Liongold's New Writeups

On demagoguery, and other acts of contemptible oratory (poetry)

2012-11-25T07:41:55Z

Language is rhetoricâs thoughtful muse:

A player of tricks, a partaker of views

Hydra-like, yet headless; for she is artisan

Of politics flavored, every pleasure partisan,

That can be filtered through her noose.

All who stumble in her wake are caught,

Wrapped in rhythms, bundled, for naught

Left wading in the dark, questing meaning

Where none is found within the keening â

An artful sentence, fluttering, hides no truth â

It is not there â only the susurrations of ruth

And moral envy, tipping their hat at tongues

Not loathe to waggle, or expending the lungs

Towards spreading the news â victims galore

To paradox and epiphanyâs incestuous amore.

And all the while the masses cheer, celebrating

Duckspeak and parrot-talk â double meaning

In entendres, enigmas in ciphers, all a mystery

With references, and a careless…

The Paper Man (thing)

2012-11-25T05:10:42Z

This is the Paper Man, who rustles when he walks. A hundred million folds dot his cheeks. His eyes flutter when he claps.

This is the Paper Man, whose back is square and broad and wavers in the wind. His limbs tumble from his corners. Turn him to the side, and he will be invisible. Fire frightens him greatly.

See him stumble, in the dark. You could roll him up in half and play drums with him, orÂ you could spread him flat on his back and write on him. He does not mind. He is the Paper Man, and he…

Caprice (poetry)

2012-10-27T22:27:31Z

Caprice, to you I owe no favours;
Recklessness, no fortune:
The promise of succour in all your flavours,
Both ill-timed and opportune,
Has paled; gone, that flush of youth,
That questions, that counters, that truth
Has not tempered yet to…

General Relativity (idea)

2012-05-30T21:18:22Z

Okay, so this is how it goes. To understand general relativity, hereâs a brief run-through of what Einstein accomplished with special relativity and how he intended to counter its deficits with his ideas of a general theory.

Special relativity is rooted, essentially, in one of the principles of Galilean relativity: to whit, the idea that it is impossible to say whether or not you are moving. For instance, if you were running with respect to a stationary bus, you could just as easily say that youâre standing at rest and that the bus was moving away from you. Similarly, if you were standing at rest and a train whooshes by, you could just as easily say that youâre in motion and itâs actually the train thatâs stationary with respect to you: there is no way to determine which one of you is really in motion. That is what the principle of Galilean relativity states: there is no test with which you can determine whether or not you are in motion. There is only…

A litany of love (poetry)

2012-05-17T10:41:47Z

Is written all over me" class='populated' >A litany of love
Is written all over me.

The words we have were not meant for this:
Enigmas, ciphers - they are better placed
As codes for a code, the mystery of you and this:
The meaning of pleasures, your lies, your taste

Is written all over me.

Even your smile has its song:
Awkward, delicate, like laughter laughed too long.
Your eyes have tongues only cameras can find:
Volumes are spoken; the trace they leave behind

Is written all over me.

If I had violins, I would play them on my heart:
Cup my fingers into bows, and let them part
My heartstrings till they pluck, from note and note,
A mournful, merry march, till murder she wrote

Is written all over me

But if this is your voice, whisper it to me:
Your language, your meaning, your metaphor
Are nothing to the tune of the air you breathe.
I am drunk on all your sounds: your tone
Has the timbre of wine to me.

Is written all over me" class='populated' >A litany of love
Is written all over me.

On the damaging effects of cultural mythology on the imagination (idea)

2012-05-12T07:22:34Z

I have this hypothesis that cultures featuring a great deal of mythology and/or religion tend not to possess or encourage greater use of the imagination.

I surmise this is because mythology, at least, traditionally, is typically presented as true and inviolable - imagining anything else could be construed as heresy to the existing orthodox, and thus tends not to be emphasised at all. Thus, we find a great paucity of inventiveness throughout most ancient cultures. For instance, a cursory analysis of Indian and Chinese culture would indicate little or no fermentation of new thought post the formation of an established mythology and philosophy: one would be hard pressed to look for startlingly new ideas post the establishment of pandeist Hinduism alongside Islam in India and Buddhism in China. Strains of thought derived from the same - Taoism or Confucianism, for instance, or the Sufi sect of Islam in India - do not count: as extensions or adaptations

…