online: 27 june 2005
modified: 27 june 2005

26 june 2005 creative disobedience


12:00 Is it possible for me or anyone, now or later, alive or imagined, to write in a few hundred words the thoughts and perceptions that enable one to do what one is doing?

Today i am trying to imagine this - the inner component, i could say, of my actions and experiences.



Walking to Kenwood:
On the surface of pond 2 i saw unrecognisable blue somethings darting across the water surface at a speed of about 20 times their length in a second. Moving closer i saw that they are dragon flies each about 3 cm long. There were 10 to 20 on or just above the water surface and others attaching themselves to grass stalks and to twigs of a nearby hawthorn. These dragonflies are smaller than most and their stick-like bodies are of a bright electric blue that to me seems almost artificial. And, as often before, i recall the much lesser agility of helicopters (or of any wheel-based mechanisms).

On the grass outside Kenwood three men were throwing replica bombs at each other and trying to catch them (in place of a frisbee). Disliking the associations of this (new to me) game i walked on. Ball games are hostile enough without making the thrown object into the form of a weapon, i thought (but the new comes in strange disguises).

Inside Kenwood is a demonstration of Tibetan sand painting. Four monks lean over a circular table on which they have drawn the outline of a mandala which they are colouring with brightly coloured sands. The sand is put inside metal cones which are vibrated to cause the grains of sand to fall almost one-by-one onto the mandala. Vibrating is done by rubbing a metal rod along a serrated edge (of the cone). Getting the sand to fall in the right place seems to demand intense effort. Once completed the sand pattern is ritually brushed away (to signify the impermanence of everything) and thrown into a river to return to the world from whence it came... A combination of activities that in Europe are separated or even dismissed - namely art, religion, psychotherapy, magic and perhaps philosophy.

At this moment (before reintegration of the elements of western culture under the influence of digital computing) such precedents fascinate but they may also mislead - for the integration of ancient cultures is based on slavish obedience in the smallest details whereas digital technology calls for what i like to call creative disobedience (in place of hierarchy)...

...so it's no wonder if modern life involves much difficulty and conflict, within and without. The human world has not only to be turned upside-down or inside-out - it has to be recreated and reimagined!

To think of that is a joy.

To begin:
attempt to see the best of one's own experiences and actions as elements of this change from hierarchy to digitised integrity via creative disobedience! (I hope these words are going to release and connect and inspire but not stifle.)




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