hot rod pause III

How is it that there is a single point in a choice that is marked by two options? This is the feature that I seem to be noticing lately: the (...what now I can’t seem to find in my handbook of rhetorical terms… found) Dissoi logoi: composing opposing arguments for a question. This is the foundation of jurist prudence, the making of a ‘truth’ by agreement as opposed to a ‘truth’ by proof. This is such a rich topic, it itself becomes a threat or an invitation to inquiry-- may distract, arrest movement or give it confidence. The point of distinction between one method and another, that is from jurist prudence and what I will presently call science. They can serve to announce a series of divisions--or better said, an example of divisions, distinctions, and perhaps even frontiers.

I am less concerned at the moment by the stability or ethics of the categories than with the ease and prevalence of their appearance. Distinctions seem to rise up at the same time as recognition. This awareness I have heard cited as the dawn of the I, as the primary cognitive act. It would seem then to be quite fundamental. The dangers of negotiating a world based on comparative difference are also powerfully present. The “other” only need be critically highlighted to be also be at once understood: us and them. The polarities also provide a simplification for rapid action: the brain operating for speed and economy. The amazing leap worth note and pause, is our awareness of all of the above. What we are without though, after this paragraph is both to ability to comprehend and to not comprehend. Or can we? Just look ahead.

I am talking about art and to some degree, the brain, or the person, the subject, the antenna we are all most familiar with—ourselves. I might add these very phrases, coming one after the other, are answering a question for me, one private and possibly not important for the subject; but suffice it to say that the act of making these statements is the answer to my own question—I apologize for being vague. Perhaps it will serve the topic to clarify my motive later, as important as it is, arising as it has out of a personal crisis. On a digression, which will guide us back to the subject, the mystery of my purpose here might have awakened a curiosity. Perhaps. Isn’t it interesting how we linguistically equate a mystery to dim uncertain edges, an amorphous object not quite in focus and perhaps obscured in the fog. This is the nature of my crisis.

I am drawn to mystery and think that solving a mystery means going from curiosity to knowing; this movement is the assignment of a value, and value makes action possible. Is there a fork in the road and if so which one is better? My crisis is precisely one of action. And like any mystery, this to you, and something else to me, until the form comes into sight, without the ability to see ahead, a choice is difficult to make. We must find out more.

How do we find out about each other? Through empathy and abstraction. I think these are the two seemingly opposed components of art, and for me literature and its comprehension; how in being presented with artistic material we exercise judgments of value. It would be then, to be a critic is to consider more than taste, but meaning as well as cause and purpose. There is in effect no need to distinguish between value and meaning. Through the arts a single questions can be presented with a variety of answers, an expansion instead of a reduction. And in this way the arts are neither science nor jurist prudence but an event. Though an attempt is often made to invest a work with meaning, it is a gun that remains unfired until experienced. Upon entering a work light is cast on new territories, mysteries are invoked—in short, the presence of other minds are realized. At the bottom of art are warm bodies in the dark--the perceived presence of other minds which contain a depth greater than the two sided arguments they compose.

Through empathy we can feel another. Not just. Not true. It is made up by the movements of self-will--taking the measure of things. Art can move without the imposition of an absolute regardless of its corroborating method. And as mentioned before, through abstraction we are taught the creation of figurative language, of simile, of analogy, of patterns, and over all of description; and I will add description yet to be validated. Art seems to situated itself in pre-truth--as true as an event, then subject to reevaluation.

And if this was less enigmatic would it be less interesting? A crisis can be very exciting. Uncertainty is the mystery that belongs to the future only deciphered by living. My own tumult (looking forward) has to do with whether or not I should pursue writing or jurist prudence; hence this could serve as a sort of an answer to that question, but in the end does not definitively, does not put me at an end where a decision has been made history. It is interesting too, how I am defensive, barred even to any third option, as if the complication means me harm, threatens the work of previous distillations and reductions. It threatens and looms, the two locked together like a dogfight up ahead, turning around each other, becoming one blur. Still, one simple question is like a prism splitting the light of knowledge while the asker remains enveloped in light. Recognizing parts we can make out the shape. The breadth of life can not be printed flatly on a coin. "The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it, immediately or in the long run" (Thoreau).

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