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THE POIGNANCY OF COMING ACROSS DISCARDED PHILOSOPHICAL JARGON IN THE DOLLAR BIN OF THE USED BOOKSTORE

"[T]here are rare occasions when we experience an overwhelming awareness, not of *things* that are possible, but pure possibility *qua* possibility, nameless and unincorporated. It neither springs from nor is directed at a particular hope or despair in our life experience. We cannot pin it down except to say that what we are feeling is the presence of infinite possibility which is not directed *from*, *toward*, or *for-the-sake-of* anything.

"The possible in this manifestation fills us with apprehensiveness in the encounter; it seems unsafe, threatening, even diabolical. It is like Mephistopheles in Goethe's *Faust*, presenting itself as more primeval than Being itself. It is a nothingness restless with stirring intimations of being, a belabored womb from which being itself is to be cast out. Like one whose foot is slipping off the edge of a precipice, we feel ourselves falling headlong into a void. We draw back, grasping for any handhold we can get seeking refuge and protection in the limits or boundaries of reason.

"'Anything is possible' in this sense carries with it the notion that nothing -- absolutely nothing -- *has* to be, and that everything -- absolutely everything -- *can* be." -- “Art & Existentialism” by Arturo B. Fallico, 1962

Of course, this jargon isn’t *completely* discarded; it still lives, in Rockist criticism, with the difference that in Rockism (and here’s my objection), the only possible producer in Art or in Life of these moments is Rock, the whole Rock, and nothing but the Rock. A recent example by Jay Babcock, (courtesy Franklin Bruno):

“Rock & roll represents nothing if not the absolute destruction of chains: the sweet-heat moment of dance action; the moving, trembling, deafening vibration of molecules; the mind-body-spirit reaction to being in the presence of culturally-personally-spiritually-aesthetically resonant sounds and songs.”