I should love...

No, we are not talking about the pile of leaves being run over by the lawnmower. That only in my lawn/attic...

We are saying, that, have you ever read something and you know that you should love it? But you can't figure out why your heart doesn't go in?

Why is that? Is it because it is disappointing that someone has already done it better than you? Or are the thoughts too different? Or does it feel like cheating? But where does the boredom come from really? And then go on to say, if even I can't be interested in the things I say I am interested in showing other people, well then, I am shit. Or is my mind simply destroyed by the world? I don't know - something somewhere is hyperexcited by these words, but where am I connected to this knowledge.

In "Visual Analogy" Barbera Stafford talks about Leibniz, the Baroque philospher and apparent "last of the visionar analogists."

First of all we should explain that analogy has as much to do with the concept of analog (as in analog synth) as with metaphor. The book points out that "nothing was exclusively one thing or the other."

Then, describing the creation of the Baroque "cabinets of curiosities" she says "not unlike the cosmos, artificial worlds required an individual hand to order them and an embodied eye to perceive them. Disparate objects, gathered in different places and at separate times, had to be 'hyperlinked' through the viewer's insightful 'jumps.'" This "required a calculus of combinations for inferrring the connections amoung thousands of unknown aspects or cyphers." The ideas expressed here have as much to do with the ideas I have been throwing around about evolution-process drawing as anything written in the technical compuper science literature I've read. Furthermore, it is a beautiful idea, a readymade explanation of my ideals in drawing and interpretation.

"His vision was of a hyper-world; less a multitude of particular persons and more a system of relations in which any person might be put together with any circumstance.... Combinatorics [or as I would say, "combinatronics"]... valorized intermediary relations, profoundly challenging Descartes divorce between objective and subjective knowledge." Great, I always thought Descartes was a fuckstick.

"Leibniz pictured the cosmos not as it appeared when reflected, static and flat, within a conventional looking-glass. Instead he posited a magically illusionistic realm of repeatable objects, beheld from various perspectives.... In this ontologized [*not a word - tho I should speak...] theory of perception, the subject of every living thing acted as the unique point of view of its soul. The body, then behaved as if it were wearing a pair of multifaceted spectacles through which the soul apprehended its environment in a slivered and distinctively personal way. Each distinct locus of matter looked out of its own angled vantage and re-presented itself to the aspect it witnessed." I love this - perhaps I can describe the sculptures I am making of my drawings as each being a "distinct locus of matter." I also love the pan-psychism that seems evident in this depiction of reality.

"The doctrine of preestablished harmony is the ultimate logic of the link. Like a digital computer, the system is both automatic and intereactive. Monads [i.e. a single unit, a "distinct locus of matter", an atom] are caught up endlessly in feedback loops. Becasue of their divinely synchronized relationship to other monads, perception comes in waves rippling across an immense reflecting pool.... In this manner God transmits the contents of our consciouness directly, vertically to all our minds and they reimage, repurpose, or rearrange information horizontally among themselves. "

It goes on to say that there are a variety of different universes experienced through the points of view of each monad, but that all these universes are only the perspectives of a single one. I love the seemingly circular logic of these ideas - in effect he is saying nothing, but in such a nice way. I am interested in how this related to the "many-worlds" theory of quantum mechanics which has emerged among physicists (albeit not among most physicists who are interested in consciousness) as more acceptable than the older Copenhagen "consciousness causes collapse" theory.

"in the least of substances
eyes as peircing as God's
could read the whole course of things in the universe."

Copying these things has helped me understand them. I'm sorry to have writ such dumb comments. I'm not really that stupid, in fact, I've been trying to think with my mind's eye more and less in words, but to no avail; they really want you to use words when you are in school and, plus, I think my mind's eye is crossed...

I'm supposed to be doing homework right now, but I think I'm freaking out about these things instead. How can I think about anything but what is interesting to my mind? I can't steer my mind - the steering wheel fell off from overuse. I have come to remember the true reason for homework; to not do it, to do something more interesting instead.

OK. I admit it, I've been freaking out, but it's only about ART and that's like a fireman freaking out about fires or something. Not newsworthy. But in the past I've made a lot of art, some of which I think is really bad. And I don't want to waste my life making more stupid shit. Or, forget my life, just my time in school - I have to know what I am doing, but this requires that at the same time I not know what I am doing so I don't kill the idea. It's hard, I think. Are these ideas going to help? Can anything help me at this point? Ha ha.

Well then, off to bed.