actionable?

"because the world in which I work is one in which nearly everything is actionable" - I open today with the words of "Spurious", defending his right to write freely, without being quoted for academia, whether students or others (but I guess the others would be too proud to admit quoting a blog..).

I started this morning by reading a post by Spurious about being captured by coffee and work, and having to go out, drink, indulge, enjoy company. I know what he means. His tone is light, he is poetic, yet there is definitely a seriousness about what he says. Getting caught is no fun, feeling the energy that you know is there somewhere, escape and elude you, is no dance.

So I will browse on the possiblity of action, the necessity of it, the impossibility of it. If you read the post yesterday about differentiation, you will know what I mean by these words. Otherwise, maybe you will, maybe you will red something totally different into them, than I intended. Probably you will, anyway, that's all part of the beauty of the distance between the writing and the reading.

What is action? Let me try to define it as that which takes place, being en-acted by someone or something, with an intension, in a milieu, with which the action interferes, intervenes, divides and takes part. Bakhtin trid to write a small philosophy of the act - strange guy, Bakhtin, one yet more than one, focusing on dialogue and worldly matters that could not possibly be understood through books alone. Yet this was what he did, he wrote about books, from books - and maybe from mouths and hands untold. This was maybe part of his fate, being where he was at the time that he was. The questions of action were easy then, but the acting of action was far more complicated. Action in the old USSR, CCCP, was preferably not something that took place throught the will of an individual, taking life into his or her own hands. If someone was credited for an action, it would have to be in a symbolic manner, ensuring that the true credit was given to the party, the nation, the diaspora of communists, etc. Certainly not the disapora of artists or dissidents - they did have their own herology, though, but one that lived its own, pseudo-clandestine life, and shared its own, untold, yet well known, mythologies.

Did I drift into the USSR? Why, strange thing to do. No, because I had the words of a Lithuaninan artist in my head while thinking and writing a moment ago (or he spoke to me in my dreams, I don't know, since he sopke to me so long ago, it may have been repeated numerous times). What he said, 13 years ago, was that you must "remember to do nothing", in order to get something done. Obviously, this sounds like s small, everyday, Zen phrase. Do nothing to do something. The words are kind and mild, and so was the man. We met at 9 in the morning, and 15 minutes later, he offered me coffee, then vodka. Yet, he was not drunk, he just drank a bit of vodka. The issue was to let the body accept the waiting of doing nothing. I watched him work, he dressed scupltures in half made clothes, he even dressed the Pan God outside the museum of modern art in Kaunas. And his friends knew ahat he was saying, they knew that he spoke, even in the days when words had to carry a colour which made them almost impossible to hear. Yet, thorugh the imposed silence of never being allowed to utter the prohecy of another world, he and all the other artists and philosophers of those times, had to invent a language which seemed to copy remains of western traditions, in order to seem as harmless as possible, while slipping their messages into the eyes of the people around them. There is another world, they would whisper - not the West, not the East, but another world, one in which we do not know what the meaning of everything is, one in which not everything is determined beforehand, as this determination is the only rule for planning action at all. I hope you live well, Alexis, doing something through nothing.

And in the world in which everything is doubly articulated, in which the lethal lobster grasps us with its careful claws, one for the forming, one for the meaning - or one for the capture in time, one for the capture in sense. In this world of ours, can we act? Is there a space for action that does not know its determination, that is not "actionable" before it even begins to carry itself into the fold of unfolding? I am sure there is, but I am also sure that it does not take place in the spaces that are usually assigned to productive action. Yet, even there, we will find pockets, bodies, slim streching bodies, folding between the members of communities, workteams, gatherings, legions. Bodies becoming, in action that does not know its course, eacpet that difference must be made, must be heard and felt within the corners of the predictable, doubly articulated movements of production.

Think of how mush production fills in your life, today. Or tomorrow. Do you feel the in betweens, that were not supposed to be in betweens, as they are probably the only reason for you to be there in the first place (or the last)? Or do you not let them be herad, felt or seen, last of all seen? Does action act in you, or do you belive to be the master of it? And if it does, is the meaning, sense and time of the action predefined, do you feel that it has a set time and course, that will remove you from responsablitiy? In that case you have got a problem. Actually, the whole world has got a problem, beacuse it means that you are completely enslaved in a fascist regime, that permeates much more of the society we have created, than is accepted on the front pages.

So much for morning words - will return to action, later. Enjoy the day, let it act upon you. Not as in "remember to smell the flowers, listen to the birds, tata". But as in remember to be aware, when a difference lurks upon you, ready to act. You will feel it by its indeterminacy, its complete strangeness. And you should invite it in, embrace it. It will play with you, toy you around, but it will fill you with the beauty of that which does not have a name, because we do not know its name. Remember?

Comments

[Sensbachtal]

Just wanted to say Hello to everyone.
Much to read and learn here, I'm sure I will enjoy !