OPM 85 is read on the porch of the bed and breakfast, down the block from Aardvark Recording Studios, with my newly acquired hipster crown, the fedora I 'earned' as a co-producer on the Sam Rocha Trio album 'Late to Love,' which is being recorded this week. Not only is Ohio the sixth state where I have recorded (Maine, New York, New Jersey, Illinois, New Mexico), but the porch of the Peabody House bed and breakfast, on Fourth Street in Stubenville, Ohio, is the third porch where I have recorded (Hotel Albuquerque, Drew University). The 'porch' is one of the important locations for this project, as it represents the threshold, and thus one of the spaces 'in-between' where learning/thinking gets underway. We were first introduced to the 'porch' when we encountered it with the discussion of Plato's Symposium. And through that text we encountered the 'darkness' or 'shade' of the porch as disclosing the truth of concealment, or the restraint. (Recall, Socrates did not enter the home of Agathon, but moved over to the darkness of the porch and was restrained there until he was ready to move on.) Since Albuquerque I have taken inspiration from this moment, and have made it a habit to record many of these videos in such a way that I appear 'concealed' and like a silhouette. The point here is to position myself in the threshold, the dwelling of thinking/learning.
It is precisely this dwelling that is the focus of OPM 85, with an emphasis on the relationship between poetic dwelling and freedom, and this is captured in the quotation that concludes OPM 85: "The more poetic a poet is -- the freer (that is, the more open and ready for the unforeseen) his saying..." As opposed to the point I made yesterday, where I emphasized 'Sage' as the quality of the location where the learning community is gathered (e.g., the recording studio), in OPM 85 the Sage is taken up again as the figure or persona of the teacher, or the one who lets learning happen. Here the emphasis is on the poetic manner of that 'letting.' This was indicated already by the poetic quality of Heraclitus fragment, "Here to the gods come to presencing," which I read as poetic because it indicates the presence of what appears absent, which is a way of framing the perception of the learning/thinker who can 'perceive' what is beyond the given, what is present yet hidden. The Sage is the one who indicates this hidden presence, and who directs our attention towards thinking/learning. And the Sage does this through his poetic dwelling. Which is to say 'through' the threshold, e.g., the way Heraclitus beckons his visitors who are standing just outside his home.
It is precisely this dwelling that is the focus of OPM 85, with an emphasis on the relationship between poetic dwelling and freedom, and this is captured in the quotation that concludes OPM 85: "The more poetic a poet is -- the freer (that is, the more open and ready for the unforeseen) his saying..." As opposed to the point I made yesterday, where I emphasized 'Sage' as the quality of the location where the learning community is gathered (e.g., the recording studio), in OPM 85 the Sage is taken up again as the figure or persona of the teacher, or the one who lets learning happen. Here the emphasis is on the poetic manner of that 'letting.' This was indicated already by the poetic quality of Heraclitus fragment, "Here to the gods come to presencing," which I read as poetic because it indicates the presence of what appears absent, which is a way of framing the perception of the learning/thinker who can 'perceive' what is beyond the given, what is present yet hidden. The Sage is the one who indicates this hidden presence, and who directs our attention towards thinking/learning. And the Sage does this through his poetic dwelling. Which is to say 'through' the threshold, e.g., the way Heraclitus beckons his visitors who are standing just outside his home.
3.0 - What would normally be a day of celebration in my world -- May 8th is a deadhead holiday! -- they skies are mostly gray, there is a cool breeze, and a feeling of unease in the air both here back home in Portland and down at Hofstra. And this end of the academic year seems to be exceeding the perennial end of the academic year drama. Despite being able to stay out of the political arena writ large, politics has found me and has me by the scruff. There is something to be said about the tension between philosophy and politics. Arendt lands on the side of the political because it is a sphere of plurality and dynamic openness. Or rather, she insists that philosophy and politics have to be kept apart. And I totally concur with her on that point. This is why she separates education from the political realm. Like philosophy, education is happening in the time/space of scholē, which is the time away from work, away from politics. It is a time for free thinking. This last week of classes I was emphasizing the autonomous student. Perhaps I should have emphasized the realm of education as a sphere of autonomy? The point of emphasis is on autonomy and education as an encounter with freedom. And that encounter is mediated by a significant object, i.e., the work of art, which is the actualization of freedom and autonomy. Blanchot calls this the solitude of the work of art. Adorno following Benjamin also identifies the work of art as autonomous. Benjamin emphasizes this when he describes the "fata" or fate of each book. So the encounter with autonomy in the significant object is the inspiration for the learning that inspires poetic praxis. Hence, as one of the last ideas I presented this semester, the claim was made: the autonomous student is a poet. This resonates with the claim I made this day 20 years ago in OPM 85: "The more poetic a poet is -- the freer..." There is much that can be discussed and explored here in terms of what is entailed in being a "poetic" poet, a free artist. In some ways it's an oxymoron. To be an artist is to enact freedom, which is to say, using Arendt's language, enact the principle of freedom, to actualize one's natality. To describe the autonomous student as poet is to use a general category that could also be captured under the title of "artist." We enter into (cross over, diagogē) the location of learning, which Heidegger describes as being capable of perceiving the essential -- "significant" (meaningful) -- and as we move in that location we are enacting poetic praxis. Learning is a poetic practice, the encounter with and the making of significant objects that contribute to the repair and renewal of our common world.
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