Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Dance of Words

Just to break it in, why not take a hand at typing something, just a little something? It doesn't matter if it turns out to be great or insignificant, whether anyone sees it or not. All that matters is that some little impulses, little neural flashes out of the inner nowhere, get translated into words which are then keyed in to appear on the screen.
It is not a one to one relationship. The words “neural flashes” don't accurately encompass that thing that I am trying to talk about. It's like interpretive dance, this swoop of the arm is symbolic, it is a verbal representation of something which exists and occurs outside of the mind and outside of the linguistic structure. Therefore saying something, saying anything at all, is a very creative experiment. Even technical manuals are avant-garde art projects when you consider them this way.
The truth is that words cannot express the truth about what they describe, they are merely creative embellishments to the truth. A coiled mystery, that I can sit here translating thoughts into symbols, and those thoughts themselves are already symbolic translations of something else that I can't name, I can't even try.
The way the wind tastes, the way the air smells, my mother smoking cigarettes on the balcony or in the garage over the washer and dryer, drinking cans and cans of Folgers coffee, bitter to the taste and smell, looking at the mural that my father painted on the wall beside the laundry machines, a flat depiction of the majestic mountains rising at the west side of the house outside the front door, out the back door you can see the lake and empty fields and a row of olive trees lined up beside the deep outflow channel, the orange and yellow tops of other distant trees are just discernible, everything can be taken in with a sun swept glance.
What does it mean, sun swept? That the light is passing over everything like the broom over the linoleum in our cramped kitchen, as it sweeps over this mysterious matter and leaps to life, becomes, house in the distance, small black and white dog, man calling dog, resplendent treetops, shimmering blue lake, child bent in the tall grass to play with a ladybug.
What is it before it is sun swept? Does the occluded landscape exist before the sun takes creative liberties with matter?
It is not even the sun which does this, but our eyes which translate light and its absence into some of those neural impulses which are further interpreted into a dance of words, house, dog, man, trees, lake, child, bug.
What qualifications have I got to try and speak about these things, I who have never read Lacan? I who never went to college? I who sit typing. I am an artist, that is my only qualification. And who made me an artist? What institution, what diploma, what Mona Lisa connects this signified, which sits here in this chair on top of an aging blue and white stripped pillow tip tap typing away, with the signifier "artist"?
Why, this very action, this happening that takes the shape of words that your human biological machine transforms into meanings which are derived from memories of the interaction of deceptive, or shall we say interpretive, senses such as sight, and hearing, and smelling, and touching, with the strings of signifiers that spew forth form my linguistic potters wheel.
It is all complete gibberish and it always was, every verse of the Bible, every page of that computers user manual, every line of that love letter, every word of War And Peace.
It was all Lacan, college, typing, artist, happening, human, memories, senses, touching, gibberish dance.
If God wrote the bible then God may be confirmed as having been an interpretive linguistic dancer much like myself, in which case we can say, good for God, everyone should reach so high.
Some will say that for having arranged such words I am blasphemous, sinful, evil, disrespectful, irreverent, atheist, communist, satanist, stupid, misguided, deceived or deceiver, lost, intellectual, cynical, arrogant, insecure, shocking, attention hungry, wicked, etc. but I assure you that whatever I am, I am none of those things, I am something quite independent of those words which are more like shadows cast by my movements to create a show which might be entertaining, horrifying, or irrelevant depending on the stone throwers, the audience, the perceiver whoever you are, am I, I am.
Blasphemous, wicked, movements, perceiver, sun swept, deceiver, majestic, depiction, outflow, occluded, none. Leap to life. Becomes. Words, unchained, signified, undefined, then defined. Costumes, masks, opera, that is the play of words, the dance of the symbolic, the dance of shapes without substance. Just a little something insignificant, neural flashes translated into words, just to break it in, creative embellishments of the truth, complex variations on a theme without conclusion, a melody without a solid form.

Labels: , , , , , , , , ,

1 Comments:

Blogger Unknown said...

amen!

9:37 PM  

Post a Comment

<< Home