Embodied Particularity: An Introduction

When Williams set down plainly his manifesto, "No ideas but in things," he was not being odd or silly or unintelligent, and what he said was not unprecedented. He was accepting a limit (for himself and his own work, first of all) that would protect things from the limitlessness of abstract ideas, abstract definitions, abstract rules and cases. Things--or, by implication, persons, places, and things--properly mark the limits of ideas. Things do not merely make manifest the general names and categories by which we describe them; they also impose a discipline on those generalities, so that the generalities do not become so general as to be unknown and unfelt in embodied particularity—so that they do not, so to speak, escape imagination and form. This is the divorce Williams speaks of early in Paterson: names and ideas becoming separate from the things they denote, so that “the language stutters." The tangible defines and disciplines the intangible. Concern for ideas in the absence of a concern for things, or at the expense of things, is capricious and dangerous both to things and to ideas.
--Wendell Berry, The Poetry of William Carlos Williams of Rutherford

Outside the Common Run

If you got something outside the common run that's got to be done and cant wait, dont waste your time on the menfolk; they works on what your uncle calls the rules and the cases. Put the womens and the children at it; they works on the circumstances.
"old Ephraim" to Chick Mallison in William Faulkner's Intruder in the Dust

The Inner-View. 5 Minutes. One Question.

Tuesday Evening, IV staffers were challenged by professional game-ers Stephen and Jude Mason to participate in the meaning-making sport known as Apples To Apples. As aspiring followers of high-stake-surrealism, we were ready to make non-sense one bite at a time. Of course, all this ridiculousness begs the question:

IV: What happens when one plays Apples to Apples?

SM: The not obvious becomes the obvious.

The Inner-View. 5 Minutes. One Question.

In love we're all the same
We're walking down an empty street
Tonight and every night...
Let's go walking down this empty street
Let's walk in the cool evening light
Wrong or right
Be at my side
The Blue Nile, Downtown Lights

So tonight The Blue Nile is playing. Children are watching Eddie Murphy in some new movie that isn't as wonderful as Bowfinger. The cups are filled with box wine kicks. Author and stand-up wordsmith, David Dark, is washing dishes. The inner-view begins.

IV: Alright... as we are comically quotidian at the moment, let's talk about Romance. What do you make of it?

DD: I want everyone to have it. I think of Portia in The Merchant of Venice when she told Bassanio that his gaze divided her heart, giving one half to him and the other, if it's still hers, also his. I think too of the tale Dmitri told his brother Alyosha (in Brothers Karamazov) of the night Katerina Ivanovna came to him, thanking him for sparing her drunken father some form of debtor's indignity by offering him her body. He was so moved by her beauty and nobility that, contrary to his usual pattern, he refused her offer. After she left, he stood there amazed at himself, overwhelmed at their exchange and so doubtful that he would obtain such heights of ecstasy again that he drew his sword and, by his account, came close to impaling himself. I think of something like the desire to pour your own life into what you take to be the depths of another human being. This is what comes to my mind when I think of romance.

Live in The Along

Speech to the Young: Speech to the Progress-Toward

Say to them,
Say to the down-keepers,
The sunslappers,
The self-soilers,
The harmony-hushers,
“even if you are not ready for day
it cannot always be night.”
You will be right.
For that is the hard home-run.

Live not for battles won.
Live not for the-end-of-the-song.
Live in the along.

Gwendolyn Brooks

The Inner-View. 5 Minutes. One Question.

It was only a matter of time before IV resident artists Sam and Peter Dark were called upon to participate in The Inner-View's whimmy blog sport. It happened today. It should be noted that, as artists do, Sam and Peter expanded the boundary-ed playing field of the current system... and begged a second question.

IV: If you could live in any place, with any kind of people, where would it be?

Sam: I would live with the Vikings because they eat a lot of meat. I really want to be a guy who hunts for animals. I love them.

IV: Can you love them and kill them?

Sam: Isn't it like thanking them?

Peter: Like the old man who made a fire and the rabbit saw him starvin' and stuff. The rabbit jumped himself into the fire so the man could eat him.

Ah Forget It!

Ah Forget It! (A response to Ted Hoagland's "Big Grab")

Are you kidding?
I'm negotiating with surrealism,
Trying to take it into me,
Trying to cuddle it,
Make it lovely,
Make it love me.

--Sarah Masen

The Ritual of Play

This weekend concludes Sarah's tenure as Children's Education Director at DPC. You'll understand that the title conferred three years ago didn't mark the beginning of her devotion of energies in this direction anymore than handing it over to the wonderful and inspiring Lenae Chambers marks the end, but this is the conclusion of a season in which Sarah has worked tirelessly at showing, instructing, dreaming, and crying out loud within a certain gap ("Adults! Receive the poetic witness of our children! Hear and see and experience!" and "Children. Here's what we're trying to do around here. Or at least, here's what we think we're doing. What do you guys think?"). She has performed the work awesomely and intensely and will now doubtless have at it some more as she returns to other mediums and other spaces. Perhaps I can get her to reflect on it all on the blog at some point, but she's lately more committed to the recent innerview series. Typical.
I give you the description for Saturday's goings-on, and invite you to come on out:
Everyday Rituals, Everyday Materials, Everyday Play
The youth of Downtown Presbyterian Church are creating again for the sixth summer running. Directed by Sarah Dark and Lenae Chambers, and with the help of local artists –Beth Gilmore, Elizabeth Streight,and Todd Greene- this year the youth are exploring the rituals they practice at home and in church. They have explored the rituals Presbyterians practice, such as baptism and Eucharist, as well as the mundane ritual of teeth brushing and eating. The art show, dubbed The Ritual of Play, will display art based on repetition. Edward, 9, explained the process of ritual in these words: “you have to have the freedom to do it, and you have to do it to know it.” Interactive stations will allow all to participate in daily rituals such as washing, eating, and writing. All materials used to create this show are found, reclaimed, or reused items. Nothing was purchased this year. The show will open Saturday, September 3, 2011 in DPC’s fellowship hall at 6pm.

The Inner-View. 5 minutes. One question.

Oh Mom, I wonder when I'll be waking
It's just that there's so much to do and
I'm tired of sleeping
Suzanne Vega, Tired of Sleeping

Suzanne Vega is played often in our house. "Tired of Sleeping" is a particular favorite of IV staff, Dorothy Dark, and on the surface fits her owl-like tendency to "get this party started" when the older staff are ready for "zzzz"s. Surface aside, I was moved to read that the song came from a dream Vega had in which "the kids are playing in pennies" line was actually "the kids are begging for God". Out of the mad jungle mass of music played in our house, "Tired of Sleeping" came to mind today when I found myself interviewed by new friend Maeve. Maeve is a 2 year old Socratic philosopher who has recently moved to Nashville from Chicago, IL. I think there is a connection between the song and her questions. Help me mine it out. Consider yourself interviewed.

Maeve: Are you, you? A grown up?

IV: Yes. Are you going to be a grown up?

Maeve: No. I am going to be a little girl.

The Inner-View. 5 minutes. One question.

Today I interviewed David Dark, recent PhD graduate from Vanderbilt University. He also happens to be my husband. If you have an answer to this question, consider yourself interviewed and write in. Or better yet, ask someone nearby. Questions are the sunshine.
Sarah

"...a creative listener is not someone who simply allows me to say what I already want to say, but someone whose listening actually makes it possible for me to say what I never could have said, and thus to be a new kind of person, one I have never been before and could not have been before this directed listening."
James Carse The Silence of God

IV: Can you think of a time when someone listened to you with the kind of expectancy that helped you to become, as Carse suggests, "a new person"?

DD: Steve Stockman comes to mind. In 1992 he got to asking me questions in Northern Ireland and eventually asked me to "speak" to his group. His finding me interesting helped me want to be interesting. He brought the possibility in his questions that my voice might change him and that changed me.

To Be Born Again

The biblical expression for such existence is "eternal life." We can be easily misled by this term into thinking that what is being offered is an unchanging status of some sort, a blissful terminus to all our journeying in which nothing new can ever happen again; indeed, in which nothing at all can happen. It is useful to recall that the great medieval mystic Meister Eckhart preferred the term "eternal birth" as a way of indicating the dynamic element in the life of prayer. Eternal birth is something of a contradiction, of course, for it is difficult to imagine being born over and over again through an eternity. One often suspects, however, that persons who enthusiastically claim to be "born again" mean to be born into a state in which they will hold out against all further change, as though to be born again is a specifiable condition in which one may remain forever. To be born again under these terms is more like dying than living. Eckhart instructs us that we are not to be born again, but to be born again, and again, and again, and...
James P. Carse, The Silence of God: Meditations on Prayer

Meaning

Meaning

When I die, I will see the lining of the world.
The other side, beyond bird, mountain, sunset.
The true meaning, ready to be decoded.
What never added up will add Up,
What was incomprehensible will be comprehended.
- And if there is no lining to the world?
If a thrush on a branch is not a sign,
But just a thrush on the branch? If night and day
Make no sense following each other?
And on this earth there is nothing except this earth?
- Even if that is so, there will remain
A word wakened by lips that perish,
A tireless messenger who runs and runs
Through interstellar fields, through the revolving galaxies,
And calls out, protests, screams.

Czeslaw Milosz

Lost Bodies

Hold your applause. It's...Well it's more of the different same. Todd Greene continues his journey under the tutelage of Bankei, and it's got him mashing up the 12 stations of the cross with Bankei's 12 stages of agitation; going all first-class animal being the first stage of being unborn. I find the above image helpfully reminiscent of any of the Seven Deadly Enemies one finds within the Rock of Eternity, the lair of the wizard Shazam of Captain Marvel fame.
The fortunate few who come out to the Twist this Saturday evening and onward will be privileged to behold the following:
Hungry Ghost, the Mealy-mouthed Swindler, Double Mind, Transmigrator, and Void of the Human. This last one draws from the collaborative volume b/w Aimé Césaire and Picasso called Lost Body which your reporter procured from a Detroit bookstore for Mr. Greene. There are elements that the terminology of warning would deem graphic.
"Why would I pass a Saturday evening exploring this sort of thing?" I can't answer this question for you, but I'll try. If the alternative to a weekend consisting of one soul-sucking vacuum after another vying for your attention, hijacking your equilibrium, disturbing your peace is an immersion in attempted mindfulness, what could be more worthwhile? It could enliven our relationships, make our hearts a little less manic. In any case, J. Todd Greene has another show going on exactly one room over from "First-Class Animal." Drawing upon James Carse's Finite and Infinite Games, there are two titles to choose from: "Unheard Silence" OR "Myths Are Like Magic Trees." Here's Carse: ”Myths are like magic trees in the garden of culture. They do not grow on but out of silent earth, of nature. The more we strip these trees of their fruit or prune them back to our favorite design, the more imposing and fecund they become.” I've only had it described to me so far, but I hope to have an image or two up for you today or tomorrow. I'm tempted to rattle on about Carse, but I should probably save it for another post. We've been reading him to one another around here all summer. Come on out and join the conversation. I leave you with more Carse. All evil might be an overstatement, but the line gives helpful pause as is:
“Evil is never intended as evil—Indeed the contradiction inherit in all evil is that it originates in the desire to eliminate evil.”

Love & Theft

When he claims to be solitary, the artist lulls himself in a perhaps fruitful illusion, but the privilege he grants himself is not real. When he thinks he is expressing himself spontaneously, creating an original work, he is answering other past or present, actual or potential creators. Whether he knows it or not, one never walks alone along the path of creativity.
Claude Lévi-Strauss, The Way of the Masks

Soundcloud of Unknowing

Over the last few years, I've had the deep pleasure of stealing occasional time with Justin McRoberts, a lyrical wit with whom I have, in socialnetworkspeak, many a mutual. Alongside a shared fascination with Batman, Eugene Peterson, and David Bazan, we're both possessed by the conviction that raw, confessional candor (and the good humor that frequently follows) is often the greatest gift human beings can give each other.
With "C," the first installment of a project called CMY(K), it seems to me that Justin begins to blow the lid off something. The songs give voice to--without answering or solving--a meaning problem, a good number of them, and express a resolve to remain alive to contradictions, dwelling within them, instead of denying or sealing them over. If Paul Tillich has it right when he says that claiming to know with absolute certainty that God exists is even less appropriate to the Christian faith than claiming to know God doesn't, Justin clears a space for a sacred unknowing within which we say what we feel, not what we feel we ought to say. And as is especially evident in "Take One On the Chin," this work isn't a deal-breaker with (or an exit from) a meaningfully Christian life so much as it's a clear sign of its presence. Listen and be enriched.

Bank Eye or Dead Man's Breath

The creative powers of Todd Greene keep right on giving. At long last, a recent Bulb offering is thine for the taking right here. And then there's the matter of Todd's recent fascination with Bankei which informs his show at the Bank Gallery this weekend.
According to Bankei's Unborn (fu-sho) Zen teaching--which Todd interpolates with the phrase "Fo sho"--everyone's born with an unborn Buddha mind. Bankei would begin his talks by asserting that everyone within shouting distance is already enlightened. Rivalry, resentment, fear, and the urge to justify ourselves has us transmogrifying our given Buddha mind into a hungry ghost, a fighting spirit, a deluded existence of our own making. "Don't side with yourself," Bankei warns. Stop trying to hurry up and matter. Let it go.
And here we have something deeply in sync with Todd's democratic sensibility when it comes to images, lyricism, and teaching. With 16 or so Bulb albums which he's prone to give away with a word of thanks to anyone who asks and work that stuns anyone who pays it heed even as Todd urges his audience to have a go at it themselves, he seems to have found himself a contemporary in Bankei. "You don't need to ask forgiveness at the Bank Gallery," reads the website. It's all there.
Oh and Dead Man's Breath. I was talking Bankei with Sarah at a swimming pool when Peter explained an underwater technique he'd been perfecting nearby. "Dead man's breath," he said. "You just have to not care about being dead." This we will file away with his 'chother teaching. That is all.

The Lion & The Baby

Most of what you need to know is on the poster. Bulb is essentially the soul of Nashville. You've seen them featured here before. There will be crafts and such. Sam will be manning a hotdog stand. We're encouraging folks to bring beverages to share. It's the SATURDAY of Memorial Weekend. If you need to think of it as a celebration of my recent entry into the cult of PhD-dom to get yourself out that evening, you are welcome to do so. My only demand for such a celebration is Bulb in performance mode. Y'all come.

"...a world...worlding"

"Celebration ... is self-restraint, is attentiveness, is questioning, is meditating, is awaiting, is the step over into the more wakeful glimpse of the wonder -- the wonder that a world is worlding around us at all, that there are beings rather than nothing, that things are and we ourselves are in their midst, that we ourselves are and yet barely know who we are, and barely know that we do not know this."
- Martin Heidegger

"Get these commercials outta here!" Sam Dark overheard in the car while listening to the radio

Maybe some North American ears have trouble with poetry because of the noise from an aggressively voiced ruling ethos—its terminology of war, success, national security, winning and losing, ownership, merchandising, canned information, canned laughter.
Adrienne Rich on Tonight No Poetry Will Serve

The Mind Is Its Own Place

"The mind is its own place, and in itself/Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n."
Satan attempting to make the best of a situation in John Milton's Paradise Lost

I'd like to register a degree of pleasure concerning the conversations I've personally witnessed as well as the ones I envision taking place as a direct result of the Rob Bell's new book, marketing campaign, and iPhone/iPad app (none of these easily extricated from one another). I spent about two seconds wondering if the text is well-served by having a hard copy at all, but quickly concluded that there has to be one if it's to go really viral. We like carrying these things around. Strangers in airports or coffeeshops might ask us a question or something.
I bring Tom Waits and Modest Mouse into the conversation (not that they weren't already there) with my own appreciative reading here.