My grande finale, my goodbye...
J. Lydon
I can do no more with word, for those of you who dont deserve
D. Dermond
Call me liar, and perjure your enterprise
Gregg G. Brown
A treatise on the highest and the best; no small undertaking! In fact such a magnificent project, the stars of which are so grand, so powerful, that only a wisp of blinding right may be presumed as I humbly but heroically endeavor to understand these magicians of spirit, these founts of the most radiant gist. From Manfred upon the lonely cliffs of his own terror to a serious young songstress pouring her heart out upon our blessed altars of perception, the incarnation of what is highest and best is often elusive, intangible; it is a matter that involves the most refined of sacred essences. These highest expressions of the soul vary in intensity but share the same undying commitment to the noble truths that enwound our human hearts. Like sweet indigo silks, they tighten to bleed their sweet lights upon us.
The heroic poets attention to the value of ideas is one of his greatest glories. Such a creator has what is almost an intuitive understanding of the creative principle in both spirit and nature. A creative spirit of this kind operates unbridled, and he remains unbroken by the world at large. A passion for life, and an unmoving will to find life in life, to glean the most radiant aspects from every experience, is central to the emotional approach of such Credent Regalists. I believe that ideas of the highest and most spiritual nature are central to each mans life, and I believe that these ideas are often ignored or betrayed due to an imposed conformity, or because of a fear of the life-changes that are demanded of the perceiver when he truly sees that which is beautiful,and then integrates that sense of the beautiful into his entire life.
I endeavor to forgo all of the fear in my life, to meet each radiant prospect or encounter with the same zeal that Byron hadall the time.
The gift of fury is a rare essence that the radiant soul taps and locks into. It is the will to do something, anythingas long as the action taken burns and ignites our feelings at their very core! I spurn those who float upon the easy tide, gliding through a seaweed series of half-discerned entanglements and mental conflicts,conflicts that do not engage the real challenges involving the highest questions of life, but instead rehearse the kind of intellectual impotencies that render the reader helpless and make their author a victim of his own foul lies. A rage for experienced truth can help bring an individual to the abstract conviction that he has the ability to perceive his own feelings correctly and meaningfully. Such a rage has no patience with the easy self-deceit of cliques and fashionsall of the lies and misdirections that one comes to accept in place of original convictions.
Often it is a matter of several generations before the rare rage for order and originality of such a creator is recognized by those creators who come after him, and then, eventually, by the public at large. Once recognized and appreciated, they stand before us as irreproachable and unassailable in their accomplishment. We can only describe them by naming them, as when some tragic heros name becomes an adjective that indicates the unique crux his imagined experience has illuminated for the rest of us. Why does the true poet require this multi-generational judgment of his peers before his word is law? Because the true poet, using beauty as his talk, speaks as an individual to other individuals andif one believes in all the fractions of the Hindic systemonly some infinitesimal proportion of mankind comes in each generation to the light. I myself would throw off such systems and have each man stand independently and reign over himself as he is, and as he may come to be in all the scope of his human possibility.
Today, individuals who come to this blinding passage of perception and self-assertion are confronted by a state of almost mythic fragmentation. It seems to them that the unity of being that they feel and know subjectively, on a personal level, cannot possibly be real, or at least cannot be consciously acknowledged as real. Taking such subjective experiences seriously would demand too many impossibilities if it turned out that they were really true. If my subjective hopes and feeling participate in reality, then all of reality must respond to my personal experience; my tears and my laughter can potentially transform the worldhow utterly important then is each grimace and grin! And so, the first experience of an individual trying to claim the Credent Regale that is humanitys inheritance is oftenalmost inexorablymixed with a kind of whipping self-torture.
Given each Regalists gift/curse to perceive, experience, and codify the sublime graces of the ideal into a voice unbelled from the heavens, they are unfortunately, much of the time, simply singing to the deaf. To truly hear and internalized the power of anothers felt perceptions and to acknowledge their reality demands that you acknowledge the power and effectiveness of your own felt perceptionsand begin to take self-conscious responsibility for their effects in the world. Better to shut ones ears to symphonies than acknowledge the challenge that we must raise the baton ourselves! And so, the mass of mankind hears no good, sees no good, and speaks no good. This is the torture of the artist and it imbues not only his work but every aspect of his experience, which demands that a perfected divinity of action result from every rote motion of existence. The Credent Regalist does not accept life as it is dealt to him; he reconstructs life from the spiritual gems of his own infinite seashis felt perceptionsand erects monuments of everliving word. This recreation of reality comes to the poet like the voice of Michael the Archangel telling the devil to go to hell, and it is his only salvation in a world where LIFE is not held sacred.
I am always held in awe by the tortured furies of such modern Regalists. The shattered essence of the artist: born in pain, and destined to die youngwho understood this? Not the watery eye of a rotting Beat poet, but often those who idolized the Beats. Many modern Romantics struck their riches by folly or by trainwreck, often inspired by what they perceived as a Beat aesthetic. Richard Hell, Patti Smith, T. Verlaine, Colin Newman, Devoto, Lydon, etc, were Romantics and Credent Regalists by example and lifeforce rather than as self-conscious artists.
I am well aware of all the detailed dickering and sinisterly infinite mechanisms modern consciousness has imposed upon the anointed joy of poetry. Such attitudinal or stylistic restrictions are helpful in a pinch, and they may keep the modern reader from wincing. But only the high and mighty frank talk that honesty imposes will ever build a civilization out of these fragments of consciousness again. Our discussions must be severe and high and sincerehow else can we ever again hope to be these things ourselves? We must not fear this seriousness in ourselves because of some morbid or nitpicking taste; what flower ever stopped blossoming because it thought itself too beautiful?
Signed, in the commission of a defense of Poesy:
Gregg G. Brown
Daniel B. Dermond
Respectfully submitted as:
THE LORD DERMOND
GREGG GLORY
THE LORDS OF WORD
From the collection "Ghosts and Princes"
Written by Gregg Glory [Gregg G. Brown]
More information available on gregglory.com.