Appropriation Art #02: Adam Curtis vs Daffodils

I wandered lonely as a cloud

What we think of as the ‘self’

is really just a small part of something else

hidden inside our brains

that floats on high o’er vales and hills

a much larger part of the brain

that actually experiences the world outside

when all at once I saw a crowd,

but that experience makes no sense.

It is just an ongoing chaotic rush

of biochemical data

a host of golden daffodils

that flashes up and fades away.

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

fluttering and dancing in the breeze,

what humans think of as their ‘self’

is actually an accessory

continuous as the stars that shine

that tries to make sense of this

chaotic mass of incoming data

and twinkle on the Milky Way

but to do that it has to simplify

and turn that data into stories

stretched in never-ending line

that are sometimes so simplified

along the margin of a bay

that they bear little relationship

to the reality outside.

Ten thousand saw I at a glance,

tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

It gives people the feeling that they are in control

but that is just a comforting illusion.

The waves beside them danced but they

out-did the sparkling waves in glee.

Human beings live in a simplified dreamworld

and in an age of individualism

A poet could not but be gay

when you can no longer order people about,

in such a jocund company.

I gazed—and gazed—but little thought

the only solution is to keep them in that dreamworld

and to make sure the dreamworld is safe and happy

what wealth the show to me had brought

for oft when on my couch I lie

in vacant or in pensive mood,

the idea of appealing to them rationally

and changing the world…

they flash upon that inward eye

which is the bliss of solitude

…is pointless.

and then my heart with pleasure fills

and dances with the daffodils.