Happy are those who know:

Behind all words, the Unsayable stands;
And from that source alone, the Infinite
Crosses over to gladness, and us—
Built with the stone of distinctions;
So that always, within each delight,
We gaze at what is purely single and joined.
Free of our bridges,

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

written on the manuscripts of Duino Elegies

“I write differently from what I speak, I speak differently from what I think, I think differently from the way I ought to think, and so it all proceeds into deepest darkness.”

~ Franz Kafka

music

“ There are two principal parts of each personality: the conscious mind and the unconscious, and these are split and dispersed, in most of us, in countless ways and directions. The function of music, like that of any other healthy occupation, is to help to bring those separate parts back together again. Music does this by providing a moment when, awareness of time and space being lost, the multiplicity of elements which make up an individual become integrated and he is one.” 

~ J. Cage

live the questions

"I beg you, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer." 

Rilke ~ Letters to a Young Poet

Cage and Cunningham

" When Cage and Cunningham met, perhaps they felt a tremor of gravitational shift. It might have been small at first, or the shiver might have been so insistent it rattled them. Whatever the case, something evidently stirred between the two men before they came to New York. But maybe nothing was spoken.

So it is with the places preparing to teach us. It’s only when the heart begins to beat wildly and without pattern — when it begins to realize its boundlessness — that its newly adamant pulse bangs on the walls of its cage and is bruised by its enclosure.

To feel the heart pound is only the beginning. Next is to feel the hurt — the tearing of the psyche — the prelude of entry into the place one has always feared. One fears that place because of being drawn to it, loving it, and wanting to be taught by it. Without the need to be taught, who would feel the psyche rip?…. Without the bruise, who would know where the walls are? "

Kay Larson ~ Where the Heart Beats: John Cage, Zen Buddhism, and the Inner Life of Artists

Prometheus four times

Franz Kafka ~ Prometheus

Morning Prayer

" On work days arise to your labors happily, if you can. And if you can't, what's stopping you? Is there something heavy, something difficult in your way? What do you have against what's heavy and difficult?--That it can kill you.--Alright, so it's strong and powerful, you know that much about it. And what do you know about what's easy? Nothing. We have no memory at all of what's easy. So even if you were permitted to choose, wouldn't you actually have to choose what's hard? Don't you feel how kindred it is to you, related to you through all your loves? Is it not your true home?

And aren't you in harmony with nature when you choose it? Don't you think the seed would find it easier to stay in the earth? Don't the migrating birds have it hard, and the wild who have fend for themselves.

Look: easy things and hard simply do not exist. Life itself is what's hard. And you want to live, don't you? So you're wrong to call it your duty to take on what's hard. The survival instinct pushes you to do that. So what is your duty? Your duty is to love what's hard. That you carry the weight doesn't say much, you have to rock it in its cradle and sing it to sleep and be there when it needs you, and it can need you at any moment.

You have to be so ready to help, so gentle and kind, that you spoil it, spoil your difficult thing like a child, so that it can no longer exist without you, so that it depends on you. 

After you've brought it to such a state you will no longer want anyone to come take it off your hands.

And you get that far through love. To love is hard. When someone bids you to love, they are laying a great task upon you, but not an impossible one. For they are not calling you to love another person, which is not for beginners; they are not demending from you that you love God, which only the most mature of people can do. They are only calling your attention to what's hard for you, what is neediest in you and at the same time most fruitful. You see, what's easy wants nothing from you, but what's hard waits for you, and there is no strength in you that won't be needed there, and even if your life is very long not a single day will be left over for what's easy, what scoffs as your strength. 

Go deep inside yourself and build what's hard. it should be like a house within you, if you yourself are like a land that changes with the tides. Remember, you are not a star, you have no course to follow.

You must be a world unto yourself and with your difficult thing in your center, drawing you to it. And one day, with its weight, its gravity, it will have its effects beyond you, on a destiny, on a person, on God. Then, when it's ready, God will enter into your difficult thing. And do you know anywhere else where you and He can meet? "

 Andre Gelpke - Sylt - 1980

-----

Rainer Maria Rilke, Morning Prayer from The Inner Sky

what does it matter

looking for the ghost in the machine

amongst the very first composers of electronic music: Daphne Oram and Delia Derbyshire

spaces between

[[[ love has many faces ]]]

"Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death. If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present. Our life has no end in the way in which our visual field has no limits." 


( Wittgenstein, Tractatus, 6.431)

what are you looking at what are you looking at?

"I now exist as myself for my unreflective consciousness. It is this irruption of te self which has been most often described: I see myself because somebody sees me."
(J.P. Sartre: Being and Nothingness)

Hearing footsteps behind him/herself, a voyeur being caught peeping through a door, becomes self-conscious that someone else is looking at him/her. This 'irruption of the self', as Satre calls it, makes us aware of ourselves by being discovered by someone else.

Étant donnés: 1° la chute d'eau / 2° le gaz d'éclairage

The real subject of the Marcel Duchamp's Étant donnés  is not the naked woman with her enlightened vagina, but the spactator, peeping through the door.
I see myself because somebody else sees me.

Con celui qui voit.

pale dog

Francesca Woodman
the last modernist photographer

Difference & Repetition

The head is the organ of exchange, but the heart is the amorous organ of repetition. The head is the organ of exchange, but the heart is the amorous organ of repetition. The head is the organ of exchange, but the heart is the amorous organ of repetition. The head is the organ of exchange, but the heart is the amorous organ of repetition. The head is the organ of exchange, but the heart is the amorous organ of repetition. The head is the organ of exchange, but the heart is the amorous organ of repetition. The head is the organ of exchange, but the heart is the amorous organ of repetition. 

(Deleuze)

In desire I become aware of myself.

Consciousness is inherently divided against itself, says Hegel.

Consciousness cannot define itself; it must hold to something other than itself. I cannot just think or feel, I must think or feel something.  

And at the same time, every thought or feeling can be also otherwise, or not to be at all; thus being its own negation. I'm not aware of things and feelings, but I'm aware that those things and feelings could be otherwise.

When I'm thirsty, my thirst is the contrast to my previous state of satisfaction. The difference between these two states is what Hegel calls desire.

In desire I become aware of myself.

There are two opposed modes of consciousness according to Hegel:

" The one is independent, and its essential nature is to be for itself (a master); the other is dependent and its essential nature is life or existence for another (servant)".*

What everyone wants to achieve is recognition and freedom (my consciousness is my freedom), while "solely by risking life freedom is obtained"*.

"The individual who has not staked his life may, no doubt, be recognized as a person; but he has not attained the truth of his recognition as an independent self-consciousness."*

The one who has proved his/ her independency by putting everything on stake, becomes a master. Thus the master gains recognition only from the servant, a dependent being. However paradoxically the master seeks for recognition from another independent being, which becomes impossible, and the never ending struggle starts over and over again. over and over again.

Notes based on Robert E. Wagoner's The Meaning Of Love

* Hegel: The Phenomenology of Mind

what a fool of heart!