Truth or Love?.. What Matters to you Most?

[Whateverist]

Truth.

I think the black eyed peas said it best:

"The truth is kept secret, its swept under the rug, if you never know truth, then you never know love"

True love does not exist in the absence of judgment, true love only exists in the presence of it.  The words “I love you” are meaningful to you only if the person who speaks them truly knows you.

I agree with this, but would say that because of it, the 2 are 1 and the same.

The metric for truth in matters empirical can never verify the ruling of the heart.  They really are equals.

I like the way cummings put it:  

"While you and i have lips and voices which
are for kissing and to sing with
who cares if some oneeyed son of a bitch
invents an instrument to measure Spring with?"

From his "voices to voices, lip to lip"

---

voices to voices, lip to lip

E.E. Cummings

voices to voices, lip to lip
i swear (to noone everyone) constitutes
undying; or whatever this and that petal confutes . . .
to exist being a peculiar form of sleep

what’s beyond logic happens beneath will;
nor can these moments be translated: i say
that even after April
by God there is no excuse for May

– bring forth your flowers and machinery: sculpture and prose
flowers guess and miss
machinery is the more accurate, yes
it delivers the goods, Heaven knows

(yet are we mindful, though not as yet awake,
of ourselves which shout and cling, being
for a little while and which easily break
in spite of the best overseeing)

i mean that the blond absence of any program
except last and always and first to live
makes unimportant what i and you believe;
not for philosophy does this rose give a damn . . .

bring on your fireworks, which are a mixed
splendor of piston and pistil; very well
provided an instant may be fixed
so that it will not rub, like any other pastel.

(While you and i have lips and voices which
are for kissing and to sing with
who cares if some oneeyed son of a bitch
invents an instrument to measure Spring with?
each dream nascitur, is not made . . .)
why then to Hell with that: the other; this,
since the thing perhaps is
to eat flowers and not to be afraid.

---

But cummings clearly would put the heart in the first position, going further than I will.

since feeling is first 

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
—the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for each other: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis



^So unfortunate that he was probably a theist.  More evidence:



down with hell and heaven

and all the religious fuss

infinity pleased our parents

one inch looks good to us


You have to understand that that this is delivered as mockery, not of atheism per se, but of people attempting to be overly rational and, as a result, becoming mechanical, less than human and finally uninteresting.

---

“ (of Ever-Ever Land i speak

sweet morons gather roun’

who does not dare to stand or sit

may take it lying down)



down with the human soul

and anything else uncanned

for everyone carries canopeners

in Ever-Ever Land



(for Ever-Ever Land is a place

that’s as simple as simple can be

and was built that way on purpose

by simple people like we)



down with hell and heaven

and all the religious fuss

infinity pleased our parents

one inch looks good to us



(and Ever-Ever Land is a place

that’s measured and safe and known

where it’s lucky to be unlucky

and the hitler lies down with the cohn)



down above all with love

and everything perverse

or which makes some feel more better

when all ought to feel less worse



(but only sameness is normal

in Ever-Ever Land

for a bad cigar is a woman
but a gland is only a gland)
{/hide]


Addendum.  The very best introduction for any art exhibit anywhere was one he wrote for a show of his paintings in the 40's.  This goes to the regard he has for "the mystery" which for him is revealed only wherever anyone is an artist.  (So dated in a post modern world, but what can I say?  I haven't kept up.)  I think he thinks creativity comes from the heart and involves risk so that intellect cannot guarantee the result.

[hide]
Art is a mystery.


A mystery is something immeasurable.

In so far as every child and woman and man may be immeasurable, art is the mystery of every man and woman and child. In so far as a human being is an artist, skies and mountains and oceans and thunderbolts and butterflies are immeasurable; and art is every mystery of nature. Nothing measurable can be alive; nothing which is not alive can be art; nothing which cannot be art is true: and everything untrue doesn’t matter a very good God damn...

---

since feeling is first
who pays any attention 
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;
wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world
my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady I swear by all flowers. Don't cry
-the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says
we are for each other: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph
And death i think is no parenthesis