We move through our lives as if in full possession of ourselves. We like to think our choices are our own, our feelings our own, and that the world happens to us. To be possessed however is always a dual articulation. We possess the world as it possesses us. We are inhabited by perceptions, spirits, affects. Rather than being that which precedes and occurs to us, they inhabit us and we become them, even as they become us. Perceptions become affects become spirits. Spirits have a life of their own and may show up in undesirable ways, and in undesirable places (though so too may they show up at just the right moment).
By thinking through our expressive selves in this way, we are afforded a new mode of relation – not to a self that must conduct itself differently, but rather to a relational mode of being-with incorporeal entities that surround, permeate and emerge from/as us. This is not “self help” but rather neighbourly relations; getting to know the forces from without as they manifest from within, greeting the stranger. As outside forces, they must be respected as such. We are not in control, we are not absolute, we are not identities. We are caught up, and as such cannot fully negate, only affirm and (re)orient in an ongoing dance of transformation.
What are the extant cultural containers for such a (re)orientation? Where are the rituals that are capable of addressing this level of transformation? Given the pervasive patterning of many contemporary spirits, it presumably requires a level of commitment, attunement and practice, necessary to form the new beats and sound the new harmonies in which both parties seek consonance. A consonance, it is interesting to note that is both temporal (rhythm) and spatial (harmony). And as good listeners, we must attend to the largest phenomena of universal evolution and the smallest moments of social enactment alike. For just as in a symphony it is the form that makes sense of the melody and the melody that creates the form. Our attention must span across dimensions, while bringing those dimensions into relation by centering, entering and blending. Spirals, fractals, waves, not points, lines, collisions.
This is not a teleological journey. No perfect cadences, only an ongoing improvisation. This is not to absolve ourselves of responsibility however, as everyone is playing their part. And as in any good symphony we must first listen, before playing, while also understanding that some play repetitive contra bass, others lilting melodies, others pizzicato flourishes and still others a single resonant triangle hit at an opportune moment. There is no “right” note in this song, only a relatively context bound range of possibilities for participation. The measure of “success” then is not whether something is Correct, Right, True, but rather if it is remarkable, interesting or beautiful. It is an affective/aesthetic/expressive process, not a calculative/logical/representational one (though it is also worth noting that logical analysis is also an aesthetic phenomenon, not more/less representationally accurate – as there is of course nothing to represent). A “wrong” note, does not disrupt the entire performance but rather ripples through with creative dissonance, likewise a “right” note does not lift the performance to another plane, but rather harmonizes and resonates.
For, as Massumi (2002) would have it, “the relationship between the levels of intensity and qualification is not one of conformity or correspondence but rather of resonation or interference, amplification or dampening” (p. 25). Or more simply “nothing is prefigured in the event” (p. 27).
Massumi, B. (2002). Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation. Duke University Press.
medium thoughts 