L. where are you? The biggest We of I misses you!

From the Long Sad Party
Mark Strand

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Someone was saying
something about shadows covering the field, about
how things pass, how one sleeps towards morning
and the morning goes.

Someone was saying
how the wind dies down but comes back,
how shells are the coffins of wind
but the weather continues.

It was a long night
and someone said something about the moon shedding its
white
on the cold field, that there was nothing ahead
but more of the same.

Someone mentioned
a city she had been in before the war, a room with two
candles
against a wall, someone dancing, someone watching.
We begin to believe

the night would not end.
Someone was saying the music was over and no one had
noticed.
Then someone said something about the planets, about the
stars,
how small they were, how far away.

It seemed to write me about it...

Revisiting Directions

Absence is the record of a presence not yet spoken
An extension of the hand not reflected

Restraint is an understatement when addressed in too many circles
An empty face is a pile of features upon features
touching touching touching touching

How to inhabit your space without admitting the touch of others

How to guide a moment into meaning beyond The already known, The could already be forgotten,
The discarded skin of fruit sliced
too ripe
too soon

a photograph
a peel

Green is the loneliest color you'll ever know

from the MS Word dictionary, a partnership with the Merriam Webster company:

Unripe or not mature
Newly cut and still unseasoned
Not yet tanned
Not yet fired
Envious or jealous
Pale and sickly-looking, especially as a result of nausea
Naïve and lacking in experience, especially because of being new to something
Young, new, recent, or fresh

-->end quote re: definition of green<<

-----------------
Crisp white linens tucked into four corners of the bed
a glass of water on the stand, half-full
for now
before the empty sets in

these are days worth waking into
fighting heavy fingers that urge
the body back to
rest in peace

the sheets are the receipt for this transaction
an uneven, single exchange

The sea I suck in deeply, extending the fingers as oars to type waves into the words

...are splashes upon splashes of papers sticking themselves up out of books, posted driftwood -- "hey, save me first, anchor these words!" attention drawn by the highlights, maximized minimum space (black text on white) of 15-20 pages >> nevermind; due three weeks ago...

The form of the index card - constraint? release? retention? reminder?

How do we know what is important?

If it makes its way off the page, through the eyes, to the brain, signaling the hand

1. reach for pen
2. reach for paper
3. write the black ink configured as you see it,
4. record the moment of reading
5. to translate it - later - into a era of knowledge

then it is given a portable reference/record. One that can be owned, traveled with, accessed again upon whim, no need for a library check-out.

With all the information that is possible, how do we know what is important to know?

We mark its importance through its recording, picking the object closest to us for the translation:

The index card

A believer himself in the index card, Barthes (in Roland Barthes) remarked on the action of using it as a tool to record data:

"Still warm, nothing is yet to be determined of its quality: stupid? dangerous? insignificant? worth keeping? to be thrown away? to be focused? to be protected?"

you know you're On the Right Track (???)

...When your citation list for your graduate school paper includes at least 4-5 of the personalities depicted on the Theory Trading Cards. (so jealous these guys came up with this first!)

Question: Why is Tracey Emin on a card in the same deck as Goffman, Foucault, Benjamin, and Said? Was one of the creators of the Theory Trading Cards included in her tent installation, Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963-1995? I guess since it perished in flames a few weeks ago, we'll never know. (Maybe Gilbert and George know yet another something we don't...??!)

"Hell" consummed by fire

...And other British artworks, including Tracey Emin's tent piece...

BBC News

>>no comment right now, i'm too choked up, i think<<

To add to the notes in the last paragraph from yesterday's post...

I just got to some of the reading picked up while in San Fran...

Alison Bing has a great article entitled, "If You Can Read This You're Too Close: Art and Personal Space," in the Fall/Winter 2003 Camerawork Journal that closes with some remarks relevant to the suggestion I was touching upon in the last post. Bing writes,

"Should our thoughts always be clean and uncluttered? ...While comfort zones may be nice places to visit, you wouldn't necessarily want to live there."

The idea of a comfort zone in relation to clutter is exactly what I was thinking about with the construction of identity representations as produced and maintained by discourse with others...It is not as if we need to, or should spend an overabundance of time, in a state of minimal communication or passive viewing/experience. The idea of travel as a means to "unclutter" the chatter of conversation with others (and in one's own head; the sound of cicadas right now comes to mind) can be a welcome respite, but eventually you have to tune-in again, folding away the blanketing comfort of a singular voice - your own - for the mediating "reality" of the discourse that is inevitably social.

Excerpt from an email conversation...What is this beauty thing? What is clarity?

a friend and I have recently been on travel, separately getting out of DC for some time...some of this time has been good, while some has been peppered by life back home - the pressures, obligations, and other "realities" that creep into the daily representations of this "living" thing...

---to quote from the email---

that is why life is so beautiful
what is beautiful are the high tree branches i see from the fifth floor of the library where i write to you now. they are framed by a corner window and evenly sliced by dusty brown venetian blinds. their moment of movement made by the wind is the single confirmation that i am not looking at a thomas demand photograph, a construction fabricated by my own desire (desire, which is always born from absence) to see the beautiful of a life that lives less than its metaphors.

true:
it unfolds itself before our eyes
and then the lids close.
and then the beauty stops, no longer held by the command of vision.

this time away has been good for the clear picture forming faculties of my brain
a picture, i hope, that is less informed by situational context, and one more motivated by the body and its detachable mind.

it's not always easy to figure shit out when youre mired in it
it's beautiful here
wish i could see the "it" with your eyes.

i dont want to come back
don't come back here, but don't stay there. plot your next move while the nostalgia of the familiar is sweet -- before tasting it too much turns it sour with redundancy and routine.

it's so clear here
so simple
it is the desert that erases experience with its expansiveness; the blankness of the desert doesn't ask to be filled in - response is not a demand.

Perhaps one of the reasons that clarity can be derived from travel is not just from the experience of a new place (or, the revisiting of a familiar one that elicits the effect of the new due to the difference of subjectivity experienced in the current moment, as informed by the individual’s spatial displacement), but because for that period of time, your social life ceases to exist as it was before you left. People leave the office, turn on their email assistant, telling the world "I am out of the office now and cannot respond to your message." What a great thing in this hyper-connected world to deny the possibility of communication with at least some of the individuals you are routinely required to engage in conversation. Granted, the cell phone presents an issue to this – many people still travel with them – but often the out-of-range call is so expensive to make that if cell phones are used on vacation, they are for very short, small-scale interactions. Perhaps it is the closing of communication obligations that truly delivers the clarity that can be derived from travel, not actually the physical distance (as we routinely credit; "the distance was good for me," "distance makes the heart grow fonder," etc.).

It seems that discourse with others is like taking a photograph – it creates, preserves, and (re)presents a version of reality (a picture of your life in that moment of time) that is not just that of the individual’s own framing, but is influenced by the context – the others’ discourse. This enters into the realm of representation and reality...Maybe what we need is a moment to ignore the other discourses that correspond to a certain reality...Like in most films (the more Realist, less-Brechtian types), for instance, the viewer is positioned in such as way as to ignore the production aspect of film-making and slip into a state of passive viewing...As Colin MacCabe argues, viewers can no longer "ignore the process of articulation by entering a world of correspondence in which the only activity required is to match one discourse against the realm of truth." If we ignore the production aspect of our socially-constructed reality for just a few days or weeks or however long our vacation is, we can blissfully derive the pleasure of passive viewing which perhaps may clear the clutter enough to gain perspective and furnish clarity on the movies lived in our minds.

this little blogger went out of town...

...while this little blogger should be staying at home, getting work done, blogging more frequently, etc. etc.

If time, i'll post from San Fran. I hope to stop at a few shows, including SF Camerawork for Pop_Remix, with Cory Arcangel (he has some stuff up that was not at the Whitney Biennial or Armory Show).

/off ->

What Is and What Should Never Be...

A friend from class told me of a conference paper she recently heard. For over a year, a graduate student analyzed one week – seven consecutive days – of footage from CNN. Her research lead her to the observation that some very interesting conceptualizations of time and its framing are embedded within the programming of the 24 hour news station. Apparently between 3:00am and 3:15am EST, CNN stops reporting the previous day's news, and begins advertising the news "that's going to happen" later on in the day (after 3:15am). This fifteen-minute interval is a sort of dead zone, the conceptual equivalent of hole in the fabric of time; nothing happens here – the past is wiped away from the slate and the future is fabricated by its framing in the present.

What CNN is up to with its programming - not just with the news but concepts of time - is illuminated by Jean Baudrillard's discussion of time and history in The Illusion of the End. As he states, "the end is, in fact, only conceivable in a logical order of causality and continuity." CNN's programming certainly does follow a linear progression, though Baudrillard's next observation really lifts the skirt on what is at stake here with this seemingly innocent news programming technique, "Now, it is events themselves which, by their artificial production, their programmed occurrence or the anticipation of their effects – not to mention their transfiguration in the media – are suppressing the cause-effect relation and hence all historical continuity."

The relationship of time to the delivery of CNN's content is a painstakingly mutually invested operation. Time must be configured in its current fashion so that the systems of meaning-making and authoritative truth delivery, that upon which news is constructed and delivered, are successful in their persuasion of audiences. From a visual language-based perspective, the news is similar to advertising in the modality it necessarily assumes and asserts in the delivery of its message. Developed by Kress and van Leeuwen, modality:

"...does not express absolute truths or falsehoods; it produces shared truths, aligning readers or listeners with some statements and distancing them from others. It serves to create an imaginary 'we.' It says, as it were, these are the things 'we' consider true, and these are the things 'we' distance ourselves from."

Thus, it is the cultural understanding of these institutions of influence (news, advertising, etc.) that "do their work" by coercion and strategic positioning of their content within the cultural context of the intended audience. Some examples of linguistic modals include "might," "should," "would," and "could," all of which situate another's subjectivity within that space and time, forever influencing their history and illusion of its end.

…Like the geosemiotics of street signs and billboard that insert their advertising messages into the context of the morning commute, the agenda and schedule of another can powerfully influence our own reading of the day, our own framing of time, its end, and our place within it...

>>> A response to this: visit the intersection of the George Washington Memorial Parkway and Rt. 29 (Key Bridge, Rosslyn) to view this painting/installation completed on Friday May 7, 2004 at 3:00am <<<

"I can see why many visual artists dislike words in artworks. They feel that words dirty the clear water that has reflected the sky. It disturbs the pleasure of the silent image, the freedom from history, the beauty of nameless form. I want to name our pains. I want to keep our names. I know that neither images nor words can escape the drunknness and longing caused by the turning world. Words and images drink the same wine. There is no purity to protect." - Marlene Dumas.

Quotation is the act of marking another's utterance...

and directly implicating the experience of their work in your own personal history. Inevitably the material we consume - visually, through words, with ears, etc. - massages the individual's subjectivity into a slightly different shape [evolved] whereby the tracing of impact equates to modification of the preexisting form.

Is Foucault still right? Has everything always already been said? Has it all been done before? If our horizon of understanding is shaped by ideology, we can also say that any discursive material [here reading "text" to be any form capable of signification] inflicts a similar effect as Althusser’s ISAs [ideological state apparatuses] on the individual's own interpretive and productive activities. Does this lead to the conclusion that we are (to use culture studies' favorite celebrity prefix) "Post-Creativity," especially now that the always already has become a slogan for its own nihilistic message?

Barbara Johnstone in "Prior Texts, Prior Discourses," (from Discourse Analysis ) defined a prior text in relation to the accumulation of an individual’s experience. This concept is brought into relationship with intertexutality (which I believe can be read, in relation to knowledge construction, as a synonym for the products of individual’s creativity) by Johnstone and summarized as the following:

"Intertextuality refers to the ways in which all discourse draws on familiar formats and texts, previously-used styles and ways of acting, and familiar plots," [Johnstone 2002]. Prior texts, then, are those texts recognized from past experience that constitute intertextual relations within a focus text. (From my previous work here).

If prior texts invariably influence a person’s subjectivity over time, how conscious are the re-workings or re-surfacing of a prior text in a “new” creative work (an intertextual production)? I believe that the tracing of any prior text to its “source” text is extremely difficult (we tried a few exhausting exercises like this in my Linguistics Intertextuality course). In some cases, it may be damn near impossible, not to mention that again, the level of the individual’s conscious recognition of an experience with a prior text influences their identification of it.

So, who thought of Don Henley when that Atari song came out a few summers ago? "Boys of Summer" was a nearly direct remake of the eighties version. I thought it was kind of cute when they switched the original lyrics from “Saw a DEADHEAD sticker on a Cadillac” to “Saw a BLACK FLAG sticker…” Is this insertion an intertextual creative production? Is the Atari’s “version” actually a “new” text? Is it because the “original” Don Henley song still exists in too many people’s lived experience of it as a prior text that the Atari song could never in this lifetime be considered an “original” work?

Obviously cover songs are a bit more black and white to deal with given the label we’ve created for them. But, I do believe it brings up an interesting point in terms of creativity, artistic texts, and the general circulation of ideas. Lawrence Lessig has written extensively and argued in front of Congress for the public commons, including intellectual and creative works. As he notes in The Future of Ideas, “In a legal sense, the regulations within which the network lives are increasingly shifting power away from innovators and toward those who would stifle innovation.” The examples he cites in the text are scary and far too close to home as an artist and as a writer. I remind myself to take the free circulation of ideas in conversation lightly whenever read Lessig [who, I admit, can be a bit over-aggrandizing at times], or generally any other text on the latest on Internet standard developments, especially the open source movement:: some philosophy:: , or other practices [here re: content] that are rapidly structuring our key means of communication (i.e. circulation of ideas) today.

An appropriate circle with which to end this today nudges towards a reading of quotation’s hegemonic weight on creativity and individual character.

(quoted from Quotation Marks by Marjorie Garber):

“If, for the sake of a crowded audience you do wish to hold a lecture, your ambition is no laudable one, and at least avoid all citations from the poets, for to quote them argues feeble industry.” – Hippocrates, Precepts

One way to get over the rain, on a Monday, nonetheless

is to roam through another’s words, another’s sculptural configurations, another’s aural landscape projected through headphones into the heart center…beats and syllables can mix to form a new mood to pattern your day. These are just some ideas to get started with, raw material for the crude coldness that you must turn into productive ways. Good luck. Best wishes. With regards. See you soon. Talk to you later. How many other phrases can signal "farewell"? How can you step back from the plate you put in front of yourself?

ANNOUNCEMENT: Monday, April 19th 6:30-9pm

Georgetown Festival of Fine Art

This is a week long event that has been developed by undergraduate student, Montana Ray, with the help of other undergraduates and myself. **I'll post more later about this event: the whys, hows, etc.

New South Building, Riverside Lounge
Georgetown University
37th & O St.
Georgetown, Washington DC

Monday, April 19th - 6:30-9pm

Panel Discussion
6:30-7:30pm
"Georgetown University and its Relationship with the Washington DC Art Scene"

Panel
Dr. John Brough, Professor, Philosophy
Calvin Custen, Professor, Studio Art
Kathryn Cornelius, Graduate Student, Artist
Jessica Eagan, Graduating Senior, Fine Art
Martin Irvine, Assistant Professor, Gallery Owner
Stoff Smulson, Alumnus, Artist

Performance
8-9pm
"Mythology Machine / Chain Value" - Kathryn Cornelius and collaborators

Art Exhibit
Monday April 19th to Friday April 23rd, 2004 12-6pm
Work by Students, Faculty and Alumni

Word of the Day = Simulacra

I have NO business blogging today since I'm back from Texas and the PCA/ACA conference and have way too much to do...

BUT, here is something worth thinking about given the discussion of language and its distribution: The Word of the Day today, over at Merriam-Webster Online is "simulacra." Check it.

The desire to inscribe

one’s thoughts into the surrounding world is innate. From birth, we begin marking surfaces around us: crayons on walls, finger paints on paper, chalk on sidewalks. We learn soon after that the skin is a surface good for remembering – for recording phone numbers, recalling addresses, reminding us of appointments and places to be. Occasionally the marks on the hands take the shape of funny faces, cartoon characters and other playful amusements. As our years grow, simple recreations fade from priorities and the hands become less and less a place for recalling anything at all. We mark instead paper with fine pointed ink, day timers are filled with new priorities to remember, and the finger tips are worn more then the flesh of the finger as typing takes precedent over the act of manual inscription.

A few years ago, well, in 1996, a film came out called The Pillow Book. The female lead character was Japanese and much of the emotion of the film centered around a birthday tradition she held with her father: each birthday he would paint Happy Birthday wishes in Japanese characters on her face. As she grew older, the tradition continued, but with changing sensations brought on by her sexual experiences with other men in her life. The pure physicality of the act of writing – and the intimacy established between one’s writing another’s text – is a pleasure often overlooked. When we write, we are literally drawing our thoughts onto paper, using the same tools of the artist; there is no difference between the artist and the writer at the moment of executing a creative act; the high is the same high.

I recently went to a tattoo convention in Tampa, Florida (after delivering a conference paper; not my main trip motivation, unfortunately). After coming back, tattoo-less, my cousin and I had a debate over “what to wear” on one’s skin for the rest of life. She told me of a project called “The Tattoo Book,” or something like that. Apparently there is a woman who is tattooing one word on one person – each a stranger – and photographing the tattoo, eventually comprising her novel from the photos and producing her text. I do not like this idea at all. What a violation to be marked by another for another’s own project. (I am still undecided about this tattoo-based art piece by Santiago Sierra...) Even with consent, and laser tattoo removal, to create such a mark on another’s body in such a way without intimacy…I don’t think I could live with it. A girl I knew in college tattooed “hope” in her own handwriting on her body, location undisclosed. That idea I like much more since there is such a stronger connection between the meaning of the word (not definition, but personal value) that will be a part of the visible skin for such a long period of time. No, I don’t have any tattoos, and I cannot think of a single word with that much value to me, personally.

Barthes, in A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments, said that when we are in love we are really only speaking to ourselves, about ourselves, for ourselves, and therefore the language of love is one of solitude; in love we are only projecting outward our own desire to hear ourselves. This voice should be constantly enacted in a process of self-inscription, so that the mind sees the words it wants to hear reflected on its own flesh, rather than obscuring the voice that the one we might love may wish to speak. We should give the words we desire to hear to ourselves first: a contract in which we bind ourself to ourself, in writing. At least pen and paint can wash away over time, as feelings and priorities change -- as our self-discourse evolves.



Language is a skin: I rub my language against the other. It is as if I had words instead of fingers, or fingers at the tip of my words. My language trembles with desire. —A Lovers Discourse: Fragments

What if we were to read with the mind attached to the body?

To feel the physical impact of the words spread across the page --- Grass becomes a synonym for the hairs of the arm as it lifts to turn to the next one --- Stumble is to literally break one’s own fall by the already sitting position during the act of drinking another's sentences --- Vastness is the hungry stomach’s cavity of waiting between paragraphs, chapters, strung across experience as bits of cloth on clotheslines, white flags of standing [sitting] strength, not surrender; firmness is the grip on the book and the fingers’ comfortable strain to have softness while shelving the writing of someone else, accessing words through the orifices of the eyes lifted over the palms, face up, touching text to find texture.

Too many times we lose awareness of the physical body in the act of its intellectual pursuits. Living parallel lives, performing different functions yet supporting each other’s act, the disembodied mind thinks itself dominant over the body while the body remembers and whispers, Hey, I’m breathing here…

Construction is a viral condition

spreading throughout nearly all the areas of town I frequent. There’s a modernist spirit to construction that I believe acts on our sentiments silently so that we tolerate its obstacles and interferences: Construction = a sign of Progress, advancement, improvement = a flashing, recycling of capital, “Everything is Fine!” “We are building a strong future!” Or, as a sign in Chinatown reads, “[insert company name] Working Together to Improve Real Estate Values.” What are these values? Who gets to “work” on them? Where do they come from? What do they say? Who participates?

The physical signs that move into an area undergoing construction communicate obvious messages – Yield to workers, Caution men at work, Slow during construction…Less noticeable is the message whispered by the orange plastic fences that redefine the shape of pathways… Fences are blockades creating Insider/Outsider relations. They are Body Movers, Orchestral Conductors directing the rhythms and movements of the body in everyday foot-travel. The body becomes challenged to renegotiate its habitual movements in the space, especially if the path is one you take everyday to work, home, etc., a path nearly etched into the code of the body’s software 0101move01left0101now0101shifttotheright0101slight1010ly0000001

We are used to being channeled by other forces: roads, sidewalks, lines painted on the insides and outsides…all of these structures act on us in a quiet, persuasive way, waving us on with a breathless “go this way.” With so much of life engaging our brains, not our bodies, the physical aspects of moving literally through life are relegated to the background, white noise to our clear objectives in life. Less and less do our professions – wherein the bulk of our time and energies are spent – employ the body in a way that reminds us of its mortality, and amazing ability to feel pain and then repair itself. A slap in the face reminder of this was given to my body in the jolt experienced as I flew over my bike handlebars a few weeks ago. Since then, my jaw has mostly healed, and I have just a strip of scar tissue on my chin. Death and disease still remain processes we don’t deal with very well (speaking from my own experience). We change our topography, our “Real Estate Values,” more than we deal with the difficult, uncomfortable stuff. And there are so many ways to insulate us from feeling anything at all…[Quick short list]…drugs (prescription and illegal), alcohol, gambling, QVC, food, Give Us This Day Our Daily Starbucks…

More then ever there is a need to communicate the body’s experience, to reconnect without a “Do It At Home” yoga videotape. If we can abandon the language of movement that has become dominant and normalized in the everyday, the body’s voice can emerge to express its physical experience of life, and hopefully quiet the chatter of the brain that thinks it knows everything.

E is for Etiological

Last month Greg Allen (of greg.org) posted some good comments in response to my commentary on the obscuring impacts of postmodern language (and general academic jargon) in trendy art writing. I apologize for not realizing these comments were there until yesterday, which is of fortunate timing as I have had some similar thoughts on the topic since the original postings.

Greg said:

"Sometimes uncommon terms ARE required, to talk about specific things in a nuanced or particular way. Or because they carry with them the weight and association of the school of thought which brought them to prominence."

First, yes, I agree with the association aspect. New terminology is developed within fields for specific purposes, often due to developments in research, technological innovations, etc., and ultimately the circulation and reproduction of this language serves a role in the self-legitimation of the field. A certain amount of value that translates to cultural capital for the speaker/writer using the word is also embedded in the transmission of this language from sender to receiver. Last month I gave a presentation on this to my former policy research team that included a pictorial representation based on the notion of protein binding (I won’t go into all of that here, but this is a picture that generally represents the concept). Basically, for the language to stick and the data to transfer successfully, there must be similar value systems encoded within the individuals during the chain of communication. So, if I’m reading an article that uses the word, "etiological" (Greg’s choice example), and I don’t understand its application to the topic at hand (even if I know the definition of the word), its placement within the essay or article and any additional symbolic weight its sender intended is lost; the word did not bind to my receptors. Whew. Enough Biology this morning!

Second, I definitely agree that “sometimes uncommon terms ARE required” for they themselves allow access and insight into a topic that maybe shouldn’t be addressed in overtly simplified, pedestrian language. I began to address this topic on 2/28 when I wrote (briefly) in frustration about the relationship between writing poetry and writing about art. I had a conversation about this the other day with a friend who also writes poetry. The observation is that perhaps any writing, when not just transmitting data, can always be considered somewhat deliberately clandestine. Depending on the purpose of the sender, the concealed nature of the writing may be to elicit a physical response, emotional reaction, or otherwise different sensory engagement with the transmitted text. Unpacking the meaning becomes a playful a treasure hunt with the reward at the end of the rainbow unknown and perhaps different for each receiver, or as Greg said,

“And ultimately, converting everything into instantly comprehensible terms would diminish the effort/reward that comes with discovery and learning.”

I like this notion of “discovery and learning”…Instant access to an inherently nuanced subject – art – seems like a drive-through, commercial-speed approach to criticism, education, etc. on the topic (is it really possible anyway?). However, writers do run the risk of isolating their audiences by engaging forms of writing and vocabulary that is too removed from their experience. I end, again, with admission of my own guilt in this arena; if graduate programs are going to indoctrinate students with a postmodern dictionary of vocabulary, then it should also come with a users manual.

Thanks, Greg, for your comments!

A call for entries...

...I'm preparing for a performance piece that addresses the concept of postmodern rhetoric. It will take place next month (more details to follow).

As the topic of postmodern language has been discussed here quite a bit, I'm asking for submissions of your favorite vocabulary words from the thesaurus of post:modern:ity. Consider it an opportunity to vent by exposing the words that get under your skin and in the way of general communication.

Email me or post as comments...Thanks!

Imprinting the body

Patterns of prior experience imprint how we relate to the new, and negotiate our body and its spatial relations to the environment we have not previously encountered.

Like making love with someone for the first time, the body starts its moves in its old familiar routine, unaware the previous pattern doesn’t quite fit with the new body below. A sort of re-wiring has to be performed in order to rid the limbs of its habituized responses. A process of re-learning to embrace the flesh of another must occur if a climax of harmony, balance and synchronicity is to be reached. For a moment the body relives the memory – the smell of the skin is that of the lover before, the hair and skin tastes similar and the muscles are of unchanged flesh – then, just as quickly, the memory is replaced by the shock of the new. We cannot sniff out something recognizable; the senses must abandon its relics, and clean house to make a room for this new body. Acceptance of all of its hows and whats and ises and is nots inform the level of the pleasure derived, and inevitably, the color of the memory made new.

Encountering anything new in life involves a period of discomfort, however long or brief in duration, and the necessary confession that we simply Do Not Know how to handle what is before us. Perhaps this is why we bring the old to bear upon the newly encountered. By re-membering, we can re-program our body and mind to take in and derive something tangible from this foreign experience. In linguistics this is akin to the concept of “prior text.” A “text,” in this case, is defined as any entity that can become embedded with signification. Barbara Johnstone, in her chapter “Prior texts, prior discourses” [Discourse Analysis], discussed how the concept of prior text can be used to understand the recognition of “something old” in “something new” (more on prior text).

A more academic application of this concept --- Each field has its own canon of valued prior texts that are (re)produced in its students/laborers. Thus those graduates with art history degrees are sought after for gallery and museum positions since the degree accreditation assumes “prior text knowledge” of the field’s valued canon. One can easily see how some disciplines make this process of teaching/learning necessary to its own survival as a field.

However, when something new is encountered that cannot be immediately explained by the past, we seek out the memories we can twist and turn to mix into an understanding of the present. For example, we may conjure up dead artists from long ago to make sense of a contemporary's practice, describing her methods as similar to "The Great Master Painter _____." Or, we reference specific artworks that we believe parallel a newly encountered work, "that reminds me of _____ by ____." Hence the mutation of artist names into styles, like "Judd-esqe" or "Warholian."

Warping the past to fit the current moment, calling up such memories elicits a moment of nostalgia for that prior experience, the prior text applied in the new moment. Milan Kundera paraphrased in Ignorance that “nostalgia is the suffering caused by an unappeased yearning to return,” derived from the Greek “nostos”- return and “algos” – suffering. When recalling a past experience, we know we cannot actually return to that moment of initial pleasure (hence, the yearning and suffering) wherein that experience was embraced and patterned into the mind and body’s history. There is a physical aspect to recollection that demonstrates our memories do not reside in the mind alone; prior texts are rooted within the body. Some massage therapists believe in the ability of myofascial release as a technique that can produce psychological benefits from the discharge of negative memories trapped as toxins within the fascia layers between muscle and bone.

Nostalgia is also described as a connection to home, or familiar experience. Hence sayings like, “I feel at home in your arms,” or “home is where the heart is.” Finding a home in a person…When the pleasure of new becomes warmth of the familiar, of another like our mirror image…this is surely what Pablo Neruda was referring to in his poem, “The Song of Despair,” when he repeated the line, “In you everything sank!” The weight of the past becomes heavy when regret is involved, and light, only when the whole of the body senses the pleasure of former experience in feeling out something new, renegotiating physical relationships through re-wiring psychological patterning.