{"id":9534,"date":"2012-01-13T11:40:49","date_gmt":"2012-01-13T16:40:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=9534"},"modified":"2012-01-13T11:40:49","modified_gmt":"2012-01-13T16:40:49","slug":"the-absorbing-and-the-absorbed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2012\/01\/the-absorbing-and-the-absorbed\/","title":{"rendered":"The Absorbing and the Absorbed"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

[Image: a Menger sponge overgrown with vines, found here<\/a>. Wikipedia<\/a> explains how
\n<\/em>to construct a real Menger sponge, noting — without elaboration — that the resulting
\nobject “simultaneously exhibits an infinite surface area and encloses zero volume.”*]<\/em><\/p>\n

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

You know when you see something like a marvelous mountain against the blue sky, the vivid, bright, clear, unpolluted snow, the majesty of it drives all your thoughts, your concerns, your problems away. Have you noticed that? You say, “How beautiful it is,” and for two seconds perhaps, or for even a minute, you are absolutely silent. The grandeur of it drives away, for that second, the pettiness of ourselves. That immensity has taken us over. Like a child occupied with an intricate toy for an hour; he won’t talk, he won’t make any noise, he is completely absorbed in that. The toy has absorbed him. So the mountain absorbs you and therefore for the second, or the minute, you are absolutely quiet, which means there is no self. Now, without being absorbed by something — either a toy, a mountain, a face, or an idea — to be completely without the me in oneself, is the essence of beauty.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Jiddu Krishnamurti, On Love and Loneliness<\/em>\u00a0[source<\/a><\/em>])<\/p>\n

…and<\/a>:<\/p>\n

… It’s 1500
\nin the book of Chinese watercolors: scholar-artist T’ang Yin
\nis asleep inside his mountain cottage, dreaming that a self of him,
\nthat looks like him, is floating in the air above
\nthe highest peaks, that looks like air we’d have
\nif lakes of milk gave off a vapor.
\n… From the Everfloating Void
\nabove our world, a human image slowly drifts back down
\nand joins its earthly body once again, reenters
\ndays and nights of wine shop, scandal, lawyers
\n— for such (in part) is the life of T’ang Yin.
\nHe’s been dreaming. And now he’s going to set it down
\non a wafer of unrolled rice paper. Writing:
\nRain on the river<\/em>. That’s all. That’s his poem.
\nHe’s writing:<\/p>\n

Rain on the river<\/em>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Albert Goldbarth [source<\/a><\/em>])<\/p>\n

…and<\/a>:<\/p>\n

I’m for mystery, not interpretive answers… The answer is never the answer. What’s really interesting is the mystery. If you seek the mystery instead of the answer, you’ll always be seeking. I’ve never seen anybody really find the answer, but they think they have. So they stop thinking. But the job is to seek mystery, evoke mystery, plant a garden in which strange plants grow and mysteries bloom. The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Ken Kesey [source<\/a><\/em>])<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

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

The Cave Painters<\/strong><\/p>\n

Holding only a handful of rushlight
\nthey pressed deeper into the dark, at a crouch
\nuntil the great rock chamber
\nflowered around them and they stood
\nin an enormous womb of
\nflickering light and darklight, a place
\nto make a start. Raised hands cast flapping shadows
\nover the sleeker shapes of radiance.<\/p>\n

They’ve left the world of weather and panic
\nbehind them and gone on in, drawing the dark
\nin their wake, pushing as one pulse
\nto the core of stone. The pigments mixed in big shells
\nare crushed ore, petals and pollens, berries
\nand the binding juices oozed
\nout of chosen barks. The beasts<\/p>\n

begin to take shape from hands and feather-tufts
\n(soaked in ochre, manganese, madder, mallow white)
\nstroking the live rock, letting slopes and contours
\nmould those forms from chance, coaxing
\nrigid dips and folds and bulges
\nto lend themselves to necks, bellies, swelling haunches,
\na forehead or a twist of horn, tails and manes
\ncurling to a crazy gallop.<\/p>\n

Intent and human, they attach
\nthe mineral, vegetable, animal
\nrealms to themselves, inscribing
\nthe one unbroken line
\neverything depends on, from that
\nimpenetrable centre
\nto the outer intangibles of light and air, even
\nthe speed of the horse, the bison’s fear, the arc
\nof gentleness that this big-bellied cow
\narches over its spindling calf, or the lancing
\ndance of death that
\nbristles out of the buck’s
\nstruck flank. On this one line they leave
\na beak-headed human figure of sticks
\nand one small, chalky, human hand.<\/p>\n

We’ll never know if they worked in silence
\nlike people praying — the way our monks
\nilluminated their own dark ages
\nin cross-hatched rocky cloisters,
\nwhere they contrived a binding
\nlabyrinth of lit affinities
\nto spell out in nature’s lace and fable
\ntheir mindful, blinding sixth sense
\nof a god of shadows — or whether (like birds
\ntracing their great bloodlines over the globe)
\nthey kept a constant gossip up
\nof praise, encouragement, complaint.<\/p>\n

It doesn’t matter: we know
\nthey went with guttering rushlight
\ninto the dark; came to terms
\nwith the given world; must have had
\n— as their hands moved steadily
\nby spiderlight — one desire
\nwe’d recognise: they would — before going on
\nbeyond this border zone, this nowhere
\nthat is now here — leave something
\nupright and bright behind them in the dark.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Eamon Grennan [source<\/a><\/em>])<\/p>\n

I’m afraid I know almost nothing about Nat Baldwin, except that he sings and plays the bass — the<\/em>\u00a0bass, not bass guitar. He doesn’t seem to have a Web site of his own, outside of MySpace. There’s nothing about him on Wikipedia. I’ve seen him described as “the bass player in the Dirty Projectors,” but I don’t know anything about them, either — except that their Wikipedia entry<\/a> says:<\/p>\n

…critics have likened The Dirty Projectors to musicians from many genres. For example, critics have compared them to New Wave artists David Byrne and Squeeze, pop stars Beyonc\u00e9 and Mariah Carey, and Progressive rock musicians Frank Zappa and Yes.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(That must be the only time all those names have appeared in the same sentence. If you’re curious, the band’s music seems to have plenty of videos online.)<\/p>\n

I’ve had the video below in my Drafts pipeline for months now — Nat Baldwin, bass and vocals, performing “In the Hollows” in a (fractal?) space beneath a highway overpass in Ontario. His, well, his unconventional<\/em>\u00a0voice works pretty well with the sawing of the bow across the strings:<\/p>\n