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• 作者： canhui87 发布时间：2022-02-26 15:00:25

  通俗易懂，涉及国内实例很实用，就是比较浅显，算不上挖掘，更多是自动化的代码实现

• 作者： 彩儿贝勒 发布时间：2020-05-31 19:27:42

  真的只是概览而已

• 作者： AA专业莲藕打孔 发布时间：2014-11-14 21:43:43

  小学在图书馆借过。

• 作者： Wen|荷兰人 发布时间：2012-08-14 06:29:26

  老外也能写出来这么主观论点一堆废话的书。。瞎眼了我才买。。

• 作者： mumudancing 发布时间：2013-08-13 09:34:47

  和＜我爸爸＞相比就不那么感人啦

• 作者： 岛与陆 发布时间：2020-07-22 19:13:05

  在国金的西西弗书店，找不到座位，又穿着裙子，站立看完新写的一篇短篇《云登先生》，旧事重提的味道，意识形态的深入。

• 请呵护每一棵树

  作者：FelicityZhu 发布时间：2017-02-02 21:40:05

  如果婚姻可以用树描述，大概就是双方都喜欢的那种树吧，如果只有一方愿意浇水施肥，那么欣赏这棵树的人也会变成一个人。婚姻中所谓的背叛是否真的可以用优美的文字表述出来，是否这样就可以得到谅解和宽容。水沼和陶子是我最喜欢的一对，水沼懂得如何安慰陶子，陶子也知道水沼是不可替代的存在，虽然他们的婚姻有瑕疵，但是这样的婚姻才会长久。

• The Journey from Existential Crisis to Existential Awakening

  作者：小水 发布时间：2015-12-17 16:45:32

  本文通过<Invisible Man>, <Mumbo Jumbo>和威廉布莱克的作品，从存在主义的角度分析爵士和布鲁斯的概念。

  In a deep song voice with a melancholy tone

  I heard that Negro sing, that old piano moan –

  “Ain’t got nobody in all this world,

   Ain’t got nobody but ma self.

            I’s gwine to quit ma frownin’

            And put ma troubles on the shelf.”

                 

   – Langston Hughes, “The Weary Blues”

  Do that thing, jazz band!

  Whip it to a jelly

  Sock it, rock it, heat it, beat it, then fling it at ’em

  Let the jazz stuff fall like hail on king and truck driver, queen and laundress, lord and laborer, banker and bum

                   

      – Frank Marshall Davis “Jazz Band”

  ——————————————————————————

  One cannot understand the blues unless he feels it. But he does, as we all do. Blues is everything discomforting: despair, dread, anxiety, depression… It is part of the human experience living in this world. What is it like to live in this world? I thought about this question while walking in a grocery store, looking at newly arrived Christmas decorations on the shelf and hearing optimistic holiday music playing in the background, finding that this atmosphere is very bizarre. What is Christmas? A socially produced holiday in the name of a religious celebration, which consists of a chain of events that give sense and preserve meaning to keep this tradition running. Where do these Christmas decorations come from? Dirty factories in Southern China where cheap labors work day and night under to produce smiling Santa Claus and evergreen Christmas trees during this season. What do people do during Christmas? Eating, drinking, watching TV, shopping and exchanging gifts. Thinking this gives me the blues. What is the meaning of all this? Where does the meaning come from? Why do we live this way? I know I am not the only one wandering and wondering. One winter night in Harlem generations ago, as the invisible man walks down the street and looks at familiar everyday items in stores, he, too, had a moment of détournement when the familiar is made obscure and absurd:

  A flash of red and gold from a window filled with religious articles caught my eye. And behind the film of frost etching the glass I saw two brashly painted plaster images of Mary and Jesus surrounded by dream books, love powders, God-Is-Love signs, money-drawing oil and plastic dice. A black statue of a nude Nubian slave grinned out at me from beneath a turban of gold. I passed on to a window decorated with switches of wiry false hair, ointments guaranteed to produce the miracle of whitening black skin. ‘You too can be truly beautiful,’ a sign proclaimed. ‘Win greater happiness with whiter complexion. Be outstanding in your social set’ ” (Ellison 262).

  Like Christmas decorations, what he sees are artificially created signs that contain the beliefs and stereotypes of this world that have no inherent meaning or significance. The religious articles reflect human’s selfish hopes and desires that are of nothing transcendental; the false hair and whitening cream show that, for many, “the only sin is in my skin,” because this world’s beauty standard and social system are based merely on looks. There is a sense of absurdity in this description that the world is a man-made playground with arbitrary values and beliefs that are somehow made official, and everyone has to act accordingly. We are so hypnotically used to it that we no longer see the absurdity. “As when one repeats a word until it loses meaning, anxiety undermines the taken-for-granted sense of things. They become absurd” (Crowell). Collectively and blindly, people create order out of chaos, establish institution out of wasteland, build fragment on ruins. So, “what did it mean?” the invisible man quests and questions (262). Existential philosophers Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre had questioned the same, and they found that there is no meaning in the world beyond what meaning is given by human (Crowell). In a world devoid of inherent or higher meaning, one exists without a precise model or a specific purpose (“A selection”). There is no point in life because there is no meaning in the world. People create meaning to give purpose to life. “Existence precedes essence,” Sartre states in his 1946 lecture “Existentialism is a Humanism,” “It means first of all, man exists, turns up, appears on the scene, and, only afterwards, defines himself. If man, as the existentialist conceives him, is indefinable, it is because at first he is nothing. Only afterward will he be something, and he himself will have made what he will be” (“A selection”). In this sense, the man is first a living individual of flesh and bones, and as he grows, he defines his identity and his position in the world through a meaning-making process. As he becomes an identity in the world, he loses his self, which is detached from the world. This is a moment of blues. All of a sudden, the existential bluesman realized that he is nothing for himself, and his life has no purpose other than what he has been lead and taught to believe. The roles he plays in life, the stereotypes he deals with and the order of things are as empty as the Jesus-Is-Love sign. He is thrown into the meaningless world like a boomerang that is moved by the force of contradiction (6), “Ain’t got nobody in all this world, ain’t got nobody but ma self” (Hughes). He made a calling to the world, hoping someone could care and respond, but all he hears is the profound silence from the abyss. He experiences an existential crisis where the very ground of existence is threatened. Albert Murray elaborates this feeling in “The Blues As Such.” “No wonder Hamlet came to debate with himself whether to be or not to be … which is also what the question is when you wake up with the blues there again, as if trying to make you wish that you were dead or had never been born” (6). Blues is existential music. As Raymond Olderman explains in “Ralph Ellison’s Blues and ‘Invisible Man,’ ” Blues “expresses all the ambiguities, contradictions, possibilities, hopes and limitations that lie in the human circumstance” (142).

  Under this circumstance, there is not much one can do. He could play and sing and dance to the blues to cast away the blues, but, like alcohol or drug, it is not a cure but a momentary relief. He could struggle to establish and protect his sense of importance to existence through violence when it is undermined (Peschel 750), as seen in the “changing same” genre of blues such as gangsta rap. Both responses assume that it is the world that lets him down; his meaning of life is given by others, depended on the world, and defined by external factors. In existentialism, the individual’s relation to the external world is termed “being-for-others” by Sartre, which refers to the interpersonal dimension of being that involves a complex play of subjectivity and objectivity (Meakin). One exists not only for himself, but also other people, which means he is subject to other’s gaze, control and influence. Often, this results in one’s self-deception, or “bad faith,” that he understands himself only in terms of his social identities such as his occupation (Meakin). Sartre dreads this idea and claims “Hell is other people” (“No Exit”). However, other existential philosophers proposed an alternative way of thinking: since the world is meaningless and absurd, one can create oneself and live accordingly through making choices and taking responsibility. This means that he gives meaning to himself, for his own reality, as primarily a human being. Soren Kierkegaard calls it “authenticity” (Crowell). In this sense, realizing and accepting the absurdity moves one from an existential crisis to an existential awakening. His ground of existence is no longer threatened, but utterly shattered and rebuilt, so he “wakes up” from the bottom of his dreams – he no longer believes in and depends on the world. There is no one but himself, no rule but his rule, no meaning but his meaning. The world’s absurdity works perfectly for him, because it brings endless possibilities and freedom in which he can move around without limitation or boundary. Malcolm X (1965) puts it as such: “We can not think of being acceptable to others until we have first proven acceptable to ourselves” (Bassay 8). Reinhart works this idea poetically to its most sophisticated form: he is the pimp, the Reverend, the gambler, the lover, the friend (Ellison 489-99). He creates multiple selves and realities, accepts this ability and takes responsibility. Musically, this corresponds with jazz, the sound of freedom and radical beauty that break established boundary and rule where “king and truck driver, queen and laundress, lord and laborer, banker and bum” coexist in music, or, perhaps, they are the same person, a Reinhart. Many order-protectors see jazz as the music of the devil, something religiously non-Christian, practically disrupting order and evoking energy, passion and desire of life. It makes fragment whole, antiphony integral, polyrhythm euphonious. It is alive, arousing, infectious, and brings movement. Jazz liberates people by challenging them to see the world is an illusion and therefore “behold the invisible” for “the unknown wonders” (Ellison 495), so one could improvise his life authentically and play around the structure and stricture – to “sock it, rock it, heat it, beat it, then fling it at ’em” (Davis).

  Blues and Jazz are the two sides of the same coin. They represent both directions to existence: one of a bluesy crisis and the other of a jazzy awakening. Invisible Man provides the foundational text of analysis that illustrates the protagonist’s journey from an existential crisis to his final awakening. To understand this journey, it is important to first see through the illusion and try to “behold the invisible.” In order to do this, we need to know what is the illusion? What kind of forces is at work to maintain this illusion? Why do people believe in it? Ishmael Reed explains this by telling the story of how dominant voice takes control and creates the nationwide big ethos in in Mumbo Jumbo that feeds the illusion. Particularly, this is revealed in the binary of the Wallflower Order, the representation of the dominant power such as government and social order, and Jes Grew, the flip side, such as anti-establishment, Voudoun, jazz and dance. Few scholars had identified Reed’s influence by 19th Century British poet and painter William Blake, who attempts to explain the same questions and binary in his works. I will take The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, America: a Prophecy and The Book of Urizen as primary points of entry to explore his depiction and discussion of the illusory world that produces so much blues and crisis. With this knowledge in mind, we may proceed and examine the existential philosophers’ proposed response to the existential crisis: the existential awakening – “the jazz way.” What is the jazz way? How can one live it? What is it like to live that way? The invisible man presents it through Reinhart and the protagonist’s final hibernation underground, Reed examines it through Jes Grew and its implications, and William Blake explains it by showing how his jazzy character Orc breaks the illusion, embraces and spreads liberation. Although many scholars had pointed out the existential aspect of blues and jazz, none had examined it as a continuous process that carries applicable value in the sense that it provides guidance to real life. Reading blues and jazz as philosophical concepts also takes the entire human race into consideration across race and generation, because what bonds us is what we all have in common: the blues, the struggle, the resistance and the freedom.

  Blues As Existential Crisis

  In the first half of Invisible Man, the protagonist’s invisibility is correlated with his existential crisis in which his ground of existence is shaken by the world. He made this clear in the beginning of the book: “I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me” (3). Refusing to see implies ignoring, which undermines his existence. It prompts him to question if he really exists or is just a phantom (4). He explains this feeling: “You ache with the need to convince yourself that you do exist in the real world, that you’re a part of all the sound and anguish, and you strike out with your fists, you curse and you swear to make them recognize you. And, alas, it’s seldom successful” (4). There is nothing worse than negligence. It is the silence from the abyss that sucks up and takes away the power of calling. It makes one feel dumb, or dead. Like a crying child who merely wants the attention from his parents, the invisible man strikes, curses and swears just to be seen and heard. Philosophically, he is in the state of “being-for-others.” In order to feel his existence, he needs feedback from the external world that proves his existence. He needs something from the abyss that responds to his calling. Unfortunately, the way to get feedback is through “bad faith;” it is to move out of his sense of self and into the role, identity and model assigned by the world. He needs a codependent relationship with the world to be seen and heard by others, and he needs to do it well. He has to fit in, conform, and be a good “pet zombie” or “talking android” or “excellent sheep” so others could “keep this nigger boy running.” This state of being is built upon self-deception, which can be understood as a metaphorical blindness that one chooses to not see who he really is. He is invisible to himself. In Chapter three, the vet in the Golden Day explains this state of being beautifully:

  “You see,” he said turning to Mr. Norton, “he has eyes and ears and a good distended African nose, but he fails to understand the simple facts of life. Understand. Understand? It’s worse than that. He registers with his sense but short-circuits his brain. Nothing has meaning. He takes it in but he doesn't digest it. Already he is – well, bless my soul! Behold! A walking zombie! Already he’s learned to repress not only his emotions but his humanity. He’s invisible, a walking personification of the Negative, the most perfect achievement of your dreams, sir! The mechanical man!”

                                                                                                                                             (94)

  As the vet points out, “nothing has meaning” for the invisible man because he represses his emotions and humanity, refuses to feel for himself, and decides to turn a blind eye on the meaning of being for/as himself. He exists in an absurd world without realizing that it is absurd, so he turns into The Absurd himself, personified as a brain-dead “walking zombie” or a brainless “mechanical man.” How could he seen by others when he does not see himself? How could he see himself when he throw his self away and give it to others? He lies to himself by choosing to believe in the illusory world and its ethos that goes against from his self – it is the “great false wisdom taught [to] slaves and pragmatists alike” (95).

  The vet elaborates on this illusory belief as “white is right” (95). Along this vein, there emerges a contradiction between White and Black, Occidental and Oriental, the world and the individual, others and self. It is the binary, the yin-yang, the force of contradiction and the check and balance of the oppositions that is at work in the existential condition. Contradiction produces gap, in which brews inequality, disappointment, discomfort, and the blues. The invisible man calls this state “boomerang,” a flying object moved by the force of contradiction, which best describes how the world moves (6), and how the individual – a subject in the world – is moved. Take a repeating theme in the book, his grandfather’s final words, as an example: “Live with your head in the lion’s mouth. I want you to overcome ‘em with yeses, undermine ‘em with grins, agree ‘em to death and destruction, let ‘em swoller you till they vomit or bust wide open” (16). This proverbial passage is in and of itself full of contradictions, but it is an ancestral guide to survival in this dangerous world, compared to “the lion’s mouth.” It first recognizes the absurdity and contradictions in the world, and then provides advice to live in a way that reverberates the absurdity. Namely, to hide under a mask that shows contradictory expressions to real motives, which allows one to resist against the fooling of the big illusion by fooling it back. The big illusion is created by one side of the binary, often the dominant one, and is broken by the other side through an awakening that precedes resistance, revolution and liberation.

  Ishmael Reed explains this big illusion in Mumbo Jumbo by looking at its creator, the dominant power in society represented by the Wallflower Order, particularly in its anti-Jes Grew nature. This nature includes appeal to obedience: “You wish all of your subjects were like them, loyal, passive, ‘just doing our jobs,’ ” claimed a hierophant from the Wallflower Order Headquarters (64). This is the ideal state of affairs the Wallflower Order hopes for: having a docile following much like a group of robots. However, if the subjects act out their humanity and decide to disobey as on Jes Grew’s side, harsh control and imperial restraint are used: “Suppose we shut down a few temples … I mean banks, take money out of circulation, how would people be able to support the appendages of Jes Grew … Suppose we put a tax on the dance floors … Suppose we take musicians out of circulation, arrest them on trumped-up drug charges and give them unusually long and severe prison sentences,” claimed another hierophant (154). The Wallflower Order controls the economy, a man-made system of resource allocation that is attached with religious significance as seen in the comparison between bank and temple. It also controls the law, a supposedly fair and just system of rules, which is revealed to be subjective, irresponsible and absurd. Both systems are worldly products that are made highly significant and addictive, and both grant the illusion of order in society. The control of these systems means the control of the people, because, just like drug addicts, the people are dependent on the system. Moreover, the Wallflower Order adopts Christianity, particularly in its monotheist sense that favors absolute control from the head and complete obedience of the people. God’s control is strict because he is understood as a serious poker face. Papa LaBas noticed, “Nowhere is there an account or portrait of Christ laughing. Like the Marxists who secularized his doctrine, he is always stern, serious and as gloomy as a prison guard” (97). The Wallflower Order turns God into an imposter and uses him as a weapon against non-monotheism and disobedience such as Jes Grew (97). It outlaws dance, effaces livelihood, and kills dissent. In other words, God is the force of control and conformity, restraint and repression, the ordered work of western civilization that intrudes non-western minds and bodies, and demands them to change: “They [Africans, or non-Western people in general] must adopt our ways, producing Elizabethan poets; they should have Stravinskys and Mozarts in the wings, they must become Civilized!” claimed Biff Musclewhite, a chief opponent of Jes Grew from a Western art museum (114). In the later part of the book, Reed attributes this contradiction to the Egyptian myth of god Osiris and his opponent Set, who murdered Osiris, the king of Egypt, to usurp power. The Wallflower Order is the modern manifestation of Set: “Everything that Osiris stood for he [Set] attempted to banish, so that he would cut his figure out of his life forever. Next he banished Music. And then as his mind deteriorated he banned Fucking” (173). It is through endless control of the physical and the mental that the big illusion is created and maintained, and it got some problems. It is absurd. It moves with contradiction and conflict. Its meaningless meaning is a big ethos that favors only the authority. The existence of the “Other” – those who are different or subordinate – is threatened, manipulated or eliminated. In this kind of world, how can one not feel the blues? How can a fresh living being swallow the life force for an arbitrary, cold-blooded, mechanical order? How can one discard his own history and tradition in exchange of a civilized god who whips? It is the world that produces blues, which is felt by the suffering individual, and he returns this pain in the form of song. If the world is hell, the angels who live here will sing the blues, or learn to be demons. If the world is an illusion, the waking ones will sing the blues, or deceive themselves to not see.

  Realizing the world is an illusion shakes the foundation of the very reality of things. What is seemingly real is actually an illusion, what is seemingly fair and just is actually dishonest, and what is considered disease is actually life giving. From the contradiction there draws a twist in things: an upside-down derangement, a lie, a sense of hypocrisy, “the darkness of lightness” as the invisible man calls it (6). This contradiction and twist are not new ideas. They were fully explained in William Blake’s mythology, particularly in his creation of Urizen (your reason), representation of reason, intellect, or the Wallflower Order, and his opponent, Orc, representation of energy, passion, or Jes Grew. Originally, Urizen was one of the four living creatures that represent the four aspects of humanity known as The Four Zoas. After his fall, he started to create a fallen world out of reason. This draws a parallel to Satan, the fallen angel from heaven who builds hell on earth (Frye 254-8). In this sense, to the real God, Satan is the fallen angel, but to the fallen world, Satan appears to be god and governor. As the invisible man questions when he acts as Reinhart just by putting on glasses and a hat (masks), “What on earth was hiding behind the face of things? … Who actually was who?” (493). This is the foundation of the twist where Satan and god are flipped in the fallen world. The Christ the Wallflower Order believes in is actually the twisted god who is Satan, and Jes Grew, the pariahs of the world believed to be evil, is actually holy. The success of the twist comes from the mask on the surface made of hypocrisy. According to a reading by John Middleton Murry quoted in June K. Singer’s psychological interpretation of Blake’s works, Urizen’s fallen world is a ratio of the infinite (as Satan to God, fallen world to the original holistic world), which results in limitation and twist. “Urizen’s creation is a mere measuring, dividing, exploring of that which exits: the imposition of the Ratio upon the Infinite” (Singer 199). This does not paint Urizen as an evil demon who intentionally ruin the world, rather, he is simply limited himself because he only sees ratio. His creation is the extension of himself, which is also limited, and he full-heartedly believes in what he sees and does. As Blake depicts, the Ratio is linear, divisive, retraining, much like the “civilized” western scientific way of thinking:

          He formed a line & a plummet

          To divide the Abyss beneath.

          He form’d a dividing rule.

          He formed scales to weigh;

          He formed massy weights;

          He formed a brazen quadrant;

          He formed golden compasses

          And began to explore the Abyss.

          And he planted a garden of fruits.

                                                           (Urizen 20: 33-41)

  Not only is Urizen’s formation a sophisticatedly calculated product, but it is also built on rules and scales that imply law and order. Is Urizen happy in building such a world? Does this world bring happiness? No. Like Papa LaBas’ description of Christ as a gloomy prison guard, Blake describes Urizen as a bluesman full of sorrow:

         Cold he wander’d on high, over

                 their cities

         In weeping & pain & woe!

         And where ever he wander’d, in sorrows

         Upon the aged heavens

         A cold shadow follow’d behind him

         Like a spider’s web. moist, cold & dim

         Drawing out from his sorrowing soul

                                                          (Urizen 25: 5-12)

  He is a “sorrowing soul” who shadows the path behind him, knits a cold and dim web, and brings sorrow to the world through his creations. One of his webs, Blake states, is the “Net of Religion” (Urizen 25: 22) such as Christianity adopted by the Wallflower Order as a means of control. Building the world in sorrow, Urizen is “unseen in tormenting passions … A self-contemplating shadow in enormous labors occupied” (Urizen 3: 19-22). In the fallen world, he produces more and more laws that are covered in an ideal mask, just like the fact that the real Satan is depicted as a fake god under the mask of benevolence and righteousness:

        Laws of peace, of love, of unity:

        Of pity, compassion, forgiveness.

        Let each choose one habitation:

        His ancient infinite mansion:

        One command, one joy, one desire,

        One curse, one weight, one measure,

        One king, one God, one Law.

                                             (Urizen 4: 34-40)

  As the first two lines states, these laws are abstract and good qualities of humanity – “peace, love, unity…” However, they are arranged in space – “ancient infinite mansion” – that externalize and objectify abstractions into materials as in the process of reification, which, ironically, is a logical fallacy . Similarly, abstract qualities are made into law, which means they are no longer qualities, but absurdities. In other words, these qualities appear as feelings driven by the engine of energy, the human pulse, as oppose to law, an Urizenian product of rationality that aims to control and repress. To make feeling into law and assign it to the “infinite mansion” of institution is to systematize and format humanity into scientific order, which results in something twisted and inhumane. For example, the Wallflower Order’s sense of peace is cold, passive and lifeless. They made their “law of peace” according to this standard, which leads to the restriction of the rejuvenating energy and strong feelings in humanity brought by Jes Grew. What they believe in has nothing to do with peace, but law of peace, an anti-peace and anti-human invention. To call such invention “peace, love, unity” is therefore a lie in the sense that the reality does not match with the name. This is hypocrisy. Along this vein, ideal qualities are manipulated and twisted into ugly forms under the command and control of a hypocritical false god, Urizen/Satan/the Wallflower Order, the “one king, one God, one Law” of the fallen world.

  If this big illusion is in fact the fallen world, we can induce that its system of control and dependence, its social modals and roles for the believers, and the meaning of existence in this world are a deliberate web of lies. Take the brotherhood, a microcosmic representation of the fallen world, as an example. In name, it advocates “law of unity” for colored people to be liberated, in reality, all it does is to use a few “talking androids” such as the invisible man to control and direct people into believing their selfish regime. In a debate between the almost awakened invisible man and Brother Jack, Jack confesses, “So now hear this: We do not shape our policies to the mistaken and infantile notions of the man in the street. Our job is not to ask them what they think but to tell them!” (473). In the eyes of the self-proclaimed liberator, the supposedly liberated ones are no more than “mistaken and infantile” sheep and robots who are blind and invisible to the lie of brotherhood. What did the brotherhood tell them? – “To have hope when there was no hope” (507), to have purpose and meaning to existence when there is none. This is how the fallen world functions: outside the lie, one is dispossessed; inside the lie, one is fooled. The purpose of dispossessing and fooling is ultimate control. In whatever forms, the people are lured to sleep, and then live in a dream in obedience and self-deception while repressing emotion and humanity as best as he can – so he doesn’t wake up. Furthermore, not waking up means he is invisible, and his ground of existence can be easily threatened which gives rise to the existential crisis. He is blue. Waking up means he sees the absurdity but cannot do anything. Repressing emotion and humanity, now, is no longer voluntary, but forced – by himself. He is blue. Perhaps, only those who are conscious can sing the blues, because they still have feelings. So, what can one do under this circumstance? The answer is simple: since the world is a fallen one, solution does not come from there. It lies internally. As painful as it is, the existential crisis is actually the first step to an awakening when one steps out of the illusion. Now, he can be a clown but not a fool (Ellison 154), to play the game but not believing in it (153), and to “behold the invisible” (495).

  Jazz as Existential Awakening

          

  The existential awakening is, first and foremost, a response to the crisis. It is one kind of response among other kinds. Kierkegaard (1944) proposed two options of response:

  Two ways, in general, are open for an existing individual: Either he can do his upmost to forget that he is an existing individual, by which he becomes a comic figure, since existence ha a remarkable trait compelling an existing individual to exist whether he will it or not … Or he can concentrate his entire energy upon the fact that he is an existing individual” (Bassey 4-5).

  The first option describes the blues condition, particularly in the aspect where one turns into a blind “mechanical man” or uses whatever form of painkiller to temporarily stomp away and forget the blues of existence. The second option describes the jazz way in which one fully accepts his existential condition in this world and works hard toward survival. Synthesizing the three works I use for this paper, the jazz way of life contains three major aspects: Rinehart – the metamorphous shapeshifter who improvises within structure, Jes Grew – the passionate force that strives for life and humanity, and Orc – the revolutionary voice of disobedience and antiphony that moves others into the same response of awakening. Working together, the jazz way prompts creativity and flexibility out of adversity, and eventually moves one out of the blues without growing bitter. Musically, this theory is proven to be valid in the sense that jazz, the successor of blues, is born out of a lost generation yet drives for freedom and authenticity.

          

  The jazzy character Rinehart is in fact the invisible man under disguise. At this time, he had awakened from his dream (478) and decided to put on a mask to hide from danger and survive. This is a jazzy response. Since the fallen world is governed by hypocrisy, one has to use the enemy’s weapon to fight for himself. What he found after responding in this way is a brand new vision, a vision that sees under the surface with which he becomes the real invisible man. Under this response and this vision, he can code switch – “be both rind and heart” (498), he can play around with a new kind of freedom because “the world in which we lived was without boundaries” (498), and he can find a stable ground in the most unstable state of being – “Rine the rascal was at home” (498). The ability to metamorphosing into different characters under different masks corresponds with the jazz composition of polyphony, a style where two or more independent tones or melodic lines are simultaneously employed (DeVoto). These various tones and melodies can be read as the different characters of Reinhart that exist independently from each other – the different “Rinds.” However, they are at the same time an integral whole, which allows for a coherent sound. This is the “heart” that binds all the parts together, as Rinehart is “a man of parts who got around. Rinehart the rounder” (498). Polyphony seems to suggest a kind of authenticity or Sartre’s “being-for-itself” by performing different identities in the world under different masks and personalities – to create his own meaning of existence. In order to do this, as the invisible man puts, one needs the awareness to see “truth was always a lie” (498), and the self-awareness to know one is acting without believing in the act. Musically, it is to understand the formula of a song and to know when and where to come in and to stop. One cannot break Urizen’s visible creations – the structures, rules and laws of the world, but he can go under the surface and improvise within the structure, move around the rules through shapeshifting, and therefore discover the boundariless possibilities that are hidden. The freedom of movement in jazz is the same. It first recognizes the pattern of a song, and then moves around the beat through syncopation, throws in solos of each independent instrument (character) to improvise for just the right time, and eventually creates a new kind of aesthetic that goes against traditional and strict compositions (social orders).

  The jazz way of life takes one’s entire energy upon his existence and survival. For a gloomy god like Urizen, this is dangerous. It threatens fixed structures, disrupts pre-established orders and brings forth chaos. As a result, in Mumbo Jumbo, the Wallflower Order aims to eliminate such force. However, the premise of the Wallflower Order’s deeds is built on the fundamental twist of the fallen world, and therefore, the position of God and Satan, life and death, plague and anti-plague is reversed. In this fallen world, the voice of the devil – which is actually gods – speaks: “Actually Jes Grew was an anti-plague. Some plagues caused the body to waste away; Jes Grew enlivened the host … some plagues arise from decomposing animals, but Jes Grew is electric as life and is characterized by ebullience and ecstasy. Terrible plagues were due to the wrath of God; but Jes Grew is the delight of the gods” (6). Despite the Wallflower Order’s lie that considers life-giving force a plague, Jes Grew’s electrifying energy and ebullient passion are what really stomp away the blues. It is the full acceptance of existence, the manifestation of human energy, and the power that drives one to keep on living with joy and freedom. Reed comments, “The Wallflower Order launched the war against Haiti … But little Haiti resists. It becomes a world-wide symbol for religious and aesthetic freedom … Dance manias inundate the land” (64). In this sense, the “dance mania” brought by Jes Grew is a form of resistance. Much like a counter reaction that uses poison (mania) to cure the poisoned (apathy caused by repression of emotion and humanity), Jes Grew is the fire that melts the ice-cold fallen world order until something new sprung out of the life-giving water.

  The dynamic of resistance is also strived between Haiti’s religious tradition, Voudoun, and America’s Urizenian religion, Christianity. It is impossible to separate music with the religious power behind it. Tracing Jes Grew back to its root of Osiris, the Egyptian god is “associated with fertilization and spring. In his time, ‘every man was an artist and every artist a priest’ ” (164). Music is the audio manifestation of the spirits brought to the human realm by the artist-priest. In this sense, jazz, the music of Jes Grew, is the sound of Voudoun and the loas. Reed state, “You see the Americans do not know the names of the long and tedious list of deities and rites as we know them … they’ve isolated the unknown factor which gives the loas their rise. Ragtime. Jazz. Blues. The new thang” (152). After coming to America, the loas, along with their music, have to accept their new home and adapt to the new context. Ragtime, jazz and blues are the fusion and diffusion of African traditional music with the music of this new context, which are mostly European-inspired (Baraka 64). This synthesis allows tradition to survive – “the location may shift but the function remains the same” (77). As a result, African music in the foster land is “an experimental art form” (152) that preserves religious tradition and function on one hand, and innovates to cater to the new crowd on the other. Therefore, the existence of “the new thang” represents a place for the loas in a new world, and the life-giving “dance mania” represents the resistance against losing tradition, the ardent fight for this new place, and the infectious cry that calls for a continuous, meaningful life. Musically, the experimental nature of jazz is rooted in the existential experiment of synthesis and adaptation. The polytheist nature of Voudoun corresponds with jazz’s polyphony and polyrhythm. As if each loa takes a timber and a beat, a family of loas coexists behind music. “Erzulie with her fast self is sheltered in a ‘vocalising’ trumpet which sings from mute to crowl. Legba takes requests from behind the derby-covered bell of a ‘talking’ slide-trombone” (77). Just like Reinhart the rounder who synthesizes multiple personas into a holistic character and makes it work in the “vast seething, hot world of fluidity” like fish in water, each loa hides in an instrument as an invisible man, but at the same time communicates and preaches through music on its own terms. The more they preach, the more people “feed” them: “you feed your Ragtime and Jazz by supporting the artists and making it easier for those who are possessed by those forms. Buying records and patronizing those places which are not in the hands of Atonists” (151). The result of this is a worldwide plague of newly discovered joy and freedom for not only Africans, but also all the people who were bounded in Urizenian control for thousands of years.

  The life-giving force of Jes Grew draws a parallel with William Blake’s creation, Orc. In Blake’s works, the timeless theme of resistance was depicted between Orc and Urizen. As two aspects of humanity, these two characters are in constant battle, which marks the basic condition of human existence. Blake states in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, “Without Contraries is no progression. Attraction and repulsion, reason and energy, love and hate, are necessary to human existence” (3: 6-9). Like the movement of boomerang, it is the force of contradiction that progresses the world, the constant check-and-balance of opposites that drives the motion. Without the opposing force of energy, the world will be in a dead homeostasis under the sole governance of reason. In fact, Blake had a prophetic vision about the practical use of energy, which is highly relevant to Jes Grew’s resistance and the final liberation of the oppressed. In “A Song of Liberty,” Blake foresees:

  Look up! Look up! O citizen of London, enlarge thy countenance! O Jew, leave counting gold! Return to thy oil and wine. O African! Black African! (go, winged thought, widen his forehead.) …

  Spurning the clouds written with curses, stamps the stony law to dust, loosing the eternal horses from the dens of night, crying: Empire is no more! And now the lion & wolf shall cease.

                                                                                                            (Marriage 25-27: 12-21)

  Written in an imperative tone, Blake advocates Africans to unleash the energy and let the winged thoughts fly out. By doing so, they can finally spurn the curses of Urizen and stamp his stony law and order to dust. The “eternal horses” can be read as the bounded feet that want to run away and run wild, to dance and to gallop toward freedom and light. Until the moment it loosens the chain from “the dens of night,” the oppressor – Empire, lion & wolf – will no longer oppress. In America: A Prophecy, Blake further explains how the revolutionary spirit liberates the oppressed in exuberant energy:

          

          Reviving shake, inspiring move, breathing, awakening,

          Spring like redeemed captives when their bonds and bars are burst!

          Let the slave grinding at the mill run out into the field;

          Let him look up into the heavens and laugh in the bright air;

          Let the enchained soul shut up in darkness and in sighing,

          Whose face has never seen a smile in thirty weary years,

          Rise and look out: his chains are loose, his dungeon doors are open.

                                                                                                             (America 8: 4-10)

  The existential awakening is apparent: after “thirty [and more] weary years” of blues, the oppressed will no longer be locked in chains and put in dungeon. He finally revives, breaking loose the bonds and bars of physical and mental slavery – and laughs, truly. Written for a central theme of liberation, this passage, too, approaches this theme in an imperative tone that provokes the mood of revolution and moves the audience to a response. This corresponds with the jazz style of antiphony, the call and response that inspires for an answer. This response is not only in music, but also in the style of one’s very existence that reciprocates the revolutionary spirit’s calling. Camus’ abyss is no longer silent, but echoes back with an even louder volume. This is “the epidemic contagiousness of jazz that makes it, like measles, sweep the block” where “young men wearing slave bracelets, sitting in the cafes quoting nigger poetry. The young women smoking Luckies, wearing short skirts and staying out until 3:00 in the morning” (Reed 64-66). These young men and women are engaging in the act of antiphony by responding to and participating in the Jes Grew revolution of human energy. The chain of Urizen cannot bound their authenticity; the modals, roles and stereotypes of the society cannot limit their being-for-themselves. Existence is ecstasy when one sees through the illusion and starts creating his own meaning, own world.

  In conclusion, blues is the musical form of an existential crisis where one cannot find the meaning of life outside of external references. It is also the condition of the fallen world mapped by Urizenian law and order under a hypocritical mask. The repressed emotion and humanity under strict ruling turns into pain and suffering, vocalized as the blues that temporarily alleviates the symptoms of the crisis. However, when one separates himself from this world and sees it with a penetrating vision, the illusion collapses, and the ocean of possibility underneath the illusion presents itself as an identity laboratory for the real invisible man. Living in the jazz way allows one’s experimentation and improvisation with identities through putting on different masks. It also gives rise to the human engine of energy that promotes life and freedom, breaks the order that builds the blues, and moves others to respond and participate. Synthesizing the works of African American writers and a British poet points to the universality of blues and jazz themes and theories. Existence as a human condition and liberation as a collective response are states of being above the arbitrary category of race – we all belong to the human race. More discussions can be made on the implication of the invisible man’s moving underground as another existential response, along with analysis of more contemporary issues on the subject.

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