Brief Matter
This weekend, D. quipped matter comes together briefly to be you or somesuch. He admitted lifting the idea of it from elsewhere, but couldn't remember the source. Do you know?
I've not been able to stop thinking about this, mostly because I'm enamoured of its implicit paradox. Namely, the concurrent everythingness and nothingness of being, man.
Everythingness has a stupendous way of making itself felt as of chief importance. That is, to do everything, all at once, is the ultimate, though sadly unatttainable, good. I've been doing a lot of things lately, so while I am physically quite tired, I feel good - as in, I feel like a good person. But I'm really no better than when I would come home in the evening and do nothing but read and eat cheetos! It's just that no one else really benefits directly from my reading and eating cheetos.
But, there's this bit of apocryphal Duchamp, conjured by Steinke. I don't remember the exact context, but therein Duchamp professes himself to be lazy and says he could spend the whole day doing nothing but paying attention to his breathing.
Well, no one was ever remembered for such minute self-awareness brought to nothing but lying on the floor of a day. But the sense of play this attitude engenders is enviable. And, whether it's anything Duchamp actually said or not, it was born out in his art - something so important born of less kinetic energy than it takes to read and eat cheetos. Or so Apocryphal Duchamp would have us think.
Kinetic energy is much sexier than mental energy. So much so, that what we deem good writing, good art, mimics the kinetic, suggests motion in some way, or stasis in such a way as to leave one craving the kinetic. Still, nerds are way sexier than jocks. Take that, Plato.
But really, all this is to say I need to exercise more.
I've not been able to stop thinking about this, mostly because I'm enamoured of its implicit paradox. Namely, the concurrent everythingness and nothingness of being, man.
Everythingness has a stupendous way of making itself felt as of chief importance. That is, to do everything, all at once, is the ultimate, though sadly unatttainable, good. I've been doing a lot of things lately, so while I am physically quite tired, I feel good - as in, I feel like a good person. But I'm really no better than when I would come home in the evening and do nothing but read and eat cheetos! It's just that no one else really benefits directly from my reading and eating cheetos.
But, there's this bit of apocryphal Duchamp, conjured by Steinke. I don't remember the exact context, but therein Duchamp professes himself to be lazy and says he could spend the whole day doing nothing but paying attention to his breathing.
Well, no one was ever remembered for such minute self-awareness brought to nothing but lying on the floor of a day. But the sense of play this attitude engenders is enviable. And, whether it's anything Duchamp actually said or not, it was born out in his art - something so important born of less kinetic energy than it takes to read and eat cheetos. Or so Apocryphal Duchamp would have us think.
Kinetic energy is much sexier than mental energy. So much so, that what we deem good writing, good art, mimics the kinetic, suggests motion in some way, or stasis in such a way as to leave one craving the kinetic. Still, nerds are way sexier than jocks. Take that, Plato.
But really, all this is to say I need to exercise more.
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