The invention of meaning
by Jon Rappoport
August 29, 2015
(To read about Jon’s mega-collection, Exit From The Matrix, click here.)
The idea that an individual can invent meaning is a foreign notion.
Discover meaning? Yes. Invent it? No.
And therein lies the rub.
“Why yes, a person can create something, but it doesn’t necessarily mean anything. There are rules about that. You have to stick to them. Otherwise, you’re incomprehensible…”
But suppose that is not the case?
Suppose a person can invent endless meanings, including those that don’t translate into language at all?
Suppose we all have that capability, but through the ascension of particular kinds of societies and civilizations, this fact has been “omitted”?
In that case, we would be walking around at half-mast, so to speak. We would be adhering to common sets of meanings and ignoring the infinity of what we can invent.
The reality machine explains what can mean what. It spits out accepted meanings. If we unhook from the machine, though, all bets are off.
Freed at last, would we be compelled to develop one new universal language that expresses new meanings? Or could we, instead, each imagine many new languages and take our chances on something far more adventurous?
Consider a painter. He makes 5000 paintings, and he says, “They’re all filled with meanings. But I can’t tell you what they are, because our language doesn’t convey them…”
If you listen to Shostakovitch’s 5th Symphony, do you glean many untranslatable meanings in the music itself? Not in words?
The situation I’m describing here is akin to thousands of people flying and running and walking in the sky…and feeling a compulsion to come back down to Earth, where the only meanings are.
That would be ridiculous.
Someone might point that out: “On Earth, there are sixty billion possible combinations that yield comprehensible meanings. But in the sky, there are 600000000000000000000000000000000 to the 50000000000000000000th power meanings.”
On Earth, the 60 billion possible combinations (or whatever the number is) are shrunken down to fewer…and then fewer…
It’s all a matter of commonality, isn’t it? People want to share already scripted meanings.
They forget there is another road, on which we become more than we are, which is to say, we become what we actually are.
Through invention.
Some 55 years ago, when I began painting, I found out much of this in a very short time.
Jon Rappoport
The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.
Outside the Reality Machine 
« Meaning », What does meaning really means? That’s the big question!
I believe “meaning” is a personal perception feeling. It cannot be imposed on anyone.
One day you look at a picture or listen to a symphony and it means something joyful and the next day it means something sad and the following day it means something weird that you cannot put words on. It all depends on your mood of the day.
So even if you invent something new, you cannot impose its meaning to someone else. It would be mean to do so… tyrannical, if you want.
Unless, of course, if you invent a new alphabet, or a new language, well then, you have to give it a meaning if you want people to understand you. It is unknown how many languages are spoken and written in this world, but they are in the thousands. So many people invented languages and their meanings. Languages for the computer, for the blind, the music, even the conductor of a symphony has its own language with his baton…and so on.
So what does my post mean? I don’t know. Probably not much, just a reflection on the subject.
It can mean anything you want: Insane, stupid, brilliant, ordinary, out of order, useful or useless. Whatever! Who cares?
Jon, have you ever painted something or wrote a piece of music just for yourself? Say its music cause I am new to painting and can relate to music more…and you see that it is something that seems new. You listen to it numerous times and you feel it is novel. But you are not sure because you do not want render it to even send it to someone? It would never have any meaning except to you like Quebec said… And that is ok too. Cause I have songs shelved because it was either too personal or I did not think it fit with other music and will likely never be played for anyone.
sorry just to be clear, more specifically complete works that you recorded with all the tracks if you do music / or if paintings all the medium/surfaces and when completed you like it because of the quality. Yet you have never played it for anyone or showed it to anyone.
“I have songs shelved because it was either too personal or I did not think it fit with other music and will likely never be played for anyone.” (Andy)
Go ahead! Unshelved them (if that is a word..lol) and put them on YouTube.
You will probably be very surprised to read the posts in the comment section. Maybe some people will hear or see something in your music and song that you haven’t seen yet. It could tell you something about yourself that you didn’t know. What do you have to lose?
I listened to your piece. I listen to a LOT of music, mostly of the alternative/punk or psychedelic/mod variety. But I like a vast range of different genres as well.
Here are some of my impressions…
Your piece had the feeling to me of a rock opera, although that term tends to diminish what you’re got going on here. It has what I like about a lot of the psychedelic 60’s stuff, which is that it goes all over the place, changes up time signatures, introduces new sections and instruments out of the blue, yet it all hangs together in a non-conventional way. Your piece takes the listener to many, many different spaces in a single song, which I appreciate.
It is an interesting mix of traditional rock guitar and drums with electronica; it feels grounded yet it weaves around into new territory, like a winding stream…the speed and direction of the flow keeps changing, but it’s definitely taking you someplace.
The vocals are somewhat hypnotic, which adds to the slightly surreal atmosphere.
I didn’t just hear, I felt it, which to me is the criteria I use for music I want to listen to.
I’m glad you’re unshelving it, and thank you for sharing it with me.
As to your comment “I come to you naked,” well, all of us do when we put ourselves out there. Ultimately all of us are naked…it’s just that most of the time people are buried under layers and layers of different flavors of armor acquired over the course of a lifetime. Sharing something like the piece you put up here gives a glimpse beneath all that. Which is really the only true way that people can connect, naked soul to naked soul.
I paint, and I write a blog. I feel like I am naked all the time now whether people see my work or not.
Feeling that you have created something novel puts you in a rare and enviable position! I know what you’re saying about how sharing certain things feels too personal; I’ve struggled with that as well. But it’s been my experience that if you put it out there, you might not only be surprised at the response you receive, but in how it makes you feel. Anyway, the world needs more truly new things. Whether people consciously respond to them or not, it lets them know that so much more is possible.
I had to finish a project so I shut down all browsing but ok here we go. This is the piece I am talking about. It was shelved for personal reasons.
It has now been included in the new project and “unshelved”. So this is unreleased stuff that was not meant to be. 5 people have listened to it amongst my friends now and that is it. My buddy who plays bass on live performances in the past has started to post it and I told him to stop so maybe one other place but you will find nowhere else.
It is not completely ready since it needs to go to the producer and engineer and my girlfriend needs to record her vocals but all the parts are there. This is my attempt to mix it down for you all.
The Jefferson Airplane reference is not meant to be trippy or trite, it is a reference to generation. The poem in the interludes is not mine. It is anonymous and I will give credit.
With that being said, this is for you 2 and anyone else who wants to hear it. These words I write have no hidden meaning or are vague. Not fishing for anything, just sharing.
I come to you naked. Thanks.
[audio src="http://www.chronicgenius.com/sound/StrangeMedicine_www.chronicgenius.com.mp3" /]
Apologies, the poem in the interludes is by Guillaume Apollinaire.
Or was it, Christopher Logue.
cheesy poem I tried to translate to english, written on 8 of June 2015:
I am looking at those
trying to give and receive meanings
all these symbols that I’m seeing
They were the first to disappear,
then the rectangle itself.
Then the wall behind,
all those homes behind it too.
Then mountains,
they all disappeared.
I was looking at space,
The space, itself.
Planets and the stars.
Who is the observer?
I never known that,
like he’s ever been.
I was sure of one thing;
I was looking at myself.
Loved this piece, it stuck in my head like an arrow from a compound bow; since you wallpapered it against the backside of my computer screen. I’ve been driven to blurting it out in such places…the waitress asks “And you sir” and I gasp “Do fries come with your.. invented meaning.”
“Extra, extra read all about it, Hillary and Jeb decide to have a town hall and bang out the nation stance, on the Invention of Meaning.
Donald sez “I know!… I know that, it was on a flyer that made the rounds a while back, one of those memes that gets in your head, like a song that won’t leave. There you are in the shower singing it well past your usual seven minute washing.”
Hillary quips “The Arabs have no idea at all, everything begins with Allah, how can we get to any understanding of what it means to invent regardless of the real purpose of: Invention of meaning. Invented meaning is American meaning…and…well, everybody wants to be an American. And girls are American, so invented meaning is a female thing.”
Johnny’s an American, and Johnny wants pussy and cars.
Personally invention of meaning is what ever I want it to be. I can invent it! And then after that re-invent it again.
I can put it on my fries, I can stick it in your eyes…can I serve it with the eggs. Green eggs and Invented meaning.
And the waitress replied “Sir that’s not on the menu, I’ll have to charge you extra for the invention of meaning.”
Can’t get a break, and so I think…(*thinking*) rules, there are rules..for invention of meaning. Comprehensibility! OMG..OMg
Ok…Shostakovich…composer, great artist. I mean, what can you say, if you understand the language, his work has a lot to say, its endless-invention-of-meaning.
They humiliated him, Stalin was asshole; what da fuck did he know about classical music…wrong!…its not classical music, because Shosty; you can call him that, if your his friend, which I am, well was he’s dead now.
Shosty invented a new musical language, something never heard before. A music from another reality. Something pregnant with new-invented-meaning.
Anyways to use a hackneyed phrase… I digress.
Stalin was an idiot all he knew about was moustaches, not as much as Salvador Dali knew about them, but…bushier. He knew about bushy moustaches, but about Shostakovich he knew squat, nada, zippo, zilch and nothing, fuck all.
But he humiliated the little guy, right after Macbeth. All those Politburo wing-nuts inventing, inventing, inventing what?…meaning. Invention of meaning to describe a genocide of 7 and half million people to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Regards: the Ukrainian department.
They knew what the language of the great Shostakovich meant. “I don’t think so”
Stalin had more important things to think about anyways…like Holodomar.
That shudder he was having during the brass of Macbeth; was not Shosty’s music, it was the flashing faces of all the seven and half million starved dead in front of his big bushy moustache.
Shosty’s fifth is the sound of hunger.
Hunger for language. Hunger for invention of meaning.
“The very existence of flamethrowers proves that sometime, somewhere, someone said to themselves, ‘You know, I want to set those people over there on fire, but I’m just not close enough to get the job done”
-George Carlin
The ultimate gift of being is that existence is meaningless – for YOU give it all the meaning it has for you and in this is your freedom under the law of what you put out is what you get back. (Bashar)
A Course in Miracles includes a daily workbook. Its first lesson is “Nothing I see means anything” – this is a foundation of not knowing that is expanded upon and opens the recognition of the linkage between what we think or accept and act upon as true, and our perception.
Because You are Meaning – your innate function is to extend it, and so if you confuse or co-fuse yourself with self-image, that concept will operate as a filter and distortion of what is acceptable or denied by such identity. And conflicted or self-contradicting thinking brings a conflicted dissonat experience. If that is not a wake up call, then it operates as if a symptom to be eradicated and thus one becomes ever more defined by and limited by what is hated or rejected. Recognizing the power to thus limit and invalidate ourself is a keypoint to re-cognizing our power. True power is invisible to the grasping after the illusion of power. An old terminology was repent of the error and awaken to the grace of being – and go in peace in all you do. Meanings that resonate with and open or stir the presence beneath the mask are not ultimate truths – but are serving the desire to realign with who and what you ultimately are – which is simply never going to be defined or imaged in any fixed way that would relieve you of your Existence and all that That Is. But as Jon might add ‘Nice try – but how’s that working out for you now?”.
The movement that seeks to deny Consciousness operates denial of all Feeling in worship of a private ‘perfection’ in which nothing will be allowed to have power to disturb it.
But it is not First – even though it believes it was perfect before its hatred of the movement of desire first triggered denial of Consciousness as if to be lord in place of The Loving Light that magnetic desire drew forth. I had wondered how Lucifer got such a following – but the more I uncover my own denials the more I see it is because he seemed powerful and love seemed weak. The important word being ‘seemed’. From a point of guilted or fearful self invalidation – everything can be seen in reversal. Meaning attacked and meaninglessness enthroned and demanding allegiance in return of its protection from the terror of what Meaning has been re-cast as by a wish to replace or usurp it rather than extend and share it.