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.

Stop prithee stop.

There is poetry in the rubble,

And hidden haunts in text.

There are voice voyages to be spoken.

And furlongs still to make.

There are rhythms between the brackets;

...subtle shifts to take.

Your breath to be captured...

Will you stop with me a while,

And while away the time?

There's a door that's there slamming,

And dog there that's barked.

There are dark clouds that threaten...

Stop.

Prithee

Stop.

While with me the while,

And while away the rain.

Will you take my hand?

I prithee.

I prithee.

DREAD.

Pas dans le couloir.  

DREAD.

Avait-il été oublié?

La porte s'ouvrit.

Coup après coup.

Il frémit à chaque coup.

Il y a eu une pause.

Un coup.

Ensuite, une pause.

Une pause.

Puis la porte grinça.

Jusqu'à la prochaine fois.

Footnotes

A blog page awaits, has it been forgotten?

It had been so long.

That's how it felt.

Something really odd happened.

The page, started flickering.

English had been translated into some sort of  French.

These are not my words.

One word:

DREAD remained in English.

There were one or two weird translations.

I edited it a bit.

I left the rest as it had appeared.

Doubts rain down...

Another day dawns.

Doubts rain down.

Buckle it.

Y'er pissing in the wind matey.

Doubts rain down.

I feel myself slipping.

I feel myself weakening.

Doubts rain down.

I hear the words of others.

Please keep on.

Hold that line.

Hold that line.

Arts of the Possible.

"We may feel bitterly how little our poems can do in the face of seemingly out-of-control technological power and seemingly limitless corporate greed, yet it has always been true that poetry can break isolation, show us to ourselves when we are outlawed or made invisible, remind us of beauty where no beauty seems possible, remind us of kinship where all is represented as separation."

Adrienne Rich.

Caged Bird.

A free bird leaps on the back of the wind

and floats downstream till the 

current ends

and dips his wing in the 

orange suns rays and dares to 

claim the sky.

But a bird that stalks down his

narrow cage

can seldom see through his 

bars of rage

his wings are clipped and his 

feet are tied so he opens his 

throat to sing.

The caged bird sings with a

fearful trill

of things unknown but longed 

for still

and his tune is heard on the

distant hill

for the caged bird sings of

freedom.

The free bird thinks of another

breeze

and the trade winds soft

through the sighing trees

and the fat worms waiting on a 

dawn-bright lawn and he

names the sky his own.

But a caged bird stands on the 

grave of dreams

his shadow shouts on a 

nightmare scream

his wings are clipped and his

feet are tied so he opens his 

throat to sing.

The caged bird sings with a

fearful trill

of things unknown but longed

for still

and his tune is heard on the 

distant hill

for the caged bird sings of 

freedom.

Maya Angelou.

Voice incubator

I have a confession to make.

I was scared of letting you read this.

I was my own worst judge.

I am not alone.

There are too many others who are scared of letting others hear their voice.

I have come across others...

Sometimes that makes me angry.

There are days like that.

What the hell is a blog?

I was never quite sure.

It seemed important for me to try to answer the question.

As far as I remember, I started off by reading Stephen Downes' blog.

I suppose it was as good a place as any.

I didn't think that I would ever write a blog.

What the hell was a blog anyway?

So here I am writing this blog.

I can't answer for anybody else but this is my answer to what a blog is. It's this. It's writing when I feel the desire, the need to fling a few words down onto this white space, this comfortable white space.

What the hell was Twitter?

I didn't know.

I spent six months being an egg.

I felt ovally dumb.

I didn't know what Twitter was.

I was an egg.

I took a long time to hatch thus...

I needed an incubator.

Incubation.

The incubator for Touches of Sense...was Learning with E's.

It is a story I tell my students now.

I had read Steve Wheeler's blog for a a fair old time before I thought I might be able to comment.

Like many people I feared that I had nothing to offer to a wider public.

I wasn't quite sure if comments like I might write would be appropriate.

I wrote to Steve asking if it was OK to comment on his blog.

Looking back on it, this seems ridiculous.

It wasn't ridiculous then.

I would read his blog every day.

It made sense to me.

I connected with his willingness to write himself openly.

There was a humanity, a personality expressed which I appreciated.

I was thinking about it the other day (a couple of years back now).

Comments that I wrote on his blog became progressively more like blog posts.

A couple of years ago, I went and found a few comments and saved them in a Google Document.





Yes, looking back the voice is recognisably mine, or at least the voice that I have become familiar with.

A Twitter Chat

I was participating in a Twitter chat yesterday.

I am no longer an egg.

I am a swirl.

It was an #edenchat hosted by Steve Wheeler about "rhizomatic learning".

He announced the theme in his blog: #EDENCHAT Growing Minds.

I got wind of it via my PLN on Facebook.

Autumm Caines did a great job Storifying it here:

@ashleygshaw @NomadWarMachine @amyburvall @shaw2703 My attempt to #Storify "#EDENChat on Rhizomatic Learning" https://t.co/WUKpS0SqLZ

— Autumm Caines (@Autumm) February 25, 2016

I wouldn't have been able to develop the Twitter skills necessary to participate in the chat had I not attended the Learning Without Frontiers Conference in London in 2011.

The photo above that I dug out was from a presentation which Steve Wheeler gave about Edupunk.


Incubation

Steve Wheeler asked a question:

Q4: I'm now quoting @davecormier: How can we help students 'make connections we would never make ourselves'? #EDENchat

— Steve Wheeler (@timbuckteeth) February 24, 2016

@amyburvall @timbuckteeth @davecormier "Dots...that is where we come in." Dots is people. #edenchat #rhizo16 pic.twitter.com/qWdaPh3Nb9

— Simon Ensor (@sensor63) February 24, 2016

I suppose this is where I connect those dots...


Rhizomatic Learning

Touches of sense is a space where I connect my learning openly, rhizomatically.

I don't start with a plan and then work backwards.

I don't have a structure in my head before I start writing.

In writing, I am learning.

In writing, I am learning what I will think, not what I think now.

In writing, I am learning to listen to a voice which was silenced for so long...by others, by myself.

Searching for patterns.

@amyburvall @timbuckteeth @suebecks humans are pattern seekers even where there were none #edenchat pic.twitter.com/2a45XV8XCq

— Simon Ensor (@sensor63) February 24, 2016

I looked for patterns in my titles here in my last post.

I come back and read and read anew.

This is a blog for me. It is a space to pattern search.

This is a mapping of  haphazard rhizomatic learning.

I look at the people that I have had the pleasure to learn from and with.

How can you not learn from people who wear shoes like Howard Rheingold's, or paint in pink like Amy Burvall?

@timbuckteeth @hrheingold @amyburvall i prefer his shoes #EDENchat pic.twitter.com/6PZyKsyLAm

— Simon Ensor (@sensor63) February 24, 2016

@amyburvall @hrheingold Howard has opened my mind to interconnected learning opportunities and taught me so much #edenchat

— Sue Beckingham (@suebecks) February 24, 2016

Search for Steve Wheeler in this blog's search box, you will see how often his ideas connect here.

http://tachesdesens.blogspot.fr/search?q=steve+wheeler

Search for Dave Cormier in this blog's search box, you will see how often his story of rhizomes connects here.

@ManYanaEd @Autumm To me it's a story for learning. It's a story that works for some people, not for others. #EDENchat

— dave cormier (@davecormier) February 24, 2016

Knitting strands...

We are all so densely complex to unravel.

How I feel of what I know changes constantly.

There is no knowledge without emotion.

There is no network without nuture.

Nature, nurture, network

Learning with e's.

I posted a link to an old post about anger to #edenchat.

I noticed a kind comment of Steve Wheeler's

Wishing I could write like @sensor63. Just once. https://t.co/LnwsvcOxFb

— Steve Wheeler (@timbuckteeth) February 24, 2016

Thank you Steve for your voice.

It touched me.

Here are some Touches of Sense:

Learning without emotion is nothing.

Our role is to enable each learner to listen to the sense their patterns make.

Here are some of my patterns.

This is my story.

This is my voice.

Thank for your part in its incubation.

R.E.S.P.E.C.T.

KEYNOTE

R.E.S.E.A.R.C.H.

I found the conference keynote carefully filed away in my bedside table.

This is its story.

"WHAT ARE YOU?"

"I'm not a what, 

I'm a who.

Why do you ask?"

I remembered  where it was thanks to Sean Michael Morris.

I read his article:

"Digital Humanities and the Erosion of Inquiry."

I quote a little bit...

"The perfect unfairness of this is that when we limit another’s voice, we create an ecosystem reliant upon limitation. And that’s the ecosystem in which we now swim. We can’t ask for freedom to take risks, to follow our own curiosity — to be scholars — if we don’t offer that freedom to others."

THE TITLE IS ACADEMIC NOW.

"Oh so sorry.

Professor."

"Digital Inquiry and the Erosion of Humanity?"

WE FORGET SO EASILY

R.E.S.P.E.C.T.

FOOTNOTE.

I decided he merited a more prominent frame.

Pride.

Pride is not a word that I use often.











I was proud of the students today...

I was evaluating their research projects which they were presenting without notes to read.

It was not easy for them.

They, for the most part, overcame their fear.

It was a start, it was more than a start.

They were courageous.

I learnt from them.
They made me think.
They made me want to know more.
I listened to them for six hours.
The day went by in a flash.

I was proud of the students today...

I asked them to share their work, their reflection on their learning with others.

I explained to them that it might be of help to others.

They seemed to understand the message.

I was proud of the students today...

I challenged a group of them to share their learning in a blog.

Some of them really have to struggle to write their thoughts in English.

They have had so little practice, for the most part, to write for others...

They have had so little practice, for the most part, to receive the encouragement of others...

I was proud of the students today...

I showed one of them a blog post in French by one of their peers written on Saturday the 14th November.

It was entitled: Ce matin.

http://thsismystory.blogspot.fr/2015/11/ce-matin.html

I had told them, how it had moved me, how it had moved others, how it had moved others to write.

Oh Paris (A Poem) #digiwrimo #paris pic.twitter.com/1hczgOv0tY

— KevinHodgson (@dogtrax) November 14, 2015

I showed it to one student.

He looked at it.

I didn't see him after.

A while later he sent me a tweet.

It was short and to the point.

@sensor63 done

— Maxime Otmani (@MaximeOtmani) November 16, 2015

I read his post, in French, and I was moved once more.

It was entitled: L'homme libre.

http://maxmyfourseasons.blogspot.fr/2015/11/lhomme-libre.html

I went back and went through the other blog posts in my RSS reader.

I gathered them together in a collection here.

View my Flipboard Magazine.

I don't know if there will be more.

I don't know if others will have the courage.

It is a start.

It is more than a start.

I was proud of the students this morning...

That I can say that gives me hope.

These people have things to say.

We must listen more often.

The darkness.

Writing Lest we forget kept me awake at night.

In the morning I remembered that the story of my great uncle Wilfred C. Hunter, victim of the Great War, had moved me to create visual imagery in the past.

The image 'The darkness' was produced using Paper by 53 on iPad.


It was drawn after a photo taken in my garden in summer and then modified with filters.

I find rather scary and appropriate, considering the theme, how we can transform a beautiful summery day into a vision from hell.

I had used PicPlayPost  and Strip Designer to create collages which were then assembled in Steller here:

And here

I had used the much lamented defunct Zeega to mash up the images with a soundtrack here.

The Darkness on Zeega  http://zeega.com/167193

Finally, I was moved to read Wilfed Owen, war poetry. I chose one:

Dulce et Decorum Est and decided to record an interpretation of the poem. I uploaded to SoundCloud here:

After recording the first version, I realised that I had missed lines, the most terrifying lines.

On relistening, I felt that the second complete version missed something.

I prefer the first version with the missing lines...

I put that second version here for future reference.

DULCE ET DECORUM EST(1)

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares(2) we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest(3) began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots(4)
Of tired, outstripped(5) Five-Nines(6) that dropped behind.
Gas!(7) Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets(8) just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime(9) . . .
Dim, through the misty panes(10) and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering,(11) choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud(12)
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest(13)
To children ardent(14) for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.(15)

Wilfred Owen
Thought to have been written between 8 October 1917  and March, 1918

Our silenced voices.

I am only too aware of how I have silenced my voice.

How ironic that you might confuse this, my writing, with my voice!





The kids are back from school, they are watching 'Face off' on TV.

I've been gagged.

Can't you hear the mutilation in my written "voice"?

I could never interrupt the TV now.

Shh...they will never know that I am "speaking" to you.

Even the dog is unconcerned by my ham-fisted typing.

“The typewriter is holy the poem is holy the voice is holy the hearers are holy the ecstacy is holy!”

Allen Ginsberg


A little while ago, I was venturing into new alien territories.

How do I "write" with my voice?

Here, I am blogging blasé.

Give me danger!

A few moments before, I was lost in Garageband, quite by accident, trying to give voice to my voice.

It is a question that I have been asking myself for some time now.

What is this voice that speaks through my fingers?

I think it through:

• What is this voice constrained in this dialogue box?
• What is this silent voice which moves me? 
• What becomes of the words of others once spoken by myself?
• What becomes of my words once written? 
• Do you hear my voice? 
• Do you hear your voice?
• Do we hear our voices?

So there I was, lost in Garageband, quite by accident, a Metronome (I capitalise without quite knowing why) took over "my" space.

Ha ha ha, "MY SPACE"!

You can listen to that Metronome if you click here.

How does giving voice to my thoughts aloud alter my thoughts?

How does giving voice to my voice alter my voice?

It is a medium with which I am yet unfamiliar.

This is ironic, really.

How silenced are those who write?

This is where Terry Elliott came along to help my reflection.

His 'voice' was there in the comment box.

And now it is here with us:

"Do you know the myth of Philomela and the shuttle? I think it applies: http://vos.ucsb.edu/myth.asp#cut2"

How reverential are we towards our written selves?

How disabled are we to hear our silence, our...punctuation once spoken, once given breath - our heart beats?

This is the challenge that I give you:

WRITE ALOUD!

Don't write before you have listened to your VOICE ALOUD!

I can hear another 'voice' echoing, that of Chris Friend:

"Make some noise: Voicing our written words."

Yes!

Give voice to your written words certainly... but that is not what I am proposing.

"We are great writers on the same dreadful typewriter."
Allen Ginsberg.

Make some noise, write your SPOKEN words!

Open a sound recorder, open Garageband, SPEAK!!

Yes!

A sound recorder will be your blank page.

Ha ha ha!

"BLANK PAGE" !!

Don't stop it. Do we stop silence? Do we stop nonsense? Do we stop hesitation?

Write what emerges if you will, if you can, if you dare...

Isn't that how it was historically?

Isn't that what we have forgotten?

We have power in our voices.

There is power in our silence.

Whose power does our silent writing maintain?

Have you ever tried speaking aloud in a library?

SHHHH!

Whose agents are there in this noisy silence?

Speak out now.

Write what you hear.

Write what you hear now.

Metronome.

A metronome's going 

Tick, tick, tick.

And then it's suddenly stopped.

What on earth is going on?

When I'm writing...

Those pauses,

Those pauses,

To catch the next word...

You don't hear.

(E)motion Capture

Who leads this dance?

Am I captive?

Am I freely enchained?

A breath, a breath, a breath...

Where might this spirit vessel sail?

A breath billows spinnaker.

A breath beyond...

My spirit keels to port.

No crew, no captain, no tiller.

Possessed, I am another...

another's voice.

another's frame.

anothers tone.

another's mood.

I submit to its form.

I tread in unfamiliar skin.

Are these wings?

Are these claws?

Are these scales?

Are these mine?

I see us now as vision composite.

I am becoming newly versed.

Arhymed, entranced, am I freely entrained?

Image Source
http://links.thisiscolossal.com/post/113169745941/watch-asphyxia-a-striking-fusion-of-dance-and

Voice off.

I should be grown up.
I should be doing work.

Que Nenni!

I was reading poetry aloud.

I heard my voice anew.

It is a voice off.

How did my voice escape? 

It is living on borrowed time.

Footnote

I blame Terry Elliott.

http://impedagogy.com/wp/blog/2015/09/18/i-am-an-old-nobody-and-i-love-what-i-do/

See me. Feel me...

Feeling through text.
Feeling through speech.
Feeling through format.
Feeling through sharing.
Feeling through appreciation.
Feeling through recognition.
Feeling through connection.
Feeling through dialogue.
Feeling through gesture.
Feeling through texture.
Feeling through symbolic.
Feelling through lens.
Feeling through motion.
Feeling through juxtaposition.
Feeling through association.




See me. Feel me.

Feel me. Touch me.

Touch me. See me. Feel me.

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?

Ajar.

I have found myself in the wings of #clmooc over the past few days.

Last year, I spent much time drawing with Paper by 53 

I can't remember how that happened.

#CLMOOC community opens doors.

It catalysed an escape into one of my favorite past times.

That led into visual mashups.

I gathered stuff together here:

http://pinterest.com/sensor63/artwork/

This year, like the year before, I am hanging out in the margins.

I know you're busy making stuff, tweeting at a rate of knots.

I am not pushing it.

Stuff clicks.

I love this type of moment.

I am a bit tired at the end of a very busy year.

I chill out. 

I am getting that urge to play with music apps again.

Why????

I am drawn to doodle not so much with images but with sounds, beats, spoken words, sound effects. 

I gave up playing music early.

I felt I was playing for others...

There were so many silent years.

I am beginning to miss listening.

There are so many unexplored avenues. 

Terry Elliott made a brilliant sound companion to a spoken voice piece which featured in Made in Entropy. 

You can listen to it here:

 

I love how he chucks another log on the fire to stoke up creative dialogue.

Here I am tapping away on a smartphone, while the others sleep, listening to a clock tick.

I open up the laptop to do a couple of embeds and tidy up the formatting.

I wonder if the video has uploaded yet?

23% only...

UNINTRO.

What object am I?

I am ajar

36% processing...

I am impatient.

97%

I sleep-engaged in a #clmooc Twitter chat. 

What was Q1? #clmooc @telliokwup @eatcherveggies http://t.co/FwDWWcpN3W via @giphy

— Simon Ensor (@sensor63) June 25, 2015

Finalizing video on Youtube.

I need to sleep.