Tag: wordpress

Awarding Influence

On By NW FilbertIn Art, Current Reading, Reflections, Traces, Writing3 Comments

1. award, n. c1386

…A decision after examination, a judicial sentence, esp. that of an arbitrator or umpire; the document embodying it….

2. award, v.1 c1386

…To examine a matter and adjudicate upon its merits; to decide, determine, after consideration or deliberation. 

1. influence, n. c1374

The action or fact of flowing in; inflowing, inflow, influx: said of the action of water and other fluids, and of immaterial things conceived of as flowing in. Also concr. flowing matter. 

2. influence, v. 1658

…trans. To exert influence upon, to affect by influence….

Etymology:  < French influence (13th cent. in Hatzfeld & Darmesteter) emanation from the stars (also inflow of water; affluence)…

(Oxford English Dictionary)

most-influential-blogger-e1364230844577

In the first place, I thank you Madeline Scribes for honoring me with this blogging award – I would think that any blogger is happy to hear that they have influence somewhere, somehow.  As concerns its meaning – its effect in ongoing flow – I am thinking that our passing these awards along through the blogosphere is an aspect of recognizing that the world around us matters – that what we encounter continuously throughout our days effects the flow of them.  To award such influence must mean that, upon consideration, deliberation, we consider that influence to be of benefit or merit to the flow of our lives.  To diminish the function and roles of these eminently reusable and transferable images by querying the authority, justification, compensation or some other arbitrary criteria of significance or import seems to me to miss the point and ideologically dismiss their networked purposes and potentials.  I am very honored and very thankful for the effort and gift of recognition and assessment.

That being said – all of these awards (as with any gift) bring responsibilities…This particular badge indicates:

Award Rules

THE QUESTIONS:

1.  What makes you happiest?

developing attachment with my wife and children; inquiring and creating new knowledge.

2.  Do you love mountains or oceans more?

mountains

3.  What has been a special moment in 2013?

reading has provided millions of them

4.  What is your favorite quote?

Today?: “I love quotations because it is a joy to find thoughts one might have, beautifully expressed with much authority by someone recognized wiser than oneself.”
― Marlene Dietrich

5.  Do you like yourself?

sometimes

6.  Do you stay up until midnight on New Years’ Eve?

rarely

7.  Is there something you wish could be done ASAP?

global peace and cooperation

8.  What is/was your favorite class in school?

philosophy/social science courses 

9.  What musical instruments do you / have you try/tried to play?

piano, saxophone, organ, drums, trumpet, harmonica, guitar, voice

10.  Anything you wished you would have learned earlier?

the world’s complexity and the constancy of change

11.  Do you like to do crafts, drawing or painting?

the effort extends and challenges me uniquely

And, given the reflective caveat above (that ALL we encounter influences us), I pass the award along to these fellow bloggers –

Life in Relation to Art

Multisense Realism

draw and shoot

AGENT SWARM

Unwanted Advice

Simon H. Lilly

midnighttheblues

ineedartandcoffee

tocksin

searching to see

 

Please Stand By. Restructuring. Thank You

On By NW FilbertIn Journallings, Traces18 Comments

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEq-Y8-vZF4

Thank you.  And I mean that.

The years of blogging, developing manoftheword/The Whole Hurly Burly have been life-changing.  Blogging has enabled me to learn to share my work, to discover what resonates in my work with whom and what sorts of interests.  Blogging has given me courage, most definitely helped me discover my voice, and linked me to an amazing community of creators and thinkers.  In that way it has given me hope.

I appreciate everyone who has visited (or will visit) these pages, who has taken the time to interact, comment, critique, challenge and question my process, my content, my style.

Thank You

It has been a significant mode of expression in which I have felt that I mattered, have been heard, seen, can contribute something to a large and complex world.

I am unsure of my intentions with a caesura, apart from feeling profoundly that the time and energy I put toward this is needed in other areas of my life right now.  The Whole Hurly Burly of life has its ways and effects.

As in brief breaks before (beginning grad school again, starting a business with spouse, children home for summer and the like) – should something worthy come forth I will share it, but for a time will be unable to consistently interact in this medium.

It has been a great pleasure – both “followers” (I hope not!) and those I “follow” – to become acquainted with your works, your gifts and talents, your ideas and artefacts – and truly – to have been offered a context that feels safe for experimencting mine.  THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU.

I cannot predict the time I will need for this restructuring, but I can assure you this experience and network and relation has been profound and meaningful in my life.

Here’s to WordPress

Wordpress

and to all of YOU who make it worth pressing.

TO LIFE!

Nathan W Filbert

Window Dressing

On By NW FilbertIn Experimenctes, Writing18 Comments

for Friday Fictioneers, May 31, 2013

Copyright - Janet Webb

You, in your bluish hue – nostalgic and hopeful – ever inhabiting a kind of aether, neither here nor there, but possible – like heavens, like waters – deep, open, beyond.  A different form of presence, not with, but altogether.  Perhaps.  Whereas I, in fleshy, earthbound, soiling tones – dressed to catch the eye – hang myself into the world of shapes and edges, angles and points – risking extravagant extension rather than mirroring sea and sky.  Butting bodies – yours forgiving and surrounding, just shy of the resistance for friction – mine stolid and secure, and flagging its pronouncement.

N Filbert 2013

Getting to the Point : Tracing Complex Intersections

On By NW FilbertIn Journallings, Traces12 Comments

“A point is considered one of the fundamental objects in Euclidean geometry.  Without depth, breadth, or dimension it is a part that has no part.  It is represented by a dot or period that has some dimension but is not a point, but must cover the point infinite times over.  The point in the two-dimensional world is the intersection of lines and in three dimensions of another line as well and on and on.  A point is only location.  And isn’t that what we are?  Mere points?  Some points suggest beginnings, some ends, all divide, and when they connect or divide, where they are defined, it is always because of a turn, an angle, a shift toward another plane.  How else could we see a point?  The point is.  The point made.  Getting the point.  Pointing the way.  Points out.  Points in.  Point terminus…

…The meaning of life is the purpose of life…

…In similar fashion he came to some comprehension of the whole ballet, language being a small window through which very little passed and became helpful, the dance being nearly everything.”

–Percival Everett–

Point being that there is no point.  That a point is like an abstract sign – a two-sided symbol – of a non-place where relation occurs – where intersection, connection – moves, happens.  Probabilistically?  Infinite.  Point being that getting the point involves a complex thinking

“going beyond itself in the direction of complexity…not from the simple to the complex, but from complexity to ever increasing complexity.  Let us repeat: the simple is no more than a moment, an aspect among several complexities (micro-physical, macro-physical, biological, psychic, social).  We attempt to consider the lines, the tendencies of a growing complexification…as they function (in relation to autonomy, individuality, richness of relations, aptitudes for learning, inventiveness, creativity, etc.)” 

–Edgar Morin–

(Further reading): Overview of Complexity Thinking – Ferrara

Point being.

Something similar to that – we utilize points and pointing to signify a passing, passage, to trace – to attend to or refer at some intersectional context – thereby creating interactive referants/actants – you, I, the relation.

WordPress as a case in point.

I am ever-so-honored and thankful to have been considered and nominated in community awards insofar as they represent mobile points of connectivity and passage – where one or more of we and our “representation spaces” intersect in this “information common” of the blogosphere.

From Words that Flow like Water I received the “Sunshine Award”

 

and from  CLisaWork, the “Versatile Blogger Award”

both of which I am very honored and thankful for.

The fantastic element to me about these WordPress community awards is that they allow us to introduce and further the connectivity and intersecting “points” of convergence and accordance that shiftily pertains to our activity and representation here.

The acceptance of the awards imply some obligation to self-report.  I am unsure how I might bring “sunshine” to others through my working-spaces here, but am happy to live with the mysteries.  I tried to find a “Sunshine award” icon that featured rain as rain is much more vitalizing, inspiring and motivating to me personally than sunshine, be that as it may.  So, some things about myself:

  • I prefer rain to sunshine, having always felt the sun to be somewhat invasive and threatening in its brightness and exposure, and rain to be softening and safe, providing more subtle noticing.
  • I also find raw emotion  threatening, and much prefer rational expression of emotion (or musical or aesthetic or literary) to emotionally reported emotion.  In other words, I prefer emotion mediated through other things than body and voice.  I continue to try to understand why this is so.
  • I often feel helpless as a parent.
  • It is never my intention to report my knowledge or ideas as facts or certainties.  I find each day bringing with it so much information that the pattern of it is never symmetrical.
  • I am tremendously graced with a spouse and family that allow and enable me to inquire and pursue connections and concepts in the human universe of information that are far from profitable or sustainable economically.

I am going to use the “award-passing-along” as an opportunity to suggest blogs that (in the “sunshine” vein) inspire and inform me in ways that keep me at it myself, and that enhance my own “versatility” through what they offer and provide.  Please visit them – I am confident that there are so many more that should be listed below (I follow 100s) but there is not world enough and time…

Objects

Simon H. Lilly

Tocksin

Life in Relation to Art

[im]probability theory

Philosophy of Information & Communication

Asifoscope

Unwanted Advice: Reflections of a Self-Appointed Life Counselor

draw and shoot

biblioklept

Creativistic Philosophy

so very very

Searching to See

Spoondeep: Magazine of New Writings

Literary Man

The Unquiet Librarian

Petrujviljoen

Lunch Sketch

and so on….(check my blogroll)…

Thank you all for the rain-like sunshine and versatility you bring to my days:

the connections…

PROTEUS MAG

On By NW FilbertIn Art1 Comment

PROTEUS MAG

 

PROTEUS MAG.

happy to find (ever-so-tardily) – and kansas-bred-proud

PRESS ON – Thank You

On By NW FilbertIn JournallingsLeave a comment

PRESS ON – Thank You.

For some reason this old post was on my stats page today…I opened it and browsed through and it says things again that I continue to experience:

thank you persistent workers and players of WordPress!

(click on image or title for past post)

All That & More : 2012 in Review (w/musical moods and interludes)

On By NW FilbertIn Experimenctes, Journallings6 Comments

Evincing

The term is evincing.  That word that stands for the complex of tangled strands stuck and striated into a confrontation with blankness.  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 – a large icy one – but dirtied – clodded thick and gluey-thready – distasteful, a kind of impossible object – something like the idea of the innards of a self – what one sees in a mirror – like a melancholy music – tunes that you love that empty and sicken you – help you to feel more alive – all that.  More.  The unaccountable enormity that feeds into a stream called entity.  All that.  More.  Horrible, beautiful things.

            The fact that we are far more than we are able to surmise, and far less than we hope or wish to be.  Messy.  Contents of a dump.  A lifelong of it.  From every here and there that has ever counted as “around” us.  All that.  More.

It comes to bear.  In its confusing ways.  Its overwhelm, that is not too much, indeed, we hang together by its incredible pressure.  All that.  More.  We are composed of far more than we can consciously carry or categorize.  Too much.  All that.  More.  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 others’ faces.

That is what I bring to blankness.  And stare.  All that.  More.  Scrambled and disturbing.  Flustercucked and discombobulating.  Lost in the morass that makes me, that I am unable to peek through, even glance.  Life.  All that.  More.  Too much.  What cannot possibly be organized.  All that.  More.

            This is my life.  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 – glaucous and cataracted visions.  Too much.  All that.  More.

I heave and haul it to blankness.  These pages.  I set it on fire, collecting the ashes.  Or pick at a corner, scabrous and stubborn, until a smidgen unravels and I can trouble it.  Or simply collapse on the paper, clod-like and unstable, leaving crumbs.  Thank you paper.  All that.  More.

            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.  That which breaks us makes us stronger?  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.  All that.  More.  I love what survives me.

“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.”

-Manny Farber-

All that and more.  It evinces.  I am thankful for the whole god-damned and gloriously blessed mass.  I gnaw.  It evinces a spittle, which falls on this blankness.

HAPPY NEW YEAR – HERE’S TO IT!

TO EVERYTHING…AND MORE!

Very Inspiring

On By NW FilbertIn Journallings, Traces7 Comments

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:

Simon H Lilly

R. L. Culpeper

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

Appropriately Frayed

 

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!

Thank you : I don’t know what I am saying…

On By NW FilbertIn Experimenctes, Journallings, Writing16 Comments
received this little garland today and a congratulations from WordPress – my account is 1 year old!

“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.

entanglement. emergence. complexity. matter.

Thanks so much for  reading, joining, my attempts.

N Filbert 2012

The Graces

On By NW FilbertIn Journallings, Traces9 Comments

as in “unexpected blessing,” or surprising gifts.

Words that Flow like Water

has nominated me for another Lovely Blog award!

Surprising, I suspect, because I oft don’t find my own voice “lovely.”

I am very thankful some find it so, or something about the overall content here.

THANK YOU!

(rules of the game attached to the logo)

1.  My real name is not Nathaniel.

2.  My favorite authors/artists are embedded in my flesh.

3.  I am pursuing a vocation in Information Sciences.

4.  I am drawn to large white rectangles.

5.  I don’t believe in “spiritual.”

6.  I enjoy laughter.

7.  I deeply desire to travel in Russia, Nepal and Portugal.

For the nominees I’d like to pass the award along to (bon chance!) I will post the list that proved exorbitantly long for the rules last week, as follows:

in the library with a lead pipe

Words that Flow Like Water
The Language we Speak

art unraveling
Appropriately Frayed
Ute Schatzmuller
Madison Woods (for keeping us all busy and honest)

A Philosopher’s Take
Careful for Isa 
The Artsy Forager
Writing with Water
Anton Jarrod
Photography of Nia
and, of course, my beloved (even if time doesn’t allow, I read whatever arrives :))
Life in Relation to Art

simplified structure of entailment (Gordon Pask)