[time to sort it all out]

Somewhere for the context and the non-sketchbook (The blue text is usually a link)

Friday, November 30, 2012

Rilke.

Love Song
-Rainer Maria Rilke


How shall I hold my soul and yet not touch
It with your own? How shall I ever place
It clear of you on anything beyond?
Oh gladly I would stow it next to such
Things in the darkness as are never found
Down in an alien and silent space
That does not resonate when you resound.
But everything that touches me and you
Takes us together like a bow on two
Taut strings to stroke them to the voice of one.
What instrument have we been lain along?
Whose are the hands that play our unison?
Oh sweet song!

Stomach Trembling

Kierkegaard's Wild Ferment


"If there were no eternal consciousness in a man, if at the bottom of everything there were only a wild ferment, a power that twisting in dark passions produced everything... if an unfathomable, insatiable, emptiness lay hid beneath everything... What would life be but despair?"
In this I see God.
That may be a misunderstanding, but there it is.

The 'darkness' of Light is an interesting idea
But call me Gilgamesh
But also in this, I can't help but imagine the Ouroboros, coiling about a person's stomach, metaphorically, and creating creation.

That primordial soup is a pretty common conceit

It's funny how a paragraph can last a lifetime,
But persective (obviously) has such an influence - I see that terrifying, roiling mass beneath the surface as God. Chance and evolution seems to me cleaner, more beautiful in a certain way, but he seemed to be thinking of oblivion or eternity (which, when looked upon, seems terrifying because of itself). Much of this, doubtlessly, is to do with the change of thinking and scientific advancements
Though still, the concept of God is in some ways very unchanged. The horror of eternity is surely no different

That aside, the image is so striking, wonderous and beautiful, that it resonates in its way and must be depicted. Something of that feeling - whether fear, trembling, awe or breathlessness - must be universal

Kiekegaard, Søren, 1843, Fear and Trembling, Penguin, London
(drawings are my own)

Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Monday, November 26, 2012

The difficulty with philosophy

More and more I realise (thought I knew not to take the word as gospel) that it would be very difficult for, say Kant to describe the sublime. He sounds almost pained. Scarry sounds entirely pleased.

A political philosopher maybe has more substance, but their experience is equally subjective

Psychology is a tricky art for these reasons (short of a physical abnormality being detected) and so things are classed, re analysed, carefully ordered and recorded

Because we cannot know each other?

Post Cel Crabeels

Reconsiderationing

Following a tutorial with Mr. Crabeels things maybe need re-setting-out
-> He had the thought that spiritualism etc. is too big and vague a topic to commit oneself to
The recommendation was 'drawing', and that things that were of interest would present themselves by and by anyway

It seems just as great and vague a topic to me - drawing- but I do see the sense. 
Perhaps somewhere in between? I shall consider it 'drawing' 
And 'personal'
And currently am exploring automatic drawing, writings, and the things that come alongside

I think this is similar to my initial aim that got a little lost somewhere along the way - poor perdú! 
But it helps to clarify my own thoughts/intentions
-> Because his other question was 'how could I hope to express something that I didn't know I wanted to express?'

Perhaps I will know?


Steven Baelen



-> So much detail and so much space?!
They don't look much like pencil, which is nice


Ozi recommended this tactic
The lines showing through are pleasing




Makes a drawing...
->It's an beautiful way to look at, and de-construct, drawing
Super clean and removed - Looks like it took it's time
Seems too much hard work for the audience (in a physical way) to me though.

Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Monday, November 12, 2012

What is it to Be?

Notes on Kant, As I Go Along
"God, You are my creation, I created you to create."

Maybe 'shadows' of truth like a plaster Ganesha
-> A net curtain like ectoplasm
I can consider it a game of limits and falliability -  There may just be pleasure to be had in talking 
about the unknown and those strange things like ant-minds.
But what is it to Be? I will be until I am not.
Lightly.

Philosophy is Synthetic, ie. Additive or Productive

The Truth that is the foundation of, for example, Platonsim and Christianity, is regarded as  'presence', or God's presence, as experienced by contrast to His absence.
-> One can have light without shadows, but only having seen light can you appreciate the concept of dark
-> Darkness, in itself, is 'whole' and idescribable without lightness.

We are the light that created god - shrouded in darkness as He is - so that we had a standard to hold ourselves against, perhaps. It would be difficult to find flaws without a measure against which to hold them, it might be said.
The fantasy serves a purpose and fulfills a need.

 So the 'thereness' is, like presence, a duality. One cannot concieve it without it's opposite - that emotional flatness.

-> However, as Jung almost put it, and I would say, everything is real
-> God, whether real or not exists as a concept real enough
As with many things.  

Want, Christopher and Klimowski, Andrzej, 1996, Kant For Beginners, Icon Books Ltd. Cambridge

Friday, November 9, 2012

Analog and Archetype?

Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain
(1)
Is there a connection between the supposed ability of those untrained in art to interpret analog, or expressive, drawings and Jung's 'archetypes'?
-> If they can be said to exist
-> Probably variable by culture?

For that matter, do I really believe in the solid left/right brain thing? Probably not
But there probably are different modes of thinking that we employ (Edwards' R-mode)
But which ear you listen with apparently affects aptitude...

Being as global skills are comprised of many things it might not make sense to say 'reading left, drawing right' since surely some of the the base skills involved in each global one could be on either 'side'

There is certainly a similarity between her descriptions of the L-mode (language, left brain) and R-mode (right brain, visual) and Jung's 1 and 2, automatic drawing
-> One can assume she knew of this, but how much did she develop/adapt?
Edwards doesn't seem very spiritual, so there might be a great difference there...

The idea of the brain observing itself is almost mystic in expression, like a lone thing.
Makes me feel a shell. Complex, soft program for expressing the brain
I wonder why we're so long.
It does not seem to need 'us' greatly, given our triple thinking and subconscious decision making
-> That's not true  but it serves my purpose

Perception is about overcoming the brain's editing of out visions - seeing with one's eyes.



Edwards, Betty, 1999, The New Drawing on The Right Side of the Brain. Penguin Putnam
Maggie Hyde and Michael McGuinness 1992, JungFor Beginners, Icon Books Ltd., Cambridge