Some things are worth living for. Contrasting contradictions can be quite interesting to observe, and as I am a convinced poststructuralist I like to observe when, how, and under what conditions the narratives we tell ourselves shift lines and lanes. What we pay for such awareness and where we imagine that the limit line goes of the convergence of fantasy with reality are some other elements that can keep us entertained. Particularly what is lost in the process interests me, and whether what is lost can yet be seen as an expenditure currency for what is gained in the trace of what is lost. Today at work I had the opportunity to experience myself making two completely contradictory statements delivered with a lot of pathos and dehortatio. Supervising two groups of students in two different rooms and on two different topics, I said to the first group, writing on Deleuze: “by Jove, I believe in sublime love. Deleuze makes me vibrate.” To the others, writing on the films of Almodovar, I said, “off with their heads, all those who contribute to passing as commonsensical the idea that sublime love exists and that it is embodied by men who know how to act (upon it) and women who wait (for it to happen). Thank God for transvestites, even though they are never in power.”
I’m good with body language, being aware of my own and paying attention to others’. The Deleuzians wanted to know more about vibration and how it ties in with Deleuze as a philosopher and a creative writer at the same time. I demonstrated. I took a piece of paper, scribbled a geometrical figure on it and then slid it on my body; like one does with a perfume sample from a good fashion magazine. While you do it, you inhale the smell, which is thus not only transposed onto your body but also inscribed on it as a sensorial experience which combines cognition with emotion. Thus as I inhaled the ink, and thus inscribing the students’ attention within the proximity of my whole body, I noticed their faces. Their nostrils vibrated when I quoted Deleuze: "if one really fancies being a writer, one must first become a woman." Then and hence I could tell that the students were ready to believe everything I said. They were in the middle of experiencing a narrative shift in the making: from knowing to living; from epistemology to ontology; from elegance of thought to relishing its taste; from fantasy to reality and vice versa. Consequently their attention shifted from my metalanguage on Deleuze’s notion of the fold, baroque aesthetics, and Leibniz to my body-language. As my words were pouring at the speed of a rocket, they all had the sense that fluids were coming out of me, intersecting the lines which I drew on the paper, now resting on my chest, on my bare decoltée. “Wow,” the only female student in the group of 8 said, “you’re enacting Deleuze’s idea of Eros as an event.” Indeed I was. I WAS Deleuze BECOMING a woman. Ever so smoothly and flowingly (Deleuze was into fluids). The students had their pupils enlarged.
I told them that elegance in writing is not only about delivering sets of threes that are rounded off by a neat aphorism – a practice one can observe in Bertrand Russell, for example. Nor is it about formulating the ultimate foundation for this or that discipline. If elegant writing is to be experienced, it has to vibrate, resound and resonate on a sensual level. Formally, only a few tricks are required to make it smashingly interesting where style is concerned. And it helps if this style extends to your own body. I wore a white coat today, made by myself from scratch from a special thin paper-coated fabric and stitched on my two powerful (one an over-lock) stitching machines. I liked the coincidence of wearing paper on which one can inscribe as many shifting narratives one wants, when one has to talk about the implication of such acts for the writer or the lover or the decapitator. “What is the supreme writing act?” someone asked. I said: “to pronounce ‘whatever.’” To write ‘whatever’ as the punch-line to the conclusion that whichever way we go, it doesn’t really matter. There is a lot of power in ‘whatever,’ even though it is the embodiment of ultimate cynicism. Of course, however, as with words and language games, there is always something that beats ‘whatever’. But it takes a hell of a lot of imagination to figure that one out. Meanwhile, while pondering on just how much imagination one has, when states are contradictory, perhaps the gift of ‘leaving it alone’ is the greatest gift we can offer ourselves, if we don’t want to go with ‘whatever.’ For ‘leaving it alone’ is the work of grace. And it vibrates on its own.
After a successful event at Copenhagen University organized by my friend, professor of English and erudite scholar in extremis, Charles Lock, on the work of Leonora Carrington, I came home with a sense of the significance of what obsessed the surrealists: “the object.” But what object? There are many, of course, and in Carrington’s case the object is a white horse, a trans-national “thing” migrating from the Arthurian legends to the Mexican alchemists. In spite of having lived in Mexico since the 40s, Carrington’s aristocratic English background does not deny itself where knowledge about Celtic culture is concerned. But while the horses populate almost all of her some 1000 paintings to date, they are also trapped in some sort of imaginary dusty tower. One of the effects of looking at surrealist paintings is making instant visual associations of more objects, including ones that seem hidden in the canvas or altogether absent from it. So, the invisible tower, I thought, as the res absconditum, trapping images devoid of energy, must be the other object at work in surrealist paintings.
What hit me was the fact that one hardly ever sees energy at work in these works. Things fly, to be sure, but the movement as such never conveys any energy. If anything, the dream-like movement is more suggestive of a wasteland where, if Excalibur is welded, it is not through fire but sand. “Sentimentality is a form of fatigue” Carrington said, which made me think that perhaps she was thinking about the difference between Celts and alchemists. Where the first ask, ‘can magic create energy?’ the latter are more into economy: ‘can we afford to lose energy?’, thus presupposing that all that glitters has already undergone the process of becoming gold, and is consequently worth holding on to. Dramatizing is a form of fatigue captured in the tower of doubt and dismay. Carrington uses Venetian red in her paintings, and yellow of the Mexican desert. In one of her most iconic self-portraits, Carrington dressed in white pants and high heeled boots cuts across these other shades as if asking herself: are certain events created for us, intended for us? Today's event ended with wine and fragments of Mexican poetry set to music and played on classical guitar. Time stood still, as in a surrealist painting. As such, it helped me shake off the feeling of missed magic that the poem The Tower in the Wasteland, by the Spanish poet Julio Martinez Mesanza, gave me, when I read it this morning, while wearing my white silk gown, and feeling stupid, sick, and sentimental.
My sole desire is order, and beauty
that women do not have. My sole desire
is a life beyond doubt: goals defined
and reached without scheming, in broad daylight.
The clarity of swords is what I love,
the clarity of powerful structures.
In this wasteland the tower dazzles me,
and I march toward the tower. Whatever lies
in wait for me – toothless ridicule
or the deceitful word of sophistry
or the traitor’s two-sided battle-axe
or a woman’s body or any body –
I will view the infamy from the tower.
(trans. Don Bogen)
For Jean-Luc Marion
Gertrude Stein is pulling my leg: “Remember narrative is continuous.” And then there’s Wagner, and Cantor, and Bach, and all the others. I was thinking that the only thing that beats ‘and yet’ must be ‘both, and.’ And then thus there are the others, specialists in quantum grammar. What do we do with ‘and then?’ – Then suddenly? Transform the status of ‘nothing’ into ‘all?’ ‘All are welcome.’ To do what? Transform topology into a vocabulary of thinking? Thinking about it. A direct address is a ready-made costume. “You, I’m addressing – and my witnesses are ‘all’ here” – Or not. The gaze can also go blank, terrified by the potential No. Not yet. So ‘Nothing’ would come for nothing. And yet. All that writing can vibrate for! Sense it all written on the body! Gertrude hands me a cookie made by her lover, and orders me to shut up. In transfinite arithmetic, both nothing and everything have a higher status than otherwise. The set of signification comprises the oath: Here I Am. We keep counting. Alice keeps the score. And then hands touch and the kiss is hot. We love the logic of insufficient reason.
Barely back from Norway, I insist on pledging with myself that my days shall end in the mountains. But I need this pledge to unfold itself against the background of constant reassuring. In other words, although I know it for sure, I need an incentive that carries my certitude forward. I need the proximity of vibration. So what do I do? I hurry to book another sojourn up in the mountains. And I like returns. In three weeks, I shall be back at Vann for a few days and then on to Isabergtoppen in Sweden. The more I anticipate the smell of autumn, the more I also get dragged into discourses concerning assurance. Knowledge by decay. Certitude by décalage. I thus return to Jean Luc Marion, although these days I find what he has to say slightly disturbing from a ‘coincidence’ point of view, but equally sublimely fascinating as ever. Here’s a passage – among many good ones – in his The Erotic Phenomenon (2007).
"… Only eternity responds to erotic reason’s need for the assurance of the present – knowing definitely whom I love […] ‘Will I have the strength, the intelligence, and the time to love you to the end, without remainder or regret?’ for the one that I love clearly imposes herself upon me as a saturated phenomenon, whose endless and measureless intuition does not cease to overflow all of the significations that I attempt to assign to her, beginning with the first among them, ‘Here I am!’ Seriously facing the face of the other, or more precisely, the face of this unsubstitutable other of whom I claim to be the lover, requires that I give without end a new meaning to the intuitions that never cease coming to me, and thus that I say all the words and pronounce all the names I am able to mobilize, or even that I invent others, so as to accomplish the indefinite interpretation. The lover never finishes telling himself of the beloved, telling himself to the beloved, and telling the beloved to herself. The lover, in front of the intuitions that the beloved inspires in him, must deploy an endless hermeneutic, a conversation without endpoint; thus he needs a period of time without bounds in order to carry out his discourse without conclusion. Love demands eternity because it can never finish telling itself the excess within it of intuition over signification. I will only know whom I love in the final instance – by eschatological anticipation of eternity, the sole condition of its endless erotic hermeneutic. Thus, only eternity answers the need of erotic reason concerning the assurance of a future – being able endlessly to tell me whom I love and to make it known to her, since without me, she would not know it" (210).
If asked, Marion would say the same as The Beatles, ‘all you need is love.’ Perhaps this is so. But it seems to me that the continuity of love, insofar as it needs constant reassuring, is dependent on the incentive to give nothing to itself. How else to understand endlessness? As reassurance comes in fragments, impulses, nods, and lexia, it supplements continuity with ‘everything’ which is also ‘nothing’ at the same time. In other words, if the proposition ‘all you need is love’ is correct, then it can only be so if it runs counter to time as a matter of necessity. Thus we don’t operate with either the past or the future, but with their assurance. Perhaps this is what Marion means to suggest, when he further says: “To love requires loving without being able or willing to wait any longer to love perfectly, definitely, and forever. Loving demands that the first time coincide with the last time” (211). I’m pretty sure that up in the mountains, I’ll decide that now I love, whether I need it or not.
Last night I went to the museum of modern art Louisiana. The new exhibit, The World is Yours is all about reflection; reflection particularly of and on the way in which we perceive the meaning of what ‘yours’ means. At least that’s what I think. Among the many good and thoughtful pieces, installations and visual media, there were two artworks I enjoyed the most. One done by my compatriot, M. Cantor, and another done by a favourite, O. Eliasson. Cantor’s work consists of filming a silent demonstration in the streets of Tirana, most of it on Prokofiev’s score to Romeo and Juliet. The demonstrators walk about aimlessly holding big slogan-placards on which there is nothing written, as they are made out of mirroring material. The buildings and people are thus reflected in these big mirrors, yet as the mirrors are held by unsteady hands, they offer a distorted picture of the world. But one which is not devoid of beauty. Sun rays go in and out of the mirrors as well emphasizing the open movement in reflection, inside and outside, beyond point and even dimension. What is captured besides the world is openness. I liked this very much.
Eliasson’s work, in contrast, consists of a ‘cryogenic box,’ which you can enter. A room is frozen down to minus 16 degrees Celsius, and features the remains of a car, also frozen in time. When you enter, a big door is closed behind you, and the ward tells you to knock hard when you want to come out. According to Eliasson, when the body is confronted with abrupt change in atmosphere, and thus starts feeling different, it kicks into to a survival mode which instantly changes the mode of perception. He forgot to say, however, that your senses sharpen exponentially, as your tract registers the cold air passing through it. Yes, there is fear, and you feel it as the first thing when you enter the room. This fear is also a shared thing, as you can see it on the faces of all those who enter the room and who wonder if they can get out again. But there is also more. The body works with the mind in complete unison. And both are in a heightened state of vigilance, but also one of contemplation. This is quite an achievement in itself, to juxtapose a moment of pure instinct with ultimate reflection. On a more personal level, Eliasson’s fridge made me think of the reason why I want to live in the arctic.
Meanwhile, however, here’s what I got out of it that others can use on a general level. Two thoughts: 1) There is love in the world that reflects perception which takes place in rooms without doors. What the point is with everything is ditched in favour of going even beyond dimension. There is space in this love, and this space is neither regimented nor pointless, as it changes form all according to how space itself is reflected in changing ways in the mirrors. And 2) there is love in the world which is hermetically closed behind doors. While Cantor is adamant in emphasizing that his work considers direction-less movement – also in his artist statement – Eliasson’s work freezes ‘what the point is’ in time. But as such, the point also becomes timeless. Now, which do I think is better, you might want to know – if we were to allow for such pointless comparison. If you’re smart enough, you’ll guess correctly, especially the variations and nuances of the thought. If not, go to the museum and get your limbs follow the music or have them freeze in silence.
When I decided that my friend, the genius mathematician, is a genius, I was not wrong. By a stretch, and since he keeps dragging me into his life, I have to admit that I wouldn’t be surprised at all, one day to hear that he had just published a solid proof of some as yet unsolved mathematical mystery under the name of Cornean/Elias theorem. I conjecture and he axiomatizes. This in fact sums up the story of my life as a mathematician. I’ve never been good at math, but I’ve been unbeatable at imagining abstracts. Alas, however, since abstracts are hard to materialize, I’ll die like Socrates with not a number on the page, unless some clever Plato decides to acknowledge my contribution in a more or less authentic fashion. Again we have proof that life imitates fiction and not the other way around. Jolly good, there is hope for everything, also for all those who have nothing better to do than listen to Wagner and his cohorts of Valkyries.
Now, what has Herr Lektor been saying, to be more precise? As he likes to formulate quizzes, and pose crucial, universal, and irreversible questions, to which he provides an answer himself, in his latest entry on his blog on the life and times of the genius, he takes issue with 6 scenarios that go from: 1) what have you learned from the wise that has contributed to your success – "Nothing," he says, to 6) Romans or Greeks? – "Good question," he says. Question nr 2 sounds like this: Who among the grand classics would you invite for dinner? – Me, he says, and then adds, however, that he is afraid of me. "You never know with such classics and whether they like sancerre with halibut filet," he then says.
Two weeks ago, I took my nephew to the Planetarium. We had coffee at the Cassiopeia restaurant while also enjoying the ducks and the lake outside, and talking about cosmic things. I ordered a bottle of water, and asked him if it was all right to share it, as neither of us was too thirsty. He said yes, and then continued: “Don’t bother to ask for two glasses. If you don’t mind, I’d really like to drink the water from the same glass as you. Perhaps that will make me as smart.” His wish was granted. Now, my question is this: Is this a sign of becoming a classic? And is this good, or bad? Maybe the genius is also right when he calls me that. So, yes, dinner: Mon Chevalier, Herr Lektor, I’m totally at your disposal. I’m ready to swoon over your treat, and imagine the continuum paved with flying cushions, even though indeed, I’ve always preferred the Persian flying carpet to Don Quixote’s pink thing – the damned classics, you never know with them - I’ll even allow it, if you might also fancy it, to drink the wine from the same glass.
For Ana, the Russian reader
What love knows is always thisness. Haecceitas. Dialogue is necessary but only on a gliding surface. The quiddity of whatness. My Russian speaking mother knew the distinction between reading and reading the other. The other of the other. The author has been dead for a while, and then resurrected. Now the other is both. “You are the master,” she said. “You know what love knows.” I bowed. She was a grand This. We all love our mothers, no matter What. The quiddity of matter is the haecceity of soul. Descartes got a good spanking from the Madonna, our Lady of the Spirit, and became an accidental tourist. Losing his head like that! Ahhh, being this woman! What bliss! Hylomorphism is a piece of cake in her mouth.
