Message-ID: <alpine.NEB.2.20.1709181727060.26807@panix3.panix.com>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
To: Cyb <cybermind@listserv.wvu.edu>, Wryting-L <WRYTING-L@listserv.wvu.edu>
Subject: Pelagic (theory/image)
Date: Mon, 18 Sep 2017 17:28:59 -0400 (EDT)
Pelagic http://www.alansondheim.org/cumb16.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/cumb01.jpg Pelagic \Pe*lag"ic\, a. [L. pelagicus.] Of or pertaining to the ocean; -- applied especially to animals that live at the surface of the ocean, away from the coast. sound philosophy: a quirk, i do philosophy - somatic, structural, mathematico- logical, in the form of sound. does this protect me against contradiction? can sound contradict sound? certainly the semantic structure of written language is inconceivably more complex; then sound perhaps illustrates what can't be said, varieties of the ineffable. because of age, i plan ahead, carefully, no farther than the shore. because of isolation, the shore is private as well; what i do may be my business, but none will know for sure. in a few years perhaps my fingers might lose the extraordinary degree of suppleness they appear to have, my hearing might be accompanied by waves of tinnitus, virtual cricketeering. i'll play the insect world, i'll walk to the tuning bench where a sarangi lies, everything foreign to me. isolation is bizarre; it increases paranoia and suspicion, makes one unpalatable in the long run. the last time we were invited to dinner? i can't remember. the last time i performed at a local club? maybe eight months ago; the last time i was invited to talk local, over two years ago. an outpouring of begging letters on my part makes me a nuisance, nothing more. online at least i remain both invisible and visible, viable one way or another. i disappear into the sound of an instrument; it's not that a world opens up, but everything else disappears - phrases and intervals take over, become obelisks in a different form of landscape. i record what i play; i discover what i play upon re-play, listening, ludic correspondence to ingratuitous and silent forms. and i live in the midst of dynamics that displace my figure, body and mind, i am hordes among hordes, i horde; our bodies are standing-waves of the molecular and quantum, appearances of structures on the way toward subsummation. the sound, music, dies out faster; for a moment i have the pleasure of an instrument, and the instrument exists momentarily, as an instrument with all the potential that accompanies it. i see myself as networked, networking, interconnected; my mind collapses against the sight, which it procures. my mind lives in cessation; i teeter. it's a slow fall, but a fall nonetheless. no things, but in dynamics; no bandwidth is wide enough to admit the world, narrow enough to observe chimera. the world as far as one is concerned, as far as there is concern, is in error - as far as error is concerned, as long as there is world. any state of affairs embodies, not only its own negation, but also its own dissolution. network protocols are undermined from beneath, are transformed, are error-prone, disappear with the disappearance of channels and communities, interrupted by a telephone call from out- of-state, which i take to discuss other networked media; the gist is clear, from the collapse and focusing of consciousness via-a- vis the screen, to the appearance of structure in the sense of a unique object which splits, 0*x = 0; 1*x = x; 0+x = x; 1+x takes us away from all of this, the diacritical mark or signifier tending elsewhere, the shaky construction of uncountable and unaccounted-for culture and whatever else we might notice in the world. what we notice is the world noticing and neither or nor the world (and we are the world etc. etc.) notice anything but circumscription, circumlocution; wherever 1+x goes is nameless, and if not now, then when; if not here, then where; and who among the who of us? questions of epistemology and ontology are always flatlined unless circumscribed, and then what breaks out and where, and again among whom? not nihilism but dynamics all the way up and down, mobile structures for category theorists. and then some. late at night in think of failures, what might have been, email i should have written, email i should not have written, words and actions i would rescind, opportunities which never materialized, the inconceivability of remaining alive as whatever will be left of me begins to deteriorate. the slurry of the world is churned; call that the chora. we descend; our consciousness, abject and impoverished, holds on until the last moment. our president taunts others, tempting everyone to nuclear annihilation; we're already past that, however - we've been there, done that, and what remains on the other side of the wall, where the blankness of fascism has erected another tawdry structure, is nothing but flows and damage. === < a quirk, i do philosophy - somatic, structural, mathematico- --- > a quirk, i do philosophy - somatic, structural, methamatico- < network protocols are undermined from beneath, are transformed, --- > netework protocols are undermined from beneath, are transformed, < gist is clear, from the collapse and focusing of consciousness --- > jist is clear, from the collapse and focusing of consciousness === A quirk: Philosophy does me. ===