John Dunn

Violated

And where does compulsion fit into the cosmic egg metaphor? What about the paradox of the escape from Ananke and the Fates being driven by some form of compulsion?

For the violation of a previous equilibrium comes from outside. Is that not the very nature of a violation, i.e. a forced entry?

One does not choose to fall in love. One is compelled to create.

Does not the compelling set of circumstances itself comprise a closed system? There is no escape once in love. One is compelled to put pen to paper, to paint…

I am reminded of how a youthful non-entity of an ordinary life was awoken by exposure to a television documentary about W. B. Yeats. It had a potent Yeatsian mixture of poetry and the occult,albeit within the anodyne limits of the BBC, but enough of the magic and mystery from the life of Yeats seeped through time to enter the bloodstream of the young viewer.After watching the programme, he had to put pen to paper; the very first time that he had wanted to do so voluntarily. He quickly scribbled his nonsensical thoughts, long lost to the world, in an effort to contain the experience within some sort of boundary, to wrap it up and place it in the sequence of experiences that happened to him day-to-day.Who knows what was on the piece of paper, but it was born of that violation and would not be aborted. The walls of the egg were breached.

Encounter is the central point; and there must be a violation. This in itself is a proof against solipsism, unless it is I who created or readied myself for the encounters that violated me.



That which we encounter must change something or it is not a violation; rather it is no more than a polite smile. A violation changes everything - that first motorcycle and the long lonely rides across the northern arc of Yorkshire Moors and Lake District; the debilitating sickness of first love; those femmes fatales, with their bruises and scars of life’s trials; that exposure to thinking lives and the books they wrote. And now the serpent of memory holds me.

What of the Orphic egg metaphor? It has its chicken and egg limitations. Yes Eros broke free; but only after egg itself was penetrated and fertilised.

© John Dunn.