CULT OF COMPLICATION (IX.15.08)

ON THE CULT OF COMPLICATION—
a rant in search of a key . . .

"There are only two ways to live your life.
One is as though nothing is a miracle.
The other is as though everything is a miracle."
Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

The contemporary worship of complication mistakes the
contortions of the intellect wrapping round itself for the mystery
of the new and unknown. The worship of complication, or
the deliberately difficult and obscure, is cultivated and is
consumed by a style of thinking that has lost resonance
with the natural world.

The cult of complication is like the obsessive figuring of a
mind caught up in the random zig-zag noise of 12-tone
melodies biting at the ears like hordes of hungry horseflies
in a hot afternoon sun. Or a mind addicted to the thrill of the
degenerative chaos of money markets as they surge like
drug-induced erections, and then, just as suddenly and
precipitously, totally collapse.

The energy that we sense when we spontaneously
encounter the new and unknown is an altogether different
order of movement. It instantly aligns, challenges, and speaks
to our whole being, like the firebolt of attraction we experience
when unexpectedly encountering an attractive stranger's face.
Or when we are struck dumb by a poet's magic wand of cascading
sound images which releases a flood of insight and emotion
within us. Or when we hear that one Mozart violin sonata in a
minor key that we must then learn by heart . That, is the miracle
of the new. Like the northface of an unclimbed mountain, it is
simply there:—pristine, pure and utterly indifferent to the confused
chatter of our clever coffeehouse reviews.

SIMPLICITY / COMPLEXITY CYCLE

Where the climax of complexity comes we

can never know for sure, but natural movement

always begins and ends with simplicity.

Draw a circle which is not

surrounded by emptiness;

Speak a word which does not

emerge from and return

to nothing at all.

Hidden Lake,
Eagle Cap Wilderness,
Oregon, IX.5.2008