Back
in snowy Portland! Still tuned into the
Miami Phish show from two weeks ago.
Built it into the DZ for this Sunday.
Let’s see if the correct files make it on the air! I was only moderately disappointed that the
second hour form last week’s show wasn’t aired, because it featured the acid
test from the Fillmore in early January ’67, and Timothy Leary was dropping
f-bombs here and there. So I was
somewhat concerned about stretching the FCC regs. Anyway, onward this morning with Burlington,
VT based Phish from 1/3/15 streaming on the Bose as I write from my kitchen
desk on this glorious sun drench crisp fresh snow morning in Portland, ME.
The
writing on 1/16/05 is a testament to the epic form that appears more often than
in this project. Just drops into think in media res. [here it is worth citing the commentary from
11/6/14 where I recall the only two readings of this project that deem
significant: “Rocha reads Being and
Learning as an Augustinian work of self-disclosure, and I’ve never contested
that reading, which, it seems, co-exists and complements Tyson Lewis’
description of BL as ‘the first epic
in philosophy of education’. I write as
one who is experiencing the trials and tribulation of thinking the relation of
Being and learning!”(11/6/14)]
The
writing on 1/16/05 begins in media res
– Donde Estamos? in media res (in the
middle of things, which is to say, in the place of thinking, the standing now,
the nunc stans, with the originary,
moved with becoming – and this beginning (of the meditation)
points to the above mentioned readings by my fellows, my friends, my
colleagues, mi colegas. I have consistently
described the call to learning to be made by the sage, who, like Heidegger’s
teacher, is the first and original learner because he stands nearest to the
originary, upon the unstable and uncertain ground (what I have called the
‘collision zone’, the sacred place, and perhaps even holy land?) and has more
to learn than the students because he
has to learn how to let them learn. But
on 1/16/05 it is the friend who issues the call to learn: “But as we have seen,
it is the friend who appears as the one bearing the evocative invocation that
puts the philosophical journey underway.
Thus, when Heidegger asks ‘On what journey does the poet attain to his
renunciation? Through what land do his
journeys lead the traveler?’ his question refers us to the situation of the
philosopher, as learner, who has been turned away from the quest for
self-certainty and placed on the path of disquiet questioning…the ‘familiar’ as
strange, the ‘self’ as a stranger, when he is confronted by the…hidden presence
of an other.”(BL 348)
The
meditation moves simultaneously in two directions: it recognizes the presence of the ‘friend’
who, it will turn out, is the figure of the ‘teacher’, and also makes a
cartographical description of the movement of the learning community. Through Heidegger the movement of the
learning community is described as a journey into a ‘land’ that I have been describing
as the collision zone, and also as sacred place. Here
I have to make note of the seminar discussion from last week where we dispensed
with Irigaray’s appropriation of Heidegger’s ‘dwelling’ as ‘home’ -- thinking
as the time when we build our home (self), each day. Thinking as learning (meditatively,
dialogically) is a building a making (technē)
but was is made is something that expresses being with becoming, and this is why music,
performed music, is the only art work that can adequately constitute the
work. And the making of music is far
from the building of the home; it moves far, very far, from the domestic. “Through what land do his journeys lead the
traveler?” ask Heidegger about the poet when he embarks after his renunciation? I’ve
written on this renunciation, this original moment of listening, and can hear
describe this place where the traveler, the learner, moves as the Open where he
discovers the fecund Silence. “The
‘land’ of poetic thinking is that enchanted realm of the Open, the boundless
boundary where the performance of learning is enacted.”(BL 348) Renunciation is yet another description of self-overcoming,
and yet another reason that we dispense with the description of thinking as the
building of the home, the self. Irigaray
wants us to return ‘home’ (to the self) after
listening to the other. But there is no
going home, as Thomas Wolfe famously said.
Wolfe’s aphorism finds no better illustration than in DuBois character John Jones, who returns to the town
where his family lives but never arrives home.
Once embarking on the journey of learning, the sojourn of thinking, we
can never go home. The original moment of listening, the effacement with Being,
leaves us speechless, dumbfounded (cf. Aquinas’ experience with the cross that
left him without the capacity to speak; Thomas renounced all metaphysical
system building after that experience).
On this renunciation I have written at least two commentaries, both from
late May:
With this in mind, I share a highlight from today's
meditation, OPM 95: "Thus, 'purposeful wandering along the proper way of
fellowship,' is the response to Heidegger's questions, 'On what journeys
does the poet attain to his renunciation? Through what land do his journeys
lead the traveler?'...To renounce is to 'give up or put aside voluntarily.'
Renounce is derived from the Latin 'renuntiare to bring back
word.' Nuntiare is 'to announce' and this is derived from 'nuntius,
messenger, news.' [Websters]...in delivering the message the Sage
conveys the renunciation by bringing back Word, by conveying the appearance of
the ineffable...Nuntius renuntiare."
To be the messenger who brings back the word. Is the
sage then the bee keeper? The one who cultivates honey? (05/19/14)
≤≥
In commemorating
OPM99, I'll take up the spirit that moved the original experiment, and begin
with two fragments that I picked up this morning. The second, which I'll
share first, because it offers the context, was an email I received from Jason
Wozniak, co-founder of LAPES, whose presentation at PES Albuquerque I recorded
and posted on this blog. An exchange we had this morning culminated in
his citing of Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus: "Song is Existence."
While, at the moment, I can't find the meditation where this exact
quotation appears, it is quite close to the Holderlin line that is cited in OPM
94 from May 18th: "Soon we shall be song"! Indeed, but in
what sense 'song'? In what sense is this 'being of song' what arrives
after the poet's renunciation, which renounces speaking (the verbal), and
announces listening (the non-verbal, 'silence')? In what sense is such
'silence' the 'sound' of instrumental music, non-verbal communication?
(05/23/14)
“In what sense is such 'silence' the
'sound' of instrumental music, non-verbal communication?” This question jumps out at me 8 months later
and demands that I take it up in related to the past few day’s descriptions of
the modality of musicality and the movement into the fecund Silence. At the very
least it seems to indicate further mediations that will yield description of
the fecundity of the fecund Silence
as heard in improvisational instrumental music.
My go to example here would have to be the jam that begins at the 38th
minute of this second set from 1/3/15: http://youtu.be/A8LO0lkqzqA [Listen to it…don’t watch the video…at
least not initially…the power of the performance as a demonstration of
musicality is felt most intensely in listening]
Renunciation has everything to do with
self-overcoming in the Pauline sense of becoming
the δοῦλος (doulos, slave) of the Holy Spirit.
And this is why I insist on describing the artwork, the making of art,
the performance of music-making philosophy as mimetic representation, which is
only to say a performance that is propelled through the performances but not by
them.
On 1/16/05 the friend appears as the
one who draws one away from ‘self’ and thus away from ‘home’. “The friend’s appearance shows the presence
of the unfamiliar by raising the fundamental question…”(BL 348) Socrates friend Chaerephon,
who Socrates tells us is the one who first relayed to him the message from the
oracle, is recalled as the friend who “offers the de-familiar, what is beyond
the ‘family’…”(BL 348) And then Zarathustra makes a sudden return to
the seen to inform that “‘A friend should be a master at guessing…you must want
to see everything.’” Zarathustra is
“conveying the friend’s showing of the fundamental question as the appearance
of the veiled presence of the be-ing human whose ‘essence’ remains with-held,
and concealed, because it always remains in/with becoming, on the way and ‘not
yet’ present.”(BL 348)
Despite having been heard saying (but
never truly enacting) the statement to my students, “I’m your teacher, not your
friend,” on 1/16/05 the figure of the
‘friend’ appears in the form of the ‘teacher,’ who has to be understood as educator described by Heidegger in lecture
1 of What is Called Thinking? How then does the teacher learn to let the
students learn? By taking up the
position of the friend, who, today, is appearing as one and the same persona as
the fellow, the colleague, colega. (I suspect the next move – which would
constitute a reversal – will be to discover the collapse of the friend v.
family distinction, so that persona with who one is making music is at one and
the same time: fellow, colega, friend
and family member aka brother, hermano.
Indeed, there is something powerful happening when the movement
appropriates the language of the mendicant orders and begins to refer to their
comrades in the struggle as ‘brother’ and ‘sister’).
What is important on 1/16/05 is that
the friend/teacher’s listening is an “openness that bears the essential or
fundament question…”(BL 349) This listening enacts the Open by conveying the fecund Silence. The
fecundity of the fecund Silence
appears as the force of the originary: “the fundamental question…confronts with
what is ‘originary.’ And what is
originary is ‘original,’ novel and unique.”(BL
349) Listening is thus the manner in
which the call to learning happens, and thus the call is a re-calling, a
re-turning, a moment of re-collection
(gathering with the originary): “To be
re-collected to what is originary is to take up what is original, that is, to
take up the question, ‘Free for
what?’…the fundamental question of be-ing human….”(BL 349) The δοῦλος of the
Holy Spirit is thus one who is properly emancipated into the exodus of the
movement of humanity’s becoming. “To be
is to be free. But to be engaged in the
be-ing of freedom is to be engaged in the question of this be-ing of
freedom. This is to be a learner, or one
who is attuned to the freeing of freedom, the releasement of be-ing that is
released in the be-ing of releasement in/with the en-actment of creation that
(re)presents the originality of the originary dispensation. To be learner is to be…(un)bound, released,
to the improvisational performance that brings from concealment…The
learner…abides (de)construccion, of/from construction…held
out in the Open, before the no-thing from which the new is let be.”(BL 349)
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