http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ab7XkaC6LVU
What is the ‘Is’? Who
is the ‘They’?
Think how often we use this word in our everyday
conversations. Think how often we say
something like “What is he about?.” “They won’t let this or that happen” or
“They decided or chose this or that.”
Who or what entity it the “They.”
Do this long enough—question the relative meaning of any language,
symbol, or sign—and one discovers a very deep and dark black hole that
decenters us. And so—more often than
not—we simply forgo that line of thought simply because it doesn’t seem to make
things any easier for us. And this makes
sense. We pretty much accept when we’re
driving along that red means stop. If we
asked such questions posed above insurance companies and the police would have
very difficult days.
And so is it better that we do not ask such questions? I would suggest such conversations
already/always occur in a subliminal way.
The point being is that we do not destroy the question sending it on its
merry way to Visidale. We simply set
aside or bracket the question for the sake of maintaining order for one and
because the very notion that we live in a world of communication that is at its
core is abstract and so a false premise that works on some fundamental level.
I suggest that there is a rarely explored world that I think
of as the objective/subjective phenomena of experience that surrounds
cultural perceptions of unity much like
the absolute spirit of Hegelian Truth that is ubiquitous yet most unseen. In other words, to experience this world—this
universal culture—to any degree means we must understand the importance of
occasionally addressing those notions that are set aside or bracketed. And it is in such activity that the safe
little world of fabricated centeredness is realized as constantly decentered. The center is within me and without me, and
so it goes.
I create a piece of art whatever form it may take. Someone asks me if it is done. I respond it has neither begun nor ended but
that it is part of an eternal “Is’. I read Frost poem about roads less taken each
time in a new set of conditions. The
“Is” has not changed and is changeless.
The ‘is’ rests on a certain agreed upon relative meaning for a bit. And then it is dislodged by the very posing
of the question what is “Is” and who are “They’.
The lesson for me is that ‘aggregate’ calculations that lead
to assumptions about cultural or tribal ways of ‘being’ are in constant
transit. The aggregate rarely leads to a
more complete form of comprehending the notion of individual consciousness.
On a lighter note, such thinking makes me glad that I have
the ‘what-if’ function on Excel.
My art is fed on the above.
My ‘selling’ or ‘pitching’ my art to a world is about wrestling with the
question of ‘what-if’, ‘what is ‘Is’, and who are ‘They’. It’s
in part a world of games and transaction.
Some of these are more predictable than others. But they are never set in stone. But
any conjecture—no matter how relevant the formulas we apply—are never the
absolute ‘Is’ is it?
