The
digression about theatre in my last posts actually helped to prepare the ground
for the next step in my terminology. Rather early on in my blog I
(re)discovered Schiller’s concept of (aesthetic) PLAYING in his “Aesthetic
Education” as a fundamental part of my reading. It certainly had an impact on
the discovery of the dichotomy of playing and acting in my last post. Playing –
not acting! – turned out as the fundamental concept to describe a successful
theatre experience. Acting is really important, though, in the way directing,
set design, lighting et cetera is. We are not supposed to notice it, but there
is no good show without professional acting. To describe what HAPPENS WITH US
when we are happy in the theatre, though, and why it is such a special
experience, PLAYING is the key. Films CAN be a lot like this if the focus is on
the playing, and the playing is so very special, as I remember, for example,
from Woody Allen’s “Wonder Wheel” or, recently, “My Zoe”. But there also are
fictional situations that can only arise on a stage. My most striking
experience of this kind was “No Man’s Land” (with Ian McKellen and Patrick
Stewart) where the inconsequential talking revealed this abyss between the thin
layer of our communicating and the mute bulk of our physical and mental
existence kind of materializing on the stage. (I realize for the first time
that the title indicates how successful my reading has been!) But this was
certainly not the only incident of this kind – where theatre was just so
different. The opportunity to actually WITNESS the playing – or notice its
absence! - in an opposed party – the actor – makes it immediately obvious that
it is not just I playing with the text but also THE TEXT PLAYING WITH ME.
I must
say, I am rather amused with my official coming out as a philosopher. And
bewildered because it feels as if I carried more responsibility for the binding
character of what I am writing. But this is just a misunderstanding. I have
always been sceptical of any kind of systematic philosophy because it means
that I have to believe in something – if only in the fact that this kind of
“absolute” truth philosophers are trying to establish through their thinking
exists. I am not even sure if I believe in this kind of truth or not, but I
have found that believing is hugely overrated. It doesn’t matter what I BELIEVE,
or just as a point of reference for what I am going to DISCOVER. In my
experience there are three kinds of small children – after the age where they
cram everything they see into their mouths: the kind that is fascinated with
throwing pebbles, the kind that is fascinated with digging holes, and the kind
that cannot be bothered. Growing up, for most people, means that they can BEGIN
to do a lot of things, like driving a car, drinking alcohol, having sex, making
money. In fact, it is the time where we STOP doing most things we used to do –
and that used to feel good! - like throwing pebbles, screaming like banshees,
running around like mad, riding a swing, going swimming in ice-cold water, crying,
running up stairs, picking fights, climbing trees, rescuing earthworms,
painting pictures, picking our noses, telling people what we really think, playing,
maybe even masturbating … and of course digging holes! The only reason that we
still appear faintly human might be that everybody else has stopped as well doing
any of these things and being interested in anything else than money, sex, cooking,
cars, alcohol, work, interior decoration, and football. And, maybe, that most
people maintain a secret reserve of “kid things” they just cannot stop doing.
In my case it was DIGGING HOLES. Therefore I became a philosopher “naturally”
because this is what philosophers do. Stepping between the neat rows of
established truths to dig holes. Once you have got the hang of it, you cannot
stop. And – unfortunately! - it implies thinking and writing things other
people don’t understand because – even if they are themselves digging – they
are seldom down the SAME hole digging for things beneath and in-between
politically and otherwise correct truths. Like all philosophers, I am
constantly trying to be totally clear and intelligible – and usually fail. It
is an occupational hazard.
For a
primitive philosopher of this kind there isn’t even a fundamental inhibition from
being a constructivist and a realist, an empiricist and an idealist, a
rationalist and a phenomenologist at the same time. The only thing you really
need is some kind of “toolbox” for making concepts. I usually know WHEN I have
found something, but, if it is new, I don’t know yet what it is. And strangely,
only when I have a WORD for it, I can begin to find out. “In the beginning
there was the word …”, for me, is the
most perceptive thing anyone ever wrote, (apart from: “I know that I know
nothing”.) And, while I am busy finding out, my world is growing around me and
the digging picking up pace … This is also - I just realize - rather wild and
weird for a method. The TEXT VORTEX is my stellar example for it, therefore the
lengthy introduction.
I don’t really
remember now, but I think it was a random find. I had developed some idea of
what I am doing when I am reading, but WHAT is it that makes me do it? Why does
it work so well with a certain kind of text – like “Shakespeare” – and not so
well with others, or not at all. Besides, I KNOW – for example right now listening
to the Brandenburg concertos played by the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields
– that there is not just me doing something with the text but an incredibly
strong “force field” created by the text, just DRAWING ME IN. So much stronger than
– and so different from - anything else that might hold my interest for a
while, like a game, a match, other people’s conversation, or even something totally
strange and mesmerizing like cats having sex … (they don’t “mate”, they are
actually having sex!) I began to call it the “black box”, but this only meant
that I would never know anything about what a fictional text is “doing”. The
only thing I had established is that it is doing SOMETHING. And there is a
corresponding black box inside ME because the biggest part of the emotions,
experiences, thoughts, dreams, motivations, and memories I use for my reading stays
hidden from me as well. Until I “found” more, my theory about reading would
stay unfinished.
I remembered
that somebody had used the metaphor of the VORTEX to describe poetry, but I
couldn’t retrieve the quote. I think it stuck because of the necessary
COMBINATION of STRUCTURE and MOVEMENT. The idea of an object that only exists
because of their working together. I wasn’t even aware until recently that
there is an empirical context! Though it is probably a common and frequent
occurrence in nature, we only become aware of a vortex when it gets huge and
threatening. The vortex as the visible part of a tornado that emerges out of
nowhere and sucks up everything that gets in its way. Or the dangerous
whirlpool that drags ships under water and grinds them to splinters. It is an
amazing metaphor – because of the giant impact of the forces at work and the
fundamental difference a vortex creates between the outside world and the
totally void and still space on the inside. It sucks us in like NOTHING ELSE
and, once inside, the outward world ceases to exist.
(It is
the strongest image I can think of for “concentrating” – and that is probably
what text and “really reading” is about for me. Just as an activity and a state
I want to be in. I cannot bear to be caught in this “half-state” where I am
busy but kind of spread out in all directions. Where there is movement
everywhere but my “centre” is totally inactive – and which, I imagine, is the
state most people are in most of the time. Especially since “we” have stopped
doing complicated – or boring but necessary - things with our hands for hours
on end and got focused that way. Instead, our attention gets scrambled in chat
rooms and on twitter.)
One of
the first dichotomies I created to describe what happens in “Shakespeare” was
STRUCTURE AND BEAUTY – where the “and” is as important as any of the terms.
Structure as such is nothing. I have always been good at analysing poetry
because I liked to detect and describe text structure, but the most important
thing I learned from it is that structure ALONE is nothing. Without movement it
is dead. It can do nothing – not even in the inanimate world. The
interdependence of structure and energy is what physics is dealing with most of
the time, and – to be honest – a complete mystery to me … So, I could detect as
much structure as I wanted in “Shakespeare”, but I had still to understand
BEAUTY.
I think
I never understood beauty before I hit on my second favourite quote from “The
Lord of the Rings” where Gimli describes his reaction to Galadriel’s gift:
I
have looked last on what is fairest (…) Henceforward I will call nothing fair
unless it be her gift.
This was
a highly subjective moment because the reason I understood is that the same
thing had just happened to me. It is the kind of thing that only happens ONCE
in a person’s life. I became aware that I had found what I had always been
looking for. I think there were a few times in my life where I got excited and thought
I might KNOW what I was looking for – therefore I never gave up. But this time
I had FOUND what I was looking for. Completely unexpectedly, it was there –
just before my eyes!
I put
“beauty” in quotation marks here, just once, to indicate that it is a metaphor,
but – like every good metaphor – it has a necessary connection to the real
thing. The word is just spread out so widely that it mostly stopped meaning
anything. One can have a beautiful person, a beautiful necklace, and a
beautiful goal, and what not, but everybody probably remembers one of these
instances of having been TOUCHED by beauty. It is this EXPERIENCE the metaphor
refers to – and, when it happened to me on this occasion, I discovered that beauty
is the only ABSOLUTE category I subscribe to. For me there is no absolute
goodness, or truth, or moral values, or whatever – probably because I am even
more of an empiricist than I thought??? - but I actually FOUND absolute beauty.
The experience certainly derived from the unexpected perfection of the “object”
I found, but of course I know that this perfection is NOT absolute. It is just
that the object matched MY INNER CONCEPTION of what a human being should be
like – as to looks but, more importantly, to “content” - to a degree I could
never have imagined. Before I had found it, I DIDN’T KNOW what was in ME! - Finding
the perfect object happened entirely by chance – as for Gimli who might never
have seen Galadriel if he hadn’t gone on that journey. I could never have
brought this about on my own – and I like this! It makes the event so much more
valuable: to realize that it is just chance that my life hadn’t been in vain. I
might have died at the age of forty-five like my father and never seen it. But
I didn’t!
The kind
of beauty I had hit upon is absolute. Its point is exactly that it doesn’t
compare with ANYTHING else. But there is a serious drawback because it only
“happens” ONCE. We have found everything we were looking for, everything we ever
wished for, in another (human) being, but we cannot “keep” it. Gimli intends to
put the golden hairs of Galadriel into some kind of shrine to preserve them
forever, but he knows that this is not sufficient. It will help to create a
memory of the “real thing”, but, sadly, “memory is not what the heart desires”.
Of course memory serves, to a degree, and we would be beggars without it, but
the impact of beauty on us will fade. Reading and analysing Sonnet 5 – in what
became, I think, my third post – I first understood what POETRY can do so much
better than anything else: PERPETUATE a state like this. I think, reading this
poem, I really captured the “vortex energy” that holds it together by getting
to the bottom of how beauty is able to MOVE us.
BEAUTY in
text depends on STRUCTURE – which is basically just what we are motivated to
select as we have learned to prefer it. Obviously, there is a basic kind of
beauty in structure – which makes us prefer highly structured phenomena and
play with them. (Thence the attraction of sudoku, magic cubes and the like.) Therefore
it is the AESTHETIC CATEGORY that comes to mind first, but not the only one.
The way “beauty” happened to me is probably rather exotic, and I used it as an example
to show how a TEXT VORTEX works just because this was how I discovered it. There
are lots of other aesthetic categories, other kinds of “movement” - like
horror, action, or story - that have little connection with beauty, or none at
all. Having a conversation with Claudia recently about our motivations for
reading alerted me to the fact that my own conception is much too narrow and
subjective. For a valid theory, a potentially unlimited amount of aesthetic
categories would have to be included. But, looking into the text vortex, I find
that STRUCTURE AND MOVEMENT might do the trick. There certainly is structure
and the potential to “move” us in every kind of (fictional) text but only WHEN
WE ENGAGE the vortex appears “out of nowhere”.
I
realize that the way I use MOVEMENT as a concept is rather cheeky because I am
trying to bring its literal meaning – as in physical movement – and its
metaphoric content – as in being moved emotionally – back together into one
concept. But this might be exactly the point of movement as an AESTHETIC term,
as we can be moved in several ways at the same time. And different kinds of
movement are playing into each other. For example, being moved by beauty – in
actors, scenery, voices and so on - usually makes me more amenable to notice
and enjoy other content.
Mostly,
the aesthetic experience is so complex that I don’t know WHAT triggered it. For
example, seeing “The Crucible” again on Digital Theatre last year just
confirmed my first impression about it that was one of pure aesthetical joy
because it is the most perfect and perceptive and “emotionally complete”
production of a play I have ever seen. Above all, I just enjoyed the
COMPLETENESS of the aesthetic experience. EVERYTHING I could have wished for
WAS THERE – and too complex to analyse. (Feeling shitty for days after I had
seen it might just have been because of the realization that it was over – and something
like this was unlikely to happen again.) Or like, just now, seeing “Coriolanus”
with Tom Hiddleston, where the production of the play was so brilliant and convincing
that I suddenly liked and understood a text I find indigestible every time I am
trying to read it. So, I suppose, the multiple indigestible bits were just
swallowed up by all the good? Most of the time, the “movement” is just so big
that I get swept away without getting to know a lot about it. But, even though
I rarely know WHAT is happening, I always know WHEN. And this is in fact my
best empirical proof for the existence of a vortex.
In extreme
cases this might even be AFTER I have read it. This happens frequently with
films, on my way home from the cinema, when it suddenly hits me what it was I
have seen. My most striking example for these dynamics was “Mother” – where I
didn’t enjoy anything about the film and sat through it bored, even disgusted, until,
right at the end, this giant metaphor came crashing down on me. A kind of
“crash” I have learned to appreciate! – There obviously is a different “vortex
energy” or “structure” for different kinds of fiction. Something like this is very
unlikely to happen with a novel because I wouldn’t read through hundreds of
pages being bored and disgusted - though the “pull” of the story might be
strong enough to drag me through. But mostly I drop out of aesthetically
unsatisfactory prose. STORY – or, more precisely in this context: text elements
we are used to create stories from! - is probably the primary “vortex energy
engine” in most kinds of fiction, the one that always works. Way back in this
blog I discovered to my amusement that I constantly try to “skip” story and
proceed directly to the “juicy” human stuff I am shooting for. And how this
sometimes makes my reading downright ridiculous. Treating story as secondary
might even be what often leads to these “delays” in really reading. Recently listening
to “The Other People” read by Richard Armitage, it happened after about two
hours. As it is often the case for me with crime stories, I get overwhelmed by
puzzling and irrelevant detail and fail to see the wood for all the trees – and
this means I usually don’t read them. But then the aesthetic atmosphere created
through the intimacy of the voice suddenly sucked me in. Only then did I begin
to enjoy the story!
In the
theatre, a delayed experience like this is not possible. There must be
SOMETHING I want to engage with from the beginning. Otherwise I become
immediately aware that this is not a place where I want to be. Seeing Ralph
Fiennes in “Antony and Cleopatra”, I knew after a few minutes that I shouldn’t
have been getting on that plane. And the beginning of “Uncle Vanya” didn’t
become a disaster only because I knew half of the actors and trusted them. (It STILL
was a disagreeable quarter of an hour!) The aesthetic experience may build up
slowly – as it did in “No Man’s Land” where I didn’t understand from the
beginning what it might be about. But there must have been SOMETHING there from
the beginning – which I identified as the PLAYING. It was obvious that both
actors really ENJOYED being there and doing this. There is a PERSONAL dimension
which I totally like but which also makes it so precarious. Only when I can see
that they are playing – and confident! - I am feeling safe and happy myself, and
ready to engage and be moved. Then we are ALL ready for the ride …
