(no subject)

[andalus]

a) i just saw the Soderbergh version of Solaris and was curious as to what people thought of it and it's relation to the original.

b) what is the capacity for transcendence in the arts? can a painting change your life? (assuming you're not a painter) a poem can make you cry but can it turn you into a different person? why don't they teach the alchemistry of emotion? is architecture more than habitation? can symbols be more important than life or should we look to practical things, practical changes?

c) it still happens to me, that suddenly the mind retracts like a frightened amoeba from all the layers it was thinking in, layers of stories or symbols or duties or considerations or idle thoughts, retracts back from all of that and is suddenly naked and unemcumbered by reality and suddenly.. i realize.. how strange it is to be human, to have consciousness, to live in a body, to sleep, to have sex, to eat, to think, to make up things to occupy the mind, false things, things that only exist in the mind or that collective mind, society. and then to treat these false things as stone and steel, to be trapped by them.. how strange it is to be human. i can almost remember what it was like before i was human. when there was only one meaning and it was the truth. now, knowing all this, what could i possibly bring to the world that would answer or alleviate that question? what could you bring into the world? an answer? an arrow? a well defined question? a maze? a puzzle? a distraction?

Comments

[wandruska.livejournal.com]

a) -
b) +
c) chess

[andalus.livejournal.com]

a) &?
b) #%$@!
c) qxb7++

[proximoception.livejournal.com]

c) to answer/alleviate what question? is a strangeness a question?

my suspicion is the naked or kubrick days are part of an enormously complex rotation: when the program suspects your actions are unproductive it turns off power to some of your existing value structures, doesnt knock them over but youre indifferent to them suddenly, you dont feel them but you suddenly do feel the world again, are at the mercy of the awful flux that engendered them. youre forced to try out something new and compare it with the old. the old will tend to win but there may at least be modification. i dont think these days often happen to presidents or mothers or park rangers, being a drifty young man makes you vulnerable

b) anything can change you if it fits you and you havent heard it before, and the order in which you hear such things is pretty crucial. but most of us hear most everything by our twenties or so: id suggest that art's effects on you after that point come from your picking among the things that hit you earlier the ones most central to you, and burrowing your way into them. people who dont just live by wants and rules live by precedents. some life or image or structure is lodged inside you and you modify it to you and you to it. and the source of this agitation, though often a person or event or palce, was as often art: art is half-digested chaos. a wall but with a window

[zulko.livejournal.com]

a poem can make you cry but can it turn you into a different person? why don't they teach the alchemistry of emotion?

Bit by bit all the poems I've read have burned a place behind my retina. The alchemistry of emotion isn't something that can be taught, I think. YOu can lead a horse to water....

As always I am very glad to read your journal.