An American Prayer

Do you know the warm progress under the stars?
Do you know we exist?
Have you forgotten the keys to the Kingdom?
Have you been borne yet & are you alive?
Let's reinvent the gods, all the myths of the ages
Celebrate symbols from deep elder forests
[Have you forgotten the lessons of the ancient war]
We need great golden copulations
The fathers are cackling in trees of the forest
Our mother is dead in the sea
Do you know we are being led to slaughters by placid admirals
& that fat slow generals are getting obscene on young blood
Do you know we are ruled by T.V.
The moon is a dry blood beast
Guerilla bands are rolling numbers in the next block of green vine
Amassing for warfare on innocent herdsmen who are just dying
O great creator of being grant us one more hour to perform our art & perfect our lives


Jim Morrison 

Terry on like, language and shit

A certain postmodern fondness for not knowing what you think about anything is perhaps inflected in the North American speech habit of inserting the word "like" after every three or four words. It would be dogmatic to suggest that something actually is what it is. Instead, you must introduce a ritual tentativeness into your speech, in a kind of perpetual semantic slurring. 

-Terry Eagleton

It's like, you know, he's smart. Terry really, like, knows his shit. 

Terry on the good life

The good life is all about an enjoyable well-being, but that is not its immediate aim. Making enjoyment the end of your life, as, say, Mick Jagger seems remarkably successful at doing, may mean that you have to devote a lot of time to planning for it, which in turn may have the result of making your life less enjoyable. This does not seem to be the most tragic deficiency in Mick Jagger's life, but it makes the point that if you really want self-fulfillment, the best way is not to think about yourself. This is not to commend the altruism of the downtrodden, who forget about their own need so as to keep someone else in clover. IT is just to say that well-being is not something you aim at directly, since it is not one good among other. Rather, it is the result of many different kinds of goods. In this sense, Aristotle is a pluralist when it comes to what counts as the good life. 

-Terry Eagleton