I can hear it in the telephone conversation.
"If you want me to go through the motions, to pay lip service, to fill in a few hours, I'd prefer to look elsewhere."
He didn't really know what I was doing.
He seemed surprised at my fougue.
I wanted it to be clear who I was, how we might meet, what I hoped.
He seemed receptive, he seemed excited with the new suggestions, and started planning ahead.
What might have been a wall which we had hit, or at least that I had hit, had crumbled.
New horizons opened up.
I took a deep breath, I scribbled some notes
I took the dog out for a walk, I felt the sun on my back.
It felt like a release.
It's what I have been reckoning: too many years being able to look out into the open have formed me.
I was brought up on the coast.
I was brought up climbing trees and looking over the wall.
I was brought up praying on my knees.
Was all that about looking up, looking beyond or kneeling down in submission?
I was never quite sure.
I wasn't happy with the submission.
Kneeling felt a sham.
The open sea.
Artists appear as lighthouses to navigate by.
I didn't realise then.
No horizons.
There are houses, there are towns, there are whole regions where I can not live nor dream.
I can not live without the possibility to look beyond, to feel the spray of the waves, to gaze over horizons.
I suppose that is freedom in my eyes.
Outward bound.
I place myself strategically, I look out, I contemplate.
I take my bearings.
I listen.
Unheard voices.
I found it later, those words that I wanted, after having been riddled with his fucking ideas.
SHOT.
“This is how it should be done: lodge yourself on a stratum, experiment with the opportunities it offers, find an advantageous place on it, find potential movements of deterritorialization, possible lines of flight, experience them, produce flow conjunctions here and there, try out continuums of intensities segment by segment, have a small plot of new land at all times.”
Gilles Deleuze
Fuck Deleuze.
I make notes.
I suppose this is a landmark (event)...this space...here.
I think to myself, all of this is out of order.
The writing I mean.
I don't care.
No that is not true.
I care.
Rhizomes, fucking rhizomes.
I was only a moment down at the bottom, and here I am trapped in the fucking middle.
I keep getting moved everywhichway, helterskelter.
Hold on.
STAND FIRM.
STAND YOUR GROUND.
How the fuck did that appear?
I don't know.
All at sea.
I follow the current.
Swimming against the tide is hopeless.
Where am I now?
Jumping from the sea into a bounded space, leaves me feeling safer.
I shall not drown.
I hold on. I hold fast.
Elements pop up invited (uninvited?) and leave me fuming.
I can't hear myself think let alone speak.
“Writing has nothing to do with meaning. It has to do with landsurveying and cartography, including the mapping of countries yet to come.”
― Gilles Deleuze
"Go away, go away."
The shame, the shame.
I take a few photos, to take note, to pay attention.
I give myself the respect no man deserves.
“The shame of being a man - is there any better reason to write?”
Gilles Deleuze
Would a woman fare better?
"Where the fuck is this going?"
"Look, I'm really sorry, I didn't want to bring bloody Deleuze along, but he insisted."
All at sea.
I can fear that you are lost....with me...and them.
"Yes, we are all fucked...sorry."
You will be my guide, my landmark, my event.
The open self.
I am for an instant unsure what constitutes "YOU".
I mean it isn't just "YOU".
It is this, it is I, er...a desire...
“The self is only a threshold, a door, a becoming between two multiplicities”
Gilles Deleuze, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia
I move into the open.
A coast, my eyes are not drawn to the cliffs, but to what lies beyond.
To what lies beyond.
To a movement, to an anticipation, to a trajectory.
I deliberately looked for a quote of Deleuze to help situate myself here now and I feel drawn to this idea, it refuses to let me put it anywhere else. Against my better judgement, I stick it here, it will be a cairn in this desert.
“A book has neither object nor subject; it is made of variously formed matters, and very different dates and speeds.”
Gilles Deleuze, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia
Too right Gilles, blogs too!
Back to earth.
A view from my house, my eyes are not drawn to the tree, nor the wall, but what lies beyond.
Beyond, beyond, what was it that Deleuze was going on about?
What is this becoming?
“According to Beckett's or Kafka's law, there is immobility beyond movement: beyond standing up, there is sitting down, and beyond sitting down, lying down, beyond which one finally dissipates.”
― Gilles Deleuze, Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation
I get that view from my house, it is an anchor, a buoy, a mooring.
All at sea.
I feel myself lunging for a line.
Sea chaos swallows me up.
I see myself flailing under the surface, fighting for the light, for air.
Back to earth.
There it is that view from my house.
A place I can rest...home.
Upside down artists.
I stop.
How will all this fit together?
I think of those TV artists who paint upside down with broad strokes.
Is this just a crude meaningless splash of paint on a canvas?
I join the audience struggling for the moment recognition.
I find myself swallowed up in a Warhole of my own making.
Another love story.
Then it reappears.
I found that photo.
A father is holding his baby.
LOVE.
HOPE.
The father is transfixed.
The babe in arms, is gazing beyond.
We have love, we have joy, we have life, we have anticipation, we have hope, we have sadness.
Nothing remains.
A photo lies.
A moment passes.
Preface to Outward Bound.
I fell upon a post of Suzan Koseoglu, thanks to Teresa Mackinnon who retweeted a tweet of Maha Bali.
— Suzan Koseoglu (@SuzanKoseoglu) May 16, 2017
It converged with a proposal for a journal "Learning in the Wild" (Teresa again), days of mapping, meetings online and here, reflection on landmark events (Maritta Riekki), autoethnography, frames, and this mess.
Little by little, I have learned to trust this my mess.
On first sight, it may be unfamiliar, that is how I deal with beyond.
This is how I learn in the open.
Here.
Convergence.
Even silence situates.
Silence especially situates.
I get that quote that Suzan shared.
"Space without boundaries in not space, it is a chaotic void, and in such a place no learning is likely to occur."
Peter J, Parker.
I note what Suzan writes:
"I"ve become open and stayed open (although intermittently) mainly because it's a learning space for me, and because learning is social, it's a social space for me too."
This space is (and here I refer to this post "Outward Bound - formerly titled Open bound")
"Bounded and open".
"Bounded by subject but open to interpretations and new directions of inquiry."
In writing here, I am honouring "the little stories" - my little stories...our little stories.
In reflecting here on autoethnography, academic discipline, and thesis, I am accepting bonds.
Bonds, he thinks suddenly, bond.
Freedom always includes bonds.
Freedom from language, from social bonds, from love, is chaos.
Multiple voices, distant voices.
I think for a moment of Schizophrenia, and multiple voices.
I think of hoarding, I think of trauma.
I think of making sense.
Is this blog, so full of voices, of others, of mine, bordering on the insane?
BIND ME.
TIE ME DOWN.
STRAIGHT JACKET.
STRAIGHT SUIT.
SWADDLED.
CODDLED.
SLAVE.
BABE.
MMM.
A babe vocalises.
A babe babbles.
BABBLE.
BABEL.
Aren't you following?
Forgive my fougue.
FOLLOW WITH CARE.
Therein lies a paradox.
CARE is not a bond.
I am sorry.
Don't worry, I'll just venture out a bit further.
I know this is inhospitable.
But take my hand.
It sometimes takes time, trust, contemplation to make sense of what appears chaos.
OK.
CHAOS.
MY CHAOS
My reason is perhaps inhospitable.
I am sorry.
If you will walk with me a while....
What is that word that Terry uses?
FELDGANG.
You will perhaps see the gravity beyond the cliff.
Safety blogs.
I return to Suzan's blog.
It feels, safe, somehow.
"The networked spaces, in particular Twitter and the blog you are reading, have become learning spaces for me, spaces that are organically designed around principles of paradox."
" - my blog is the most personal of all because it is a reflective medium and I write not as a gift but to think and to connect with others."
"...."
I stop and I could go on copy paste...copy paste.
I do.
A bit.
"The tensions between discursive identities (emergent, defined by relationships) we create in open spaces and our institutional identities might be one area we might focus on."
I stop myself.
I reason that I need discipline.
I need time.
I reason that I need to connect this mess here with those who are viewfinders, guides.
I suppose this is where, and this what I contemplate.
That is my thesis.
I write it to myself.
An anticipation of negation.
To better think for myself.
“Do not ask who I am and do not ask me to remain the same. More than one person, doubtless like me, writes in order to have no face.”
Fuck it, kids' art was never about depiction.
It is landscape mapping in paint.
Kids toys flung around a bedroom may look like chaos to you.
It ain't.
Come and play.
Simon Ensor