Piano Blue Roses Sing Gently
Disclaimer: not an interpretation of Syudou’s Usseewa and Naima, but an articulation of the reason behind my discord username, Nietzschean Naima.
The wind dances, the street breaths, trees fall silent and flats bath into the crepuscular sunlight cracking through polluted clouds. There is an emptiness in my chest, things remain the same but they are not things anymore. Previously, what I was seeing had its own meaning and impression upon me. Now all fades away, indifference. Something has broken, I cannot make sense of sense anymore. This is the desert of the real. Words no longer mark my heart; they fly impersonally just like leaves descend into dust. So simple: void. You can call this depression, depersonalization, a certain estrangement, as if I am condemned to be isolated into a world where only the tick of the clock faintly resembles the anchoring emotion of veracity, reality, experiencing.
I am a Naima which can no longer shout usseewa. I cannot revolt, there is nothing left against which to fight for. In what sense has one to articulate the critical program of deconstructing social norms and advocating for compassion if the world itself is nothing other than a mixture between my projections and mere matter. Can one articulate this question objectively? What does it mean to ask this question? What is a question? I have halted the hypocrisy of pretending to have answered even this question. When one tries to see the root from which one develops an anti-war, anti-dictatorship discourse, one has to be careful to not implicitly carry the violence further. Language is fragile, and if my usseewa is too strong, it can kill, but if it is too soft, it is mere a gentle breeze leading to nothing. Thus, language is fundamental, and I speak, but I cannot talk.
In this sense, like the siren who has given her tongue to the witch for being able to meet her love, so during the wave of burning revolutionary fire I have purged my voice by being too passionate, by sacrificing myself and my ‘spiritual body’ instead of peacefully cultivating it — injections of caution. I should have been cautious, but here I am catatonic, unable to constitute healthy social relations. I need to rest, to rest, but it is not over. There is a return, a reincarnation, but more likely a birth, I have never been myself, I have only been a rebellious controversy. I have only used my gentleness and strength to build castles, but never a bridge. Why I say that? Simply because my compassion towards the world has been one of building a nice home for all, yet, implicitly, I have been isolating myself against the world by this very scream against authority, without awareness of being merely reactionary. Created a very nice home, but zero bridges. I followed to the letter the well-known truth that monads have no windows, instead of creating them for the first time.
Can a Naima be a gentle Gira Gira? Can Ado avatars unite just as different immanent components of a concept condense into one intensity point which is a concept? — as Deleuze details in the chapter “What is a Concept?” from What is Philosophy. Is Chando the concept while all Ado characters are separate versions, aspects, mirrors through which Chando projects herself to the world? And then, to what problem is Ado’s music responding to since a concept is created in relation to a problem it addresses. Each song has its own story, and I do not think that one can reduce it to one thread, yet, in a clumsy way, I would say that it is the story of all of us, of emotions, of intensities, of interpreting, of desiring and of creating pleasures. Pleasure, as Deleuze shows in One Thousand Plateaus, is the opposite of desire, in the sense that desire interpreted as lack, as that impulse incentivizing one to seek pleasure, is not genuinely desire. Desire, in its very suchness, is fully immanent requiring no external sources, no seeking. Desire is free circulation of the world, it is joy, ecstasy, simplicity, but also an authentic openness to the aching, painful side of things. In the end, the root of dissatisfaction is the proliferation of pleasure, of a vicious lack-pleasure cycle. Can Naima be more than Naima?
Can one act freely, as an existence not predefined by an essence? This idea, of consciousness as existence preceding essence is found in Sartre’s book Existentialism is a Humanism. He argues against psychoanalysis, against the idea that one is determined by the world. His argument is that one’s ability to question, to not take the being of something for granted, implies that one can distance oneself from any casual chain of events. This argument is found in Being and Nothingness — precisely, in the fourth section of the first chapter. Merleau-Ponty has fairly criticized Sartre’s zeal by pointing out that for one to exercise one’s freedom one has to act in a world populated by challenges and bodies. Furthermore, one oneself is a body, a body which is neither pure matter nor spirit, but in-between. Thus, for Naima to be more than Naima, it is not about a radical rupture, a shout, an usseewa, a violent cry against the disciplinary regime of etiquette. Rather, it is about a refined process of self-affirmation both through shouts, but also through gentle caresses. One is consciousness, an ‘I can’, a stubborn resistance against letting oneself be defined by the other. However, one is embodied, is a body, and, thus, one is constituted through bounds with others. In so far as Naima is an archetype of a shout, of usseewa, it needs also become an aitakute, an “I wanna see you”, a gentle openness, an invitation card for friendship.
This synthesis and promise of a revolution not tainted by any violence, no war against war, no unfair treatment of anybody, might be possible because I articulated it now. Since I can choose this, I will, and shall do my best. This is a law of love; it is the reverse side of the law of balance which states that no violence can be justified since there is no higher good obtainable by it (Indeed, I played Full Metal Daemon: Muramasa). This love balances the strength of might by showing that one’s might can blossom only through the other’s might. Thus, the amor fati affirmation of life, the yes-sayer of Nietzsche is not one of a war of everyone against everyone, but that of a sport competition. Might has its place, so does love. The law of love has its blade. When balance cannot be kept without a kick in the ass, an usseewa is required. However, it is meant for the sake of the living, it expatiates, like Walter Benjamins divine violence in Critique of Violence.
After all I am Nietzschean Naima, a Naima trying to be not only Naima. I aim to create windows for monads to talk, write, and gaze through. I do not know if I am mad, if such ideal balance between usseewa and aitakute is possible — experimentation, that is the path, try, try!
Bibliography:
In Monadology, point 7, Leibnitz states that “The monads have no windows through which something can enter or leave” — in other words, eyes allow one to see another’s body and gestures but never what goes in one’s mind. The quote has been taken from here.
Other philosophical references have been mentioned throughout the text.
