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Search For Fire
It seems to me, that if we love, we grieve. That’s the deal. That’s the pact. Grief and love are forever intertwined. Grief is the terrible reminder of the depths of our love and, like love, grief is non-negotiable… It occupies the core of our being and extends through our fingers to the limits of the universe. Within that whirling gyre all manner of madnesses exist; ghosts and spirits and dream visitations, and everything else that we, in our anguish, will into existence. These are precious gifts that are as valid and as real as we need them to be. They are the spirit guides that lead us out of the darkness.
~Nick Cave
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DESIRE is not enough; in fact, ignorant desire frustrates itself or burns itself away. For desire to be consummated, for the opus to come to fruition — in art, in love, in practice of any sort — learn all you can about its fire: its radiance, its flickering instability, its warmth, and its rage. Fire as element below and above the range of human reason requires a “psychoanalysis of fire” — the very title of Bachelard’s exemplary study. [1] The art of the fire and the key to alchemy means learning how to warm, excite, enthuse, ignite, inspire the material at hand, which is also the state of one’s nature so as to activate it further into a different state.
