This song compels me into verdant places imaginatively again and again…any and all who would like or be willing – it would intrigue me to see what you each might blog/create or what is evoked for any and all of you when you engage in this beautiful piece…
“As I was saying perhaps ignorance is the key. We all of course know what’s going to happen next.
Only artists don’t know what’s going to happen next a quirk of ignorance they share with history and the weather.
This is the key quirk of the quirky mind that produces the work of the artist…
…Stories don’t have reasons.
Or if they have them they have them after the fact like the weather.
Then the reasons become part of the story.
The mind is like the weather and this is the reason that everyone likes a good story.”
-Ronald Sukenick-
“For, in effect, the humanities have as their implicit agenda the cultivation of hypotheses, the art of hypothesis generating.
It is in hypothesis generating (rather than in hypothesis falsification) that one cultivates multiple perspectives and possible worlds to match the requirements of those perspectives…
…the language of evocation substitutes metaphors for both given and new, leaving it somewhat ambiguous what they are substitutes for…
the ‘relative indeterminacy of a text’ that ‘allows a spectrum of actualizations.’
And so ‘literary texts initiate ‘performances’ of meaning rather than actually formulating meanings themselves.’
And that is what is at the core of literary narrative as a speech act: an utterance or a text whose intention is to initiate and guide a search for meanings among a spectrum of possible meanings…
…the author’s act of creating a narrative of a particular kind and in a particular form is not to evoke a standard reaction but to recruit whatever is most appropriate and emotionally lively in the reader’s repertory…
…set forth subjunctively to allow them to be rewritten by the reader, rewritten so as to allow play for the reader’s imagination.”
-Jerome Bruner-
Erasure
It will have to be something new, you think to yourself, beginning. What’s been done before is already present. All the brief and poignant things gathered. Already processed and past-eurized.
Heroes are made, families described. Every aberration. Otherwise we wouldn’t know, would we? So much sex and images, and the inner lives of children. Histories and sciences, and the nothing that affords, beyond.
New probably just means different, you say, using old words already. If it’s a word it’s definitely been done. Or an action. Dreams and thinking too. Which leaves you with little, if not naught.
You once composed a text of tinntinnabuli – it was fascinating to you. Also a fugue of sorts, even a classical symphony, all in words, one in the twelve-tone scale. Little matter with a missing orchestra. Fit snugly into your drawers.
The series of anthropomorphic fruit. What they felt and how they perceived, from rind to seed. Even the veins in their fleshes, bruises, and each distinct and delicious juice. Cycles of life, inevitability of change, sprout to rot.
Who cares?
Yet it’s what you do. Identify moments and make them stories to exist. Wrapped in the tangles of problems, sentence-wriggle-thread your way elsewhere. A place that looks like knowledge. And sometimes feels.
Like mathematicians with their unknown variables – it’s the ocean you swim, an amoeba almost.
You sought after mastery but found it banal. Meaning didn’t make any sense. You turned to hypotheses, but not the wilder the better. You had to squeeze through gaps, hoping for openings. A friend called it spelunking, and it did seem dank and cold and blind. Often.
Restatement is not what you’re after. Nor refining. If thinking is digestion, you order an autopsy and strange foreign parts. Intake as transplant.
Distinctive takes a while, but quickly regurgitates style, and you’re back to remarking, remembering…remorse.
Today you’re dissecting an Else. Not again, or if\then, or more, but the Else. What else? you say. You don’t know. But it lies here dismembered, deconstructed on your desk. It’s pretty messy. The pieces aren’t going to fit, even though you’ve studied jigsaws and puzzles. Inventing new ones feels like metaphor or code, a twiddling thumb to decipher, something no one has time for even if they wish they did.
It will have to be something new to count as satisfaction, you consider. And you take up the large eraser.
In the space of three weeks I have received 3 nominations for the “Very Inspiring Blogger” award here on WordPress. I’m a little bit wordless. It feels in me that inspiration works like a system of waterfalls. Someone kicks the rock out of the way and the water flows, tumbles over one fall dislodging more obstructions, flowing on, saturate and soothing…on… “When it rains…” I am very thankful for these nominations / recommendations / kudos. It is very inspiring to be considered inspiring. Thank you: The Rag Tree, The Writer Site, and Words That Flow Like Water. So, essentially, the award bounces right back at you – for its bestowal is so inspiring in itself. To view my 7 things and the bloggers I nominate in kind, please visit my initial response: https://manoftheword.com/2012/11/23/reasons-for-thanks-inspiration/
Please take a look at my current blog roll as well – through these other bloggers I have come to follow many new blogs that promise to be quite inspiring, but don’t feel I’ve followed them long enough to contribute awards. I would like to point out a few bloggers who have newly inspired me by their contribution of comments to my posts:
Elena Caravela – an explosion of creativity I have followed consistently
Mari Sanchez Cayuso – her tangles of words (and images!) always unraveling potent internal realities
Petrujviljoen – ever active and compelling
Biblioklept – consistently instigative tidbits
Literodditie – fantastic and curious and quirky
This Blog Needs a Title – I thoroughly enjoy what happens here
Brainsnorts – always thoughtful and genuine
Okay, so it isn’t difficult to compile lists of inspiring bloggers in our community – and the happiness it brings is the fulminating trajectory of ever discovering more through awards like these – THANK YOU ALL!
Underneath is the meaning that it is meaningful to each of us – however small or distant these contacts and connections – that we each are offering ourselves and our work and welcoming those of one another – thank goodness and human capacity.
To paraphrase Dave Eggers (writing about David Foster Wallace):
“Which is, after all and conveniently enough for the end of this introduction, what an author’s seeking when he sets out to write – anything, but particularly a blog like this, a blog that attempts to give so much, that requires sacrifice and dedication. Who would do such a thing if not for want of connection and thus of love?”
THANKS AGAIN – AND KEEP BLOGGING!
I have to agree that one major thing I have never been able either to tell when talking with others, nor explicate when trying to share – about writing, the activity – is the pleasure. For me, if I can move my experience of the world into language and there let language create a new experience with world for me, whether I’m miserable or joyous, in tedium or ennervated, things feel alright with the universe. Sometimes even if I’m just drawing letters onto paper, words or not, phrases or not, discernable meaning or not – I still feel fine. But then, if there seems like a resonant flow – if the language available and the experience felt engage recursively – there truly IS nothing quite like it in my experience of life. David Foster Wallace says it this way, and I’ve heard similar attempts come out of my mouth:
“When I discovered writing I discovered a thing that gave me a combination of fulfillment (moral/aesthetic/existential/etc.) and near-genital pleasure I’d not dared to hope for from anything”
that rang exactly true for me….and…
“when i’d sit down and look up and it would be hours later and there’d be this mess of filled-up notebook paper and I just felt wrung out and well-fucked and, well, blessed.”
I probably wouldn’t blog that term (“blessed” or “f*@ked”), but there it is, and again, it does come as close as I can think to that satisfied, dizzying, emptied loose feeling that comes from a safe and open, intense and releasing session of writing. I am thinking that the words “combination” and “pleasure” and “fulfillment” do the most to describe the process and experience of experimenting and experiencing in language for me. And it is very similar to sexual intimacy, because once you have moved into the other (in this case, language) – the other has as much to do with, as much control over, as much effective presence in, the beauty and sense of meaning of, content and activity of the process and results or engagement as you – the writer – do.
Making it with the world is one of those weird mysterious ecstasies that are incomparable and indescribable. I would be deceptive if I said that anything were “better” than it, though it has (in our limited emotional/emotive base) many similarities to being “spent” with one’s spouse, or those rare and profound connections with one’s children – I guess it ought to make some sense that intimacy-with would draw from the same human wells. There is a quiver of experiences that no one speaks of without a touch of awe, a befuddled amaze, or a glad bafflement, and for me, the activity of reading and writing is one of these.
“Express only that which cannot be expressed. Leave it unexpressed.”
-Maurice Blanchot-
“The world eternally turns round; all things therein are incessantly moving, the earth, the rocks of Caucasus, and the pyramids of Egypt, both by the public motion and their own. Even constancy itself is no other but a slower and more languishing motion. I cannot fix my object; ‘tis always tottering and reeling by a natural giddiness; I take it as it is at the instant I consider it; I do not paint its being, I paint its passage.”
-Michel de Montaigne, 1580-
“Sincerity – it’s the insatiable process
of transition, of fluctuation…”
-Arkadii Dragomoshchenko-
I began one place, and become another.
Wallace remarked that the most difficult thing to teach young writers was the difference between expressive writing and communicative writing.
“Two utterances cling tightly to each other, like two bodies but having indistinct boundaries.” (Maurice Blanchot)
A notification informs me that today is the first anniversary of my experience of the blogosphere.
Humbled over 365 days.
And thank you.
.
I imagine many writers/artists start out, in the youth of their writing (or creative work) from a singular sense. There’s this “me” experiencing this “world,” it seems like – an I and a chaos, an identity and a multitude. When the I (or eye) feels full, it is like to burst. Things touch us, hurt us, impinge on our locus, our “self,” and it seems something must be done about it – we must exert – strike back, reach out, kiss, craft – exhibit our presence. Interact. The dualities are clear.
Are confused. Experience turns out to be very mixed, an impossibly confusing weave. As we begin to plunder these “moments,” we’re countered. Things that happened to us, we were there for, in all fairness, our activities encroach.
We begin perhaps to recognize our existence as agents – not only done to, but doing; not only recipients but respondants, reactive. The wrestle of expressing ourselves through materials (language, movement, matter or sound) teaches us this. The Other’s inextricably woven – what occurs and results is the same. Is unlike. We lose balance.
Conceiving the work as a subject toward object (our creating) deriving from object to subject (our experiences) – our investigations quickly expose this unclear. Attacked by requirements of how. Stubborn like marble or tricky as oils, even recalcitrant conventions, we begin to comprehend a falsity to working on, as a single direction, and realize it’s all a working with. And we struggle.
Even working with. The earth, or people, or bodies, or clay, things rarely abide our intentions. We set out to disburden ourselves, get incited to construct or create (to “use”) and find ourselves consistently foiled. Reality doesn’t care. We find precious little room for expression. Compromise and nuance, novelty or style – ineffective to the longings we exude.
Perhaps at this stage we lose faith in our voices or visions – what we seek we does not seem to obtain. This is fine. This is something no product can resolve. For there isn’t. There is no solution to life. We are IN it. And there is no replacement for death. Then we’re OUT.
Whether language or matter, movement or sound, our “I” never works on an Other. We are INsulated. INextricably. Communicative activity means cohabiting the spaces, simultaneous-ing the times. Realities – experiences – accord. Everything possessing the prefix co-. It’s admitting the reciprocal, the recursive – we’re not separate beings being, we are beings expressing ourselves commensurately. Perhaps control is adjusting to convention. Accepting agreements with place. Expression living IN and WITH, communication the word for the weave. That we’re behaving, creating, co-mposing in inseparable connectivity (inexpressible process) – transition, fluctuation, IN –
– attempting to paint its passage.
Thanks so much for reading, joining, my attempts.
N Filbert 2012
Wandering back over writings from the past year that I have yet to “organize”…I’m running across portions of interest (that I can’t even access to fix typos in now!? having been done on a former computer and transferred/transmuted with missing marks / disintentions, alas) – but something I can do when I’m sick… so I’ll post a few of these and you can weigh in (if you will) with what you think – whether interesting, worth filing away, saving forward and what-not. Thank you!
press here : Taking It In : press there
Like margins, thresholds, beginnings.
Species of relation.
I am drawn to synthesizing agents, it seems. I find myself attuned to, and triggered by, generalizations, and yet curiously constantly in search of them.
Fitting things where they converge, borders of meetings and passings.
.
Oscillation is one such theory. Neurologically cognizable perceptively, passaging to and from hemispheres and lobes, neurons and systems, and productive. From which we get “fire together – wire (conspire) together.” Symphonic circuitry. Fluctuate congruity. A jazz band improvising.
Extended to bodies in spaces and times, collective moods, or space and time themselves, if you will. Constructive theory of observation. Oscillation.
As if a structural template for an expression of personal creative process.
As if an introduction toward a story, that story that’s been brewing, surging, throbbing and stewing throughout my physiological corpus for days, since an opening of light, of breath – a semester’s impending conclusion – aptly (I hope) nominated “break.”
If “break” belongs with “dance” and poetic feet fall into step, or sentences seek their stride. She hopes so, as does he, now ungendered in a unison of copulatory oscillation, my hope for the tremoring bits that vibrate me toward a Nathan : writing.
…to be continued…
Of Inquiry (Inquiring)
“Inquiry, then, is more like running around a circle and back and forth between different points on it than walking in a straight line”
-Stephen Littlejohn / Karen Foss-
Theories of Human Communication
And yet whoever thought of it otherwise?
Still sometimes we use logic, as diversion, among the so-called “points,” letting it go. Circular, perhaps, in that way. Much as we’d like to, never quite constructing a web. For capture. Or a moment to observe, re-flect. Rather, more de-flect.
If you get their picture.
Would be something like this:
“Intention provides the field for inquiry and improvisation the means for inquiring”
-Lyn Hejinian-
The Language of Inquiry
That is, I assume, if for “improvisation” we substitute some creatively imagining wandering – the wonderings of intention or querying of some inceptive experiencing? After a fashion.
I’m prone to argue the “point.” I.e., “What/where/when/how – a ‘point’?” Inconceivable for me. As my understanding of ‘point’ is like my comprehension of ‘god’ or ‘time,’ ‘truth’ or ‘being’ – concepts as moving targets without definite characteristics – indefinable insubstantials. E.g., the falsity of my diagram.
It wouldn’t surprise me if I thought of inquiry as motricity. When we intend to inquire we’re moving (point-less) and inquiry moves us (point-less) among (therefore, obviously) moving things (thereby point-less), if only in relation to us. The denial of a dead present. Pointedly.
No stasis for the living. Life (logic leads), as, literally, pointless.
So how do we refer? Index? Sign? “Point” to – in all this motion? Commotion?
Language levies us these lies. These helpful and distorting machinations and maps of partial, hazy truths. Like mathematical “laws” providing invisible scaffolding in which to graphically refer. To question and inquire into falsely stable invisible objects. Creative and imaginative markers. Hypothetical space-time convergences – true experientially – but unlocatable save for the traces in ongoing movement – unstoppable, uncharitable, unrecordable – each stoppage (representation), chart or reading of ‘reality’ being an-Other, a deflection, an improvisation and wandering (i.e. a new experiencing)…
…dropping the term “experience” as blatantly false.
…retaining till death “experiencING.”
Not, then, “to question,” but questionING, one and same with observING, evaluatING, inquirING, seekING, readING, creatING, fabricatING the impossibility of a truthful past tense.
…running round and round and back and forth,
not between points,
simply, actually, between.
N Filbert 2012
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Many thanks to Music & Meaning / The Rag Tree for awarding me the “Very Inspiring Blogger” award. The work there is genuinely inspiring, in fact, just this week I was speaking with my spouse, artist & blogger Holly Suzanne, about RT’s work, particularly in translations and all that brings with it regarding languages and cultures and purposes of art. Thank you Rag Tree! I am honored and, indeed, inspired, by your work. In fact, I would hazard to guess that the decision to begin a personal blog or website, followed by the clunky and quirky process of finding or constructing a steady community of readers or viewers might be characterized by inspiration. As we watch one another follow their urges to “do or feel something…creative” it does “create a feeling, esp. a positive one” in us to continue doing/working/creating our own. I am thankful to the blogosphere for providing such a cheap and relatively easy format for those of us who will to expose our work far beyond our limited personal spheres, and especially to receive comments and criticism, and gather multitudes of inputs from others works all throughout the world, that we, most likely, would never have otherwise been exposed to. It gladdens me deeply if my work inspires others to work or think or be, and all of you that I follow have done the same for me.
I relish in giving awards to other bloggers, as there are so many out there, but we’d live in social media were we not forced continually to edit and select the number we can truly “follow,” and actually attend to. By that point, a blogger has gone through (for me) the same sort of criteria any music I listen to, literature I read, or conversation or activity I participate in does – engaging it involves an enhancement of meaning for my life. How can one not want to award or acknowledge, thank or praise those whose work and words enhance and expand your daily living?! So I find no difficulty in finding bloggers to pass the gratitude on to, the hardest thing is choosing! This blog comes with a few “rules”, as follows:
Seven Things About Myself
1. Writing joins me to the world.
2. I love theory – as a way of thinking about thinking about the world and anything in it.
3. I am particularly fascinated by the way humans learn and change.
4. My wife and children amaze me and expose and explode un-countable aspects of the world into me.
5. Rain is my favorite weather – especially the thick drizzly kind, the all-day kind (or all-week or -month) – optimum temperatures 40s or 50s.
6. I read 4-6 hours a day.
7. I like cabins and caves.
Now for those I recommend. For the selections for this, I have spent a good deal of time thinking “which blogs do I truly go to for inspiration?” Not only interest or admiration, information or curiosity, but that I seek out and miss if I don’t see, and that genuinely create in me the urge to “do or feel something creative…” perhaps even the “ability” to do so. Here they are:
Life In Relation to Art – see also www.hollysuzanne.net: yes, this is my wife and co-creator in everything I do. It’s true she always makes my lists for blogger awards, and it is also true that no other’s life or work inspires me remotely as much as living life side-by-side with her. I can attest to the effort and deep work that goes into each of her creations, and how her creating fuses into every aspect of our lives and activities. Thank you, love, for inspiring me every moment of my life.
Objects – see also www.spoondeep.wordpress.com – contributions by author “severnspoon.” This author also occurs with each of my kudos and thanks because he, too, constructs the courage to be alive in me. His work in graphics, poetry and mixed media ALWAYS inspirit me to do and make and think. Thanks, compadre.
Draw and Shoot – see also www.karenmcrae.photoshelter.com – when I first spied Karen’s work I was impressed by the mood and quality of each shot. Now, over months, I must say that I anticipate each shot, and have truly come to be amazed by the “capturing” her eye, technique and production do in relation to the world. These are photos I go back over again and again, almost as a meditation, guaranteed to evoke feelings, thoughts and the urge to create in me.
Christian Mihai – how can one NOT be inspired by the quality, content and sheer verve of Christian Mihai – he is instructive, productive and full of ideas and insights, as well as fine and evocative creative writing. Press “random post” again and again – let me know how many times it took before you stumbled across something “not interesting.”! Thanks CM – for all your work – and work FOR all of us!
Ironwoodwind and Photography Of Nia – Doug and Nia are two of the most humane, attentive, genuine, interested and interesting blogger-people I’ve come across. Both obviously care about the world around them and the people and organisms in it, and express themselves warmly and carefully into it. I notice from many that their efforts at commenting and encouraging others goes a LONG way in inspiring ongoing work in the community of WordPress. Thank you both for your kindness and creativity and communal encouragement.
Settle + Chase – in line with Draw & Shoot, S+C’s work indeed settles deep into the subject and chases what is ephemeral, mysterious, or not objectifiable in it. This leads consistently to photography that we are able to “enter in” instead of just observe and admire. I enjoy work like this that asks to be questioned over time…and continually provides new responses. Thank you S&C!
Boy With a Hat – I can’t remember how I came across this blog, but have not missed a post since I did. Here is some ingenious, fresh and alive writing and thinking. His 50-word stories are little explosions of insight, and his particular way of involving the reader in whatever it is he is considering in language is admirable and unique. Thank you Vincent Mars!
atelierscheune2012 – see also Ute Schatzmuller – here you’ll find visual art and collaborative work that I promise will evoke new ideas in you, inspire new collaborative desires, and set your mind or hands or eyes off on new explorations internally and externally. Ute’s work is suggestive and entire in a spiraling manner – each piece feels complete and yet also as if it’s the beginning of a journey. Thank you Ute!
The Disorder of Things – I promote this blog because I admire blogs that take on big issues and are willing to dig deep and explore options and ideas. I appreciate this because whether or not I agree with any position or concept under inquiry – it invites and enervates more thinking – which is inspiring.
Ooggetuige – primarily portraiture of some sort, the settings and background textures combined with perspective on subject consistently intrigue me. These photos start stories. Thank you!
The Hour of Soft Light – the writings, images, poems, quotations and reflections here nearly always brush some deep human place of longing, nostalgia, wonder or gratitude. Important things to keep alive in us. I appreciate the breadth and depth of the entries – the range of our human experiences.
Quirk’n It – inspiring in subject, expression and real-lifeness of it. The energy, interest and genuineness of her intention and attention to subjects, meanings, and scene are delightful to follow. (Also, there’s collaboration in the works – being considered for it is inspiring in itself). Thanks!
It Started With a Quote – likewise – so much of my life is inspired or rises out of what I read and then winds in and out of my lived relational experience, testing, proving, questioning the language of it. Here you encounter all sorts of worthy inspirations and get a chance to watch them thread through, effect and alter an able mind into the world of experience.
The Artsy Forager – I am SO thankful for the work of the Artsy Forager – bringing all manner of creative, enlivening, interesting works and activities into our days. Our family has a funny attribution to “feeling artsy” – for when we have that curious, active want-to…the Forager satisfies and often increases this want-to.
barbaraelka.com and Dark Pines Photos – two sites that do things with photographs that make me want to do things with words – change the finish, crack the background, tear the edges, skew the subjects…MAKE IT NEW! Very thankful for their work and steady spontaneous creativity.
There it is – longer than usual, but fortunately for me – it’s Thanksgiving Week in the USA, so seems appropriate. Hope you visit and enjoy each of these! And follow the tags onward to new brilliant blogs!
Sincerely, mano’theword
in·spire (
n-sp
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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 