Planning with Detachment
Posted on January 25, 2003 in Textual, Timeline by Jeff Starr
Editor’s note: the following is an unedited excerpt from a spontaneous thought stream captured while exploring a chemically altered state of consciousness — i.e., not to be taken too seriously. Any spelling, grammatical, and/or other errors appear below as they exist within the original text and have been left unedited for full effect.
planning with detatchmentt:
//how is art categorized in the mind? by which mechanisms are images organized, classified, and understood? consider alternate possibilities concerning how art is thought of and appreciated. look at a trash can. find one. now look at it, for a moment, and ask yourself what you "think" it is. what words come to mind? is it "green", "funny", a "garbage can"?
well what can be said about the "object" that "you" "see"? hmm. try some critical analysis from some cubist perspective? trash talk! go ahead and see what you can think about that "trash can" over ther. confused? try this. take your eye and focus it on any edge of the can. now, focus on it, stare at one spot only, watch the contour and follow its path in 3-dimensional space. you see? folds and shadows cut elitist geometries beneath pools of chaos, details, thrills. a "color" analysis proves beneficial as well, but will not be attempted here.
beyond the analytic, literary definitions and postulations about your "can" lie unreferenced, subconscious interpretations of "living" images and things we see around us. beyond the two-second, snap-reaction heuristic attack on that damn can waits simple, unthinking "being" with the "image" all around us. within the image, it gets easier to appraoch the true nature of its existence. as a flower, you find trash cans uninteresting.
once there, as with the flower, true artistic and creative appreciation begins. keep the words, all the words, absolutely isolated yet fresh within a different realm of the mind as all attention, focus, and understanding happen without them. it’s a space-fold, high-level circuit-scramble if can you tap the flow. problems are problems. the inspiration and creative frequency channel broadcasts 24-7, however, so take your time. many world denizenz often fail at noticing things on any other level than "business". cars are "cars" and "snow" means just snow. why? on a schedule. whole day planned before it happens. stuck with no chance of letting nature move you.
assuming interest in holding on to a shred of creative, original thought throughout progression toward death, thereby escaping the ungodly wrath of sentencing yourself to a baneful existence of being entertained, the hellish perils of advancing within the creative paradigm, a discipline that demands organization, planning, and execution, while merely going with the flow, being spontaneos, and "getting into it", magically manifest.
given that true artistic appreciation ideally happens as one spends the freedom to let go and float with it, then, and given the derisive long-term outcome of not merely "using" plans, but obeying them, the paradoxical dillemmaa we face presents as a real need for planning with detatchment.