AD_FINITUM

“I know that our efforts all come to nothing. I know the end of us all is nothing, I know that at the end of Time, the reward of our toil will be nothing— and again nothing. I know that all our handiwork will be destroyed. I know that not even ash will be left from the fires that consume us. I know that our ideals, even those we achieve, will vanish in the eternal darkness of oblivion and final non-being. There is no hope, none, in my heart. No promise, none, can I make to myself and to others. No recompense can I expect for my labors. No fruit will be born of my thoughts. The Future—eternal seducer of all men, eternal cause of all effects—offers me nothing but the blank prospect of annihilation.” ―  Giovanni Papini,  Un uomo finito

Although boredom is something that we have all suffered from at some point in our lives, and has become one of the central preoccupations of our age, very few of us can explain precisely what it is. In this book Lars Svendsen examines the nature of boredom, how it originated, its history, how and why it afflicts us, and why we cannot seem to overcome it by any act of will. A diverse and vague phenomenon, described as anything from 'tame longing without any particular object’ (Schopenhauer), ‘a bestial and indefinable affliction’ (Dostoevsky), to ‘time’s invasion of your world system’ (Joseph Brodsky), boredom allows many interpretations. In exploring these, Lars Svendsen brings together observations from philosophy, literature, psychology, theology and popular culture, examining boredom’s pre-Romantic manifestations in medieval torpor, philosophies of the subject from Pascal to Nietzsche, and modern related concepts of alienation and transgression, taking in texts by Samuel Beckett...

 “Real misanthropes are not found in solitude, but in the world; since it is experience of life, and not philosophy, which produces real hatred of mankind.” ―  Giacomo Leopardi

 

 ...in the playlist since 2017...

Brian Lavelle - Untitled Brian Lavelle - Untitled Brian Lavelle - Citadel Brian Lavelle - Votive Topias Tiheäsalo & Niko-Matti Ahti - Four Letters - Life Part IV Topias Tiheäsalo & Niko-Matti Ahti - Four Letters - Life Part II Tomoko Hojo + Rahel Kraft - While Your Body Is Asleep Tomoko Hojo + Rahel Kraft - Resounding Entities Tomoko Hojo + Rahel Kraft - Probabilities & Possibilities Tomoko Hojo + Rahel Kraft - Melted Into Darkness

 ...in the playlist since 2019...

Presumably, this very pleasant work is hardly known to anyone today, but it is a very special one. A few years ago I came across this band by chance. They have only released two albums so far, with their second and last work from 1984 being their best. Overall, the atmosphere is very sad and a little monotonous, but I think that it is precisely this fact that defines the morbid and gloomy charm of this release. Particularly noteworthy are the songs: "Dance Of The Dolls" and "The Wedding". It's one of the few records that is very coherent altogether and it keeps it's high level during playing time. Overall Score: 7/10

from the forthcoming album "ASCHE"  

...in the playlist since 2019...

Language is not made to be believed but to be obeyed, and to compel obedience newspapers, news, proceed by redundancy, in that they tell us what we ‘must’ think, retain, expect, etc. language is neither informational nor communicational. It is not the communication of information but something quite different: the transmission of order-words, either from one statement to another or within each statement, insofar as each statement accomplishes an act and the act is accomplished in the statement. ― Gilles Deleuze, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (1980)

...in the playlist since 2020...

     Looking Back (2013) by Lesley Oldaker

Because we demand a future, we live each moment in expectation and unfulfillment. We live each moment in passing. In just this way the real nunc stans, the timeless present, is reduced to the nunc fluens, the fleeting present, the passing present of a mere one or two seconds. We expect each moment to pass on to a future moment, for in this fashion we pretend to avoid death by always rushing toward an imagined future. We want to meet ourselves in the future. We don’t want just now—we want another now, and another, and another, tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. And thus, paradoxically, our impoverished present is fleeting precisely because we demand that it end! We want it to end so that it can thereby pass on to yet another moment, a future moment, which will in turn live only to pass.  ― Ken Wilber, No Boundary: Eastern and Western Approaches to Personal Growth

...in the playlist since 2020...