Everything that you need to know about neural networks, micro-chips, electrodes & sanguinity, special effects and the power of love to overcome all obstacles.
For a heart-warming, time-warping triple feature, watch Tron with The Planet of the Apes and Time & Again.
I shared a bus ride in Ireland once with a French man who carried more photo equipment than clothing. It was 1979 and the bus ran local stops up into Donegal from Killybegs. I was on my way to a little town called Glencolumkille, where I’d spent a timeless week in a cottage with six other itinerants. I was on a quiet pilgrimage of my own this time. There was a sheep herders’ hut on an isolated field that jutted out beyond the bogs above the ocean and I planned to camp out there for a while.
I fashioned myself an artist then. Not even that, really. I just wanted someone to think that I was an artist, so that all the time I spent scribbling in my notebook and picking out tunes on my saxophone could amount to something more than just things that I did. After all, how did you acquire an identity if you couldn’t have external artifacts?
So, I was impressed when the Frenchman got on. He had blond hair, stained fingers, a vest filled with pouches, film canisters and light meters. We made conversation, a little French, a little English. I asked him what he was travelling for.
The perfect light, he said.
There was a light in Ireland that came as the sun moved around the horizon, at dawn, or sunset, a light that you couldn’t find anywhere else in the world. He’d seen it once when he was young and had waited all his life to come back and photograph it.
The image captivated me. I looked for the light and felt like I’d seen it sometimes. I wondered how you could grab it on film, because it was such a three-dimensional thing, that light, that enveloped you and soothed more than just your sense of sight.
I’m surprised sometimes when I take a photo and find that light in it. These two photos are from the Bahamas.
Frequent and substantial conversations with others creates a sense of well-being, according to a psychology study reported in Science Daily this morning.
Greater well-being was related to spending less time alone and more
time talking to others: The happiest participants spent 25% less time
alone and 70% more time talking than the unhappiest participants. In
addition to the difference in the amount of social interactions happy
and unhappy people had, there was also a difference in the types of
conversations they took part in: The happiest participants had twice as
many substantive conversations and one third as much small talk as the
unhappiest participants.These findings suggest that the happy life is social and
conversationally deep rather than solitary and superficial. The
researchers surmise that — though the current findings cannot identify
the causal direction — deep conversations may have the potential to
make people happier. They note, “Just as self-disclosure can instill a
sense of intimacy in a relationship, deep conversations may instill a
sense of meaning in the interaction partners.”
I was reading a blog post the other day from the writer Scott Berkun who lamented the impact his loner disposition had on his life. Because he was inclined to solitude and self-reliance, he hadn’t maintained connections with people as he moved from phase to phase of his life.
Was that an articulation of a lack of well-being? Or the discourse of a man who accepted himself.
The irony is that I suspect Berkun — who I don’t know — is a man who gravitates towards substance in his conversations.
Substance isn’t an instant construct. It requires thought and reflection. You have to listen carefully to provide substance. Substance needs reciprocality. Substance requires that you are able to combine the here and now with your internal life, and that you can accept ambiquity and disagreement and are open to the human experience.
Conversations of substance are moments of commitment. You give up some of your energy and you take some of the energy of the other person away.
Sometime when you are talking, stop and look in the eyes of the other person. That is the life force you have engaged. Knowing that you can accomplish that engagement is part of knowing that you are truly alive and human. For any one of us, that can contribute to a sense of purpose, giving breadth to the feeling of well-being.
When I write a poem I try to keep the words as simple and true as I can manage. The temptation to show-off with language is always there, and the temptation to force meaning will make me pause and doubt the words. I know that the music is in the plainsong of language and that meaning is in the precise and simple statement of what we experience and observe.
I was in school with Jeff Harrison. Here is one of his poems. I like his poetry because he is able to be skilled and direct. He uses language that you can hold on to. He can be very smart, but he doesn’t let being very smart get in his way.
Here’s how he explains it:
I tend to dislike deliberate obscurity, for instance, and I tend to gravitate toward poetry that is seriously engaged with both experience and language.
A poem:
Visitation
by Jeffrey Harrison
Walking past the open window, she is surprised
by the song of the white-throated sparrow
and stops to listen. She has been thinking of
the dead ones she loves–her father who lived
over a century, and her oldest son, suddenly gone
at forty-seven–and she can’t help thinking
she has called them back, that they are calling her
in the voices of these birds passing through Ohio
on their spring migration. . . because, after years
of summers in upstate New York, the white-throat
has become something like the family bird.
Her father used to stop whatever he was doing
and point out its clear, whistling song. She hears it
again: “Poor Sam Peabody Peabody Peabody.”
She tries not to think, “Poor Andy,” but she
has already thought it, and now she is weeping.
But then she hears another, so clear, it’s as if
the bird were in the room with her, or in her head,
telling her that everything will be all right.
She cannot see them from her second-story window–
they are hidden in the new leaves of the old maple,
or behind the white blossoms of the dogwood–
but she stands and listens, knowing they will stay
for only a few days before moving on.2006
You can visit his web site here.
You are reading this on a device powered by a micro-processor, rendered by photo-electric diodes, built from bits and bytes. You are processing the signifier of each letter in its encoded meaning through each word, and cumulatively, through the combination of words that appear on the screen.
The contract between you and I is that I will try to say something in a way that you will be able to understand, and that in return for your committing time and energy to process what I have rendered on this screen, I will try to create a beneficial experience for you.
That’s the way that our mode of communications has evolved over the past 5,000 years or so, in a fairly linear fashion prompted by technological innovation.
We don’t comment on the remarkable fact that we’ve been able to agree on a set of codes and conventions to achieve that communication.
But at some point in our history — for maybe 25,000 years — man experimented with a set of signs in order to piece together common understanding.
The ultimate goal? To transfer knowledge. For the human species the ability to abstract and transfer knowledge over time and space became a critical aspect of survival.
The graphic above from New Scientist shows the incidence of certain signs in human artifacts from as much as 20,000 years ago.
The most frequently used signs were the dot, the circle and the crosshatch. These are seminal images that resonated with the human mind and that conformed to the abilities of their body and the tools that they had designed.
The implication of this conclusion is that impulse for communications, through language and sign, is core to the human experience, and that its direction and shape is influenced significantly by our physical design.
Urban use, disuse and decay from Detroit.
Buildings have a contextual identity when they are in use, even when they are deteriorating. They take on a measure of human intent.
When buildings are dismantled, they lose their identity, becoming as random as any natural encounter. The juxtaposition of use, disuse and decay creates indelible images. They are easy hits because they are stark and dramatic. They speak to that part of our consciousness that is primally aware of the risk that is always at play around us.
The ruin is not natural, but has become part of nature.
One time when I was a young man
I caught the scent of the priest
Through the tannins of the communion wine.
He smelled like my father
On the morning that he buried my mother.
I had just married. My new wife
Kept two paces behind me
In the communion line.
Taking the host was still a new thing for her.
Father kept the cologne on a shelf by the toilet.
He was particular in his things.
Mother was more disorderly.
The scent made me think of Mother
As an angel. I could sense God’s love,
Even though he punished her in life.
My hand sometimes strays to my lips
As I wait in line to take the body and blood
To prepare my flesh for a sacred passage
That is a path to absolution. Father said Grace
Was given to the worthy in a tone
That bespoke confidence. I am replete
With sin.
Feb 2010
