ms. jurich - repetition
Why are we as philosophers seemingly only concerned with what lies beyond the physical? Our curriculum is saturated with thinkers who so desperately want to shed their physical reality, to escape into the intellect. Why do our beloved philosophers exist in a state of self-hatred? Unfeeling? Why are they unable to see what is in front of them? The faculties of pure intellect are interesting, of course, but I am so much more concerned with what it is to be man. There are moments when our spirits fill our bodies like a golden light, perfectly describing our individual shapes. I couldn’t imagine that this is done in the intellect. How could it be? The physical is the medium of our spirits!!! I am enamored with the tiny little things of life. Things that are so uniquely human.
I feel that repetition falls to the side much like physicality in philosophy. I feel that people are quick to judge repetition, condemning it to "mundanity." But the feeling of repetition and the expression of it, feel so natural to me. so human! It feels that there are long ribbons of silk dancing within my eyes. They graze my spirit.
This music video pulls an innate feeling of togetherness within me. My heart weeps valiant tears of bliss!! How lucky am I to participate in the symphony of life? I feel completely infinitesimal and completely infinite when I watch this video.
I want to focus on repetition in composition, I want to chase this feeling. Because repetition and the faculties of the physical are not understood through thought, but through feeling.
The motions of the spirit are so hard to explain. But I hope I'm understood even a little.
That's a really beautiful video! Very reminiscent of O'Keefe paintings in that both engender a sense of exploration. While I was watching this I always wanted to know what lay just beyond, or inside the image on the screen, similar to the way that I feel when I view O'Keefe's paintings. There is the sense that both artists present the viewer with what could almost be described as the backside of a painting; we are not meant to see what lies within the actual piece of art, only the beautifully contorted outside. Both her paintings and this music video seem almost intent on keeping out prying eyes, or protecting an ecosystem within. I know we explicitly said this in reference to "In the Patio III", but this sentiment seems to pervade many of her pieces, like "Blue Line" or "Abstraction White". I think that the desire to see what lays beyond the canvas might have something to do with the element of repetition that you were talking about, Ms. Jurich. I kept noticing the camera movement in the video, the way that it seemed to almost mimic the restless eye of the viewer, wanting to see the inside of the art. The visual repetition of the video was very human, it shows the effects of humanity, the mimicry of nature. But it leaves the viewer to say the next phrase, to try and understand what it is to be human, to turn the canvas around, or peer around the skyscraper.
ReplyDeleteBeautiful post and reply. G.K. Chesterton in his book Orthodoxy has a rich passage about repetition: "A man varies his movements because of some slight element of failure or fatigue. He gets into an omnibus because he is tired of walking; or he walks because he is tired of sitting still. But if his life and joy were so gigantic that he never tired of going to Islington, he might go to Islington as regularly as the Thames goes to Sheerness … It might be true that the sun rises regularly because he never gets tired of rising. His routine might be due, not to a lifelessness, but to a rush of life. The thing I mean can be seen, for instance, in children, when they find some game or joke that they specially enjoy. A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, ‘Do it again’; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, ‘Do it again’ to the sun; and every evening, ‘Do it again’ to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we. The repetition in Nature may not be a mere recurrence; it may be a theatrical encore." Children and geniuses don't get bored.
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