{"id":21480,"date":"2019-09-13T09:38:49","date_gmt":"2019-09-13T13:38:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=21480"},"modified":"2019-09-13T09:38:49","modified_gmt":"2019-09-13T13:38:49","slug":"mistaking-the-tool-for-the-material","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2019\/09\/mistaking-the-tool-for-the-material\/","title":{"rendered":"Mistaking the Tool for the Material"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Image:<\/a><\/p>\n

[Image: “The Day the World Went Away,” by Sabbian Paine. (Found on Flickr<\/a>; used here under a Creative Commons license: thank you!) The title refers to a song by Nine Inch Nails, and the Flickr writeup quotes from the song’s lyrics and directs us explicitly to a video<\/a> of the song’s “Quiet” version, assembled from outtakes of the music video for the “original” version. The image itself is one of many created by Sabbian Paine using tools originally built for the <\/em>Second Life<\/a> virtual-world social network.]<\/em><\/p>\n

From whiskey river<\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\n

Words tend to last a bit longer than things, but eventually they fade too, along with the pictures they once evoked. Entire categories of objects disappear—flowerpots, for example, or cigarette filters, or rubber bands—and for a time you will be able to recognize those words, even if you cannot recall what they mean. But then, little by little, the words become only sounds, a random collection of glottals and fricatives, a storm of whirling phonemes, and finally the whole thing just collapses into gibberish.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Paul Auster [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The Goddess Who Created This Passing World<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Goddess who created this passing world
\nSaid Let there be lightbulbs & liquefaction
\nLife spilled out onto the street, colors whirled
\nCars & the variously shod feet were born
\nAnd the past & future & I born too
\nLight as airmail paper away she flew
\nTo Annapurna or Mt. McKinley
\nOr both but instantly
\nClarified, composed, forever was I
\nMeant by her to recognize a painting
\nAs beautiful or a movie stunning
\nAnd to adore the finitude of words
\nAnd understand as surfaces my dreams
\nKnow the eye the organ of affection
\nAnd depths to be inflections
\nOf her voice & wrist & smile<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Alice Notley [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Art is an engagement of the senses; art sharpens the acuity with which emotions, and the other senses, are felt or imagined (and again, here, it challenges reality: What is the difference between feeling happy and really being happy? What is the difference between imagining you can taste something and really tasting it? A hair’s breadth; a measurement less than the thickness of a dried work-skein of ink on paper).<\/p>\n

And then the kicker is this: in passing from the real to the imagined, in following that trail, you learn that both sides have a little of the other in each, that there are elements of the imagined inside your experience of the ‘real’ world – rock, bone, wood, ice – and elements of the real – not the metaphorical, but the actual thing itself – inside stories and tales and dreams.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Rick Bass [source: can’t cite any other source at all for this (which drives me <\/em>crazy… what’s the Internet for if not to answer every question?!? (laughing))<\/em>])<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Not from whiskey river<\/em>:<\/p>\n

The Ships of Theseus<\/strong><\/p>\n

The ship wherein Theseus and the youth of Athens returned had thirty oars, and was preserved by the Athenians… for they took away the old planks as they decayed, putting in new and stronger timber in their place, insomuch that this ship became a standing example among the philosophers, for the logical question of things that grow; one side holding that the ship remained the same, and the other contending that it was not the same.
\n— Plutarch, Vita Thesel<\/span><\/p>\n

The answer of course is that the ship
\ndoesn\u2019t exist, that “ship”
\nis an abstraction, a conception,
\nan imaginary tarp thrown
\nacross the garden of the real.
\nThe answer is that the cheap
\npeasantry of things toils all day
\nin the kingdom of language,
\nevery ship like a casket
\nof words: bulkhead<\/em>, transom<\/em>,
\nmast steps<\/em>. The answer
\nis to wake again to the banality
\nof things, to wade toward
\nthe light inside the plasma
\nof ideas. But each plank
\nis woven from your mother\u2019s
\nhair. The blade of each oar
\ncontains the shadow of
\na horse. The answer
\nis that the self is the glue between
\nthe boards, the cartilage
\nthat holds a world together,
\nthat self is the wax in
\nthe stenographer’s ears,
\nthat there is nothing the mind
\nwon\u2019t sacrifice, each item<\/em>
\nanother goat tossed into
\nthe lava of our needs.
\nThe answer is that this is just
\nanother poem about divorce,
\nabout untombing the mattress
\nfrom the sofa, your body
\nlaid out on the bones of the
\ndouble-jointed frame, about
\nseparation, rebuilding, about
\nyour daughter’s missing
\nteeth. Each time you visit
\nnow you find her partially
\nreplaced, more sturdily
\njointed, the weathered joists
\nof her childhood being stripped
\naway. New voice. New hair.
\nThe answer is to stand there
\nredrawing the constellation
\nof the word daughter<\/em> in
\nyour brain while she tries
\nto understand exactly who
\nyou are, and breathes out
\ngirl after girl into the entry-
\nway, a fog of strangers that
\nalmost evaporates when
\nyou say each other’s
\nnames. Almost, but not quite.
\nLet it be enough. Already,
\na third ship moves
\nquietly toward you in the night.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Steve Gehrke [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and:<\/p>\n

We’re used to thinking of active machines as digital<\/em> machines; when we talk about the possibility that unliving things might think, we mean computers. We might be very shortsighted. All the processes we attribute to brains and computers alone might fill the world. In the same way that the legs code the program of walking, unknown information is inscribed in the patterns of grains of sand as the wind tosses them on an empty beach; the frenetic interconnections of the internet and the spoken world are thrumming in a field of grass. The thinking machine thinks; it has its processes and its functions. And the world of inert objects might think too, in slow and strange ways which we can only borrow for a moment, and which disappear again into what sounds like silence.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Sam Kriss [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and:<\/p>\n

We live in a fantasy world, a world of illusion. The great task in life is to find reality.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Iris Murdoch [source: interview by Rachel Billington<\/em>, “Crusading in a Fantasy World,” the Times of London, April 1983<\/em>])<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Image: “The Day the World Went Away,” by Sabbian Paine. (Found on Flickr; used here under a Creative Commons license: thank you!) The title refers to a song by Nine Inch Nails, and the Flickr writeup quotes from the song’s lyrics and directs us explicitly to a video of the song’s “Quiet” version, assembled from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","h5ap_radio_sources":[],"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Paul Auster, Iris Murdoch, et al.: 'Mistaking the Tool for the Material'","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[183,247,1393,95,250,37,50,251,4159],"tags":[1253,1615,3314,3670,3998,4268,4977,4978,4979,4980,4981],"class_list":{"0":"post-21480","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-everyday-life","7":"category-ruminations","8":"category-whiskey-river-runningaftermyhat","9":"category-science-medicine","10":"category-art","11":"category-onlineworld","12":"category-language-writing_cat","13":"category-poetry-writing_cat","14":"category-essays","15":"tag-rick-bass","16":"tag-reality","17":"tag-paul-auster","18":"tag-second-life","19":"tag-alice-notley","20":"tag-iris-murdoch","21":"tag-steve-gehrke","22":"tag-sam-kriss","23":"tag-denotation","24":"tag-connotation","25":"tag-metonymy","26":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-5As","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21480"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21480\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21490,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21480\/revisions\/21490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}