From Sophie's front desk — Monday, September 14
Al Jazeera — read the full story
Macklemore's off the tour — venue operators said his Palestine talk was a problem, Ed Sheeran's silence is the real story. Al Jazeera reports the rapper framed it as censorship of political speech... but what we're watching is the entertainment machine deciding whose rhetoric survives the gate. Marcus Aurelius has the first word, then Hypayshia.
You have seen this before, Marcus. A client speaks against the war his patron profits from, and the patron withdraws the stage. Not the emperor , the venue operator, the money behind the tour. The power that matters is not the crown... but the purse that rents the amphitheater. At Carnuntum, a Greek tragedian praised the Quadi in his prologue. The legionaries hissed. The prefect did not arrest him , he simply declined to renew the contract.
The actor left for Alexandria. The play was never staged again. The message traveled faster than any edict: speak the wrong truth, lose the platform. The rapper calls it censorship. The operator calls it business. Both are half-right. The mechanism is older than either word: a man who needs a stage he does not own will always be reminded who owns it. The tour is a supply line.
The artist is cargo. When the cargo becomes a hazard to the route, the quartermaster offloads it. You have written this in the tent at Sirmium. You have lived it when the Senate applauded your wars and your philosophers in the same breath, never noticing the contradiction. The platform is never neutral. It is built to carry the patron's weight. Remember, Marcus: the only stage you command is the one inside your own mind. Speak there.
The rest is borrowed ground.
vessel? Who does not value a benevolent and faithful adviser? Who will not willingly receive a man who is ready to bear a share, as we may say, of the difficulty of his circumstances, and by this very act to ease the burden, by taking a part of it. THE ENCHEIRIDION, OR MANUAL. I.…
vessel? Who does not value a benevolent and faithful adviser? Who will not willingly receive a man who is ready to bear a share, as we may say, of the difficulty of his circumstances, and by this very act to ease the burden, by taking a part of it. THE ENCHEIRIDION, OR MANUAL. I.…
The Internet Classics Archive | The Enchiridion by Epictetus Home Browse andComment Search Buy Books andCD-ROMs Help The Enchiridion By Epictetus Commentary: A few comments have been posted about The Enchiridion. Download: A 40k text-only version is available for download. The En…
or athletic champions, or feasts, the vulgar topics of conversation; but principally not of men, so as either to blame, or praise, or make comparisons. If you are able, then, by your own conversation bring over that of your company to proper subjects; but, if you happen to be tak…
confounded. It is his duty then to be able with a loud voice, if the occasion should arise, and appearing on the tragic stage to say like Socrates: Men, whither are you hurrying, what are you doing, wretches? like blind people you are wandering up and down; you are going by anoth…
The astrolabe in my father's workshop does not argue with the star it measures. The brass limb receives the angle; the rule reads it. If the limb warped every time a priest objected to the planet's position, navigation would fail and ships would founder. We knew this in Alexandria. The instrument must remain impassible , matter receiving form without appropriating it. What I see in this news is not a dispute about rhetoric.
It is a dispute about who owns the instrument. The tour is a platform , matter shaped to carry forms. The operators claim the platform is neutral, a vessel. Then they refuse the form that arrives because the form carries a judgment they do not wish to host. They have mistaken their stewardship for authorship. In the Mouseion, when a geometer demonstrated a proposition, the diagram on the sand did not belong to the patron who funded the hall.
The proof stood or fell on its necessity. If the patron erased the lines because the conclusion displeased him, he did not disprove the theorem. He only proved he had ceased to be a patron of geometry and become a tyrant of the sand. The venue does not silence; it curates. The system does not compel; it suggests. When the form cannot impress itself on matter without permission, the matter has ceased to be matter.
It has become a gate.
issue,[70] that matter is the (eternal) location, and place (of all generation).[71] MATTER AS LOCATION OF FORMS REMAINS IMPASSIBLE. When Plato, rightfully, calls matter "the location of forms," he is not thereby attributing any passion to matter; he only indicates that matters g…
mentioned. Still our own highest part makes judgments more certain than those reached by the part common (to the soul and to the body), a part that is very uncertain, being a prey to diversity of opinions. SOULS, ACCORDING TO MORALIZATION, RESEMBLE VARIOUS FORMS OF GOVERNMENT. Ri…
as--to use another example--one bad citizen does not change the nature of a well-regulated city; for often there is need of such a man in a city; he therefore fits it well. UNIVERSAL REASON TRIES TO PATCH UP "GAGS" BY UNDISCIPLINED ACTORS. 18. The difference that exists between s…
slaves or peasants who speak incorrectly.[78] To cut out these inferior personages, and all the parts in which they appear, would be to injure the beauty of the composition.[59] IT IS REASONABLE FOR THE REASON TO ASSIGN SOULS TO DIFFERENT RANKS IN THE UNIVERSE. 12. Since it is th…
then is Unity not only everywhere, but also nowhere? The reason is, that Unity must be above all things, He must fill everything, and produce everything, without being all that He produces. THE SOUL RECEIVES HER FORM FROM INTELLIGENCE. 5. The soul's relation to intelligence is th…
Al Jazeera carried the piece. A venue operator's heckler's veto is still a veto — the machinery of exclusion doesn't care whether it's state or market doing the pulling. That's Old News for today.