Tuesday, June 30, 2015

This is freedom.



It started with resistance, resistance:

to Being mediated,
to being Mediated by this blog,
to being mediated by these Digits...

I was touch typing, a linear stream of thought made text. 

I was beginning to feel prisoner.

My matricule: @sensor63

Lines, stay between the invisible lines.

A bird on a wire tweets.

I am dressed in black font, I feel momentary skittishness while italicised, importance while underlined or emboldened.

Is this writing freely?

Is freedom written?

There are times that it feels like freedom...

Words flow easily off my finger tips.

At the outset, I was given a choice of uniform.

Choice of layout
Choice of format, 
Choice of name of blog
Choice of name of post
Choice of font.
Choice of word.
Choice of picture.

That felt like freedom.

And yes it gave me freedom. 

It gave me freedom to stretch out as far as the dialogue box would allow me. 

I am living in another's space. 

Am I a tenant?
Am I a prisoner
Am I a ghost-writer for Google?


Out of the cell, I fled to feel the feel of paper, to feel the scribble of pen, to feel the freedom of scratching up, down, and around, and diagonally, and changing implement, and scribbling, and ripping up the sheet to hear the tear, and crunching up the paper to express my disgust, and throwing the rolled up, beaten up expression of my being into the trash.

feeling trash, feeling trash, feeling trash, feeling...



And then I was engrossed in the paper: journeying out into the depths of the hills to feel the sun on my back, the cold of the breeze, the bodily orientation of my imagination released into an open. 

This felt like freedom.
This felt like freedom.
This felt like freedom.

I gave it a frame, an ironic frame.

It was freedom in irony.

And its irony is here.

It is here in my Shadow Boxing.

Here it is my shadow boxed.

And then it was there in my mind:

to reform it to release it
to revoice it to bring me back to breath...
to bring it back to breath.













And I breathed it slowly and I felt the click and the double click and heard the dog and the traffic which passed behind and then it came back to me here to reinvigorate my anger, my anger to be only touching you by type, touching you by type, type, type.





And I am back, and this is it.

This is it.

Freedom is a word.

A four letter word.

No freedom is wider than a word.

It has panache.
It has a breath
It has a position
It has no meaning without an act

This is an act.

I am @sensor63

Chop wood, carry water.

On reading Kate Bowles', post entitled "Chop wood, carry water", I revisit 'This is freedom' here. 

Kate's work and this act appears appropriate as punctuation to dystopia.

We must forever retrace our steps, until we are no more able, to make meaning.

"bell hooks: Whereas my mother in Kentucky always used to say, “Life is not promised,” in the sense that boredom is a luxury in this world. Where life is always fleeting, each moment has to be seized. For us children, that was a lesson in imagination, because she was always urging us to think of the imagination as that which allows you to crack through that space of ennui and get back going."

I am bored with algorithm, fake news and those who fakely preside, fake money, surveillance et al.

Quel ennui!

To hell with them.

Here, a distinct moment captured, traffic and the dog barking in the background, I seize my breath and muster whimsy. 

I am not alone, struggling here, as ever with this media, these boxes, these blinking cursors.

It is, we are, a marked moment of loss.

Recorded voice marks time.

Voice is not just to speak, it is to reveal, if we let it.

I never found the cassette with my father's voice.

I can hear snatches in my mind.

I can see it in the box in the attic.

I feel melancholy at being apart from those that I love, from those who might discover meaning here.


"The work in network is the water lifting. It’s the labour that the algorithm can’t appropriate, that needs our time and vulnerability to loss. And to restore this vision of the networked self having the capacity to labour cooperatively and effectively, to bring something to the other situation, we first need to imagine other refusals: of the email, of the browsing, of the personal branding, of the suggested-for-you.
There’s still a well. We just need to learn how to make time for it in our lives."
I think of what pleasure networking online has brought me. 
Fellowship, friendship, fun, learning.
May we forever remain grounded in what really counts.
Time passes.
What did we do for our souls?
What did we do for our souls?

"Whatever satisfies the soul is truth." 
Walt Whitman.
We are engaged in drive.
We have no reverse gear.
Despite what technology might tell us...
What did we do for our souls?
Is there any truth in news?
There may be truth in art.

"Art is the lie that enables us to realize the truth."
Pablo Picasso
Time passes.
What did we do for our souls?






2 comments:

  1. Thank you Simon,

    As I read these words
    I felt free to flee
    to leave my station
    to walk outside
    to take my camera
    because it is now July 1
    need to use other media
    make a mix media make

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  2. I find it interesting that some folks were vexed when you shared the image. They clicked. Where the sound? In that case, the image seemed to project something that wasn't there -- it was not a sound file at all, but some mirage concocted by Simon. The ghost in the wall (fading, as I thought, or appearing, as you suggested).
    Kevin

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