Suit You, Sir

Runaway Feedback

The beat, the beat at my temples;
my pulse, my pulse in a rush.
I'm feeling increasingly mental,
legs shaking, my face flushed.

The lights so bright in a dazzle,
the pumping that thumps at my chest.
I'm feeling increasingly frazzled,
need some comfort, need some bedrest
or some kind of intervention,
cold sweat's beading up on my brow,
the hairs on my neck at attention,
I don't know why but somehow

I'm highly strung, I'm stressed as hell,
I bite my tongue, I hold my breath as well.
The iron lung, the diving bell…
time to depressurise, my nerves are shot to hell.

The beat, the heat is astounding,
the pressure, the tension full-blown,
the static is crackling around me,
I can't go on, I can't let go…

I'm highly strung, panic attack,
can't do this one, can't go on with the act.
I'm frozen on the topmost rung,
I can't go on, I'm just too highly strung.

 — Peter Hammill 'Highly Strung'

Dispensing Poison

All ideals are dangerous, since they denigrate and stigmatise what is actual.  They are poisons, which, however, as occasional medicaments, are indispensible.
 — Friedrich Nietzsche

Mind Over Matter

The distinction between mind and matter, which has become a commonplace in philosophy and science and popular thought, has a religious origin, and began as the distinction between soul and body. The Orphic, as we saw, proclaims himself the child of earth and of the starry heaven; from earth comes the body, from heaven the soul.
 — Bertrand Russell 'The History Of Western Philosophy' (p149)

Symbolisations Of Transcendence

The first step to participation in the destiny of humanity today, which is neither of this folk nor of that, but of the whole population of the globe, is to recognise every such local image of a god as but one of many thousands, millions, even perhaps billions, of locally useful symbolisations of that same mystery beyond sight or thought which our teachers have taught us to seek in their god alone.

 — Joseph Campbell 'The Inner Reaches Of Outer Space'

Gods As Facts Instead Of Symbols

For any god who is not transparent to transcendence is an idol,
and its worship is idolatry.
 — Joseph Campbell 'The Inner Reaches Of Outer Space'