Curtis White, in response to the question “What do you think is the hardest thing about being a creative in this culture?” (North America, 2012):
and to “What’s the best advice you might offer a beginning writer?” (I just ‘slipped’ and typed “writher”!), he replied:
“So my best advice is to read Nietzsche until you understand him and go from there”
thank you Curtis White π
Thank you Superstitious Naked Ape for such a spot-on condensed rendition of (I think) what Pelevin’sΒ Helmet of Horror evoked for me as well! Β Really readers – check these out together – incredible lucky spontaneous occurrences of “synchronicity”? Β Almost?
by The Superstitious Naked Ape
with the personal caveat that it may as well be named “The Self Machine,” “The Reality Machine” and so forth…
Approach the page with no idea.Β No secondness of reality or facts.
See what the words will do.Β Like spontaneous sex with your lover.
What happens next.Β If youβre lucky.
What words will come?
Look closely.Β Draw the pen near the paper.Β Remember, youβve no idea, like what Iβm writing.Β Language finding synonyms making thoughts.Β Perception in the body.
Something already in the clear, or on it.Β Never clear.Β Do you see it?
Donβt let the first mark frighten you, it is already done, everything coming after you can edit: crossing out, crossing over.
See the line?Β To chase or avoid, either way, impossible to capture or erase.
Look again β do you see it?Β Hover but donβt inscribe, what is it waiting there?
Iβm not being mischievous or rhetorical, facetious or mystical.Β I want you to see what is always already there, predividing your canvas, filtering the open before you engage.Β What you cast out around you, the shadow of your general βself.β
See it there gathered at point of pen, shading back toward your physical hand and pooling around it?Β The absence of your presence forming incorporeality.
You are visiting here.Β Your shadow is the record.Β What you make out you make up.Β But itβs never the first word or the beginning line.Β Reality comes before you and spreads out, interfering and refracting the light you wish to use.
At times a bulky blot, at others barely discerned, evidence nonetheless that you are, in fact, tracing.Β Operating in a kind of cloud of substance, adding lines and loops, particles, threads.
They say art (and representation) began in shadows, with shadows β recognition of other and presence and beyond.Β Likely a myth that is true.
For starters, notice the outline, letting it outline itself/yourself, the visible ghost informing your areβ¦
Now, since youβve already overshadowed whatβs next, begun whatβs begun, press down and press forward, press onβ¦
continuing qualia…
{eliminating parts of speech and tense(-ing)s}
Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Where we began, and when, was next-to-nothing.Β How must have been something, and the what bears repeating.Β Complex and variegated channels, ganglia alike to beans taking root, nutty and filigreed.
The event is conception and all its pertinent involve (where-when-events) β resultant growth of hairy little what-hows.
What is a theme-and-variations composition, melodies often scarce to trace, but certainly music!Β Thrumming drumming subtle, with irregulating tremors, shushing swinging bellowed strings, replete with punctuations.Β A human is a riffing thing, something of artistβs collage coupling biological systems and common laws relatively, referred to as patterns.
Person is an unstaid element, living requiring stimulation and acknowledgements, enough continuity to be.Β Elaborate contexts of nurturing structures and their vice-versas.Β Cells swimming fluids, objects in umwelts, mini-beasts scuttling a globe, as seen from various distances (perspectives not visibly limited).
Existences like screens full of mimeographed transparencies layered and colored by hands.Β Bewildering tangles of syrup and string.Β Odd combos when mirrored by mirrors, as mirroring means.Β Two-sided at least.Β Reflected subjectivities / subjective reflections, sort of spinning things set on a gyro turning tilting.
Nurturing structures of what-hows commons: language, culture, environment and arts.Β Structuring nurture of sustaining nourishment, awareness (attention) and semblance of security.
And there you have a person (a what-how) and a world (where-when-event); synonymously person-making-world, er, world-making-person toggling looping recursive spirals adjusting discontinuous connectivitiesβ¦
Perhaps each and overall what-howβs where-when-events all beggar why (i.e. remain puzzling) at which point (or somesuch of the like) there probably arises a who.Β Who and why as yet unknown, being conjectured derivatives only from how-what in where-when-events.
All demanding further potentially endless inquiry and study and inventive erasures of conventional grammars and parts of speech.
“To understand how language works, what pitfalls it conceals, what its possibilities are is to understand a central aspect of the complicated business of living the life of a human being”
S. I. Hayakawa
“Thinking is a truceless act. / How it holds the injuredΒ yets andΒ thens inside it, so many layers of barter /
and resist. Β You who are all swerve, / Distance and blindfold when I try to find you – “
Laurie Sheck
“The world of art and culture is a vast commons, one that is salted through with zones of utter commerce yet remains splendidly immune to any overall commodification. Β The closest resemblance is to the commons of aΒ language: altered by every contributor, expanded by even the most passive user. Β That a language is a commons doesn’t mean that the community owns it; rather it belongs between people, possessed by no one, not even by society as a whole”
Jonathan Lethem
Working the edges and angles.Β βPart of the woodwork,β they say, though not in a structural sense β rather more a destructural or deconstructional way, one should probably add.Β Weβre usually fairly quiet, but work is constant, at times involving even groups or clans.Β What we create looks like a whole full of holes.Β Feeding on the solid, reducing it to doubtful tunnels, leaving some beautiful patterns.Β Rhythmic, at least.Β Once in a while you can hear the hum of our work, but more often than not our efforts are simply stumbled upon.
What you once thought sturdy enough to lean upon often crumbles out from under.Β Usually weβve been there first and found the flaws.Β We scramble and burrow, many even fly.Β Keeping mostly to ourselves, gnawing and chawing away at the things we all believe in and trust, things assumed to hold fast and true, the shapes that give substance to lives.
Of course many consider us sinister nuisances, think we work to undermine, but we really donβt take much β just leave it considerably different than when we first come upon it and passage our way through.Β Left to ourselves we accomplish a lot, are industrious, but weβre more often pestered, hampered, sealed-off, even (and yes, Iβm serious!) exterminated!Β Treated as pests or threats or dangers.
We might be admired, theoretically, but weβre never welcomed as guests.Β Not invited in houses where public or money are smelled.Β There weβre only talked about β as worming and wriggling our ways through the infrastructures β βfluttery, ephemeral crittersβ weβre called β parasitic to power and ultimately debilitating if left unconfronted.
Harmless enough as ourselves, simple units to squash, but we happen to be many.Β Think: ants.Β Think: pestilent plague.
We can be quite beautiful in the light (as a specimen!) β translucent and fine and opaque, exhibiting a powerful delicacy.Β But given free reign we undo the foundations, and therefore, it is feared, the whole edifice too.Β An elephant, for instance, might be trained β used for tricks or for jokes β is easy to keep an eye on, but not us βweasly and scuttling creatures,β no, no.
All Iβm saying is that some of us are always eating away at the edges and bounds, plundering thresholds, slobbering the barriers and gates β theyβll acknowledge us if forced to β but with a mind to be rid of.Β If featured, we watch out for the shadows and sprays, closed quarters and boots.Β Theyβll let us have slush piles and compost, a few trimmings or whatβs already abandoned, but itβs always in hopes β always β of keeping us OUT.Β Mark my words, no one really loves a thriving insect but itself.Β Grind and tear with all youβve got, our lives are short and thereβs much to do.
Requiring so little, any medium will do, only to find accessβ¦andβ¦wizzle insideβ¦
βA peculiar fact about termite-tapeworm-fungus-moss art is that it goes always forward eating its own boundaries, and, likely as not, leaves nothing in its path other than the signs of eager, industrious, unkempt activity.
The most inclusive description of the art is that, termite-like, it feels its way through walls of particularization, with no sign that the artist has any object in mind other than eating away the immediate boundaries of his art, and turning these boundaries into conditions of the next achievement.β
-Manny Farber-
Another year. Β The title of this post comes from Helene Cixous’ introduction to Clarice Lispector’sΒ The Stream of Life, both books being part of the tight reliable necessities of each of my own repeated beginnings. Β No matter how I try otherwise, when the first of a calendrical year comes around with its socio-cultural aura-like atmospheric influence of theΒ idea of new beginnings…I find myself tracking to the shelves for these few cellular texts like the body seeks to breathe. Β This has been my inalterable habit for so many years now, that I can not avoid recommending them (with the highest deepest forms of Β loving attachment), to all of you.
“evoking the incommunicable realms of the spirit,
where dream becomes thought,
where trace becomes existence…
I write you because I do not understand myself…
it is always a question of beginnings.”
“And for many years I have been writing,
borne by writing,
this book that book;
and now, suddenly, I sense it:
among all these books is the book I haven’t written;
haven’t ceased not to write.”
and additionally, today:
“What I mean is, if you have ink in your blood it’s hard to get it out of your hands…
Our reputation for excellence is unexcelled, in every part of the world.
And will be maintained until the destruction of our art in some other art which is just as good but which,
I am happy to say, has not yet been invented.”
“Samuel Beckett: Try again. Β Fail again. Β Fail better…
to conceive of writing as a possibility space where everything can and should be considered, attempted, and troubled.”
May your 2013 be filled with incredible texts and integral growth and development!
Evincing
The term is evincing.Β That word that stands for the complex of tangled strands stuck and striated into a confrontation with blankness.Β You know what I mean?
Balled up like a sap-thickened snot-slickened hardening knot of twine, all strung together, unruly, but wadded and crushed, like a snowball β a large icy one β but dirtied β clodded thick and gluey-thready β distasteful, a kind of impossible object β something like the idea of the innards of a self β what one sees in a mirror β like a melancholy music β tunes that you love that empty and sicken you β help you to feel more alive β all that.Β More.Β The unaccountable enormity that feeds into a stream called entity.Β All that.Β More.Β Horrible, beautiful things.
Β Β Β Β Β Β Β The fact that we are far more than we are able to surmise, and far less than we hope or wish to be.Β Messy.Β Contents of a dump.Β A lifelong of it.Β From every here and there that has ever counted as βaroundβ us.Β All that.Β More.
It comes to bear.Β In its confusing ways.Β Its overwhelm, that is not too much, indeed, we hang together by its incredible pressure.Β All that.Β More.Β We are composed of far more than we can consciously carry or categorize.Β Too much.Β All that.Β More.Β The too-much encroaches, suffocates, immerses us in such a way as to individuate and differentiate us as misshapen identities, figures in rubbled ground, that which we spy in mirrored surfaces and the reflections of othersβ faces.
That is what I bring to blankness.Β And stare.Β All that.Β More.Β Scrambled and disturbing.Β Flustercucked and discombobulating.Β Lost in the morass that makes me, that I am unable to peek through, even glance.Β Life.Β All that.Β More.Β Too much.Β What cannot possibly be organized.Β All that.Β More.
Β Β Β Β Β Β Β This is my life.Β Such a jumble of grandeur, goodness, glorious juiciness and jubilant joyeux, with dark twisting tunnels of termiting fear, incapacitate fogs too bleary to count quite as fog β glaucous and cataracted visions.Β Too much.Β All that.Β More.
I heave and haul it to blankness.Β These pages.Β I set it on fire, collecting the ashes.Β Or pick at a corner, scabrous and stubborn, until a smidgen unravels and I can trouble it.Β Or simply collapse on the paper, clod-like and unstable, leaving crumbs.Β Thank you paper.Β All that.Β More.
Β Β Β Β Β Β Β If you took all that was life-sustaining precious to me in this world and stacked it on top, I would die quickly, crushed under its weight like a sparrow cracked under boot.Β That which breaks us makes us stronger?Β Comes out of the mouth through the pen and returns through the tubes in my ear-throat to gag me.
I buckle under it like an aged Prometheus and slog, spilling it onto the blankness.Β All that.Β More.Β I love what survives me.
βwith no sign that the artist has any object in mind other than eating away the immediate boundaries of his art, and turning these boundaries into conditions of the next achievement.β
-Manny Farber-
All that and more.Β It evinces.Β I am thankful for the whole god-damned and gloriously blessed mass.Β I gnaw.Β It evinces a spittle, which falls on this blankness.
HAPPY NEW YEAR β HEREβS TO IT!
TO EVERYTHINGβ¦AND MORE!
In the midst of busy, sometimes harried, rhythm-bashing holidays, Holly and I find our first day of quiet self-direction, spending a full day of her sketching, submitting images, reading… and myself completing an essay and Ida’s blank notebook and polishing on some poems…and, probably most nourishing of all (for me)…input. Β Here are the sumptuous nuggets I’ve been sampling today:
and the typeset:
7
Taking Root, Using Your Woods
For this is how we come to woods β they come to us.Β Ancient are the lineages and deep the roots of almost every wood we encounter.Β Your woods, my child, though freely belonging to anyone, are also and quite absolutely, your own.Β You see, we come to learn our woods through time and play, experiment and work.Β Those woods you train yourself with, that you fondle and prune and water and grow β those woods will change right along with you.Β With time and your own adjustments, growth and adaptations to all within and around you β these woods will shape those changes in you and you will select, alter and use each of your woods in your very own specific and particularized mannerβ¦in every moment, experience, and time.
It may not be long before one of us departs with The Leavings, and with such a season you may seek out woodless spaces for a while.Β There is nothing wrong with leaving woods behind for a time.Β You will invariably find yourself among thickets of woods you do not recognize, are unfamiliar, or being used in ways you had not imagined.Β Remember, my dear one β this world is large and uncontained β we cannot master it β it is crowded and flush with persons and woods.Β Incessantly they are changing, every moment β the woods and their peoples, and the peoplesβ selection and uses of woods.Β Many will offer you groves unwanted, wealds of woods you do not know, clumsy lumber for your yearning purpose.
Remember to breathe and look far, my dear, take your time and search their roots.Β Nearly any wood can be partially known from its seed taking root and its clamorous growth.Β Woods are formed of winds and waters, weathers and disparate soils β they are bound to have unique characteristics and histories, varieties and sources β learning these will help you find your way among them.Β While hardly a simple task β its effort carries its own worth.
Then you may come to feel comfort in whatever woods construct the bosk where you are β they can speak to you, and you with them β becoming another precious person of the wood.
You have so much to offer us, as the forests of woods do you β all the many woodlands spread throughout our homelands, neighborhoods, countrysides and world β many, yes, loved child, many woodlands yet to be invented, discovered or known β and you, sweet forested one, growing now among them, taking roots, assembling branches and leaf piles and canopies, or ships with broad docks and high towers, realms and copses, barrels and fires and beds β as you learn to love and use your woods, multiply and form them β oh what wonders await us all!
Take your roots, then, gather seeds, use your woods β let them grow and shape you β plant, sprout and remake them!Β All woods you engage are yours while you are in them!Β So live, darling wonder, live and learn and create!Β Staying open to woods β testing and investing and proclaiming them!Β Even logging them for records or constructions, be certain to renew, and create!
and the final product of the little gifted notebook from my lovely daughter, sussing me through these holidays
Student Magazine of IISER Mohali
Music, Musicology, and related Matters
a photographic pilgrimage to Orthodox Christian monasteries across the continent
Meandering Through a Literary Life
Orthodox Christianity, Culture and Religion, Making the Journey of Faith
Erik Kwakkel blogging about medieval manuscripts
"That's the big what happened."
Networking the complexity community since 1999
All my Words are Silent 