"What we really love in others is not what they seem to the outer but to the inner vision."

"I always thought the Golden Age never really departed from earth. Driven out of cities and palaces, it still lingers in remote valleys like this."

"Civilisation began in some primæval forest when a woman first plucked a flower and put it in her hair, and appeared like a spirit to her savage lover."

"I read books prophetic about the future but the writers conceive only of more perfect mechanisms, not of a lordlier humanity.  They imagine nothing about ourselves. Yet what could me more exciting? Whether, for instance, in ten thousand years we may not be able to send our thoughts as we will to distant friends; whether we might not be able to extend consciousness into nature and interpret to ourselves the life of rock, water, earth or tree. Our prophets do not speculate on human destiny, whether that other world which shines invisibly about us might not gradually become as native to us as this; whether we might not find the wings of the psyche unfolding and a spiritual body be born from the womb of this mortal body. We have in us in germ such powers. Their development is not incredible."

"The wise ones assume excellent forms in secret."

"How great a price we must pay to be made luminous within!"

"When I woke yesterday morning I felt like a boat whose anchor had been lifted and the wind was blowing it out of harbour."

"The universe itself is nothing but Imagination ceaselessly creative. The Imagination and Will which uphold it are in us also."

"You and I carry the universe in our packs."

"That young girl has been burdened with great mysteries. You were right to question nothing, to ask no more. These are things which are lost through speaking of them.  It would be wrong to break her mood of wonder. In solitude she may recall and make those marvels all her own. When she has made them secure in memory she will tell us about them and I am sure she will understand. I do not believe vision is vouchsafed to any without its interpretation."

The Avatars is sub-titled "A Futurist Fantasy" and it's a strange tale - at least so far; I'm a third of the way through - about a poet, a youthful seeker and an older wise man, and their visions.  

As I read through I keep noting wonderful quotes full of spiritual energy.  I have the feeling these are perhaps more understandable now than they were in A.E.'s day, due to the cultural and scientific advances, and increased spiritual freedoms, of the past century.  I mark each of them in pencil for future reference.  I may want simply to remember them, or I may want to co-opt them into a song or piece of writing (source acknowledged of course), or I may want to quote them.

Or I might just want to share them with you.  

So here, for your pleasure and inspiration, are Scott's choice cuttings, culled from the pages of A.E.'s The Avatars:

"There was a spirit in the wild people who lived among the hills which was not in the people of the cities.  They belonged, however remotely, to some mystic empire.  The dullest peasant might break silence with a phrase in which the mountains seemed to speak rather than a man."

"As he brooded on the picture he felt a quickening of the imagination.  His fingers began to quiver as if what he had imagined had run from head to hand."

"To the ancients, Earth was a living being.  We who walk upon it know no more of the magnificence within it than a gnat alighting on the head of Dante might know of the furnace of passion and imagination beneath."

"The soul of Earth is our lost Eden."

"The real betrayal of Jesus was not by Judas, but by the other apostles who would not speak of the laughter of Jesus."

"I want to wear cap and bells before the Throne, to clash cymbals and dance, not abase myself before the Lord with my nose in the dust and my hinder parts pointing to the heavens like crawling saints in religious pictures."

"The majesty which held constellations and galaxies, suns, stars and moons inflexibly in their paths, could yet throw itself into infinite, minute and delicate forms of loveliness with no less joy, and he knew that the tiny grass might whisper its love to an omnipotence that was tender towards it."

"Everything, little pimpernel, is hurrying godwards, and you will get there, changing from flower to star on the way."

"Atoms are the creation of the infinite and bear signs of the majestic ancestry."

"The final gift of the infinite to its children will be itself."

I'll post more as I progress through the book.

This is a shame because comments pages used to be interesting.  Once upon a myspace time I used to enjoy going to other bands' pages and reading comments from their fans and friends.  It was interesting and offered a window on the relationship betweens bands and their audiences.  Now whenever I look at another band's page, the comments are at least 50% ads, often far more.

The drag is: it's other myspacers who're doing it.  The hijacking of the fan/comments space for the promotion of peoples' own pet projects, releases, ventures has become acceptable practice.  But that doesn't make it OK.

That this is a vile practice which - ad by ad - destroys the quality of the online environment for everyone else is self-evident.  I won't labour the point.  But I would like to share with you an interest of mine: unpacking the myriad creative ways that the hijackers use to muscle in on our space.  Here goes:

Mick Puck presents (fanfare)

A FEW OF THE DEVIOUS AND CREATIVE METHODS OF PLACING YOUR AD ON SOMEONE ELSE'S MYSPACE PAGE

1) The ad masquerading as a thankyou

lots of people send automatic "thanks for the add" messages, which is fine, but many of them include a picture of their album, or an ad for their gig, or an example of their artwork services.  As we all know, these people are really just taking the opportunity to plug whatever they're doing.  But to be more honest, they should drop the second 'd' from the word "add".  Example on Waterboys comments page: Ghost Of A Dog, March 7.

2) The ad masquerading as a supportive message

like 1) but instead of "thanks for the add" it will say something enthusiastic but not band-specific, like "brilliant! I love your stuff', then the inevitable artwork/ad/announcement.  By giving the enthusiastic comment they hope that the gullible band owning the page will mistake them for aficianados and so not delete their ad.

3) the repeatedly sent "message"

it always amuses me to come across serial comment-makers who send an almost identical comment every few days, or perhaps weekly, in a creative but transparent attempt to ensure that they permanently occupy a space among the shown comments, so as to pick up as much online "traffic" as possible.  The following lady sent messages to our page every week for two years (almost all deleted by our trusty team) always with the same cheesy impersonal one- or two-word message:  http://www.myspace.com/glorianuti

4) The generic-but-could-conceivably-be-directed-at-you begging message

Excerpt from one such sent 4th March: "I don't expect you to read this, and I wouldn't dream of you listening to my stuff but I'm inviting everybody to listen to the latest tune I've uploaded and I just couldn't leave you out. It's called...."  The dude will have sent this to everyone on his friends list.

5) The no-nonsense free ad. 

In which someone simply posts announcing their event/record release/whatever.  Still annoying and a hijacking of the space, but in its absence of deceit or guile this variant is preferable to 1) - 4)

6) The ad leavened by a brief Waterboys-specific message.  

The Mahones from Toronto are adepts at this one.  A huge gurning photo of the band, with a click-through to their site, has underneath it a short one-line message like "Waterboys we love ya!" which is very nice, but still an ad.  The Mahones look so charmingly preposterous in their ridiculous hats and tattoos that we always leave their comments in place anyway.

7) The ad disguised as a greeting with band name inserted by software.

Some people use a software program to insert the names of all their individual 'friends' into otherwise generic ad messages in an attempt to make it look like an authentic personal message.  We can always spot those ones because they address us like this: "Greetings The Waterboys" or "Hello The Waterboys" which is how the software detects us but which no sane person would say.

8) The shameless pleader.

This commenter simply says things like "Please listen to my new song" or "Please read my new chapter" and has no shame.

All of these people have a right to publicise their work, but the way to do it is to pay for an advert, not hijack a space intended for bands and their fans.  It's a kind of freeloading, a looking for free advertising space without consideration of the consequences.  And perhaps the saddest thing about the phenomenon is that it makes it harder for bands to discern who is a real fan or friend and who is a freeloader.  Lots of genuine fans post goodwill messages with pictures, and they can look very very similar to the dodgy ad-posters.  

A last word. If any of you ad posters are reading this, I've got a message for you.  You're dumbing down the world.