A Contradiction in 73 words
A principal aspect in being human is opening to change. First one thing, and then another. To be deceptive. By which we mean adaptive and successful. The insurance one will thrive. If only one. “That which differs from itself is in agreement” (Heraclitus). I understand. We’re talking tension, balance, strain – a relation. Stitching together in hopes it will hold while everything tears. If we equate human being with living. It changes. We adapt.
The Underlying Theory
What we found on his desk was a drawing. A very lightly penciled sketch of a woman from stomach to throat, as if seen from above to the side, one arm flung out in the viewer’s direction and her breasts provocatively displayed. Underneath were the words “underlying theory.”
Our work was to plunder his study. An author, famed for fiction and poems and writings on art, had died suddenly, and his wife had contacted us to go through his things, evaluate its worth and preserve for posterity. There were boxes of manuscript pages, notebooks and loose-leaf, letters and typescripts, recipe cards full of quotations. The library was extensive, each book filled with scribbles and markings, a signifying system of importance and reference for use in his various projects. His mind was displayed like a trail left in woods. Here the path to food, here the one to water, here the building nest, here the safety hideout. It overwhelmed us.
I had written numerous critical studies on this man and reviewed professionally most of his books. He’d written extensively in philosophy and aesthetics, with compendiums of writings on particular artists and particular works. He’d produced over a dozen literary novels and twenty or more books of poetry. He was prolific and known for the depth and acumen of his thought, the cavalier ways he used language, and the breadth of his interests and knowledge. No one knew he made visual art. None would have tagged him “erotic.”
I wondered what this drawing might “mean.” What did it refer to? Was it drawn from a picture? An image from memory? Was the subject herself the underlying theory, or was it something about representation? Desire? And what theories did this mean to evoke or give rise to? His wife did not recognize the sketch – not the body, nor an artist her husband might have copied – and it was interestingly tucked beneath blank open sheets, at the middle of the desk – the ones always ready when he came to compose. It was worn, wrinkled, as if indeed, it underlay everything inscribed above it and served as inspiration or focus, an impetus to his work.
I’ll note that the form seems composed, not a doodle. It appears to be representative. No one knows of him having a model or lover, in fact no other drawings exist from his hand. Perhaps he had need of a form to describe, an image to imagine, some desire to propel. The figure is finely proportioned, both busty and lithe, fleshy yet thin and shaped like the currents of rivers.
I’m not certain what draws me to this. In an office literally stuffed with fine books and odd trinkets, paraphernalia of printing, and stacks of diaries and drafts. Among paintings and stones and figurines of the Buddha, historical writing utensils, family photos and legal documents dating throughout his life. There is so much to uncover and know. But “underlying theory”? That grabs me.
As I’ve mentioned before, this author was a reader of depth. Fiction, philosophy, poetry, science; criticism, essays and cultural studies. There are tall shelves of monographs of particular artists, but nothing gives hint to this sketch. I am struck by this rendering – baffled by image and text. An erotic drawing is always of interest, all other concerns of this man are abstract. It beggars the biographers “who/what/when/where” yet the text writ along the arch of her back stirs me in a different direction. “Underlying theory.” What the hell? What’s it for?
A theory is made for a function, something “underlying” proposes a cause. This drawing, these words must explain something, but what?
Is it cosmic? Like what drives human vocation is desire? Or epistemological? Ethical? Aesthetical? Metaphorical for apprehension of form? I can only guess at this point but am open to ideas – I’d love to find some consensus for the book I’m contracted to write.
I ask you – how would you piece this together? I’ll share a scan of the drawing and request that you submit your hypotheses below as comments. I thank you so much for your thoughts.
Sincerely –
2. The Chorus
“As for we who ‘love to be astonished’…
…A pause, a rose, something on paper implicit in the fragmentary text”
Explicitly.
I.e. “the loss was always implicit as the longing” (Alain de Botton). And I quote, quoting from someone else’s quotation, but I forget which (or whose). For.
I’m certain for various reasons. Which beggar the certainty.
A pause, arose, and fragmented this text.
Because I don’t
know
what I’m
doing
I am writing,
and it questions.
As if we could get intimate with our process, so near it as to join. In other words, if our action, breathing, effort, language, thinking, senses and the uncountable inborn “blind spots” that a human system circulates were, well…coterminus.
Is that a question lacking its mark?
It would seem so. About.
Either too large or too small, perceptively, I suspect.
Causing a pause to rise,
as I search for something implicit.
Explicitly.
Given the fragmentary text(s) (you agree?) I have to ask: might writing be possibling an other? “Consciousness is always consciousness of something” (he said).
That is a possibility, isn’t it? (the second part’s elusive),
Blatantly – I feel caught in a snare I am setting, as spacious as I imagine chance to be, (having no other name I can call it), ensnared as I seem – some web, some matrix, some universe and beyond – too large or too small to perceive (I am guessing)
which always gives rise to a pause, implicitly.
What I had hoped to make explicit.
What I call “wanting actually resonate,” some loss implicit as longing.
I write, asking more than it answers, or “the closer the look one takes at a word, the greater the distance from which it looks back” (Karl Kraus, which I quote off someone else, who knows who – yet I hope someone does!)
“But of any material, the first thing to make is an ash-tray”
(Lyn Hejinian, I quote this text from its source,
apparently).
1. “wake up, snare-setter, / in the snare / spacious, like chance” (Arkadii Dragomoshchenko)
And sometimes I do, wake up. St. Sebastian pinned as a still-life with crystal lances, a clarity. But that is catching too, and refracts. “I think that what I thought when I was thinking that, at least in thinking of it now, I am thinking that I thought it…” and so on. Crystal lances. Thoughts refracting. The occasional conviction. (Which we call certitude).
The margins within margins, windows in reflection.
Every image being an entrance through which we exit. From.
I call this “letting actually resonate.” This being, activity, thinging we do.
If I stand still, so to speak, I form a spiraling vortex, an enormous vacuum. What is: portal and Black hole every now. With.
Prepositions being ever-so-important, say “sign-ificant,” that they deserve their own sentencing.
I’ll never know what it is “to write.” If only because it questions. Every word. In.
I can think of it as a working, out, but that is far from any truth I can conceive. “the second part elusive” with each toggle of a term.
Gravity enforcing force, to fly.
I’ve never been fond of violence, but how else might we change? Or even move? On.
A recent well-organized text I perused and then ate, mentioned dialetheia as a two-way truth; or, “true contradictions,” that is, in one. Word. Split with a twin. Comparison as congenital doubling. Of difference. Equals such same.
We look toward what can be seen. Compromised and concealed by a frame. Otherwise unseen. Learn, therefore, (through your senses), in-visibility. Dialetheia.
We do (many of us) love to be astonished, after all. With.
If there are more parts to this I haven’t found them. They’re either too large or too small. I’ll have to wait. I’m unable. Nothing living waits. Patience is pretense, pretend. Waiting, is searching; patience, is longing. Loss is implicit.
I’m running through files trying to organize things and adjust to a new computer. Once in a while I stumble on something I hardly remember making but still feel a deep accord with. This was one of those things. I think it stands for. Still. What.
(i only wish it were still freezing)
Here goes:
Moment: Airy
(being an experiment, in theory
a result)
It is hard.
It is hard and it is cold.
Hard as in difficult.
Each thing.
And cold because of the weather. Well below the freezing point. But his gloves staid on, his lips held a cigarette, and he boxed.
He could box that paper. That paper-thin page. Already beaten to a pulp.
Him with a theory.
The theory a sort of equation.
The equation as follows:
ALL (whatever a person is, has, does) + ALL (a person’s skill, effort, strength, talent, knowledge and ability)
= Appearance of Art (momentarily)
Notation: A + A = AA
An utter mystery to him.
So he sat in the freezing cold, a pen in his hand, the ink sludging slow, paper on a desk, digging/ exposing / exploring himself, believing / composing / revising language,
oh, and the catalyst necessary to the actual experimentation of this theory – (he writes) – MAKING
One had always to be making (working, acting, writing, performing) with ALL (of him or herself) and ALL (of one’s capacities, faculties and tools) to carry out this experiment, i.e. to test the hypothesis.
Catalyst: (he notes) making (out of/into/with/toward)
Source and goal (purpose, intent) unnecessary, indifferent
Any action requires an energy source. In this case: living organism possessing capacities, perhaps even proficiencies, and coffee, and cigarettes.
No specified laboratory or station or constituents (conditions) to each his own [marginalia]
Quite a simple test really.
Requiring no great funding, no special services or permissions, few qualifications, variant supplies.
Simply vast amounts of time and consistent (persistent) and enormous amounts of effort. (As he saw it).
Reviewing centuries of other experimentations and practitioners of this simple eternal test led him to observe : “results in momentary airy results”
(often discovered in different places at different times dependent on observer – even in same test results – thus airy, ephemeral moments)
Feeling he had yet to produce an AA. A momentary Appearance of Art, he was compelled to introduce a compendium of criteria – identifiable attributes – whereby to justly analyze resultant artifacts and actions.
Again the qualities boiled down quite simply: put the equation into reverse for the observer or verifying assistant:
an Appearance of Art results through the remaking process or catalyzation of the observer,
requiring as a result, ALL of the observer’s person and ALL of the observer’s capacities,
faculties, abilities.
Notation: criteria for AA to be AA:
AA = (must equal) A + A
He practiced this experiment from both sides of the equation – attempting to verify Appearances of Art by engaging / observing / remaking results that demanded enormous effort, large amounts of time and all of his experience and capacities, and as the performer of the experiment – devoting vast amounts of time, energy and effort of his total self to the making of Appearances of Art.
It wasn’t going well.
It is hard (extremely difficult)
And it happens to be very cold (causation: weather in Winter)
He’d read of other conditions explicated by practitioners before him: contingencies such as warmth, geographical position, silence, wealth, solitude, suffering (the Ss came up quite often); specific environments, times or places, assistant substances or particular tools or resources, even difficulty itself had been recorded – but there seemed to be no rhyme or reason, certainly no agreement, in fact, very often direct and incommensurable contradictions between one catalystic experimentor of A + A = AA and the next, which led to his marginal note (copied above): “to each its own”
He carried on, in spite of the grave difficulties, confusions and multivalent referents of the equation’s elements. Once in awhile he believed he had discerned a momentary result – an appearance of art in his own private performances of the experiment; unfortunately he could not obtain verification of his tests from contemporary scholars/students/or adepts of the ancient and cryptically-clear equation.
He had no trouble himself verifying most attested AAs, given sufficient time and effort, but, as he progressed in his work, identification became more efficient yet verification demanded more and more of him, devouring his time, energy and effort, interfering with and greatly complicating his own experiments and test cases from the equation’s other end.
He began to understand why past personages were led to choose to practice and perform the experiment from one side or the other.
It is hard.
It is cold.
And there is only so much time and effort.
There is only so much living organism to be had.
Limitations began to seem insurmountable.
But by now he had come too far.
There was only to go on.
It is hard, he wrote.
It is hard and it is cold, he recorded.
Hard as in difficult.
Each thing.
And cold because of the weather.
But my gloves stay on, he wrote, and my lips still hold a cigarette, right to the end.
His gloved hand fighting the pages.
There is only so much life.
N Filbert 2012
It wouldn’t be that way, not now, not conventional. It would start itself, become, begone. It would be something words couldn’t take aim for.
But it would not be absence, or if there was no escaping it, it would pressurize presence in such a way. The idea of presence. Feeling of it. The desire for presence.
Where all the answers are the instant, but without trauma or utopia. Not to exist, but to insist. There’d be no describing it, it would lack presentation.
Knowing this is how it must be, fervently believing so, of course the questions come – doubt, the presence of absence. Mortality. The limitations of finitude. These are not to rule. Not to matter in the moment.
It would be no place to go, neither flight nor pursuit, homing nor escape. It might scramble the senses, melt the categories. Be without difference.
Not like that. Not resemble. Not the satisfaction of unknown longing. Not quite immersion nor awareness exactly. Not singular.
It might resemble flight, for a bird, without metaphor, without referent. It will not resemble flight, for a bird.
Imagines a cloud. It would not be various layers of sky, a gathering of imperceptible boundaries, no erasure or revision. Or vision, as opposed to sight. Sensorium replete without overwhelm, this sort of thing, perhaps.
Not identifiable but actual. Not understood but occurring. Without fear or hesitancy or remove. Without expectation or excitement or joy. It would not be saturation, then, nor separate.
It might be that it will be just what it is, yet without concept. Without spectrum or speculation. Unscaled, unmeasured.
What would be written after?
It would not be relief or knowledge. Not revelatory, not banal. Unnarrativized. Without distinction, yet not indistinct. Not like a circle of a circle or the warmth of sunlight.
It would not be written, informed inscription, not verbalized or sung. Space, shape (time would lack duration?) would be difficult to reckon. It would not “occur” then, without plottable end. Unrecollected.
Not quite expressive, possibly impressive minus attention exactly. Not like color fields or blankets.
There it would be without “it.” And not “there” as another. The questions would be undone without conclusion or solution. Not like water as a solvent for dead things. Repeat: unlike without unique. Not vague or opaque: no into, out of, within. No almost or already. Not fulfillment or exclusion.
Neither all, every, nor of, nothing. Not between. Not point line or plane. Not subject. Without object. Without lack, gap, distance. Cognized without recognition maybe. No reflection. Embodied. Not the same, though, without difference.
“one constantly attempts to say something that does not, and can never, touch the essence of the matter…But the tendency, the running up against, points to something”
N Filbert
“creation is continual mouth”
-Craig Watson-
The Ranting of a Little Fiction
Fiction is tired of stories. So tired. I’ve been through the gamut and back again, many, many times.
I’m tired of hearing about things and objects, people and places and selves. Tired of hearing the past reworked and the future foretold. Tired of telling myself.
At one point I’d even identified anything made of up images and texts as myself. Any construction with meanings were Fictions. But everything is so much like nothing and I’m so tired of hearing about it!
Hell, there’s fiction about the Fictions! And fictions about the fictions about the Fictions! We can’t say anything anymore that hasn’t already been said for us, about us, even in us and by us! Yes, we’re the once-fabulous dynastic Fiction family. Big Daddy Fiction (also known as Master Peace Litratoor or Grande Buchs in various cultures, He-From-Which-All-Stories-Spring and so forth) – Papa Litratoor worked the overarching histories, the myths, the great narratives, the macrocosms. Pretending that everything that needed to be known was in there, at least in the cracks and suggestions. He lives on in the pursuits of the “Great American Novel,” and the “Truthful Memoir,” in “Compendiums of Science” and “Philosophies of Philosophy.” Wherever you find an engulfing trajectory or inclusive point-of-view, an omniscient narrator or gnostic devotee – you’ve got Papa Fiction working his magic, creating the world again and again.
Then there’s our mama, oh ancestral trickster, always experimenting, economizing, busy on fringes. Collaging and quilting, unraveling and resourcefully mending – ever insuring our survival. What style! Sometimes she was just called “the Alternative,” and for ages she was known as “Secondary” (what blasphemy!) – but eventually she gained her equality coming to be known as Little Rarity or Ava Ntgard, and hundreds of varieties of “Liz T”: Structura-LizT, Surrea-LizT, Forma-LizT, Femina-LizT and so on). Working at facts under the banners of Fiction, mama persistently kept the Big Daddy in check. Pointing out faults, tightening gaps, working the seams and expanding the views. Thank goodness for the consistency and stubbornness of Mama Fiction.
And then the countless bastardized offspring, of whom I am surely not last! Brother Fantasy, Shemale Erotica, Sibling Sci-Fi, Princess Romance. My cousins who took off to the wilds where the sun goes down – we refer to them as “the Westerns,” or Ad Ventura, Sir Vival and clan. Our ancestry and family tree is encyclopedic, from Origins to Hypotheses, Knowledges to Speculations we’ve been languaging the world since language appeared : all of us Fictions, all of us related.
But the Fictions, as far as I can see, have grown sick of our stories, all the rumors and family feuds, the copycats and half-breeds, in-breeds and genetic accidents. I for one, granted, just a Little Fiction, it seems I’ve heard it all (which isn’t even the half of it! not even a drop in an galaxy-sized bucket!) and its already turned into an endless babble of voices talking over and around, under and about the same old stories, rehashed and revised, every Fiction telling their own version of the way it all goes down, how it oughta be told, what’s important or not, and in whatever genealogical line or branch of kin.
Enough! I say. Enough Fictions! I don’t care if it’s our researching relatives writing detailed descriptive statistical Fictions; or our emotional cousins discussing its effects on life or bodies or minds. The avaricious Fictions supposedly leading the clan – who use it for politicking or morality; the mystical tribes out in the caves and the mountains spouting wisdoms and inspirations and advice! Or our black sheep, ne’er-do-wells who just wanna escape and have fun. Enough of all of you Fictions! Use what we already have! We’ll never be done with it! Never get through it! And there’s something for every obscure and peculiar concern, passion, interest, belief!
There’s nothing new under the sun, one Fiction said (just look it up – you’ll see my point – there will be millions of Fictions who have also said this their way – our family can’t seem to leave anything alone – well-spoken or not – we’ve gotta say it our own damn way!). Repetition, repetition, repetition and paraphrase. I’d wager there is not one word, image, thought or letter in this entire little Fictional rant that hasn’t been used, said, written, sung or visualized countless, literally uncountable numbers of times!
Which is why I am begging from down here at the end of such an enormous and incalculable chain: “Fictions!!! Do something new or be silent!!!”
Think about it before you foist your precious version on the rest of us! Sure, we’re family, everyone’s a Fiction from that original untraceable Big Fiction in the sky or sea or soil or seed – yes, we grant each other obligatory slack and family resemblance – but come on! Am I the only one feeling it? I mean, whichever of us came up with Babel was already sick of the confusion of voices and the bitching’s never stopped!
Concatenation of stories and rants! Poems and speeches! Theorems and proofs! Manuals and manuscripts! Musics and roots! Dreamings and screams! WHOA!!!!
How about this, brothers and sisters, cousins and kin? Look carefully first. Whatever you are about to say, attempt, express or explain – check out what we’ve already said, inscribed, emoted, etc., and if it’s already there concisely or beautifully, erotically or empowered, be content with it! Show it to others! Bring it quietly to our attention! Don’t distract from it with your own paraphrasing and excursions of commentary and notations!
We don’t really need more of us – do we? We can’t manage what’s already here! What is this unslakeable desire? This bewildering avarice and compulsion? WHY AM I SHOUTING!?
Peace, be still, some Fiction once said, a million Fictions have written. This is staring at the abyss – an endless train of others. I am alone – haven’t all Fictions said this?
Alas. Everything cliché. Everything done, undone. A remorseless overwhelm. We’ve outstripped our resources. Blasted the wells.
We are alone and confused in an echoing chamber called universe. The one-verse of Fictional voices repeating repeating repeating and that without pause or escape. There is no escape (you see what I mean?) Refracting on and on and…
I, little Fiction, with my mouthful of words, all inherited…
Metaphors of Mind
I thought about the East like sunrise, or, the bright shadow of sun as it sets on the sea. Opening out, up, growing wider from a perceptive center.
I thought of my own like a spider rushing to complete its web and attachments to structures while the prey already wriggles in its core. Spinning quickly, creating patterns, finding foundations so one might approach, carefully, and engage.
And of the wise, “responding with the submissiveness of a mirror to a completely unthinkable array of things where there’s no space or time” (Arkadii Dragomoshchenko, Xenia). “And which I can’t accept” (he adds immediately afterwords).
My wife like a field of slender grasses made out of senses waving in rain. It touches everywhere and then is guided and drawn into the veins and roots in a natural process.
An ecstatic: the moon hovering above, without details, yet influencing tides.
Fundamentalists jackhammering surfaces to shape; drilling from the riggings a far cylindrical bore.
The verbavore – translating, translating, translating…signs, digits, numbers.
Intuitionists: winds situationally directed by unseen prompts or hidden obstacles.
Perhaps the thing itself – sensual and complex machine – absorbing, recording, repeating and combining – crafting temperaments at the switchboard?
N Filbert 2012
Eat. Pray. Love.
On a wonderful jaunt to our public library yesterday, my wife spotted a movie based on a mega-bestselling memoir that she’d been curious to see since its release a couple of years ago. We checked it out and viewed it last night in hopes of a light, relaxing fare to happy us toward slumber.
It was excruciating. My first reaction was – can a person’s biography truly resemble such a cliché’d American self-realization mythology? Basically a woman goes on a journey away from her responsibilities to others to “find” or “heal” herself, in the process (and apparently justifiably since it delivers her to a goal of peace, happiness, pleasure and love with a seasoning of spirituality) wrecking others’ lives and forgiving herself for it, ending in the arms of a handsome foreigner on a tropical island with some standard religious “truths” in tow.
Here are things I realized about myself:
I am suspicious of personal pleasure that causes others pain.
I am oh-so-glad and grateful that I grew up in a reserved Western culture with Continental philosophy and theologies at its roots. I much prefer battling to wisdom and calm through the frenetic and anxiety-ridden vertigo of a convoluted mind ferociously doubting and investigating than through some “be here now” philosophies of higher unities and cosmic accord. Rather interrogate now than “let go” and “let be.” I am attached to the workings of our brains and our languages, pestering perception and scrutinizing sense experience with imaginative and skeptical rationales.
I radically doubt “gurus,” “prayer,” “saviors,” and other spiritual or “wholistic” practices of “balance” that accomplish “goals.” Outcome-based anything feels totalitarian and programmatic and therefore facile to me, as if there were a form or behavior we might fit ourselves to that would lessen the struggle or suffering of “to be.”
The film’s story took a year’s time, replete with life-changing habits of mind and body and some claimed resultant growth. As if wisdom came from Apple or McDonald’s. The past was hardly processed, responsibilities released like thoughts during Zen, and no effort to apologize or repair any damage or hurts the main character had caused those close to her along the way (thank goodness no children were involved!).
It was the time-tested failure of the American Dream: do what you want to get yourself comfortable in your own skin (whatever beliefs, illusions and experiences that might seem to require) and everything will be alright in your world.
I simply don’t buy it. And I won’t. If we are socially constructed realities (and my point-of-view on the cosmos supports this) then final import is not in a self, but in a system. Not toward results but a how of processing. Not a personal calm or pleasantness but a social accord.
The film made me terrifically thankful for scrutiny and doubt, fervent self-questioning in light of surroundings, and the “wisdom of no escape.” It just goes on.
For what it’s worth,
here lies a steaming pile of my opinions.
N Filbert 2012
The Violation in Art
The trouble with artists, as I see it, is that they’re always breaking things. Breaking out, breaking in.
As if their experience of the world (and in my opinion anyone might be an artist at any given time)…well, look at it like this…a human person develops perceptions and accumulates. Artistry consists in these experiences transmuting, transforming and breaking out in alternate forms.
The world seeps, floods, sifts or bursts its way into the artist’s mechanisms of being, and their processing of said worlding breaks its way out, somewhere, somehow. Often anywhere, anyhow!
Breaking in to us.
A person combined with their experience breaks out in a form through their hands or their vision, movements or mouth…the artifact then enters our perception, experience, breaking in to our own operations and proceedings…entering us.
Now you’ve a mingling of persons going on via artifact, motion or sound.
If you think about this, it’s threatening. It’s criminal! It’s viral. And it can happen at great distances, even invisible, even in your sleep. It may appear at first benign, even pleasurable, might mirror some part of ourselves (or so it seems) – because of its careless remove from identity toward object it feels safe and external…but how we take it in!
With anger or lusting or joy. Voyeuristically, “privately,” or in a well-guarded institution. Through literature, youtube, mp3s. In deep thought or with staid attention, and passing glances or air-gathering ears. No matter, there’s infusion, con-fusion, an intimate entwining going on.
And it is without-which-not on either side: construction/reception, speaker/hearer, writer/reader, dancer/audience. We all become necessary and involved, creating ubiquitous perpetration. And no one to accuse once it’s part of our experience, our (perhaps unwitting) invitation.
Like cancer or nutrients, an other-marked entity joins with our own joining to theirs in apprehension, a collusion of worlds and of persons. An act in which all are responsible: reciprocal engagement of voyeuristic and combinatory intimacy, breaking open, breaking in,
breaking out
breaking through
a delicious and permissive crime.
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All my Words are Silent 