Composing mode is radically and incommensurately
opposed & "hostile" to consuming mode; and a sense
of the DIFFERENCE is prerequisite to a sense of the
RELATIONSHIP (the ratios, the rationale).
I quite agree. I don't know the ratios, or how to work
the relationship. I keep wrestling with your notions
of sharpening the distinctions and putting them in
"hostile" opposition to each other because everything
about me wants to blend, compromise, and say, "Aren't
we really talking about the same thing"
("Can't we all just get along?").
... Keep on at me. We should get this conversation back
into the light. G.P.
Dear G.P..
I drive my students nuts with this same insistence: "first"
(as-if we worked sequentially, as if we were chrono-logical)
divide & separate & polarize, & turn UP the very opposition
we want to go away: and characterize the pair of contestants.
(Carla Composing and Carl Consuming bump into each other
at the crossroads: BANG! They repair to Fools Rush Inn for
a beer, to smoke it over. Will they just get along? Who will
dominate? etc. Mytho-logic!)
composing/consuming
play/work
nature/nurture
apollo/dionyseus
(order/random)
individual/collective...
fem/masc
freedom/determinism...
All these koans we keep struggling with, double binds.
I can't seem to satisfy either without a sacrifice of the other,
damnit..
When I DO separate (& polarize) the distinct values of each
side of the opposition (both teams: thesis & anti-thesis), then
the nature of the the oppositional relationship begins to be
revealed---and usually the fact that I privilege or favor ONE
over the Other. One rules--the other is sub-ordinated: sent to
attic or cellar, and then I got a House of Usher situation: divided
& can't stand it. Revolution over and over and over again.
Revolting.
Something like that.
As OPPOSED TO: separating the opposition, polarizing,
putting them in play and not letting either side win (this is all
"theoretical" of course--mythological even) and anticipating
a revelation of a 3rd super-ordinate term that contains both
opposing "sides" without diminishing either--or the conflict
(agony, now an agon).
A small apocalypse! Unveiling.
Like: if I keep hot and cold in "opposition" and don't
compromise the relationship: POP - Temperature: the term
that incorporates both, plus their ratios and relationship.
Same with Noise & News....POP: Information--the term
that does justice to both AND to he relationship. (Well, it does
in "information theory" if not in normal-day user-friendly notions
which will usually banish NOISE, if not send it to the woodshed..
The starving artist stereotype (and marginal situation of the arts)
reveals the attitude of a privileged status of Consumer Mode
and Work over Creating Mode and Play. Need we argue?
It's always a lopsided deal.
I'm sure it can never be corrected
"politically" or "socially." Which means it's
every liberal artist's task to work out the terms
of these oppositions in fear and trembling--damnit,
seeing as the "world" will always prefer consuming to
creating, clarity to confusion, news to noise, pleasure to
pain, nice to nasty tidy to muddle etc etc etc.
I'm simplifying and reducing IT--of course. How else get
to the root or the matter, swimming in all the symptoms:
mixedmeta force not with standing? Fundamentalism.
An appreciation of the appropriate "HOSTILITY" of
opposition always animating the sub-ordinate bottom-line
is pre-requisite for realizing a HOSTING & hospitality
on a "level" of super-ordinate perspective. Or you put it
in your terms. Improve mine. We can argue.
SAMENESS doesn't annihilate diversity and difference
or the natural born "hostility" among discrete members
of a set or category or class or family or community....
What needs to be framed (if not explained) is the PAIN
involved--so that IT be seen as agon and not agony, as
Gold's Gym work-out and not senseless, needless,
meaningtless conflict. The PLAY's the thing.
Sorry to bend your ear, Graham.
You made my day. This is how I try to
make some sense, if I'm lucky enough
to be in conversation (or what's a college for?)
xxxooo, Sam
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