page hall nov 25, 2014 photo by nico
“Punctuation can do more than words” Tom Kasulis said tonight during the introduction of himself at his lecture “Zen Buddhism as Creativity”. He shared many good thoughts with us including “I is the name for the flow of my experiences”. I give the entire happening a bloody thumbs-up.
Yesterday I read an old journal excerpt, written sometime between 2008 and 2010. The tornado I speak of is how I used to self-soothe age 4-7ish.
“I want to quiet my mind with writing words. They swim tunnel pierce and wind through my brain. I catch them and spew them out of the pen. Still more come they never stop. yes they do.
I miss the nothing. The tornado that put me to sleep each night. When did I get so bitter and proud? I used to be nothing and wise. There were times I didn’t criticize myself and others. Things were quiet. My tornado spun and blew away the thoughts and emotions until there was no light no darkness just space. It was one of the most beautiful things I can remember. The world I dance in is part of this space. I do not always dance there – but movement and trance brings my body glimpses of this place. Where nothing and everything exist unnoticed. You can live a whole life in one dance.“
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I am intrigued by the work of Catherine Malabou. In one of my favorite of her talks, called “Epigenesis and the Plasticity of Life” she speaks of the structural spacing that renders meaning possible in language. The floating signifier – a term coined by Claude Levi-Strauss in his introduction to the work of Marcel Mauss. She quotes “the floating signifier is in itself void of meaning and thus apt to receive any meaning”. She continues “so it is a void in the language, it is an empty space. A floating signifier is a signifier with a vague, highly variable, unspecifiable or non-existent signifier. As such, the floating signifier may ‘mean different things to different people, they may stand for many or even any signified, they may mean whatever their interpreters want them to mean. Such a floating signifier is said to possess the value 0’ and this value 0 is what, according to Levi-Strauss, ‘maintains the correspondence between signifiers and signified’. Without this originary void in language, without this originary blank we wouldn’t be able to speak, and understand each other.” – Malabou
I shared the lecture tonight with love and as we said our short slow goodbye in the quiet of the street “Let’s Get It On” dropped in from the bar next to us, booming sound into the space made from our parting. A groove smiling, softly chasing silence roun the corner.
Dancing alone at the bus stop, I smiled up as the universe shone down by my light. from my light. on my light.
Moon made bright by the void.
3Dec14
edit 1.25.15
Cole G 