[473] Hear And Know

Whether it’s a clip offering an explanation of a philosopher or a 3 hour movie, I think the power of any piece of work is its ability to bring you into the moment. I think this ability is often mocked or hijacked by ideas regarding celebrity or magnanimity. For any celebrated or generous act is immediately washed into the past. Every letter or line I create is poised to disappear as insistently as I felt they needed to exist. They’re of value when you’re caught. When the words seep into your veins like a drug dictating your emotional or mental state.

It speaks to my struggle with notions of “progress.” Our cultural dialogue ascribes it to an endless assortment of contradictory examples. It’s progress to bomb poor ignorant people, even moreso, to deny them help until we stretch our morally progressive legs for those in closer proximity. It’s progress to churn through year after year of our relationships so long as we progress our memory loss as to what constitutes “friendly” or “love.” We romanticize technology as it progresses to the point of, often literal, phantom limbs meant to prop up our spirits and financial perspectives.

To speak of the here and now or bring someone into a moment is to threaten. Fear can be ignored. Pain can be numbed. To suggest you should carry it alongside the beauty and joy of the celebration is thought to be rude and uncaring. To burden one who is struggling with a few more shovel fulls suggests malicious and naive intentions. We don’t let the “crazy” walk alongside us. We don’t invite the enemy to offer reasons for their humanity. Why spoil the party by pulling out a chair for gravely suggestive matters?

An “enduring moment” is something of a contradiction until you consider suffering. Maybe it’s the grief of losing a child. Maybe it’s the abuse of an alcoholic parent. Maybe it’s the shadow of guilt cast by sin. In contrast, we don’t seem to regard the positive in the same manner. That is, when we manage to, we rush to words about “innocence,” “childishness,” “naivety,” or even perhaps “manic.” Say you’re enthralled by the new Star Wars movie. How quickly might you dissolve your friend’s patience if you only carried on about it for several weeks? How immature and petty would you be considered? You’d transcend impolite nerd into garnering genuine concern for your well being.

Now consider enrapture. It’s the zenith of the religious experience or goal. One is obliged to endear themselves to not only The Creator Himself, but to His Word and what that means for existences beyond your own. They’re to do this for a lifetime. They’re to proselytize. We consider this a celebration and triumphant point of pride about the nature of faith! We build linguistic skyscrapers to house all our excuses for when it goes astray. We ignore the contradiction of claiming truth while waiting for it to be revealed. We bound joylessly exuberant into the unknown despite what’s there begging to be acknowledged.

I’m still enthralled by the idea of finding so much in allowing yourself to be lost. Lose yourself to the pain and learn how much you can endure. Give yourself over to insatiable doubt to gain foundations that are rarely shaken. Sacrifice yourself on the altar of public opinion to reduce both “public” and “opinion” to greater drudgery than they’ll ever manage for you. At my most “boring” I find some of my most compelling suggestions about how to “direct” my life. Perhaps in a Woody Allen sense of “yeah, yeah, that’s good enough let’s move on I have less than a year to produce something new.”

Maybe I can unpack the idea of “perpetual self-justification.” Literally all of existence could be the Example. Every book, every movie, every blog, quote, or relationship to anything simply a reflection. To take a book and slowly remove one line at a time. Is it still a book? Does this force us to ask questions about the message and meaning of a book? Does it press further to explore why we’re willing to read an “incomplete” book or if we’re still capable, if ever were, able to digest and transfer the message?

I can simply reflect on my collection of blogs. There’s drunk rambling, seemingly incoherent digressions. There’s things that have deeply touched people. There’s the heights of egotistical thinking. There’s enduring sadness, confusion, and jealousy. I can hold up the mirror to any point, but they all came from the same brain. They all exist and disappear as insistently as I choose to open or create them. “I” will manifest for as long as you remember a single line, or title, or feeling I aroused in you. It’s as much or as little as anything else.

There’s a line in Waking Life, for example, that has always stuck with me. “I’m sort of reading it, and then writing it.” I’ve watched that movie pushing 20 times and over the years different scenes or lines have been lodged in my head. They would dance about as I wrote different blogs until I was done with them. They burrowed into my heart and pumped through the veins in my hands. It helps me in thinking about being in accordance with something larger. A willingness to search allowed my perspective to create, not “independent” of myself, but as an extension, a reflection. What do we say of our reflections? Are they “over there?” Or are they simple mind games to give us a broader view to cheat how our eyes are situated?

I, at least, try to read my circumstances. I try to read the culture. I read faces and voices and bodies. I read numbers and waterfalls of personal truths. I think I often feel like I come across “angry” or “depressed” or “pessimistic” or “sociopathic” or “judgmental” because more often than not, those are what’s reflected back. It’s anger life didn’t pan out like you planned. It’s depressed about feeling stuck and abused. It’s pessimistic pride for having figured it all out. It’s sociopathic disregard for consequences. It’s ceaseless purposeful judgment in order to stand in contrast to.

I don’t think it can end, but it can be understood as a reflection. It can be understood as parts of the same. It doesn’t have to be called “necessary.” It doesn’t have to strike a “balance.” It’s a choice of what to look at. It’s to choose the size of your mirror. It’s how long you’ll let it sit with you until it can be accepted and extended.