Wanderlust thoughts (blog)

Thoughts on Wanderlust

     First thoughts on Wanderlust. I'm thinking about those in power wanting discourse to take place more or less indoors. Then I think of the market women of the revolution, Confucius , Socrates, Jesus, civil rights marchers,the person standing in front of a tank at Tiananmen Square. Those in power if one refers to the Railway Journey would prefer we remain "parcels" in our movements through space.

     When discourse takes place indoors it takes place under the thumb of power. Watched a show on TV called "Who Was Jesus?". It was a secular view. Jesus walked the streets and disrupted the money changers in the temples ( I can't help but visualize some person walking into a Walmart and just ripping things apart violently). He spoke of the hypocrisy of those religious figures and their lip service and opulent lifestyles while the oppressed remained voiceless. the average christian would not approve of Jesus or his methods. Speak on the streets and those in power get nervous. I am not religious but Jesus was a political figure more than some guy with a funky halo and nicely coifed locks.

     More notes and thoughts on the book Wanderlust...

Travel is less important than arrival: this has a direct connection to our contemporary relationship with “process”. Is anything to be gained from process? Walking six flights of stairs to find a book and find the correct passage versus a Google search. When the process is stripped from a destination is its inherent meaning stripped as well?

     Life is moving faster than the speed of thought: does this throw the idea of what qualifies as “thought” into question or is thought degenerating into “reaction”. 
I can't help but think about cable news and what seems to be reactionary discourse. I suppose this is not entirely new but it seems as if it is more difficult to locate accessible yet original ideas used in political discourse.

     The incalculable is what gives life value and or vitality: if life was immediately quantifiable it seems in ways that would be a form of death. Without the “in-betweens “ from one resolution to the next at least life would seem less alive. Goals! Corporations are goal oriented not life oriented.

     "Leisure is being crushed under the anxiety to produce" (from Wanderlust). Which in turn means we have lost an understanding or ability to play. When we do play (video games) it is in a way finite. There are specific walls within which one operates in the realm of play.

     Thoughts move or better yet “saunter” much as the pace of a walk. A walk without destination constitutes the actions of aesthetic synthesis chiefly because aesthetic synthesis is a journey with no defined destination. this synthesis serves as a question. I relate this to what Rilke wrote regarding questions. He encouraged Kappus to love and live the questions. this seems to be antithetical to Global Capitalism which has been reduced to appropriation, duplication without synthesis or translation. Maybe this is relative in some ways to a seemingly prevalent anti-intellectual zeitgeist. If we set finite goals and destinations we only become practiced at setting goals. Once we “arrive” the next goal has been set and no moments in which to absorb, examine or translate experience.

In Wanderlust, Solnit refers to phenomenologist, Edmund Husserl writing that walking allows us to “ understand our body in relationship to world". This is about the walk serving to recontextualizing ourselves through the act of walking. Juxtaposing a self to illicit new contexts and meaning. Fresh revelations about self are highlighted and made available.

A place is difficult to grasp/realize without walking to that place. Walking the steps of a library. The walk delineates the makeup of a place. A walk to a place defines the spiritual, “unperceivable” underpinnings of a place. The spirit of place is felt.

     Gardens
I saw Rebecca Solnits writing on the garden as an interesting manifestation of the western world’s impulse to control nature, remain outside of nature while more indigenous peoples live within nature as part of a whole. The western world believes in the superiority of the human species and their art reflects that value. Indigenous people respected the characteristics of the natural world and were grateful for its reciprocation.
It seems this is perhaps why westerners were on the forefront in the development of industrialism that seems to serve as an enormous symbol of our (innate?) arrogance. Maybe industrialism was not part of the “natural” continuum of the human species but a horrible glitch and bad joke on us only destined to eventually implode. Maybe we should make an effort to qualify the nature of our values. Why do we not make use of our ability to anticipate unintended consequences? 
I’d like to venture a guess. We are so amazed by ourselves and in our arrogance we’ve become blind. In the book "Duchamp" by Calvin Tomkins he quotes Duchamp as saying," We are so fond of ourselves, we think we are little gods of the earth- I have my doubts, that's all". Now we need to investigate what the unintended consequences of unguarded exponential growth in technology may bring. Yes, people are investigating these things but no one is really listening. Therefore maybe there needs to be bridges built to reveal these potential dark sides in more accessible ways. While some thinkers need to explore these ideas without restraint and unabridged there needs to be a few (artists, writers etc.) who attempt to make these prognostications more accessible.
The idea of the walk could not be more relevant in a time in which many concepts developed during postmodern times are being called into question. I found Nicolas Bouriard explored this idea as it may relate to the walk in his 2004 book "The Radicant". He is troubled by the propensities to appropriate multicultural motifs without bothering to translate those cultural products. How does this relate to a walk? To walk any given expanse is in of itself a sort of narrative. The expanse is defined and unfolds through the act of walking. A map on the other hand may serve as a metaphor for postmodern expression in a relative comparison. The map serves as only a symbol of that space. It may serve, in a sense, as a colonial construction allowing humans to “control” the space it represents. A map symbolizes human’s mastery of space. A map represents the space as little more than a motif. It is also a tool with an emphasis on “arrival” (end) and a dismissal of the potential benefit of the means of arrival. For Bouriard, postmodernism was about the destination as a static place emptied of meaning.

     Mountains
The mountain serves as an exquisite symbol for the west's impulse to control and dominate. It also served as an appropriate counter weight to the walk. The mountain can represent some of the ideas about authenticity, perception and illusion in image.
I remember in about 2003 reading a book by historian John Lukacs called The End of an Age. In this book Lukacs uses the mountain as a metaphor regarding how written history can be deceptive. He writes that the horizon line of a single mountain changes according to where one is positioned in relation to the mountain. This points out the instability of “truths” as all truths are manifest in how they are expressed and from what angle. Again I must refer to one of my favorite passages from Tomkin's bio on Duchamp, "Chance, random order, and game playing, those familiar tools of the contemporary artist, have invaded scientific methodology, and many of the familiar laws of science have become shaky as Duchamp liked to think they were. " In spite of Einstein," as the cultural historian O.B. Hardison Jr., put it, " it is fair to say that the dominant movement of twentieth-century science, especially mathematics, physics, and cosmology, has been away from certainties and toward masks and games." Early in his career Duchamp stopped taking science seriously. "We have to accept those so-called laws of science because it makes life more convenient, but that doesn't mean anything as far as validity is concerned. Maybe its all just an illusion. the word 'law' is against my principles. Science is so evidently a closed circuit, but every fifty years or so a new 'law' is discovered that changes everything."
This instability inherent in perceptions of the nature of mountains opens it to a variety of manipulations. It seems to be an appropriate symbol of western human's desire to appropriate the symbols of greatness for no other reason than the claim of greatness. To scale a height that few if any have achieved becomes a symbol of greatness while providing no inherent benefit. I couldn’t help but be reminded of an advertisement made in the late 70’s or early 80’s featuring tennis star Andre Agassi promoting a camera. At the end of the ad Agassi recites the slogan “Image is Everything”. I thought at the time it was an excellent slogan for a camera and it seemed to be especially appropriate for the time which seemed to be the time the postmodern project was coming into its own. It also seems relative to American's cult of trophys and awards. 
I remember growing up our family had a trophy case in our family room filled with golf, football, tennis and wrestling trophys. I also recall a golf tournament in which my brother participated. In his category the contestants were comprised of one opponent and himself. My brother lost to the opponent however there was a trophy allowed for first and second place. Technically he lost yet it was proudly displayed in our home trophy case.