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July 16 ’24
We are half-seated, half-laying on a concrete slope of the LA river. The scene is relatively still except for the sound of a small, solitary standing wave intermittently building and collapsing. It seems that this stationary, aqueous ruffling is being caused by a collection of colorful trash, mostly what appear to be firework husks, gathered around a branch caught up in some hidden rocks.
Above this peripheral drama/phenomena, in wild and wyrd contrast, the sun is doing its routine rage — hotly seated in that offensively cloudless field of irreconcilably specific blue — a primordial doubloon.
At the water line, is a small-ish white crane-type bird — presumably hunting (whether carnivore, herbivore, or both). Its feet are bright yellow and mildly puffy, almost like it’s wearing foot gloves made of rubber — combined with the consistent jerkiness of its head — it seems to have a humorous demeanor. But of course it is not humorous, not hardly.
* * *
Humans are incapable of understanding the complexity of any situation beyond a certain point; as well, we can’t help but see the world from a wholly human perspective, only able to utilize human-based equipment (whether physical or psycho-semiological and bound by a perceptive structure of something like focus, periphery and pattern recognition) and (perhaps terrifyingly) we are surrounded by nearly infinite variables and thus subject to constant, unforeseeable outcomes.
This condition though, is almost never admitted. From our perspective this absence calls into question the verity of almost all assertions.
* * *
Instead of acknowledging cognitive/conceptual/predictive deficiency, humans almost always, camouflage their imprecision, fragility and vulnerability with a false, bullish confidence. Such deceptive, pusillanimous spuriousness seems to be reaching a saturation point in this era.
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Make no mistake this is a corporate and political age, and terrible because of it. The hook, line and sinker acceptance of these modes obscures the pathways to all truth — what is the truth(?!) that there is no truth — there can only be engagement, artistic speculation and (hopefully dignified) compromise.
All the corporate and political leaders have is fear — inward and outward facing. They trick us into engaging and believing in all sorts of endless, pop-up, embroidered oblivions — making us forget that we all have our very own tailor made apocalypses waiting for us — and don’t need to be dependently mollified at all times, from theirs.
These political and corporate modes have no poetry, no curiosity, no dérives, no joy, no ability to thrive without winning (as if) and control (🙃). Only fear-born, false certitude.
It is in contrast to this political and corporate panic merchandising that the artistic impulse (the utility of speculation) is revealed in its proper defiant significance — “all art is useless” that it why it is useful, it doesn’t pretend omnipotence.
* * *
Why does Rick Owens have an sarcophagus at the terminus of one of his hallways? Perhaps it’s because he doesn’t know what life means and allows himself to be confronted by the ravishing inscrutability of death.
Why did Donald Judd make furniture of physically excruciating right angles? Hardly because of function. It was to lyrically and elegantly intimate beautiful but impossible order.
Why does Marquel Williams have a massive blunt, i-beam, angling out of the floor to over-support the back of his “Beam Club Chair”? Perhaps to actually feel a gesture in a world of many vague, bland and interminable gestures... To us, the design is metaphysical not ergonomic.
Imaginative acts are beautiful when they flirt with function.
Also of sincere interest is Marquel Williams’ other deep project:
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Goings-On(line)
An offering of pieces and projects
from around the web
from around the web
Hart Crane, To Emily Dickinson (1926)
Heesoo Kwon, Leymusoom Digital Shrine (2021)
Andrea Arnold, Red Road (2006)
Paul Hutchinson at Galerie Russi Klenner (2021)
Number (N)ine, Fall/ Winter (2002-03)
Oracle
Each week we consult both the Tarot and the I Ching.
22. Grace
These first few lines are the general aphoristic returns for the week. They are raw and uninterpreted; there to use how you’d like. (The specific readings follow.)
- Structural soundness comes from deep methods like math and engineering, not by aesthetic preoccupation (this is not a comment on art but on surface fixations).
- Behold the distant heavens; see how they pierce you and all the world(s) around you.
- Freedom is an illusion; it is wise to accept the reality of interdependence (sun to food to eating, etc.).
* * *
From “M.S.”: Being that humans went from riding atop animals, as a main form of transportation, to having all manner of engine-based mobility, in a crazily short period of time — and from having to send correspondence via boat or car or train to instantly seeing your friend’s (and other’s) lives without synapse or delay on portable screens, also with very little transition... Not to mention the innumerable, insane effects of radical technological changes, generally... And keeping in mind how specifically so many of us go from relative health into deathly decline... (And please know, we know, that the following question may be quite trite...) What is the best attitude that one can adopt to deal with so much instability and change?
* * *
Perhaps a difficult relationship to Change (writ large) points to an absence of an awareness of the interdependence of all things — you might be believing that the swirling eddy of self is actually self contained — but that would be wildly wrong. It might be that you are unable to accept your insignificance and live in the dream of narcissistic “achievements.”
We are all mere decorative notes to minuscule occurrences within vast systems, of which are within inconceivably larger systems — which themselves are in even larger _______.
Interdependence and novelty are our lot. If we accept this, that is, that we are part of and dependent on our world (which is an inarguable truth) and we accept that we mostly don’t really know anything (another inarguable truth) then how can we be surprised by change?
* * *
Complete Reading
This week we pulled The Star. The Star is the far off “truth” — the unknowable, but all-piercing substrate — the “supernal Understanding” made manifest. It is the symbol of the undying/moving/dancing animator(?) of all things. Another way, we move at a certain self-referential speed, thinking we are important and separate from all else — The Star is the All Else that we are inextricably apart of.
Our first hexagram this week is #30, The Clinging, Fire. Here we have a thoroughly beautiful metaphor/exposition regarding what might be put as freedom and enlightenment. In short harmony is dependency (relinquishment to the truth of interdependence). No person is an island (forgive the hackneyed proverb) — all things require all manner of multi-life-form reciprocity to survive — pretending independence is a dream or illusion. “A luminous thing giving out light must have within itself something that perseveres; otherwise it will in time burn itself out. Everything that gives light is dependent on something to which it clings, in order that it may continue to shine... Human life on earth is conditioned and unfree, and when a person recognizes this limitation and makes themself dependent upon the harmonious and beneficent forces of the cosmos, they achieve success.”
There was one change this week, of which the specific note is: many dangers are not survivable but often the best way out of a perilous event is by following the path of least resistance.
Our second hexagram, the one that suggests how best to meet the challenges (or the changes) is 22, Grace. Beauty is not essential, that is, elegance of form (etc.) is not the causal or main part of any important mechanism — beauty is not structural but decorative. “Grace — beauty of form — is necessary in any union if it is to be well ordered and pleasing rather than disordered and chaotic... However, it is not the essential or fundamental thing; it is only the ornament...” It is important not to spend all of one’s time on a pleasing appearance. If a significant project like a relationship or architectural construction is to be sound, its creation cannot be preoccupied with outward form but rather with the principles of engineering and systematic nurturing.