staring inbetween 0/O zero /infinity---Hands' Movements and Moments--Motifs
After many adventures and abraisions and absurdities and ---well, much
else--at last am moved into new domicle and able to begin to bring field
reports of activities, ideas, methods, madnesses, motifs, movements,
moments--the lives of eyes and hands and legs among the ceaseless profusion
of materials and sites-- a good deal of what i work with is often a
handful at best of questions/wonderings, motifs and series and obsessions.
To be honest i keep cutting out long chunks of these notes because i
think --wel they are too long--!!!--better to cut the chase--
one thing i can say is that i am finding ever more a very great
difference not only in a way of seeing/making but of being as well, in
Picasso's saying "I do not seek, I find."
This seemingly simple assertion by our man Pablo is i find ever
more profoundly engagng in thoughts, work and life as i find them out for
myself--and become aware how for most people it is the opposite.
That slowly becomes one's understanding in part --and does
indeed help much--
>I also think often of Olson's "i have learned the simplest
things/last"--last having three meanings at once--yet it is true, the
simple--it may come last, but it lasts--so when one finds anything simple,
this is one to live with--it wil last --and last and last--the rubBEings
teach me this--they have been with me through everything, everywhere, in
everytime when there seemed nothing, a big nothing-prison--they were
there--they are here--
What i am trying to say also is--don't expect much of me or
this blog. I can share basic simple daily things and references but that is
about it. The rest one can find many many elsewheres, so my advice is to
go to them.
As Dorothy Day put it, there isn't time to sit around talking
about it, there is too much to be done.
Some of these ideas and activities may be found in this resending
of a note i wrote to the spidertangle list. There was a discussion going on
re staring as at Nick Piombino's fait accompli blog there is an interview
with Nicos Vassilakis regarding this. I present what i wrote because i
think it may help to show some ways that i see and work differently. I am
not arguing one way is better than another etc--i am just trying to present
a different way.
here is what i wrote (30/10/05)
forgive me, but i find what is said abt staring in the interview to be
>the construction of another form of heirarchy--lists of things to do with
>it
>how it behaves what it turns into sounds like a way of control just as much
>as as the control purported to be changed--
> i understand the form of staring advocated and one finds this as a
>child very swiflty with texts--
> there is another way to stare at a text
> you stare long enough and what do you see?
> just another prison
> the pieces may be rearranged and furniture moved abt and things
>taken
>to pieces but in the end we have the same prison because this is also a
>method of control--it advocates a linear progression of texts in to more
>texts with a viisual arrangement along the way-
> when you are confined and there are barely any texts
>other than the ones on the walls which all tell you the same thing DO
>NOT--one stares and stares and one wants to see thorugh this wall this
>prison of texts built up in immense archtectonics of texts until texts ring
>in the ears to be sure-
>
> it is like the sound of the sea in a shell--and in the cell it is
>the
>sound of the prison--
> one stares and one is told not to stare
>"don't you know it's rude to stare"
> another DO NOT
>what one hopes is to no longer have any of this be there-
> no surface no games no confinement of
>alphabet--words--sentences in all the meaning of the word-
> one stares and hopes to see through a wall --a woman a
>mountain a tree a bird homecookiing playground streets houses-fire escapes
>windmoving hair--eyes that dance---anything but the burden of shakling
>words
>no matter how one stares at them they always rearrange to spell the the
>same
>thing
> forgive me but the tenor of the statements is --sounds like--another
>hiearchy--staring is better than such and such--and when we stare we do
>this--and this happens--and it creates--it 's nice linear projection and i
>do understand the attraction--yet because of this linearity there is
>another
>form of confinement--
> one thing leads staright to another--just like the original
>text--there
>is a programmed element to it-
> "the names change but the game remains the same"
>
> i have been thinking a good deal on what this means
>Picasso said: "I do not seek, i find".
>and here staring seems to be a form of seeking--hence the lineraity and and
>the programmed elements--
>seeking has a goal--a path--maybe a master/earth goddess--
>seeking as in this staring becomes another form of production--
>and also has a built in belief in heirarchies-
>is more pure than others--
>i am truly only at the very edge of the dirty dusty road in the foothills
>with this
>also dirty/clean--
>the clean--purity and efficeny--tightly controled--
>dirty--who are we?--
>i come back in dirt on pants and my hands mixed with lumber crayon spray
>paint-
>good old dirt--
>"someone has to do the dirty work"
>finding is a different way of being i am begining to find--(!)-
>
> it is very interesting and i deeply appreciate the knowledge and
>insightss of all the replies also
>with burroughs/gyson --and what happened to this
> back in the day --and i am sure today --when you took acid or other
>hallucinogens, people wd always tell or remind you--DO NOT stare at
>something too long--Medusa-- . . .
>don't stare at the sun
> one accepts it there is not enough time to be able --esp when working
>means wlaking and long hours or short ones even --the time is less--for
>texts--and one has to work and study dailly the motif-
> the motif for me -i have to have a taphonic approach to tihis
> taphonomy is the study of things in there present state
> worn cracked weather beatn telephonepoles rusting machinery fences
>splitting and fraying--layers of dust of an afternoon on a large plastic
>trash holder--its insignias marking numbers-
> staring has something to do with time--like doing time--you have time
>to stare-another intentiaanly takes the time to stare-it's a privilege for
>some and a prison for others
> "but those who lay the foundations are forced to descend into the
>dpeths'
> believe me this is not at all against the method of staring here,
>or
>what was said--is just to present a different point of view, a different
>way
>of being--
> attention--attention and care--with these one is set to work--
> i can stare at texts and they just aren't there--what i see is
>something
>else in the imagination--or reveries staring into it--my god! one hopes not
>to turn into Narcisussus!--better turn away!--
>"he stared long and hard at that animal before he decided not to kill it"--
>
>
> to stare at texts--the focus beams light and burns a hole in the fabric
>of texts
> burns a hole into the Other--
> beyond, outside--any of those elements of text--
> to leave them behind a jumbled heap or neat clean package
> i was wondering also about expression in visual poetry
>is there expression?
> i mean as in expresionsim--
> or ornette coleman saying "it's not about notes it's about
>feelings'--
> if one keeps working with the pieces of the stared at texts--is one
>still involved with notes?--notes only?--
> pausing much going slow--time to stare at what is right by me
>here on desk--STRAIT LINE "Making Our Mark Around the world"
>and --man they sure are!:
> ' WARNING: Red, yellow & flourescent
>chalks are permanent colors. There is no known way to remove them. Blue
>chalk may be permanent in porous mateirals . . . '
>
> Yes thse permanent chalaks--no known way to be rid of
>them--are
>making their mark in the world--
> staring at the words i feel an intense sense of hilarity--"no
>known way to remove them"--"making our mark around the world"--
> hey--why not make MY mark aorund this world
>here--permanently!! you can see where the mind goes with texts--
> it's a nice form too--this is chalk for use on highways
>mainly--a workman at a construction site being done gave it to me no more
>use for it--marking lines around the perimeters--to--mark where roads will
>be-
>also i was thinking STRAIT LINE--strait is the gate--strait jacket--and
>straight--
> staring strait or staight--
> the more one stares the more one is aware of the
>plastic
> used one feels it with the eyes--and the colors black and yellow on the
>bottom cylindrical container and topped by red top with nozzle--it has a
>happy form--its road dusty surfaces--everything written three times
>red/rouge/rojo--
> when i stare--there are so many avenues to go--myriads--one can
>stare at the text the way laid out and get sensations, feelings-one can
>have
>the vacant junkie stare--no affect--the person staring off into the
>distance--
> i like that one--i stare and stare and what is there--
> staring into distances--
> uncanny and unknown-
> no particiles at all of words --text--
> the distances of the spaces in
>between--
> hidden in plain sight--
> staring i find myself
>looking into the distances in the spaces in between--
> there is a
>great difference between the calculated self consicous stare-
> and the stare of astonishment--or fear--the
>stare at the sudden apparition of things--the stare a child has--
> there is the stare when all heads turned to
>stare--this can be the organized stare of the parade watching--or stare of
>disapproval--
> the best staring one has often with a text is
>staring at it and not seeing it all--but things in the
>imagination--memory--"she was staring at nothing. what was it her eyes
>saw?"--
> i think this consious stare where it is
>self consciouly staring is like a controlled laboratory experiment-there
>isnt really a freedom--
> working with the attention, with the found--a
>stare
>is into it--into the text and into the spaces in between --nothing is
>sought after--nothing expected--what approaches--uncanny recognitions--one
>stares in surprise--"it is new to me yet not unnkown"--
> often one stares at a text and sees nothing at
>all--
>what is in the mind's eye is focusing attention inward while the eyes stare
>unseeing--the text may be frozen--or the eyes moving smoothly--sliding
>right
>over those rigid forms--no care for their meanings--
> is there or what is there--a relationship between this blank
>staring--with the mind absent from the text the eyes see-and the staring at
>the spaces in bwteen--
> both have to do with an absence--
> the absence of the text
> stare into the Os in DO
>NOT--into the absence--
> O as zero & infinity-
> s
>o it is in the spaces inbetween one may go through that which is hidden in
>plain sight into absence--
> the text is gone--
> now we may begin . . .
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