I have a practice where I get up each morning, and, before doing anything else, sit down with a cup of coffee and write three sides of prose in long-hand. (Three sides of A4, that is.) Kate has convinced me that it would be a good idea if - for a while - I devoted one of those three pages to the fishing project. Today is the first day of that commitment.
The idea of the pages is that I simply write. The material is not carefully thought out or prepared in meticulous detail. In fact, the point is not to linger over it, not to re-read it, not to keep rewriting, but simply to put down something that is on my mind at the time. That being so, please accept my apologies if these paragraphs seem foolish or ill-formed. To me it is enough that they are here - something to read, to show you, to think about. Kate, in the meantime, is developing a complementary practice - that of reading whatever we advise her to read. My own suggestion is John Cage's collection of short texts: Indeterminacy. I'm not sure exactly how this is related to wisdom. Well, I have an inkling, but that is something for later, perhaps:
http://www.lcdf.org/indeterminacy/
I looked it up and will read it. Because I am on the Dogma I am reading Up the Junction by Nell Dunn which Steve gave me. Here is a piece from Alan Sillitoe on fishing and contemplation: 'Arthur's eyes were fixed into the beautiful earth-bowl of the depthless water, trying to explore each pool and shallow until, as well as an external silence there was a silence within himself that no particle of his mind of body wanted to break.'
ReplyDeleteFor me this is also the power of contemplation (see above), fishing and also, for me, reading
'He held her fast round the waist and was cast into sad reflection by staring at the water below, a rippleless surface where minnows swam gracefully in clam, transparent silence. White and blue sky made islands on it, so that the descent into its hollows seemed deep and fathomless, and fishes swam over enormous gulfs and chasms of cobalt blue. Arthur's eyes were fixed into the beautiful earth-bowl of the depthless water, trying to explore each pool and shallow until, as well as an external silence there was a silence within himself that no particle of his mind of body wanted to break. (Sillitoe 1958/2008:206
ReplyDeleteI very much like this practical exercise, and if you don't mind I will copy it for myself and start to work in this way. I am curious to see what happens. I have always had a prefernce for writing longhand, the materiality of the medium works very differently from typing and allows for great concentration on the process of expression, I think. A russian pedagogue whose name escapes me now recently pleaded for introducing the practice of writing while standing up (as the old German romantics did, at their Schreibpult) and using a dip pen; the rhythm of breathing in and out, the movement of interrupting the writing to dip the pen in the ink and return to the movement of the line on the paper can connect you to the moment in which you live, the moment as it unfolds itself. From that point creativity becomes possibe. It is also that point that meditation may seek out and may try to make into the centre of our lives. That point is described by Bloch in terms of'Front', 'Novum','Ultimum', the triad that describes the process of realisation. We are all our own avant-garde, and if we can connect to that moment, we can become expressive. Not in a metaphysical sense in which an already real inner reality is pushed out into a material form, but expression in a more processual sense, as a content that realises itself on the edge of the new. I do think that John Cage has a lot to say about this, it is the meaning of 'I have nothing to say and I am saying it', read in a slightly different light than it might otherwise be read. We are dealing here with improvisation, 'as a way of life', as a way of connecting to others as well.
ReplyDeleteYour the materiality of longhand writing and also John Cage's ideas of indeterminacy are two things that have had a lasting influence on me over the years. I avoid writing with a pen where possible. For many years throughout school I had to have handwriting practice because I was told that my writing was illegible. My problem with writing was that I never could get my 'ideas' down on the page fast enough. When I started using computers to type it was a revelation as I could use both hands to write and not just one to write and the other to hold the paper. Though in order to write I feel that I have to not think about what I wanted to say but vomit out everything that I could think of in the moment and then after some time away return to edit and rewrite what I have done. In a way the time away from the text means that I can contemplate what I wanted to say which at the time of writing I was unsure of. Because of this constant crafting in writing, for example whilst writing my thesis, I like to think of Cage's indeterminacy ideas when I 'play around' with the electronic music equipment I have at home. After periods of trying to figure out what I want to say in one medium it is relaxing to follow Cage's idea of, as Johan posted, 'I have nothing to say and I am saying it' in another for fun. Improvisation is something I do after work, to avoid reflecting negatively on the writing that I have tried to craft into worthy thing. I very much like the idea as improvisation 'as a way of life'
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