The conceptual self is intrigued by the spatial.
In our matrix of conceptual reification, our perception of reality flattens. We experience concepts cognitively as opposed to experience viscerally. Space, which we know is characterized by depth and dimension, is where this incompleteness of the conceptual self may make itself known.
To be embodied, to be real, is to be within a particular expression of space. We become aware of the visceral spaciousness of our consciousness when we experience peeks into the present moment. many of us may be years removed from a remembrance of what space feels like. Some of us may have had glimpses into – what can often to the conceptual self feel like the vertiginous – visceral, embodied presence.
What a grid -which represents the spatial dimension -fails to show us, is that this square is markedly unique, differentiated experientially from that square. micro increments of difference are significant, and we can intuitively sense this experience through osmosis from a great artist, painter, or dancer. The painting breathes because an artist was alive and aware and intimate with that particular instance of interaction between brush and canvas. Even when the painting is a singular color, the painting feels flat when the artist paints their idea of a monolithic plane, but alive when this portion of canvas is met in the moment of its conception, and this moment, and this too, and this as well. The dance is visceral and magnetic when every movement is uniquely, minutely articulated.
I feel this is the difference between a masterful dancer and a complete beginner. The beginner moves their fingers and wrists through their more practiced relationship to that portion of their corporeal spectrum – which is their idea of fingers and wrists. A masterful dancer is simply one who is more intricately intimate with the subtle points of contact with the reality of the feeling of the hand and wrist. Time spent with a relationship, and presence deepened, nurture the conditions of intimacy, from which the vital energy of life -the attractive quality of great art – emanates.
“All” is not one thing. “All” is the totality of moments met singularly over the period of a piece’s completion.
The concept of “all” does not glaze over all that is.
Perhaps this the moment in which we find ourselves as a species… defying the shorthands our brains developed to conserve energy. Perhaps the artist is the impetus to orient according to the generative quality of Life rather than our culture’s prime directive of hyper-“conserving”; pacifying, numbing, apathizing, desensitizing. A life lived through flattened concepts glides over the depth and breadth and fullness and vitality of visceral, embodied ALIVE. But its easier. it hurts less.
Space intrigues the conceptual self, enchanted within the matrix of signs rather than experiences. Space reminds us of the depth we are missing in our haze, in our cognitive dream. It invites us into its viscous total immersion. It invites us into the experience of feeling a vulnerable small within an uncontainable Vast with a backside always open to what’s beyond our calculations.
Space
is
Full
and
Long