“These things happened, but not as described.” Lisa Robertson1
“In as far as I can tell, none of these things is verifiable true.” Arthur Jafa2
“These things happened, but not as described.” Lisa Robertson1
“In as far as I can tell, none of these things is verifiable true.” Arthur Jafa2
I am not sure precisely when it dawned on me - it felt too late, far past the point of no return - when I couldn’t trace the idea all the way back home anymore. Had it been lingering in my brain or did Ryan plant the seed? Did it start with Jia’s book, Jamila’s song, Jafa’s show or the walk with Jack? Was it her soft touch or fraction of eternity in his eyes that gave me confidence? His text or her presence when it all fell into place, inner landscapes taking outer contours? And where the hell do I even begin, and they, he, she...you all end?
It was then when I saw it that there’s not all that much to see: this boundary between me and you, between us and the world is neither fixed, nor material. How deeply misleading the physicality of our bodies is: it implies containment, autonomy and self sufficiency. It suggests a soft, yet hard, limit to our being. Misguided illusions of control. A border. A country within its own right. Yet the surface of the skin, reductive, limited, leaves out the very fact that the geography of our bodies, like any geography, depends on its atmosphere, on the things that it lives in and by, caught with the eye or not.
If our bodies are ecosystems, are we each other’s weather? Your words are cloud like, ethereal presences that constantly reshape the warmth of the sun, the song turns into torrential rain, softening the hardened earth, a book starts an earthquake, inner tectonic plates shifting with no end in sight. How does a verse on the right beat, a gesture on a walk, a sentence in low sunlight, an image in a biting context become a part of your being, indistinguishable from what was, and essential to what may be?
It was then when I saw it that there’s not all that much to see: this boundary between me and you, between us and the world is neither fixed, nor material. How deeply misleading the physicality of our bodies is: it implies containment, autonomy and self sufficiency. It suggests a soft, yet hard, limit to our being. Misguided illusions of control. A border. A country within its own right. Yet the surface of the skin, reductive, limited, leaves out the very fact that the geography of our bodies, like any geography, depends on its atmosphere, on the things that it lives in and by, caught with the eye or not.
If our bodies are ecosystems, are we each other’s weather? Your words are cloud like, ethereal presences that constantly reshape the warmth of the sun, the song turns into torrential rain, softening the hardened earth, a book starts an earthquake, inner tectonic plates shifting with no end in sight. How does a verse on the right beat, a gesture on a walk, a sentence in low sunlight, an image in a biting context become a part of your being, indistinguishable from what was, and essential to what may be?
I am not sure precisely when it dawned on me - it felt too late, far past the point of no return - when I couldn’t trace the idea all the way back home anymore. Had it been lingering in my brain or did Ryan plant the seed? Did it start with Jia’s book, Jamila’s song, Jafa’s show or the walk with Jack? Was it her soft touch or fraction of eternity in his eyes that gave me confidence? His text or her presence when it all fell into place, inner landscapes taking outer contours? And where the hell do I even begin, and they, he, she...you all end?
It was then when I saw it that there’s not all that much to see: this boundary between me and you, between us and the world is neither fixed, nor material. How deeply misleading the physicality of our bodies is: it implies containment, autonomy and self sufficiency. It suggests a soft, yet hard, limit to our being. Misguided illusions of control. A border. A country within its own right. Yet the surface of the skin, reductive, limited, leaves out the very fact that the geography of our bodies, like any geography, depends on its atmosphere, on the things that it lives in and by, caught with the eye or not.
If our bodies are ecosystems, are we each other’s weather? Your words are cloud like, ethereal presences that constantly reshape the warmth of the sun, the song turns into torrential rain, softening the hardened earth, a book starts an earthquake, inner tectonic plates shifting with no end in sight. How does a verse on the right beat, a gesture on a walk, a sentence in low sunlight, an image in a biting context become a part of your being, indistinguishable from what was, and essential to what may be?
It was then when I saw it that there’s not all that much to see: this boundary between me and you, between us and the world is neither fixed, nor material. How deeply misleading the physicality of our bodies is: it implies containment, autonomy and self sufficiency. It suggests a soft, yet hard, limit to our being. Misguided illusions of control. A border. A country within its own right. Yet the surface of the skin, reductive, limited, leaves out the very fact that the geography of our bodies, like any geography, depends on its atmosphere, on the things that it lives in and by, caught with the eye or not.
If our bodies are ecosystems, are we each other’s weather? Your words are cloud like, ethereal presences that constantly reshape the warmth of the sun, the song turns into torrential rain, softening the hardened earth, a book starts an earthquake, inner tectonic plates shifting with no end in sight. How does a verse on the right beat, a gesture on a walk, a sentence in low sunlight, an image in a biting context become a part of your being, indistinguishable from what was, and essential to what may be?
The impact of words, of touch, of our presence onto each other can, in fact, be physically measured.3
…even when we are too ignorant, to numb, too dumb, too fearful to acknowledge that part of us lay outside of ourselves, that we indeed bleed, mix, blend, mingle, combine, put together, stir, jumble, merge, fuse, unite, unify, join, amalgamate. With each other, with strangers, with ourselves. Our bodies talk to and feed off each other and like trees they care and nurture and miss one another, and talk without words, loving when we hate, healing when we hurt. Someone’s absence an actual physical burden, an invisible wound. Their presence sometimes too. Pain. Or ecstasy, pure joy. Like most things, it goes both ways. This might be the most romantic thing I have ever learned, what if we lived by it? Why don't we live by it?
Years ago, as I was about to move to NY, I was told, aggressive caringly, to “be careful, you’re very impressionable”. It took a while to understand that this came from the same universe in which “too” sensitive is a thing, like one could overdose on feelings, and where being strong is meant literally, seriously. I believed it too, and tried, like concrete, to seal, reject, compress, repel. Turns out the one thing you can’t undo is your own chemistry, so I kept leaking or so I thought until I realized our limits are not hard edges, not even a place.
Recently researchers discovered that the in-between spaces in the human body form in essence an organ in its own right. A shock absorber for other parts of the body, “It looks fluid — something that ebbs and flows, like the ocean.”4 We just conceptualized organs differently, we couldn't see it, make sense of it before. Yet isn’t the in-between me and you an ocean in itself too, past skin and deeper than sight? We ebb and flow, into one another and each other, no beginning or end, no birth or death, just life.
1 Lisa Robertson, Baudelaire Fractal
2 Arthur Jafa, Cahiers D’Art
3 How Emotions Are Made, Lisa Feldman Barrett
4 NYTimes, March 31, 2018 - Is This Tissue a New Organ? Maybe. A Conduit for Cancer? It Seems Likely
Years ago, as I was about to move to NY, I was told, aggressive caringly, to “be careful, you’re very impressionable”. It took a while to understand that this came from the same universe in which “too” sensitive is a thing, like one could overdose on feelings, and where being strong is meant literally, seriously. I believed it too, and tried, like concrete, to seal, reject, compress, repel. Turns out the one thing you can’t undo is your own chemistry, so I kept leaking or so I thought until I realized our limits are not hard edges, not even a place.
Recently researchers discovered that the in-between spaces in the human body form in essence an organ in its own right. A shock absorber for other parts of the body, “It looks fluid — something that ebbs and flows, like the ocean.”4 We just conceptualized organs differently, we couldn't see it, make sense of it before. Yet isn’t the in-between me and you an ocean in itself too, past skin and deeper than sight? We ebb and flow, into one another and each other, no beginning or end, no birth or death, just life.
1 Lisa Robertson, Baudelaire Fractal
2 Arthur Jafa, Cahiers D’Art
3 How Emotions Are Made, Lisa Feldman Barrett
4 NYTimes, March 31, 2018 - Is This Tissue a New Organ? Maybe. A Conduit for Cancer? It Seems Likely
The impact of words, of touch, of our presence onto each other can, in fact, be physically measured.3
…even when we are too ignorant, to numb, too dumb, too fearful to acknowledge that part of us lay outside of ourselves, that we indeed bleed, mix, blend, mingle, combine, put together, stir, jumble, merge, fuse, unite, unify, join, amalgamate. With each other, with strangers, with ourselves. Our bodies talk to and feed off each other and like trees they care and nurture and miss one another, and talk without words, loving when we hate, healing when we hurt. Someone’s absence an actual physical burden, an invisible wound. Their presence sometimes too. Pain. Or ecstasy, pure joy. Like most things, it goes both ways. This might be the most romantic thing I have ever learned, what if we lived by it? Why don't we live by it?
Years ago, as I was about to move to NY, I was told, aggressive caringly, to “be careful, you’re very impressionable”. It took a while to understand that this came from the same universe in which “too” sensitive is a thing, like one could overdose on feelings, and where being strong is meant literally, seriously. I believed it too, and tried, like concrete, to seal, reject, compress, repel. Turns out the one thing you can’t undo is your own chemistry, so I kept leaking or so I thought until I realized our limits are not hard edges, not even a place.
Recently researchers discovered that the in-between spaces in the human body form in essence an organ in its own right. A shock absorber for other parts of the body, “It looks fluid — something that ebbs and flows, like the ocean.”4 We just conceptualized organs differently, we couldn't see it, make sense of it before. Yet isn’t the in-between me and you an ocean in itself too, past skin and deeper than sight? We ebb and flow, into one another and each other, no beginning or end, no birth or death, just life.
1 Lisa Robertson, Baudelaire Fractal
2 Arthur Jafa, Cahiers D’Art
3 How Emotions Are Made, Lisa Feldman Barrett
4 NYTimes, March 31, 2018 - Is This Tissue a New Organ? Maybe. A Conduit for Cancer? It Seems Likely
Years ago, as I was about to move to NY, I was told, aggressive caringly, to “be careful, you’re very impressionable”. It took a while to understand that this came from the same universe in which “too” sensitive is a thing, like one could overdose on feelings, and where being strong is meant literally, seriously. I believed it too, and tried, like concrete, to seal, reject, compress, repel. Turns out the one thing you can’t undo is your own chemistry, so I kept leaking or so I thought until I realized our limits are not hard edges, not even a place.
Recently researchers discovered that the in-between spaces in the human body form in essence an organ in its own right. A shock absorber for other parts of the body, “It looks fluid — something that ebbs and flows, like the ocean.”4 We just conceptualized organs differently, we couldn't see it, make sense of it before. Yet isn’t the in-between me and you an ocean in itself too, past skin and deeper than sight? We ebb and flow, into one another and each other, no beginning or end, no birth or death, just life.
1 Lisa Robertson, Baudelaire Fractal
2 Arthur Jafa, Cahiers D’Art
3 How Emotions Are Made, Lisa Feldman Barrett
4 NYTimes, March 31, 2018 - Is This Tissue a New Organ? Maybe. A Conduit for Cancer? It Seems Likely
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