A long time ago, I thought: “It’s all very well for conservatives to complain that gay marriage is unnatural—yet what is ‘natural’ about anything we do in the modern world?”. The same applies to the transgender issue, the current cultural concern. It is unnatural to sit at a computer from nine to five every day—yet conservatives are not worried about that. True, with sexual issues there is a deeper and more primal unnatural element; and yet the criticism holds true—almost nothing we do is natural; much that is considered desirable by conservatives is achieved by unnatural means, and so how can you really criticise other activities as more unnatural? Drag queen story hour might be unnatural, but so are petrol stations when it comes down to it—so is a two-hour traffic jam.
What is the natural state for man? To walk 10-15 miles every day in a small band, a hunting band—and to migrate in a wider band over greater distances. The reason why modern man is murderous, envious, greedy, lascivious, and filled with nasty and petty plots is that he spends all day in a seat or in an industrial unit. It is in these conditions that we build up the poisons—plots and schemes—that blossom into the evils found in modernity. Our lack of movement is deeply unnatural.
What is the most perverse city in the West, in America particularly? LA. What never happens in LA? Travel by foot. If you walk in the upscale neighbourhoods you will be interrupted by an abbreviated squeal from a police siren: “Whereyagoin, m’am?”. The only reasons you could be on foot in LA: you are a hooker or a burglar. The less people walk, the more perverse they become; the solution to all problems in life is not to be found in therapy or drugs: it is to be found in a long walk.
All religions originate in a long walk: Lao-Tse, Buddha, Jesus, Moses, Mohammad—all undertook long walks, they all ranged widely; they made a peregrination, a rotation around the centre—as with the circle the Muslims turn around at the Kaaba; as with Horus, the Peregrine Falcon god of Egypt—the god of peregrination, the god of pilgrimage. These religious leaders had to walk because they sought to reconnect man with nature, often with ceremonies and formal pilgrimages that imitated their journeys into the wilderness: this is the path, the way—the Tao.
“Never trust indoor thoughts,” reported Nietzsche—by which he meant, as described in detail, that you must walk your thoughts into existence so that a certain rhythm is integral to them. Thoughts must be beaten out like a tattoo on a drum. Hence these articles are formed on walks: the article comes to me on the walk and then is transcribed later—there is no conscious development; it is spoken to me on the walk, forms with each footstep—coagulates around a kernel.
Additional: Nietzsche celebrated “the gay science”—the poetry of the troubadours, men of Provenance. The troubadour is the travelling minstrel—“A-wandering minstrel I,” as Robin Hood’s Alan-a-Dale sings—who is bound with a chaste love to a certain lady. The lady is really Sophia, an emanation that leads to the godhead; the troubadour is the Grail knight—he seeks the Grail (Gay-al, Gail, Gral) with puns. He is a jongleur, a fool, who entertains with his pratfalls—the first jongleur was Lucifer, he who tumbled from Heaven; he who broke his crown in the fall, a shard of which formed the Grail. Troubadours are the knights of Lucifer. The troubadours will lead you from the cities in great singing columns, lead you out to purge your corruption—as with many pilgrimages, as with the early nomads, many will die: the old, the malformed, the sickly babies—and all to the good, for when the Eskimo sees an elderly straggler fall he walks on. This is the purity of song, of Lucifer’s nights.