continual creation, upkeep, and sharing of things that are truly, absolutely wonderful. Beauty, the true, sublime kind, can be bright and happy, or sad and painful; they fulfill their own purpose and become perfect in what they’re meant to be:
The artist that paints the cathedral ceiling-
The chef that creates a single, perfect moment of taste-
The writer that inspires with a play-
The soldier whose kinetic prowess can be witnessed for but a single, perfect moment of deadliness-
The conductor who creates an atmosphere of magic-
The farmer who lifts life out of the earth to create arrays of pure, hospitable green-
These are the things that we as humans must be called to do. I am not one to challenge the nature of a divine creator, (after all, that certainty in of itself could be an insulting presumption,) but in all the things we read, and listen to, and trust in; this is perhaps the most self-evident: whatever may have created us, we can create things, too.
We can choose only to consume, to let entropy’s slow stone crush us into oblivion along with everything that those around us have made, or we can create art.
Art- Art!
Real art: The kind of stuff that takes forever to master! It doesn’t need to be great and pretentious – hell, it doesn’t even need to change anything! It could just be the simplest, greatest “thing” that you can think of.
We only consider people to be masters at something because we haven’t seen anyone take their craft further. There are upper limits to this greatness that we have not even comprehended yet.
It’s true that people will make lazy things because they’re easy, and it’s still “art” after all, but what’s the fun in that? Why not create art so much that you cannot ever be questioned again as to its quality? Why not work so hard and so diligently at the things you pursue that you change what the “thing” itself is?
It takes so long to create wonderful things, because they’re just absolutely that worthwhile. Spirit, observation, and effort is what makes the great things what they are, and I’d like to invite you, Reader, to make great things with me. We can make the world anything we’d like it to be, and whatever it turns into, I doubt it could be worse than if it was never made – everything has a right to be at some point in time, if only to teach us humans never to do it again.
I know that’s an earful. I usually try to keep it shorter than that.
It’s always a pleasure to give my thoughts to you about this sort of thing. I’m sure you don’t agree with the whole of it, but I am happy that I could at least open up about it – iron sharpens iron, after all.
Now, I’d love to dump more on your lap, but I think I’ve already done quite enough with the whole free book and rambling chaotic essay thing. I think I’ll cut it here and say so long until next month, where you can expect an email on the normally scheduled 15th.
Oh! That’s right, I was going to tell you why you’re receiving this today, rather than two weeks from now.
It’s because I didn’t think about it, and scheduled the promotion for the first of the month – totally absent-minded.
Write to you again soon, bye now!
Coffee... WRITING!... COFFEE!! 