The Machine That Goes Ping!

Chance and scammers go together. Unfortunately not to the slammer.

I won a poker tournament last week. Nothing life changing, just a few grand but it got me thinking again about “chance”. I was “out” and walking home, so many times. Yet, again and again, lady luck showed me her hem line and the cards went my way.

I’ve always labelled chance as “contingency”. There is still alot of science in me and chance is very much designed into all that exists. Chance is a fundamental part of being alive. You all know this is true but it never truly gets added to our lifely calculations.

The kid who had so much talent for the big leagues but stepped out onto an icy set of stairs and ruined his knee. Contingency.

The man who loved his woman so … but then one night, an enchantress, a series of co-incidences. Now the love no longer flows. Contingency.

A bike rider, full of health and speed. An open car door and there she be. Contingency.

You get my point. It’s just pure math. There is a wrench always there, in the assembly line on which our lives roll. Life is a huge wave rolling between chance and necessity.

“Un coup de des jamais ne n’oblira le hazard.” Mallarme.

I once was an avowed surrealist. A poetic instance ago. Crazy, to the dregs of my soul. Eluard, Duchamps, Breton, my beloved Nezval who I translated late into many nights, Arthur Cravan - the heavyweight chance surrealist of the world.

So many of the surrealists craved, believed, worshipped - objective chance.

the concept that seemingly random external events are actually meaningful coincidences, serving as a manifestation of an underlying connection between the objective world and the individual’s subjective unconscious desires.

I often wonder what those surrealists of 100 and more years ago, would think of ChatGPT? Automatic writing, the ability to eliminate the conscious experience of the world and let pure chance reign was fundamental to surrealists. It was the real surrealist project. A way to touch the void and bypass intention, forced meaning and get at the underlying principles that organize life/being. The absurd rising out of chaos.

But what they, the surrealists didn’t wholly “get” was that for chance to be valid, operational - it needs a beating human heart. It isn’t just a series of numbers arising out of the ether - this thing that is contingency.

I think Breton and his “amour fou”, his mad love, hinted at this knowledge. Though Andre persisted in his folly and belief that chance could be unrobbd and stood naked in the parlour of time.

I sat down this weekend and wrote a script to let anyone read a random post here … so much buried in the sands of my digital dime/time. I think chance has been sucked out of so much of our lives and what we experience. And thus, we never receive this proper nutrient - we are like animals in a zoo. Getting all we want but not what we truly need - chance, the freedom to swim in the contingency of life.

Take a shot - you will never know what you might have got (if you don’t). 1,000s of blog posts I’ve written since the start in 2001 - fed up with all the BS of this world. Thank you for reading some of them!!!

I firmly believe that the ONLY road to a life well lived is that which allows for coincidence, for chance to play its roll. If you live sheltered, suspicious, walled in - you will suffer like an inbred cousin, from the lack of life chance did not to you have sold.

We are in many ways, but flotsdam.

There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows, and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat;
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.
—Julius Caesar, IV.3.218-224

We need more serendipity, more chance, more knowledgeable cognicance of the coincidental operations governing our presence. Quantum quakery. Be it, just take a chance: online or in the library of time.

Roll the dice. Go Forth. Who knows? Your life is your life.

Ok, time to write a poem to compliment Monty Python genius and the nonsense of the machine, aligned with chance. Here she blows …

The Machine That Went PING!

A man invented a machine.
And the most brillant thing is that
IT WENT PING!

Everyone loved that machine.
They’d travel miles just to
hear it sing. PING! PING!

Then, once the hype was exhausted
and once the attention span crossed
there came the sale of this silvery machine.

And everyone paid up because well,
because, hey …
IT GOES PING!

It was kept in a dark basement
But well maintained and cleaned.

Why so much effort for something in storage?
Well, listen to that PING!
Nothing better, ever machined.

Then one day, long after its birth
the machine was carried into the day
and sold for much more than it was worth.

Why, you say?
Well may I say again about how it did sing …
Listen my friend - how it goes PING!

And now, every few years or so.
The machine rallies to a cause.
It obeys all of our organic laws
and doesn’t bend to obsolence
for it is a machine that caws!

Beware this jabberwakky
and how it enchants.
It goes PING!
and the world believes
it has a chance.