Antecedents to nadaism

Several people have warned me that the word nadaism has already been used. Some might go a bit further and say that not only the name but the ideas and the philosophy behind are not original either - which is true. They point out that I'm falling into big contradictions as well.


A Colombian poet called Gonzalo Arano wrote the first nadaist manifesto in 1958. "Midnight. I get down the ceiling through a staircase. There's a nice full moon. I get dressed. I go out to the streets. After a few steps I have this reassuring feeling: today I haven't done anything". (http://www.gonzaloarango.com/). However, as most artists, the author gets extremely pessimistic in his "pious progress to madness and suicide".
As for me, no endurance path makes sense at all.

Besides, there's a Austrian female artist called Nada Hribernik-Godler who wrote a book called ¨Nadaism: philosophies of life and art". In her own summary: "Innerspace is filled with images of splendor as words fulfil the promise of thought and inspiration in this offering of a personal philosophy". Seems to address some paranormal subjects and also supposed to be a "nice coffee table book for any artist". (??).

Also, there's some British musicians and DJs who call themselves nadaists, @ www.nadaism.co.uk.
In total, there are around 2000 entries for "nadaism" in google, and about 10000 for "nadaismo" (since it seems the unknown Colombian poet had certain influence; some critics compare the movement he started with the Beat Generation).


As for the ideology, it is true that nadaism might have some roots on existentialism, and shares some of its mistakes. Is life worth to be lived? - that's a question you cannot rationalize, nobody would commit suicide so coldly after facing an intellectual deadlock, (except maybe some artists).

A friend suggested me that "La Salle de Bain", by Jean-Philippe Toussaint, is still his nadaist bible, "showing the way, but also showing the futilility of it all as in the end he renounces and returns to the struggle of life". From the novel: "Lorsque j'ai commencé à passer mes après-midi dans la salle de bain, je ne comptais pas m'y installer ; non, je coulais là des heures agréables, méditant dans la baignoire avec le sentiment de pertinence miraculeuse que procure la pensée qu'il n'est nul besoin d'exprimer". (I should translate it I guess; you can copy-paste e.g. in www.worldlingo.com, the result is readable, more or less).

And finally, some could even find plagio in nadaism from Eastern thinkers like Krishnamurti. There's plenty of authors trying to go deep into the uselessness of thinking, suggesting that we should spend more time being present in our lifes. But they write very long books about it, in order to encourage you to think about it...

Enlightenment in London

Every tourist in London knows the feeling: whenever you open the wallet you get a heart attack. The locals recommend the use of credit cards. In particular if you smoke or drink, everytime you indulge yourself, or just when you buy a ticket for the tube, you'll feel as if you've been just raped.
However it's true there's a number of attractions for free. For example you can go to the Tate Gallery cafeteria to watch the sunset. You'll find out a lot of people has had the same idea, (it must be suggested in every tourist guide). Also, there's a lot of cheap concerts, a lot of talented young musicians, luckily one of the bands will play not too far to your place, (so that you avoid expenses in transportation). On the other hand, raw food can be so expensive, that a number of decent cheap restaurants can be a good alternative to cooking.

Anyway, there seems to be a community of people looking for enlightenment in London. The other day I was in a lecture about meditation, and they had a kind of weird ceremony at the beginning, one of the steps was that each of us in the audience had to talk for a minute to somebody you don't know and explain the reasons why you've come. Then the girl sitting on my right started talking to me, she told me that she had seen me the day before in Brixton, in a similar kind of gathering!. I thought it is probably a good place for a pick-up, you may get a nice confused girl and be as merciless as you want to her.
But even with the promise of good sex while you are seeking, the silence of the mind seems to be a very tough discipline. I see no other option than giving up meditation, following by the way my nadaist votes. Giving up is such a natural process, brings peace to your inner mind, and the subconscious, (that monster inside you which believes that you don't deserve happiness and that everything you do is wrong), gets a lot of relieve, you feel it stronger each of the occasions you resign.

Stop thinking!

Thinking is pretty pointless.

My mind spends most of the time making projections about the future and reviewing carefully the past and that's nonsense. You might say that thinking about the future could be good since it helps you to be prepared and to foresee what’s going to happen, but I have my doubts.

For example yesterday I was in a car going to the airport, I already started a bit late and I was in a hurry, and there was a traffic jam. Then I got worried because I might not make it in time, and then start thinking if the ticket was refundable or not, how urgent it was to get to London yesterday, if there would be a plane later, or today or tomorrow or whatever, also, to whom I should call when I miss it, the things that I won’t be able to do, where I was going to stay last night, etc, etc, etc. And it is not that I looked at it very rationally and looked at the different possibilities and the solutions and create a kind of scheme that will define the future action depending on what happens, a tree of decisions, no; I was basically looking at it with anxiety and getting worried. I was not getting prepared for the outcome of the traffic jam, I was not foreseeing, I was just worried. So it was useless.

Of course, I made it on time to the plane and at the end it was just a stupid episode. But, even if I was late and finally I had taken one of the actions I had been thinking about for so long, how long would have taken me to decide what is the right things to do after getting to the airport and being rejected at the check-in counter?, 1 or 2 minutes maximum to get to the same conclusion?. And it is not only the anxiety, it is that maybe in the car the radio was on and there was a song that I loved and I did not listen to it. Or there were beautiful birds flying around, or it was a nice sunny day and you could have opened the window and feel it, or there was a chance for a nice conversation.

I’m not saying that projecting to the future is always useless, but the way I do it most of the time is pretty clumsy and stupid.

Now in London I'll try to investigate meditation, the silence of the mind, a bit further.

Diary of the nadaist

In a regular day, I wake up early, although it takes me some time to get out of bed. Then I go for a shower, I shave slowly, get some light breakfast, solemnly I visit the toilet, and relax for a while. I go to the street to buy the newspaper, and for a walk, and when I'm back it's already time to start preparing a nice meal for lunch. Then I eat, I check there's nothing watchable on TV, and that's the moment for some mild activity: meeting a friend, going to the cinema, for a bicycle ride...

When I'm back, depending on how hungry I am, maybe I can open the newspaper, maybe not. After cooking and dinner it should be ok for sure, but perhaps I want to read a book instead, or write a little, I'd rather listen to some music, or play some chess or a computer game, or there's a good movie on TV. Sometimes I can only take a quick look to the paper drowsy before going to bed, or maybe the morning afterwards, having some coffee.

Probably it's not a good idea that I spend a while everyday in the writing routine for the nadaist blog. Most of the times it will look just as the text above. Besides it would add even more structure to my day, and there's already a framework too heavy by feeding myself and logistics and other physiological needs, (and not so much time for the paper). Thus I will only cover the nadaist exercises and some real activities.

So, next week I'll try to join a meditation course. I'm just back from a 2 months trip to India, over there I was thinking about the nadaist principles, and I found amazing the way some folks, (I mean common people, not gurus or mystic yoga touts), could describe thought and mind and obsessions and the subconscious having no background on western psychology. They told me that meditation is the silence of the mind, just like that, and there's no divine implications. So I guess I'll try to join a course, even if it is a bit of a contradiction to the principles, since it would be an achievement to learn to meditate; however I hope you excuse me - meditation seems to be the perfect nadaist activity. Anyway I assure you I will quit as soon as I can.