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| On originality |
| 01.25.05 (7:06 am) [edit] |
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Originality (as thought by most as a kind of deliberate difference) represents a departure from engagement with reality. In order to engage with reality, one must deny the impulse to be original: after all, being original means being different from everyone else as a prejudice: by not engaging with everyone else, one relies upon preconceived notions of what constitutes everyone else in order to shore up one's own sense of exceptionality. This doesn't mean that originality is entirely evacuated; rather, originality is part of the process by which one realizes the complexities of one's own engagement with the world (the engagements of another are necessarily both different and interconnected to one's own); originality therefore arises from a complex engagement with the world rather than from self-isolation and deliberate difference. Originality is more creative (in the sense of productive) a notion when we think of it as a matter of accidental difference.
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| On dance |
| 01.24.05 (6:06 am) [edit] |
Think of your basic unit of time (basically the unit of time that is most repeated in your schedule; this unit develops habit based on routine). My primary unit is currently the week, which is the basis of the school scheduling; a secondary unit is the fortnight, which is the basis for many group and advisor meetings.
Once you have determined your basic unit of time, work towards embodying this unit as a series of instinctual, intuitive actions. The gradual development of temporal embodiment means that successive actions make sense. Proximity is important to making sense: actions that occur in nearby places enable not only time to be embodied, but space as well. Since I forget things easily, I depend upon embodiment and intuition: if I want to drink water more regularly, I cannot legislate a glass of water with my coffee; having a water cooler next to the cream and sugar, however, reminds me that a glass of water makes sense with my coffee.
Gradually guiding your embodying of times and spaces allows you to consciously shape the way you are shaped.
Choreography is a good way of talking about movement through space and time as being embodied, shaped and shapable. Dance is intimately related to habit: when you learn dance (or when you think you simply dance), you preform and adapt choreographies you've developed over time (and that have developed your movements); dance and habit are linked in choreography, the way we script our movements and the way our movements are scripted.
When dancing, the repetition of beats is a way that the body can become inured to the rhythm of the environment. But when there are beatless, gaping holes in the music, as is the case with certain compositions, then you need to retune your body: you are caught in the act of being habitual, of dancing simply without the music. Reattuning your body to your ear, becoming aware of the way in which your body fits the environment and responds to it as an active ear, is the way in which habit is not discarded, but learnt from and adapted.
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