Logo of the Museum of Vestigial Desire
The Museum of Vestigial Desire

Improvisation

tags: fodder published on:

Within the labour of reading is included a capacity to improvise. What can be read? Through which construction can a specific meaning be read? For something to be inferred, does something need to be written? Is the relationship between reading and writing direct and one that has a distinct co-relation?

To figure this out, we decided to talk.

We talked at length and for considerable time but hoped for the conversation to have a clear lead-in and lead-out. But this did not happen. The conversation went on and on and it went in directions that neither we hap mapped for it nor the one we were talking to. So how did this direction come to be traversed at all? The minimum contribution of any conversational element in a given context is a deflection. But this deflection needs to also follow a script. For, without a script no one can take away anything from it. This take away is the rule around which a script can be woven and wound. Where do you want the conversation to deliver the participant to? This destination can be set to a time or to a progression of a thought. But this destination needs to be possible to map. If a conversation does not move you, nothing will. If nothing can possibly move you, what is the point of conversing? Conversations die when they feel redundant. If a conversation feels used like a container of words and nothing more, it dies. For it to live, it needs to feel the capacity to move. Move somewhere, move anywhere but move. If the movement does not feel desirable or comfortable, it can be reversed. In the scope of a conversation, a certain elasticity needs to be enacted. The range of this elasticity can be calibrated. But it needs to be there.

The problem with elasticity is that the range within which it can operate needs to be defined. Definitions are fixed. Elasticity operating within definite boundaries are only fake simulations. They are only approximations of a genuine flexibility and cannot be taken as a sign for a genuine facility for emergence.

What is genuine emergence? Genuine emergence is a situation in which we expect the drift to change. We consider for example, the possibility of a deflection. We consider the possibility of extension, of growth. But what kind of growth are we seeking? What are we after? We simply want something that we do not already have. We want to encounter a thought that falls outside the pattern of what we are capable of thinking. Or stated simply, we want to be surprised. And surprise is a valid desire, which is possible to engage with understanding and regard. If we do not get surprised, we have to make peace with living with old words, old forms and old codes guiding our mind. And that is not acceptable.

‹ index