A philosophical problem has the form: “I don’t know my way about.”
– Ludwig Wittgenstein –
“The silent spaces between words often speak louder than the words themselves”
-Gunnar Olsson –
Tag: Art
Signifying Writing, Figure 1
Opicinus De Canistris World Map
*
The map began as a scribble, a doodle. Begins as a failure to write, to “compose.”
In lieu of a word there’s a wiggle of pen wandering aimless in search. Cartography-graphology-psychology – a loitering for logos.
Begins this way – in hope of words, a sort of squiggle. A body desiring a mind. To show up, to take over, provoke or convince – to appear, make a meaning, disclose – to figure toward sign. Some unconcealing.
The signal’s not there, so it moves: the hand, the instrument, the breath and the heart – are they tools? And for what? A cartographer’s dream. Of no training, no knowledge, even reason is lacking.
A pen making marks on a page, mapping none. Tracing nonsense. It begins in this way, and it leads, so he hopes (it hopes, is hope, is desire).
The scrawl travels over the page – given borders and boundaries, arbitrary and set – 6”x9” and lined with a soft viscous grey. He (it) slows down. Just a hand and an arm and a shoulder – in motion – holding a technical device filled with fluid – black, yes, like bile, but less tacky, diluted – it flows, threading lines – it’s con-fusion – yet taking, biting, inscribed. Something happens. Drawings are locked to a medium stock. Incomprehensibles stained on a page.
It crawls on.
*
This mapping begins in a loss. He is lost. It is lost. Doesn’t “know.” Just beginning, because – with desire. It is driven, compelled, WRITER WANTS (for to write) with “nothing to write, and no means to write it” yet constrained to keep writing, to expunge merely SOMEthing, some THING. Which is NO thing, no THING, but to mark. It goes on.
Makes a map, a map-ping, tangled series of lines meaning nothing, no THING, but creating TO-WARD. Ward off absence, off void, ward off death, this is to – .
It (he) is tired. Is forlorn. Is an absence and loss, a re-mission, re-cursion, re-morse. And not even that clear.
Scribbles on. NOT a map. NOT directions. For NO where to go – NOW here, now HERE, no-where. Which begins all the longing, for “he’s” heard it said, found it written – in signs, in-scribed, sign-i-fied: but NOT HERE. Not in him or this body. NOT THIS. No sense. Non-sense. “It’s” not “working.”
Trail dwindles along cross the page. It’s a map. Just of being. NOW here. Now. HERE. Looks like this – some electrocardiomusculoskeletalpsycognilinguadigital-gram. From this angle, this tool, these techniques. As a Ouija. No meaning. Saussurating. Arbitrary. Mediate. Only markings.
It falters.
And so it begins – as a failure to write – as a scribble – an assay – a tribute to write – that cannot, that will not, that does not…quite occur.
Becoming What and Who
I would find it difficult to praise this work enough and urge you to engage it if you share a deep love of creating and participating in literature and works of art.
Toward a Reading of Forms – by Jean Rousset
Laramie & Alias & possible ways to end
“Just find a way through to an end,” Laramie thinks, fallen there, and hurting.
“the void is waiting for vocabulary,” Alias reads, and ponders alone what the void might be comprised of. “Perhaps the void is composed of perhapses,” he writes, “combined with some organization of relations we are incapable of imagining, cannot begin to fathom. Awaiting and constraining possibilities, likelihoods and unforeseens in a kind of complex and chaotic equation or balance.” Irreducible, inexhaustible, and unsayable, he marks on the wall-sized whiteboard in his office.
“If I figure how to end…make it to an end,” Laramie whispers, hoarsely, internally, excruciatingly, silently. He cannot sense his horse, nor smell the fire. It will begin to rain.
“Perhaps,” Alias cursives at his desk, dire, lonely, remiss. “Perhaps each motion, feeling, thought…perhaps the shaping of an ‘a’ instead of an ‘I,’ perhaps this particular curve or flutter of line, this pen rather than another, the way it sits in my hand, perhaps the letter-to-word conjured depends on so much more than I can conceive or dream: smoke rising to atmosphere in some African desert; a precise selection of neurons inhibited and allowed in my body; the varying flow of blood and calculus of cells active in my thighs, my ankles; the trajectory of wind – its velocity. Perhaps what registered itself in my synapses and muscles 17 years ago is playing out in curves versus straight; what she said; or his coughs in the night. The amount and location of sperm; exact army and height of each dandelion stem; the president’s breath; engine ignition in China; the current temperature of Jupiter. Perhaps.”
Laramie works to focus on his breathing, attempts to concentrate his eyes. Seeks localization and diagnostics of injury. His vision is “impaired.” His legs have gone numb. Some liquid burn fires through chest-shoulder-arm. He cannot wriggle his fingers.
“Perhaps every ‘moment’ or movement, influence, decision, activity, intention, expression truly depends on everything else – EVERYTHING…since ANYthing occurred – however that may have become. And the motion of my arm, its difficulties, my emotions and thinkings, what I am able to perceive, just as much participates in the perhapses and perchances as EVERYthing else – directs them accordingly while equally or ratio-reciprocally affected and determined by. Some inexhaustible, irreducible, assemblage – unsayable from my specified and fluctuate limitations – my finitude, but imaginatively infinite (perhaps not) in chances-are,” Alias furiously scribbles.
Attempts to roll over. Effort towards sky. Finds himself clutching left arm, his legs akimbo but working into a ball. Breath harsh and labored. Sight unseen. Somewhere far, separate, Laramie is suffering. Finding a way to an end.
“Perhaps,” Alias drones. “Perhaps deaths and births, seedings and desiccations, galactics and atomic behaviors, cheetah-screech and egg-breaks, politics and business transactions, theories and documents and artifacts, particular weights of the world and all of their unformed-formings gather every instant to become again, particularly. Planar, scalar, interactive and recursive, never still, never stable, not quite patterned – ever potent, ever determined, ever possible, ever realized – EVERYWHERE + HOW + WHY + WHO + WHAT – always possible and continually actual – without possible worlds – just IS. Just IS. Just IS, again.” Alias slumps. Decides again to drink. Looks at porn. Longs for intimacy, for desire – to be craved, wanted and longed-for. To be satisfying, satiating. To be some whacky, untellable, sort of “enough.” Wishes and wishes – 15,000 things.
Nothing now but distress, pang, shards, fire. Something like the neigh or whinny of a horse. A coyote yelp or yip. Dying insects, a squashed ant. Sparks fizzled in mist and wind. Harsh, hard, and consuming. Consumptive. Agony. Laramie unable to locate his body, his voice…himself.
Meaning-Making in Living Systems, or, 15,000 Things
is a phrase and a theory I have queried, contemplated, spelunked and pursued for the past few decades of my “living.” Since (apparently) before I can remember, I’ve been addicted to a kind of figuring-out – some offspring of “understanding,” any concept / idea / or belief-faith – that might elucidate to me my (experienced) compulsion to “meaning” or “significance” – to matter as matter-in-relation.
I’ve encountered many gurus (preachers, priests, philosophers, psychologists, scientists, mathematicians and artists, farmers and engineers, poets = “people”) along the way who have sent, directed, swerved, commanded, troubled, commended, interrogated, suggested and questioned this impulse of mine. From sarcasm to scholarship I’ve been told I will not find that which I seek. Or recommended resolutions that don’t withstand my particular scrutiny and skepticism.
It is sunny and light, Spring-y and gentle in Kansas today. I took my lunch, after a walk, at a table among trees. Birds were active, dogs ambling by, flowers in bloom, and a breeze.
For the most part I “eat” cause I’ve believed that otherwise I would fail (as a being) and die. I like to enjoy food, but most often it’s presumed “preparation” falls to me, and therefore becomes a complication of time I would prefer not to.
So I sat and I drank (so much easier). Water & coffee & other things to my pleasure. And “pondered,” I guess – what I do, when (apparently) no one requires immediate need of me.
I was alone, in a way.
And thinking of “meaning-making,” and “knowledge,” “belief” and “desire” – human shit. (It’s what I do – that compulsion).
*** As I was contesting people’s behaviors and language recently in my home, my unanticipated fortune of something like a life-partner offered the response “there are 15,000 things it could be.” Which struck hold and has become something of a cliché in short order in our home. Imponderables, indefinables, indescribabilities. For any action any thing might perform – there are nigh infinite possible “reasons” (most likely irrational) – these courses are taken. “Personal knowledge” is not something we have. Systems do what they do – what is done is what’s done – and the likelihood of our assessments being correct is near null.*** [that’s all an aside]
I can be critical.
And quite gracious and kind.
“Depending.”
On what?
15,000 things.
I am rambling. And have decided to do so. Readers, you must know, I don’t write because I have something to say. (15,000 things). I have drives to express (inexplicably) – and most often what I write is precisely a declaration of what I don’t know.
“The more we know, the more exposed we are to our ignorance, and the more we know to ask”
– Marcelo Gleiser, The Island of Knowledge–
Well that’s a positivist view.
When I write, I expose all my ignorance. Compose hunches and urges, fascinations and fears. Ache to pull my ineffables toward tongues. Talking’s the same. I don’t know what I’m saying – just hoping experience finds text. Immaterial materializing. We might get “something to work with.” I don’t understand any of it.
Sitting then, in the sweet Kansas day, 20/30 years of my life gained a traction. “Meaning-making,” to make meaning, was obscuring infinite unknowns. Underlying such a contention – that meaning is made – swum its absence = there’s no meaning “there.”
“Person-hood” aptly decreed – “person” a “hood” that we wear. “Person-ality” – some ability we possess to appear as in situations. “Meaning” – a something we might craft to suit our unaccountable occurrences. I don’t mean anything, significance is made. If I’m lucky the people around me choose to do so with my existence. Otherwise it’s matter of course. We’re Matter…of course. But who knows? Also the problem of “knowledge” – the only “knowledge” we have is our own and some idiosyncratic communal bastardization of what our Species has MADE.
Not quite nihilism. Just meaninglessness.
I like the idea of “meaning-making” – finding it in the relation of atoms, of stars, of humans and beasts. Of dreams and delusions, of science. I like “knowledge” – created cultural artifacts and residue, flotsam & jetsam, structures and practical theories. AND it would seem it obscures what surrounds. For every academic discipline that drills its way into a world we experience (as humans) and stacks up hypotheses and –pedias…there’s still the wide world there from every other perspective and experience – the ant, paramecium, subatomic particle, sky. Your spouse or your child, parent or friend, or the foreign, the stranger, the Other, the “them.”
Myopia. Perception. The experience of meaning. Attribution of significance. What matters in matter to ME. IF matter – for even matter’s a human contribution to what seems to be.
Perhaps it comes down to particularized –“hoods” and “-abilities” – “each one’s” momentary personhood and personality – whether experience is an occasion to “make meaning” or glide on in its unnecessary meaninglessness. I don’t know.
What remains is my deranged and crazy compulsion – my “hood” I guess, and ability.
So many words come to mind.
Not-Belonging, Chapters
I feel somewhat apologetic, but here is one more selection from my archives. Another that when I re-read I am unable to see how I might do better, or how I ever got it done at all, yet all my work un-published or rejected, so I know it is not “good enough” per whatever the current cultural milieu would prefer. “No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” Perhaps. In any case, it circles around for me like the tail-eating snake I am, in hopes it might engender something new, no, in hopes it might be put to rest. For any who read it, I would be hard pressed to metaphor my astonishment, humility, gratitude and begging-of-patience, including a sheer and sharp ache of deep appreciation for your life’s time and likely unwarranted, gracious, attention.
Chapters That Don’t Belong
(please click image or title for text)
many thanks
Let Me Get This Out of Your Way
Intriguing stumble-upon. Clearing an old flash drive for my daughter I ran across this – texts from my first and only public reading – featuring art by George Ferrandi and Laura Barbuto, which occurred in an interactive reading space with many assistants and much assistance a couple years ago. Seemed like it belonged in this space.
“Getting it Out of the Way: A Response”
(texts by Nathan Filbert; art/images Laura Barbuto/George Ferrandi)
The Sickening of Stories
I am not certain why stories sicken me so. By “sicken” perhaps I mean something closer to depletion or boredom, gluttedness or exhaustion. By stories I mean shaped texts of language – narrative fictions, philosophical arguments, journals and declarations and ads.
“I don’t know why I told this story. I could just as well have told another. Perhaps some other time I’ll be able to tell another. Living souls, you will see how alike they are.”
– Samuel Beckett, The Expelled
It has something to do with that. My own writings sicken me faster than others, but all writings, once entangled in plots, developing characters, or pursuing a narrative…tend me toward disgust.
The motion of “progress,” falsity of construction, illusion of meaning begins to fray as language gets “handled” or forced into order. The squeezing and pressure and molding of shaped texts, especially as they develop into sections, seem bound to conform to the size of the creator. Many texts start out wildly, with chaotic promise, almost infinite exploding potentials – but threads develop, and lines, sentences form, and shapes, causes and results, actions and repercussions, and ever so surely the mass is twisted to the size of a snake. And then I’m tired, exhausted by “how alike they are.” We are. It is.
Language imploding and exploding. This is what I want. Language available like elements. Language operative in a chaotic surround, like experiencing. Language that doesn’t know next. Language becoming, not necessarily or even especially something – just becoming within/without human.
So I read words, less to learn or be entertained, less to follow or empathize, less to argue or understand, and more to exist in a sea of potential communication and commerce, to respond, to be open and closed by each term and their relations, to go on.
As if language were oxygen, blood, water. As if language were soil. As if language were all these mystifying, crazy, strange, different and unknown others surrounding us everywhere. As if language were environment. Context. Medium. Not tool. Not machinic. Not discipline. Not function. Not at our service or in our control.
We know that it’s not. It does indeed possess others – carries and transfers multitudes – times, cultures, histories, humans, vagaries of meanings. It is untamed and unpredictable, available and unsolvable, like ourselves. But we often use it for us rather than in or with us. We often torment it into cages and patterns, (I’m doing it now) – forced representation, desiccated potentials – marks of expression or intention or persuasion or telling.
I declare. I unravel. I investigate. I express. I guess. I wonder. I commit a sound to form. It leads. I resist. I say. I listen. It leads (each of us in particular ways). I resist. I ponder. It takes shape. Incites. I want. I resist. I query.
Doing and undoing language becomes the only way to use it and avoid strangling it down to my size. Persisting and resisting, experimenting and erasing, canceling / canceling-out, backwards, forwards, at the angular. Listening to others. Throwing in, throwing away. Desist. Insist. Consist. And delete. Chaos and pattern. Detangle, knot up. Fracture. Fragment. Avoid. A void. Void and null and emergent. Perhaps. Perhaps. The attempt to leave open. It suffers to form.
Sickening me.
All my Words are Silent 