Deftness: using TAE to construct theory about mastery
Kye Nelson
Steps 1-5: WORDS FROM THE FELT SENSE
STEP 1
Choose something you Aknow@ and cannot yet say, that wants to be said.
Write it down in a few paragraphs in a very rough
way.
It's
something about deftness. When I
am drawing, there is a way of making the gestures that is just-so, and the
thing I'm calling deftness also says when the drawing is done. It is a way of being in my body so that it
knows what to do to stay right in the place where the line really goes, and
still it also knows that it's okay and good for the line to be loose and
free. If the line were tight, it
wouldn't be deft. When a drawing is
successful, one can see that the line is spontaneous, and yet it is also
exactly right. In the drawing as a
whole, where the line goes and what it does there, is required and also
sufficient.
Have this knowing as a distinct felt sense to
which you can always return.
Write that in one sentence, even though the sentence
doesn=t really say it.
It stays
right where it really goes, but it's also free.
Underline one key word or phrase in the sentence
Something
deft stays right where it really goes, but it's also free.
Think of one instance, example, or time when it
actually happened.
Write that instance down.
Writing
what I just wrote is itself an instance of deftness. It's knowing this form, and playing with it.
STEP 2
Be particularly attentive to anything that does not
make the usual logical sense.
If it helps, write a paradox with the underlined key
word.
Something
deft is freely staying right where it really goes.
STEP 3
Take out the key word or phrase from your sentence
from step 1. (If you made a
paradox, be sure it’s included in your sentence before you go on.)
Write the usual (dictionary) definition of the word or
phrase and notice that it is not what you meant.
freely
staying: Even it it is not coerced into standing
still, it's still something that's standing still and remaining in one
place. But I'm talking about a process,
so of course it can't stand still. It's
going somewhere, but not just anywhere.
It's following something, but not-exactly following.
Return to your felt sense and let another word or
phrase come to say what you mean.
Write the usual definition of the second word.
not-exactly
following: goes behind something that's
in front of it, but it's pretty unruly and rebellious and keeps going off
somewhere else, kind of like a dog going for a walk with a person. In a funny way this is very close. But following feels clumsy. Somebody who is only following isn't
deft. Deftness has in it that you don't
need to follow because you know the way.
And the unruly and rebellious part is really wrong. It's actually more like, it's so disciplined
that it comes out on the other side into a free space.
Return to your felt sense and let a third word or
phrase come.
Write the usual definition of the third word.
disciplined
knowing:
after long hard study, this person has a mental grasp of something. But what I mean is something a sure-moving body
does, even if the something it is doing is thinking: not a mind holding onto
something. And anyway the holding-onto
is all wrong in itself.
Accept the fact that there is no established word or
phrase for that knowing.
STEP 4
Now let the first word speak from your felt sense after
all.
Let yourself feel THIS in your sentence.
Do this with second word
Do this with the third word.
Write a sentence that articulates exactly what the
first word pulls out from your felt sense (which the other two do not).
freely
staying:
how much space there is--the way there's plenty of time for the movement.
Do this with the second and third word.
not-exactly
following: an attention that is so close that it almost anticipates the other,
without hampering the movement of the other.
disciplined
knowing:
a sure-moving body inhabiting a familiar pattern or form while also delighting
in this instance of it.
STEP 5
For each of the three, write a fresh, somewhat wild
sentence which expands what you mean.
Phrase the sentence so that it makes no sense unless it means what you
mean. Then it cannot be misunderstood.
This
movement takes no time at all, because it's happening so slowly.
This
following anticipates and doesn't hamper.
This sure
body-inhabiting unfolds a familiar form just-so in a new shape.
Underline the
new details which each of the three sentences brings out.
This
movement
takes no time at all, because it's happening so slowly.
This
following anticipates and doesn't hamper.
This
sure body-inhabiting unfolds a familiar form just-so in a new shape.
Make a list of the underlined details.
There are three sets of details, which could go in a table:
This movement takes
no time at all it's
happening so slowly
This following anticipates doesn't
hamper.
This sure body-inhabiting unfolds
a familiar form just-so a new
shape
Now string all three sets of detail into the slot in
your original sentence.
Something
deft is _____ right where it really goes.
Something
deft is (taking no time at all because it's
happening so slowly, anticipating and not hampering, unfolding a familiar form just-so in a new
shape, .....) right where it really goes.
Steps 6-8: FACETS
STEP 6
Collect facets, (incidents, any kind of examples).
Choose three facets.
Also copy your original instance from step one here.
Writing
what I just wrote is itself an instance of deftness. It's knowing this form, and playing with it.
I remember
when I was painting a series of concentric squares with dye on wood. There was no way to recover it if my hand
slipped. But it didn't slip. Even though it was the first time I'd ever
done exactly that, I felt the authority of my hand with the brush in it.
When I ask
a kye-question, I feel a familiar gathering-up that has happened just this way,
time after time. But there is also a
characteristic feeling of being poised over an empty space where this time is
not like anything before, just before the question comes.
When I am
writing a story or a poem, almost every word comes just-so. I can feel all the layers within words and
phrases, and I know if I consciously shaped each to do all that it would be
impossibly complicated. But this is
simple, even if it's not easy.
STEP 7
In each of the four, underline a specific pattern
which this facet contributes.
[Two
preliminary notes: 1. What appears inside the brackets following each instance
is the sort of analysis which goes on at this step as one looks at the
patterns. 2. The boldface within the
text is added detail that came from looking at the structure and from crossing.
(Crossing is actually step 8, but I did it in a kind of zig-zag together with
step 7, so it isn’t broken out separately in this example.)]
Writing
what I just wrote is itself an instance of deftness. It's knowing this form, and playing with it. [a knowing, a
playing-with, and a form that is known and played-with.]
I remember
when I was painting a series of concentric squares with dye on wood. There was no way to recover it if my hand
slipped. But it didn't slip. Even though it was the first time I'd
ever done exactly that, I felt the authority of my hand with the brush in
it. [an exact doing, a time when the
exact-doing happens, an authority of the hand that does it]
When I ask
a kye-question, just before I ask it I feel a familiar gathering-up
of the pattern that has happened just this way, time after
time. But there is also a
characteristic almost-anxious feeling of being poised over an
empty space where this time is not like anything before, just before
the question comes. [a pattern, a gathering-up-of-the-pattern, an
exact way it happens, an almost-anxious, a time not-like-before, a
just-before-the-question time that both gathering-up and also almost-anxious
happen in, a question that comes, a question-coming time, a question-asking]
When I am
writing a story or a poem, almost every word comes just-so. I can feel all the layers within
words and phrases, and thinking about it now I know if I consciously shaped
each to do all that each time it would be impossibly complicated. But I stay inside the story itself,
and the story knows what to do and it shows me. [a
thing-itself, a layering-within a thing-itself, a feeling-the-layers, a
staying-inside a thing-itself, a knowing-what-to-do that a thing-itself has, a
showing-me that a thing-itself does, a part-of-the-thing that comes, a just-so
way it comes]
STEP 8
If it can help, Across@ your facets.
You ask: AWhat does looking at the first facet from the second
facet let me see, that I could not see just from within the first facet?@
[This I did
simultaneous with finding the structure at step 7. For instance, when I saw layering-within, and
feeling-the-layers, as separable in the last facet, I went back to the previous
facet and separated gathering-up-the-pattern into 1. a pattern and 2. a
gathering up]
Steps 9-14: THEORY
STEP 9
Freely write what you are now thinking, that comes
out of this process.
What is
striking right now is that something coming into existence—a
thing-itself-happening¾itself knows and shows.
Deftness is staying inside—with my own body-doing—the palpably dense and
precise sense of what-happens-next as this, coming-to-be right now,
guides its own forward movement.
Though this
palpable sense of what-happens-next is an inner sense, felt within my body as
it moves and does, this sense comes from, and is findable in, the actual which
has happened and is now happening—in certain little details like the way the
sunshine is dancing on the windowsill as the wind blows, or this somehow-thick
sentence which I just read in an email which I am now answering and which is
part of this very human interaction between her and me, or this mushroom which
I am cooking for supper and which has a so-faint lemony woody nutty
fragrance—little details which, when I slow down enough to take them in in
their never-before particularity, have an almost luminous quality. I feel ‘Oh! There is this!’, and I want to
touch it, to respond to it.
My exact responding to it, in the way I allow it to structure the moves I make, is a sort of homage to this thick almost-shiningness. We have brought home a funny new kind of mushroom from the store. I cut open the mushroom, and in cutting I smell its fragrance, then “smell” and “taste”—in an inner act which responds to that precise fragrance—the way that a little garlic and butter would come together with that subtle smell. So I mince a little garlic very fine and add it to the mushroom now gently cooking in some butter.
I smell the
actual smell of butter, garlic, and mushroom now together, and in response add
just this amount of fresh-ground pepper. I notice next how a green apple, sliced very thin, would with its
crisp sweet-sourness complement this barely-musky richness of
mushroom-garlic-butter-pepper. And
cutting open such an apple, I make every slice of it thin just-so, so that the
crunch of apple between teeth will be a delicate experience, neither texture
nor taste overwhelming this subtle mushroom.
When my
doing happens in this way, I experience a palpable quality of just-so-ness to
each move as it comes, alongside the in-here body-sense of the thing-itself and
what-happens-next which I am matching with my doing, and which comes in
response to this emerging actuality.
But
sometimes I smell the smell of this dish cooking and it smells good to me but
not yet balanced and complete—but I don’t know yet what would complete it. Rather than settling for an abstract idea of
what is needed, I can stay with the smell and taste of it as it is,
incomplete. Sometimes I simply smell it,
taste it, and keep noticing it as it actually is. Sometimes I might open various bottles of spices, and smell them
alongside this incomplete smell. Would
that do it?—no. Or this?—still not
it. What about this?—closer, but… Perhaps this time, the dish remains close to
completion but not actually complete; good… but not finished. There is some move that would be right, but
it is not yet clear exactly what that move would be. I may finish the dish with the spice that came closest, even
though that spice wasn’t exactly what the dish called for. (After all, we do
need to eat!)
Staying
here with the dish as it is does build something, even when this particular
dish doesn’t quite come out right. In
my early twenties, when I was first married, there were many such not-quite
meals—and occasionally my then-husband and I would attempt to eat something,
look at each other, and go out to eat instead.
But over time there were fewer such occasions, as I learned from each
attempt what it had to show me.
STEP 10
Choose three words or phrases to be your MAIN TERMS.
For the sake of these instructions, decide which will
be AA,@ AB,@ and AC."
By this time you have numerous parts of your thing,
and probably a complex pattern between them.
Choose A, B, and C so that the pattern is between them.
Do not use one of your three original terms.
A=a
thing-itself-happening
B=knowing
just what needs to happen and showing just what to do
C=staying
inside
Now define A in terms of B, and also in terms of
C. A=B. A = C.
First write each equation as an empty formula. You don=t yet know
what it might mean.
A=B a
thing-itself-happening=knowing just what needs to happen and showing just what
to do.
A=C a
thing-itself-happening=staying inside.
Rewrite the sentence A=B, replacing the A=@ sign with
the word Ais.@
Now consult your felt sense: Find the smallest change
you can make on one or both sides of this sentence, so that the Ais@ becomes
true.
(Always insure that you keep the crux of your felt
sense.)
A=B
A
thing-itself-happening is knowing just what needs to happen and showing just
what to do.
A
thing-itself-happening is something that knows just what needs to happen and
shows just what to do.
Do this also with the second sentence.
A=C
A
thing-itself-happening is staying inside.
A
thing-itself-happening is something you can stay inside of.
STEP 11
INHERENCY:
Rewrite the AB sentence, adding the word Ainherently@ after the
word Ais.@ You do not
as yet know what this might mean.
Dip into the intricacy of the felt sense to find out
why these two things are inherently connected.
What is the very nature of A, such that it has to be B?
A=B
A
thing-itself-happening is inherently something that knows just what needs to
happen and shows just what to do.
A
thing-itself-happening, by its very nature displays an ordered unfolding which is
a knowing of just what needs to happen, and a showing of just what to do.
Do this also with the A=C sentence.
A=C
A
thing-itself-happening is inherently something you can stay inside of.
A thing-itself-happening,
by its very nature, is a story which we can only tell by staying inside of it.
REVERSAL: If
your felt sense and its illogical pattern is contained under a larger
more general idea, let any larger one be restructured, so that it too now has
the complex pattern of your felt sense.
Insist that it shall be so, then consult your felt sense and wait until
you realize, yes, of course, the wider thing always was already so.
If your AA@ fits under AB,@ let your new pattern redefine and restructure the
wider category.
You will need inherency and reversal also in the
sentences you will generate later.
If your inherency is a wider category, then you've
already done reversal if you did inherency.
Reorder or change your two sentences to take account
of the inherency and/or the reversal.
A=B
A
thing-itself-happening is something that knows just what needs to happen and
shows just what to do.-->
A
thing-itself-happening, by its very nature displays an ordered unfolding which is
a knowing of just what needs to happen, and a showing of just what to do.-->
A
thing-itself-happening displays an ordered unfolding which is a knowing
of just what needs to happen, and a showing of just what to do.
A=C
A
thing-itself-happening is something you can stay inside of.-->
A
thing-itself-happening, by its very nature, is a story which we can only tell
by staying inside of it.-->
A
thing-itself-happening is a story which we can only tell by staying inside of
it.
STEP 12
Take your two main sentences. From all details you have so far, select
those which are within or between the three main terms. Draw a box around this.
Now, since A is B, you can substitute AB@ for AA@ in your
second sentence (AA is C@), so that it becomes the new sentence AB is C.@ Write it first, then see what it could
mean. (You probably already thought
this one.) Fix or add, so that it is
true and speaks from your felt sense.
Write it immediately below the box.
Now also reverse the sentence so that AC is B.@ It might (or might not) suggest another
meaning. If it says something further,
modify it to make it true and add it below the box.
On separate sheets, using each detail from the box
one after the other, substitute each in for AA,@ or AB,@ or AC,@ first in
the one main sentence, then in the other.
(If it is a detail between two of the terms, you can substitute it for
either term. ) Wait each time, to see what sense the new sentence might
make. Only then fix it to make it
true. Be sure that the change you make
keeps the crux of your felt sense.
Many of these new sentences will be obvious and
unnecessary, but quite a number of them will say something new and
surprising. Collect all valuable
sentences below the box.
B=C
sentence:
Knowing
just what needs to happen, and being shown just what to do, is what is given by
staying inside-of-it.
C=B
sentence:
Staying
inside-of-it is knowing just what needs to happen, and being shown just what to
do.
-----------------------------------------
Substitutions:
[I included
all substitutions here; boldface are what I’ll keep]
A=B
substitutions:
sub A:
A form that
is being known and played-with displays an ordered unfolding which is a
knowing of just what needs to happen, and a showing of just what to do.
An exact
doing displays an ordered unfolding which is a knowing of just what
needs to happen, and a showing of just what to do.
sub B:
A
thing-itself-happening displays an ordered unfolding which is an
authority of the hand that does.
A
thing-itself-happening displays an ordered unfolding which is a pattern
that can be gathered-up.
A
thing-itself-happening displays an ordered unfolding which is a layering
within a thing-itself.
A=C
substitutions:
sub A:
A form that
is being known and played-with is a story which we can only tell by staying
inside of it.
An exact
doing is a story which we can only tell by staying inside of it.
sub C:
A
thing-itself-happening is a story which we can only tell by this movement which
takes no time at all because it's happening so slowly.
A
thing-itself-happening is a story which we can only tell by this following
which anticipates and doesn't hamper.
A
thing-itself-happening is a story which we can only tell by this sure
body-inhabiting which unfolds a familiar form just-so in a new shape.
A
thing-itself-happening is a story which we can only tell by knowing and playing
with it.
A
thing-itself-happening is a story which we can only tell by feeling the layers
within it.
STEP 13
The odd structure of your terms can now serve as a Amodel@ for
anything else.
Your terms can bring their structure into any
large idea such as art, religion, education, marriage, metaphor. First merely assert that the large topic has
your pattern,
then wait
for something about that topic to leap up, which makes it truly like that.
Choose either your AB or your AC sentence from inside
the box at step 12.
Write it down, and underline the wider category which
appears in the sentence.
A
thing-itself-happening displays an ordered unfolding which is a knowing of just what needs to
happen, and a showing of just what to do.
Write down that wider category, and also write down
the sentence again, with a blank where the wider category appeared.
A
thing-itself-happening
__________ displays an ordered
unfolding which is a knowing of just what needs to happen, and a showing of
just what to do.
Choose some context outside the one where you've been
developing your theory (could be education, religion, art, marriage,
etc.). Where do you find an instance of
this wider category, in that context?
It should be an instance that can be substituted for the phrase
you underlined.
I'll choose
education for the context. And for the
instance, a child who is learning.
Write your sentence, with the substitution. This is your assertion.
A child
who is learning displays an ordered unfolding which is a knowing of just what needs to
happen, and a showing of just what to do.
Now wait for something about that topic to leap up,
which makes it truly like that. Freely
write what you are now thinking.
Well of
course it is true that a child displays an ordered unfolding--lots of theory
there already. But what's new here is
wonderfully reassuring: that process of
learning not only unfolds in an ordered way, it also knows what is needed, and
better still, it shows what to do. It
doesn't have to be figured out from the outside, and then applied. The process happening right here shows what
to do.
I know this
is true from being with my own children's learning. But what is new is having what I already knew from being
with them, and in having my own knowing there, being able to rest in
that knowing which the process of learning itself has in a child, and
especially in the way that it will show what to do.
You can also apply your theory in other contexts.
STEP 14
Now stay within your field and apply your theory to
anything important within the topic of your theory, and to topics close to it.
As you bring up each further consideration, let your
theory restructure that. Then check
whether it seems to be true. You are deriving
concepts for the related topics from your initial concepts. In this way the theory can develop and
elaborate itself indefinitely within your field.
Here the step assumes that I am working within a single field—but I am a painter, a thinker, a consultant who specializes in troubleshooting all manner of working processes, and a teacher—and in fact, my field is that point where all these endeavors cross. That said, though this theory is in fact applicable to any skilled human activity, it can very naturally be integrated formally into the field of aesthetics.
In aesthetics, a long-standing problem is how to characterize the artist’s “idea”: that is, what the artist is guided by from start to finish. This guiding idea that the artist “has” seems to be some fixed something that is “held”¾firmly enough to guide the process, but loosely enough to let spontaneous moves emerge. But in practice what is guiding the process changes in the process, is not (or not only) something possessed by or within the artist, and in some sense isn’t even yet there—so it cannot be right that the guiding idea is actually fixed, had, or held.
The artist’s initial and continuing “idea”, “vision”, “expressive intent”, has to be understood not as a certain picture or form which mysteriously guides although it does not yet exist, but as a concrete, palpable, and unavoidably existing series of movements and responses to these movements—the palpable sense of the ongoing motion and its corroboration up to this point¾which is, in its own right, a thing-itself-happening.
INTEGRATION AND FURTHER DEVELOPMENT:
Within your field, describe the context where your
theory applies.
This theory
is developed out of a multi-disciplinary knowing of a specific context which
cuts across many fields, and I would like to apply it to precisely that context
in any field. This specific context is
the mastery and practice of a discipline.
What does current theory say right there? What interesting problem exists when this is
the understanding, such that your theory can contribute something?
Mastery is
often thought to be of discipline-specific skills and knowledge.
When
knowledge and skill-set were finite and didn't often change, this definition
could be meaningful. But when both knowledge
and skill-set are changing daily within a discipline, it begins to be clear
that what makes someone a masterful practitioner within a discipline lies in a
different order of knowing. I do not
mean to imply that discipline-specific skills and knowledge are not important:
far from it. I would not want to go to
a doctor who did not have these things solidly. But ideally I want a doctor who has something more than this, as
well.
There is
already theory which takes a broader view of what mastery could mean. For professionals, at least, it is sometimes
thought to lie in certain habits of thought, rather than in the specific
content which is thought about. Here, already, we begin to be able to cross the
boundaries of disciplines. But in this
view, what is thought-about is still passive and inert. Such a perspective leads straight to the
experience we have all had in doctors' offices, of being more a passive object
than a living subject.
And what of
the deft baker in the bakery? She is
also masterful. But a description which
centers on habits of thought--as thought is publicly understood--misses most of
the baker's masterfulness. When mastery
is defined in terms of thought the baker becomes invisible. Her mastery doesn't receive the same order
of respect as is given to the doctor.
Unseen, she often loses access to part of her essential human dignity
and worth, at least publicly.
Donald A.
Schon is one theoretician who does pay attention to the continual sensitive
adjustment of a skilled practitioner in a given discipline within a new
situation, and his theory of reflection-in-action begins to make room for tacit
bodily knowledge which sensitively responds to a situation. He says, “It is our capacity to see
unfamiliar situations as familiar ones, and to do in the former as we have done
in the latter, that enables us to bring our past experience to bear on the
unique case. It is our capacity to see-as
and do-as that allows us to have a feel for problems that do not fit
existing rules.” (in The Reflective Practitioner, p140).
But even
with Schon the emphasis is on seeing what we have already seen before—not on
the way that that which is not known here, that that which is not
like what we did before, can itself guide us very exactly in our doing here,
now. Of course it is true that part
of what guides us as skilled practitioners is seeing an instance here of what
we knew before. But this is not all we
are guided by, else a discipline could never exceed itself.
The
guidance that the work itself gives us here, now, is similarly invisible in the way that the visual arts as
a discipline are presented, as they are here:
“The artist is motivated by feelings about a subject (which we shall
call the “what”). That subject may or
may not be a representational likeness.
The artist then manipulates the artistic elements (line, shape,
and so on) to create a kind of form (the “how”), that will result in the
desired content (the “why”), one that expresses his or her feelings. In this process the artist attempts to make
all parts of the work mutually interactive and interrelated—as they are in a
living organism. If this is achieved we
can call it organic unity, containing nothing that is unnecessary or
distracting, with relationships that seem inevitable.” (Art Fundamentals:
Theory and Practice—Ocvirk, Stinson et. al. eds, p18).
But in the
preceding description there is no inherent life or organic unity in the subject
itself, before the artist imposes it—and there is no guidance from within the
subject, for the unfolding of a work of art into (or from) such an organic
unity. In this view, the livingness of
a work of art is only imposed by, or comes from, intention.
Describe how your theory changes that understanding.
But mastery
is more than knowledge, more than skill-set, more than habits of thought, more
than being able to see this as if it were that, and more than the
capacity to intend and impose some kind of unity on a subject. Mastery is at least a certain kind of
relation to a thing-itself-happening.
It is at least that body-sureness that comes from understanding that a
thing-itself-happening both knows just what needs to happen and also shows just
what to do. And it is knowing how to
stay inside of that happening.
If mastery is understood in this way, then the knowledge and skills that are actually used in a situation arise from, are inherently responsive to, and become a continuing part of, a thing-itself-happening:
As a
teacher, I am in interaction with this right-now experimental
wondering-what-would happen which is part of the larger playing-out of this
student’s perpetual interest in the interaction of water and paper and his
compulsion to explore the implications of what he observes, forms the basis of
my interaction with him in this moment.
As a painter, my own long exploration of the relationship between light
and line informs (but also is informed by) this present drawing of the
shadow on the wall across from me, cast in early morning by that tree
outside this room which casts a shifting pattern through these
blinds.
Whatever is
right here unfolding (this doing over time, in interaction with this
something that is coming-to-be from one’s doing, here, now) becomes the
ultimate, and valued, source of our knowing exactly what to do. This painting as it is being painted by this
painter (or this house as it is being built by this builder, or this loaf of
bread as it is being baked by this baker, or this story as it is being told by
this storyteller, or this theory as I am writing it now, or any
thing-itself-happening—that is, anything which is coming to be) can now be
understood as inherently being, in itself, an organic unity or
livingness that is always more than prior knowing and intention,
though it does, of course, include them.
Matisse
does approach this territory when he says: “Nothing, I think, is more difficult
for a true painter than to paint a rose because, before he can do so, he has
first to forget all the roses that were ever painted.” (in Matisse on Art, ed.
Jack Flam, p148)
When an
artist or baker or builder or writer stays inside of this ordered
unfolding that knows and shows, then a work—any skilled working—both
is an art and also creates art which can be great, even if what
is created is as transitory as a loaf of bread. When we see this point clearly, then anyone who knows the art of
staying inside an unfolding story in this way can become visible to us in their
mastery. The master carpenter becomes
visible together with the architect.
The waiter who deftly attends us and plays his part in this work of art
that is the entire experience of eating in a great restaurant, becomes
visible together with the master chef, and the sous-chef, for without the
waiter, we who eat do not exist in our particularity for those who cook. When we step back and become aware of the
processes of creation happening all around us, and give the whole of
these processes their proper weight, then the whole of human
participation in the process of creation regains its essential dignity.
Now the focus can shift to describing characteristics of such a relation, so that it becomes findable by another person.
Go back to step 12 for any of the generated sentences
you kept which would bring helpful detail now.
Also look back at your earlier notes for detail which is not part
of the nucleus of your theory, now needed.
Further elaborate your theory, using these details. Underline the new concepts which you have
been deriving.
A
thing-itself-happening displays an ordered unfolding which is a knowing of just what
needs to happen and a showing of just what to do, out of which comes the
authority of the hand that does. It
is a pattern which can be gathered-up, and a story which we can only
tell by staying inside of it and feeling the layers within it. Our exact
doing is how we stay inside this story: with this precise kind of movement which takes no time at all
because it's happening so slowly, and with a sure body-inhabiting which unfolds
the old familiar form just-so in a new shape. And this kind of following anticipates, but doesn’t hamper, a
thing-itself-happening. Such an exact
doing is itself a thing-itself-happening, and as such it, too, displays
an ordered unfolding which is a knowing of just what needs to happen, and a
showing of just what to do.
It's knowing this form, and playing with
it. Even though it is the first time
one has ever done exactly this, one feels the authority of one's hand which
knows and shows. One feels a familiar
gathering-up of the pattern that has happened just this way, time after
time. But there is also a
characteristic almost-anxious feeling of being poised over an empty space where
this time is not like anything before.
Something
coming into existence—a thing-itself-happening¾itself knows and shows. Deftness is staying inside—with one’s own body-doing—the
palpably dense and precise sense of what-happens-next as this,
coming-to-be right now, guides its own forward movement.
Though this
palpable sense of what-happens-next is an inner sense, felt within one’s body
as it moves and does, this sense comes from, and is findable in, the actual
which has happened and is now happening—in certain little details like the way
the sunshine is dancing on the windowsill as the wind blows, or this
somehow-thick sentence, just read in an email which is part of this very human
interaction between the two of us, or this mushroom which I am cooking for
supper and which has a so-faint lemony woody nutty fragrance—little details
which, when one slows down enough to take them in in their never-before
particularity, have an almost luminous quality. One feels ‘Oh! There is this!’, and one wants to touch it, to
respond to it.
One’s exact responding to it, in allowing it to structure the moves one makes, is a sort of homage to this thick almost-shiningness.
We have brought home a funny new kind of mushroom from the store. I cut open the mushroom, and in cutting I smell its fragrance, then “smell” and “taste”—in an inner act which responds to that precise fragrance—the way that a little garlic and butter would come together with that subtle smell. So I mince a little garlic very fine and add it to the mushroom now gently cooking in some butter.
I smell the
actual smell of butter, garlic, and mushroom now together, and in response add
just this amount of fresh-ground pepper. I notice next how a green apple, sliced very thin, would with its
crisp sweet-sourness complement this barely-musky richness of
mushroom-garlic-butter-pepper. And
cutting open such an apple, I make every slice of it thin just-so, so that the
crunch of apple between teeth will be a delicate experience, neither texture
nor taste overwhelming this subtle mushroom.
When one’s
doing happens in this way, one experiences a palpable quality of just-so-ness
to each move as it comes, alongside the in-here body-sense of the thing-itself
and what-happens-next which I am matching with my doing, and which comes in
response to this emerging actuality.
But sometimes I smell the smell of this dish cooking and it smells good to me but not yet balanced and complete—but I don’t know yet what would complete it. Rather than settling for an abstract idea of what is needed, I can stay with the smell and taste of it as it is, incomplete. Sometimes I simply smell it, taste it, and keep noticing it as it actually is. Sometimes I might open various bottles of spices, and smell them alongside this incomplete smell. Would that do it?—no. Or this?—still not it. What about this?—closer, but… Perhaps this time, the dish remains close to completion but not actually complete; good… but not finished. There is some move that would be right, but it is not yet clear exactly what that move would be. I may finish the dish with the spice that came closest, even though that spice wasn’t exactly what the dish called for. (After all, we do need to eat!)
Staying
here with the actuality of something as it is does build something, even when this
particular work doesn’t quite come out right.
One learns, from staying inside a thing-itself-happening, something of
what it has to show, even when one cannot finish the work as it could be
finished if one knew the right move to make.
Where does this theory want to go on? What itchy spot wants something more? What was it anyhow that made this compelling?
There is
something more about sufficiency and about what it means for an artistic
work to be finished. A painting can be
a taking-off place for a next painting which further develops it. Or, one painter looks at a painting by
another, and is moved to paint a new painting “In homage to…” The new painting doesn’t take away from the
finishedness of the original painting, but it is also clearly a going-on-from.
When the
process of painting this painting is going on, it makes a space where it
goes out ahead of itself. It’s an
opening of a great many possibilities that cannot be fulfilled here, though
this painting does fulfill itself. It
fulfills itself and also it’s out in front of itself. So it’s impossible not to go on being a painter. What is out in front has to be followed.
When I finish a painting, or any creative work, there is a sadness that comes. This painting (or writing, or thinking, or…) process at each moment opens a huge space of possibilities. Being inside that space is what staying-inside-of-it means. And that space of possibilities comes-with the finished work When a painting is finished that space is not gone, and is not satisfied.
Deleuze, writing on aesthetics, says “It is always differences which resemble one another, which are analogous, opposed, or identical… The world is neither finite nor infinite as representation would have it: it is completed and unlimited. Eternal return is the unlimited of the finished itself… Re-petition opposes re-presentation… Repetition is the formless being of all differences, the formless power of the ground which carries every object to that extreme ‘form’ in which its representation comes undone.” (in Difference and Repetition, p57)
Yes… but this “unlimited of the finished itself” is not arbitrary: not actually formless in practice. It is, instead, a not-yet-formed which is implicit-in, and which continues-on-from, that which is already formed.
|
|
|
return |