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11 Notes on “The Art of Creation and the Creation of Art”
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“Some Things Which A Maze Me: The World A Part”
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Written by
Reginald Webber
Annotated and translated by
Dick Whyte
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1. Atoms and cells and molecules, as far as I have heard, are on different planes all together. What this means is that they appear to be discrete ‘leaves’ of matter, rather than “building blocks” of this reality. When you look at an atom, you can no longer look at the cell of which it is a (part). There is no gradient from atom to cell. It is not like a colour which you can slowly manipulate shade by shade to give the impression of degrees. The difference between the atom and the cell and the molecule and the body (and everything in between) is one of “kind”. The atoms do not simple become cells, but atoms and cells are being themselves. This indicates that there is space and time between what an atom is and what a cell is (and what we are at the end). But there is not “change” between them, no degrees on which they slide into one another. The atom is an atom, and is individually this thing (not knowing that it is a cell, nor what it must do to continue being a cell). Henri Bergson writes often of this important distinction (difference in kind, or difference in degree). A difference in degree always applies to scales which humans have created (colours, numbers etc.), which allow for an easy mental passage from one thing to another. But the “degree” by which they change is always arbitrary (between 1 and 2 are an infinite number of numbers: 1.1, 1.111, 1.11111, 1.111111111, 1.11111111111111111, and so on, literally forever).
2. So atoms and molecules are being the same thing at the same time (my body), and yet exist wholly as their own level of reality, as a streaming reality, much like ours. This means that there are three worlds (or more) running concurrently with each other. This is highly strange to me. This means a whole other invisible dimension of life exists right now, making up what we are, all acting with free will (potentially) in their own dimension. All the dimensions are interlocked, and yet they seem to have a complete interdependence on each other.
3. The idea of colour is interesting in itself. If I look at something which is “light” green, and something which is “dark” green: it seems impossible to think that they are not green. There is a “greeness” about them, no matter what word we put in place of “green.” There is something experientially the same about two shades of the colour/green. In this sense it is easy to imagine a passage from green to black, and green to white (the two limits of colour, where colour is in excess of itself). But these are not real passages, only inventions of the mind (the colour green never actually “becomes” white, it can only be “replaced” by white eventually). Is there any possibility that colour was something different before we named it, and tamed the “real” world with perception? Could our perceptions have started much differently, with colours of many more shades and variation? Could it be that our organised eyes are now seeing what we trained them to see, and forgot that this was the case (thinking it is what is really there)? This is the difference between “on” and “phenomenon” (the key to philosophy: is what I experience real/ontic, or perception/phenomenon, hence, is what I experience “real” in any sense of the word, can I have “real/ontic” knowledge of anything).
4. If I think about “light” I am struck by the idea that my vision is not composed of one image (one phenomenon), but many rays of light, none of which we can see (but which enable the eye to see). It is the invisible which make the visible visible. Straining my eyes I can even see the “grain” on my eye, where each clump of light hits it. As such, I imagine millions of rays of light all pointed in every direction invisibly (quaquaversal), enough of which reach my eyes to make things visible. When I look out the window of my house, which has a couch in front of it (on which my wife Robyn is drawing) the light which comes from the hill beyond the window is further away in time and space, than the couch and Robyn. The light coming from the couch might take 0.1 of a second, but the light from the hill is taking 0.3 of a second (these times are arbitrary, serving only to illustrate that the hill is actually further away in time, as well as space). Not only this but the tree on the hill is curved, so every ray of light which comes from the top of the tree and the trunk is slightly further away again than the middle of the tree.
5. In this case what we call vision must synthesise all of this information, millions of rays of light, and produce the smooth moving-image which we watch. The real world is probably much more like a fire, in fragments. Light/waves/particles are what makes “art” possible (not paint, words, lines, notes and so on). Each ray/wave is a brush-stroke, a letter, a musical note. I heard of an amazing thing recently concerning vision. There was a woman who only saw one “frame” out of every 100 (or so). So when she pours a cup of coffee, she sees the water going in, then suddenly it sort of “cuts” to the water overflowing, and she misses seeing the middle bit. We see in frames. As Bergson said in the early 1900s – our vision is of a wholly cinematographic “kind.” Vision is an astounding thing. There is no better reason for art to be called research. When Bergson wrote this he had no scientific proof, no object. He just knew that the eye must construct the images in some fashion, which could only be possible if it were arranging the images into frames, into singular blocs, which have so little time between them they appear to be moving. We never see movement, but only the moved. This is only possible if the eye/mind is faster than the thing which “is” the image.
6. I find art amazing because there is nothing of the past which remains other than our arts. All of what we know of the past comes from art (and the notion of arrangements in general). Art enables people to express and perceive, to enact that part of the mind which we call “daydreaming”. The “big Other” have recently “discovered” that “daydreaming” is the natural state of the mind. Scientists say they don’t know why. I would say that “daydreaming” is the origin, the genesis of the mind, the flow of thought which connects the parts to the whole, and yet which is not parts or the whole, without distinction between them (always becoming the one, and then the two, which are one, which is two, and so on: see Deleuze and Guattari’s Body-without-Organs, or “BwO,” in A Thousand Plateaus).
7. If “being conscious” or the “psychological mind” is one mind (the mind which views the image we see, the “psyche”) then there must be some mind which organises the image for the “psyche” to view. To the Greek, this is called the “nous” (which organises the the senses into one image which the psyche views). My “image” of the world is not just sight, but a (sight sound smell taste touch thought) image “in one blow.” (Maurice Merleau-Ponty) However, as Deleuze notes, we must choose from this “blow” what part will “hit” us. In a conversation, for instance, are we more concentrated on the sounds (the mood, the tone of the voice), the sight (their facial expressions as they say it), the touch (how the grain of the voice makes our body feel), the smell (what it smells like as they say the words) or the taste? How do we direct our attention? From the “one phenomenon” (presented by the nous) what do we experience (with the psyche)? Viewing an art work what do we think of? What are our choices (everything is choice in art).
8. What do we think with? For film it would seem natural to say “I think with my eyes,” but are the eyes really seperable from other feelings. Vivian Sobchack’s notion of cinesthetics, in which the sense of sight becomes the sense of touch, or smell, and so on, challenges this assumption. She sees with her body, of which the eyes are but one sense. The term “cinesthetics” is obviously a play on the term “synaesthetics,” the synthesis of sensations (in which the sensation of sight is experienced as a sound, or a taste is a colour and so on).
9. These two minds (psyche/nous) are two “heads” in Gilles Deleuze’s terms (see especially The Movement Image, on cinema signification). Everything has (first) a bi-polar composition (two heads) which come from a genetic sign, or a genesis. So, space and time are “two heads” of the universe (which for a long time we thought were real entities, actually existing as substance). Space and time were thought to be the “analysis,” and movement the “synthesis/synthetic” (happening after space and time, not ontic/real). However, for Bergson, if space and time are an anylsis, then there must be an object of analysis (something studied). We cannot study the “whole universe” (which space and time are said to be) so how did we come up with these concepts? By watching movement. Hence, movement is real (the genesis/genetic image) rather than the synthesis (the after-effect). This may seem simple, but before Bergson and Einstein’s work philosophy (most often) put “movement” on the side of perception (not real), and “space/time” on the side of being real (ontic). Hence, space and time are containers into which movement was added later (by God, no doubt). After Einstein, science puts “movement” on the side of the real, and “spacetime” on the side of perception (space and time are phenomena, simply things to sell; I am sold space to have a home, I sell time to pay for the space).
10. We are in “two minds” all the time, we are the “CwN” (like the “BwO,” the “CwN” is the Consciousness-without-Nous). The genesis of the conscious-mind, I am arguing, is the “nous.” It categorises our thoughts “before” we experience them (with the psyche). This is a constant state of daydreaming, the “natural” state of the mind which we have forgotten how to use (which is not considered usefully organised). How many times are children told to “stop daydreaming,” to “not be a dreamer.” This mind is the mind where ideas come from suddenly, which we call intuition, genius and inspiration (all lacking today). When a poem arrives completely finished, when you suddenly get that solution to a problem, to something which was bothering you (an art-work that just isn’t working), when an idea is just there and you don’t know what it means, except that it is important to you for some reason, where do they come from? Who created them? All these indicate (for me) the activity of the nous, the deep-mind. What would it mean if we were able to have access to this mind? To speak with it? What could it do for us?
11. This “nous” would be like a computer of some kind, a mind which is able to process ideas faster than the speed of light. This is the evolution of the human mind: to move toward the two minds (CwN), to find the other self, the shadow, the dreamer of the dream (or the dream the dreamer dreamed). This “nous” is where the mind really is, where the self is waiting to be found, where the “real” takes its place next to the “dream,” and we might stop for a moment.
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Bibliography (Wayfarer Library)
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Henri Bergson
Matter and Memory (1896: Zone Books, 1991)
Creative Evolution (1911: Dover, 1998)
Gilles Deleuze (* with Felix Guattari)
A Thousand Plateaus (1980: Continuum, 2004)*
The Movement Image (Minnesota University Press, 1986)
Maurice Merleua-Ponty
The Visible and the Invisible (Northwestern University Press, 1968)
Vivian Sobchack
The Address of the Eye (Princeton University Press, 1992)
“What My Finger’s Knew: The Cinesthetic Subject, or Vision in the Flesh” (2000) http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/00/5/fingers.html
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