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Most experiences are unsayable; they become real to us in a space no word has entered.

Rainer Maria Rilke, from Letters to a Young Poet (tr. Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy)

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"Rituals are architectures of time, structuring and stabilising life, and they are on the wane. The pandemic has accelerated the disappearance of rituals. Work also has ritual aspects. We go to work at set times. Work takes place in a community. In the home office, the ritual of work is completely lost. The day loses its rhythm and structure. This somehow makes us tired and depressed.

In The Little Prince [1943], by [Antoine de] Saint-Exupéry, the little prince asks the fox to always visit at the exact same time, so that the visit becomes a ritual. The little prince explains to the fox what a ritual is. Rituals are to time as rooms are to an apartment. They make time accessible like a house. They organise time, arrange it. In this way you make time appear meaningful.

Time today lacks a solid structure. It is not a house, but a capricious river. The disappearance of rituals does not simply mean that we have more freedom. The total flexibilisation of life brings loss, too. Rituals may restrict freedom, but they structure and stabilise life. They anchor values and symbolic systems in the body, reinforcing community. In rituals we experience community, communal closeness, physically.

Digitalisation strips away the physicality of the world. Then comes the pandemic. It aggravates the loss of the physical experience of community. You’re asking: can’t we do this by ourselves? Today we reject all rituals as something external, formal and therefore inauthentic. Neoliberalism produces a culture of authenticity, which places the ego at its centre. The culture of authenticity develops a suspicion of ritualised forms of interaction. Only spontaneous emotions, subjective states, are authentic. Modelled behaviour, for example courtesy, is written off as inauthentic or superficial. The narcissistic cult of authenticity is partly responsible for the increasing brutality of society.

In my book I argue the case against the cult of authenticity, for an ethic of beautiful forms. Gestures of courtesy are not just superficial. The French philosopher Alain says that gestures of courtesy hold a great power on our thoughts. That if you mime kindness, goodwill and joy, and go through motions such as bowing, they help against foul moods as well as stomach ache. Often the external has a stronger hold than the internal.

Blaise Pascal once said that instead of despairing over a loss of faith, one should simply go to mass and join in rituals such as prayer and song, in other words mime, since it is precisely this that will bring back faith. The external transforms the internal, brings about new conditions. Therein lies the power of rituals. And our consciousness today is no longer rooted in objects. These external things can be very effective in stabilising consciousness. It is very difficult with information, since it is really volatile and holds a very narrow range of relevance."

- Byung-Chul Han being interviewed by Gesine Borcherdt, from "Byung-Chul Han: 'I Practise Philosophy as Art.'" Art Review, 2 December 2021.

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dreamy painting in progress

#brbchasingdreams

prints | tutorials

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“It is impossible to get better and look good at the same time. Give yourself permission to be a beginner. By being willing to be a bad artist, you have a chance to be an artist, and perhaps, over time, a very good one.”

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Author and writing teacher Julia Cameron on what it takes to improve

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when they say “you’re hot” but kafka said “you’re the knife I turn inside myself” like do better

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An amazing recent fossil discovery: a whole school of fish! A single slab of limestone from the Green River Formation in North America contained 259 fish of the extinct Erismatopterus levatus species. They lived between 56 to 34 million years ago.

The discovery is exciting because it is a rare case of fossils demonstrating behavior – in this case, that fish have gathered into shoals for millions of years.

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Alex Krokus

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Portrait of Fryderyk in Shifting Light, Richard Siken

[text ID: How much can you change / and get away with it, / before you turn into / something else, / before it’s some kind of / murder?]

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it’s been ten years and i can confirm that everything still happens so much. happy anniversary king

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2022 First Alaska Native!!