I wanted to bring up the question Linda posed about developing a new language. I think this could be a really exciting place to explore. We many never have a single answer but it certainly is a very pertinent question for us to look at, in my opinion.
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I tried looking at this question in detail in my MFA thesis (oh no, not that again!) and when Linda raised the quesion the other day, it got me thinking about my favorite anti-social, Ludwig Wittgenstein. He says that there is no private language. For W. language has its basis in rules and it depends on the assumption that there are multiple speakers. To give a rule to only yourself would be something besides language and nonsensical because no one could say whether anyone violated the rule or not. "All talk of an individual following rules has reference to him as a member of a community" (Saul Kripke) and it follows that language assumes membership in the same community.
I was also reading something about film recently that was discussing the nature of voyeuristic watching and asserted that we perform intimate activities in ways that confirm a certain idea we have of ourselves, one that implies an external look. The implicit onlooker gives meaning and structure to the private activity. I guess the notion is that without the implicit watcher we would have no idea how to act in private, no method for organizing our ideas. (strong nods to "The Impossible David Lynch", Todd McGowan, Columbia U Press, 2007).
i wasn't thinking of coming up with a language that only we would know or a 'new' language. it's difficult to say exactly what i meant? but i know that you know thats what i meant. whew. this is just hard to talk about. obviously.
maybe i was trying to say that i would like to form a new way to THINK about art. before you can begin to think in a new or different way you must first visualize. but, visualize what? this is the question.
april, that's where the exploration in your drawings are going and i like that very much. i love the search. it's making me want to do more of my own searching.
they say children draw to make sense of their world. they draw because they have no vocabulary, their thought process is limited by that.
guess i talk of all this since most of my sculptures have had a destination before their beginning. i'm going on a search. don't know if that will entale drawing however since i'm most drawn to 3-D. guess i'll start there and see where that goes.
hope all this rambling is useful to you all. it helps me, but i don't want it to be cathartic and only useful to me. you know what i mean? i want it to be useful to our group.
I feel like everything that we use to communicate to each other and even privately to ourselves, is language. So musical notes, symbolic marks, even the most abstract object become part of Language in a larger way. For me, the recombinant has been the focus. If I put this tacky unexpected thing here and this elegant thing here and then turn this other thing upside down or reduce it to a single letter (like G for google?) then maybe it starts to generate the unexpected.
Assuming that everything can be summed up into neat packages makes me feel peevish and I certainly don't want to do that with my work or my ideas. So I am always looking for ways to open up my own assumptions about a work, be it my own or another's.
Does the communication need to be decipherable. well, I suppose it does. maybe.
in order to find new thoughts and have them be useful to us as a culture, we must go down deep where all of us are dreaming the same dream. (jung)
the native peoples call this the 'big dream.' images and visions belong to the tribe. the only name our culture has for a person who descends to that place is madman, lunatic, psychotic, manic depressive or artist. shamens go their all the time. artist should go there all the time. they say if you go there and don't speak of it you will go mad.
(the english language has almost as many labels for crazy people as eskimos have for different kinds of snow!)
to descend into the sub/unconscience is to descend into the waters of the moon and of the mother, the feminine, the creator.
A COUPLE OF IDEAS
obviously there are many many ways to get to the subconscience, but maybe sometime in the future we can try something out of ordinary. for example, try some 'ecstatic body postures.' here's what the book jacket says:
"Specific body postures reappear in the art of world cultures, even those widely separated by time and distance. What are these images of unusual postures telling us? Anthropologist Goodman discovered that people who assume these postures report similar meditative experiences to people in trances. The results from this research are astonishing, proving that certain body gestures and movements trigger us into accessing altered states of consciousness. "Ecstatic Body Postures" is a must read for anyone interested in meditation, shamanic practive, yoga and body work." (isbn # 1-879181-22-3)
i have this book but haven't used it yet. maybe pam has already done some of this work?
OR, we could consult the "celtic oracle" as a group. (isbn # 0760778035)
doesn't seem like it must be decipherable? at least not in the beginning or for a long while. because if it's decipherable, then it's part of the culture again, right? and we're wanting to leave culture and fly around in the mists...or find ourselves going down down down to depths far below where we can barely see the light. both seem perfect.
i've read that to journey into another reality is always "perilous." that's the word that was used, peril. but i don't remember who said that? jung?
aaahh well, such is the life of the artist. we're not afraid of a little stinking peril !!!
This is so great. I was just reading a bit of a Casteneda book called Magical Passes. He talks about a kind of seeing that involves the ability to perceive energy as it flows in the universe, to see it in essence as a "windlike vibration." This takes great study and focus and is the realm of the shaman, who as Linda says and Castenda asserts, is considered mad or uber-spritual. To me making art is about perceiving this windlike energy but perhaps more importantly, evoking it. I don't want to merely discuss the sublime; I want to make it!
I first off think one can have ones own language.... I love Wittgenstein, but I do not agree with him, he in many ways is about making sense. When I worked with special ed kids, which I did for 5 years, some of the austic kids had their own language to themselves,and it was not in any way nonsensical. I worked with a set of austic twins who had developed their own language and we had to figure it out if we were going to work with them. It had rules and regualtions...so interesting.. also a single person has the capacity to make and break their own rules so I say everyone needs to make their own language...I understand trying to convey that language to a collective understanding is very different. That is dependant upon the cultures willingness to explore and tolerate other languages.
In reguards to dream worlds.. there is a woman named florinda donner I saw her speak years ago and she has a few books out, but she lived in mexico with a group of people who would collectivly dream together.. they would go off into other planes of existance and collectivly be in each others dreams. Her book are really interesting. In my dream/tantra meditation group we would have group dream questions.. we would meet for a few days straight and set intentions for the group and every night a few of us would have the exact same dream. That is a very interesing thing to do. In reguards to enegry work, when I have worked with the psychic sergeons who are shamanas- they heal by working on the psychic/enegertic body. They think the illnesses being in the psychic/enegritic body before anything manifests in the physical body. So shamanastic initations begin with learning to read the energy flows around and throught the body-plants etc...
my three cents....
Wasn't Florinda Donner one of don Juan Matus' students? I find that mode of exploration completely fascinating and a bit fear-invoking (awe). I am so drawn to it and yet so frightened. Peril.
I read in another book "the greatness of a work of art depends on its ability to transform the audience." Rilke offers that a great work of art tells us that we have to change our lives. I don't know exactly what that looks like and don't think it's a universal but I have experienced it and I hope my work does that.
Yes,
I think she was on of his students....I met her and she was great very sweet and supportive... april, i would be interested in knowing what frightnes you about it? is it thinking you might not return? You might run into something you cannot get rid of? it might be helpful to expose your fears around this....
the past life regression work is so mush similar to all this too- working on the emotional/psyhic level.. it is all really interesting...
pam
I believe I could be overwhelmed by it. I always was a cautious person. I am afraid of madness, for certain. I think you're right that it would be helpful to expose my fears. I am also afraid of that! But willing to try.
oh yes,
maddness is intense indeed.. but part of the human experience- a very important one.... let me think about it for awhile.....
maddness it is.. always an interesting topic..
pam
what would happen if you went mad?
I am afraid to lose my life. It feels so fragile as it is and I don't think I would like to fall completely into that dark space. I don't feel particularly zen about it. What I have witnessed of madness is violence, discomfort, sickness. I don't think I want to freefall. I want to but I don't know if I can.
Why do you think it's an important aspect of human experience. As Linda said before we have as many words in english than eskimos have for snow. So we must give it some credence, but isn't health better? Is there another vantage point or is madness better defined than I am doing?
Well,
our cultures ideas of health and wellness are really strange and i think deeply repressed. We might have lots of words for it, the words are used as comdemnations not descripitves of complex human experiences. Historically there has been far more tolerance for our more depressive or more illusionary parts of our personalities. I remember that in medeveal castles they built rooms for depression- places where you could just go and sit. In most shamanistic cultures part of the shaman journey consists of being able to travel in both the light and the dark- you can not be a shaman without experienceing the complex vastness of the human experience- other wise how could you help others? I am never sure what healthy really is? what I for myself is that life experiences are really complex and varied. What I know from reading astrology maps is that people are put together really differently and what is healthy for someone might not be for someone else. I know that some of my own life experiences might look horiffic, but my goodness with out them i could not have learned the lessons or had the experiences that i needed for my own soul growth.
The christian paradyme which has been in place of the last two thousand years is one of being in the "light"- there has not been many places for more paradoxical - messy (by this culture standards)) aspects of life.
In the trantric tradition- there are paths that souls are on in their different lives- the left hand path and the right hand path- they offer complete different life exeriences but both have equal and important experiences of the divine. The right hand path is one of purity- the yogis who meditate for 15 hours a day and live off of a glass of milk a day and that about it- That path is one where the cleansing of the body and spirit is of absolut importance to make a realtionship with the divine. The left hand path is one of taking drugs, hulinations and deep sexuality to find the divine.. both are valued and supported. maybe we are dealing with both the enegeries with our group! sounds good too me!
pam
yes, the words used to described madness are definately not positive! our culture does not value madness in any way.
i know a few 'mad' people and if everyone in the world were like them we'd have wonderful place!
april, you remind me of when i was afraid to take acid. was afraid i'd never come back. my friends were afraid too, for me that is. they were doing it. anyway, i never tried it and now i wish i had. maybe i still will?
very interesting. this is the first time i've heard of the left and the right path. i guess i've done some of the left path and some of the right. life is an adventure and i'm always up for adventures. don't mind going down the rabbit hole. not afraid. (i'm much more afraid of the freeway!) i'm hoping as a group we're up for adventures? april, don't worry, you don't have to go anywhere you dont want to go. suppose we do some group work to another dimension/realm, you only have to go as far as your comforable with. AND, you don't have to go anywhere! you can just meditate and relax. we can all be on the same road yet everyone can be a different speeds. you know what i mean?
i said i wasn't afraid, but i am. if i wasn't afraid i'd have taken the celtic oracle journey by myself. i'm afaid to encounter entities that might not be sympathetic to me, might terrify me; but i feel like if there are people in the same room anything that might terrify me will be lessened, diffused? does this make sense?
and, i'm still afraid of the dark! and have nightlights all over the house.
so, i'm not so brave.
interesting,
you know ive had many phases... i've been completely mad nuts insane out of it listening to voices in the cosmos and i was young so it was my life ... but i know remebering it did scare me for awhile when i was older all i wanted was sanity then i got that and i remember the gift of lucidity and just straight forward dealing with life on its terms was really amazing to me too.... i am fairly comfortable with maddness states and with deep hulinations.....
i do know from working with spirit enegry in the past life work is that "evil" enties usualy enter the body when one is in trauma or deeply wounded. I know I have had some funky/bad ass enegry lurking inside me- which i did realease.. But my guesss is that it took a ride when I was deeply wounded in other lives. My understanding is that stuff can get in whenever or wherever you are wether you are or are not in a altered state. but if something really frightenes you it is always interesting to see where that is coming from?
Doing deep dream work is completely safe it would only be a problem if you are in sever psychosis ( and what i mean by that is totally out of touch with reality) because then one might bring in some funky entity. but most of this work is very safe - but unfamilar for our culture.
It might be really good for everyone to start some kind of dream work.. just start writing them down.....
pam
If I were to try to describe my interaction with a truly mad person in the throws of madness was that it scrambled all their mental connections. The ultimate randomizer. No rhyme or reason. It was as if you threw the dice to determine every thought process, every decision. Everything connected to everything.
When I did that video on the streets of new york where I went around asking people what the best and worst things were that they could imagine happening to them. I thought the answer about the worst that I most related to was the young woman who said that the worst thing she could imagine was losing her mind. Because who you are resides in your mind. To loose your mind is to have nothing left.
Oddly though. The mentally ill are always going off their medication. Chasing the delicious first awakening mists of madness.
I would be interested in trying dream work. I almost never have any sense that I have dreamed.
I would say I can remember have a sense at wakening of dreaming maybe a dozen times in my life.
Perhaps if I sought it out I might find them? Because I have to be dreaming in order to not go crazy.
I'd love to talk about this in more specifics.
One last thought on this...
Perhaps embracing chance is a form of madness. Accepting and trusting the truth in random connections.
Just clarifying. I just re-read my last posting and it reads more like I'm saying I'm posting THE last thought on the topic. What I meant was ANOTHER thought in a different direction on this.
The bad thing about comments is you can't edit them. Once they are posted they are out of your hands.
(juliet, you can delete a post.)
i've been having some engaging dreams so i'm gonna start writing them down and will let you know if any of you are in my dreams. anyone else interested?
(last night i dreamed of a tall, handsome, interesting guy who i was sleeping with. hehehehe very nice. i'll take some more of him.)
pam, thanks for the info. makes me feel much more safe and reassured about entering conscience altered states.
I love what Juliet said about the complete randomness of connections found when observing madness. I am trying with all my sane power to do that in my work because I think there is some alternative, much more I don't know, expansive understanding there. It's painful though, I think for the madperson and for the observer. I do find sometimes I feel lost in the drift of my work but I don't want to do it in my everyday life. It's hard to look at what we call madness from a distance, without having some visceral connection to it. For me anyway. I become so enmeshed in people's stories, their energy and I feel mine integrate into their's and then I feel mad, or in pain, or whatever. Then I focus on their experience and mine often goes on the back burner. I am so interested to engage that random space and feel safe in the fact that I don't have to make sense of it or control it. That perhaps is real health. I don't know. Well, Pam had recommended a book called the Blue Lady by Lyn Cowan and I found another book of her's at the library about "eccentricity." I'll be curious to read it.
My friend, Jill Poyourow, referred me to this piece. Has anyone seen it?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kryptos
I'm not sure how I missed all of this exciting conversation about interior languages, madness, and dreams, but it has been wonderful. I'm eating dinner (sushi) and contemplate everything that you've been talking about. gosh...
I have been having a lot of dreams lately. It's wonderful. I laugh out loud at most of them. I am going to start writing them down. I used to, and when I went back to read them a year later they were quite revealing. I have a book on how to ask specific questions that will help reveal the symbolic meaning.
And as far as a 'new' language,I think that everyone has a 'unique/new' language to share with everyone, and the common goal should be to find a way to have a common language. I think if you're quiet and silent for any lenth of time, you hear and understand whatever it is you need to know. That's why I'm all for a collective group activity of meditation/dream state. (or travelling to my past/future.)
interesting sculpture by sanborn at the cia headquarters. how funny that the cia decoders didn't figure out the message immediately? you know, those guys who do that exclusively during a war?
this reminds me of a book, authored by an english dude, with beautiful paintings that had clues as to where the author had buried a treasure. people were digging holes all over england about 25 years ago! i loaned the book and never got it back and now can't remember his name? then he did another book about 6-7 years later but it wasn't as beautiful. and the poetry/riddles clues weren't as engaging. i sure wish i could remember his name?
http://www.nyfa.org/nyfa_artists_work.asp?pid=654&num=1
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