“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.”
A couple of days ago I reblogged Searching to See‘s incredible posting “What Once Was Here.” Their pictures lived on and wriggled their way into my psyche, so I asked if they would be open to me composing some paragraphs responding to the images. What follows is the result of that…
What Once Was Here images – Emily and Alex Hughes texts – N Filbert
What’s left hanging, a dangling or loosened shadow, often ends determining. A note you left with simple instruction opened on unprepared mystery. Unable to handle and afraid of the dark, tiny conduits tunneling everywhere. The twine wobbly and knotted, but the lines of the threshold so clear. When things are left hanging, though exciting and ominous, possibilities frighten. The key to what once was here is risk.
Perhaps one day you will ask for something that you want but do not need, or even need but don’t quite understand. On a lark, let’s say, out of a “why not?” not exactly exasperation nor as fueled as curiosity, almost a simple value, who knows, but perhaps you do.
How will they respond to your free request (a spontaneity without expectation) now having burdened them with options? You had thought it a gift, an eruption, a “no harm done,” “nothing to lose,” but of course, in the world, there is more.
So your request floats out, on the air, like a streamer, swaying and curving, rippling past the subjects to which it’s addressed. For some it’s a slap, for others a trial, still others just dodge it and head for silent hills.
You had thought it a good, an offering of joy, a connection and possibility, not something to wind or to bind. Never something so knotty. A kind of safe enclosure that’s open, a meadow of sorts, where gentle counterparts might convene when they wanted or needed and whomever appeared could relate.
But in order to appear each required a turn, of attention, of glance, of an ear – to surmise and to meet, to attend. Bodies incapable of severance. Could they send an arm, an eye, a knee or other organ, they happily would, provided it would not be missed any elsewhere (their “here”) – and this proved impossible.
One respondent, upon lending a hand, was not able to help his young son tie his shoes. Another offered her hair only to find herself fired from her workplace. Each was affected by your generous request while you were left with dismembered parts in your park.
Unintentional, no doubt, you found as well that it was not spare fragments you were needing for your want. The severed hand grew stiff and cold under your knees; the hair like strands of sand in the night on your chest. The smells were changing. The eyes you’d assembled were distracted, neither here nor there the parts were failing.
In an awkward flashing of a dream a teacher’s voice arrived with cliché: “be careful what you wish for.” You’ve been waking to that for awhile.
For this foray I need, as they say, a “blank slate,” “carte blanche,” a banded void.
In other words, I know what I’m doing this time, not relying on the “shoulders of giants,” resting on no other’s laurels, or catapulting off some foreign quotation. No grand metaphors from the dead or established.
I’ve come of age.
I view the spines of those lying around me – oh they’ve had their say and sung it quite loudly if you ask me! – now mouldered and whispering like ghost-chatter or chains rattling in a cellar wind. No, those pregnant freight-train loads have departed this station and become imperceptible tremors, thunder-rumbles echoing to far dissipation.
I’m setting out my own trail. No trail. Expedition – yes, that’s it! Packed with only myself and whatever remains undigested in my system, I’ll set out, set in; implore and explore.
My eyes, my hands, my legs and feet. My lanky arms, my ears and my snoot – my particular mindbody complex and whatever might come to surround me!
No more reading! No more imitating masters! No more interludes and origins – referential abysses! Nay, only this human specimen armed with senses and gestural capacities – engaging this world!
Sounds heroic, adventurous, creative and crafty – as a Ulysses hoisting his sail – a voyage and a journey, an epic assay of discovery! (Forget the “Ulysses” slip – no more of that, believe me, I’m on my own here, now). I’ll delete out the crutches and mentors, all competitors now on the lyrical battlefield of verbalizing existence! Stand back! Give way! Fall silent! (please???) – it should be my turn now!
I’m ready, able and willing – this is my moment.
Cutting ties, spreading wings, taking the stage, the road untraveled, for I’ll be building it as I go – my road. My way. My path. My vision.
You’re probably wondering to yourself how you’ll identify something so unique, unprecedented and individually differentiated – yes? Probably brimming up with anticipation and excitement – as if attending some grand unveiling, or approaching the mysterious goal of a lifetime’s pilgrimage? Quite right to be ecstatic, verklempt and even a good deal afraid, perhaps intimidated – we can never know when awe and glory might undo us!
Prepare yourselves.
From this point forward you’ll be engaging this writer’s voice. Texts, language and letters funneled and revealed via this being’s mediums and convergences. As I invade and am invaded by my existence/existents; subjects, objects; realities, fancies and facts…you, dear lucky readers, shall be privileged and forced into a kind of secret society, veritable coterie and gnostic initiation into
the unknown of the unnamed one
For indeed, perforce and assuredly instigating, nay, creating (as if ex nihilo, pro nihilo)… beginning such an enterprise as this requires all become fresh and new –
nothing answering to nothing
absolutely! A virginal venture for all – an only! Circumstance in the making of being made – the copulation of a human complexity encountering and being-countered-by ALL (within/without).
Oh, I’ve come of age. Proven my ability to survive, alive, and to endure all the many centrifugal/centripetal formulating methods of provenance and progeny, culture and biology, genetics and genius,
have undone, erased, reformed or assimilated
and set forth as if naked, stripped bare,
into a fantastic actuality (“reality”!) likewise deposed and evolved.
To the marks!
On your marks (well, mine, actually) –
get set –
and here/now GOES!!
[drat! here/now went!]
Again…
“in response, you make a gesture filled with uncertainties…”
It is clear that we called for the meeting to leave something behind.
I don’t believe that either of us questioned its integrity, intentions.
We both of us asking to know.
It had been long in coming, decades. Still not yet old we hoped to find some kind of truth and choosing. A discovery discovering. Both an offering, a revelation, no lives to be lost.
I had never seen her this way. Never this close nor this complicated. I allowed her to undress, even asked her to. I did my best as well, to arrive ready, with a thousand masks.
Long navigation. The years had dug channels, paved roads. The routes were secret, but we remembered, as if written on the palms of our hands. We read them with our eyes, began to retrace.
I made the first call, in order to argue, to work something out. Why we never, nor knew. Our stories paralleled – the subterfuge, pain, and the pathways of scars. We dug to heal, opening the wounds.
We held it together, even with weapons. To cleave – cut and joined. Rifts and bridges. His truths were all lies, logically constructed. I sprayed mine as graffiti on his monuments, defaced. Undone.
I guess each truth is a lie to something else. Our stories held water and ran. We found ourselves somewhere in their flow and stood together as a base in cascade. In the thundering rain the masks dissolved and our veils clung to our bodies, sheer.
What we experienced together we did not forget, but forged a place for it. Here and now. We began. Possessions and pasts stolen, we clung and feigned, using only our skin and joined breaths – our voicings. Fluid in a world of statues.
Something fell away, eventuating our silence. We departed the space we had filled, abandoning its form bags packed full. I felt I’d left something behind, still checking my pockets and luggage.
He preferred the weight he carried, holding him secure and anchored to the earth. I chose the flight, and the destination, returning us unharmed. My pillowcase was empty, nothing lost, nothing gained. Of much was made.
I guess we masked our joy in difficulty.
Which fell to the ground in our separate ways.
“This is how we originate and how we are formed: a slapdash piece of work, subject to the vagaries of time and the blunders of brief opportunities”
All my Words are Silent 