Reflection ii

Hegel says, "True faith is possible only where individuals can seclude themselves--can exist for themselves independently of any external compulsory power." He keeps mentioning a little bit of the "nonage" I'm familiar with through Kant. When I watched a few lectures on Hegel and Marx they mentioned that some argue the genesis of Critical Theory is Kant, not Hegel. Not really that it matters, but I guess you can draft a more authorized syllabus with that information.

Words to examine: true, faith, individuals, seclude, exist, independent, external, compulsory, power. I've only been trudging through the first sections of Hegel's Philosophy of History, those concerning China and India. He says interesting things about patrimony, the analog between familial relationships and governments, and Supreme Power, or substantial being. Basically a bunch of semi-mystical hoo-ha but it's sometimes refreshing.

For example: when speaking of Chinese religion he says it's a religion which "regards as the Highest and Absolute--as God--pure nothing; which sets up contempt for individuality, for personal existence, as the highest perfection." I watched a few lectures by R.C. Sproul on the character of secularism where he explicated a few existential notions, and it all seems now to be about how we conceive of Time. I need to find a biography of Einstein, or some comment on the conversations between Tagore and Einstein maybe a century ago. I think there may be keys there on how to navigate the tipping point between science and spirituality, or even the subjective with the objective. Seems the philosophical speculation is so far removed from action in the world, though.

Do I have a "contempt for individuality" though? I'll run around the social media brandishing my "woe is modernity; woe is individualism; woe is relativism" jargon and propaganda, but to what purpose? But I think it will be useful to think of Modernity not as something antithetical to Religiosity, but as an outgrowth of it. Kind of like a spiritualization of the individual. I think this is why I have been drawn to Hegel through my study of Christianity. There is a certain sense of individuality in the person of Christ that gives me the intuition that it leads to broad ideologies that embrace the secular, relativism, or just subjectivity. Hegel seems to trace history as a "progress" from the objective to the subjective. What I may need to examine next is notions of "freedom." I think there is a "democratic" idea of freedom, and a different kind of freedom that takes into account notions of ethics or duty.

I'll dig into the remainder of the India sections in Hegel tomorrow, but he starts it off saying that in "China the patriarchal principle rules a people in a condition of nonage." I guess my personal politics has to struggle with conceptions of development, when, where and whether or not there is any appropriate "time" for a maturity opposed to "nonage," etc. What happens in a world of pure, true relativistic and subjective freedom, free of patronage and patriarchal principles? What is the consequence of a prevailing ideology that embodies this idea? Did Kant win through Hegel? Isn't this just a new hegemony that pretends it isn't a hegemony? What did Luther say about Christians? “A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none. A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject of all, subject to all.”

Reflection i

I feel clear and unclear; visited and unvisited; vacant and full; etc. I'm going to push myself through a lousy discipline and appreciate. I'm no different now that I've always been, yet I'm infinitely changed. I can remember writing without thought as a child, then thinking without writing, reversing the whole thing and wondering about a synthetic other-ness beyond it. Sometimes I feel like I'm lost while I'm found, like I'm in the middle of a terrible yet terrific paradox. I'll push through these reflections throughout 2014 with vainglorious intent. But I'll put without an expectation, or with the expectation to have no expectation, or with the feeling of no feeling, or with the paradoxical essence of no-essence coursing through my non-body...

I'm meditating on a bit of Tagore: "In order to find you anew, I lose you every moment/ O beloved treasure." Treasure isn't so bad. I'm in the middle of ambiguous conversations about the challenges of the everyday, how they give us the tolls to deal with the challenges of tomorrow, how the present is an unfolding nonsense that is never extinguished. I'm grateful for the difficult things, and I know with my whole heart and my whole disjointed faith that tomorrow will bring something immeasurably more terrible and traumatic. But what do I have within my will and power to push on? What steam and verve and vigor resides inside me that I can draw upon like a fount to push myself into the future? Is this pushing and this will--this will to believe--a vainglorious mission? Why do I have a question for myself?

I'm devising a four-pronged plan to push into 2014. There are four courses of study, probably to be supplemented with a physical aspect. I'm going to revisit my snuffed mantra of last year: discipline. I can understand why my cohorts at that meeting-of-minds weren't enthused about that word. But I'm going to need to push on as a duty to myself and my god, wherever she resides, in whatever guise or face she chooses to present herself, through whatever mysterious veil I imagine for her. The four-sided time I'll push through consists of: reading, writing, music and painting. Every day gets a deliverable. Every day gets a reflection (these are the preamble); every day gets a series of poems and writings; every day gets a meditation on an old song; every day gets a construction of an image--a representation in two-dimensional color.

I'm going to pray and hope and imagine all things beyond the real, a satisfied life of discipline where work demonstrates faith. I can't imagine myself in the future without a regimen of creativity. The artist creates; he doesn't philosophize about creation, criticize creation or even think twice about making. He makes, and that's the ethos I want to live with for the rest of my life. No longer any of this, "But I'm not good enough. But I'm not ready. But I'm not qualified, justified, inspired, etc." I am the arbiter of my time. I can choose to revolve myself about a productive calendar. I can choose to be the progenitor of myriad little spinning proverbs in a plethora of media. The only thing that's stopping me is myself.

So thank you all for listening and being inspiring. Thank the clouds and the grasses for standing silent or roaming with a whisper. Thank the bayous and gulfs for being beyond me. Thank the grand universe for spinning without a care for my vanity, thank all the words and languages, faiths and doctrines, for being this dew upon a grateful grass. Thanks for your patience that inspires mine. Thanks for the spirit that moves us all. Namaste.

What Isn't Aesthetic? And Other Ruminations

I'm going to write this even though it's doomed to failure, all the finites are veritable nothings compared the the Infinite. We might could even argue they're incommensurate meaning there is no common measure between them therefore it is impossible to compare. Perhaps this is the necessity of allegory, the purpose of an art and the perpetuator of irrationals in our overly-empirical society. None of this makes sense, it makes nonsense. I never blogged as an academic, I'm with Debord on spurning footnotes and sourcing, but I'll quit with the apophasis.

Coomaraswamy wrote a killer essay destroying modern conceptions of "aesthetics." Lets just look at the word, that's what he did. Lets accept this definition of aesthesis as "an unelaborated elementary awareness of stimulation." Essentially we're talking about a sensual activity. Some synonyms cited include "sensation," "perception," "visual perception," "olfactory sensation," etc. When we talk about an "aesthetic experience" we're talking about something that happens to our body from the outside, something that affects us, stimulates our senses.

With "perception" is where a sort of duality emerges. Perception we find defined as "the act or faculty of apprehending by means of the senses or of the mind." Here we're not limited to sensory input, we're caught in the infinitely regressive quagmire that is Intellect. An "apprehending of the mind." What, pray tell, is apprehended? Apprehend itself means in a sense "to perceive." We're getting a bit circular here, and then it just seems pointless, but traditional conceptions of Life, Time, etc. tend to be cyclic instead of linear anyways.

An aesthetic experience is, accordingly, first a stimulation of the body and then an apprehension of this stimulation by the mind. Now we get to the slipperyness that is "aesthetics" as a science of beauty. We're born into an endless stream of stimulations apprehended by the mind. In some sense the entirety of life is an "experience" of sensory stimuli "apprehended," or perhaps made-sense-of, by the mind, by processes of cognition, etc. At this point it may be advantageous to reference Huxley's discussion of "Doors of Perception."

What happens when you're born? You're overwhelmed by new sensory experiences your burgeoning mind must make some sense of. If your mind doesn't make any "sense" of them, you're not able to participate in the social structure and culture of the world. We learn as we grow to make distinctions (science) as to what is important and what isn't, what we ought pay "attention" to and what we may be just as well off disregarding. The process takes years. At first we're charmed and dissociated babies: all the surfaces, sounds, sights, all stimuli are dazzling and mysterious. Everything gets a touch, a sniff, a look and most times a taste. All the stimuli, all sensory input is examined, is "apprehended" and assessed. We live and breathe as miniature aestheticians.

As we grow, we amass some scientific tools. Science as a word comes from roots meaning "to separate" or "to divide." Perhaps because of our Will and drive, we make assessments and judgments about which bits of sensory input are most useful. Which are the tastes, sounds, sights, etc. that we must focus our "attention" or "apprehension" on as to be most effective in the world? Gets real close to questions of ethics and morality real quickly. What's an "effective" behavior? What is "useful"? Perhaps these are all just as pointless questions as that at the core of aesthetics: What is "beautiful?"

But we can't stop here. Lets jump to Kant's proposed "aesthetic attitude." We might define it as an "attitude of detached and disinterested, but engaged, contemplation." First of all, we'll note how silly it seems to posit an "attitude" that is aesthetic when the very substance of our Life Experience is aesthesis (sensory stimulation). In my humble opinion one would be hard-pressed to find someone roaming this real world without incurring sensory stimulation. But this is beside the point and there are some ways in which this concept can be applicable, and, yes, useful.

The artist performs a remarkably curious task of assigning an "aesthetic" value to an object. This "object" need not be a physical thing, but may also be a process, a lapse of time, a series of events, etc. The artist, the genius, "sees" this object in a certain way, approaches it with a curious "attitude." Now within the modern mindset, we look to these "administers," these "artists' for what to consider as an "art," what to consider an "aesthetic object" or experience. But in reality we each have innumerable aesthetic experiences every moment, what the artist does is merely assume an attitude.

Now we'll get to my proposed spectrum. What are we considering "aesthetically valuable"? At our birth, when the "doors" are open, all our sensory stimuli are treated with the same awe, the same sublimity with which we later treat art objects, aesthetic objects. We then are nurtured into a society in which, by necessity, we make judgments about what is important to view with this attitude of awe, and what isn't. The reality of it is that all these "objects" are all equally dazzling, all worthy of examination, all embodiments of beauty, etc. What I propose is an idea that an artist has more of their "doors" open, assumes an attitude receptive to the dazzle in all things, and this allows them to choose particularly effective exemplars of this sublimity.

It gets kind of close to being a little crazy, having a "split mind," or not being able to make distinctions between what is "valuable" or "useful" and what isn't. I've noted this with autistic children as well. In my view, the issue is a sort of inability to discern between what is socially important stimuli and what isn't. Whereas a cognitively normal person knows what sounds, what sensory input is most important for sociability with other humans, these children can't make the distinction. This manifests in a seeming ability to hear better than others or notice things that a typical person doesn't. In my view this isn't because they possess special sensory abilities, but because they lack what others have as far as discerning ability.

The genius sees the worth of all beyond the confines of human society. There is no distinction made between what is "important" for participation in the Logos and what is important on a scale beyond humanity. Whereas it is useful for us to note those stimuli which make us more effective persons in the social sphere, what is admirable in an artist or a person with curious thought is their ability to note those stimuli which, while they may not be socially useful in the conventional way, are encapsulations of an essential quality of a Universe that human beings are merely part and parcel of. We see at one point of this spectrum those who have concern merely with what is useful socially, and on the other extreme those dazzled by both applicable stimuli for humans, and stimuli that has nothing to do with us at all.

I know I've wandered on this one. I have no discipline. It's difficult to force myself to write things out, to get to the task. I feel like de Lubicz as I've written before. As much as I depend upon word analysis, philology for argument, words and symbols remain hopelessly inadequate. The Infinite cannot be captured in a finite and writing out more words to try and capture it with some hope of getting it "all" in is delusional. It demonstrates no knowledge of the meaning of Infinite, a word that means very clearly "not finished." A symbol is by nature finished, static, the Universe, this Life and Being are dynamic. There's a perpetual tension between the two that's been discussed by men and women across all culture and era. To suppose we are the only ones with an insight into this quandary is ridiculous. Keep loving, keep being, keep trying, it never ends.

On that note I'll close with a little Tagore paraphrased by a student years later. Often we are dazzled by that which is exotic, which we have no schema for, which we've never encountered. Often we are most receptive to that which is novel and new to our ears. We note this in music listening habits, artistic consumption trends and otherwise. People have a tremendous yearning for something "new" and "original" though the Bible is quick to tell us there is "nothing new under the Sun." The desire and drive remains. It's only difficult to have those fresh and curious eyes about those things which are most immediate to us, most local. To find a beauty and a worth in those things which we've learned to tune out is a true accomplishment. As Tagore has said, "I have spent a fortune traveling to distant shores and looked at lofty mountains and boundless oceans, yet I haven't found time to take a few steps from my house to look at a single dew drop on a single blade of grass."

Metrical Studies, Astrological Musics and Meanderings...

Lets talk about this chart for a little while since I haven't written in a while. I've been doing a lot of experiments with metrics in poetry, with prosody, and learning how to chart natural phrases. I'm planning a series of sonnets that may be in a sort of ghazal mode, as in they're going to approach themes of love and separation. Some of the things I've been thinking of as hallmarks or points of guidance for it are some of Berryman's Dream Songs (specifically for their use of recurrent characters), Borges' sonnets on some of his literary and other idols, and some Shakespeare. I never read any Shakespeare outside of school until recently and it only just started making sense. Sometimes I feel like the course I've followed for myself, my own sort of curriculum since 2006, has lent me a pretty solid yet amorphous foundation for further experiments.

But lets get back to this chart for a minute. I've also been learning a lot of geometry, I want to learn the calculus, especially its necessity. I'm a huge Borges fan, I read Borges learned Zeno's paradoxes from his father on a chess board. There are so many beautiful and romantic things about that image to me. Follow me long enough and you'll know two of my biggest idols are Borges and Duchamp. I'm imagining myself right now watching them play chess, something about the Ruy Lopez or a Spanish Opening. I tried for a long time to learn chess openings, some tactics and strategies, but I'm not into it enough to practice on a daily basis. Apparently I'm into writing and singing enough to practice those things, I tweet enough to aggravate the living shit out of most people and if you hung out with me I'm constantly either singing or playing Precorder...

I still haven't made it to the chart! This is a post about a nonchart, a nonmap and a nonplan. I been reading this terrific biography on Tagore and it has really touched me. I'm not one for, what seems to me, the forced sappiness of the Lin sect, but I'm all about sincerity in love in the mode of Hafez. I keep wondering about oppositions, the nature of the world in its dualism, how object and subject oppose and all the concomitant polemics. I think I read once about a "passive" oriental mindset, something opposed to the Nietzschean "superman," or active principle. I'd guess its like a Kinsey scale, there is no black nor white, there is merely a spectrum in between. But sometimes gradations and solid degrees are good tools, are good ways for us to frame an analysis.

Lets see how long he can avoid the chart.. I've also done some studies of chakra, though when I say I "study" it usually means about 6 hours or at most two days. I'm pretty keen sometimes, though. I did some drawings mapping out what I perceived as a concordance between 7 scale degrees and Western accepted 7 chakra positions. It made a lot of sense to me when I read it at the time, the seat of voice being 5th chakra, seat of melody in song being 5th degree. I'm working on a cosmology of sorts, ha. I'm always working especially by not working. Maybe I'll look into the etymology of work, Debord said "never work"? Reed wrote a song about Warhol, about Drella, and the lyric was "the most important thing is work." I guess that's why I find myself writing this today, weasel words and all.

Finally lets look at this chart! I promise! Vernal equinox was about 10 days ago, we see Sun a little past 10th degree Aries. Aries is the initator, the beginning of the cycle. Vernal point because it begins our Spring, Aries is associated with the head and with the sprouting of the seed. Here we see a conglomeration of luminaries. Mercurial intellect just turned around (retrograde) and initiates communications; expansive Jupiter sits mid-Aries opposed to Saturn, we get a fiery expanse; Sun soon conjoins Jupiter in this opposition, putting benefic, good luck, ego across from the scythe, Father and karmic ender Saturn. I wrote a little analysis once about the recent revolutions and how it's curious that Uranus (the Revoluter) is at Aries point for these events. Still we see Mars soon conjoining Uranus, so the conflict does not end soon, it stays martial.

Essentially the chart stays stressed. Pluto runs the T-square from 7 degrees Capricorn. Cardinal signs are shook by a series of squares. When Sun hits 8 or so degrees Cancer we'll get another flux of energies as it completes a Grand Cross. All of this is vague and awful. Astrology takes the truth of astronomy and grafts a traditional method of interpretation. We take the Moon's cycle and use it as an analogue for longer cycles. I feel a bit demoralized? The magic of my art is my vulnerability. I'll keep working through these metric studies and then the sonnet (song) cycle with the Buddha, with Ibn Arabi's Her, with all the love and heft of attachment/detachment will emerge. It's my malware, I assume the most innocuous form to infiltrate the system. Sorry I meander, stay lovely all. Especially those who don't read.

Illusory Subject and Object, Or Advaita: Non-Dualism

Many ideas about love and separation, many ideas about di-vision and duality in manifest Uni-verse and concomitant suffering. Perhaps we explore the meaning of Advaita, the re-semblance of separation demonstrated via musical consonance and dissonance, and many of the finite and thus finished signs an other has coined to mark static moments of existence. This will probably be exceedingly esoteric.

Been doing much study of musicality and manifold existence. Geometers map this world of forms in many ways. Korzybski has illumined distinction between map and territory for us exquisitely, but let us not assume he was the first. Essentially we suffer as result of di-vorce of Subject and Object. Some traditions agree on the illusory nature of this dis-tinction. In fact, the Upanishads exposit the essential equality of Subject and Object in their mantra "Tat Tvam Asi" meaning "That Art Thou."

The essential characteristic of the World is its mystery. Infinite means in-finite, unfinished, ever dynamic. All static representation of nonstatic existence is doomed by its very nature to failure. Only the unfinished is perfect. All expression, beit through glyph, image, act, even human life itself is doomed to finitude. Thus it suffers an impossibility of perfection. By their very nature all expressions of the Infinite (Absolute under any name) are assured inadequacy. Perhaps this is the Secret which a-muses mystics, quite literally ceases their thinking and sets them alaugh.

Advaita, as we mentioned earlier, is quite literally "non-duality." An essential aspect of tolerance, altruism, and love of fellow beings is recognition of similitude. All being and becoming are part and parcel of the One Song, widely known as Uni-verse, the singular Unity ever turning incapable of representation in static symbol. Much artistic practice since time immemorial, and especially, and quite curiously, in contemporary practice attempts to re-present this dynamism. The classic symbolism of the yin and yang we find here applicable. Another theme touched on repeatedly by Mowlānā is the coincidence of opposites.

Essentially all manifestation suffers this illusory duality. Conceptions of "good" have no hope of existence without concomitant "evil." The same is true of ideas of "right" and "wrong," "beautiful" and "ugly," and even "true" and "false." An acceptance, and perhaps prostration, submission, to the Uni-verse, the one song, a true tolerance of necessity must embrace all aspects of the Universum. The ugly is necessary for the existence of the beautiful, just as evil is necessary for the existence of good. Passive is necessary for the existence of active, favoring either principle sets one off balance and perhaps this is the meaning of the Buddha's "middle way."

We may explore, as I've mentioned, the patterns of manifold existence in many ways. Perhaps the most universal of these means of approach is that of music. A tonality is the establishment of a base unit and the dance of a music is quite literally differing relations in sequence about this Source. For example, a consonant re-lationship such as a fifth has a close relationship with the dynamic cycle of the tonic. This is represented by the ratio of 3:2 and we hear the ease of the interval and characterize it as consonant. The nature of music proceeds likewise in a similar fashion.

Other intervallic relationships we hear suffer a quite literal dis-integration of base consonance. Other ratios imperfect into dis-ease, so we find that a third suffers a 5:4 ratio, while a relationship we tend to hear as dissonant, a minor second, suffers further a 16:15. Perhaps this separation from Source is what gives differing musics their character. In consonance we hear the near-union of separated pitches, in dissonance we hear the agony of their separation. It was Rūmī and the other Persian expositors of ghazal who focused their art on themes of love and separation. In music itself we hear differing cycles in differing relationships, different degrees of separation.

Perhaps, indeed, the nature of a tonal music is an apt analogy for our intervallic re-lationship with the Divine, Brahman, the Universal Ground of All Being. Each and every one of us, all aspects and degrees of manifestation relate in some degree to the Absolute. Some have an apparent relation of ease and this is perhaps voiced, as in music, as a con-sonance. Some, however, have a relation of dis-ease, and this is voiced as a dis-sonance. While one we may judge as "pleasing" or "beautiful" and the other as "displeasing" or "ugly," both owe their re-lationship to Source, the Silence that underpins them, the Nothing that allows them. In this sense it may be valuable for us to recognize the debt owed Source for both ease and dis-ease. In fact, even the most dissonant of intervals (some explored by La Monte Young and others) must at some point re-meet the Source...

Beauty and truth are tremendous re-minders of the Unity from which we emerge. Theories of the Big Bang and the birth of our body's elemental building blocks in the stars are merely scientific re-presentations of our emergence from the Source, our di-vergence from primordial Unity. It is perhaps valuable for us to re-mind our selves and others, continually re-member the base, the tonic about which we dance, to which we relate. As the Tao Te Ching voiced: paths that may be taken are not the only paths, names that may be named are not eternal names. In this sense all paths and names become essentially identical, and each becomes a mode or tool for remembrance of God. All voicings are necessary, and their necessity is their beauty. I've decided I must love always, I must love all ways, and only hope a demonstration of this behavior benefits an other.

Authorship and Authority: Why I Didn't Write This

"I love you!" Who wrote that? Ought you claim it? With the proliferation of media that we've seen over the course of the last 20 years and beyond, intellectual property and authorship have become hot-button issues. Social media and the concomitant applications offer services that allow us to "Share" information that we've encountered on the web with others very easily. One of the most oft-used features of an operating system is copy-and-paste. While artists have always dealt with issues of borrowing and sourcing, technologies in the information age bring these issues to the forefront.

Problems of self and property have been touched on by philosophers, social critics and others since before history. It was renowned textual and conceptual artist Jenny Holzer who included as one of her truisms, "private property created crime." It was the infinitely influential Rousseau who once noted that "the first man who ... fenced in a piece of land [and] said "This is mine" ... was the true founder of civil society." Preaching about the faults of property and the "I," "me," and "mine" of society, however, is not the impetus of this essay.

It has been drawn to my attention that there is a book being published collecting the tweets of some of those involved in the recent revolution in Egypt. Jraissati's article begins with an explication of authorship dilemmas in the digital age. She posits that "the dematerialization of cultural products is in the process of revolutionizing the notion of the “book.”" Not only is this "dematerialization" process changing ideas about what is or isn't a book, it is affecting conceptions of art across all media. Mainstream publishing and distribution is not the only avenue in which we may note changing ideas regarding intellectual property.

An examination of the terms "intellectual property" and "copyright" may now become appropriate. Intellectual property rights consist of laws in which "owners are granted certain exclusive rights to a variety of intangible assets, such as musical, literary, and artistic works; discoveries and inventions; and words, phrases, symbols, and designs." Intellectual property is slightly different from notions of copyright in that copyright protects not the ideas, but their expression. While we have each had the idea I've begun this discussion with, "I love you!," it seems absurd to claim an ownership of the idea or its expression.

It is curious that authorship shares much of an etymological basis with the word "authority." In the same sense in which we use the word "authority" to mean a certain degree of power over something, authorship as it relates to copyright and intellectual property grants an individual a certain power over an idea or expression. It is obvious how tenuous these distinctions become when we begin to consider some of the details of copyright law. Copyright grants an author rights over an "original work." While for some it may not be difficult to determine what is "original" and what isn't, considering the never-ending dynamism of language and thought may give us insight into what I consider the absurdity of "originality."

Jraissati's article states that "tweets are not copyrightable because they are too short." From this we may extrapolate that the components of a work, be they words, sounds, phrases, graphemes, lines, colors, etc., are not what is protected under law, but the composition of them all in tandem, a certain unity in their arrangement, is what is protected. Many artists in the past 100 years have toyed with ideas of replicas and reworkings. For example, Kenneth Goldsmith has completed tasks that include transcribing daily the New York Times newspaper, as well as writing out in excruciating detail the weather reports over a certain period of time.

Yet another, and perhaps more interesting, study was done by writer J. L. Borges regarding Don Quixote. Borges' "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote," explores issues of authorship, authority and property by positing a writer who goes beyond just translating the classic work of Cervantes and eventually recreates the document word for word through a sort of immersion in the original author's atmosphere. I myself have created curious "poetry" regarding Borges, ideas of literary forgery and the accompanying concern with authorship and property.

Issues of identity, likeness and similitude have been explored extensively by philosophers since time immemorial. One of the best studies as regards works of art and their ontological replications may be found in Arthur Danto's "Transfiguration of the Commonplace." Danto begins his study, which presents his institutional theory of art, by positing a set of blue ties that are empirically nondifferentiable, but have different causal histories. One tie was painted blue by a child, one was used as a rag by an illustrious artist, etc. His study of artist/author intent and the concomitant acceptance or nonacceptance by an art community gives a different insight into issues of authorship.

Finally, I'll consider the concept of authority and authorship in a religious context. It is widely known that the prophets in Semitic religions did not make claim to what they preached. From Abraham to Muhammad, each of these figures explained that the knowledge and language they were disseminating was not their own but that of a Supreme Being. Maimonides has written extensively on these issues, influencing Spinoza and thus most of modernism. These people make no claim that what they were saying was theirs and had no concern for their "right" to keep their expression free from copying, distribution, or adaptation. We find an applicable term in the tradition of Hinduism with the word "avatar." This term means a "deliberate descent of a deity from heaven to earth." In traditional symbolism we may interpret this as a manifestation of Source in our terrestrial realm.

It is also interesting that in the digital age we use the word "avatar" as "a computer user's representation of himself/herself." In a sense we are participating in an analogous relationship to the traditional description of a descent of a deity. We as users become the Source of our identity and authorship while our avatars are our re-presentations in a different realm, that of the Internet-work. It seems we have come full circle. Our "avatars" are talismans or placeholders for ourselves as authors or seats of authority (power) over our content. We see across all social media platforms a connection between our online self-image and our content. Online content in social networks typically consists of a user's name or image directly next to their content. As mentioned previously, however, it is easy using appropriation techniques such as copy-and-paste to separate content from user.

We find yet another striking example of this separation of content from author, work from authority, with rap music and DJing. Bourriaud has done a great study of the use of appropriation in contemporary arts with his Post-Production. All across mainstream radio we hear popular musics that are not only built from the samples of prior musics, but relentlessly reference and borrow from each other. It is possible to hear not only the recurrence of a typical voice (Lil Wayne might appear in a series of songs on popular radio at any moment), but we hear the same phrasings borrowed. While a hit like "Fancy" may have its own "original" content, another song will shortly thereafter reappropriate the phrasing for its own ends.

Because of the technology and automatons we've constructed in our Enlightened modern society, we have access to a plethora of information with an ease never before seen in history. It is possible for me to appropriate information from millions of sources within minutes where in years past I would have had to travel distances to sources of collected information and then perform the menial task of copying by hand. Freedom of media and access to information are changing the world around us rapidly. We see this in the recent political developments in North Africa and the Middle East. Ideas of intellectual property and copyright are being challenged and blurred by such technologies as Twitter and others. What one considers as "mine" is changing. I yearn, like Rousseau, for the moment when none of us "claims" a thought or expression as original and we each realize the debt we owe to the silence, the nothing, the Source that allows us. Until then I demonstrate only love, and insist that I didn't write this!

Why Tao isn't a Minimalist and Poncho is kind of a Dadaist...

Here's a polemic on some of my poetic contemporaries and some younger fellow Millennials who use the Internet as a new vehicle for art and expression. I keep reading everywhere people talking about a "literary minimalism" that Tao Lin is a proponent of. Is this the same minimalism that Pound and Williams expounded? I just don't understand it, I don't think people understand what minimalism is? Is a minimalism "Less is more"?

Some of the discussions I've briefly perused on the subject of contemporary literary minimalism make a reference to the "most fundamental features" of a form. Other definitions I've quickly rounded up term a minimalism a use of the "fewest and barest essentials or elements" or a "style or technique that is characterized by extreme spareness and simplicity." Spare and sparse mean thin or meager, mean there is not a lot to it. While we may argue that Lin and others of this "school" embody sparse themes and employ a simple diction, I think the style is far from a return to the fundamentals of a form.

Lets examine this more closely. We may consider Lin, with most-illustrious Wikipedia, a "writer." A writer works with language, there are many forms which "writing" may take. Lin is known as a writer of poetry and prose, perhaps an occasional essay, etc. I'm feeling the crux of my argument shift. Now we may have to delve into what "form" means. What is the form of writing? What is writing? "Writing is the representation of language in a textual medium through the use of a set of signs or symbols" We can use these ASCII characters as our textual symbols, we can appropriate a differing script, perhaps an abjad, etc. A writer works with the form of text and text is merely a set of symbols.

Now we'll return to minimalism. Were we a writer with a minimalist tendency, what would the "fewest and barest essentials" be? As we've established, a writer merely works with signs and symbols, arranges them in a formation conjuring a meaning (or non-meaning). We may debate at this point whether the "bare" essentials of the writing form are the characters, the words, the sentences, etc. or if they are the themes, emotive contents, evoked meanings. A keen reader may not see the slippery-ness of our essentials assertion. Could we not just as easily find a photographer, a sculptor, an architect, etc working with "themes, emotive contents, evoked meanings"? These are basic elements of art beyond merely writing or literary formalisms.

It would seem at this point, on basis of this argument, that the "most fundamental features," true minimalist formal elements, could not be related to semantics or anything involving meaning, as these elements are not exclusive to the writerly form. Therefore, a true minimalist writer would strip his or her language of superfluous characters and graphemes, of extraneous lines of text, etc. in order to draw attention to the fundamental components of the writing form. Many modernist writers have done this in a very formal way. Pound's "In a Station of the Metro" is a truly formal minimalist composition. Inspired by orientalism and the haiku form, he very literally reduced his form, text, to its most simple and fundamental elements.

Now we may approach the other side of our argument supposing some may retort Lin and others are not "minimalist writers" but "minimalist artists." If we qualify these individuals as artists instead of writers we may avoid the pitfalls of characterizing them as minimalists based on their thematics and semantics alone. An academically noted portion of minimalist music (a kin in art of writing) is repetition and iteration of figures. Early minimalist composers such as Steve Reich focused on the repetition of a single phrase and the changes perceived by a subject over the course of extreme reiteration. Lin and others of this supposed school may be classified loosely as minimalist artists under this criterion.

An insistence on over-erudition, the repetition of simple sentence patterns and excessive over-detailing may be viewed as an extension of the minimalist aesthetic of repetition and the consequent monotony. While this may support themes of "spareness and simplicity," as we've noted in previous definition of minimalism, these are not the "barest elements" of the form. Themes continually explored in Lin and his mimes' works are those of alienation and separation from others in a real, physical and personal way via superfluous technology. These themes are easily noted by preponderance of "low" diction, gChat conversations turned into literary "material," and insistence in the narrative of mentioning the technological apparatus in various ways. The style reminds me of machine language, it's dry and unfeeling in it's feeling and journalistic in its totality.

There is much art of all epoch and era that falls into this category. Some have noted the oriental tendencies of some of these so-called neo-Dadaists, but touching on themes of alienation via technology, the emptiness of life and its concomitant suffering are no hallmarks of a "new" style. These are themes touched on by great artists of all epochs, from those depicting the Buddha through the centuries, to Eliot's "Wasteland," to the Futurist's fascist celebration of the violence of machinery. In other words, classifying a writer as a "minimalist" because of the themes he or she purports would be yet another slippery slope.

I'll end this with a few words on the gross mischaracterization of writers like Poncho Peligroso and Steve Roggenbuck as "neo-Dadaists." More a scourge on and polemic against nearly-a-century-old Dadaism than a criticism of said poets, Dixon's complaint unfairly characterizes Dada as merely a revived "primitivism." While Dada certainly embraces low culture, everyday language, simple dialect and nonsense sound, the gist of the movement was a destruction of the status-quo of institutions. Be they social, political, academic or artistic, Dada challenged and attempted to destroy the standards and accepted notions of these institutions.

The anti-art experiments proposed by Duchamp, Ball, Tzara and other Dadaists were not merely grasps at low culture for a grasp's sake. Dixon's base criticism of the mundane, monotonous and repetitive works of these "neo-Dadaists" is that the "self comes in the way." These writers most certainly fill their works with seemingly endless lists of detailed and superfluous information. The true paragons of Dada, however, were producers of artifacts that challenged the accepted notions of the art institution. Whether it be Duchamp's "Fountain" or Rauschenberg's "Portrait of Iris Clert", these works' main impetus was the questioning of the standards of the artworld.

Additionally, terming these writers neo-Dadaist is a fallacy because, in fact, Rauschenberg and others were already deemed neo-Dada half a century ago. Many artists have followed in the footsteps of early modernists in the field of Dada. While many Dadaists proclaimed their "art" was no art at all, this does not mean their dialogue and work doesn't interact with the institution. Dixon's claim that Dadaism "isn't art" is outrageous in its audacity and falsity. The thinkers and doers who participated in the movement and its offshoots quite obviously recognized their products and projects as art. This is evidenced in their intentional polemic with recognized art personalities and ideas. The artists themselves, Hugo Ball in particular, recognized their work as "an opportunity for the true perception and criticism of the times we live in." In this way, Roggenbuck and Peligroso's works are in the spirit of Dada, and this polemic against them demonstrates their Dadaism.

Criticism of this "neo-Dadaist" Internet poetry as full of "self" is also a bit ludicrous. Dixon herself is the author of appetitive, self-concerned poems. Concern with the minutiae of "me," "I" and "my" is not just a tendency of "neo-Dadaists," but a tendency of nearly all poets and artists. We speak about our bodies, our thoughts, our desires, our needs, our feelings, our emotions, our perceptions, etc. Much of the greatest Dada arts, as I've said, spoke not of a person but of the art institution. Many of the techniques used to promote Peligroso and Roggenbuck's works are exactly that, critiques of the established poetic institution. Criticism and dismissal by editors, writers, academics and other players in the institutional game are exactly the purview of Dadaism and the reasoning for Peligroso's call for a freeing of language.

I think I've meandered enough in this one, wandered helplessly from theme to theme without a hope of backbone. But essentially my point is this: Lin isn't a "minimalist," he's a writer; Peligroso and Roggenbuck don't write "neo-Dadaist" poetry, they just write regular old appetitive poetry about being emotive and having desires. What is Dada about their endeavors isn't their content, its their insistence on challenging traditional poetic norms, including vernaculars of now in their works, and refusing to bend their creative output to what is accepted by editors, academes or otherwise. In the end, however, I won't shirk from the argument like Peligroso has in saying he "did not mean that all language everywhere was poetry." When you can tell me once and for all what "poetry" is, better yet "art," and without exclusion of a myriad of counter-examples, get back to me. Until then, I float amum a none with an infinitely tolerant aesthetic attitude.