Fiona Gillmore
Newcall Gallery 29 April - 20 May
Yellow:
Oftentimes at twilight I find myself seated at a bus-stop awaiting carriage home. I generally frequent the same stop, where the seats are placed generously to afford a view of the city, though not from any great distance. Across the broad street from my position buildings rise – teeth, battlements or monoliths – thirty flights against the vaster reach of sky.
I have no pressing matters I can attend to whilst sitting there – no goals to achieve nor expectations to meet. Accomplishing little but witnessing the passage of time, I often get to wondering about the value of things, the way we think. For example there is a point where day becomes night, where a switch occurs between opposites. And yet as I sit there I find it difficult to tell with any conviction whether what I am experiencing is part of the period called day, or the period called night. If there is a switch that takes place between two opposing forces, say when black becomes white – one could be forgiven for expecting a violence to evidence itself, some moment of trauma to signal the inversion which turns one concrete existence into its opposite.
This moment somehow never arrives to announce itself, so I have to read the herald of night into inconspicuous details. My current system is somewhat clinical. There in the office buildings facing me, there are invariably rooms or whole floors left fully lit, projecting their own approximation of daylight for the benefit of those working inside, the better to pursue daytime goals. This provides me with a standard measurement upon which to base my calculation. During actual daylight hours the light from the windows – being still an imperfect approximation – pales in comparison to the natural radiance of the sky, but as nighttime steadily approaches the artificially lit rooms acquire more impact. As the sky darkens I have come to believe that the transition between night and day happens at that point when the light from the windows seems to become more luminous than that from the sky.
Black:
And yet that point is infinitely reducible and infinitely escapable. To make use of such a definition is hardly possible within the fluid structure of language, where words are replaceable and their meaning alters according to their context. Because we have developed this flexible system of abstraction we are no longer required to make experiential judgements. By your definition we can only know when day turns to night by seeing it happen, by some system we devise and in relation to a given constant. But the only reason those buildings and that channelled electricity can exist is because of language, because we can reduce physical things down to concepts and vagaries, so we can use the knowledge of their existence without ever coming in contact with the thing itself.
The language we use is a system with an inbuilt schizophrenia, where the meanings of words overlap, so that the word ‘twilight’ includes both ‘night’ and ‘day’. In this way we make easier for ourselves our interaction with the world. By interacting with porous concepts, rather than concrete realities we can make these periods of transition less traumatic and be free to pursue activities that would otherwise be forbidden by our subservience to natural cycles.
Yellow:
Perhaps then let me offer another definition of change.
I was sitting on a pier facing the city one night recently, the harbour between us. The lights of the buildings and of the streets and the dock machinery glimmered over the horizon, a thin band made up of individual points. The night was overcast so the lights seemed to emerge in the distance from black depth. As I sat there a huge tanker entered the harbour, a slow and silent leviathan. The tanker carried few lights of its own, so appeared mainly as a giant moving shadow, a silhouette against the city. From left to right the tanker past by, it’s presence causing an insidious eclipse swallowing the city lights in front, and depositing them behind.
I think this is perhaps a better way of understanding change. Where once a light can be said to exist in front of the ship, after the ship has past the light can be said to be behind. This is like the difference between night and day. Because things exist inside of a continuum the only thing that changes drastically is our way of classifying them. Behind the silhouette of the ship is the point that one thing changes to another. When looking, we can never see this happen, because for one thing to become another, at some point it has to be invisible, it has to be neither one nor the other.
What Fiona is offering to us is a chance to slow down our expectations for gratification, to relish time spent during periods of transition. What we encounter is not a transaction, we do not enter the gallery and leave having made a cultural purchase, an intellectual product akin to “I came, I saw, I conquered”, but the opportunity to witness a series of infinitely different scenarios, played out inside of a continuum that purposefully eludes classification. Like finding ourselves in the shadow of a passing ship.
Essay by John Ward Knox
Monday, April 28, 2008
Saturday, April 5, 2008
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
At a point overlooking the city.
At a point overlooking the city, a car park at 9pm. Looking upwards, through the open sunroof of a parked car, the clouds lit from beneath by the glow of the city.
(…)
Grace:
Thank heavens, else they recede with the sky and we lose them til tomorrow, as if they were history. Only in the city do we capture the clouds – we hold them in an immobile and insidious spotlight, lest they slip beyond our recognition into darkness. In the age of reason we have to be sure at all times that the clouds exist. It is reassuring but saddening too. An affirmation of sentience that somehow forbids sleep?
Estella:
There are no silver linings to be found with clouds above a city at night, instead the city provides something akin, a mirror perhaps. The horizon lit by a thousand points of light providing a golden lining between the earth and the sky – a delineation that is most obvious at the edges, where humanity hugs the ground, an insidious urban sprawl. Aspiration breaks this artificial lining though, where humans have struck upwards with sky-rises that create a lattice of lights like the facets of a crystal – refracting our perception of form as something that belongs to the earth. Human aspiration is like the atmosphere turning into a cloud to announce its presence. In one moment it is a wandering mass of individuals – carefree and restless – the next a union of effort, a confluence of wills and a cloud – the city – is produced.
Grace:
It seems to me that people climb a hill – right to the top – to seek distance. This then, is the real point. When you achieve distance you achieve momentary independence. What then? What does one seek in isolation?
Estella:
Beneath us our compatriots, our families, our enemies and lovers. Above us the compassion and benevolence of a world apart. People seek the point because reaching any point is to see the intention of humanity. To see that as a tool humanity is a blade gliding through thin air – in contact with nothing – swung by a species fighting shadows.
The drunks and the druggies see this, see the millions of blinking lights and perceive of them hostile in their ability to remain distinct from one another. The drunks see that they are receiving a thousand individual bullet points in a lecture in manners from a superior they do not respect. They can never conceive of all the conflicting rules as being something they can understand so they seek to blur the boundaries – to turn the city into the heavens – until they become a single celestial cloud in which it is safe to sleep.
The lovers see this - they are in contact with nothing, and as such, even in company are alone. So the lovers turn to one another and seek solace not in each other’s words but in one another’s breathing.
The lonely see the harbour, the boats moving slowly to sea, the trees moving barely. The lonely hear the wind and the motorway and think of them sisters. They hear the chirping of thousands of crickets; see the blinking of thousands of lights and think of them brothers. At the point the lonely find thoughts like fireflies, incandescent sparks swimming through black depth. They grow entranced at the beauty of these glowing spectres, adrift and disembodied hopes. At the point of the world the lonely find siblings in nature, unusual comfort in strangers.
At the point everybody finds solace in nothingness, see in the distance the ancestors of their thoughts, hear in the wind the sermons of some estranged teacher they once respected, but had long since forgotten.
Grace:
At the point I think people become a body apart, whether in the interior euphoria of teens marching side by side or of lovers momentarily staring at the same point in the distance, or as a drunk who becomes a cloud – less presence but more impact – or even the lonely who are already apart, but who find in themselves a million potential relationships.
Grace and Estella depart the point.
Grace:
At the very tip it becomes pointless to ignore others – one feels perhaps a renewed drive to engage with others in ways that convey some of the meaning gleaned from seeing the stars and the city mimic one another. Descending though the lights all change – the city no longer twinkles but it glares – the heavens retreat behind looming constructions of brick and concrete and glass. The beautiful separation seems somehow less applicable, and the lack of recognition on the faces of those whom you meet makes you pine again for existence on the point.
(…)
(…)
Grace:
Thank heavens, else they recede with the sky and we lose them til tomorrow, as if they were history. Only in the city do we capture the clouds – we hold them in an immobile and insidious spotlight, lest they slip beyond our recognition into darkness. In the age of reason we have to be sure at all times that the clouds exist. It is reassuring but saddening too. An affirmation of sentience that somehow forbids sleep?
Estella:
There are no silver linings to be found with clouds above a city at night, instead the city provides something akin, a mirror perhaps. The horizon lit by a thousand points of light providing a golden lining between the earth and the sky – a delineation that is most obvious at the edges, where humanity hugs the ground, an insidious urban sprawl. Aspiration breaks this artificial lining though, where humans have struck upwards with sky-rises that create a lattice of lights like the facets of a crystal – refracting our perception of form as something that belongs to the earth. Human aspiration is like the atmosphere turning into a cloud to announce its presence. In one moment it is a wandering mass of individuals – carefree and restless – the next a union of effort, a confluence of wills and a cloud – the city – is produced.
Grace:
It seems to me that people climb a hill – right to the top – to seek distance. This then, is the real point. When you achieve distance you achieve momentary independence. What then? What does one seek in isolation?
Estella:
Beneath us our compatriots, our families, our enemies and lovers. Above us the compassion and benevolence of a world apart. People seek the point because reaching any point is to see the intention of humanity. To see that as a tool humanity is a blade gliding through thin air – in contact with nothing – swung by a species fighting shadows.
The drunks and the druggies see this, see the millions of blinking lights and perceive of them hostile in their ability to remain distinct from one another. The drunks see that they are receiving a thousand individual bullet points in a lecture in manners from a superior they do not respect. They can never conceive of all the conflicting rules as being something they can understand so they seek to blur the boundaries – to turn the city into the heavens – until they become a single celestial cloud in which it is safe to sleep.
The lovers see this - they are in contact with nothing, and as such, even in company are alone. So the lovers turn to one another and seek solace not in each other’s words but in one another’s breathing.
The lonely see the harbour, the boats moving slowly to sea, the trees moving barely. The lonely hear the wind and the motorway and think of them sisters. They hear the chirping of thousands of crickets; see the blinking of thousands of lights and think of them brothers. At the point the lonely find thoughts like fireflies, incandescent sparks swimming through black depth. They grow entranced at the beauty of these glowing spectres, adrift and disembodied hopes. At the point of the world the lonely find siblings in nature, unusual comfort in strangers.
At the point everybody finds solace in nothingness, see in the distance the ancestors of their thoughts, hear in the wind the sermons of some estranged teacher they once respected, but had long since forgotten.
Grace:
At the point I think people become a body apart, whether in the interior euphoria of teens marching side by side or of lovers momentarily staring at the same point in the distance, or as a drunk who becomes a cloud – less presence but more impact – or even the lonely who are already apart, but who find in themselves a million potential relationships.
Grace and Estella depart the point.
Grace:
At the very tip it becomes pointless to ignore others – one feels perhaps a renewed drive to engage with others in ways that convey some of the meaning gleaned from seeing the stars and the city mimic one another. Descending though the lights all change – the city no longer twinkles but it glares – the heavens retreat behind looming constructions of brick and concrete and glass. The beautiful separation seems somehow less applicable, and the lack of recognition on the faces of those whom you meet makes you pine again for existence on the point.
(…)
Saturday, March 22, 2008
Attention to detail
A small stoat is taking a drink at the edge of a stream. A leopard approaches, with a glint in it’s eye.
Leopard: I always find that writing something down is a way of instantly forgetting it. It is all taken care of and you don’t need to worry about forgetting it later. Don’t you think?
Stoat: Please don’t eat me.
Leopard: You don’t need to worry, I’m never very hungry when I’m thinking..
Some small talk.
Stoat: So you’re saying that in Hollywood love is a fade to black, then cigarettes?
Leopard: At least it used to be, back when Hollywood respected it’s audience enough to hide things from them. Now it’s all copulation and flesh, teasing and gratification. Funnily enough, the fade to black is more generous to our perversions and fantasies than flesh caught on film ever is. The bride stripped bare is no longer a bride, but an animal, the groom a fauve too. Our minds have little work to do in such an encounter – all of the work is being done for us, in our place. So the fade to black used to be much more risqué in a way.. by letting our own fantasies bloom. Now it is no longer possible to engage in my own personal fantasy – to apply my desires to the situation in front of me – instead a predetermined piece of choreography is dictated to me, preaching generosity and democracy, while practicing authoritarian fascism.
Personally I believe the old adage that love is blind. It is like standing back to back with someone you trust. You are unable to see them, but when the back of your hand touches the back of theirs you know that you are both there because you want to be. When facing away from each other, at any point one or the other of you could walk away and leave the other completely exposed. This cannot happen when you are looking someone in the eye – face to face – body to body, flesh on screen. It is that unspoken agreement the fade to black that stands for something. Maybe I am old-fashioned, but I get more kicks from Alfred Hitchcock than from Takashi Miike. Let me elucidate a little..
I think that the pain and beauty of being alive lies in our inconsolable loneliness; our universal singularity, and in our innate drive to find the miracle that will reverse this condition. Supposedly the answer to this loneliness has existed in the solidarity of workers, in the solidarity of belief, in the solidarity of religion and class. But solidarity is not happiness, it is temporary euphoria. It is the feeling of marching side by side towards a common goal. But solidarity cannot last forever. March too long and fatigue sets in, euphoria turns to ideology. March farther still and ideology turns into doctrine. And if the march stretches out longer still doctrine turns into hegemony.
So solidarity is an impermanent phenomena relying on constant propulsion, an increasing or at least steady velocity. As soon as it slows the essence of solidarity is lost, when euphoria turns into ideology it requires more and more fuel to reach that joy of initial and unmediated euphoria. It is this way with capitalism, with drugs, and with relationships too. We enter into a relationship with the hope for communion, but what we find is solidarity. We enter into a relationship with the hope of finding a self propelling something that exists in a natural state – just because we will it so. But we find that to keep the engine running there must be a constant feeding of fuel into the fire. What we expect to be ease - our own private utopia – we see is actually work, just as much the dysfunction as the thing we hope to take solace from.
So in love unless your backs are turned to one another, unless you are facing opposite directions and remaining perfectly still, you will always be walking slowly away from each other even though you travel in the same direction.
Stoat: I think I know what you mean. Love can be hard to find sometimes, so sometimes we need to look a bit harder. When we are looking harder, we take notice of things that we may otherwise miss; a fallen tree balanced gingerly across two rocks, a light yellow sheet caught on a wire. When we are not possessed of a single love but are looking, we take notice of these things and somehow they make sense and we realise that actually we are already in love.
Some smalltalk.
Leopard: I always find that writing something down is a way of instantly forgetting it. It is all taken care of and you don’t need to worry about forgetting it later. Don’t you think?
Stoat: Please don’t eat me.
Leopard: You don’t need to worry, I’m never very hungry when I’m thinking..
Some small talk.
Stoat: So you’re saying that in Hollywood love is a fade to black, then cigarettes?
Leopard: At least it used to be, back when Hollywood respected it’s audience enough to hide things from them. Now it’s all copulation and flesh, teasing and gratification. Funnily enough, the fade to black is more generous to our perversions and fantasies than flesh caught on film ever is. The bride stripped bare is no longer a bride, but an animal, the groom a fauve too. Our minds have little work to do in such an encounter – all of the work is being done for us, in our place. So the fade to black used to be much more risqué in a way.. by letting our own fantasies bloom. Now it is no longer possible to engage in my own personal fantasy – to apply my desires to the situation in front of me – instead a predetermined piece of choreography is dictated to me, preaching generosity and democracy, while practicing authoritarian fascism.
Personally I believe the old adage that love is blind. It is like standing back to back with someone you trust. You are unable to see them, but when the back of your hand touches the back of theirs you know that you are both there because you want to be. When facing away from each other, at any point one or the other of you could walk away and leave the other completely exposed. This cannot happen when you are looking someone in the eye – face to face – body to body, flesh on screen. It is that unspoken agreement the fade to black that stands for something. Maybe I am old-fashioned, but I get more kicks from Alfred Hitchcock than from Takashi Miike. Let me elucidate a little..
I think that the pain and beauty of being alive lies in our inconsolable loneliness; our universal singularity, and in our innate drive to find the miracle that will reverse this condition. Supposedly the answer to this loneliness has existed in the solidarity of workers, in the solidarity of belief, in the solidarity of religion and class. But solidarity is not happiness, it is temporary euphoria. It is the feeling of marching side by side towards a common goal. But solidarity cannot last forever. March too long and fatigue sets in, euphoria turns to ideology. March farther still and ideology turns into doctrine. And if the march stretches out longer still doctrine turns into hegemony.
So solidarity is an impermanent phenomena relying on constant propulsion, an increasing or at least steady velocity. As soon as it slows the essence of solidarity is lost, when euphoria turns into ideology it requires more and more fuel to reach that joy of initial and unmediated euphoria. It is this way with capitalism, with drugs, and with relationships too. We enter into a relationship with the hope for communion, but what we find is solidarity. We enter into a relationship with the hope of finding a self propelling something that exists in a natural state – just because we will it so. But we find that to keep the engine running there must be a constant feeding of fuel into the fire. What we expect to be ease - our own private utopia – we see is actually work, just as much the dysfunction as the thing we hope to take solace from.
So in love unless your backs are turned to one another, unless you are facing opposite directions and remaining perfectly still, you will always be walking slowly away from each other even though you travel in the same direction.
Stoat: I think I know what you mean. Love can be hard to find sometimes, so sometimes we need to look a bit harder. When we are looking harder, we take notice of things that we may otherwise miss; a fallen tree balanced gingerly across two rocks, a light yellow sheet caught on a wire. When we are not possessed of a single love but are looking, we take notice of these things and somehow they make sense and we realise that actually we are already in love.
Some smalltalk.
Saturday, March 8, 2008
Houses
A dinosaur and a human are at an airport waiting for a flight – which has just been delayed.
Dinosaur: Damn.
Human: Damn.
Some Smalltalk.
Dinosaur:
I also don’t understand why you humans don’t like spiders – why you eliminate bugs. Don’t you know that bugs eliminate each other much more effectively then you do? You wipe spiders out of your house and then act surprised when the place fills up with flies. Death is not one off and final, not extermination. It is cyclic and essential and joyous. I don’t understand you humans – you hate death so much that you spend your life fighting instead of living. It is always a joyous thing when somebody dies. Sad, certainly, but overwhelmingly joyous. A death acts as an affirmation of life. When somebody dies the shocking thing is not that they are gone, but that you are still there. This must be joyous no? A death is not a realisation of death itself, but of life. If all your loved ones were to live forever you would end up hating them, because you would know them too well.
We dinosaurs lived for some billions of years, I’m not sure how many, we didn’t bother to count. We lived that long because we enjoyed it. You humans live at a pace that exceeds that of the universe. And as such – you will all be dead before the various gods you worship can even realise you exist, let alone help you.
Lets pretend we can call all your objects of worship ‘god’, it doesn’t matter what they are. Lets pretend that this god is an animate being. God is sexless, in as much as that it is made up of all the men and women that worship it. This sexless god is a sum of its parts. The parent is only a parent because of the child. God is only god because of the worshipper. Each devout human is an individual cell in the body of this god – entirely not god – but entirely a part thereof. This is how you do things I think. What you struggle to realise is that there can be no communion between a human that is part of god and god that is made of humans. Being human, god cannot exist, being god humans cannot exist. They are the same thing because they are entirely different. So a human is a cell in this god, in whatever god. The funny thing is that you have hundreds of words for this god – the most common being ‘God’ and ‘Humanity’ where the word humanity acknowledges that humans exist as humans because of their ability to communicate and to exist individually inside of multiplicities. If there were only one human there would be no humanity.
You can never talk to god. You exist at a much faster pace. All that god, humanity or otherwise hears from your entire existence is a tiny blip – a fragment that cannot make sense on its own. It is only by juxtaposing thousands, millions of these blips, one following another that god can make sense of anything that is being sent to it. Maybe after stringing millions of these blips together it hears ‘damn’.
You cannot commune with humanity because you exist at a much faster pace. You can never understand anything in it’s entirety because you are a part of a whole. You can never understand anything in isolation because it is part of the same whole that you are.
In the body of your god, if you If you try too hard to survive you become either a thought or a cancer, either way it is risky business, but you humans cannot live without these stakes it seems.
A long time ago we dinosaurs realised these things, and this is why we became so happy, stopped trying to communicate with things intangible and once again started to enjoy life. We dinosaurs were so happy because we understood enough to know that understanding isn’t everything. We used to build houses, great houses, made of granite and thatch, but soon we no longer bothered, because we found we would rather dance in the rain then sit inside. When we dance in the rain we warm up from inside, with heat and with rhythm. When we dance in the rain we cool down from the outside, with chill and with melody.
When we sat inside during the rain we would sit and stare, and wait for the rain to stop. While we waited for dry we would think too much and grow angry, because thinking is useless without doing. It is pointless to grow angry at the rain. Even when it stops the anger stays, because it isn’t anger that stops rain. Anger from thinking too much, anger that is no solution.
So we abolished the construction of houses and instead when it rained we would dance and be happy, because the feeling of heat is best when it is cold, rhythm is best with melody.
I do not mean that you should abolish your own houses - you are not dinosaurs yet – just that you should live outside as well as in.
Human:
Yes, we are not dinosaurs yet, and I am not sure we ever will be. We do not have the same lethargy of ages, instead the virility of youth and of viruses. I think we are unable to live as intensities, we would then be apes again. I think we need to know things in order to change them, but the things we most commonly get to know are our criteria for knowledge, so we are constantly changing our concept of concepts. This is our survival scheme – like a virus will constantly evolve and grow resistant to vaccines, we will constantly become resistant to truth, because with truth is death. And as you say, we are more scared of death than anything, so we spend our time trying to pre-empt life. I think we have touched on some of what you are saying, dinosaur. Have you ever seen a human tragedy?
Tragedies are fundamentally happy things I think, the tragic element of a tragedy is not so much the death or demise of one or all of the main characters (which is sad), but the fact that though the character is dead, life will continue (which is happy), regardless of this woe. A tragedy cannot be a sad thing unless the central woe is lesser than the implicit joys of being. The tragedy is tragic because the implication is there that though death may be profound; it is only meaningful in the greater significance of life. A tragedy has to be truly and fundamentally happy, to be truly and fundamentally sad.
It is the same with our houses, we can only appreciate one thing in relation to another. We can only appreciate outside because inside exists.
Dinosaur:
That seems a bit tenuous to me.. So what you are saying is that all your buildings are houses. There are two types that I can see, your houses called home, by which you will always be at war with your neighbors, and your houses called railway stations, called mosques and airports and churches, which provide the ammunition and mobility to make war from your home.
For your houses space becomes impressive only when you can define it’s limits. This is how you operate yes? You build a great hall which can hold much space, but you do not appreciate the space itself – only the structure that encapsulates it. You determine value by separation. You have the capacity to build fluid structures – I have seen you do it – but constantly you revert to concrete after thinking thoughts filled with helium.
The flight is now boarding.
Human:
You are such a hippie. Did you know that dinosaurs evolved into birds? See that pigeon? That’s you in the future.
Dinosaur:
That’s a bit depressing.
Some Smalltalk.
Dinosaur: Damn.
Human: Damn.
Some Smalltalk.
Dinosaur:
I also don’t understand why you humans don’t like spiders – why you eliminate bugs. Don’t you know that bugs eliminate each other much more effectively then you do? You wipe spiders out of your house and then act surprised when the place fills up with flies. Death is not one off and final, not extermination. It is cyclic and essential and joyous. I don’t understand you humans – you hate death so much that you spend your life fighting instead of living. It is always a joyous thing when somebody dies. Sad, certainly, but overwhelmingly joyous. A death acts as an affirmation of life. When somebody dies the shocking thing is not that they are gone, but that you are still there. This must be joyous no? A death is not a realisation of death itself, but of life. If all your loved ones were to live forever you would end up hating them, because you would know them too well.
We dinosaurs lived for some billions of years, I’m not sure how many, we didn’t bother to count. We lived that long because we enjoyed it. You humans live at a pace that exceeds that of the universe. And as such – you will all be dead before the various gods you worship can even realise you exist, let alone help you.
Lets pretend we can call all your objects of worship ‘god’, it doesn’t matter what they are. Lets pretend that this god is an animate being. God is sexless, in as much as that it is made up of all the men and women that worship it. This sexless god is a sum of its parts. The parent is only a parent because of the child. God is only god because of the worshipper. Each devout human is an individual cell in the body of this god – entirely not god – but entirely a part thereof. This is how you do things I think. What you struggle to realise is that there can be no communion between a human that is part of god and god that is made of humans. Being human, god cannot exist, being god humans cannot exist. They are the same thing because they are entirely different. So a human is a cell in this god, in whatever god. The funny thing is that you have hundreds of words for this god – the most common being ‘God’ and ‘Humanity’ where the word humanity acknowledges that humans exist as humans because of their ability to communicate and to exist individually inside of multiplicities. If there were only one human there would be no humanity.
You can never talk to god. You exist at a much faster pace. All that god, humanity or otherwise hears from your entire existence is a tiny blip – a fragment that cannot make sense on its own. It is only by juxtaposing thousands, millions of these blips, one following another that god can make sense of anything that is being sent to it. Maybe after stringing millions of these blips together it hears ‘damn’.
You cannot commune with humanity because you exist at a much faster pace. You can never understand anything in it’s entirety because you are a part of a whole. You can never understand anything in isolation because it is part of the same whole that you are.
In the body of your god, if you If you try too hard to survive you become either a thought or a cancer, either way it is risky business, but you humans cannot live without these stakes it seems.
A long time ago we dinosaurs realised these things, and this is why we became so happy, stopped trying to communicate with things intangible and once again started to enjoy life. We dinosaurs were so happy because we understood enough to know that understanding isn’t everything. We used to build houses, great houses, made of granite and thatch, but soon we no longer bothered, because we found we would rather dance in the rain then sit inside. When we dance in the rain we warm up from inside, with heat and with rhythm. When we dance in the rain we cool down from the outside, with chill and with melody.
When we sat inside during the rain we would sit and stare, and wait for the rain to stop. While we waited for dry we would think too much and grow angry, because thinking is useless without doing. It is pointless to grow angry at the rain. Even when it stops the anger stays, because it isn’t anger that stops rain. Anger from thinking too much, anger that is no solution.
So we abolished the construction of houses and instead when it rained we would dance and be happy, because the feeling of heat is best when it is cold, rhythm is best with melody.
I do not mean that you should abolish your own houses - you are not dinosaurs yet – just that you should live outside as well as in.
Human:
Yes, we are not dinosaurs yet, and I am not sure we ever will be. We do not have the same lethargy of ages, instead the virility of youth and of viruses. I think we are unable to live as intensities, we would then be apes again. I think we need to know things in order to change them, but the things we most commonly get to know are our criteria for knowledge, so we are constantly changing our concept of concepts. This is our survival scheme – like a virus will constantly evolve and grow resistant to vaccines, we will constantly become resistant to truth, because with truth is death. And as you say, we are more scared of death than anything, so we spend our time trying to pre-empt life. I think we have touched on some of what you are saying, dinosaur. Have you ever seen a human tragedy?
Tragedies are fundamentally happy things I think, the tragic element of a tragedy is not so much the death or demise of one or all of the main characters (which is sad), but the fact that though the character is dead, life will continue (which is happy), regardless of this woe. A tragedy cannot be a sad thing unless the central woe is lesser than the implicit joys of being. The tragedy is tragic because the implication is there that though death may be profound; it is only meaningful in the greater significance of life. A tragedy has to be truly and fundamentally happy, to be truly and fundamentally sad.
It is the same with our houses, we can only appreciate one thing in relation to another. We can only appreciate outside because inside exists.
Dinosaur:
That seems a bit tenuous to me.. So what you are saying is that all your buildings are houses. There are two types that I can see, your houses called home, by which you will always be at war with your neighbors, and your houses called railway stations, called mosques and airports and churches, which provide the ammunition and mobility to make war from your home.
For your houses space becomes impressive only when you can define it’s limits. This is how you operate yes? You build a great hall which can hold much space, but you do not appreciate the space itself – only the structure that encapsulates it. You determine value by separation. You have the capacity to build fluid structures – I have seen you do it – but constantly you revert to concrete after thinking thoughts filled with helium.
The flight is now boarding.
Human:
You are such a hippie. Did you know that dinosaurs evolved into birds? See that pigeon? That’s you in the future.
Dinosaur:
That’s a bit depressing.
Some Smalltalk.
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