Intermittent Signaling

News through the Noise

If listening itself indicated Old-New advancing step-by-step along the Creative Path, any emergent structure of ascertainment reflected inside-out would be more than an experimental inversion: it would be evolutionary — with potentially revolutionary upspirals.

To that, as a new feature and fusion of Poetry, Thought, Word Magick, I’m setting up an offering to paid subscribers: gleaned signals, prompts, spiritual exercises. (This post is an initiation and preview — every now and then, significance identified through the noise.)

My concept for these signalings is not to be confused with Nate Silver’s The Signal and the Noise in terms of field, use, or methodology, although his definitions suit the purpose.

“The signal is the truth. The noise is what distracts us from the truth.” —Nate Silver

Of course, Silver has been making a lot of noise lately. Obviously, the election looms gargantuan and blaring, a fact hardly irrelevant to my project; but I’m not in the least endeavoring any sort of divination, much less a science of prediction, poll-based modeling, and statistical analyses, however oracular the discerned echoes of hearkening¹. Absolutely I’m in contention with the precarity of what’s before us. I’ve mentioned Simon Rosenberg’s Hopium Chronicles Substack more than once (launched after Nate Silver himself accused Rosenberg of smoking “hopium” for staying confident the purported red wave would never materialize during the 2022 midterms); Rosenberg, a veteran Democratic campaign operative rather than an elections forecaster, not only has an alternative approach to choosing and interpreting the available data contrary to Silver and most of that whole industry of pollsters and aggregators², but an alternative theory of the election: the widespread public disgust with MAGA since Dobbs is underacknowledged (and underreported by the mainstream media), skewing our understanding of what’s going on with voters on the ground. This proved true in 2022 and in most elections since — and, without complacency, this is a strong and competitive way to orient to what still needs to be done. Notably, Rosenberg is the foremost activist/commentator tracking the phenomenon of right-wing polling designed deliberately for obfuscation: a democracy-undermining tactic, polls skewed a few points to the right make a tight race seem even tighter, specifically for the purpose of delegitimizing the outcome should MAGA lose again.

We’ve seen this all before, but we’re likely to see it worse.

The ability to dismiss noise, to recognize any clamoring for what it is, to elude panic (even when there is indeed something to fear) is the key to equanimity, to clear-sightedness, to keeping one’s cool — for appropriate action or inaction. Don’t flinch under bluffs and ominous rumblings, war cries, Big Lies, blood libels, and guttural, demonic snarls. Uphold the wedge of unwavering awareness. Non-reactivity is the clairvoyant, clairaudient discipline of seeing through and hearing through chaos to what’s important. To the essential.

To a subtler signaling. At times. Possible only through clarity, as George Bernard Shaw has it under the entry of HONOR in the Man and Superman supplement “Maxims for Revolutionists”: Better keep youself clean and bright, you are the window through which you must see the world. This is self-possession on par with the skilled debater’s refusal to be baited, a determination to stay focused and undistracted under pressure, not to bother about buttons being pushed, restraint from indulging in one’s own anger and frustrations, dispensing with the inessential. Then what truths are open to you! — to be told boldy, poetically, as out of Parmenides’ fullness, irreverent to the opinions of mortals. From there, Heraclitean vigor is what it takes to hold onto philosophical clarity — listening to the Logos — I have to say as well it limns into a spiritual strength and clarity, this bodied resonance with any calling within the words, beyond the words, Logos And Kairos, timelessness and the right time for truths, utterance, sorting out the timeless within historical time and the varieties of ways such can be experienced… sorting out what matters. We are bombarded with news, news-noise, domination of news cycles claimed as wins and reality, so the endeavor to discern news through the noise is indeed an echo of Ezra Pound’s definition of literature as “news that stays news.” Or likewise, William Carlos Williams: It is difficult/ to get the news from poems/ yet men die miserably every day/ for lack/ of what is found there. Undeniably, I’m saying yes to essences, and the poetic. Nevermind that the poet’s ear is a bit grotesque, that shell-like crescent of gristle which can be picked up along the dusty, ancient paths (if one only knows where to look) and — quivering alive, magickally immortal — held to the head like a horn. Thence, poetic license hones its own sense, uncanny valley, instinct, intuition, gut for the human and fleshly against the ghost, apparition (hallucination) in the machine; a good sense along the lines of common sense but in the way Heraclitus uses the word “common,” as universal, available to all — the eternal in the spiralling of things, materiality.

The essential, what matters.

True power resides solely in the light of the mind. This is exactly what fascism, tyranny, and hatred long to extinguish. The thinking, lucent human spirit is the best defiance and the only progress.

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• Signal: True Power resides solely in the Light of the Mind (Spirit).

  Your singular consciousness holds your own. Now and forever.

• Prompt: Refine a memory of a scene from your life when emotion, such as fear or rage, overwhelmed your senses.

  To begin, outline the time and setting. Describe the situation as succinctly as possible, no more than two or three sentences — all the while conjuring the vision of it in your head. Roughly, recreate the experience of whatever passion overcame you as it was for all five senses: here, you are tapping into the effect of disequilibrium on your perceptions. How selective was your hearing? Did you see red? How distorted were the words coming in, how warped the space? Was there a metallic taste in your mouth, or dryness on your tongue, a clog in your throat? Did your nostrils flare and burn, were you hot or cold or was it different for different parts of your body? Were your fists clenched? Were you shaking? Could you touch anything, could you be touched? What was behind you? As extensively as possible, get a feel for all elements of your sensory apparatus and how they affected the incoming.

  Truthfully, how clear were you in those moments? Notice, still in memory, your brain recorded something aside of the matter so present to your intensity. What was it, what was there? What did you miss? There’s a phrase that could come of that, lyric or sybylline — it might be telling.

• Spiritual Exercise: The Internal Horizon Dawn