The Signifiers Have No Value for Us Anymore

How abnormal is it that I have a sufficiently well-developed personal symbolic system that when I am at a concert and some random dude in a Halloween skeleton costume comes out before the lead singer to ask, "What kind of moth do you want to be?  The kind of moth who beats itself to death against the wall of the lantern, delusionally imagining it to be the moon?  Or the kind of moth who manages to sneak onto a space rocket and flies to THE!  ACTUAL!  MOON!, I don't even have to think before mentally responding, "I want to be the kind of moth who helps to create the moon on Earth with my own hands!"?

I think the problem with the symbolism here is that, as far as I know, most scientists think that the moon that we already have was in fact created on Earth?  On the other hand, I guess it was not created on Earth by the hands of moths, so maybe that's still okay?  Well, okay, the other problem with the symbolism is that moths don't have hands.  But the moon was also not created on Earth by the. . . legs of moths?  Antennae of moths?  Something?

Two Quotations I Like

1. "In the traditional Confucian interpretation of poetry, such imagery of the distant beauty personified as the moon can be read as the exile's longing for the imperial court. Naturally, other more erotic and metaphysical interpretations are also possible."

---Footnote on "Red Cliff Rhapsodies, 1 and 2," by Su Shih, in The Columbia Anthology of Traditional Chinese Literature, ed. Victor Mair

2. "The laughter of Voltaire, the hatred of Swift were assertions of vitality and the instinct to live in us, which continually struggles not only against evil but against the daily environment."

---V. S. Pritchett, "1984," in Twentieth Century Interpretations of 1984, ed. Samuel Hynes