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tags:nonsenseantiphilosophygamesart
related Islands
NOTE
I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space
- Shakespeare
I think what this thought ended being about was intimate, obsessive focus on detail and how that minute study can unfold, and perhaps reflect back to form an outer gaze, or just something unexpected.
Maybe what I am saying is that I am curious if you look inward so much, it turns into looking outward (like staring at the coast, then looking at a pebble, then seeing in the reflection on the water glazed surface the whole earth and the waves that landed it there). How much information you can get through a peephole?
“If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, try it for eight, sixteen, thirty-two, and so on. Eventually one discovers that it’s not boring at all but very interesting.”
Everyone has so many options today to stave off boredom, well the feel entertained even if it’s just a very basic feed-driven satiation.
But I am curious about these “trapped projects” which is what I’ll call them. They feel primitive, even wasteful or pointless. But in our times there is a charm to how resistive they are. They are often focused on detail, by nature of limiting. It becomes introspective and insane, as the mind seeks.
Man’s ability to see is in decline. Those who nowadays concern themselves with culture and education will experience this fact again and again. We do not mean here, of course, the physiological sensitivity of the human eye. We mean the spiritual capacity to perceive the visible reality as it truly is. To be sure, no human being has ever really seen everything that lies visibly in front of his eyes. The world, including its tangible side, is unfathomable. Who would ever have perfectly perceived the countless shapes and shades of just one wave swelling and ebbing in the ocean! And yet, there are degrees of perception. Going below a certain bottom line quite obviously will endanger the integrity of man as a spiritual being. It seems that nowadays we have arrived at this bottom line. -Josef Pieper
I can only explain now by two illustrative examples.
A trapped project might be dedicating your whole life to understanding your yard. We pass yards every day, and there’s a sense there’s a universe inside but we just take it for granted. For example, if you trapped yourself to observation of the yard you’d find details on the composition of the soil, a categorization of the trees. You’d document the various anthills, and their colonies but not just spatially but in their seasons and harvests. Even in that anthill, every ant could be dedicated to. Even the life of a single ant, because you might as well because you are trapped in this project. How many birds do I pass that know me, but I don’t know them? I’d find out.
Another trapped project is related to a Anti-Dates. For this trapped project you’d have no voice anymore. You’d be locked with another person. The two of you would have just multi-colored thread. With this as your only means of expression, you’d be with them. Now I wonder with this method of communication, what would your life look like in 50 years. Not just a week, but a lifetime of being trapped and exploring how to communicate with yarn.
Cricket song
There was this cricket in the work bathroom, sequestered somewhere in the corner of a stall. You know, they came from outside to escape the coming cold. It was so loud, that a number of my colleagues commented on it. Like it was impressive. My point here, being it performing it’s ultimate creative act but it struck me as pathetic and sad in a human narrative sense. Like on the damp floor of a bathroom, singing to no crickets before ultimately dying alone by virtue of its exploration. Before I left for work it was singing louder than ever, but the next day I didn’t hear it, nor since.
I had this thought about an alien girl endling once, and her being on the planet and just singing the last song.
Guitarless guitar learning
Do you think you could get equally competent, even if given 10 years, on learning Capricho árabe (or even a less technical song, say beginner intermediate) through just notation (be it tabs or sounds) and without holding a guitar?
I’m talking about practicing in your head, or even with an imagined fretboard (gripping a piece lined paper even). I’ve seen this form of a thought experiment before, but I’m talking specifically with a guitar. You’d spend 10 years, in isolation (using any means necessary to develop calluses, finger dexterity etc - outside of holding a guitar) then are given a guitar and the chance to play, virginally.
You could deconstruct the entire guitar process, (the entire guitar) into individual components and learn them (like how a guitar is composed of usually six strings, and learning a song on a single string, then combining that).
Could you learn a song this way? Then pick up the guitar and play it like you had held the guitar the whole time.
Movie
Watch the same movie, every day for a year. Use some vacation time. Watch the same movie, nonstop for the entire vacation. Listen to only one song.
Stop
One day walk to a place. And just stop. Stay there stopped through the day and through the night, and through the day and through the night.
Naturalist
In [Geographies of Solitude] from 2022 we get a sense of a trapped project following a naturalist and environmentalist who lives in a remote location, Sable Island.
She keeps exhaustive notes on such things as the island horses
Board Game
Which board games can be solved by just focusing on a single piece? A single tile. If I were to devote inordinate attention on a Pawn (perhaps not even my own), am I ever capable of winning a Chess match just by understanding how it relates to other pieces? In Chess, there is a fixation on the King because of the Checkmate win state, but other pieces clearly play their role.
Maybe this game isn’t a good match. Perhaps a game, like the Mole where there lies a secret actor which is attempting to subvert the goals of the group. Can I focus on the action and reactions of a single player and from this deduce the false actor?
Sentence Summary
Like Effective Summarization can I be distilled into aSentence effectively? What is my sentence? If I took a pen, and devoted a week to writing down me, irreproachably and irrefutably me - what would that sentence look like?
We are often tasked this. Every social site has a bio. It has an introduction. How much thought is put into this? Are they every accurate?
Kochuu
Just watched this documentary, Kochuu which depicts the Japanese influence on Norwegian architecture. One term is brought up, the title - Kochuu - which is an Edo period term for “in a jar.” The idea was to create a really small tea room where your thoughts were on the universe. The Japanese would construct small enclosed spaces, which imparted that sense of being isolated Islands of thought.
Some appropriate quotes from the film,
What is a small space, in physical terms, can be filled with big thoughts.
The building’s form is not determined by the outside, it emerges rather, swelling from within…
Crusoeism
A termed coined by J.G. Ballard, Crusoeism, refers to castaways that choose to maroon themselves. Robinson Crusoe was marooned against his own will.
“The concept provides a reason why people would deliberately maroon themselves” because becoming a castaway is as much a “healing and empowering process as an entrapping one, enabling people to discover a more meaningful and vital existence.”
Seen in the fantastic film, Castaway on the Moon.
Perception
The perception circuit is a trapped project. I think I’ve only been me.
Xavier de Maistre, A Journey Around My Room
In the spring of 1790, Xavier de Maistre, confined to his room under house arrest, embarked upon a voyage around his bedroom, a trip every bit as arduous as that of Magellan and Cook but one that took place almost entirely within the boundaries of his own imagination. The result was A Journey Around My Room and it was followed by the equally adventurous A Nocturnal Investigation Around My Room. These accounts, as de Maistre was to proudly proclaim, would introduce the world to a new form of travel involving little of the risk or expense facing the conventional traveller. ‘There’s no more attractive pleasure,’ claims de Maistre ‘than following one’s ideas wherever they lead, as the hunter pursues his game, without even trying to keep to any set route. And so, when I travel through my room, I rarely follow a straight line: I go from my table towards a picture hanging in a corner; from there I set out obliquely towards the door; but even though, when I begin, it really is my intention to go there, if I happen to meet my armchair en route, I don’t think twice about it, and settle down in it without further ado.’
Robinsonner
Reputedly coined by Arthur Rimbaud, robinsonner, which means ‘to let the mind wander or to travel mentally.’
Kafka - The Top
Link to originalKafka’s “The Top” is a story about a philosopher who spends his spare time around children so he can grab their tops in spin. To catch a top still spinning makes him happy for a moment in his belief “that the understanding of any detail, that of a spinning top for instance, was sufficient for the understanding of all things.”