The Metaphysics of Value 9

What I'd like to stress
is that Quality and Value
do not exist
as mutually exclusive concepts

They work in tandem

Too often we refuse to see
how things work
together

We try and we try
to isolate and contain

To make things so precious
that we ruin them
in our attempts
to prove their worth

Somehow in this New Fade
of early 21st century bullshit
we've managed
to make that the mainstream

And I can think
of no greater torment
for intellectual thought
than to accept that
as the best way
to run the culture

The Metaphysics of Value 8

Value is what you appreciate
when you're exhausted
and you just want to take a break,
and you turn to what means the most

The Metaphysics of Value 7

I sometimes think
that Value
is what I seek
when someone claims
an absence
of Quality

The Metaphysics of Value 6

Value is a thing
that exists
in the best
and worst
of human instincts

The Metaphysics of Value 5

Value is a funny thing,
because we're so eager
as a species
to help things lose all value

We're awfully
(fully awful)
invested in destroying
good things

and it never ceases
to amaze me

It's the things of Quality,
really, that we try so hard
to support
but the twain in which they meet,
Value and Quality,
is the valley of pitiful despair

The Metaphysics of Value 4

What I love,
what I respect
so much about Value
is that it exists
in a visceral manner

It's the cat you've spent
a dozen years adoring,
knowing her in ways
no one else will,
in ways that are uniquely
her own

The Metaphysics of Value 3

If the Metaphysics of Quality are subjective,
and the Metaphysics of Value objective,
which would you call superior?

Pirsig considered Quality
to be difficult to identify,
which was why he called his theory
Metaphysics,
and yet it seems that Quality
speaks for itself
while Value is read into

As in,
a good book,
or a good movie,
or a good song,
is good whether or not
universally acknowledged

As in, Melville wrote
a masterpiece
but it took decades
for anyone to notice

Or, Shakespeare
might have been lost
to history
were it not for the Folio,
and where would we be then?

Quality, it seems,
is subjective.  It's the Value
that doesn't vary,
the Value that exists
whether acknowledged or not

But isn't that Quality?
Yet Pirsig voiced that better
than I ever could,
and so I defer to him
and lead you to him,
a voice crying out
in the wilderness
somewhat in reverse
but there we are

Quality is the thing
that can be rejected,
Value the thing that you will know
the minute you see it,
what it adds to your life

Quality is the thing
that can be ignored,
given agendas,
Value the thing that
cannot be denied,
because it defeats all,
a destroyer in the long night of mankind,
the constant eclipse in the blink of the universe

Value means something in that span,
Quality is the awareness of its brevity

You dig?

The Metaphysics of Value 2

The Metaphysics of Quality
in a lot of ways,
speak to the conflict
America has always had
with itself

So I will not take away
from that;
I will celebrate that

Intimations of Quality
have always been best described
as a fickle bitch
so I instead
direct your attention
to something else,
the Metaphysics of Value

Value is different
from Quality
in that it brooks
no exterior judgment

It is an entirely
internal affair

That is why
Robert Pirsig
if he doubted his Quality
always had Value

The Metaphysics of Value 1

Earlier this week
Robert Pirsig
passed away

Here was a guy
tormented
in some ways
by his greatest achievement,
a fateful sojourn
into Quality,
the Metaphysics of Quality

He never knew
quite what Quality was
but rest assured
he had it

So again
in tribute to him
I present
a companion,
the Metaphysics of Value

Rest assured
he had Value,
too