I know why I stopped going
to Kettle, and it is not just because they owe me money and there’s no getting
through their Kafkaesque bureaucracy. Two words: (that I would not be typing
weren’t I drunk, most probably) Danielle Moore. The delightful little Taurus
girl was a Princeton student of Philosophy whom I met on the Flag Football
Field of Grape Day Park. She was doing some course work at St. John Paul the
Great University on Grand. I spoke to her beside a big tree. I wrote for her a
list of all of the Taurus philosophers I knew at the time.
1. Soren
Kierkegaard.
2. Karl
Marx.
3. William
James.
4. Ludwig
Wittgenstein.
5. Bertrand
Russell.
I don’t know if she ever
ended up looking them up. All that I know is that she never added me online. I
saw her outside Plan Nine Alehouse, before I was banned without cause (Kafka
would have a field day) and asked her to share a drink with me. She smiled and
told me later. Later never came. I past her at Kettle and got the distinct
feeling in my sympathetic nervous system that told me it was over.
But then: that never stopped
me and Alanna.
So I kept coming back. Like
Wittgenstein said: a philosopher who does not engage in intellectual debates is
like a boxer who does not go to matches. I disagree with him, of course. And it
is a bit too late to get into a debate with the old, dead weirdo. Whatever. The
best writers got their biggest audience post mortem, Wittgenstein included. And
I know enough about Debate from experience to know that it does not reveal the
truth; it is a form of aggressive and amoral sophism that leaves you in
contempt of Truth Itself. But then: who ever did live up to Wittgenstein’s
saintly expectations? Genius has a way of projecting itself onto the ordinary;
I Know This. And I don’t need any more triggering memories of people reciting
the same old collegiate bullshit that earns them a fast pass to the top of a
dogmatic pile of dog pile.
And yet, and yet, and yet:
What is a musician who does
not play shows??
Dm.A.A.
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