HyperEnlightenment, or Penis Injections In The Rain at the Haus Der Kunst
the isaacsohn dialogues 6a
Bryan Johnson injects botulinum into his penis. Maurice Isaacsohn drops his key, gets stuck in the rain. Pony Isaacsohn sees contemporary art at a building designed for Adolf Hitler, feels depressed. What do these three experiences have in common? They are the actions of people who are fooling themselves. How are we fooling ourselves? Because we believe that we are the mask. The mask of an aging cock. The mask of someone who has lost his keys in the rain. The mask of an artist betrayed by an art world that hates art.
What’s under the mask? Any words I use for it will be inadequate. I feel it now, writing in the sun at a rented apartment somewhere in Munich talking with Loaf about episodes of sodomy and murder detailed Benvenuto Cellini’s insane autobiography. It is easier to feel, now, with an energy drink and some more coffee running through me — that is one thing drugs do, connect us back to the it, to the everything, to awareness, to God, to whatever it is under the mask.
Had you told me in the depths of my despair last night that my pain was fake, that I was identifying with a mask, I would’ve shrugged and said you were right and not felt anything. Because it isn’t just identifying with the mask. It is a welding of the mask to the face. How? Through what you call the “complete abandonment of intelligence that comes from shame.”
It happened to me right now, this complete abandonment of intelligence in the face of shame..” In order to use my camera at the museums, the single remaining battery must be charged every night before. After writing the last paragraph I looked up, saw the camera on the table and realized that it hadn’t been charged last night. Shame rushed through me, not much, but some. Now the battery is charging and I’m back writing and wondering: will I ever be able to see the camera on the table, remember that it has been charged, get up and charge it, come back and write without the bolt of shame? What is that shame doing? Why is it there?
The shame (for me, at least) happens at the youngest level of my psyche, happens to the part of my persona called Little BB, the so-called inner child. For this little one inside of me feels safe and connected to the world when it does things the right way and when it does things the wrong way it feels unsafe, disconnected — feels shame.
What does any of this have to do with hyperreality? My self-description of shame as the hurt experience of a younger self is inspired by Internal Family Systems — a therapeutic modality invented a few years after Baudrilliard used the term “hyperreality” to describe a situation governed by “the principle of simulation.” What the French theorize, the Americans enact. IFS is a consciously constructed simulation designed to transform nameless psychic hurt into quasi-conscious internal parts supported by an all-loving, all-knowing Self.
Let me end on the outrageous proposal that this is simply a re-creation of God’s creation of the world, that we are, ourselves, psychic hurt being transmuted into a self-conscious part of an all-loving, all-knowing Self. This duplication of creation can be called Hyperenlightenment.
p.s
I will explain why Bolos are not startups at The Boloist, and make another post later here continuing the reworking of Tank Think.