I
often write while listening to the Grateful Dead performance of the day, and
today’s show from 1973 https://archive.org/details/gd73-11-28.sbd-seastones.finney.968.sbefail.shnf
is perhaps one of the most originary performances of a most originary band of
musicians (originary in the sense that Schürmann describes the project when he
identifies it having both a ‘retrospective and prospective gaze’). The performance in general, expresses to me
the tension between the terrestrial and celestial, the historical and the
cosmic. Listen to the intense contrast between the live
electronica Seastones performance (Garcia, Hart, and possibly Ned Lagin and/or
Phil Lesh) and the mostly acoustic and orchestral Tarot Outtakes. (e.g.,
compare Tarot Outtake 6-8 with any of the Seastones).
I
often stream music when writing as a way to focus, especially when the time I
have been granted for writing has been offered to me when I am traveling on a
bus, train, plane, or in the period of waiting for one or the other. As I mentioned in this blog a few times, in
the early weeks of the original project, in February, 2004, the Columbia
University radio station WKCR, broadcast a two week celebration of Coltrane,
and it not an exaggeration to say that the hours I listened to that two week
broadcast constitute the originary gathering spirit of the project. Coltrane is the constant inspiration for
this daily work, in large part because there is no other artist that I know who
demonstrated so much rigor, discipline, audacity and throughout it all
understood his work to be something of an exodus, a pilgrimage, a spiritual
journey. , which I am streaming while I
undertake my hour of writing, my daily spiritual exercise in revisiting the
soul (excess) of the meditations from the project I undertook ten years ago.
A
longer than expected prelude to the commentary in response to the meditation
from 11/28/04. The delay, in part,
because I had an email correspondence with Rocha on the beginning of the
meditation (BL 288-289), which complements
and corresponds to a recent paper he completed on tension. Rocha: collaborator, brother…friend? Here the question arises again regarding the koinōnia of
learning community, specifically, the question concerning the force of the
fellowship that gathers the congregation of thinkers, the power of the koinōn (common) to bring the
many (panta) together such that
plurality is…sacrificed? Unless friendship
is precisely how the mystery of grace appears and unfolds? 11/28/04 begins: “The friend appears as the
un-familiar one.” In what way ‘unfamiliar’?
Unfamiliar can denote
not known or unrecognized, but also unusual, strange. It can also denote mystery. Can the friend appear as unfamiliar? Yes, of course, especially when we think the
friend as the one who discloses mystery, such as the mysterious gathering force
of grace, or demonstrates the mystery of faith.
Perhaps friendship is a demonstration of the mystery of faith we risk
each and every time we undertake work with others? Does faith precede grace? Or is faith the
recognition of the mystery of grace that we witness in friendship,
specifically, in the work done via friendship?
Perhaps what I am describing is a particular case of friendship that we
call ‘colleague’? Is the learning
community the smallest unit of what we denote by the term ‘college’? College, collega,
colleagues, collective, communal, common, community. The fellowship of the
fellows. Fellows denotes ‘a person in the same position, involved in the same
activity, or otherwise associated with another,’ and ‘a member of a learned
society.’ Fellow origin: Old English fēolaga ‘a partner or colleague’ from
Old Norse félagi, from félag ‘partnership.’ [phonetically,
these roots harken back to logos as legein as ‘gathering’ (cf. OPM 242(43),
October 14th)]
The learning community
is the gathering of fellows, is a fellowship.
Koinōnia discloses the
commonality of the common enterprise, similarity and synchronicity between two
or more. The strings of a guitar offer
the example that advances the description of the friend’s disclosure of tension
that unfolds from the mystery faith and grace.
“The [gathering] of the friend emerges from a tension that is sustained
in the intersubjective relationship.
Like the strings of the guitar, the tension arises with a specific kind
of stretching or pulling. Too much, and
the strings break. Too little, and the
strings remain loose and unable to sustain a vibration that can generate sound
[music?]. Tension and soundness co-arise
over the openness that opens with friendship.”(BL 289) Unfamiliar,
strange, mystery > tension, sound, music.
The Open, the gap, the
Nothing, the opening…both the threshold we pass through, and the ground we move
along. But originally and originary,
more profoundly, con mas profundity,
depth, sound-giving (re-sounding), the heart.
The teaching of the friend, what the friend offers, the mystery of faith
and grace: the heat that is overflowing in offering the most profound depth of
compassion. “When Zarathustra offered
his teaching of the friend, he spoke of becoming like a sponge that is capable
of absorbing the overflowing heart of the other.”(BL 289)
The friend appears as
the un-familiar one…and reveals the mystery of faith and grace. Appears, reveals, offers. But friends appear to one another. Friend is never singular. Friend always implies at least one
other. Friend always denotes friends. Friendship is a gathering of many. Friends are a many related, like the strings
on the guitar. The tension of each one is felt alongside the other.
There is the tension of each string in-and-for-itself; there is the
relation of the tension of each in relation to the other. Can a single string make music? Yes, of
course! But what of the music made by
five, or six, or twelve strings?!
The single string is
like the solitary meditative thinker. There is a paucity of sound… relative to
the chorus. The lyrical poet sings with
great force, but it is the force of singularity; powerful, yet singular. And this single voice always presumes ears (two or more) to hear it sing; ears that are
listening for its song. Always presumed,
then, is compassionate listening. This
is what is insinuated with the example of Augustine and the confessional: “thus
Augustine, in speaking to the Divine, over-comes him-self, and with this
speaking offers his excess to his readers, his listeners. He offers him-self as the question that turns
away from it-self and thus appears as an authentic question….The confessional as
a way of being-in-the-world enacts the modality of the learner as the excessive
speaker, as the evocative saying of the one who spills over. This spilling offers the evocative invocation
that beckons the friend.”(BL 289)
3.0 (Thursday, Basking Ridge, NJ) - Thanksgiving Day! Much to be grateful for. The more I document the resonances of the OPMs and 2.0 commentary that are heard in "LEARN" the more I realize how much continuity there is between the projects. And today I hear how the call of the book to the student is a resonance of the important "evocative saying" that is so central to B&L. In B&L the evocative saying is that which originally turned the student around to the contemplation of Being. That's how the question inspired by Plato was taken up and put the OPM/B&L project into motion. And it's picked up in "LEARN" as what happens after the student has been turned around and invited into the solitude of study. What's more ther Here is a fragment of "LEARN" that not only shows that connection, but also resonates with the 2.0 commentary that plays with the sound of the guitar ( Friends are a many related, like the strings on the guitar. The tension of each one is felt alongside the other. There is the tension of each string in-and-for-itself; there is the relation of the tension of each in relation to the other. Can a single string make music? Yes, of course! But what of the music made by five, or six, or twelve strings?!): "That power is conserved by the receptive modality the student takes during phenomenological reading, when the student is the subject of learning, or subjected to the force of the fecundity of the enduring object of study, its incessant arrival that is akin to the quasar emerging from the black hole, the luminosity of meaning arriving through the openness (khaos) of the open text. Here we are reminded of the sonic aperture of Picasso’s Guitar sculptures, and his use of negative space as both a literal and figurative engagement with the ‘hole’ or threshold through which sound moves, circulates and gathers the listener. By amplifying the negative space of the instrument’s hole with a cardboard cylinder Picasso reverses the usual order of the instrument’s composition: the interior – the resonant chamber – detonates above and beyond the chamber. His guitar composes a reversal: the interior, the space held inside the instrument, placed outside; the hidden unhidden, absence presented, and in doing so Picasso’s guitar takes us into the threshold through which the sound of music moves, circulates. This unconcealment of the hidden (the re-sounding of silence) forces us to recognize the presence of what seems to be mistakenly registered as absent. The unconcealment play of Picasso’s guitar echoes Nancy’s description of silence as the origin of resonant subjectivity, the original situation from whence listening occurs."
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