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artofthemindblog · 2 years

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Emotion and Energy

An excerpt from Incomplete Nature by Terrence W. Deacon

Emergent dynamics: A theory developed in this book which explains how homeodynamic (e.g., thermodynamic) processes can give rise to morphodynamic (e.g., self-organizing) processes, which can give rise to teleodynamic (e.g., living and mental) processes. Intended to legitimize scientific uses of ententional (intentional, purposeful, normative) concepts by demonstrating the way that processes at a higher level in this hierarchy emerge from, and are grounded in, simpler physical processes, but exhibit reversals of the otherwise ubiquitous tendencies of these lower-level processes Emotion and Energy

An emergent dynamic account of the relationship between neurological function and mental experience differs from all other approaches by virtue of its necessary requirement for specifying a homeodynamic and morphodynamic basis for its teleodynamic (intentional) character. This means that every mental process will inevitably reflect the contributions of these necessary lower-level dynamics. In other words, certain ubiquitous aspects of mental experience should inevitably exhibit organizational features that derive from, and assume certain dynamical properties characteristic of, thermodynamic and morphodynamic processes. To state this more concretely: experience should have clear equilibrium-tending, dissipative, and self-organizing characteristics, besides those that are intentional. These are inseparable dynamical features that literally constitute experience. What do these dynamical features correspond to in our phenomenal experience?

Broadly speaking, this dynamical infrastructure is “emotion” in the most general sense of that word. It is what constitutes the “what it feels like” of subjective experience. Emotion—in the broad sense that I am using it here—is not merely confined to such highly excited states as fear, rage, sexual arousal, love, craving, and so forth. It is present in every experience, even if often highly attenuated, because it is the expression of the necessary dynamic infrastructure of all mental activity. It is the tension that separates self from non-self; the way things are and the way they could be; the very embodiment of the intrinsic incompleteness of subjective experience that constitutes its perpetual becoming. It is a tension that inevitably arises as the incessant shifting course of mental teleodynamics encounters the resistance of the body to respond, and the insistence of bodily needs and drives to derail thought, as well as the resistance of the world to conform to expectation. As a result, it is the mark that distinguishes subjective self from other, and is at the same time the spontaneous tendency to minimize this disequilibrium and difference. In simple terms, it is the mental tension that is created because of the presence of a kind of inertia and momentum associated with the process of generating and modifying mental representations. The term e-motion is in this respect curiously appropriate to the “dynamical feel” of mental experience.

This almost Newtonian nature of emotion is reflected in the way that the metaphors of folk psychology have described this aspect of human subjectivity over the course of history in many different societies. Thus English speakers are “moved” to tears, “driven” to behave in ways we regret, “swept up” by the mood of the crowd, angered to the point that we feel ready to “explode,” “under pressure” to perform, “blocked” by our inability to remember, and so forth. And we often let our “pent-up” frustrations “leak out” into our casual conversations, despite our best efforts to “contain” them. Both the motive and resistive aspects of experience are thus commonly expressed in energetic terms.

In the Yogic traditions of India and Tibet, the term kundalini refers to a source of living and spiritual motive force. It is figuratively “coiled” in the base of the spine, like a serpent poised to strike or a spring compressed and ready to expand. In this process, it animates body and spirit. The subjective experience of bodily states has also often been attributed to physical or ephemeral forms of fluid dynamics. In ancient Chinese medicine, this fluid is chi; in the Ayurvedic medicine of India, there were three fluids, the doshas; and in Greek, Roman, and later Islamic medicine, there were four humors (blood, phlegm, light and dark bile) responsible for one’s state of mental and physical health. In all of these traditions, the balance, pressures, and free movement of these fluids were critical to the animation of the body, and their proper balance was presumed to be important to good health and “good humor.” The humor theory of Hippocrates, for example, led to a variety of medical practices designed to rebalance the humors that were disturbed by disease or disruptive mental experience. Thus bloodletting was deemed an important way to adjust relative levels of these humors to treat disease.

This fluid dynamical conception of mental and physical animation was naturally reinforced by the ubiquitous correlation of a pounding heart (a pump) with intense emotion, stress, and intense exertion. Both René Descartes and Erasmus Darwin (to mention only two among many) argued that the nervous system likewise animates the body by virtue of differentially pumping fluid into various muscles and organs through microscopic tubes (presumably the nerves). When, in the 1780s, Luigi Galvani discovered that a severed frog leg could be induced to twitch in response to contact by electricity, he considered this energy to be an “animal electricity.” And the vitalist notion of a special ineffable fluid of life, or élan vital, persisted even into the twentieth century.

This way of conceiving of the emotions did not disappear with the replacement of vitalism and with the rise of anatomical and physiological knowledge in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. It was famously reincarnated in Freudian psychology as the theory of libido. Though Freud was careful not to identify it with an actual fluid of the body, or even a yet-to-be-discovered material substrate, libido was described in terms that implied that it was something like the nervous energy associated with sexuality. Thus a repressed memory might block the “flow” of libido and cause its flow to be displaced, accumulated, and released to animate inappropriate behaviors. Freud’s usage of this hydrodynamic metaphor became interpreted more concretely in the Freudian-inspired theories of Wilhelm Reich, who argued that there was literally a special form of energy, which he called “orgone” energy, that constituted the libido. Although such notions have long been abandoned and discredited with the rise of the neurosciences, there is still a sense in which the pharmacological treatments for mental illness are sometimes conceived of on the analogy of a balance of fluids: that is, neurotransmitter “levels.” Thus different forms of mental illness are sometimes described in terms of the relative levels of dopamine, norepinephrine, or serotonin that can be manipulated by drugs that alter their production or interfere with their effects.

This folk psychology of emotion was challenged in the 1960s and 1970s by a group of prominent theorists, responsible for ushering in the information age. Among them was Gregory Bateson, who argued that the use of these energetic analogies and metaphors in psychology made a critical error in treating information processes as energetic processes. He argued that the appropriate way to conceive of mental processes was in informational and cybernetic terms. Brains are not pumps, and although axons are indeed tubular, and molecules such as neurotransmitters are actively conveyed along their length, they do not contribute to a hydrodynamic process. Nervous signals are propagated ionic potentials, mediated by molecular signals linking cells across tiny synaptic gaps. On the model of a cybernetic control system, he argued that the differences conveyed by neurological signals are organized so that they regulate the release of “collateral energy,” generated by metabolism. It is this independently available energy that is responsible for animating the body. Nervous control of this was thus more accurately modeled cybernetically. This collateral metabolic energy is analogous to the energy generated in a furnace, whose level of energy release is regulated by the much weaker changes in energy of the electrical signals propagated around the control circuit of a thermostat. According to Bateson, the mental world is not constituted by energy and matter, but rather by information. And as was also pioneered by the architects of the cybernetic theory whom Bateson drew his insights from, such as Wiener and Ashby, and biologists such as Warren McCulloch and Mayr, information was conceived of in purely logical terms: in other words, Shannon information. Implicit in this view—which gave rise to the computational perspective in the decades that followed—the folk wisdom expressed in energetic metaphors was deemed to be misleading.

By more precisely articulating the ways that thermodynamic, morphodynamic, and teleodynamic processes emerge from, and depend on, one another, however, we have seen that it is this overly simple energy/information dichotomy that is misleading. Information cannot so easily be disentangled from its basis in the capacity to reflect the effects of work (and thus the exchange of energy), and neither can it be simply reduced to it. Energy and information are asymmetrically and hierarchically interdependent dynamical concepts, which are linked by virtue of an intervening level of morphodynamic processes. And by virtue of this dynamical ascent, the capacity to be about something not present also emerges; not as mere signal difference, but as something extrinsic and absent yet potentially relevant to the existence of the teleodynamic (interpretive) processes thereby produced.

It is indeed the case that mental experience cannot be identified with the ebb and flow of some vital fluid, nor can it be identified directly with the buildup and release of energy. But as we’ve now also discovered by critically deconstructing the computer analogy, it cannot be identified with the signal patterns conveyed from neuron to neuron, either. These signals are generated and analyzed with respect to the teleodynamics of neuronal cell maintenance. They are interpreted with respect to cellular-level sentience. Each neuron is bombarded with signals that constitute its Umwelt. They perturb its metabolic state and force it to adapt in order to reestablish its stable teleodynamic “resting” activity. But, as was noted in the previous chapter, the structure of these neuronal signals does not constitute mental information, any more than the collisions between gas molecules constitute the attractor logic of the second law of thermodynamics.

As we will explore more fully below, mental information is constituted at a higher population dynamic level of signal regularity. As opposed to neuronal information (which can superficially be analyzed in computational terms), mental information is embodied by distributed dynamical attractors. These higher-order, more global dynamical regularities are constituted by the incessantly recirculating and restimulating neural signals within vast networks of interconnected neurons. The attractors form as these recirculating signals damp some and amplify other intrinsic constraints implicit in the current network geometry. Looking for mental information in individual neuronal firing patterns is looking at the wrong level of scale and at the wrong kind of physical manifestation. As in other statistical dynamical regularities, there are a vast number of microstates (i.e., network activity patterns) that can constitute the same global attractor, and a vast number of trajectories of microstate-to-microstate changes that will tend to converge to a common attractor. But it is the final quasi-regular network-level dynamic, like a melody played by a million-instrument orchestra, that is the medium of mental information. Although the contribution of each neuronal response is important, it is more with respect to how this contributes a local micro bias to the larger dynamic. To repeat again, it is no more a determinate of mental content than the collision between two atoms in a gas determines the tendency of the gas to develop toward equilibrium (though the fact that neurons are teleodynamic components rather than simply mechanical components makes this analogy far too simple).

This shift in level makes it less clear that we can simply dismiss these folk psychology force-motion analogies. If the medium of mental representation is not mere signal difference, but instead is the large-scale global attractor dynamic produced by an extended interconnected population of neurons, then there may also be global-level homeodynamic properties to be taken into account as well. As we have seen in earlier chapters, these global dynamical regularities will exhibit many features that are also characteristic of force-motion dynamics.

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yuexin7 · 1 year

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Reflection：

This is a satirical work that discusses the oppression of the role of mothers in society. At the beginning I wanted to limit the topic to the family, so the most important information I got from the initial research was the keywords of the image of a mother that I got from the questionnaire that I got from my children, and the answers were undoubtedly stereotypical, but at the same time, they were recognized as the virtues of women. The question that arose for me was, is it right that it has always been so? It's not fair to women to kidnap them with compliments that after becoming a mother they must be a master chef or a cleaner, that they must be emotionally stable and beautiful and gentle, that every mother should have her own color, that they should have their own flaws and their own personalities, just like every human being. Why does our world promote such an injustice?

This was the cornerstone of my eventual expansion of scope beyond the family and output. I decided to show these good virtues of motherhood in a seemingly joyful way and materialized these intrinsic virtues on a visual level to produce illustrations, which made a thematic combination of motherhood and amusement parks because the discussion was about mothers, the concept of motherhood is relative to children, and to arouse the interest of children, a very representative children's place, the amusement park, was chosen. I chose seven virtues and also the seven deadly sins that women carry, and combined each virtue with a related ride, and wrote a story for each virtue, and even gave each virtue a name for the mother, to more bluntly express what the women behind these virtues have given up or are suffering from, and the process of giving the names is a process of realizing the concept, and I believe that this The process of giving names is a process of realizing the concept, and I believe that this part of the project will give people a more practical and empathetic perception of what is happening to women. I then created a visual illustration of the mother and the skull together to illustrate the positive and negative aspects of all the virtues.

Finally, I decided to use a web page to incorporate the above content, as an interactive and dynamic web page would fit the theme of the amusement park better. The web page contains eleven interfaces in total, and I wanted the whole page to have the feeling of an amusement park that can be played in general, so I designed rich and dynamic visual effects, which can be triggered by clicking and sliding the mouse, etc., and added a totem collection mode during the browsing process. Only after playing all the facilities can, we collect all the seven totems. We also designed a spam promotion, using the gimmick that you get a free tour of the site, and designed a golden ticket and poster to be included in the spam. In the overall design process, thanks to adequate research in the early stage, I have sufficient material to utilize in the subsequent output, and at the same time, I have tried the production of dynamic illustrations and webpage production in the process of self-learning, which are two brand new means of design, and the dynamic illustration is undoubtedly the most time-consuming one, and I drew a total of seven illustrations, and animation was made for each of them. I am satisfied with the final output, but due to the longtime of drawing illustrations, I did not have enough time to improve the details of the webpage in the subsequent webpage production, and many of the functions initially envisioned have not been added to the webpage, if I have the time after the semester ends, I will refine the details of the webpage, so that this work can be left in a more complete way on the Internet.

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grey-sorcery · 2 years

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Visualization is very prominent in the witchcraft community as a foundation for spellwork. This practice stems from The Law of Attraction, appropriative, and misinformed mystic philosophy. New Aged practices permeated actual magical practices through the energetic model. The energy work within New Age scope derived from westernized Reiki, which heavily relies on visualization and consumerism.

Visualization is the act of imagining what it is you’re trying to accomplish, like a vision board. This requires that the headspace is nearly entirely occupied, leaving very little room for much else. Mental visual representations are also imperfect and cannot cohesively contain enough details to be of any use for spellwork. Focus (or headspace) is the aspect of spellwork that is A) Intrinsically required for conscious energy work, which is less taxing than visualization. B) The accuracy of spell & C) The channel for passion to power your spell. Without well distributed headspace, spells become ineffective at best. At worst, the spell could have a completely different effect than desired due to a lack of continuous focus and a faulty imperfect image. Beyond this, those who have aphantasia cant perform any spells that rely on visualization. Which actually gives them an advantage; however, this makes it very difficult to find spells within our community due to the common reliance on visualization.

The Law of Attraction is rooted in classism, systemic racism, and white supremacy. The idea that you can just think about something really hard and you’ll obtain it. The idea also stems from an idealistic and proselytized interpretation of theoretical physical and quantum mechanics. This practice when used for manifestation is completely ineffective. If it works for someone, it is a direct result of confirmation bias and a system that they have a predisposed privilege in. Most practitioners think of The Law of Attraction as a means to escape poverty or find love and will take even the most minuscule financial or social gain as confirmation for their ability to manifest their desires.

This practice also directly leads to other new age practices like Reiki, pseudo intellectualism, misogyny, appropriation, misinterpretations of ancient history, and New Thought. Like Mormonism, the New Age movement was started by Helen Schucman who was a self-proclaimed prophet that was given visions by Jesus Christ. Because of this, it was very easy for fascists to create a pipeline. Through anti-Semitism and New Thought, followers of New Age practice will inevitably begin absorbing fascist propaganda. The practice also is quick to instill Doublethink, which leads a person to believing two very contradictory concepts at once. As an example, believing that all humans are filled with light and are inherently an aspect of the divine that deserves love and respect; while simultaneously, very prone to believing that ancient civilizations’ wonders were crafted by aliens or believing in reptilian overlords within the illuminati. This belief inherently postulates that ancient POC couldn't possibly have the intelligence or technology to construct these wonders, while reptilian overlords is a redressing of the narrative that Jewish bankers are in control of the world.

Reiki was started in the 1920’s by Mikao Usui in Japan. The practice was immediately monetized. In order to learn it you had to pay a “Master” to “Attune” you to Qi, or the Universal Life Force. While Qi is used in a lot of Eastern Asian traditions, Reiki shares no cultural or direct connection to any of them. Mikao claimed that Reiki was revealed to him during a 21 day fasting retreat at Kurama Temple in Japan, however the temple claims they’ve never held a retreat before. Since he was a Buddhist, a lot of his faith and philosophies were introduced into Reiki. While there are claims that Mikao’s original texts are heavily based in Buddhism, these texts have never been found and authenticated. The practice's reign in Japan was short lived in that period, so Chujiro Hayashi, a student of Mikao, and his apprentice Hawayo Takata Christianized the practice so that it would be more appealing to the west. This was done by claiming that Jesus Christ performed his miracles by the employment of Reiki, or a very similar practice. In the United States, there is absolutely no regulation of the “training programs” that a practitioner must go through, and because of this the societal reflection is very much a pyramid scheme. Due to this westernization and Christianization, the practice has completely lost its original fidelity. The Reiki that is practiced today is nothing like Mikao’s Reiki. IT has since adopted an appropriated form of *Chakras and the *Kundalini. Beyond this, Reiki requires that the receiver of the healing enters a light trance state while the “Master” places their hands on their body. The issue then becomes that physical stimulation often breaks trance and meditative states. Reiki’s interpretation of energy work has permeated into modern witchcraft, combined with Visualization from The Law of Attraction, which hinders the efficiency and effectiveness of the community at large and makes it likely that they’ll succumb to fascist propaganda.

To read further on more effective methods of energy work, check out this article I wrote.

check out this post to see my upcoming and posted content.

To ask a question, request content, commission a sigil, or read more about me, click here.

#Reiki #law of attraction #new age #new thought #energy work #witchcraft community #witchcraft for beginners #informational post #Gintro

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burialuntrue2007 · 2 years

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Integrative Body Psychotherapy

Introduction

This is just an overview of terms based on my personal understanding of Integrative Body Psychotherapy. My explanations are based on my experience doing this kind of therapy for a couple of years, and thus they’re imperfect and of course can’t replace working with a qualified therapist. That being said, all of these concepts have produced incredible improvement in my well-being. I really hope other people might benefit from reading about them.

THE SELF

All people are intrinsically good. Practicing IBP, we aim to let go of the unhelpful behaviours and beliefs we have developed in response to trauma, and return to our core self, where we will find love, kindness, peace, and energy.

MINDFULNESS

Mindfulness, or awareness, is the state in which we observe the sensations in our bodies, and observe our thoughts. When we are mindful we can see and feel everything happening within ourselves without judgement or involvement, like a person standing on a bridge watching a river flow by underneath.

When we are mindful we are grounded in the present moment, instead of being lost in the past or the future.

BOUNDARY

Our boundary is the divide between where we end and where the outside world begins. A healthy boundary lets love flow in and out, but protects us from unhelpful outside influences such as hurtful words from others. A healthy boundary thus allows us to control what we accept and what we reject from other people and from the world.

One kind of unhealthy boundary is a wall which blocks out everything from the outside world, including love from others.

Alternatively, we may find ourselves with a very weak boundary which allows all unhelpful influences to affect us indiscriminately.

We can create a boundary by picturing the edge of our container all around us in physical space. Maintaining a healthy boundary takes practice and focus, but it is much easier to maintain a healthy boundary when you are grounded.

ENERGY, CHARGE, AND THE CONTAINER

We all have life energy. We could also call this a charge. A charge isn’t positive or negative, but our experience of it can be painful or pleasurable depending on how our charge and container interact.

The space we are occupying within our boundary is called our container. It is more or less the space you imagine yourself taking up. A container could be as small as your body, or as large as the room you’re in, or even larger.

An important part of IBP is learning about how the charge and the container interact. Sometimes I may have a lot of energy, but I may be scared of the amount I have and try to restrict it. I will shrink the edge of my boundary down, occupying little space, a small container. But this will result in me having a charge that is too big for my container. I am now overcharged. We commonly call being overcharged being anxious.

Having energy that is too low is associated with being depressed.

One goal of BIP is to gain an equilibrium where our charge is as high as comfortable within our container. We commonly measure the strength of our charge on a scale of 1-10, 10 being the maximum amount of energy we can hold in our container. At a 3, I would be feeling very depressed with no energy to spend. At a 13, I would be feeling very anxious and too overwhelmed to function normally.

If I am overwhelmed by emotion and not able to contain my energy comfortably, I may act out to release it through expression, for example, yelling or violent action. When this kind of release of overwhelming emotion is uncontrolled or inappropriate, we call it discharging. The more I am able to contain my energy comfortably the less I will feel the need to inappropriately discharge, as I will learn to accept my feelings or release my energy mindfully.

I can help raise or lower my own charge, or expand my container, in a few ways. I can use breathwork, or move my body in specific ways that will ground me in the present. Learning to work with my charge and my container to help them relate comfortably is a project that takes a lifetime and will be a main focus in working with a BIP therapist.

PRIMARY SCENARIO

Our primary scenario is a core story we tell about ourselves based on formative trauma. We default to believing our primary scenario when we are triggered.

I can find out what my primary scenario is by mapping out my family relationships on a piece of paper and observing the narratives that emerge. It can be very helpful to work with a therapist who can help you create this map.

An example of a primary scenario might be, “I am not loved.” An overcrowded family tree packed with other mentally ill people might have resulted in me as a child feeling that there is no room for my needs. At a young age, this may cause me to feel uncared for, and as an adult, I continue to believe this and view my life through this lens when I am triggered.

Recognizing the primary scenario is the key to letting it go. When I become mindful and realize that my thoughts and body are playing out my primary scenario, I can use breathwork, meditation, and the other BIP tools to return to the present, to a grounded, parasympathetic state.

AGENCY

In everyday speech, we use the word “agency” to mean free choice, or personal power. But within IBP, the word “agency” has a different meaning.

Agency is a state where we abandon our core self to gain approval or love.

I am in agency when I act, not in accordance with my true wishes, but according to another person’s wishes to avoid their displeasure,

It is really easy for me to go into agency if my boundary is weak. My lack of confidence in my own boundary will lead me to feel that I need another person’s affirmation, and in that case I will be willing to compromise my own values to gain their love and approval.

Counter-agency is when I rebel against agency and take the direct opposite action to it. My boundary is probably like a wall when I’m in counter-agency. Unfortunately, counter-agency is not a state of being authentic to myself either, since my actions are still controlled by other’s wishes when I define myself in opposition to them.

Free, authentic action happens when I am not in agency OR counter-agency, but when I have healthy boundaries and am able to freely accept or reject others’ wishes or perspectives based on my own genuine desires.

THE BREATH

The breath is the sacred connection between the body and the mind. We can communicate with our bodies by breathing deep, at a certain pace, or in a certain pattern.

For instance, if I am overcharged, deep, slow breathing can help me lower my charge, release blocked energy, expand my container, or return to a grounded, parasympathetic state.

My body is in a parasympathetic state when it feels safe, calm, and secure, with a comfortable charge and good boundaries. In this state I will be open to feeling my emotions and sensations, physically relaxed, and sense flow in my energy.

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brand-strategy-consulting-blog · 3 years

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To provide you with concepts that make you go whoopee, the strategist will research your brand, study what your idea is and what you would possibly be offering in terms of worth to your customers. As part of the job, strategists will also keep an eagle's eye on the competitors. They will observe competitors, examine brands just like yours, have a glance at their communication and maybe the strategic approaches to position your brand to become THE BRAND.

This often entails conducting surveys, together with competitor analysis to understand the voids in the market that your brand can fill. Get methods, ideas, and instruments for growing your firm’s model with Hinge’sBrand Building Guide for Professional Services Firms. Finally, you'll use your positioning statement as inspiration for headlines and persuasive language on your website and in advertising collateral. To learn more about uncovering your differentiators, try our free Differentiation Guide for Professional Services Firms. Also, I recommend you learn this weblog post on aggressive differentiation.

The complete process of creating such providers deals with ideas rather than bodily objects. The testing course of varies depending on whether or not the service is equipment-based or people-based, but in both case it's tough to do check marketing or different kinds of market analysis on the model new service. Customers should be enticed into experiencing the service, and this usually requires major marketing efforts. Thus the worth of introducing a successful new service may be fairly high as a result of it is difficult to predict what service concepts might be understandable and engaging to the shopper. Probably less is understood about the usage of price as a strategic weapon in service companies than about any of the opposite strategic variables.

The finest logos actually look compelling, they’re aesthetically pleasing, and they’re memorable. They shouldn’t be overly advanced and must be simple to decipher visually. But more than all of this, one of the best logos speak to the brand itself. One essential component to that is the artwork and science that both go into logo design. Your emblem is more than your name, it says one thing about who you're, and it represents you when folks come into contact with it.

Establishing your self as athought leaderis one of the effective marketing instruments for impartial contractors. Blogging via your individual web site or via a channel corresponding to LinkedIn is a creative outlet that permits you to share your experience and attain an viewers you may not join with through traditional advertising strategies. Speaking opportunities are one other method to promote your name and voice. Reach out to skilled organizations, conferences, and local media and provide to share your expertise. Looking to grow your business by way of new merchandise and services?

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autumnblogs · 4 years

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Day 43: Openbound

We’ll principally be doing Act 6 Intermission 3 today, so expect lots of pictures in this one!

Believe it or not, I initially didn’t like Openbound very much; I felt like it kind of dragged on my first readthrough, and generally had a pretty hard time getting myself to care about the Dancestors. They’re a pretty unsympathetic bunch.

Then again, lots of Homestuck characters are pretty unsympathetic! I’ve been really feeling that in the second half, as retrospect allows me to view a lot of secondary characters through the lens that we’re not intended to get attached to them.

That said, Openbound is actually pretty key to helping us understand the second half of the comic, I think, and makes explicit a lot of the themes that it explores, and how it builds upon the first half.

I think that the theme of Openbound as a self-contained work within Homestuck that we can use as a tool to decode Homestuck can be concisely stated like this; “Nostalgia and a desire for unity with the past causes toxic stagnation.”

So, aside from the introduction that we’ve already gotten to Meenah through the short conversation she had with the other kids, this is our first real opportunity to get to know her! Boy is she obsessed with money.

Money, like Cake, is a symbol that is associated with the Aspect of Life. As an aspect principally associated with Raw Power - the power to do what you want, unfettered by the stringent restrictions that are associated with Doom - it’s natural that Life would be associated with money.

The origin of money in history is pretty nebulous; it precedes the invention of writing, so any theory concerning its invention is ultimately conjecture. What I think is interesting about money is that the move toward a monetary economy in history mostly (but not always) happens as a result of the fact that it is way more efficient to collect taxes; the state mints standard coins, only accepts taxes in the form of standard coins, and propagates them into the economy by buying goods and services from the market.

It’s a tool of government, and even though Meenah may abrogate her inheritance, the Princess can’t escape her birthright. Money offers control, security... and power. What makes all of this extra interesting is that money is effectively worthless in the afterlife. Here, there’s actually nothing for her to really buy or spend it on; anyone can dream up whatever they want with ease.

It’s a nice bit of callback humor that Meenah has the same reaction to discovering the Thorns of Oglogoth that Rose does, but unlike Rose, Meenah actually does destroy them on the spot.

For being so headstrong and dangerous, there are ways in which Meenah is really pretty surprisingly sensible.

Lord English can destroy ghosts - this has always been a pretty disturbing thought for me. I may have said something to this effect before, but if I haven’t I’m a free-thinking Theist - raised in the Church, and largely independent in terms of beliefs, but I’m still pretty convinced that there is some kind of life after death. It doesn’t bother me nearly as much in works that have final death as a general presupposition, but it always bothers me when some kind of eternal life after death exists in a setting, and can be arbitrarily denied by evil beings with some power or another, like how some Demons and Liches can destroy or devour a soul in Dungeons and Dragons.

In Homestuck though, it fits with the themes established by the ways in which everyone God Tiers - spiritual power can be pretty arbitrary, and generally signifies very little about the moral worth of the one who has it; it does not intrinsically elevate the one who has it. It fits with its general criticism of power and the powerful, whether that’s the Mayor’s hatred of Kings, or the associating of corporatism with the worst parts of Jane’s characterization and Crockercorp in general.

Lord English has the power to destroy ghosts and end the lives of immortals not because he has attained to any kind of heightened spiritual awareness. He’s just some douchebag who through cosmic serendipity was in the right place at the right time to become basically all-powerful.

I adore Meenah’s spark. Who gives a fuck if Lord English is invincible? She knows exactly what she’s going to do when she gets her hands on him, and she’s got a plan from the outset. I think it’s also interesting the way that even though Meenah is absolutely taken by the spectacle of power, it isn’t sufficient to make her want to join up with English. Only soft power works on Meenah Peixes; emotional intimacy, friendship... keeping her entertained. All of these are the actual way to moderate her violent and dangerous personality.

While neither Rose nor Meenah is a parallel character to either Gendo or Rei from Neon Genesis Evangelion (I think, actually, that Dirk is the character who most strongly parallels both of them), this bit reminds me of the way that Ritsuko describes both of them;

Rose says of herself and Meenah, “You’re not very good at this, are you? ... talking to people.”

Ritsuko says of Gendo and Rei, “They’re not very adept (at)... living, I suppose.”

The same can really be said of a lot of characters in Homestuck, particularly the ones who primarily find their identity in some form of power-seeking. Whether it’s Rose, or Dirk, or Meenah, or even someone as innocuous as Jake, none of them is particularly adept at living.

Rose is pretty conciliatory with Meenah; given her attraction to danger and darkness, it’s probably not surprising that she makes such an obvious pass at Meenah in spite of the fact that she probably knows what their relationship was in another life.

Further evidence that Rose is the horniest Homestuck character.

“you know how it is with ancestors

they just kind of hold this inexplicable power over you”

Dave continues to progress down the path of not giving a shit, as did Sollux before him.

He’s not quite to the level of reluctance that he eventually adopts, of choosing to just not engage with English at all.

Gods are, to some extent, aware of the various narrative forces that govern their existence.

About the only thing this piece of nasty trash has in common with Karkat is the extent to which they both blabber, and he helps create contrast with the other, somewhat more likable dancestors. Kankri is pretty much openly contemptible, and really in the worst way. I’m almost inclined to call him a concern troll because of the extent to which his verbal essays exist purely to make him feel better about himself. Any time it comes time for him to listen to people who historically actually suffered from the systems they were involved in, Kankri shows his true colors, slut-shaming and misogynistic.

Unsurprisingly, The Other Thief is also the vector for English’s ideology in her session, “turning us against each other to make us stronger.” While Kurloz may be a worshipper of English, and Damara may have thrown in her lot with the demon because of her nihilistic despair, Meenah (rather like Dirk!) is clearly driven toward a life of violence, and restless action for its own sake.

Now we’re starting to get some insight into Feferi’s style of rulership, which in turn, probably gives us some insight into Jane. For Feferi, leadership means taking power away from the people you’re leading if it seems like they have the potential to hurt themselves (or to be a drain on society if left to their own devices). It represents a violation of agency, perhaps not so severe as the kind that Vriska perpetrates usually.

Feferi and Jane are the sort of people, I think, who want to create a perfect world - but it’s important to them that they’re the one who’s creating that world, and less important that the world is perfect for anyone in particular. Just perfect.

https://homestuck.com/story/5288

John’s whole self-conception, and especially his conception of himself as a man, and someone who might be growing up to take on the same roles as his Father, is tied up in the icons of dadliness and masculinity in the movies that he likes.

So we should expect that his disillusionment with his past will change the way that he thinks about his future, and what he’s going to do with it. It’s a shame that this line of questioning never goes anywhere in Homestuck proper, but I’ll use it as evidence in the “John/June Egbert is trans” folder. Reminds me of how my decisive lack of affinity for the Boy Scouts serves as a nice little retrospective bit of evidence in my own trans narrative.

Based on the number of trans Eagle Scouts I know, I feel like there’s a certain extent to which it be like, a fast-track to figuring that out about yourself, like, you tried all the boy stuff and just decided, nope! Not for me.

https://homestuck.com/story/5290

Man, especially if we continue to read this section of Homestuck as conflating the characters and the audience, this whole section reads as John not just having a meltdown about Con Air, but also generally having a meltdown about his own story so far - everything he’s done in Sburb, etc. It just all feels lame and shitty in retrospect, when it was something that was kind of exciting at the time, at least up until the point where his loved ones all dropped dead there at the end.

It turns out that there was nothing particularly edifying about John’s suffering.

https://homestuck.com/story/5300

Teens can be such monsters. It’s the anniversary of Bro’s Death too. Davesprite is probably as broken up about that as John is about Dad, but it’s hard for boys/men to talk about that kind of thing with each other.

Cronus is even more of an incel than Eridan. He may be the most singularly contemptible character in Paradox Space. Do I hate anyone more than Cronus? No, I think I do not.

I won’t have a lot to say about the middle leg of Openbound; it’s relatively empty of substance, and not much that happens in it is ever relevant again compared to the first and second legs.

I like to think that this leg of the journey is, more than anything, a chance to ruminate on some joke characters who were already parodies; parodies of parodies, a joke made at the expense of an existing joke. The kind of thing Dirk Strider would write, basically.

Hey check it out, the Year of Our Lord 2012, and Andrew was starting to show some mild sensitivity in his choice of words. Just mild enough to have the lowest character in the story show a tiny bit of sensitivity himself.

This leg of the adventure does give us some more insight into Meenah’s character. Just like Vriska, she’s all about being a hardass super-murder, until she starts causing problems for the people she actually cares about.

Being Evil Sucks.

This is a really weird sentiment for Karkat to have in light of like, everything else about the latter half of the comic. I mean, he hasn’t exactly had the epiphany yet that the ideas that he has about being a leader are kind of awful and shitty, so it’s possible that he’s talking the Condesce up to avoid thinking about that. IDK.

He also immediately claims he’ll leave behind the meteor to go and join Meenah’s army, so maybe Karkat is just in a pretty low place in general? That tracks.

Karkat’s little conversation with Terezi explains at the two thirds mark of Openbound exactly what this whole thing is about.

Almost the entire second half of the comic is about examining the character’s guardians, and their relationships with them. The Guardians - Grandpa and Bro especially - are hyped up to be these outrageous badasses, both in-and-out of universe, and their ambivalent relationship with their kids creates this ambiguity throughout the comic about whether the kids are worthy, whether they’re living up to their parents’ legacy - and it’s the kind of thing that plagues them throughout.

But the thing is, Ancestors can be lame, or even terrible. They’re not really anything to aspire to, and the image of success that they project onto the world is one of learned confidence, and usually that only if they’ve really managed to make it.

Even the best parents are flawed, and instead of trying to measure up to them, growing up healthy usually means learning what those flaws are, and committing not to reproduce them.

Parents don’t suck; they can be awesome, and generally speaking, for a long part of our life, they’re all we’ve got. It’s hard not to love them. But we shouldn’t turn them into idols.

(On another note, it’s one hundred percent fitting for Terezi’s Ancestor to be an outrageous coolgirl. Terezi is perpetually anxious about being cool enough, the sort of person who is breathlessly fun to be around, who commands the attention of everyone around her, and she’s surrounded by them wherever she goes.)

https://homestuck.com/story/5340

John’s distress leads him to dream about his dead Dad, and boy is he angry. He spends a lot of the second half of the comic seething in rage directed at whomever is responsible for all the suffering he and his friends endure, dishing out beatdowns toward those responsible, but I’ve never gotten the impression that these little outbursts of his are particularly rewarding for him.

https://homestuck.com/story/5358

That was quite a blow. He knocked out like a tenth of Jack’s health bar.

https://homestuck.com/story/5387

Depending on where you’re standing some really totally different things can matter to different people. From Vriska’s point of view, the things that happened back when she was alive totally don’t matter at all anymore - only the matter of Cosmic importance that is fighting Lord English.

But the stuff that matters to the people she left behind, and the suffering she’s responsible for - especially for putting Terezi in a position where she had to slay her - all of that still matters very much to the people who are alive, which is what makes her self-conception as someone who is on the side of the angels now really... not sit well.

She clearly hasn’t changed all that much. She just thinks, as usual, that now that things are even, now that the score is settled, things can go back to the way they were before.

https://homestuck.com/story/5388

Tavros and Vriska are really bad for each other in general. Like, it’s not good for her to be around someone as pliable as Tavros is, and it’s plain to everybody that it’s not good for him to be around her either; whenever he’s around her, he apes her bogus inflated self-esteem in all the worst ways.

https://homestuck.com/story/5397

Tavros’ explanation of what Vriska does suggests that storytelling has become kind of a ritual for her - a means by which she is attempting to connect with her Ancestor, by performing the same actions she is, miming her - still the same old Vriska.

That’ll be all for now. Cam signing off for now - join me for the thrilling conclusion to Openbound tomorrow, Same Cam Time, Same Cam Channel.

#commentary #neon genesis evangelion #liveblogging

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monkey-network · 5 years

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Eizouken v. Ratatouille: Dawn of the Creative Drive

WARNING: This critique will contain spoilers for Eizouken episodes 1-4 and the film Ratatouille. Also this is long. And yes, I had to make this or else I would’ve exploded. Enjoy.

Youtube’s TheRealJims made a video review of pixar’s Ratatouille not long ago, check it out by the way, and one thing about it caught me deep. He described Ratatouille as “a progressive kind of film, not in the political sense, but a very forward looking movie.” This line stuck with me as I begun to watch Keep Your Hands Off the Eizouken, an anime about a high schooler, inspired as a child, working her way to create anime with her friends. It wasn’t until episode 4 where mind threads started to knot, where that line about the pixar flic started to click with this anime in a way I’ve never thought of before. As such, I found that these two have a great thematic link, a connected warp between the creative minds of adults and children. Eizouken and Ratatouille do the remarkable in giving us the bouts and beauties to having a creative, “progressive” drive, and I wanted to explore how they stack up differently and similarly. And with that,,,,

The Ignition

The beginning scene of Eizouken where Midori see her inspiring anime for the first time is personally my favorite moment of the anime so far, borderline perfect. Like Remy, we already see her have this extrinsic passion for drawing once she arrives at her jungle gym of a newfound home; crude as they look, we see her seedling talent in jotting the details of her world onto paper. It’s then when she watches Future Boy Conan where her passion becomes etched in stone intrinsically. Miyazaki was her Gusteau, the bonafide inspiration that, taking it all in, made a simple hobby into a driven pursuit. Ratatouille more or less streamlines this whole moment with narration (makes sense cuz it’s a film) but they nonetheless bring home how a talent can be solidified if given the right push. Even if you didn’t have a desire to have a fulfilling career from it, you can’t deny that there was a moment in your life where something (be it a show, game, book, etc.) was the foundation to your biggest hobby, which then allowed you to explore it more as you grew up.

One thing to note is how Ratatouille handles Remy’s character with his interest. In spite of his palette gift, he doesn’t become a snob or too good towards his rat family; there’s not a moment where he claims he knows better than his skeptic father, they just idealistically disagree and their connection remains intact throughout the film. He has taste and knowledge, but isn’t smug about it. Midori is rounded the same way, she doesn’t push Kanamori or anyone to accept that anime is the best thing ever, and there’s that layer of anxiety to her love of anime that humanizes her aspirations a little more than Remy. It was a lot easier for Remy to be a cook than it was for Midori to make anything beyond concept art, or be sociable about it for that matter. At the same time, both remain humble in their ignited desires and understandably had to deal with an initial drawback to pursuing their dreams which is where...

The Helping Hands

Now, I’m not saying Midori is puppeting Tsubame or that Tsubame is a subversion of the whole rags to riches trope. I say like Linguini, Tsubame is one of the bridges for Midori to live out her desire, with the added bonus of being just as on board in scaffolding Asakusa’s passion to its most palpable form with her own dream of being an animator. Midori and Remy, be it their figurative or literal limitations, needed the likes of Linguini and Mizusaki to make things come to fruition. Even when Linguini doesn’t desirably wanna be a top chef himself, he witnesses Remy’s skill and is willing to put himself out there to work together and make the best cooking at the restaurant. Likewise, Tsubame is more than willing to work with Midori if it means not being forced into doing what her parents want and sharing that pathos of anime with a similar mind. And unlike Ratatouille, it helps that Tsubame is already adept in animating; I’ll talk to more on this later, but I’m glad Ōwara didn’t force us a character that wants to be somebody but has done nothing for herself. That’s what I noticed with both of these features, there’s a great semblance of support when passion is there but can’t progress singularly. There can/will be people out here to help you and they will come when you least expect it. Linguini and Tsubame both work well as the muscle of the cast, the character that does the heavy lifting in bringing the meal or anime to life. As such, we essentially have our director and the more hands on conductor of the project, but this all can’t be done without the producer.

Colette and Kanamori serve well as the anchor for our respective characters; we can’t just have the four characters go nuts with whatever, there needs to be some stability, a reality to the ambitious madness that can come with creating. Kanamori isn’t teaching the two any ground rules of anime, but she understands the analytics and guidelines to keeping things on track. Colette helps Linguini, by extension Remy, on the known etiquette to being productive in the kitchen, the same can be said for Kanamori in helping Tsubame and Midori in getting the film done clean and timely. While making a meal isn’t the same as making a whole cartoon, the ins and outs of getting things done have a parallel organized track. There’s especially more to making animation, especially on a deadline, and I’m glad Eizouken doesn’t shy away from giving you the thought process in what might go on behind the scenes; it practically gives you the ropes on what could happen if you were in each of the trio’s shoes.

Additionally, these two are the most resolute of the three characters; they stick to the mission understanding where Remy and Midori are philosophically, and Tsubame and Linguini are fundamentally, coming from. She and Kanamori exhibit the practical outsider, the one to truly stick their neck out, don’t put up with bullshitting, to push the creative drive further. Both see the weight that comes to production and while Colette has her fallback in the 3rd act, they make sure everything goes as planned. They truly practice what they preach and are the glue that holds things together. The only disadvantage Colette has is that she lacks a relationship with Remy, it’s mostly indirect at the end while Asakusa and Kanamori are initially on better terms since they were already close friends. But with our characters on the move, there’s hardly such thing as a perfect run,,,,

The Fallback

This part is where Eizouken and Ratatouille truly divide because the problems that arises for our characters come in differently. Ratatouille has more outside factors coming in with the fact that Remy is a rat and is pulled between his connection with humans vs his own kind. Eizouken is more in-fighting between the three where Tsubame and Midori’s ambitions have to face off against Kanamori’s more realistic shut downs and options. Eizouken also presents the compromises that can come with being a creator where Ratatouille reasonably montages through the hardships that can come with human puppetry and becoming an instant hit in the kitchen. Success is portrayed more consistently in Ratatouille than in Eizouken, which focuses more on the progress. It’s obvious given that, again, making food is not as time and energy consuming as making a feature; we see that animation is a lot more than just drawing all your ideas onto the equivalent to a flip book.

To sidetrack a bit, I came to agree with Jim that Monsters University is the antithesis to Ratatouille where the hard work that one puts into their dreams doesn’t mean imminent or easily delivered success. It’s a bizarro film in that, while not breaking new ground plotwise, MU is grimly realistic in that your passionate drive won’t always lead to getting the spoils you exactly want. Eizouken cleverly sits the middle of the two, where success is achievable if you put the effort in, but that effort realistically won’t go exactly how you want. Mizusaki wants everything hand-drawn and Asakusa wants a story, but come to understand that shortcuts need to happen if they want to get it done by the council meet. Kanamori isn’t crushing their aspirations for the hell of it, she makes it clear that time and the student body are not on their side. As opposed to Ratatouille, the final boss that are the critic(s) are notably secondary to getting the project done somehow. As mentioned before, I’m glad Ōwara made Tsubame already apt in animating because we can focus less on her being able to do it, more on the limitations that come with doing it. She has the skill, but has to bargain on her capabilities with what’s necessary as we see the tolls that come with the job.

Where I say these two collide somehow is the facet of the outsider putting the effort in for their goals. Remy and Midori are gifted and near encyclopedic in their trades, but are reasonably setback by both internal conflicting question of how far are they willing to go in exercising their drives. Remy more external than Midori since he could literally be killed if the truth was out too soon, but there is that self doubt in both of them where it can be hard to imagine that anyone can cook or that creating the great world is possible. It’s near the end of the arcs where they truly stand up for their beliefs and I appreciate that both handle the determined directing of our MCs in a respectable, pretty relatable way. They finally get to call the shots. They never sacrifice what could’ve been for what could be dauntingly realistic either; both offer an organic sense of optimism. But, with this optimism, comes the endgame that truly puts it all to the test in...

The Moment of Truth

Mr. Anton Ego, Skinner, and the Student Council are undoubtedly the final piece to these puzzles. It’s smart that they’re only present by the end of the arcs, only mentioned initially as the antagonistic force Remy and the Eizouken need to convince; they didn’t need to shoehorn their looming gavels any further. Naturally Skinner parallels the council president, a disingenuous hothead that antagonizes our MCs in a more unfair light while secretary Sakaki represents Ego, an intellectually honest person with actual standards and can see the forest for the trees. Eizouken’s episode 4 perfectly conceives why Kanamori is the boss, as she effortlessly confronts the allegations against them; not so much bluffing as she is spotlighting the council’s rash judgement. Unfortunately Kanamori can only debunk them so far, which leads to Midori overcoming her anxiety to demand that they’re given a chance. It’s great that Asakusa can suffer in silence for only so long before pushing herself to say something. This falls in line with Remy’s dad showing his son the grim realistic front of humans and rats before coming back to help him when he realizes Remy’s determinism. It’s like the rat says, the only way to go, “With luck, forward.”

Like the scene where Ego eats the titular dish, the moment we finally see the anime in full is almost disgustingly perfect. It’s fitting that a riot was going on before the presentation only for the action packed film to essentially come to life and throw chaos right back at everybody with powerful air waves, tank shells, and the tank itself jumping off the screen, literally blowing the audience away. Eizouken has literally more louder of a scene than Ratatouille’s, but both offer that climatic impart equally hard in their respective moments. They don’t shy away from grasping that immersive feeling of what you loved the most about food and/or animation, those invested in the film/series are basically with Ego and the student audience as those moments happen. It kinda hurts the brain how perfect these two moments are. Eizouken and Ratatouille, in a meta sense, weren’t successful only because they poke at our nostalgia or love, but of how they go the mile to convey it significantly. Ratatouille by the end, thanks to Ego, provides the apt idea of open-mindedness; that greatness can come from anywhere. Eizouken does this but adds the step that being open-minded can come with seeing what the efforts of that determined greatness can lead to. And with this, we see how it ends, or how it begins...

The Step Forward

I mentioned this before, but I loved that immediately after their demo reel finished, they weren’t worrying about any approval from the council or audience but discussing about what to improve on next. We see the soon boundless enthusiasm of the trio when, regardless of , they want to improve and do more as a team, all while the secretary approves the club in the hopes to see the fruitful potential. Compare this to Ratatouille for while Remy succeeds in convincing his family and Ego of his talent, they don’t sacrifice realism too much. Gusteau’s is naturally shut down, rats and humans aren’t suddenly living together by the end. At the same time, the movie wasn’t really about that, but about achieving small victories, optimistically grasping that palpable progress. Like Eizouken, Ratatouille leaves us with the progressive prospect that there’s the potential for more, for better.

To quote Jim once more, I say what makes both Eizouken and Ratatouille work fundamentally is that they keep the finger on the pulse of their respective message(s) while still creating enjoyable moments; they don’t sacrifice the fun of getting things right for pushing why it matters. They don’t sellout the bonds between our characters for irreverent romps in the kitchen or studio. Both offer a meaningfulness to their respective crafts, blending its many flavors into a well made dish that explores what it means to create and the steps that come with it. What it means to have passion and utilize that to its capable extent. What it means to enjoy a meal while watching an impressively finished production. They’re also very well animated; thanks Yuasa and Bird.

#keep your hands off eizouken!#keep your hands off the motion pictures club!#eizouken #eizouken anime #KYHOE #Ratatouille #pixar #disney #anime #animation #critique #analysis #Good Stuff #long post

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batmansymbol · 4 years

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Hello!! Just wanted to say I haven't enjoyed plot in fanfic like this ever before (referring to disappearances). I read the whole thing in one go, last night ... Or should I say this morning? You are very very enjoyable writer to read. I can't wait for the next update, which I hope is soon hehe. I was wondering - what made you title the fic that way? It's a very interesting title. Thanks for all you work! Have a good day. ❤️

sweet anon!! thank you so much, i’m thrilled you’re enjoying it. and we love plot-heavy fics in this house!!!

this will be a VERY self-indulgent answer, lol, because i have a lot of Feelings about the title (and i rarely come up with titles i really love!!). it’s meant to ricochet off the events of the fic in a bundle of ways. obviously we have the main literal “disappearance” in chapter one, draco’s death being faked, after which he vanishes from the wizarding world. and wartime demands that all the characters disguise and conceal themselves almost constantly, so there are many smaller literal disappearances - every time they Disillusion themselves or slip under the Cloak, eg.

but then more figuratively i think disappearance is a resonant concept when it comes to redemption, and in particular draco’s redemption, because it emphasizes that parts of yourself must be erased in order to make room for what’s next. for every positive new thing in his life, something must be painfully shed.

i’ve also been having fun playing with ideas of disappearance and reappearance through hermione’s perspective! to me, these concepts feel intrinsically tied to perception. who is seeing you? who no longer sees you? who is the person who looks at you and knows what you are? i think from inside, it’s often difficult to look at yourself and say, “okay, part of me has gone forever.” so, draco’s redemption, his repeated conflict to become a better person, and the ways in which he is winning that war against himself ... these are things that will be seen most fully, i think, by the people around him, who can fully see the cruel and malicious behaviors that have disappeared.

lastly, the length and mood of the title felt Correct to me... moodwise, the idea of plural disappearances, multiple disappearances contained within one person, feels lonely and lost to me. & sometimes you’ve got to wander around in the mists before you feel like you’ve found yourself, u kno? it’s also a long, grandiose, extravagant title, and i knew the fic was gonna be long and extravagant lmao.

update-wise, i am hoping soon. god. i think it’s probably just safest to assume i’m still on hiatus until i post saying i’m done with deadline. and i’ll probably start putting updates right into the AO3 description if i miss deadline again.

#reply #disappearances #Anonymous

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lady-plantagenet · 4 years

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Shakespeare Appreciation Week

TUESDAY, JULY 14th: Favourite Plays Day: Hamlet (Yes I know I’m basic)

For most of my teenage and young adult life, I’ve been wondering what it is about Hamlet that has drawn me so much to him in particular. The tension between action and contemplation was an obvious one for me, but looking back at it now (more 15th century history orientated than before) I realise that with the ‘method in his madness’ he thematically reminds me of the perils faced by some of my favourite historical figures. So on reflection, my love for Shakespeare’s most famous protagonist has rekindled and redefined itself. Behold an old take of mine on whether Shakespeare presents Hamlet as sane or mad, admirable or not? (At least up to Act 3) @harry-leroy .

It is without a doubt that it was Shakespeare’s intent to portray Hamlet in a multi-faceted way, pertaining of a lot of paradoxes, such as Hamlet being both mindful of Ophelia for example warning Polonius about letting his daughter be blinded to the majesty that he projects: ‘Let her not walk I’th’sun’, yet at the same time condemning her for simply exhibiting more than one personality: ‘God hath given you one face and you make yourselves another’, which ironically is a central feature of his character. Therefore in many ways Hamlet is supposed to be portrayed as both admirable and mad to us the audience, as his character consistently changes depending with whom he speaks to, such as the ghost of his father in contrast to his mother, Polonius and the rest of the Danish court, as he is sometimes admirable in the way he accepts the moral responsibility that he has as heir presumptive of Denmark has, while simultaneously mad, as he is seen in some of his interactions and within his introspective soliloquys.

On the one hand, Shakespeare’s intentions to depict Hamlet as a protagonist pertaining admirable qualities can clearly be seen through the multiple times he draws parallels between Hamlet and his storyline and Greek and Roman mythology, for example when he sees himself as Pyrrhus, who is a character that the term ‘pyrrhic victory’ derives from, the drawing of such a parallel subliminally portrays Hamlet in an admirable way to some degree, as it transmits Hamlet’s concern for morality in himself and others, because it shows how he acknowledges that even if he like Pyrrhus were victorious – in his case victory is avenging his father by bringing himself to conquer his ponderous nature, and murder Claudius -, his victory would still have moral ramifications for both himself and those around him, which is one of the main reasons why he procrastinates his vengeance despite wanting it so. For example, when he says in Act 1 Scene 2, line 244: ‘Though hell itself should gape’, he supresses his curiosity as a scholar, and wish for vengeance as the son of his beloved father – both roles that dominate his life and characters – in order to acknowledge how unorthodox this encounter would be, as suggested by the explored themes in that scene such as heaven, hell, death, the after-life and purgatory, which all pertain to a thaumaturgy which is a theme that would have been immediately linked to witchcraft and blasphemy at that time, and it is in many ways admirable for Hamlet to be troubled by the news of his father’s ghost returning instead of immediately trying to see it, without considering the moral implications, which can also be seen by how suspicious he is at the onset, questioning Horatio and Bernardo fervently about the smallest details: ‘pale, or red?’, ‘looked he frowningly’ and ‘armed say you’, while the stichomythic nature of the sharp and short exchanges between the three men, further emphasizes Hamlet’s suspicious and agitated approach towards occurrence, as he firstly maturely analyses if it is indeed his father they saw, before committing the heretic act of speaking to a ghost, who could judging by its description of the sun – often a symbol of clarity and bounteousness – as ‘sulph’rous and tormenting flames’, be a creature of hell and alluding to the dark side, instead of heaven. Yet, he himself often compares himself to the ‘sun’, whether intended for the pun between ‘son’ and ‘sun’, or when describing his relationship to the world and Denmark. For example, in Act 2 Scene 2 when he encounters Polonius and warns him to cease being his ‘fishmongering’ self and to"Let her not walk i' the sun: conception is a blessing: but not as your daughter may conceive" in Act 2 Scene 2, line 184 to 185, which is also delivered in prose instead of the more scholarly and sophisticated albeit removed iambic pentameter, which could suggest that he is speaking plainly and simply at this point, and his advice to Polonius should not be taken as one more of his paradoxes and mind-games. Hamlet’s delivering of that line though very strange in nature - as it is jux-ta-posed with the gruesome imagery of charion and maggots, which connote filth and deaths – can be one example of him exhibiting an admirable quality as he realizes that as ‘the sun’ he is in many ways Denmark and has a moral duty to act on what is better for everyone and the people around him than his own selfishness, as Polonius’ aside: ‘still harping on my daughter’ acts as a clarifier to the audience, that Hamlet still harbors feelings for Ophelia, which makes it clear that him warning Polonius to not ‘let her not walk I’ the sun’, serves as a warning to not let her be blinded by his position and the high-standard to which he is being held by Denmark and Ophelia as the heir presumptive: ‘the glass of fashion’, ‘the mould of form’, as he condemns himself for being so submissive to his own feelings as he calls himself ‘a rogue and peasant slave’, for not being able to take up the role of kingship like the actors ‘could force his (their) soul’ and pretend to weep for Hecuba despite meaning nothing to them, and thus making him more admirable as he realizes his own selfishness and thus does not vie for the position of a king or to selfishly love Ophelia.

On the other hand, the frequency to which soliloquys form Hamlet’s dialogues could connote a certain degree of madness as the constantly introspective nature of Hamlet’s dialogue shows how far he lives inside his mind, which intrinsically suggests that he sees and experiences life to some subjectively, which can connote a certain degree of madness. This is primarily manifested by Hamlet’s constant use of paradoxes throughout the play for example in Act 1, Scene 4, Line 85, when he tells Horatio and Marcellus “I’ll make a ghost of him that lets me”, where ‘let’, which meant ‘hinder’ now means the exact opposite to ‘allow’ which depicts Hamlet as a very confused character as the diction of his speech is ambiguous in meaning, which often can also confuse the audience, getting them into the somewhat mad state of mind that Hamlet is in, another example that illustrates this is for instance: ‘you are the queen, your husbands’ brother’s wife’ that Hamlet says when talking to Gertrude, which not only serves to highlight the morbidity of the union of Claudius and Gertrude but also makes a paradox out of a fact, which serves to further blur the factual world of the outside and the paradoxical inner-world that Hamlet primarily resides in, which serves to further perpetuate the idea that Hamlet is in fact mad and not just play-acting, which he is clearly not capable of –switching roles like the actors have – which would explain the spiteful language that he uses when condemning the players such as: ‘monstrous’ and ‘horrid speech’. Additionally, in his encounters with characters like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (of whom he didn’t know were spies) Hamlet’s general mood despite changing: he is much more amicable towards the two men, then people whom he is spiteful towards such as his mother, Claudius and Polonius, still retains its air of madness, in both the language that it contains and the rhythm of the line. For example, he proclaims to them: ‘I am but mad north-north-west: when the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw’ in Act 2, Scene 2, Line 402-403, this which is seemingly a clever jape, aimed to show Rosencrantz and Guildenstern that, he (Hamlet) knows they are spying on him, and that beneath his ‘antic disposition’ he is perfectly aware of everything around him, on the other hand the completely offbeat comparison between a ‘hawk and a handsaw’, whose similar sounds no doubt brought their jux-ta-position in Hamlet’s head despite the inappropriate comparison, in addition to the weird repetition of ‘north-north’ in the direction and allusion to something as unpredictable and flimsy as the ‘southerly wind’ can suggest an internal disorientation, which could also reflect an internal perplexity in the construction of his intended jape towards Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and thus, an element of madness and disorder within his mind, which makes this intended clever remark about how he noticed that they were spying on him, into more of a joke on him, as the way it actually comes out of his head, would not make sense to the audience/reader.

In conclusion, Shakespeare clearly intended to portray Hamlet as a multi-facetted character pertaining of many different identities and moods, which often appear erratic and baffling to both the recipient (character dialoguing with him) of his speech and the spectator/reader of the book, yet not so obvious as to make it clear that he is mad. Shakespeare further confuses us by having Hamlet proclaim that “As I perchance hereafter shall think meet to put an antic disposition on”, which leads the reader to constantly question when he is pretending or actually being mad, putting the reader in a similarly maddening and blurred disposition as Hamlet, which therefore makes it increasingly difficult to completely understand him. In addition, Shakespeare’s frequent depictions of Hamlet’s noble and admirable qualities such as his need to consider his moral responsibility and role, in addition to his sometimes selflessness, for example when he warned Polonius to keep Ophelia way from him, and warder her off on the grounds of being multi-faced, which he himself is, further mares the image that the reader developed of Hamlet, as he is a lot like the paradoxes in his dialogues: both selfish and selfless, both lucid and mad. Therefore, my overall view is that Hamlet is overall still pretending, but his inner-fight with his inactivity and procrastination in exacting his revenge, is driving him closer to madness, but not in the conventional sense.

#theplaysthething2020 #hamlet #I'll let you guess which historical figures I referred to #A young girl's treatise on madness I suppose

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bombardthehq · 4 years

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Deleuze and Empiricism Bruce Baugh, written 1993, read 10/06/2020 - ??

a short article which characterizes Deleuze as an empiricist.

1. intro

Deleuze was an empiricist, but wanted to meet Hegels challenge to empiricism - so rather than arguing all knowledge is generalized from experience, he wants to "search for real conditions of actual experience" - he does not provide foundations for knowledge claims [Hume: Empiricism & Subjectivity, and an article on Hume in Histoire de Ia philosphie (Paris: Hachette, 1972-73) - find this!]

Deleuze takes as his starting point that "there is a difference between real difference and conceptual difference”

this difference is in "the being of the sensible" [difference & repetition]

2. non-conceptual difference

the 'naive' statement:

the concept makes 'repeatable experiences' possible, experiences which are identical to each other

the sensible is 'the actuality of any given experience' - something sensible can never be repeated, so there is always difference between actualisations

the sensible 'as a specific actualization' always falls outside the concept

the concept 'determines the equivalency among actualization', so they are all actualisations of the same concept, while the sensible grounds their difference

[this is a somewhat straightforward statement of particular vs abstract entities, and Deleuze seems to say that abstract entities, as generalities (every red thing is the same 'red', etc.) are never instantiated in particulars, at least not fully; ie. a nominalist view -- although perhaps what is considered significant here is the ordering of the world into the 'different' (each particular different from another) and the 'repeatable' (these particulars all instantiate the same thing) in the first place]

but...

if this were all, the sensible would just be a platform for actualizing the concept - our representations are just determined by the concept [as it is in Sellars, 'theory-laden observation', etc.] (so the sensible isn't noumena, its 'sense-perception'?)

in this case the sensible is 'explained by' the concept, ie. 'a priori conditions of experence', and therefore the a priori that constitutes knowledge

so whatever particularities of a representation aren't covered by a representation are just extrinsic & accidental, as are sensations themselves [don't quite understand this - wouldn't we require an a priori concept to grasp them in the first place?]

baugh offers a justification in parentheses: 'since..' other qualitatively similar sensations can be 'synthesized into a representation' that would be equivalent 'from the standpoint of knowledge' [confusing to me - different things are synthesized into the same representation? are representations repeatable?; I might need to read more about 'representations']

brief aside~

Representation, in the Oxford Companion to Philosophy ‘T.C.’, written 1995, read 10/06/2020

I couldn’t find a good explanation online so I took the opportunity to wipe the dust off of a physical book I had upstairs, using it for the first time in ten years. Trying to read it and type on a screen almost made me sick - perhaps I should have looked harder for an online explnation...

everything that represents is a representation, so... words, sentences, thoughts and pictures are all representations

representations can represent something that doesn't exist (lets say the word 'unicorn') - but all representations nonetheless do represent *something* [this problem isnt resolved in entry]

so we might say: a pictoral representation represents something by resembling it - but this encounters problems. Resemblance is reflexive (everything resembles itself) and symmetric (identical twins resemble each other), but a representation is neither.

Resemblance doesn't guarantee representation: this newspaper does not 'represent' all the other similar issues... [Nelson Goodman argues resemblance is not relevant to repr., Malcom Budd claims he can defend some resemblance theory of pictoral representations...]

Words obv dont resemble the things they represent, but we might see words as representing by linking to mental pictures

but pictures do not represent intrinsically... Wittgenstein gives a fun example: a picture of a man walking uphill could equally be a picture of a man sliding downhill. Nothing about the picture of itself tells us its a picture of the former or the latter.

So we have three choices:

the picture represents by virtue of being interpreted, so representations represent by being interpreted (not resembling something)

mental pictures 'self-interpret' - in this view representations are primitive & unexplanable

representations represent everything they resemble, so one representation represents countless different things - this too makes representations unexplainable

the 'mental pictures' theory also encounters problems, eg. what does a 'prime number' look like to my mind? how could 'we'll go to the beach next sunday' be a pictoral representation?

so there are many sorts of representation which each require their own explanation

recently representations have become very significant in philosophy of mind & there is hope that neuroscience & psychology could uncover a naturalistic explanation of them

back to Baugh~

so a representation isnt anything special - just anything that refers. Its most relevant to knowledge in the form of 'mental representations'... Deleuze seems to endorse a representation-centric theory of knowledge, where we only come to know things through our mental representations of them (I think this is quite common)

so if the naive account holds, similar particulars can be synthesized into a single representation, eg. several bluebells into one mental picture of 'the bluebell' (this being different from an abstract entity, eg. 'bluebells' as a class?)

so there are a few relevant steps: noumena, then I have a sensation of noumena, then I make a mental representation of that sensation (and might synthesize similar sensations together), and I finally know this representation

[I'm reminded of Ayer discussing Hume here, where impressions (ie. sensations?) must be 'brought under concepts' for us to recognize them by associating them with one another -- but this is a slightly different theory, ie. we have direct acquaintence with noumena and make concepts... This is perhaps really similar to some rationalist who stressed the a priori w/r/t sensation, who I'm not aware of - perhaps Kant! -- this would be why Baugh is careful to say 'a priori *conditions of experience*'] (reading this summary is probably much harder than reading Difference & Repetition)

so basically, a representation can be different from the concept (universal), and this is considered something accidental or extrinsic to it, ie. that this bluebell is shorter than the other is just accidental & its still a bluebell, I know it because it is a bluebell to me. The same operation plays out between sensation and representation (I don't really understand how) [its possible he actually means to explain the same thing in two ways, rather than describe two operations at differnet levels, ie. in order to create a representation (which 'leans on' the a priori concept) I have to discard the particulars of the actualized sensation and grasp only what is general to it, ie. I cannot know this bluebell, only what is 'the bluebell' in this bluebell

Baugh describes this view as 'the Kantian challenge to empiricism' (nailed it) he says there is 'an even greater Hegelian challenge' lurking behind; for Hegel, the particularities of the sensible are not dicarded as accidental, they are instead 'the self-articulation of the Idea', elaborating itself in particular form

for Hegel the concept already contains its particular empirical manifestation, that the two are together the way 'form' and 'content' are in a painting - the form is a 'synthetic organization' of the content

(so the concept is the 'content' and each particular its 'form' - just a particular way of organizing the concept)

Deleuze objects that even if the concept includes empirical content, it cannot already include this actuality (particular)

so for Kant, the empirical is 'what the concept determines would be in a representation if it occured' (so, the flowers of the bluebell would have to always be blue); for Deleuze, the empirical is this actuality itself (the bluebell before me itself), not 'the possibility of existence indicated by the concept' [Baugh writes: see pg 36 of 'Expressionism in Philosophy'; reading this page I dont really understand how its related... Perhaps "substance is once more reduced to the mere possibility of existence, with attributes being nothing but an indication, a sign, of such possible existence." - he's summarizing Spinoza's criticism of Descarte, but we might assume approvingly. Attributes are maybe the 'empirical', the particular - Spinoza argues against treating Substance as a 'genera' of which the attributes are 'species', [ie. where there are attributes 'of' susbtance(?)]; are we to take it that substance is a 'sum of attributes', ie. just empirical reality itself? if so, as Substance empirical reality is undivided, there is no distinction between things in it... (we're back to our point about the ontological equality of all divisions of noumena, ie. the tennis ball, half a tennis ball, etc.; in this case 'attributes' are proper to me, substance has no attributes because there are no distinct 'things' in it, its *just* substance, things are only distinct to me...) - but this seems to be the opposite point than Deleuze's, because for him everything empirical is different, and we make things the same by seeing the concept in them]

Against Hegel we argue that the difference between two performances of Beethoven's 7th Symphony cannot be included in the Idea, because the content (what is performed) is identical but the actual performances differ [is this a good argument? wouldn't the idea/content be 'a performance of the 7th Symphony', and the form be 'each particular performance'?]

for Deleuze the empirical is the difference between each actual performance; this difference makes the repetition of the same work possible

empirical actuality is therefore not possibility -- it is 'the effect of causes' ... 'which are immanent and wholly manifest in the effect through which they are experienced', as Spinoza's God (substance) 'is immanent in his attributes' [now the connection makes sense]

therefore, (here's the juice) "instead of being explicable through the concept ... empirical actuality, 'difference without concept'... [is] expressed in the power belonging to the existent, a sutbbornness of the existent in intuition" [cites Difference & Repetition pg. 23]

difference is a proprety of empirical reality itself, ie. each particular/actualization is different from the others, & it is the concept that organizes them into things which are the same as each other, ie. repeatable entities. each bluebell is already different from the other bluebells, the concept organizes them and declares that they are all bluebells, ie. have some 'being-bluebell' which repeats in them. [I feel like this doesn't overcome our objection to empiricism, ie. what makes this particular the particular? ie., what makes the tennis ball a particular and not half the tennis ball, the ball + some air, etc.? More generally: does it overcome Sellars, 'theory-laden observation', etc.? ie. do we really get the non-foundationalist empiricism promised?]

actually, is Deleuze talking here about noumena or sensation? earlier Baugh says Deleuze "locates difference in the 'being of the sensible'." this might change how we see it, ie. if noumena is undifferentiable stuff - not different or similar in any way - which sensation picks out as 'different stuff', and which are organized into representations which assume similarities between the 'different stuffs'... this makes sense to me.

I think this is the case: "[difference] is first given in sensory consciousness, a receptivity which grasps what comes to thought from 'outside' (DR 74)"

so 'empirical actuality' does NOT = empirical reality/noumena, empirical actuality = the world as grasped by sensation actualities =/= particular just-so, but where particulars are only existent in sensation

is this a 'third way' between foundationalism and 'theory-ladenness'? that noumena does not yet have particulars, but that my sense-perception organizes it into particulars, but this organization is *not* yet inscribed by the conept (theory, etc) - perhaps instead by my perceptive apparatus, the retina and so on? - the concept inscribes only the representation I make of this sensation. Sensation is a sort of passage between noumena and mental representation, perhaps the organization of the 'hailstones on the window' into associations, and their being 'brought under concepts' is their becoming representations, as Ayer says of Hume?

[calling this empiricism feels a little like splitting hairs by now, esp. if there isnt a foundationalist account of knowledge waiting - I'm not sure that Deleuze did call himself an empiricist, though]

Hegel all of a sudden makes our argument about the tennis ball! or something like it.

Hegel believes that the empirical ['pure actuality'] is 'empty' if it is not organized by the concept; every 'this' is as much a this as any other (ie. tennis ball, half a tennis ball...), so there is only 'indeterminacy'. but he takes this as a criticism of the point, ie. empirical reality cant exist without the concept because it would be empty, a 'negative universal', which cannot have being, is nothing. [This goes for both noumena & sensation; ofc Hegel feels that everything in nature is part of the Idea and so on]

This is where Deleuze disagrees with Hegel. Deleuze "rejects the epistemological model on which Hegel's argument is based", that "whatever does not make a difference to knowledge makes no difference" -- rather "the empirical must be thought even if it cannot be known, at least if knowledge is regarded as knowledge of phenomena" [does this line defeat my earlier conjecture about the empirical not being noumena, ie. the empirical is here not phenomena - but does that mean it is noumena, or simply not yet phenomena?]

for deleuze concepts are possible because of empirical actuality, in two senses:

actualities are "the condition of the application of concepts over different cases & so for universality in general" (different actualties are a platform for universal concepts)

it is the "real condition of experience" (I'm guessing: what we really experience; whatever we can expeirence is empirical actualities)

page 4, btw

NOTE: update 15/06/20 I think the bluebell example I use here may have been uninstructive. For Deleuze the sensible that is difference-in-itself is not objects - it is things like ‘substance’, ‘matter’, ‘energy’ (in their scientific uses); MATTER is difference-in-itself, which we coordinate into repeatable objects via the concept

3. multiplicity and externality

taking a siesta...

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zap-writing · 5 years

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The sun sets on another day - TRSNS fanfic

@redstone-sun‘s fic fucked me up so I did what I know and wrote about it to cope asdfghjhgf

the basic summary of this fic: Mumbo has a Bad Day(TM) and we stan Good Guy Iskall

AO3 Link

On days like these, Mumbo felt his guilt like concrete weights tied tight around his throat.

The actual impulses and desires to obey that sanguine call no longer affected him as often as they used to―perhaps out of sheer necessity rather than true recovery, but the fine details didn’t matter. Not to Mumbo at least. The intrusive thoughts and feelings, however, were another story.

Sometimes he wished he could just press a button and fix all of his problems like one would a faulty machine, force him through some kind of psychological reboot. His prescribed process was tedious enough as it was; exposure therapy was a snail’s race by nature, and the transitions were mind-numbingly gradual. From mentions of redstone, to discussions of redstone, to looking at redstone, to touching redstone, to holding redstone, to――

And so on and so forth.

Days turned to weeks, weeks turned to months, and the process was anything but linear and orderly. For a long while it felt like every step he took forward, something would send him three steps and a stumble back. One moment he was setting up semi-complex circuits from memory in his obsidian home, the next Grian would make an off-hand comment about a test contraption one of the hermits built nearly killing him and Mumbo would find himself involuntarily wishing it had.

Those moments scared him. He knew that it wasn’t really him thinking then, that it was just some heinous, corrupted part of him, some deep innate brand of the Red Sun festering behind his eyes. But it wasn’t any less terrifying to catch himself tempted by the crimson voice in the back of his mind that told him he didn’t belong in the overworld, that he needed to continue wiring in the quartz covered plains or he’d never be satisfied, to beg and steal and lie and cheat if it meant getting back to the Sun’s dimension, that if anyone got in his way he had to kill kill kill kill kilL KILL KILL KILL KILL K―

. . .

Those nights, Mumbo felt pain beyond anything he’d known before, from the crescent welts of his fingernails dug deep into the meat of his forearms, to the once-foreign hopelessness that left him wondering why anyone thought he was worth saving anymore.

--------------------------------------------

On days like these, Mumbo found himself convinced that he’d never be released from his blood-stained binds.

It hurt more than he cared to admit, having redstone so intrinsically ruined for him. Sure, he had brute-forced his way into standing it enough to look over blueprints with Iskall and play with it like a child when he was alone, but it was never the same. Nothing compared to the satisfaction of improving on an existing design, nor the pride and excitement of inventing something entirely new.

Inventions. Redstone was such a progressive material, a resource far beyond any of the hermits’ understanding. It was able to do just about anything if only someone could crack the code to get there. Most of them already knew of the wonders it could provide--plenty of the hermits used redstone-based bionics, or at the very least a form of enhancement.

Iskall was no stranger to them, obviously. Perhaps Mumbo shouldn’t have been surprised, then, when the man came to him amidst his wallowing with a stack of crudely arranged notes in hand. He was somehow more chipper and cheeky than usual if the bright smile on his face was anything to go by. There was a proud sort of flourish as he handed the papers to Mumbo, who sat with wariness and confusion. That apprehension, however, was quickly replaced with curiosity.

Blueprints and notes regarding the conception of redstone-powered contraptions and devices would typically be a quick read for Mumbo, but even having been friends with Iskall and Grian for quite some time, there was no way to scan through the chicken-scratch handwriting and less-than discernible doodles in a short amount of time.

Mumbo’s initial attempt at cracking the code that was Iskall’s notes was interrupted not ten seconds in when two loaves of bread, an apple, and a bottle of water was set down in front of him, making him flinch slightly. He stared at the selection for a moment, mouth suddenly dry, before nodding his thanks and reaching for the apple. It was in that instant that Mumbo realized he didn’t remember the last time he had something to eat and swallowed down his embarrassment.

The two men soon fell into silence as Mumbo worked through the notes bit by bit, often pausing to right papers that had somehow folded or flipped upside down in Iskall’s attempt to organize them. Though it took a while, a careful read through informed Mumbo of Iskall’s plans to research a possibility of mechanically repairing his vocal cords.

There was a prominent section on the usage of prismarine crystals and diamond powder to color match the box with his eye prosthetic, and another that explored the possibility of controllable pitch and volume settings.

(In a better scenario, Mumbo would have been terrified at the possibilities that would come with giving Iskall such power, and even now he wondered who the first prank victim would be.)

All of it was quite clearly in the early stages of development, but Mumbo could help but brighten up at the thought of Iskall being able to talk again. It wasn’t something he liked to think about for long or often, but he missed Iskall’s voice. Before the incident, his friend’s laughs and sly comments were one of the things that helped the days go by, and Mumbo knew he wasn’t the only one who thought so. The man deserved his voice and more for what he’d gone through.

But information on Iskall’s voice-box plans came to an unexpected stop halfway through the stack of notes. Suddenly Mumbo was reading through two different handwriting styles about mechanical joints and synthetic muscle fiber and artificial nerve endings and――

He stopped reading. This section contained far too many things he knew too little about.

Head spinning from unfamiliar jargon, he looked up at Iskall in question.

“F...f-for Gri..ian,” came the harsh rumble from Iskall, startling Mumbo in the process. Both of the men stared at each other for a moment, each sheepish in their own right, before Iskall pulled out a relatively new-looking book and began writing.

[Doc let me take a look at his arm a bit ago and helped me out with the technical stuff. I’m hoping that we can replicate a pair for Grian. Took much more work comin up with this blueprint than it did for my voicebox plan lol ]

Mumbo went from bemused to ecstatic as he read Iskall’s explanation, feeling surprisingly hopeful for the first time in a long time. The sheer thought of his friends getting back what he took from them made his heart swell with guilty joy.

The technician’s part of his brain fired off a million different inquiries about how they could get these plans to work, but his heart ached knowing this was a project he wouldn’t have much part in if any. He didn’t specialize in bionics for one, but even if he felt like dabbling in the expertise for the benefit of his friends, Mumbo didn’t want to get too involved out of fear of relapse.

Especially not after today. He just wasn’t ready.

“These plans are incredible, Iskall.” Mumbo whispered in awe, flipping through both sections of the packet thrice over. A part of him yearned to add notes and suggestions of his own along the margins of the already messy prints, but he swallowed down the eagerness and handed the papers back to Iskall with a shaky hand. Far too fast for him to subdue, bubbling apprehension rose into his chest again as a presence beneath his ribcage scolded him for not ripping the notes to shreds when he had the chance and Mumbo turned away from Iskall in shame. He didn’t even notice himself staring off into the corner of his room until the scratching of a feather pen against paper got his attention again.

[I was hoping you would say that. Wouldn't be Architech patent-worthy without your approval :) ]

Mumbo gave a half-hearted as smile his dear friend stored the notes away in a light blue shulker box he hadn’t seen get brought out. As Iskall packed the box up, a red hot silence burned within the room and Mumbo flushed at the uneasiness of it all, hating the fact that he couldn’t enjoy the company of the people he loved anymore. It made him feel like an ass when he was so unresponsive and caught up in self-pity, but at the same time it felt like acting as if nothing ever happened would be a slap in the face to everyone he wronged. He was halfway through a mental reprimand when Iskall huffed through his nose and came to sit beside him at his birch wood table.

A beat or two passed in silence before a steady hand reached out to fix the uneven part in Mumbo’s hair, smooth out the collar of his dress shirt, and pat him gently on the side of his face. The warmth of Iskall’s hand damn nearly drove Mumbo to tears. With cloudy eyes, he watched as Iskall tilted his head, expression a melancholy mix of fondness and sorrow.

[It’s bad today, huh?]

With a sharp intake of breath and clenched teeth, Mumbo glanced away from Iskall. He’d rather pretend he was fine than admit to the Red Sun’s influence holding strong sway over him today. But before he could come up with something to say, Iskall was already shoving his book back into Mumbo’s hands.

[Don’t try to lie to me, I can see it in your face. And in the stubble on your chin.]

“I…“ Mumbo started, cotton-mouthed and ashamed, closing his eyes to prevent the tears from glossing over his vision.

Sweet scarlet whispers pricked at the back of his head and swirled behind his eyelids, reminding him the Red Sun never sets the Red Sun never sets the Red Sun never sets, and he tensed his jaw to try and drown out the words with a high-pitched strain. The world around him grew warm and tight and dark, and despite his best efforts, the voices seemed to just get louder.

All at once, Mumbo realized that Iskall was pushing at his shoulders and letting out determined, wordless noises as he tried to bring the man from his panic. Mumbo brought down his hands from where he found them pressed firmly against his ears, noticing that his face felt warm and wet. He silently wiped at his cheeks with his sleeve, defeated.

“...Yeah. It is.”

“I-I...It’ss oh-k-kay.” Iskall offered gently, releasing his hold from his friend’s shoulders and sliding them down to his arms as he scanned Mumbo for any more signs of distress. As soon as his hands were free, he reached for his book again.

[It’s a nice day out today. Let’s go for a walk. I’ll shoot Grian a message to meet us in the shopping district.]

Before Mumbo could begin to read, Iskall plucked the book from his hand and began writing frantically, leaving Mumbo to wipe at the heavy tears that pooled over the edge of his eyelids once again.

[Let’s not tell him about my plans yet. I don’t want to get him excited for something that could take months or more to even start on. Promise to keep it a secret for now?]

Mumbo couldn’t help but flash him a warm smile. This man has done so much for both him and Grian even in wake of his own obstacles and responsibilities. There was nothing in this world or the next that Mumbo could offer as retribution.

“Sure thing. You have my word.”

Iskall huffed a laugh, grabbing and immediately shaking Mumbo’s hand with unnecessary earnest.

[Jolly good cheers mate! Let’s get you ready for our stroll, shall we lad? Pip pip!]

With a good-natured roll of his eyes, Mumbo stood from where he’d been sat since early that morning, bones audibly popping from inactivity, and made towards his room to change into a clean white button-up and dress pants, leaving his coat on the bed. It took him a moment to brave the mirror in the corner of his room, but once he could stand to look at his reflection, he made an honest attempt to make himself presentable. After smoothing out the folds and wrinkles in his shirt, Mumbo pulled at his mustache a few times in an attempt to style it, lamenting that he didn’t have the time to shave the shadow from his jaw.

There was a soft, gentle hum from Iskall that got Mumbo’s attention as he exited his room, and he walked closer to read what his friend was saying.

[Handsome.]

Bashful, Mumbo blushed and shut the book. Compliments always made him somewhat embarrassed before, but it hit him much harder nowadays, especially when he felt bad about not being able to clean up as much as he preferred. Despite his self-consciousness, Mumbo was grateful for Iskall’s encouragement and offered a small smile in thanks.

As he and Iskall locked up his house and began the journey towards the shopping district, Mumbo watched him message Grian and shake with silent laughter―probably at something stupid Grian responded with, knowing them, but he was too engrossed in thought to catch what was said―and noticed that for the first time in a while that he couldn’t hear the honeyed song of the Red Sun, nor could he feel its pull deep within his bones.

Truly, Iskall and Grian were gifts from the universe he didn’t deserve. It was a bloody wonder that they still stood by him after all they went through. Despite everything, his friends still cared for him. Still loved him. There was nothing he could do to repay them for that. And nothing could compare to the outpour of adoration he felt for them in return.

--------------------------------------------

On days like these, with his best friends at his sides, Mumbo felt free.

#the red sun never sets #trsns #mumbo jumbo #mumbo #iskall85 #iskall #grian #grian and mumbo and iskall #architech trio #hermitcraft #I am likely to and probably will be looking for errors so Blease let me know if u see any

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meditativeyoga · 5 years

Text

`Creative` is having the divine spark

Creativity has nothing to do with any kind of activity specifically-- with painting, verse, dancing, singing. It has absolutely nothing to do with anything in particular.

Anything can be creative-- you bring that high quality to the task. Task itself is neither innovative neither uncreative. You can repaint in an uncreative means. You can sing in an uncreative means. You could clean the floor in an innovative method. You could cook in an imaginative way.

Creativity is the high quality that you bring to the task you are doing. It is a perspective, an inner technique-- how you look at things.

So the initial thing to be born in mind is: do not restrict imagination to anything particularly. A male is imaginative-- as well as if he is creative, whatsoever he does, also if he strolls, you could see in his walking there is creative thinking. Even if he rests quietly and does absolutely nothing, also non-doing will certainly be an innovative act. Buddha, resting under the Bodhi Tree not doing anything, is the best maker the world has ever known.

Once you comprehend it-- that it is you, the individual, that is innovative or uncreative-- then this issue disappears.

Not everybody could be a painter, and also there is no demand likewise. If everyone is a painter the world will certainly be very hideous, it will be tough to live. And also not everyone could be a dancer, as well as there is no requirement. Yet everybody can be creative.

Whatsoever you do, if you do it happily, if you do it lovingly, if your act of doing it is not purely economical, then it is creative. If you have something outgrowing it within you, if it provides you development, it is spiritual, it is creative, it is divine.

You ended up being much more magnificent as you become much more innovative. All the religions of the globe have actually stated: God is the designer. I aren't sure whether he is the creator or not, but one thing I understand: the more creative you come to be, the more Godly you end up being. When your creative thinking concerns an orgasm, when your whole life comes to be creative, you live in godliness.

Love what you do. Be reflective while you are doing it-- whatsoever it is, pointless of the fact of just what it is.

Creativity suggests loving whatsoever you do-- taking pleasure in, commemorating it, as a present of presence! Possibly nobody comes to recognize about it. The value is intrinsic.

So if you are searching for popularity as well as obtain imaginative-- also if you come to be as popular as Pablo Picasso-- you will certainly miss it. You are, in truth, not creative at all: you are a politician, enthusiastic. If fame occurs, excellent. If it does not occur, excellent. It needs to not be the factor to consider. The consideration should be that you are enjoying whatsoever you are doing. It is your love-affair.

If your act is your love-affair, then it ends up being innovative. Tiny points end up being excellent by the touch of love and also delight.

The questioner asks: "I believed I was uncreative." If you rely on in this way, you will become uncreative-- since belief is not just belief. It opens up doors or it closes doors. If you have an incorrect belief, then that will hang around you as a closed door. If you believe that you are uncreative, you will end up being uncreative-- because that belief will certainly block, continually negate, all opportunities of streaming. It will not enable your energy to stream because you will constantly say: "I am uncreative."

This has been shown to everybody. Few individuals are accepted as imaginative: A couple of painters, a couple of poets-- they are one in a million. This is foolish! Every person is a born creator. Watch youngsters and you will certainly see: every one of them are imaginative. Soon, we ruin their creative thinking. Soon, we force wrong beliefs on them. By and by, we sidetrack them. Soon, we make them a lot more and a lot more economical, political and ambitious.

When ambition enters, creativity vanishes-- because an ambitious guy could not be imaginative, because an ambitious man could not enjoy any kind of task for its very own sake. While he is painting he is looking in advance, he is thinking, 'When am I getting a Nobel Reward?' When he is creating a novel, he is looking in advance. He is always in the future however a creative individual is constantly in the present.

We destroy creative thinking. No one is born uncreative, but we make 99 per cent of individuals uncreative.

But just throwing the responsibility on the society is not going to help, you need to take your life in your very own hands. You have to go down all incorrect conditionings. You have to go down wrong, hypnotic auto-suggestions that have been offered to you in your youth. Drop them! Cleanse yourself of all conditionings ... and suddenly you will certainly see you are creative.

To be and also to be imaginative are synonymous. It is difficult to be and not to be creative. Yet that difficult point has taken place, that hideous phenomenon has actually taken place, since all your creative resources have been plugged, blocked, ruined, as well as your whole power has been compelled into some task that the culture thinks is mosting likely to pay.

Our entire perspective about life is money-oriented. And also loan is one of one of the most uncreative things one can become interested in. Our entire method is power-oriented as well as power is damaging, not innovative. A man that wants money will become damaging, due to the fact that cash has actually to be burglarized, exploited, it has actually to be removed from lots of individuals, only after that can you have it. Power merely suggests you have to make lots of people impotent, you need to destroy them-- only after that will certainly you be powerful, could you be powerful.

Remember: these are damaging acts. An imaginative act improves the beauty of the world, it gives something to the world, it never ever takes anything from it. A creative person enters into the globe, improves the elegance of the world-- a tune here, a painting there. He makes the world dance better, delight in far better, love much better, practice meditation better. When he leaves this world, he leaves a better globe behind him. No one could know him, someone may understand him-- that is not the point. He leaves the world a far better world, significantly satisfied because his life has been of some inherent value.

Money, power, status, are uncreative, not only uncreative, yet damaging tasks. Be careful of them! And if you are cautious of them you could come to be creative really easily. I am not stating that your creative thinking is mosting likely to give you power, stature, money. No, I could not guarantee you any kind of rose-gardens. It may provide you trouble. It might compel you to live a pauper's life. All that I could promise you is that deep inside you will certainly be the wealthiest male possible, deep inside you will certainly be met, deep inside you will certainly contain joy and celebration. You will certainly be continually obtaining a growing number of blessings from God. Your life will certainly be a life of benediction.

But it is feasible that ostensibly you could not be famous, you could not have money, you may not do well in the supposed world. To succeed in this supposed globe is to fail deeply, is to fail in the within globe. And also just what are you going to do with the entire world at your feet if you have lost your own self? Exactly what will you do if you have the entire globe and you don't possess on your own? An innovative person has his very own being, he is a Master.

That's why in the East we have been calling sannyasins as swamis. The word swami suggests a master. Beggars have actually been called swamis, masters. Emperors we have actually recognized, however they showed in the final account, in the final verdict of their lives, that they were beggars. A guy that is after loan as well as power as well as stature is a beggar, due to the fact that he continuously asks. He has nothing to provide to the world.

Be a giver. Share whatsoever you can! And keep in mind, I am not making any type of difference between little things and also terrific points. If you can smile whole-heartedly, hold somebody's hand and also smile, after that it is an imaginative act, a wonderful creative act. Simply welcome somebody to your heart and you are innovative. Simply look with caring eyes at someone ... simply a loving appearance can change the entire globe of a person.

Be innovative. Don't be bothered with just what you are doing-- one has to do many points-- yet do everything artistically, with commitment. Your job becomes praise. After that whatsoever you do is a prayer. And also whatsoever you do is an offering at the altar.

Drop this idea that you are uncreative. I know exactly how this idea is created: you may not have actually been a gold medallist in the college, you could not have actually been top in your class, your paint may not have actually won appreciation, when you use your flute, neighbors report to the authorities. Maybe - yet just because of these things, don't get the incorrect belief that you are uncreative. That could be since you are mimicing others.

People have an extremely limited concept of exactly what being creative is-- they think it is only around playing the guitar or the flute or writing verse-- so individuals go on creating rubbish in the name of poetry. You need to discover exactly what you can do as well as just what you can refrain from doing. Everybody could refrain from doing everything! You have to search as well as discover your fate. You have to grope at night, I know. It is not very well-defined exactly what your fate is-- however that's just how life is. And also it excels that a person needs to search for it, since in the really search, something grows.

A Sudden Clash of Thunder/Courtesy Osho International Foundation/www. osho.com

#meditation #spiritual

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echristides-blog · 5 years

Text

Blogs

Methodology - 11/12/19

Dear Blog,

As a part time student at the beginning of a three-year journey of a qualifying degree and as placement won’t begin until January 2020 I thought I’d take the opportunity to embark on this adventure by looking into what spurs my curiosity and interest along the way, letting my intuition, reading and teaching guide my methodology and inform my self-growth:

My main approach was visual, searching for art exhibitions at galleries that really spoke to me and I felt very drawn to, this includes one film that was heavily based on the mental ill health of a fictional character. This method allowed me to experience, be influenced by the visuals as well as view the artist or subject through an art therapy lens - looking and thinking like a trainee art therapist. The most important part of this approach was supplementing my reflections with qualitative scientific input from art therapy literature and from peer-reviewed articles in related fields giving elements of validity and reliability whilst enhancing my learning as I explored different areas and possible meanings under the concept of art therapy.

Having come from a musical background and understanding the influence sonic environments have had on me, one blog is of experimental thinking - again approached scientifically, as I am interested in exploring the idea of using sound in an art therapy setting. My research has shown that this is still a developing area in the context of art therapy even though some professional writing has been contributed here. I feel this approach would have been more complete for me had I made some response art to an environmental soundscape.

Two blogs are purely experiential, based on the process of making my own piece of art and experiencing working with different art materials. I felt I had to document important realisations that shaped my understanding and learning of the art making experience for myself and also what it could be like for clients in therapy.

I also felt it was important to include some reflexivity in my methodology as this is key in developing practice and I hope this is reflected in a number of my blog posts. Because of this, I believe that a reflection on personal therapy could have been a good addition here.

Back to School! - 01/10/19

Dear Blog!

I have just come home from the ‘official’ first day at uni. Going back to academia makes me a little anxious… Will I quickly remember how to be a student again? How will I juggle work, study and life? I’m a little nervous about the journey the MA Art Therapy will take me on. Even though I have a cloud of thoughts above me, it was great seeing familiar faces from the Foundation course – we bonded and shared experiences so feeling that sense of safety was comforting… The Foundation taught me that Art Therapy is a creative route to better self-understanding but its unpredictable process is a little bit of a scary thought. I guess all these emotions will be coming into play at some point, this is an MA in Art Therapy after all.

Today was very exciting. In fact, as soon as our lecture on Research and Enquiry began I couldn’t wait to get started! This emotion continued throughout the taught lessons. I'm already thinking of areas in Art Therapy I want to explore; sound/music in art therapy, the intrinsic properties of art materials, gender in art therapy, art and psychoanalysis, art therapy and the criminal mind. So here I am, my mind travelling at 100 miles per hour after having a plethora of information thrown at us. Although I'm loving that we can navigate our way through the course, I do have to slow down as I know that my starting point is research, research, research!

I found it quite intriguing today that I started doodling during our Research & Enquiry class as I realised that I was doodling the same shapes I drew on the first day of the Foundation. Although the patterns were identical there were differences in size, in colour and they were positioned on different parts of the page in my notebooks. This was very interesting to me... (Interesting…a word I’m sure I’ll be using a lot…). I do wonder what the role of an intuitive image is? (Case & Daley, 2013: 124). While doodling has been associated with being disinterested in a primary task, recent research shows that the act of doodling releases mental stress, which in turn improves focus and helps memory and recall performance (Gupta, 2016: 17). Dr Robert Burns relies on doodling to reveal what is going on in the unconscious, claiming that the way that EEG leads transmit brain activity to a piece of paper, one’s hand also does (cited in Pillay, 2016). Even though I believe I could try to make sense of my doodling, I’m certain that art therapy theory, psychoanalytic theory and neuroscience could shed a lot more light here...

Word count: 434

(Doodling in first lesson Sep 2019)

(Doodling in first lesson September 2018)

References

Case, C. Dalley, T. (2013) ‘The Art Therapy Handbook’, London & New York: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group.

Gupta, S. (2016) ‘Doodling: The Artistry of the Roving Metaphysical Mind’, Journal of Mental Health and Human Behaviour, Vol 21 (1), pp.16-19. doi: 10.4103/0971-8990.182097. (peer reviewed)

Pillay, S. (2016) “The Thinking Benefits of Doodling”, Harvard Health Publishing, https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/the-thinking-benefits-of-doodling-2016121510844 – Accessed on 02/10/19 at 19:15.

If ‘Joker’ (fictional character, 2019) was in Art Therapy… - Reflections 07/10/19

Dear Blog,

Last night I went to the movies to see Joker, a psychological thriller focusing on the main character’s mental illness. This film emphasized that what we are at birth and what we become and why, are very different identities. Everybody has a story...

The film makes it known that Joker was never really in a nurturing environment, loved or cared for and that he had a very dark upbringing. It was a memoir of the criminal before he became destructive to the world around him. Joker is a fragmented individual and sees a therapist who didn’t succeed in developing a therapeutic relationship between them. The irony is that Joker seemed to be collaborative during their sessions by opening up about his emotions but she wasn’t very interested in understanding him or responsive to his needs.

It made me think about the significance of the art therapist, the art therapy process and its multitude layers of containment through the different therapeutic relationships within art therapy. In his therapy journal he wrote “The worst part about being human is mental illness”, which striked me in particular as he was aware of his disturbances but was really struggling to deal with them. I guess he was trying to fight his demons alone. Mental illness is like being in a prison you can’t free yourself from and no one can understand the suffering if they haven’t experienced it. His sense of powerlessness lead to him making use of a gun - he used it for physical, emotional and psychological protection. It became his shield, forbidding anyone to upset him. It really saddened me that the therapist failed to create that “holding environment” and that she in fact discouraged emotional nourishment (Murphy cited in Liebmann, 1994: 16). What if he missed his last chance for positive change because the professional was incompetent?

Perhaps the art therapy setting and process would have been more suited to Joker as he is a very visual individual, constantly daydreaming and painting a clown’s face on his. His imagination made him creative but he was only able to be this expressive alone. It felt like he was self-soothing himself through his creativity but even his creativity was imprisoned in his own sense of self. Art therapy allows one to be free and creative through play in what Winnicott calls the “potential space - an environment which can tolerate the successes and failures of experimentation, but which is ultimately reliable” (cited in Liebmann, 1994: 16). We can’t release on humans the pain and aggression we can release in the art therapy room... His creativity could have been his way out.

Word count: 434

References

Murphy, J. (1994) ‘Mists in the Dark’, in Liebmann, M. ‘Art Therapy with Offenders’. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.

Joker (2019), [Motion Picture], Todd Phillips, USA: Warner Bros. Pictures – Viewed 07/10/19.

Sound in Art Therapy - Reflections 15/10/19

Dear Blog,

Yesterday in our Introduction to Art Therapy lecture we talked about how to approach our first art therapy session as trainees. How we could prompt a client if he or she is struggling to engage in art making was a question posed and this triggered a thought I have a lot of faith in... Although usually the visual sense for humans is perhaps the more dominant, we are nevertheless multi-sensory and senses can stimulate subjective experiences. Art Therapy is a creative way in to the psyche just as much as externalizing what is part of the psyche is – therefore, exploring creativity when utilizing art therapy is very important. “Sound can be an invasive phenomenon of everyday experience in that it assists our engagement with, immersion in and commentaries with the environment in which we live” (Taylor & Fernstrom, 2017: 4). I am very interested in non-musical sounds evoking memory and emotion as there seems to be a lot less written about it in comparison to great work on memory and music.

Sound has the capacity to mark time, place and narrative “making the past psychologically present or problematized, creating a dialogue between the present and the past” (Bao, 2013: 208) and we fathom sound in terms of phenomenology, memory, imagery, associations and even phantasy. As sound is tied to different experiences, the use of sonic prompts can elicit memories and involuntary memories. “Our ability to interpret the world around us crucially depends on how the brain organizes meaningful auditory information in memory” (Hendrickson, Walenski, Friend, Love, 2017: 2). This could strongly suggest that sound has potential to aid a client into and through the complex process of art therapy sessions. So, it can very much be considered to be a stimulant... Referring to good and safe practice, could it be risky for some clients to be played recorded sounds during an art therapy session? Perhaps it could be, but the acousmatic approach creates an illusion for the client, it allows the client to be connected and disconnected with the sound at the same time as the actual source of it would be unknown. Sound is also ephemeral and what could be triggered in the art therapy room when sound is played can be contained by the therapist, by being in the art therapy room and maybe even in the artwork itself. Furthermore, there seems to be a particular interest in the natural soundscape as a therapeutic resource and it being used as a calming agent (Franco, Shanahan, Fuller, 2017: 1). Of course, this is all very subjective but more research is without doubt needed here as I am a firm believer that nature can be a healer in many different ways...

The effect of sonic elicitation is multisensory as sound evokes visual, tactile and olfactory as well as auditory memories (Harris, 2015: 22) and this fits in to art therapy very well as art therapy is a whole body experience. It has been stated that multimodal sensory input can drive positive mental states such as tranquility, unlike monotony, which is a cause of stress (Franco, Shanahan, Fuller, 2017: 2). Allowing sound to play an active role in the triangular relationship (therapist-client-artwork), to prompt and be part of a therapeutic relationship seems to be a creative avenue to explore... And creativity is not just a non-threatening way to access and express memories and emotions but has the power to create a corrective experience in the brain (Perryman, Blisard & Moss, 2019: 80).

Word count: 563

References

Bao, Y. (2013) “Remembering the Invisible: Soundscape and Memory of 1989”, Journal of Chinese Cinemas, Vol 7 (3), pp. 207-224. doi: 10.1386/jcc.7.3.207_1. (peer reviewed)

Franco, Lara S. Shanahan, Danielle F. Fuller, Richard A. (2017) “A Review of the Benefits of Nature Experiences: More Than Meets the Eye”, International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, Vol 14 (8), pp. 1-29. doi: 10.3390/ijerph14080864. (peer reviewed)

Harris, A. (2015) “Eliciting Sound Memories”, The Public Historian, Vol 37 (4), pp.14-31. doi: 10.1525/tph.2015.37.4.14. (peer reviewed)

Hendrickson, K. Walenski, M. Friend, M. Love, T. (2015) “The Organization of Words and Environmental Sounds in Memory”, Neuropsychologia, Vol 69, pp. 67-76. doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2015.01.035. (peer reviewed)

Perryman, K. Blisard, P. Moss, R. (2019) “Using Creative Arts in Trauma Therapy: The Neuroscience of Healing”, Journal of Mental Health Counselling, Vol 41 (1), pp. 80-94. doi: 10.17744/mehc.41.1.07. (peer reviewed)

Taylor, S. Fernstrom, M. (2017) “Acouscenic Listening and Creative Soundwalks: Evoking memory and Narratives Through Soundscape Exploration”, Leonardo Music Journal, Vol 27 (27), pp.3-6. doi: 10.1162/LMJ_a_00999. (peer reviewed)

‘Protreptic’ (2018) - Reflections 26/10/19

Dear Blog,

I recently came across artist Despina Zaxaropoulou and her eight hour a day, three-week long performance Protreptic in Bangkok and became fascinated with the power in endurance art... I decided to watch a clip of the performance and view images taken from it without reading its short descriptive summary to have a more authentic response to it... Dressed in an almost completely transparent dressing gown, Zaxaropoulou lies silently and moves around on a wooden transporting container inviting audiences to interact with her... Her purpose was instantly and unmistakably made clear to me, it was that effective and meaningful... It pushes the artist’s physical and mental strength to the maximum, makes the power relations between artist and audience prominent and tests boundaries. She embodied herself and her inner reality into her artwork, becoming the image under the gaze and available to be physically handled by many different individuals. It was very interesting to see different reactions to Zaxaropoulou’s loss of autonomy and even though her body language seemed sorrowful... she was still objectified and touched in a sexual way by some. From a trainee art therapist point of view my immediate response was to want to create a safe space for her and hold that space for her... my mind couldn’t stop thinking about the significance of complete respect for the client’s intrapersonal meanings...

From an artist’s point of view I really admire her bravery in her performance. It made me question my own art practice and how stepping out of my comfort zone is something perhaps I should attempt more often as my artwork consists of only my own personal experiences, emotions, memories and fantasies. Although I felt very uncomfortable and bothered by the performance – Zaxaropoulou being exposed, vulnerable and receptive to many different interpersonal experiences, reminded me that “creative work has been associated with ‘a-ha’ moments of self-realization... that stimulate personal growth” (Hinz, 2017: 143). Being experiential is often about taking risks and experimenting with different environments, materials and exploring the psychodynamics. Sitting with uncomfortable feelings and being reflective as well as being reflexive is necessary for my own creative practice and development as an artist and as a trainee art therapist. These different thought processes have shifted my perception of me as an artist and have made me eager to transcend my boundaries and embrace challenge and uncertainty. They have spurred further curiosity for learning and I feel I need to honour those interests.

Word Count: 407

Reference

Hinz, L. D (2017) “The Ethics of Art Therapy: Promoting Creativity as a Force for Positive Change”, Journal of the American Art Therapy Association, Volume 34 (3), pp. 142-145. doi:10.1080/07421656.2017.1343073. (peer reviewed)

First Art Making Session in MA! - 29/10/2019

Dear Blog!

Today we finally made some art work at uni! And it was really, really, REALLY liberating. Since we started I haven’t had the chance to sit down and take my time to make art and today’s session just proved to me how long overdue it was to do so, especially being on this course...

We were told to bring wool and newspaper to today’s class last week, but we were only told today that we would each be making a person and I really enjoyed having that direction. I enjoyed working in silence in a quiet room, getting lost in the moment without any distractions as I was able to tune in with myself. Usually, I instantly get a visual response to an exercise but this time I hadn’t, so I knew I would go by my method of “what feels right” to make art. This is how I selected my materials and then let the process take its course. From the selection in front of me I ended up using only the earthy materials such as string, crinkled shredded paper, tissue paper, curly moss and stuck to earthy colours. It was interesting to me that I didn’t end up using every material I chose in the beginning, even though I tried to incorporate them, certain materials and colours didn’t feel suited.

I realised I was spending a lot of time on the legs and was feeling irritated trying to get them looking and feeling the way I wanted them to. When I became conscious of this, I started asking myself why the legs were so important to me...

I then worked on the arms, needing them to take a slightly firmer form but I still needed them flexible so I used curly moss. I wrapped the body in white tissue paper to give it a lighter, transparent feel visually. Finally, the head I felt needed “consolidating” so I sewed all around the newspaper with navy and beige string – as if I was bringing my thoughts together, sewing and securing them all in one place. Interestingly enough, I didn’t want to hide the newspaper effect and was picky only using parts of it that had no images but I only thought about how fussy I was after I had finished making my piece. At the time I only wondered why I chose those two shades of colour of string...

I instantly felt at ease with my creation and connected to the entire product. As I had some time left to reflect on it I thought about my emotional journey when making it; the time it took to get the legs looking springy and unrestricted – flexible and ready to run, made me think about how much I love freedom and spontaneity, it made me question if I am struggling with that part at the moment. The body felt as light as a feather, the arms were spread out and bendable... perhaps because I feel like I am on a new adventure. It wasn’t long before I realised that the head seemed to be the only solid and heavy part of the body... maybe because I have much to think about and organise at the moment... I felt I identified with my piece and my object became real to me, it had its own existence in the space and its positioning became an important decision. Today’s session seemed to have mirrored my invisible reality, it was enlightening and educational and even though not in a therapy session, felt the concept of the triangular relationship come alive.

Word count: 596

‘Same Bed, Different Dreams’ (2018) by Song Dong and Psychoanalytic Thinking - Reflections 02/11/19

Dear Blog!

I came across the works of Chinese artist’s Song Dong today in London’s Pace Gallery and was captivated by his art work Same Bed, Different Dreams (2018), which represents the expansion of Asian cities and their modernization that has not only changed the face of the cities but the citizens lives with it. His concept and artwork resonated with me on a metaphoric and symbolic level, and its title seemed to meet my intuitive feeling towards it quite well: that his artwork was dream related... It made me question if the title was a conscious or unconscious attempt to be ambiguous.

In Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams (cited in Strachey, 2010: 338-339) the unconscious surfaces when the censor is frail, which occurs during sleep and the repressed comes out in a dream-form... a dream is a thing that is pictorial and is capable of being represented. This to me was Dong’s unconscious sitting within the physical space – or should I say his psychical space – in concrete form.

A very large beautifully crafted, multi-coloured and polished dream-like case made out of many different windows in the centre of a pale room makes itself known. In it were household objects including crockery, pendant lights and decorative knick-knacks... objects that carry history, memory, emotion. Dong having constructed it by using rubbles from old Beijing confirmed to me that its every detail was meaningful and left me feeling that past and present were undefined here. According to Reiser (cited in Fonagy et al., 2012: 78), the manifest dream draws out past and current life issues and conflicts, in hope to resolve them. Perhaps these raw materials and objects inside are more raw than they seem… Dreams disguise impulses and substitute them with symbols – an operation accomplished by primary processes of the unconscious where the repressed return in confusing ways through visual imagery (Rocha, 2012: 20). Both, dreams and artwork have their own dimensional measurements and in Dong’s artwork, the dream could be preserved in the large dream-like case. The pendant lights dangling in it are lit up, which could suggest psychic activity. Lacan wrote that “dream is a phenomenon of psychic activity” because the unconscious is always at work and never sleeps... so perhaps this is what is being presented by Dong unconsciously (cited in Rocha, 2012: 17). Although the dream-like case is completely closed, one can still see through it, some windows are more transparent than others giving an indication that the hidden parts of the psyche are reachable through dreams. I have always been fascinated with how personal, mysterious, enchanting and unfathomable dreams are. I hope to inform my practice with psychoanalytic literature but I know that it could take me a lifetime trying to understand some of it. Even though exploring psychoanalysis feels like stepping into a whole other world, I believe it is a study that sheds light on the bigger, deeper and most complex parts of the psyche. Dong’s political artwork displays the relationship between his life and his art... And I can’t help but wonder if he was to bring this to an analytic setting, what would come up?

Word count: 510

References

Fonagy, P. Kachele, H. Leuzinger-Bohleber, M & Taylor, D. (2012) ‘The Significance of Dreams: Bridging Clinical and Extraclinical Research in Psychoanalysis’, London: Routledge.

Freud, S. & Strachey, J. (2010) ‘The Interpretation of Dreams: The Complete and Definitive Text’, New York: Basic Books.

Rocha, G. M. (2012) “The Unconscious: Ideal Worker?” International Forum of Psychoanalysis, Vol. 21 (1), pp. 17-21, doi: 10.1080/0803706X.2011.624546. (peer reviewed)

‘The Anthony Gormley Experience’ - Reflections 07/11/19

Dear Blog,

Today I finally managed to go and see Anthony Gormley’s exhibition and what an interesting one it was. I had booked my ticket last night for this morning as I wanted to go in with a fresh and clear mind to simply experience it. The focus was the body: we all have a body but the world within it, is unique every time. As I was walking around each room my responses to his different artworks were authentic and instant to what was happening in that present moment: What I was feeling, what I was thinking, what I remembered, what I imagined, what it made me question, what it made me want to do… it all came to consciousness. Seven rooms really spoke to me:

Clearing VII (2019) Approximately 8 kilometres of aluminium tube coiled against the space, restricted by the walls, ceilings and floor to bounce and expand. I felt I was in a child’s scribble and wanted to play in it – it activated a physical impulse and I felt I was part of the artwork.

Subject II (2019) A single life-size male body form made of steel bars became my complete focus and it was his posture that really captured me – he seemed sorrowful and I felt the impact of that emotion. Perhaps the heaviness of the material that he was made out of played a part in the intensity of that emotion making it more prominent that he was alone and seeming lonely in the space...

Matrix III (2019) An enormous cloud made out of steel mesh, its density increasing as you walk towards its centre and looking up at it whilst walking beneath it triggered a memory. I remembered swimming in deep water unable to see the world above it and swimming towards the surface – remembering the feelings of fear and relief that came with that experience, essentially reliving it.

Lost Horizon I (2018) Many identical male figures made out of cast iron, positioned in many different ways across the ceiling, walls and floor. Walking amongst these figures, I noticed that the male figure was Gormley. It made me think about him and his life experiences, every figure felt like it had a different story to tell about him. I became very aware of these presences in the room, I realized I couldn’t pinpoint exactly what I was feeling with each one but their presence was intense – making me think even more.

Cave (2019) A steel sculpture on an architectural scale imitates a hollow human form. Going through this hollow body I felt my visual, auditory and tactile senses heighten as it got completely dark; using my eyes to spot anything possible, my ears to hear what I could and touch to navigate myself though the darkness. At the same time I felt like I was walking into the unknown as sensations were very present but not obvious. This artwork stimulated and activated my body and mind together, and led to a combination of observations on the self, experiencing my own body as an entity – externally as well as internally.

Drawings II Exiting the Cave led to a room with more basic and natural material artworks. Gormley used his own blood to make drawings representing the interior of the human body, which I found very uncomfortable to look at making me want to turn away. I was quite surprised to have felt quite nauseous at the sight of that and it made me realise just how disturbing I found it. There was something about his blood, its varying texture in the artwork and being displayed for many years now that didn’t sit well with me at all and made me question why. Why was I affected this much?

Host (2019) Gormleys final room was kept separate by a single solid piece of stone, a room consisting of earth, water and air where water covered the whole ground. This room is the only room left uninterrupted by visitors. Still, it offered me an incredibly soothing experience by gazing at it and smelling the humidity that was produced – I was so drawn and nourished by it, I wanted to sit there. I realised this was the only room I felt so relaxed by as it made me imagine that I was looking out of a window to natural landscape, envisioning forests and being by the beach. It was the perfect note to end on as I felt safe near it... bringing to the surface my strong connection and love for natural surroundings… It also made me think about the counter-transference in therapy, the feelings a therapist feels in response to the client or the clients artwork as Gormley’s exhibition certainly did that...

This exhibition was all experiential reminding me of Hakomi Psychotherapy: based on mindfulness, Hakomi is body orientated psychotherapy accentuating somatic awareness (Rothaus, 2013: 208). The body is a powerful resource as it stores influential information and can guide us to deeper places in the psyche. It seemed as if Gormley took the role of the therapist using his artworks as experiments to evoke experiences for the visitors… gently accessing unconscious material and bringing it to conscious awareness so that it can be processed. Having gone first thing in the morning allowed me to be relaxed, and being calm helped me to be more open and receptive to new experiences when engaging with the artworks. This is a vital part of mindful self-study as it allows you to focus on body-mind connection in the here and now and “the quality of mindfulness heightens mental imagery”, which in turn could increase degree of healing (Morgan cited in Rothaus, 2013: 212). In an Art Therapy setting I could have externalized my body-mind experience, have the process and my artwork contained before safely reflecting on it… A really rich combination of approaches to consider…

Word count: 977

Reference

Rothaus, M. E. (2013) ‘Hakomi and Art Therapy’ in Rappaport, L. ‘Mindfulness and the Arts Therapies: Theory and Practice’, London & Philadelphia: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.

‘Other Spaces: Vanishing Point & Our Time’, Psychosis & Realizations - Reflections 10/11/19

Dear Blog,

I have always had a very strong interest in Psychosis and having studied music even composed an electronic piece based on my understanding of an episode of Psychosis. My purpose of composing music like this was to try to interpret psychological disorders guided by my readings so that I can raise awareness on how difficult it is to be on the other side and to help me understand sufferers state on a deeper level. By doing this I felt I would be able to relate and connect better with these individuals. Vanishing Point and Our Time are exhibitions I visited that played with one’s visual perception. Both in dark rooms Vanishing Point used laser lights and projected beams of light to a vanishing point, and Our Time used smoke and a kinetic light installation that swung back and forth – both playing with reality and illusion.

Psychosis is the severe distortion or even erosion of the normal functions of perception, thinking and feeling and of the capacity to communicate (Sass cited in Killick & Schaverien, 1997:134). For me the visual nature of this exhibition resembled a hallucinatory experience placing me in the mind of a psychotic client. From a trainee art therapist point of view, this exhibition made me panic slightly at the thought of some tricky but vital questions… How could I contain a severely psychotic client? How would I approach this? Where would I begin? I took a moment to consolidate my thoughts and reverted to our core learnings so far… I have to create a safe and facilitating environment for the client, which means being resilient and being able to tolerate different behaviours, by providing safe art materials and a place where artwork could be stored, by having a regularity of sessions in that same space. With all clients and especially clients suffering with severe mental health problems, getting them to experience a level of relatedness to the art therapist through repetition is essential. According to Killick “containment can be mediated through the experience of continuity” (Killick & Schaverien, 1997: 50). And what if there is no artwork?! I remembered my tutors words: “It’s still art therapy!”.

I am also a very firm believer in body language as it is penetrative and a universal form of communication. Searle focused on the therapist’s facial expressions being fundamental for the symbiotic relationship between the psychotic client and the therapist stating that through the therapist the psychotic client can recognise their aliveness (cited in Killick & Schaverien, 1997: 219-220).

I am beginning to understand the complexities that come into play with the different clients and the importance of not being reactive to alarming thoughts but responsive – remaining patient and having faith in the process. This exhibition and the readings that followed highlighted that as a trainee art therapist I have to learn the language of each of my clients and adapt my way of working to their needs in order to get them to connect with me and engage in art making. Although I am trying to prepare myself for my upcoming placement as much as possible, I understand that I can’t know fully what to expect… The responsibility for improving the mental well-being of another and thoughts on what my counter-transference will be in the process, are thoughts that make me a little... or a bit more than a little nervous…

Word count: 552

Reference

Killick, K. & Schaverien, J. (1997) ‘Art, Psychotherapy and Psychosis’, New York: Routledge.

Charlotte Salomon’s ‘Life? Or Theatre?’, Looking at Her Paintings - Reflections 16/11/19

Dear Blog,

What an exhibition... I am so captivated by how deep and penetrating it was...

“The war raged on and I sat by the sea and saw deep into the heart of humankind”, she said and she really did (Salomon cited in Felstiner, 2009).

Salomon, a German Jew in Berlin lost her mother at the delicate age of 9 and grew up living in fear witnessing the heartache and devastation the Nazis spread when they came into power in 1933. Her father eventually remarried opera singer Paula Salomon-Linberg and Salomon fell madly in love with someone her step-mother worked with, Alfred Wolfson, only to be sent to stay in southern France with her maternal grandparents due to dangerous circumstances. After witnessing her grandmother hang herself, her grandfather brutally let her in on what was being kept from her all these years – that their seven family losses where suicides, including her mother’s.

“I will create a story so as not to lose my mind” (Salomon cited in Felstiner, 2009).

Salomon created a series of autobiographical paintings attaching tracing paper, writing words and melodies, adding a narrator and introducing characters giving them a theatrical effect... I thought about why she chose to paint the way she did...

Her paintings presented her internal and external reality in a very defined and cohesive manner. She used paint, a medium that could be messy and which can be daunting when there are issues regarding control (Robbins, 1987: 109). Everything happening in her life was beyond her control but her choice to use paint, for me, was a sign of wanting that power over how her life story was illustrated – a valuable challenge of tolerating all the toxic feelings depicting her struggle through life. This left me with an incredible impression of her inner strength and her being well-balanced. Perhaps her faith in religion gave her that power... “Dear God, just let me not go mad” (Salomon cited in Felstiner, 2009).

Her paintings shift from bright to dark colours and her writing from witty to grim as her story proceeds. They start becoming colourless and dull as she began feeling fed up with feeling fed up and she contemplated committing suicide herself. Colour communicates the felt experience and makes a visual statement about a person’s current state of being (Robbins, 1987: 107-109). Their flatness could metaphorically represent her lifeless life. But Salomon’s paintings were all of notebook size and of a repetitive style of painting completely limiting her body movement, which according to Robbins are signs of offering herself containment and of protecting herself (1987: 113).

Salomon seems to have had experienced cumulative trauma having lost her mother, being away from her father and her lover, being in the midst of war, not being able to communicate with her loved ones... Emotionally and psychologically exhausted by it all she fought to live every day. Her efforts at art therapy saved her, she confronted her harsh reality and realised that death can’t be worse than what she was she was mirroring in her images, which made her want to live... “I will live for them all” (Salomon cited in Felstiner, 2009). Research has linked psychopathology with avoiding thoughts, emotions and memories but Salomon engaged with her process over and over again...769 times before being killed by the Nazis (Skeffington & Browne, 2014: 116).

“Keep this safe, it is my whole life” (Salomon cited in Felstiner, 2009). Salomon’s artworks are incredibly inspirational and influential as they document honorable aspects about her and make it evident that she was her own art therapist. In an audio-visual recording at the exhibition, it was said that Salomon was an introvert. Externalizing her mental images the way she did, may have been a conscious wish to be able to communicate them to someone other than herself (Schaverien, 1992: 83-84). This was her life but I think it was her desire for it to be unreal, for it to be theatre...

I walked out of the museum feeling so moved and emotional over Salomon’s life story... her pain, her fear, her struggle. I was astonished at her outlook on life, how she relied on her creativity to regenerate strength and ignite hope in a dark hole. I felt very grounded by the way she made me think about the way I see my own life and how she made me look at it from the outside, as if that too were theatre...

Word count: 715

References

Felstiner, M. L., (2009) “Charlotte Salomon: 1917-1943", Jewish Women’s Archive. https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/salomon-charlotte – Accessed 16/11/2019 at 17:15.

Robbins, A. (1987) ‘The Artist as Therapist’, New York: Human Sciences Press.

Schaverien, J. (1992) ‘The Revealing Image: Analytical Art Psychotherapy in Theory and Practice’, London & Philadelphia: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.

Skeffington, P. M. & Browne, M. (2014) “Art Therapy, Trauma and Substance Misuse: Using Imagery to Explore a Difficult Past with a Complex Client” International Journal of Art Therapy, Vol. 19 (3), pp. 114-121, doi: 10.1080/17454832.2014.910816. (peer reviewed)

‘Leonardo: Experience a Masterpiece’ (2019) - Reflections 17/11/2019

Dear Blog,

I visited the National Gallery today to see Leonardo: Experience a Masterpiece (2019). As well as being one the world's most famous painters, Da Vinci is known for having extensive knowledge in scientific subjects that fed into his artwork such as architecture, science, mathematics, engineering, anatomy, geology, astronomy, botany, palaeontology, cartography and the list goes on. This exhibition focused on Da Vinci's the Virgin of the Rocks (1508) by introducing unknown truths in four different rooms that allowed me to reacquaint myself with his famous painting ultimately making me see it in a new light.

Entering the Mind of Leonardo as he begins his journey of creating the Virgin of the Rocks, his thoughts are text written backwards and reflected on mirror surfaces so that they could be read easier. "He who is only good at painting figures seems to be a poor master" (cited at the exhibition). I wondered how he meant this.. I wondered how he meant "figures"… Could he have been insinuating that one can only master figures if his soul invests in it? Was he insinuating that a true artist should master how to depict elements of divinity in his figures? His connection to religion perhaps? An unclear yet powerful statement, where I felt he meant both... This mirror effect was done against a backdrop of the Italian Alps and it stated at the exhibition that many of Da Vinci’s geological sketches and observations were situated there so he must have felt something special about this location. According to Andric he was constantly striving for the heights, which could reflect his desire to elevate the spirit (2016: 7). This led me to think that he wanted viewers to experience the search for meaning in what is around us, to search for mystery that exists in the world and is to be sought and to acknowledge that we are part of this mystical and miraculous creation. According to Gal (cited in Vladislav, 2004: 53) searching is a method by which we implement and connect with faith, and is kin to art.

With this in mind I left that room to move on to the next looking for the bigger picture and tuning in with what was around me - a circular hall that connected all rooms in the shape of a cross. This reinforced the feeling that his own spirituality played a bigger part in this painting than I had thought...

The Studio. "The figure that does not sufficiently express with action the passions of its soul is not worthy of praise" (cited at the exhibition). Da Vinci refers to the "figure" again and its "soul". This seemed to imply spiritual art, which is dependent on the artist's capacity to understand spirituality and on the experience of the knowledge of God in order to achieve "art in spirit", otherwise known as iconography. (Vladislav, 2004: 58-60). Scientific investigation that was carried out on this painting using infrared reflectography and hyperspectral imaging revealed lost content beneath the Virgin of the Rocks we know today. So if we are to think of Da Vinci as an iconographer, this piece of work would not be one of self-expression or scientific precision but rather a method and practice towards transfiguration of his nature through his experience of the revelation of the holy by which he would be able touch upon the mystery of incarnation of the Divine (Vladislav, 2004: 56-59). His first attempt can't have been definitive enough in what he was trying to portray and it seemed Da Vinci was trying to transcend his painting methods and touch elements of divinity in his work, as if he was aiming for perfection.

How he achieved that was by mastering two techniques that were introduced in the third room - The Light & Shadow Experiment. "Your tongue will be paralyzed by thirst and your body by sleep and hunger before you can show with words what the painter shows in an instant" (cited at the exhibition). Da Vinci paid great attention to Chiaroscuro and Sfumato, skillfully shading and blending in colours. Translucent layers of paint are at once seen as ethereal and the light radiating is from within the figures outward, "enlivening the action of uncreated grace” – Da Vinci not only worked towards making an instant impression that he was depicting sanctity but also that he was able to do that, he had stated that "perfect faith is perfect knowledge" (cited in Andric, 2016: 9). It is through the artist's ascending journey looking for Truth that he begins to see that "good art" is done in a more human way and "spiritual art" is reflecting what he practices within (Vladislav, 2004: 62, 65).

The Imagined Chapel. The Virgin of the Rocks was to be an altarpiece for a chapel in the church of San Francesco in Milan but the church was demolished. Only artworks that have an adequate symbol of holiness used for uniting the invisible and the visible, where the artist contemplates the image of God within his own soul mirroring his glory, are able to have a permanent place in the church – works of art that are a shared activity of the Creator and the created (Vladislav, 2004: 62-63, 66).

I feel his in-depth knowledge into the order of the world made him search for the beyond, made him search for God. That this painting wasn’t about what Da Vinci is much known for – his scientific precisions in art and science, but much much greater than that.

Going to this exhibition reminded me of our lecture on Supervision. It made me realise that total objectivity when seeing a client's artwork is quite impossible as we all have our biases. It highlighted the importance of having a supervisor to see what I can't or to put me in different thought processes. Even though it takes some pressure off knowing that I am able to share clients artwork with another, it also made me feel that much more responsible to be open to seeing that there is more than just one way of viewing artwork and that it is important to try to look for those different ways and those details on my own before relying on supervision. Every different way of viewing artwork could lead to a real depth of one’s psyche just as the way I viewed Da Vinci’s Virgin of the Rocks. Moreover, my experience and reflection on this exhibition directed me into thinking about spirituality and religion in art therapy as it often is a big part of who we are and it can be a big part of our everyday life and lifestyle, which is an extremely interesting area to explore. It also made me think about art therapy in palliative care as end of life gives rise to the feeling of spirituality whether one has a faith or is agnostic or atheist. However, palliative care is an area I’m not ready to go into...

Word count: 1,134

References

Andric, N. (2016) “Religious - Philosophical Aspects of the Novel ‘The Romance of Leonardo Da Vinci’ by Dmitrij Merezkovskij”, Russian Literature, Vol. 86, pp.1-20, doi: 10.1016/j.ruslit.2016.11.001. (peer reviewed)

Vladislav, A. (2004) “Art and Religion: Creativity and the Meaning of Religion of ‘Image’ from the perspective of the Orthodox Icon”, Theology Today, Vol. 61 (1), pp.53-56. (peer reviewed)

Experiential Workshops: Material Realizations - 02/12/19

Dear Blog,

We have now started our experiential workshops after having been given the foundations on art therapy theory and art therapy practice. I am gradually feeling teaching beginning to merge together - what feels like - "the separate pieces" of the first year of the course and I can now understand the direction in which it is going. (Now that I mention separate pieces I'm remembering my doodling on the first day of uni, how that too was separate pieces floating around in a section of my notebook page, maybe there's an emerging meaning...).

(Doodling in first lesson Sep 2019)

These workshops are familiarizing us with different art materials... Our first workshop was working with dry materials: marker pens, pencils, coal on sticks, chalk and pastels. The second workshop was working with wet materials: paint, water colour and ink, where different sized, shaped and type of paper were used in the first two workshops. The final workshop was with clay and plastecine. This was really great as it put me in a position to ask myself why I work with certain material and why I don't work with other, why I like some and why not other. It made me wonder to what extent is the use of certain material subjective and to what objective? Being restricted to a group of materials each time, allowed me to explore the intrinsic properties and to reacquaint myself with those I seldom choose when art making, but in this blog I will discuss material experiences that stood out for me.

I was instantly drawn to certain material: coal as I associate it with historical times and keeping warm in the cold, the mysterious effect chalk can have when it is smudged and its sharp dusty lines when it isn’t, ink reminds me of sentimental writers and poets of a previous era such as William Shakespeare, Edgar Alan Poe, William Blake and Ralph Waldo Emerson that I love to read, clay being 3D really brings emotions and thoughts to life in an organic way and requires a lot of physical handling that arouses the senses. I became aware that there were symbolic and metaphorical meanings behind the use of these materials that I identified with and this was confirmed to me during the art making and also in the way I used the material. As we were only allowed to use coal tied to a natural tree branch from a distance, I believe drawing a tree with it was from an unconscious driven force related to that. This generated further questions... What if coal wasn’t attached to a tree branch or natural object? What if it was attached to something else or not attached at all? How would this affect my art making instincts and decisions? Knowing how much I love nature, would I have felt disconnected to the art making process and art product if the medium in between wasn’t natural? Is this what it could feel like for a client with a disability?... Although I like using water colour with brush effects and layering different colours, I really struggled to use anything more than a single colour to do this as I found that the size and shape of the paper really influenced my working with this material. In a similar manner with regards to paint, although I tend to mix different colours to get blends as well as create thicker and looser blends, the workshop only had certain colours available that I couldn’t make use of in a satisfying way so having a limitation in colours became very frustrating... Why are certain blends so important to me?

(From left to right: paint, paint, ink, water colour)

(Coal)

Pencils and marker pens have never been a preferred medium for me even having rubbers provided in the workshop I found pencils were too definitive needing a lot of control to create something representative of me and marker pens rather aggressive and unforgiving, which in turn made me feel uncomfortable... But I questioned now if this is can be absolute as what is emerging in these workshops are the different material associations and the different experiences of their materiality in the structured workshops. It was intriguing to me that I actually ended up reacquainting myself with most of the materials through the different processes and my usual ways of creating art with certain material often changed. This stirred new emotions and I thought about how these processes made me feel... Ultimately, the material processes became unpredictable. At the beginning of this blog I wrote about the workshops familiarizing us with different art materials but I think it is wise to add, that they are familiarizing us with different art materials through different personal interactions. As an artist I am so use to having a variety of materials to choose from with no limitations where having directive workshops urged me to consider art making in another way as they tapped into something specific within me, perhaps contacting other areas of my psyche that I knew not about but thought I had, that are completely unconscious...

(From left to right: chalk, pencil, marker pen)

(Clay container)

Most importantly, these workshops have now started to make me think in more complex ways when considering clients and different settings... What are certain client groups in need of and how could I meet their needs? What could be helpful and what could be harming?...

Word count: 900

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carnegiemuseumnaturalhistory · 6 years

Text

Natural History and a Unified Museum Definition

By Eric Dorfman

Much is being said within the museum industry about the definition of museums. ICOM is considering the current definition and whether it needs to be rethought. I think a review is worthwhile, regardless of whether changes are ultimately made. Robust thinking about museums (or any field, in fact), whether related to practice or theory, should be based on the intrinsic nature of the field. Defining museums is a critical step along that journey.

For natural history institutions, whose main business is to study and interpret the diversity of life, the relationship between museums and the state of the Earth must by necessity play an important role in constructing a definition. At the very least, an exploration of this relationship provides a context for natural history museum collections and, at best, it has the power to incite people to explore their identity and connection to one another through the prism of nature.

To some degree, natural history museums can be defined by what they do. At Carnegie Museum of Natural History, we have defined our work through three distinct but interrelated lenses:

The Tree of Life: The study of evolutionary relationships among taxonomic groups,

The Web of Life: The collection-based and in situ study of ecological systems,

The Future of Life: The study of the trajectory of species, populations and ecosystems, especially in the context of anthropogenic disturbances, as well as actions to ameliorate those effects.

The collections and other infrastructure provided by our museum support this work and the story-telling that arises from them.

While the study of evolution and ecosystem relationships is the traditional work of natural history museums, the future of life bears further consideration. By most measures, conditions on the planet we bequeath to our descendants are highly uncertain. Even discounting the seemingly inescapable reality of a future effected anthropogenic climate change, many factors inhibit our predictive ability. Will we run out of power or meat? Will plastic and mercury pollution render produce from the oceans inedible? Will at least some of the planet run out of water in the face of increasing desertification?

These are “wicked problems” (Churchman 1967; Levin et al. 2012) – issues that have so many facets we cannot know the answers, but for which at least some of the alternative outcomes are negative. The interrelationships between these issues create bewildering complexity.

These effects have been recently amalgamated into the concept of the “Anthropocene”, a proposed geological era that reflects human impacts so pervasive as to influence the geological record. These effects will be detectable millions of years from now, by whoever might be looking, as an unprecedented band of plastics, fly ash, radionuclides, metals, pesticides, reactive nitrogen, and consequences of increasing greenhouse gas concentrations (Waters et al. 2016), as well as highly modified fossil composition, featuring an overwhelming preponderance chicken bones.

How does this ‘Age of Humanity’ structure our visitors’ perceptions and help them phrase questions about their environment? How will it influence our research? Most germane here, how does lack of certainty about the future of the planet influence the museum definition as it pertains to natural history institutions?

A Natural History Perspective

Fifteen of the world’s top natural history museums collectively contain, at rough estimate, almost 570 million specimens[1]. This represents the largest category of collection across the museum industry. Collections underpin the field. Any discussion of a unified perspective of natural history museums must therefore take into account the fact that collections form the basis of much of that is undertaken by natural history museums. This focus on collections, often from deep time, intertwines physical and temporal considerations:

Natural history museums and their collections are often thought of in terms of the past, which is not surprising. We are probably the only scientific research facility that can claim the ability to time travel, albeit in a patchy and far from perfect way. Our business is intimately connected with the past, both recent and deep time, and much of what humans know about the natural world a hundred, a hundred thousand, or a hundred million years ago arises directly or indirectly from the specimens held in our collections. When your child states with certainty that Tyrannosaurus rex lived in the Cretaceous they are, knowingly or unknowingly, drawing on the results of research done using museum collections. Norris, 2017, p. 13.

Norris (ibid.) follows this with a comment: “There is, however, a considerable difference between studying the past and belonging in the past.” Natural history institutions also focus strongly on the present and future and use information about the past uncover, contextualize and predict changes in the world around us.

Natural history museums, sitting at the crux between nature and its artistic representations have an important place in facilitating exploration of personal identity. Inasmuch as enhancing self-perception can have a positive influence on behavior, (see Falk, 2009), natural history museums’ capacity to contribute to society increases as their activities in this sphere become more purposeful. Those visitors who care about wildlife, and there are many, want natural history museums to deepen and expand their understanding. Museums like to feel that they occupy a place of credibility in the hearts and minds of the public that other channels of information, for all their worth, do not (but see Museums Association, 2013). Whether we truly are more credible than other types of institutions or not, our self-perception provides a significant opportunity to strive for best practice.

Albert Bierstadt: Rocky Mountain Landscape

The grounding of natural history museum practice in the study of physical specimens means that these institutions have at least a goal of objectivity, however influenced by curatorial subjectivity the framing of questions can sometimes be (see Dorfman, 2016). The articulation of evidential knowledge, concern over changing political environments, even in quality of governments themselves, is not new, nor restricted to the museum field.

How are museums responding to the melange of environmental, sociopolitical and technological changes that that are beginning to set the context in which they operate? Customer focus and using people’s own languages, both culturally and linguistically, to communicate touches every aspect of activities at natural history museums, including exhibitions, marketing, strategic planning, science, cleaning regimes and providing sufficient seating. Conflating individuals’ perspectives into stereotyped offers based on age, gender, race, socioeconomic background, sexual orientation undermines the relevance on which natural history museums pride themselves. Every institution has the opportunity to provide leadership in the sense that Covey (2005) wrote “…leadership is communicating to people their worth and potential so clearly that they come to see it in themselves.”

For natural history museums, the unique signature of our industry is formed by using collection-based and in situ research to elucidate evolutionary and ecosystem relationships, as well as the intersection of these processes with humanity and its impacts, and then facing these stories outwards to the public. For all the many facets of the work of natural history museums, this is the most important and the aligned with our mission.

The Definition Through the Eyes of Natural History

The current definition of a museum as provided by ICOM is as follows:

A museum is a non-profit, permanent institution in the service of society and its development, open to the public, which acquires, conserves, researches, communicates and exhibits the tangible and intangible heritage of humanity and its environment for the purposes of education, study and enjoyment. (ICOM Statutes art.3 para.1)

At first blush, much of the definition of the definition as it stands is generic enough to include natural history museums. One question, however, that comes to mind is how well the term “humanity and its environment” fits the practice and perspective of our industry. For one thing, any organism that existed before the evolutionary rise of Homo sapiens (~2mya) could, by this definition, be considered irrelevant to the work of museums. While this is patently not the case, a careful review of the definition should take this wording into consideration.

This semantic argument notwithstanding, the implicit question embodied in the words “its” poses a deeper consideration, namely the ideological friction between the notion of ecosystem valuation versus that of the intrinsic worth of nature. Both these perspectives have their strong adherents.

Formal cost-benefit analyses and the generation of market value were first developed in 1997 by Robert Costanza, Distinguished University Professor of sustainability at Portland State University, Oregon, building on earlier discussions of economic benefits of the environmental (e.g. Rolston, 1988). Constanza and his colleagues calculated that such services were worth US$33 trillion annually, or US$44 trillion in 2019 currency (Constanza, 1997). The rationale for undertaking this exercise is that ecological system services and the natural capital stocks that produce them are critical to the functioning of the Earth’s life-support system for humans. They contribute to humanity’s welfare, both directly and indirectly, and therefore represent part of the total economic value of the planet.

Since then, the field of environmental economics has proliferated and non-market valuation has become a broadly accepted and widely practiced means of measuring the economic value of the environment and natural resources. A variety of methods, including opportunity cost, travel-cost, hedonic price and contingent valuation have been applied in highly nuanced and complex models (e.g. Weber, 2015). In most, but not all cases, environmental goods and services are geared solely toward protecting inter-generational human welfare. For instance, considering mangrove ecosystems, benefits might be characterized by direct ecological yield in the form of fish or timber, contrasting with indirect value, such as filtration services and storm protection. There is also a line of reasoning that suggests that sentimental or “existence” value: simply knowing something exists provides a distinct, discernible benefit (Krutilla 1967).

An opposing viewpoint lies in the philosophy that nature has intrinsic worth and that the environment should be protected based on its own merits without reference to real or potential benefits for humanity (McCauley, 2006). This viewpoint is strongly based in environmental philosophy and ethics (see, for instance Callicott’s 1992 criticism of Rollston, 1988).

Young humpback chub (Gila cypha) swimming in Shinumo Creek, inside Grand Canyon National Park soon after release. They are part of a reintroduction program of this federally protected species with the goal to establish a second population, after they became extinct everywhere except a small part of Little Colorado River. Photo: Melissa Trammell, NPS

For instance, in discussing conservation efforts of the humpback chub (Gila cypha) a large minnow with no value to humans, native to the Colorado River, Smith (2010) suggests that all currently existing (biological) species have their own intrinsic goods, framed in terms of their ability to flourish. Based on this ethical stance alone, it could be argued that even a species like the humpback chub, that competes successfully with economically important introduced species (such as rainbow trout Oncorhynchus mykiss), should be preserved.

The work of natural history museums is firmly rooted in this second philosophy. For one thing, much of the research we do is based on advancing knowledge for its own sake or, like the example of the humpback chub, taking conservation action out of professional ethics and a moral sense that it is the right thing to do. Additionally, natural history institutions, like other types, use the museum medium of engagement to instill empathy with the subject. In the introduction to her book Fostering Empathy Through Museums, Elif Gokcigdem highlights this necessity:

…Having visibly altered our planet’s outermost layers, scientists are debating whether our footprint is worthy of naming an entire geological epoch on Earth’s billions-of-years-old timescale after ourselves: Anthropocene, the Age of Humans… A steady proliferation of new and ever more powerful technological tools seems unable to correct these ills. One must wonder why they have not succeeded. I believe it is because the tools that are at our disposal are most beneficial when filtered through a worldview that values the collective well-being of the “Whole” – our unified humanity and the planet, inclusive of all living beings as well as of its life-supporting natural resources. Such a unifying worldview cannot be attained and sustained without empathy, our inherent ability to perceive and share the feelings of another. (Gokcigdem, 2016. xix)

Connecting people both intellectually and emotionally to the world’s major stories sits firmly within the scope of work of museums. The opportunity to bring people outside themselves to engage more deeply with the world is an element of the definition of that should be incorporated across all its nuanced facets. If the definition of museums chases, these considerations should sit beside many others as influencors of the conversation.

Eric Dorfman is the Daniel G. and Carole L. Kamin Director of Carnegie Museum of Natural History. Museum employees are encouraged to blog about their unique experiences and knowledge gained from working at the museum.

Footnote

[1] Information taken from the websites of the following museums: Smithsonian Museum of Natural History: 137 million; Natural History Museum (UK): 80 million; Jardin des Plantes: ‎68 million; Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History: 35 million; American Museum of Natural History: 32 million; Naturhistorisches Museum: 30 million; Field Museum: 30 million; Museum für Naturkunde: 30 million; California Academy of Sciences: 26 million; Carnegie Museum of Natural History 22 million; Australian Museum: 21 million Harvard University Natural History Museum 21 million; ; Natural History Museum of Geneva 15 million; Yale Peabody Museum: 13 million; Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales: 6 million. No attempt to verify these figures has been made.

References

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Dorfman, E.J. 2016. Who owns history? Diverse perspectives on curating an Ancient Egyptian Kestrel. Taipei: Proceedings of the International Biennial Conference of Museum Studies Commemorating the 80th Birthday of Professor Pao-teh Han 30th and 31th October 2014.

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