TheMindChallenge

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”

“LIMPING” – towards Conversations with a big C.

Posted by piermar2 on January 25, 2024
Posted in: Insights, LifeAfter, Post-Rehab, TheMindChallenge, Uncategorized.

What do we do after a major crisis? We are here but we are also somewhere else.
What remains is a state where simple answers do not exist anymore.
Someone asks “how are you,” and it is absolutely impossible to answer – cf. below Robert Frost on voting.

Language as a whole seems to belong to a “universe of scoundrels.” Not that anyone has any bad intentions, but non-conscious exchanges – when normalcy is assumed (which is most of the time) – turns the limping into some kind of consolation dance.

“Insouciance” or “what-me-worry” was left behind.

Thanks To Friends!

Posted by piermar2 on December 10, 2023
Posted in: Insights, TheMindChallenge, Uncategorized, Website.

It does not make sense to reduce what was created following my first brain-bleed, the School of No Media to a few words, nor to any words for that matter… but a friend asked for a summary.

The shortest version:

With incantatory redundancy, the repetitive and predictable behavior of words (and images & sounds) act as formulas and cliches to make sure that the tautology (“it is true because it is true”) –  a form of personal and collective idol-worship, – will function ad infinitum.
All of this, along with the fact that we disguise our addictions as interests, became very clear after spending three weeks in an ICU, unable to communicate.
Unlearning, if possible, seems the only life-affirming goal. —-> http://SchoolOfNoMedia.com
“ In the tradition of Abraham, the iconoclast… Pier Marton…”  — Sander Gilman
« Tout le malheur des hommes vient de ne savoir pas demeurer en repos, dans une chambre.» All of humanity’s trouble stems from not being able to remain at rest in a room. Blaise Pascal 1623-1662

The longer version:
Everything can be traced to a 2008 hospital ICU where I was unable to communicate: I could neither speak nor even scribble anything.
For almost three weeks, I was just a pair of eyes … Afterwards, “human activity” became as abstracted as the flow of ants appears to most of us: both somewhat erratic and having its very particular logic.
From that point on, the glance of a donkey – one specifically stepped on my foot on a narrow mountain path in Bolivia – was more eloquent than most words spoken.
An animal’s eyes, its presence seems richer than what it could say, were it to speak.
Already in the hospital, it was clear that whether a doctor, a nurse or a janitor were “present” while being with me, made a huge difference in how I perceived the interaction. Animals seem always present but humans are prone to a form of absenteeism (MIA), hiding behind words.
Speaking of which, it is not just words but images too that have a tendency to “make it look” (ha!) as if they are revealing reality, but instead, in most cases, they cover up reality.
More importantly, what we refer to as we speak, by using words, are ready-made concepts and ideas. Everything, like in a predetermined script, just falls into place and no moment is perceived on its own. All we are doing are reinforcing existing clichés. We live inside a tautology: it is true because it is true ( validating the existing system, the doxa). The ancient mould (both meanings!) just awaits our own prescribed movements.
Yes, I know: lives can be saved because of words, and writers and poets create unique sparks through their wordsmithing, and lofty or even glorious emotions can be reached through the arts, be that as it may, as the saying goes…

Bloody Thoughts

“I hold up what I know with what I do not know.” – Antonio Porchia

>%,~*€|~£_+*%{! ^!D! #)|@{ (Survival Mode)

Posted by piermar2 on October 24, 2023
Posted in: TheBodyChallenge, TheMindChallenge, Uncategorized.

Magyarul: vagy irok, vagy sirok (either I write, or I cry).
OR
Being K.O. is not O.K.

This note was produced after many much valued friends asked me how I was doing. It is inserted here, even though it is only after being home that I realized that communication was going to require many more skills than in normal times.
First I apologize for any impatience on my part. I did what I could.

In the middle of a struggle, one is generally unable to speak, making any kind of statement is impossible.

Repeatedly I am asked how I am doing (“ça va?” in French, “hogy vagy?” in Hungarian).
In 2008 I had to placate someone who kept asking how I was doing (again, “ça va?” in French)… and ended up screaming “No, it is not going well!” (“ça va pas!”).

When you are going from moment to moment, if you are going at all, the concepts of “pain, progress, healing…” are absolutely irrelevant.
At those times, you know nothing

More importantly, one may end up being unpleasant to the outside world because one is still trying to create a link to some kind of self.
It is impossible to speak without a well established subject. That’s why one shouts.  One is asked something impossible: to speak means affirming one’s ”I,” one’s identity.

For those friends who have many questions to ask, instead:  please listen to what it is the only person is going through – only silence and time will allow for the reality of that moment to appear. Cervantes said it this way: Give time to time.

“A long and slow convalescence” means there’s no need to keep asking questions. Presence is 200% of the gift you can provide; as I often say:
                           presence is your infinitely precious present (or gift)!

More succinctly, in the context of pain: BEING IS NOT SPEAKING
(OR ONE IS ONLY PLAYING WORD-GAMES & IGNORING THE COMPLEXITY OF REALITY).

OR
Tout ce qui n’est pas cri est trivial.
The poverty of language; if I don’t scream, I am using platitudes.
The French writer, Antonin Artaud, addressed all of this throughout his life.

Your can only protect yourself that much, but it is clear that I would not be here without a helmet.

In Robert Frost’s footsteps (“Thinking isn’t agreeing or disagreeing. That’s voting.“), I would add that whether one is doing well or not is not the way to ask questions, if one wants to ask the important questions.

Nota Bene: Pain has nothing to teach. There is no “teaching moment” in it. And, possibly everything is only valid until the text time you encounter (the same!) difficulty again.

(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.

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

Solitude – Claudie Hunzinger

Posted by piermarton on November 20, 2014
Posted in: Delirium, ICU, Insights, LifeAfter, TheMindChallenge.

— As I have written elsewhere and will keep repeating, in spite of all appearances, “you’re on your own.” —
— The isolation of being in nature, or lost in ICUs can lead to a very similar wisdom —

Another way to be and to think — Une autre manière d’être et de penser

Claudie Hunzinger - Photo Françoise Saur

Claudie Hunzinger – © Françoise Saur

Claudie Hunzinger est écrivain et artiste. Elle vit en Alsace dans les montagnes des Vosges depuis 1964.
Wikipédia (en Français)

ENGLISH TRANSLATION BELOW

Interview sur Hors-Champs (France Culture)

Question (Laure Adler): Une dissolution?
Réponse (Claudie Hunzinger): C’est quelque chose comme ça la solitude. Il y a quelque chose d’infiniment merveilleux qui peut vous attirer très loin, qui est le fait qu’on se quitte soi-même. Quand on est seul, on perd son identité. On se déploie dans tout ce qui vous entoure, on devient ce qui vous entoure.
On peut devenir la maison si on est à l’intérieur, on se dilate et on prend toute la place; c’est un peu une expérience très “Alice,”
Et si on est à l’extérieur, on devient absolument ce qu’on voit. On devient l’air, on devient les forêts, on devient l’herbe, et c’est un sentiment très puissant, très reposant aussi.
L’élément humain… on devient un élément étranger, et quand je quitte la montagne et que je me retrouve à Paris, il me semble que j’entre dans l’élément humain, et que l’élément humain est un élément étranger. Que je suis, que j’appartiens à la montagne, que j’appartiens aux bêtes, que j’appartiens aux plantes, et que je me rétrécie que je rentre en moi-même et que je suis en face de ce micro…


Question (Laure Adler): Quand vous dites que la montagne vous appartient, elle vous appartient sensoriellement? Elle vous a capturé?
Réponse (Claudie Hunzinger): Sensoriellement. J’en fais partie. C’est quelque chose qu’on sent, c’st quelque chose qu’on remarque. C’est un bien–être.

“Le désir doit rester une fenêtre ouverte sur la nuit, sur sa foule d’étoiles.” La Survivance (2102)

Les Promesses Tenues de Claude Hunzinger –  © Françoise Saur

Claudie Hunzinger is a writer/artist who has been living in the mountains of Alsace since 1964.

Question (Laure Adler): A form of dissolving?
Answer (Claudie Hunzinger):  It is something like that, solitude. There is something infinitely marvelous that can draw you forth very far in the sense that one leaves oneself behind. When we are alone, we lose our identity. We spread out into everything that surrounds us, we become what surrounds us.
We can become a house if we are indoors. We blow up and take all of the space; it is a bit like an “Alice experience.”
And if one is outside, one becomes absolutely what one sees. We become the air, we become the forests, one becomes the grass, and it is such a powerful feeling, very relaxing too.
The human element… we become a foreign element, and what I become when I leave the mountain and I find myself in Paris, it seems that I enter the human element, and that the human element is a foreign element. That I am, that I belong to the mountain, that I belong to the animals, that I belong to the animals, and that I shrink and re-enter inside myself when I face this microphone…

Question (Laure Adler): When you say that the mountains belongs to you, do you mean that you do on a sensory level? It has taken over?
Answer (Claudie Hunzinger):  On a sensory level. I belong to it. It is something one feels, something one notices. A well-being.
“Desire must remain a window open onto the night, with its multitude of stars” La Survivance (2102)

Living with Exhaustion – Humor Required

Posted by piermarton on October 21, 2014
Posted in: Humor, Insights, LifeAfter, Poetry, TheBodyChallenge, TheMindChallenge.

Someone who  had also a brain hemorrhage told me that to this day, twenty years later, one thing that remained with her was the exhaustion.
Sometimes it feels as if I want to sleep for weeks at a time, to hibernate…

The famous French/Belgian poet, Henri Michaux speaks here of exhaustion too.
I had always liked this poem but now I understand it more deeply.

Un homme paisible

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.

English Translation (by Marton)
A quiet man

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, there are always a great many problems; 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.

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

If you want more from Michaux, here are some of his night reports.