some sort of something. this is it. 26, going on 27. at some point during a glorious weekend full of friends and food and wine and brunches and frisbees and conversations, I momentarily leaned back, had a little glimpse of us all. look at P, working steadfast on this documentary for two years. H, pointedly and diligently working on residencies, applications. A and T, looking forward to graduate programs. C, having just come back from that film festival. C, having come back from that residency. L, M, R, S, A, etc. in the midst, juggling opportunities, options, desires. is this it? is this some pride at a shared diligence, a movement, a direction?
I feel the formation of a practice bubble up among activity, a practice not anchored by the legitimacy of a name but from elsewhere, that operates along lines of desire, enthusiasm, interest, tenacity, intensity, focusedness.
most of my questions to myself are about strategies vs. tactics; watching certain opportunities exist, to let some go, to take other ones. how does one operate? somehow I have found myself at a myriad of intersections. this project, that project, that project, this project. and somehow they don't stop. but this time I can feel the balance of my being, saying, slow down, focus. one has projects already. continue onto them. fulfill them fully. etc.
that's not what I quite meant to say. what I mean to say is somewhere inbetween the lines of all of these things:
= Marx's LTV. at some point, the history of all deliberate attempts at reformulation and modification (aka, design) is the history of the mobilization of labor. or less grandly put: everything is constituted out of labor, or averaged forms of labor, lathered onto objects, constituting objects. a primordial clay.
= And about those who aren't interested. aren't running. what of them? by creating a criterion of interest and desire I have negated and forgotten those who are content, or even worse, those who aren't exactly in a position to mobilize ones desires, because there may be other, stronger forces than 'desire' at play. for example: 'need'. or 'suffering'.
= I can feel an ecosystem of activity, a kind of barely decipherable, yet concretely tangible ecology at play here. networks, systems, chains, linkages. actors in a rhizome. does one participate? engage?
= the wise whisper at the back of my ear says - the only reason one plunges into arenas of participation is because one wanted to in the first place.
for the me in the future who will, even after having said this now, will doubt and reconsider, so I say this again now: there is nothing but a swirling network (rhizomatic entanglement?) of desires, interests, focusedness, friends, warmth, emotion, tempo, respiration, rejuvenation, activity, independence, collaboration. no other fertile soil. let's not mistake the mass of commodity/process/identity fetishes as something beyond what they are; let us recognize the potency of attractor points while understanding them also to be self-fulfilling prophecies; let us realize with gravity the influence of influence while also understanding that really, everything worthwhile has only arisen from a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens, to paraphrase margaret mead; let's understand the role of visibility and presence, and the way in which gazes can be terribly powerful forces, but let's also understand the way in which execution can be so central to the operation of a practice; let's consume both critical practice and celebratorily-tecnological execution together, not in a 'balance', but in the way that latour's quasi-objects proliferate to create true hybrids, and so understand the way that execution trumps concept, and criticality trumps non-critique, while also understanding that exuberance and energy enables execution, and criticality often engenders withdrawal and hesitation. let's hope that we can undergo twin cycles of praxis with critique. let's hope that building and thinking are never apart, but springing from a central realm, two sides of a transparent film slide, brief anchorings of an ecology of actors onto language; momentary modification of endless chains of repercussions onto the network of relations.
tl;dr: to move