Uncategorized | David Fekete

TOO HOT TO HANDLE! We’re Touched with Fire

27 Feb 2026 Leave a comment

by davidfekete123 in Uncategorized Tags: reading, William Blake, writing

TOUCHED WITH FIRE: ART AND MANIA–Too Hot To Handle

 Why do people read a story? They want something bigger and more than average. An ordinary woman hooks up with and marries a Scottish Laird. They all live in a magnificent castle and enjoy boundless wealth--eh?
 No one wants to read a story,

 "Yah, I went grocery shopping and bought some carrots. Potatoes were on sale, so I bought some potatoes. I needed toilet paper."

Consider this quote from the Swedenborgian Poet, William Blake. It’s a little bigger than grocery shopping. Blake is writing about Artistic Creation in an extended metaphor of giving birth. The character “Los” symbolizes the creator, Artist. Blake isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. I like him:

 "8. The globe of life blood trembled
   Branching out into roots:
   Fibrous, writhing upon the winds:
   Fibres of blood, milk and tears:
   In pangs, eternity on eternity.
   At length in tears and cries imbodied
   A female form trembling and pale
   Waves before his deathy face
   9. All Eternity shuddered at sight
   Of the first female now separate
   Pale as a cloud of snow
   Waving before the face of Los
   10. Wonder, awe, fear, astonishment
   Petrify the eternal myriads."

Wow, eh!? That Poet is hot, literally.

 Dr. Kay Redfield Jamison wrote a research book whose title I use in my fb post: TOUCHED WITH FIRE. In her book, Dr Redfield-Jamison found that there is a higher incidence of mental illnesses in the arts community, than in the general population. Everybody always thought Artists are half-baked; Dr. Jamison gave it clinical validation.

 I said that the Poet is hot. Blake lets us into just how hot he is. Again, talking about his own character, Los. Blake compares Artistic Creation to a blacksmith amid the Fiery Forge. William Blake also draws on Alchemical Imagery:

			
"Los ragd and stampd the earth in his might & 
      terrible wrath!
 He stood and stampd the earth: then he threw
       down his hammer in rage
 In fury: then he sat down and wept, terrified: 
      then arose
 And chaunted his song, labouring with the tongs
      and hammer."

		

I know this. I think all us Artists know this.

Too Hot To Handle!

ENIGMATIC DR DAVE ENTERPRISES, PRELUDED

THE SAD SOCIETY YOU AND I WRITE IN

26 Feb 2026 Leave a comment

by davidfekete123 in Uncategorized Tags: book-review, books, fiction, literature, writing

I dropped off my Poetry book, LINES DRAWN AUTHENTIC: A Realized Man, with a major bookstore national chain in my city. It is already in the online system, but this particular store in a big mall does not have it on their shelves. If they accept it, I will do a 2-day book signing.

I have my head on straight. The bookstore will be making a BUSINESS DECISION, only. They will decide if their customers would likely buy it–WHETHER IT WOULD SELL THERE.

I have confidence in the Literary value of my Art. I hope you do. I hope that you labor hard at Los’ Anvil–William Blake’s fictitious mythic giant symbolizing the Creative process. I hope you do not settle for less than as perfect as you can make your Art. That’s how I work.

So far, however, I’m about the only one who believes that my Art has significant meaning. It’s a hard place to be. Maybe it’s where you are, too?

It puts us in a hard place. The same place F. Scott Fitzgerald was in, and died in. THE GREAT GATSBY did not even sell out the first edition. Fitzgerald died thinking he was a failure as a serious writer. He WAS popular. He WAS rich. But he made most of his money writing comic short stories in magazines like our VANITY FAIR; or VOGUE. Not “great literature.”

Hemingway, his friend sold millions of books, was rich and famous, AND was considered a great Literary figure in his own lifetime. THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA won Hemingway a Nobel Prize. Fitzgerald had none of this. He was like most of us.

I don’t think I need to say that now, THE GREAT GATSBY is considered one of the great Literary works of the 20th Century. Equal with Hemingway’s best.

Too bad he didn’t know it. He was like most of us. With one difference:

I know that what I’m writing is a significant contribution to English literature. I’m the only one who knows it.

“The notes are the same in E”–Dr. Dave Fekete; “Rintrah.”

ENIGMATIC DR DAVE ENTERPRISES, PRELUDED

WHAT ISN’T FUNNY–GLIB, EITHER

25 Feb 2026 Leave a comment

by davidfekete123 in Uncategorized

UPSETTING–I find this scene in 6 UNDERGROUND very disturbing violence. Probably what makes it so disturbing for me is the sick, glib joking around while timeless Art is distroyed by a tawdry sporting car. The gallery is The Florence Academy, where Michelangelo’s David is. DEADPOOL is like that, too, but without art.

 The joking getaway driver is racing through priceless, tumeless Art. He has no concept of the intense meaning Art had for hundreds of years, for millions of people and would have for hundreds more years for millions more people. 

 I like cracking jokes as much as anyone. I'm not as fond of being glib. Aristotle says a hood sense of humour is a character virtue--just not buffoonery. Traditional Chinese Medicine also thinks too serious is a sickness, and Chinese Ideal Character profiles include "cheerfulness." Taoist Sages may not mind buffoonery. I don't think wit diminishes domeone's dignity.
 
 But when someone is baring their depths in Pastoral Confidence, I will not start to crack glib jokes. 

 I'll note that the first Batman Feature Film had Joker, Jack Nicholson spray painting timeless oil paintings.

AGENDA SUNDAY, FEB 22–The Gift of Art

22 Feb 2026 Leave a comment

by davidfekete123 in Uncategorized Tags: music, poetry, writing

As an unemployed Elder, I have finally arrived at a position in life I’ve always wanted: I am free to do my art, in possession of some cultivated “skill,” and I have the will and motivation to do it.

I hope younger Artists are able to find their way here; I never thought I could when I was younger. Certain unreliable factors blocked me:

GREATNESS: I wanted to “make it,” “make a name for myself,” in fact, to be “great.” Now, I want to make art. I have the luxury of it being too late in my life to “arrive.” What a load off! I’m writing a poem about it: JUST HAVING FUN; but it’s not on today’s Agenda.

EMPLOYMENT: I thought I had to have a good and successful job. WHAT A CROCK. When you get to Senior Citizen status, nobody wants to hire you. It will happen to you. EMBRACE IT AS THE BLESSING IT IS! My wish for you is that you find a way to bypass all that. Say you can’t get a job so now you are free to devote yourself to your one true love in your life: your Art.

The only essential thing, is I have Canadian CPP and US Social Security to live on, even if it’s not really enough. It works.

Agenda: Sunday, February 22, 2026:

Complete (hopefully) Poem, DESCARTES’ EPISTEMOLOGY.

2. Practice Piano–My own song, PANIC STATE (I wrote a blog about it a little while ago). Get familiar with the E-Minor Pentatonic Scale; also the chords associated with that Scale–the Dominant Chord is B7 or B Minor 7; the IV Chord is A-Minor; the “blues note,” or flat 5, is Bb (B flat). These are the things I need to know and play without thinking–in every key. Today it is E-Minor Pentatonic.

3. MALL WALKING: It’s too cold to walk outside, and walking is a different kind of exercise than Chen Taiji, which I also do (Grandmaster Chen Zhonghua Practical Method Taiji).

PEP TALK

20 Feb 2026 Leave a comment

by davidfekete123 in Uncategorized

When you want a “Feel Good Pep Talk;” when you NEED a Feel Good Pep Talk, look back at where you were, and where you are, now. Mark your own progress–it’s good enough, and good enough to go at your own rate of speed.

Neither compare yourself. Not to any writer or anybody: your competition is your “last self.” “Last Iteration of Identity,” I put it in Poetry.

I took that girl’s last dollar (A Loonie, Canadian Dollar) for a few poems of mine!!! She was a student at a Christian College, too!

“PANIC STATE” My Song; My Psychosis

20 Feb 2026 Leave a comment

by davidfekete123 in Uncategorized Tags: life, music, poetry, reviews, writing

PANIC STATE: The Lead Vocalist for DAVE MATTHEWS BAND likes it! They told me in Charlottesville, in 1992 when I wrote it. I was playing through it, in a piano rehearsal room in the U Virginia Music School. DAVE MATTHEWS was trying out different configurations for his band: word was, "Something big is in the works."

Playing through it, tonight, I LOVE it. I'm astounded.

My bass teacher in Florida is a Berkeley School of Music graduate. He said the chord changes were too hard for him. They were for me, too--almost. I can play them now, and soon will make a recording.

When you write a note three bars down from the staff, it can get hard to count. I thought it is an Fb, but it's an Eb, below the third bar line down. It doesn't make me smart or anything: it means it has to be written down. So, you figure out how to write it, and there isn't any other way.

My Music Partner in Charlottesville always respected my musicianship--some other players did, too. But but I didn't realize it, and didn't have a strong profile. I was a Ph.D. Religious Studies Major.

I asked the singer for DAVE MATTHEWS BAND, because I wrote it just before my psychotic hospitalization. I had lost my perspective. I couldn't evaluate anything--was an author's point a solid argument I could rely on to quote? Why does everything look like a cartoon of reality? My close friend told me I'd list my gift for poetry. He'd read my poems at Harvard, and said my poems as a Ph.D. Candidate lost it.
Now, 34 years later, I'm astounded. Can a composer say that about their own compositions?

It hurts, which makes me bitter and I can lash out that Edmonton does nor not credit me as someone who can write PANIC STATE.

The Internet world changes what "local" means. I consider a poet in Portugal my brother. An Architect in Transylvania, my sister. I have a colleague who is an Art Professor in Italy who travels and posts photographs of Temples and Statues in India, and orher places in Asia. When PANIC STATE gets a good recording, "locals" on the Internet will give me a listen. Maybe a friend I knew in 1992 in THE DAVE MATTHEWS BAND will hear it, and then it doesn't matter if someone on Edmonton's streets listens, or knows who I am.
Edmonton favours its own. I like a lot of Edmonton Players.

ENIGMATIC DR DAVE ENTERPRISES, PRELUDED