Culture

Off-Road -> The Cracks

Posted by piermar2 on March 13, 2024
Posted in: Culture, Doctors, Insights, Post-Rehab, TheBodyChallenge, TheMindChallenge.

No Man’s Land (Beyond Regular Communication)
[Could be “no woman’s land” and “no child’s land” – and all of the other animals, plants (I was just told of  Stefano Mancuso’s work), and what we, in an easy way, call “nature.”
A lot of people do try their best to do their very best. This is not what this is about.]


We speak, like on a freeway, we honk, wave, flash our lights and move forward, until… we don’t.
It is NOT “the road less traveled” – it is just “something” less talked about. Something we cannot “just discuss” – even friends listen without necessarily getting it, so yes doctors and nurses, surprisingly even less.

Beyond the words, beyond the diagnostics, the visual evidence, the charts and the scales, there is something else.

That is where I am, and what I want to address as pointedly/directly as possible.
I have heard a great many stories of patients going from doctor to doctor, from specialist to specialist, and the great many tests performed.
In my eyes, there is a very clear place that has to do with the fact that
whatever one describes is not properly heard.
Is it a lack of communication skills, the amount of time allocated for the exchanges, the poverty of the means to assess “what is wrong” and the fact that the symptoms may be too complex to fit a regular exchange in a doctor’s office?

To be continued – there is much more to this.

For those who many be interested in this: the Glasgow Coma Scale rates me a 15 (Mild) but because of a so-called   “Complicated Head Injury,” I end up in the Moderate category.
What’s good about this? It allows me to acknowledge as per French rabbi Delphine Horvilleur’s recent book title, “comment ça va pas?” – how is it not going?.
Maybe all we need is some kind recognition, the details to be elaborated somehow, IF the right context exists somewhere, for that kind of  exchange/communication.

LET IT BE ALWAYS BEYOND THE REACH
like an asymptote, but with fellow passengers onboard
ACKNOWLEDGING “THAT”

The nowhere that’s here.

Posted by piermar2 on February 16, 2024
Posted in: Culture, Insights, LifeAfter.

At some point, speaking leads nowhere.
Communication has reached its limit.

It is not about speaking different languages but there is a limit to what words can convey.
When the symptoms change from hour to hour, and the “how-are-you” assumes a response, to coin an answer leads to something that is clearly not valid anymore, and a waste of time.

How do we point to air, to what is too subtle for words/speech?

“Being, presence… ” is all that is needed.
But of course, like with most important things in life, those words are only pointing fingers, not the “thing itself.”

Blood in the head… and he went back to sleep.

Posted by piermar2 on January 12, 2024
Posted in: Culture, Delirium, Humor, LifeAfter, Post-Op, TheBleed, Uncategorized.

This poem by Henri Michaux has been with me for a great many years.
Its refrain, “and he went back to sleep,” is echoing in me.

Much revolves around sleep, and avoidance.
Do we ever face anything else besides what we cannot escape?
The present is the only “stuff/embrace” we may handle…

A quiet man by Henri Michaux –  (my emphasis)
[English Translation by Marton]

Extending his hands out of bed, Plume was surprised not to meet the wall. “Well, he thought, the ants must have eaten it …” and he fell asleep again.

Shortly after, his wife grabbed him and shook him: “Look, she says, lazy you! while you were busy sleeping we were robbed of our house. “Indeed, an immaculate sky stretched on all sides. “Well, the thing is done.” he thought.

Soon after, a noise was heard. It was a train coming at them at full speed. “From its hurried look, he thought, it will surely arrive before we do” and again he fell asleep.

Then, the cold woke him up. He was soaked in blood. A few pieces of his wife were lying next to him. “With blood, he thought,  a great many conflicts always arise; if this train could have not passed, I would be very happy. But since it has already passed … “and he went back to sleep.
– Well, said the judge, how do you explain that your wife injured herself to the point that she was found divided into eight pieces, without you, who were nearby, being able to make a gesture to prevent it, without you even having noticed it. That’s the mystery. Everything lies there.
– On that path, I cannot help him, thought Plume, and he fell back asleep.
– The execution will take place tomorrow. Accused, do you have something to add?
– Excuse me, he said, I have not followed the case. And he went back to sleep.

Original
Un homme paisible par Henri Michaux – (mon emphase)

Étendant les mains hors du lit, Plume fut étonné de ne pas rencontrer le mur. ” Tiens, pensa-t-il, les fourmis l’auront mangé… ” et il se rendormit.

Peu apres, sa femme l’attrapa et le secoua: “Regarde, dit-elle, fainéant! pendant que tu étais occupé à dormir on nous a volé notre maison.” En effet, un ciel intact s’étendait de tous côtés. “Bah, la chose est faite.” pensa-t-il.

Peu après, un bruit se fit entendre. C’était un train qui arrivait sur eux à toute allure. ” De l’air pressé qu’il a, pensa-t-il, il arrivera sûrement avant nous ” et il se rendormit.
Ensuite, le froid le réveilla. Il était tout trempé de sang. Quelques morceaux de sa femme gisaient près de lui. ” Avec le sang, pensa-t-il, surgissent toujours quantité de désagréments; si ce train pouvait n’être pas passé, j’en serais fort heureux. Mais puisqu’il est déjà passé… ” et il se rendormit.
– Voyons, disait le juge, comment expliquez-vous que votre femme se soit blessée au point qu’on l’ait trouvée partagée en huit morceaux, sans que vous, qui étiez à côté, ayez pu faire un geste pour l’en empêcher, sans même vous en être aperçu. Voilà le mystère. Toute l’affaire est là-dedans.
– Sur ce chemin, je ne peux pas l’aider, pensa Plume, et il se rendormit.
– L’exécution aura lieu demain. Accusé, avez-vous quelque chose à ajouter?
– Excusez-moi, dit-il, je n’ai pas suivi l’affaire. Et il se rendormit.

Référence: Henri Michaux, Un certain Plume, dans Plume précédé de Lointain intérieur, Paris, Gallimard, 1963, pp.139-140.

Difference is everything

Posted by piermar2 on December 25, 2023
Posted in: Culture, Death, LifeAfter, LifeBefore, Post-Op, Post-Rehab, TheBodyChallenge.

One writes to make a difference, or simply to try to distinguish, not extinguish…
As each moment passes, one attempts to leave one trace, so each moment, in its particular uniqueness, is noticed — “I bore witness to myself.”

As much as the miracle of healing can take place – and we cannot take credit for that – there are points of no return.
What happened is what happened.
Overall though, I am where I am and you are where you are.
In that sense, we do not really communicate. As Artaud said: “we are (only) making signals through the flames.”
That difference is paramount. And unbridgeable: tears are not enough.
In this culture of denial, the dictatorship of positivity reigns; nobody has actually any room for what is conveniently summarized as “negativity” & real difference.

AND…

Posted by piermar2 on December 12, 2023
Posted in: Culture, Insights, Uncategorized.

Holding opposites, and not being tempted to reduce it to one of them.
The complexity means that while the sun is shining and birds are singing, war is raging, people are dying (in December 2023 we know that too well)… and I am still feeble.
I am frail because I am still struggling – that is my state even if you would like a simple statement like “I am doing better” (so you can move onto other subjects and be truly relieved)… but my off-balance state – showering, cooking, daily victories, are exhausting tasks and challenges – implies that whatever I end up saying has to make sense to you; all of that represents some kind of front, hiding a complexity nobody has time for.
And there is still that sporadic “private sensation” – how to describe the “flutter” inside my head during the night – what to call a most unusual sensation inside my skull/cranium/head (which word to use?) – everything seems as unreliable as the flicker of a switch.

Light and darkness are in constant dialogue – when to open one’s mouth?

When you open your mouth makes a huge difference as to what you say. Five minutes later, you may say something quite different.
Are we just fleeting snapshots of ourselves?

I learned as a young man this quote by Victor Hugo (“Les Mis”!): “Vivre c’est lutter – To live is to struggle.”
 Every day the words resonate in my head, but then maybe – don’t tell anyone – I am digging around to create more space in my hole – bonjour Henri Michaux!
Writing here is part of that way of dealing with what is.
But there are many layers of silence and solitude in there, and these words do not change that reality.

Words are only ABOUT it.
IT cannot be shared.
Please be here AND everywhere all of the time!

 

(a human) being – the short film

Posted by piermarton on June 24, 2022
Posted in: Culture, Film, TheMindChallenge.

Winner of “Best Experimental Film” 2022 St. Louis Filmmakers Showcase
AND
played
at the 2022 St. Louis International Film Festival
&
the 2023 Defy Film Festival in Nashville, TN

too many words for such a short piece, but then it is (about) nothing
14 years of gestation & very close to failure (as it should be)

Reality is a cliché… — Wallace Stevens

While we try to stand on “icebergs of knowledge” (with a very large mass of unknown), any film either stands by itself or does not…
As we have been told before:“All the rest is commentary.”

My teacher Charlotte Joko Beck used to say that one spends the first part of life accumulating, and that the second part is spent getting rid of things.

In 2008 after being unable to move and to communicate while in an ICU for three weeks… when I finally was home – after having scared myself in the mirror by looking like a camp survivor, jawbone and knees protruding & stomach skin hanging – as in some kind of slow motion, all normal activity seemed like actual choices & getting that essential mechanism going again looked like getting hooked into automated addictions (eating, drinking, watching my surroundings…).
Nothing was evident anymore, not even regular speech and words.
I was an outsider to any kind of normalcy. A world of conventions had been revealed as in the Emperor With No Clothes story…
That’s the short of it.

Addressing this film piece more directly: except possibly for Brakhage’s “The Act of Seeing with One’s Own Eyes,” Debord’s “Society of the Spectacle” or Peter Kubelka’s “Arnulf Rainer,” our addiction to images and sounds remains beyond the scope of most films.

This short piece attempts to take off… while trying to remain as grounded as possible.
Tabula rasa.
The movies of the future will take place in between two eyeballs… but this is meant to be a very cold shower.

Consciousness is motionless… If time passes, it is necessary that there should be something which remains static. And it is consciousness of self which is static. — Leo Tolstoy, January 15, 1910 (at age 85 – ten months before his death).

About the filmmaker:

  • In the tradition of Abraham, the iconoclast… Pier Marton is an original, an artist for our age“. — Dr. Sander Gilman, leading American cultural and literary historian, psychoanalyst and the author and editor of over eighty books
  • He is ahead of us all and behind everything that is.— Tamiko Thiel, Artist (“The Female Supercomputer Designer Who Inspired Steve Jobs”)
  • Pier Marton rakes the virtual screens and the tablets of our hypocrisies with the sharp claws of the avenging angel, piercing the complacent facade of the status quo to reveal the underlying agonies of our conflicting moralities. — Aribert Munzner, artist, professor emeritus/former dean, The Minneapolis College of Art and Design
  • … a reflective, thoughtful presence in the field… balancing intellectual rigor with unbridled creativity and curiosity… an integrity and authenticity characterized by an inner strength, giving his work a unique sensibility… rare in our field of media art. — Bill Viola, Leading and Pioneer Video Artist
  • I am moved by what you are doing, I hope your video will reach many viewers. I hope it will bring them closer to a world they could never enter. — Elie Wiesel, Nobel Peace Prize recipient (in a private letter)

An earlier “graphic expression” of one of the lures.

Currently the Unlearning Specialist at the School of No Media and its collection of “imploding words.”
Video works collected in Beaubourg Museum, Paris – Museum of Modern Art, NY – National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario – Carnegie Museum, Pittsburgh.

ARTISTS REACTIONS

Phenomenal, so deep, so simple…
The closest thing to facing the mystery of the Easter Island’s faces in a most present manner.

Aribert Munzner – https://www.aribertmunzner.com/

I have watched it many times yesterday and again just now.
Every second of the film, so much to capture: your voice and your eyes change as you balance both realities – yes you can speak from or close to what you call the silence.
But that can’t really last for the nature of those moments of knowing makes it so that, by the very stating that you know, you are expelled from holding onto any kind of trophy.
Yet, honest and reflecting that liminal threshold of access to that ‘silence’… with the words you are allowed to speak in that, and from that moment, that place.
There’s that most human moment when you call it something else, it’s almost done then… the last vestige of it.
And then it changes to ‘addiction,’ a kind of pronouncement, which engages the mind, as in asking who is ‘you’? Is it us, or is it your voice as it leaves that space, speaking to the self that is addicted to images and thoughts? And all of us who are addicted to these….  the energy shifts.
I know that instant of knowing… trying to stay in that moment and keep that consciousness but the words diminish the actuality of that type of being and knowing … it can’t really be held.
But you did it: the entire process is there to witness as it happens…  And then you stop,  judge yourself, and how it seemed like a good idea…. but in fact you have succeeded, because you are exactly what you name your film, (a human) being.
To me, moment to moment, no editing, a piece so brave… raw, humble, true.

Rose-Lynn Fisher – https://www.rose-lynnfisher.com/

The nuances of a master at his craft – very subtle and very intimate.

William Morris – https://vimeo.com/williammorris

“PRODUCTION STILLS”

Primal Initiation

Posted by piermarton on December 11, 2016
Posted in: Culture, Insights, LifeAfter, TheMindChallenge.

“NO!”
— the shout that started the process of “recovery,” my “reincarnation” (coming back into my body/life) —
After weeks in an intensive care unit, I finally came back to life when, from the deepest place in my body, I found myself shouting “No!”

We are born…
And our brain is shapeless. Words and concepts have not yet colonized it.

There is a “self” (should we even use that word?) that exists that is pure perception.
In that state, nothing is stored for recycling.
You live…
It is neither “life,” nor “art,” nor “experience.”
You live.

Then come those who say: “tell us all about it! Make sense, let us know, make us understand!“

However hard this hospitalization is/was, it is a trip… an initiation into something that cannot be communicated.
Just like anything worthwhile.
Just like becoming a shaman.
OR
You can view this as a Torah(Teaching) Scroll where you will spend the rest of your life
trying to interpret it – my advice, as Susan Sontag says, don’t.
It is what it is.

ALONE.
AND UNIQUE.

In the extremely long road of recovery – one does not recover – everything appears as what it is: a series of addictions.

An Unlearning MindMap – Honoring the Emptiness

Posted by piermarton on May 29, 2016
Posted in: Books, Culture, Death, Graphics, Insights, LifeAfter, Tips.

– from the School of No Media site –

In parallel to the Chinese Yin and Yang principles, our digital reality is composed binary digits – the bits – composed of ones and zeros, yet our culture seems to emphasize only the ones, only the fullness
— at the expense of our emptiness —

As per the hourglass visualization, the clarifying process of decantation takes time, yet dramatic events like death or disease can speed up the unlearning phase.
Regardless of our books, our words and our philosophies, death – the so-called “great equalizer” – will create an outstanding silence.
What traces will be treasured by the next generation?

An Unlearning MapThe essence of normalcy is the refusal of reality. Ernst Becker

Enough said. The School of No Media says “Shut Up!”

Posted by piermarton on May 29, 2016
Posted in: Culture, Death, Insights, Post-Op, TheMindChallenge, Uncategorized.

Words, these words too, hide so much more than they reveal.

In an effort to unmask this, I did this long interview for a Bolivian paper: The Void and its Pressure.

Just a few excerpts from the beginning:

  • At their core, words are frozen experience and as such monuments, they function as mere reference points. No matter what others may say, we remain bound by our life’s path.
  • The topic at hand is oblivion…
  • I should mention that I belong to Abraham’s ancient iconoclastic tradition and that this is only one way to react to our boundless arrogance.
  • Civilization as a whole produces a deafening disturbance we remain unconscious of until the end of our lives.
  • During encounters with death or, in less tragic ways, when we feel dwarfed by our surroundings, radical changes can take place…

More importantly, the School of No Media (I am its Unlearning Specialist), is my direct response to the arbitrary concepts/words we surround ourselves with – something I would not have been privy to, had I not been without words in I.C.U. for those “hellish” three weeks.

Yes, beyond stuff, culture & media, words & concepts…
Can we get there? Very easy: the next car accident will get you there fast.
Or, you may simply sense a regular form of vertigo as you ponder the implications behind what the Laniakea or the Eukaryota imply for us. More information on the School of No Media site.

What I represent. © Marton 2015