kagablog

By Ramon dos Santos

1.

This is the age of Identities.
Of lifestyle, logo’s and intentions.
This is not the age of ideologies or a belief in something outside the Self.

1.1

In the past century Man has fought himself a way from the ideological to the conceptual. And from the conceptual into the virtual.
Now at the beginning of a new millennium, the only logical next step for man is to venture into the Mental.

2.

Ever since the ape stopped being a reptile and stood up and became Us, man’s perception has always been the subject of fashion.

2.1

The notion of fashion is the only thing that really separates us from other creatures. We are subject to fashion because we can SEE time. No other creature can SEE time like us. They might sense it. Feel it. Even hear it subconsciencely in whispering winds, but it cannot see time like us. So no other creature but us can see the difference between this and last year’s fashion and thus has no need for it.

2.2

Fashion is next to many other things the result of boredom. Boredom is the result of being able to see time.

2.3

Fashion has also been the number one engine behind civilization and progress. On occasions, in history, it became fashionable to be smart. To think and act accordingly. We now live in a time though in which the fashion is to be stupid. To not think and act accordingly.

3.

As the universe expanded through time, so did man’s brain. On scale, the human brain expanded with the speed of light.

4.

During the last century, while the universe kept expanding at its steady pace, REALITY has exploded into multiple big-bangs of facts, images, recorded time and space.

4.1.

Also. With every picture taken, with every sound recorded, reality doubles. For even if this picture is one of the smallest detail, the humblest grain of sand, we cannot think this grain free from its surroundings, and thus not free of the reality it represents.
So with every picture taken of a reality of which already pictures have been taken, reality quadruples. This gigantesque multiplication of realities has already long ago reached its perceptional limit. And so it became fashionable not to think.

4.2

The more we copy reality in art or thought, the less reliable she becomes.

4.3

Our immediate surroundings resemble the outskirts of the universe: neither can be comprehended without either a filter or a key. As we do not possess the key, and are not too keen on becoming mad, we adjust a filter, and thus we become stupid and insensitive. This is called maturing.

4.4

To block out the ever changing and ever brighter light of reality, man has adjusted many different filters in the last century. We have changed the ideological filter for the conceptual one. And exchanged the latter for a virtual sunblock.
But no filter is strong enough to block out entirelythe burning light of exploding realities. So in order not to go collectively insane, as we are well busy trying to do, we have to search for the mental key.

4.5

To get hold of this mental key man has to develop a third half of the brain. A bridge between both sides of the brain. A bridge between the alpha and the omega of an infinite number of big-bangs.

4.6

The Big-Bang was not a moment in time, or the beginning of time. The Big-Bang is a continuous proces. It IS time.

4.7.

Perception is a parasite of the senses.
As reality doubles, so does perception.

4.8.

Perception defines who we are. Or who we think we are. Or who other people think we are. In any case: if perception doubles, so does our identity. We are no longer one. We have never been just One. “Being oneself” is either a technical, psychological and philosophical impossibility or just a plain lie.

5.

A true philosopher questions the manifestations of reality. And thus, a true philosopher does not think with his mind.
For his mind is full of fixed ideas that do not reperesent reality, but a mental mask blocking the true philosopher’s view and thoughts.
A true philosopher therefore, like a true artist, thinks with his eyes and genitals.

5.1.

You cannot think about writing and write at the same time. You cannot make music and think about making music at the same time.
The writing IS the thinking.
The music IS the thought.

5.2

All art is recorded thinking.

5.3

All art is pain, in search of its cause.

6.

I can be anyone I choose to be. In fact I am many. I can say fart and kill and tender things on the side and see no conflict in their assembly.

6.1

As morality is tightly connected to the notion of identity and perception, it changes as the latter two change. The fact that we are more than one identity suggests that we also have more than one set of morals. This cannot be. For a moral is always on its own. Therefore, once we recognize our other identities and let them grow, we have to abandon every notion of morality.

6.2.

This is how we will learn to understand the universe. For there are no conflicts in the universe. There are no opposites, and no ‘forces’ or counterforces. There is no morality in super-nova’s.
The true universe is what is Not. The vacuüm. The stuff we are, mainly, made of.
Only the tiniest percentage of the space we occupy with our bodies is not one hundred percent vacuüm.

6.3.

Imagine two bottles. One is filled with wine. The other only carries the tiniest – actually invisible – drop of wine.
When the question is aked: “Which one of these two is a bottle of wine?” everyone will give the obvious and correct anwser.
Yet, when the same question concerns the so-called reality that surrounds us, we choose the empty bottle.

6.4.

In making art, in searching for the lost bonds with the universe, we learn to recognize the vacuüm as the main substance of reality.

6.5.

This leads to the inevitable conclusion that there has never been, nor ever will be, a big bang. We were never on our marks, ready and set to go. There is no beginning, for there is no time.

7.

All that I had to say about the artworks in this book, and the mental masks by which they were seen for the first time, I have said.
It should be noted though that, just as each person cages a million identities, each word is the prison of a million thoughts.