resultant haptic interface a sensory/memorial thrift store. big chaotic hands reaching out and in describing and becoming something a hand never thought it could be. love, stephanie
dear stephanie, i think of thrift stores as museums. and perhaps all museums are memorials of a sort. thrift stores certainly are, as they are often where the things of the dead show up. things in thrift stores are sticky. in his ugly duckling presse book the theory of everything (abridged), ben luzzatto writes: “These clouds have indistinct boundaries that are made to look distinct because we are so far away from them. This is the way language holds the world. All definitions and distinctions between things would be blurry if you could get close enough to them, even the ones that look hardened and fixed.” in describing we recognize. in describing we recognize we cannot describe. we can only approach, or make another attempt, or try to further describe the description. 222 |
we approximate. is description distribution? so to redistribute (wealth or whatever else) would be to redescribe? love, jen
i have had the distinct feeling of flailing my thought hands around in the dark of my mind looking to find out how to say. and as i say i realize. distribution YES. i like this cloud idea that it is proximity which makes things diffuse. something i have felt in terms of intimacy. the blurriness of those closest to us. i enjoy this blurry feeling and think it is somehow so generous. this allowing those you know and love to be strange and strangers but i think it gets tricky as there is so much pressure to show love via understanding or knowledge. do we put this same pressure on language?? sometimes. i have found myself playing both sides—using an inappropriate word simply for humor or musical resonance (etc.) and expecting its acceptance but also being a bit of a stickler at other times and not wanting definitions to shift (nonplussed—don’t give in to the pressure!). we are making minute re-descriptions with every context we throw a word into and we are also re-describing if the initial description is the neurological/sensorial way we interface with the universe. we then redescribe when employing language to describe.