I watched the film Adaptation the other day and it had quite and effect on me from literally the first ten seconds. The voice over of Charlie Kaufman's thoughts with only the black screen and little credits at the bottom reminded me so much of Fitter Happier. It was that same morning that I had listened to OK Computor the whole way through for the first time, because I never really liked Radiohead before. That song in particular used ot make me so mad because it seemed to be the sort of nihilistic social criticism that wasn't actually helpful in anyway but only looked at valid human experience and said 'man this shit is fucked up, full stop!' But this time it struck me so much. It seems to be kind of freeing me more from a way of thinking that is a series of cliches that have lost their real meaning and worth. Some of the things in Fitter Happier and Adaptation are worthwhile things, like exercise for example. But when they become nothing but empty statements like "maybe I should start jogging again, yeah, five miles a day from now on, yeah"...fitter, happier, more productive...empty nothings that fill up head room and sap actual possibility.
Instead, somehow, I feel like it's possible to interrupt that inane chatter and actually do something zomg! ... as I try to say it it seems elusive...I think I should watch the movie again or lsiten to the song again...but it wouldn't have the same effect, you can't just listen to it trying to get the smae thing out of it again, trying ot get the same feeling, it doesn't wokr that way...it feels like there's some possibility here, but I don't know how to sieze it so actual change takes place, rather than just letting this idea drift away and be forgotten. I don't want that. But the feeling seems to be going the more I think about it. There's stuff to be got at, but it's so hard to get at it!
I really like Katherine Mansfield. She is impressive to me. In her stories, there is always this feeling of being on the brink of some revelation. That's what I feel like so much of the time. Like if one little thing would just click into place then the puzzle would be solved and I would be there. It's amazing to have something so personally experienced and never to have talked about it with anyone, and then suddenly to find it perfectly expressed by someone else. It makes me wonder (amazement) at things. It feels like that's something to challenge the constructivists, the materialists etc. and point towards some sort of common characteristic of human experience that defies strict materialism. It of course does not have to mean this, but it one possibility of many, and one that feels to me like it might have some element of truth to it. You could say that humans are just wired so that they feel that way, and that's fair enough, but both conculsions are really a matter of assumption to a large degree, rather than empirical evidence, are they not?
Writing like this as oppossed to thinking directly about the problem of trying to learn the lesson that seems to be there to learn actually makes the lesson seem less elusive. I've never noticed that before. Maybe that's because I've always shied away from this sort of discussion. But now I am being pushed :D
It reminds me of something Merleau-Ponty wrote in The Visible and the Invisible...I'll go find it...He writes about what he calls 'the intertwining' or 'the chiasm' in relation to our experience of the world, elaborating on the idea that you cannot create a sort of serparation between self and other, inner and outer etc. because they fundamentally overlap. This is a familiar enough concept. One thing that particularly struck me in his work, though...I can't find the exact part, but his point was that when trying to know something (not a mathematical priciple kind of thing but rather lived, intuited experience things) you cannot think of it in terms of a 'me' trying to understand an 'it'. This mode of inquiry will not work because the 'it' cannot be separated from the 'me'. This is kind of hard to write, a bit like the elusive things i'm trying to talk about, but do you get a bit of what I'm trying to say? Does this make sense? I cannot approach this elusive lesson as a something else to be incorporated into me because it is already part of me.
It's like poetry or music or abstract art, which must be 'intuited' in part to be understood (I mean intuited in the way poets love to use it - not some extra sensory perception but something that's understood partly by feeling it).
This might be getting pretty boring and a little inscrutable? I don't find it boring, but I'm the one writing it and experiencing it so...
But in short I shall say that the way you understand art and poetry is also, I think, the way you understand life - it's subtle, felt, intuited, combined with rationally thought and comprehended. Niether is more important because each needs the other for understanding. This seems to be what a number of philosophers (such as Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Nancy) and, of course, poets have thought. They use both intuition and intellect to try and reveal something of truth. It's easy, at least for me, to just go for rational thought and think you don't have time for the subtle and complex process of intuiting meaning and piecing things together. It is also easy to do neither properly and just kind of hover in the superficial. A delicious metaphor for this: sitting on the outside of a giant thing of jelly and only getting to lick it rather than diving in and eating it! See kids, academic things aren't just dry and boring - they can be fun and delicious!! Ahem, anyway. The patience and effort is always worth it. Easier said than done. But worth it.
That's more than enough from me tonight! Lovelove
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