What Comes After Postmodern

My cow is not pretty, but it is pretty to me.

 

Somewhere in talking and rehearsing, there is a magical moment where actors catch a current, they're on the right road. If they really catch it, then whatever they do from then on is correct and it all comes out of them from that point on.

 

The concept of absurdity is something I'm attracted to.

 

The ideas dictate everything, you have to be true to that or you're dead.

 

This whole world is wild at heart and weird on top.

 

We're all like detectives in life. There's something at the end of the trail that we're all looking for.

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MILCH: Some people will not know themselves. As the minister says at Hickok's funeral, he quotes Paul... "If the hand shall say, 'Because I am not the foot, I am not therefore the body of Christ,' is it not of the body?" 

In other words, because we misunderstand our natures, does that exclude us from the community of spirits? And the answer is no, it just means we misunderstand our natures. 

So many of these characters misunderstand their natures, but that does not prevent us from recognizing that they're of the body of Christ. 

My feeling about "Deadwood" is it's a single organism, and I think human society is the body of God, and in a lot of ways it's about the different parts of the body having a somewhat more confident sense of their identity over the course of time.

SALON: What kinds of characters do you enjoy writing the most? Do you favor certain characters?

MILCH: No. You know, William James said that what every spiritual experience has in common is ego suppression at depth. 

That is, one loses one's sense of one's own separate identity, and experiences a kind of in-rush of either a sense of God or one's commonality with others. 

So when I write, I try to have no favorites. I try to be sort of a vessel of the character, and that's how I feel a part of the body of Christ. I feel that they're all part of a single thing, and they just exhibit their sameness differently, if that makes sense.

SALON: It does. Do you feel like you're channeling God or the spirits when you write?

MILCH: Well, I think we all are vessels of God, you know. As Saint Paul says, if the hand doesn't know, that doesn't mean it's not part of the body, that just means it doesn't know. 

And that's why, when I'm able to be of service to the characters, I experience God's presence more acutely than I do when I'm not working. So I try to work as much as I can. (from an interview available at Salon.com)

The fundamental theme of "Deadwood" has to do with the community as an organism and the sense of separateness as the illusion. (quote from a different interview with David Milch)

We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us.

Life has no meaning. Each of us has meaning and we bring it to life. It is a waste to be asking the question when you are the answer.

Opportunities to find deeper powers within ourselves come when life seems most challenging.

Participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world. We cannot cure the world of sorrows, but we can choose to live in joy.

The big question is whether you are going to be able to say a hearty yes to your adventure.

The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with Nature.

The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.

The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.

If you are falling....dive.

Gods suppressed become devils, and often it is these devils whom we first encounter when we turn inward.

It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life. Where you stumble, there lies your treasure.

Find a place inside where there's joy, and the joy will burn out the pain.

Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors where there were only walls.

Myths are public dreams, dreams are private myths.

Every religion is true one way or another. It is true when understood metaphorically. But when it gets stuck in its own metaphors, interpreting them as facts, then you are in trouble.

Half the people in the world think that the metaphors of their religious traditions, for example, are facts. And the other half contends that they are not facts at all. As a result we have people who consider themselves believers because they accept metaphors as facts, and we have others who classify themselves as atheists because they think religious metaphors are lies.

One way or another, we all have to find what best fosters the flowering of our humanity in this contemporary life, and dedicate ourselves to that.

Is the system going to flatten you out and deny you your humanity, or are you going to be able to make use of the system to the attainment of human purposes?

I was wise enough to never grow up while fooling most people into believing I had.

I must admit that I personally measure success in terms of the contributions an individual makes to her or his fellow human beings.


Prayer does not use up artificial energy, doesn't burn up any fossil fuel, doesn't pollute. Neither does song, neither does love, neither does the dance.


Always remember that you are absolutely unique. Just like everyone else.


What people say, what people do, and what they say they do are entirely different things.


It is utterly false and cruelly arbitrary to put all the play and learning into childhood, all the work into middle age, and all the regrets into old age.


Nobody has ever before asked the nuclear family to live all by itself in a box the way we do. With no relatives, no support, we've put it in an impossible situation.

If we are to achieve a richer culture, rich in contrasting values, we must recognize the whole gamut of human potentialities, and so weave a less arbitrary social fabric, one in which each diverse human gift will find a fitting place.


It may be necessary temporarily to accept a lesser evil, but one must never label a necessary evil as good.


Instead of being presented with stereotypes by age, sex, color, class, or religion, children must have the opportunity to learn that within each range, some people are loathsome and some are delightful.

Our humanity rests upon a series of learned behaviors, woven together into patterns that are infinitely fragile and never directly inherited.


The solution to adult problems tomorrow depends on large measure upon how our children grow up today.


We won't have a society if we destroy the environment.


We have nowhere else to go... this is all we have.

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Humanity will not perish from want of information, but from a want of appreciation.

- Rabbi Heschel

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You can't fake quality any more than you can fake a good meal.

 

Most of the trouble in this world has been caused by folks who can't mind their own business, because they have no business of their own to mind, any more than a smallpox virus has. 

 

Happiness is a byproduct of function, purpose, and conflict; those who seek happiness for itself seek victory without war. 

 

Hustlers of the world, there is one mark you cannot beat: the mark inside. 

 

In deep sadness there is no place for sentimentality. 

 

In my writing I am acting as a map maker, an explorer of psychic areas, a cosmonaut of inner space, and I see no point in exploring areas that have already been thoroughly surveyed. 

 

Perhaps all pleasure is only relief.

 

Silence is only frightening to people who are compulsively verbalizing. 

 

Sometimes paranoia's just having all the facts.

 

The aim of education is the knowledge, not of facts, but of values. 

 

Desperation is the raw material of drastic change. Only those who can leave behind everything they have ever believed in can hope to escape. 

 

Every man has inside himself a parasitic being who is acting not at all to his advantage.

 

The cat does not offer services. The cat offers itself. Of course he wants care and shelter. You don't buy love for nothing. 

 

Like all pure creatures, cats are practical.

 

Admittedly, a homosexual can be conditioned to react sexually to a woman, or to an old boot for that matter. In fact, both homo- and heterosexual experimental subjects have been conditioned to react sexually to an old boot, and you can save a lot of money that way. 

 

After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn't do it. I sure as hell wouldn't want to live in a society where the only people allowed guns are the police and the military. 

 

The face of evil is always the face of total need.

 

Anything that can be done chemically can be done by other means.

 

Artists to my mind are the real architects of change, and not the political legislators who implement change after the fact. 

 

Be just and if you can't be just, be arbitrary. 

 

Black magic operates most effectively in preconscious, marginal areas. Casual curses are the most effective.

 

The way to kill a man or a nation is to cut off his dreams, the way the whites are taking care of the Indians: killing their dreams, their magic, their familiar spirits.

 

There couldn't be a society of people who didn't dream. They'd be dead in two weeks. 

 

Your mind will answer most questions if you learn to relax and wait for the answer. 

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A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees. 

 

Always be ready to speak your mind, and a base (bad) man will avoid you.

 

Love seeketh not itself to please, nor for itself hath any care, but for another gives its ease, and builds a Heaven in Hell's despair. 

 

Both read the Bible day and night, but thou read black where I read white. 

 

Where mercy, love, and pity dwell, there God is dwelling too.

 

Can I see another's woe, and not be in sorrow too? Can I see another's grief, and not seek for kind relief? 

 

He whose face gives no light, shall never become a star. 

 

If a thing loves, it is infinite. 

 

If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite. 

 

What is a wife and what is a harlot?  What is a church and what is a theatre?  Are they two and not one?  Can they exist separate?  Are not religion and politics the same thing?  Brotherhood is religion.  O demonstrations of reason that divide families in cruelty and pride! 

 

To generalize is to be an idiot.

 

Do what you will, this world's a fiction and is made up of contradiction. 

 

Energy is an eternal delight, and he who desires, but acts not, breeds pestilence. 

 

Eternity is in love with the productions of time. 

 

Every harlot was a virgin once. 

 

For everything that lives is holy, life delights in life. 

 

Fun I love, but too much fun is of all things the most loathsome. Mirth is better than fun, and happiness is better than mirth. 

 

If the Sun and Moon should ever doubt, they'd immediately go out.

 

Imagination is the real and eternal world of which this vegetable universe is but a faint shadow. 

 

In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy. 

 

It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend.

 

Man has no Body distinct from his Soul; for that called Body is a portion of Soul discerned by the five Senses, the chief inlets of Soul in this age.

 

Prisons are built with the stones of Law; Brothels with the bricks of religion. 

 

That the Jews assumed a right exclusively to the benefits of God will be a lasting witness against them and the same will it be against Christians. 

 

For the bird, a nest; for the spider, a web; for man, friendship.

 

The fool who persists in his folly will become wise. 

 

The foundation of empire is art and science. Remove them or degrade them, and the empire is no more. Empire follows art and not vice versa as Englishmen suppose. 

 

The glory of Christianity is to conquer by forgiveness. 

 

The man who never alters his opinions is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind. 

 

The tigers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction. 

 

The soul of sweet delight can never be defiled. 

 

The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way. Some see in nature all ridicule and deformity... and some scarce see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself. 

 

The true method of knowledge is experiment. 

 

The weak in courage is strong in cunning. 

 

What is now proved was once only imagined. 

 

When a sinister person means to be your enemy, they always start by trying to become your friend. 

 

When I tell the truth, it is not for the sake of convincing those who do not know it, but for the sake of defending those that do. 

 

Without contraries there is no progression. Attraction and repulsion, reason and energy, love and hate, are necessary to human existence. 

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PHOTO by Catherine "Kitty" Kelleher-Stonebreaker 

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