repost: question, representation and beauty

part one: question

The question was asked:

"Why are we here?"

Some people answered.
Some said nothing.

One person wrote:

"So we can leave."

a) On the grossest level, this means nothing more (or less) than the certainty of bodily death, and while this fact seems mundane, true understanding can only be obtained as a side effect of our ultimate demise. This being the case, I will refrain from speculation.

b) On a more subtle level, leaving means much more than the body – it means recognizing the transitory nature of our beings. The "me" writing this now is not the "me" I was when I started. for example, i have just heard the most amusing song:

But I know that this amusement will be gone by this time tomorrow; it will probably be gone within the hour. This is the nature of thought and emotion.

The longer I study the nature of the (or at least "my") mind, the more convinced i become of two things:

1) The contents of the mind are ever-changing.

(and)

2) At least so long as we are embodied, the mind itself is ever-present.

Memory inevitably fades or fabricates, and even those sublime moments when we let go of identification can only be read against the moments that came before and after.

(fort and da)
(fort and da)

So, why are we here? We are here so we can leave, so we can let go of all those moments before and after, the moments we believe our existence can ever be fixed, defined, or understood.

part two: representation

Last night I sat in a room with eight other people and we stared at a machine approximately similar to the one upon which I currently type. The machine presented a two dimensional image of a person in Vancouver. The words spoken in Canada were transmitted to the room in Florida.

Sometimes the technology works well, but other times:

Without saying so, the person in Vancouver was talking about the nature of representation. This is a topic with which I have some familiarity. Afterward I picked up where he left off:

If one were to go to the beach, he or she could make a list of 50,000 distinct characteristics. Each of these 50,000 characteristics would be unique to the moment. Repeat this experiment 100 times.

After each repetition

(fort and da)

the characteristics will be slightly, or vastly, different. And yet, there is some experience of the beach that is consistent. It cannot be named, nor can it be denied.

But this is too simple.

Looking a little more deeply, one will inevitable encounter a problem. The sight of the water, for instance, is not instantaneous. The interaction between light, cornea, optic nerve, and brain create a lag between perception and cognition that is insurmountable. Therefore, to see the beach is actually to know the beach as it was; to hear the waves is to hear the waves as they were. The distance between us and the moment is structural, not conceptual, and everything in nature is pointing us to the answer given to the question in part one.

It is only

the persistent insistence of our existence

that prevents us

from
spinning
into nothing.

part three: beauty

An ancilla of last night's trans-continental discussion had to do with beauty and left me with more questions than answers. Like all transcendental categories, beauty encounters substantial obstacles when one ventures to dip below the most superficial of levels, and here are three points i continue to ponder:

1) For starters, if, as the truism argues, "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" then who is it that trains the eye?

(I recall Laura Mulvey had something to say about this.)

2) Furthermore, in defining beauty do we not also necessarily define its lack? Does not, as Ani Difranco argues, everyone harbor a secret hatred for the prettiest girl in the room? If so, is beauty nothing more than a side effect of ego, a severing of oneself from the Source of all creation?

3) And, most perplexingly, what does Morrissey think of all this?

(fort and da)
(fort and da)
(fort and da)

"It's gruesome that someone so handsome should care."