The semester is beginning to dissolve, moments opening up for readings that wander further afield… the pleasure of not squeezing freedoms into necessity however inextricably they are entwined… the reprieve arrives today in the form of:
“What is to be understood throughΒ seeing and hearing (even if not at first glance) cannot be too far removed from what is already known. Β As incomparably as something unutterable may be expressed at times in a gesture, a grouping, a picture of feeling, or an event, this always happens only in immediate proximity to the word; as something hovering, so to speak, around its core of meaning, which is the real element of humanity…the essence of the person does not reside in his experiences and feelings but in his silent, persistent quarrelling and coming to terms with them.”
Greetings all, I apologize for not filling daily posts with content (or…anything) of late. Β I feel the loss myself as this serves as my creative outlet currently, and I feel it when I don’t create, purposefully. Β Anyway, I’m trying to orchestrate some time in the next week to compose something. Β For now…the music that I’m hoping will help me awake…pull me up out of a sea of academic work…
I hastily grabbed a notebook of primarily blank pages as I whooshed the children off for a swim. Β I needed to study and make notes while they splashed about and played and require pen & paper for the process. Β It turned out that the pages containing my writing dated some 15 years ago – journaling from a 4-day solo hike I had made in the Colorado mountains. Β Included was this me-of-20-something’s poem:
The whole notebook was nostalgic for me – my youthful vibrant concerns for solitude and justice, freedom and nature and virtue. Β What struck me about this little number was how consistent (or persistent) the concerns and interests worded here have been (obviously) throughout most of my life. Β Seeking purpose, expression, control – recognizing somehow that once language is entered, is invoked, everything changes. Β Our purposes, searches, availabilities, capacities, expressions, knowledge, – all gets reworked and revised as we engage in the broader activity of language.
If, as John Canfield theorizes, “in language we never leave the sphere of the social” and that “language is a vague concept with unclear boundaries,” in part because it “grows as more language-games are added to the mix, and as existing ones are enriched in various ways,” Β that, fundamentally “language is a set of customs in which words play a role, a set of patterned, culturally determined modes of interaction..” so that with “increasing cultural complexity come increasing complexity of our patterns of interaction” then my lifelong hunches that I’ll never get a handle on it, or master its use, or turn it explicitly to my purposes are a matter of course.
M. A. K. Halliday’s Triangle
Which is also what fascinates, compels and rewards its use. Β Again, with such a limited arsenal of units – (take a look at your keyboard and consider for a moment to what gargantuan and variable use we put those 100 keys or so) – every engagement with the tool is interactive, reciprocally shaping and shaped by us, and unfailingly externalizing for our organism – the medium thrusts and immerses us into our society and culture and history and possible futures, as well as all the “thinks you can think” and more!
On the right day, then, my bewilderment in the face of language as my vocational practice gets to be an adventure of constant discovery, novelty, and learning – immersing me in some infinite-like context, warping and woofing my organism into a universe of threads…
all quotations from John Canfield’sΒ Becoming Human:Β The Development of Language, Self and Self-Consciousness
I get a little weary of philosophy. Β It fascinates and intrigues, has its spectacular, glittering moments of whatΒ feels like beauty and “accomplishment” – like architecture, the sciences and arts, studies human and social and hard. Β But with each human activity and behavior there can be too much of a good thing. Β Perhaps it’s the fantasies involved in abstraction – in theΒ feeling of “figuring things out,” or ofΒ “making sense” – our human super-additives to experience that are also experience themselves – that I, at times, weary of. Β That eminently falsifiable intuition thatΒ everything is made up.
web perhaps called “self”
imagined universal web of matter & energy
It is extremely hard work to keep up a worldview. Β Involving enormous complexities and details, layer up on layer and strand interweaving strand of biological and logical, illogical, psychological, irrational, emotional, – ologies and descriptions, manipulated perceptions and re-interpretations of interpretations reinterpreted (ad infinitum) – it takes matter and energy, and particular organisms, which grow tired.
Those same realities, capacities and activities are also extremely inspiring, enervating and exciting for organisms – the behaviors of productivity, creativity, imagination and survival – and our weird confounding capacity to think we can observe our perceptions/observations to an infinite regress, make for a very strange frenzy of energy and matter indeed.
In a possibly (?!) infinitely webbed interdependence with our surround copious possibilities of activity are available – all bewildering: chaos can be so generative. Β Chaos can be so nullifying.
WhatΒ might weΒ know?
And why do we want to?
That we are organism within dynamic systems? Β (How would we know that, from within the systems?)
That we are dynamic organisms alongside other dynamic forms of matter and energy? Β (Sometimes seems to be our sense of it – that we might somehow step aside – wha-?!)
and…so…what!?
Alongside and within – in order toΒ be –Β apparently (that is, according to OUR OWN perceptions) – however would could we exist either detached (abstracted) or without (independently, unattached). Β To imagine distance, “objectivity,” without the imaginative capacities of fantasy –Β illusions – for example logic, mathematics, economics, philosophy, psychology – codes and symbols –Β DElusions in order to play the games in these forms of life we are with delusional sincerity – effectively. Β And our fantastic delusions or profound poeitic creationsΒ are often effective, productive, pragmatic, dynamic and evolving – techniques and time – which would seem to imply that they also are part ofΒ being within a myriad of dynamic systems…
…one might suppose (i.e. “hypothesize”); or infer (i.e. “fantasize”)
All an immersion in symbols – languages – stipulated relations – codified behaviors –
Iβve been working over things in my sleep.Β Parenting issues, marriage.Β Vocation deadlines, assignments.Β Logistics and payments and scheduling.Β Improbable care of the self.
– that overwhelm is inevitable, inherent.
Everything we know (or surmise) about anything indicates vast beyonds unknown and ignored.Β In order to see, to breathe, to speak, to hear, to feel, to think, to live.Β We filter and avoid.Β Press the vast majority of the worldβs availability into a void.Β So of course we canβt manage our world, or comprehend, even minimally control.Β We can barely deal with even a relatively microscopic set of variables, and those only enough to survive.
Reminded, awake then, that overwhelm is constant and inevitable.Β Inherent to the systems of which we are and are a part.Β Living is processing vastness.Β Essentially unscalable.Β And we thought bacteria were small!
Β Β Β Β Β Β Β So it comes as no surprise that at times we feel oppressed, drowned, immersed β helpless, confused and at loss.Β Pretend for a moment that we have to-dos that seem important + unforeseen and substantial grief + illness + snow days (which = a house full of ecstatic children, active and noisy and eager to be entertained) + inclement weather shuffling schedules and doctors, activities and possibilities around + limitations of time, energy and internal resources + anxiety or mood βdisordersβ + love and high hopes + responsibilities and intentions + fears and deep hurts + a body (bodies) mind (minds) to feed and nourish +β¦
Too Much Information, a saturated context for the human organism.Β The black box crashes.Β The connections run slow.Β The screen jerky and fuzzy.Β Head aches, breath thickens or shallows, noise is incommensurate β the signals scrambleβ¦
At first breach, first sign of imperturbβ¦we check in, acknowledge β perhaps argue or fight or make love (i.e. signify our overwhelm and our intensity), sit still, register what we canβ¦
and wake up, reminded:
WE MAKE ART.
Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Once ground is touched, we go in (or out) β βseventh direction perceptionβ β we begin to consciously process/perceive.
The query that sprouted is as follows: might the activity of art-a creative dialogic relation of index-sign-symbol, signifier-signifiant-and interpreter, i.e. βbecoming-forthβ β expand our perceptive capacities/processing?
In other words, in enacting the relationship of making, creatively, holistically, might we draw on more of the worldβs availability β perceived and βdismissedβ β a fuller context of experience less limited by intentional activities of categorical aims and constraints, thereby opening more of us to more of it in an open reciprocal dynamic interrelation, thereby sort of processing in βlump sumsβ β a gulping digestion of overwhelm?
We set aside prescribed roles, beliefs and opinions and work out, work into, an arbitrary generalized conventional (safe) mediumβ¦we fog our normalized paradigms and strictures of interpretive alertness β mores, values, expectations and censorship β we reach out gathering in.Β Interact.Β It seems something larger is carried, is moved β more than the medium, more than ourselves, more of a context, a world.
Does art extend our perceptive capacities?Β Our scope of perception β to process, to be?Β A kind of open-boundaried passage of experiencing between organism and world?
All my Words are Silent 