Listen to the hummingbird.

Listen to the hummingbird.

Listen  to the hummingbird.

Whose wings you cannot see

Listen to the hummingbird

Don't listen to me.

Listen to the butterfly

Whose days but number three

Listen to the butterfly

Don't listen to me.

Listen to the mind of God

Which doesn't need to be

Listen to the mind of God

Which doesn't need to be

Don't listen to me.

Listen to the hummingbird

Whose wings you cannot see

Listen to the hummingbird

Don't listen to me

Leonard Cohen.

Listening to the humming bird

I was lying in my bath, eyes closed, listening to Leonard Cohen's last album "Thanks for the dance".

I got out, got dried, got dressed.

I was reading academic articles on my phone, filing them for future reference....

As so often, the act of choosing boxes for ideas, becomes tortuous...

So there I am being orderly, working on three conference submissions for the end of the week, with people in four different countries.  

We had pretty much sorted out the author combinations, the lenses through which we would be observing our contexts.

Or at least I thought that we had...

We could have stopped there. 

But the more we look, the more we see.

But the more we speak, the more we hear.

But the more we know, the less we know.

The choices of lenses appeared to be changing daily.

Over time more connections and disconnections appear. 

As we work together from our for ever changing respective positions, the more we are asking ourselves about whose voices are foregrounded, whose names are named, whose stories are told, whose languages are heard, whose translations are accepted and what forms best represent a momentary convergence of divergent sense making.

I go and find a screenshot of a quotation shared in Maha and Shyam's article:
Bonds of difference, participation as inclusion.

We have a deadline, that is straightfoward.

We have a word and time limit that is straightforward.

We can rest in peace, there will be a moment when it/they will be pasted into a dialogue box.

Then the fun starts...

How shall we perform polyphony?

How shall we represent complexity?

Who is we? 

We are the world.

Pffff....

USA for Africa...proudly presents:

Since when was America, Britain, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, China, Russia et al there for Africa? 

Well they have been there for all that Africa could be exploited for, minerals, territory, slaves for the cane.

• The New Scramble for Africa: how China became a partner of choice
• Russia and the new scramble for Africa.

Globally then, « we are the world. »

I note the NASA perspective of this, their globe, in the intro to the "We are the world video".

That's it: Trump inadvertently speaks truth, SPACE FORCE:

Star Trek was always a projection of power....a military project.

Those ages, past, present, future of heroic discovery, exploration, exploitation....

I find an article about Bruno Latour's theatrical performance  entitled "Moving Earths."

I am reminded of our co-performance at a conference in Krakow which attempted to express 

"Lived experience of connected practice." recounted here by my friend Teresa.

Is theatre a means to enable Polyphony? 

What is the difference, actually, between a formal lecture in an amphitheatre and a theatrical performance in an amphitheatre? 

"All the world is not, of course, a stage, but the crucial ways in which it isn't are not easy to specify."

Erving Goffman.

Dismembering complexity.

I am working with others on a book chapter.

We are faced with the impossibility of dismembering a complex entanglement of relationship-reality for the sake of academic convenience.

Must we accept that form trumps content?

We write that we are not able to comply with such a simplification of our complex reality.

We hope that they will understand (accept our divergent realities).

We are working on a book chapter with one or is it two or three or four colleagues, and trying to untangle who is lead author, who is co-author, who is credited as being co-author.

We hope that they will understand (accept our realities).

Well we hope, and sometimes we are accepted for what we are for a moment.

Authentically Insoumis....

Taking a few mindful steps back, I express myself with a higher level of abstraction than words enable.  

It's not a planned methodological choice, it comes as a spontaneous doodle.

I draw myself engrossed in nature. 

I sense not fragmentation but fractalisation, belonging, a being grounded, down to earth.

I find an article: « The Planet: An emergent matter of spiritual concern. »  

When I speak of changing the world, I am not thinking of a globe.

Planetary concerns are beyond me.

I am thinking of the world in and within which I have made meaningful relationships.

I am not viewing from above.  I am not looking for global reach. I am looking for local impact.

I am viewing from within and mapping meaning here to find my path through my improbably forested world.

“The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.”

Albert Einstein

There it is, I scribble my wordless world onto a page.

I feel the hesitation, I take time to depict neurones sparking.

I am seeing grey matter becoming transformed into green matter, I am seeing forest and feel belonging.

There is no would, there is a strange will.

I can't really claim authorship, ownership, choice.

Lines of interdepence, lines of communication, an ecosystem of reflection.  

I am, no, on reflection, I is only being, here reflected in this abstract chaotic world.

It would be so much easier to reduce complexity of creation and claim control, claim responsibility.

It is beyond me.

I feel no desire to sign it off.

Signing, signifying, signing, signifying possession, signifying power, signing words, signing facile meaning, signing order, signing posts, signing authenticity, signing with a signature, an individual signature.

"If there is one word that makes creative people different from others, it is the word complexity. Instead of being an individual, they are a multitude. Like the color white that includes all colors, they tend to bring together the entire range of human possibilities within themselves. Creativity allows for paradox, light, shadow, inconsistency, even chaos -and creative people experience both extremes with equal intensity."

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

I am suddenly reminded of Criss-crossing  of the insanity of order, of Book-Keeping.

Then my mind was fluttering from moment to moment, from order to disorder.