Locked Down, Looking Up (the book)

blurb.com/b/11949191-locked-down-looking-up

Locked Down, Looking Up (the exhibition) will be at Clamp gallery in New York, September 5 – November 2, 2024

"Every thing is really an event. Even a stone is a form of river, and a mountain is only a slow wave."

– Paul R. Fleischmann, The Experience of Impermanence

ostranenie or defamiliarization: “the artistic technique of presenting to audiences common things in an unfamiliar or strange way so they could gain new perspectives and see the world differently”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defamiliarization

“Who among us hasn’t noticed it—the strange doubling of forms and faces—the echo in the world? The waves in rock, the veins in leaves, the ghostly flowerings of frost. As though God, deep in his labors, had suddenly run out of ideas, or, perhaps, surprised by the loneliness of his creation, had set out, in the eleventh hour, to stitch the world together—the sound of wind to the sound of water, the ruffling of field to the ruffling of fur, the memories of the living to the hopes of the dead. A familiar universe. A sea of small recognitions. A vast brotherhood of thoughts and things. That is what he dreamed.

It was too late. It didn’t work. We misread intention as accident, correspondence as coincidence. Only rarely, wandering through this world, did we feel that someone was trying to tell us something.”

– Mark Slouka, Lost Lake: Stories

the splendor of recognition: the divine that is in everyone and everything re-encountering and remembering itself

Swami Shantananda, The Splendor of Recognition: An Exploration of the Pratyabhijna-hrdayam

“A color which is identical for all human beings and is completely cross-cultural is nevertheless only proper to humans. Now the proper cross-cultural comparison would be between humans and birds and fishes and insects, because each one of these groups has something that is proper to call color-vision, but that is so different from ours that it cannot be accounted for as just another view of the same thing out there. It is in fact a different world.

For example, birds happen to have a different dimension in color space. That is a little technical, but the idea is that their vision of color is as different as our perception would be to a creature that has only two dimensions. A third dimension is inconceivable for a flat creature.

Now birds, mind you, have another dimension of color. It is not just that they see more colors, it’s not that they see better colors. Their color space itself is unimaginable to us.

That is an example of another way of laying down a path for the stream of living things. This gives them a world which we share, but at the same time it cannot be asserted that theirs is the true one and ours is the false one, or vice versa. It is truly a multiverse.

– Julian Charriere and Julius von Bismarck, Some Pigeons Are More Equal Than Others

“Each spectral port, each human eye is shot through with a hole,

and everything we know goes in there, where it feeds a blaze.”

– Heather McHugh, “The Size of Spokane” (poem)

“The beauty of flowers is vague and sensual but Mitsch focuses attention on their veins and pulp… the soft forms are so layered and complex that they seem almost threatening. While Busse’s flowers are actually present as part of the image and work to highlight his muscularity, Mitsch’s are fleshy and tender because they are really only the ghosts of things that once existed and were discarded after they were used for her art. Whose worldview would better perpetuate the species?”

The New York Art World, “Dietmar Busse and Doris Mitsch,” April, 2004

”AMOR FATI.“ (LOVE YOUR FATE.)

– Epictetus (Greek philosopher)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epictetus

“Embrace the suck."

– U. S. Marines https://www.military.com/daily-news/opinions/2020/09/22/what-embrace-suck-means-military.html

The Four Tasks of Grief (paraphrased from William Worden):

1) Accept the reality of what happened

2) Feel the feelings

3) Create a new version of your life that includes the loss

4) Build a new relationship with what you lost

kintsugi: “golden joinery”

My zen parable: a guy walks into a shop, and says to the shopkeeper, “I want to buy a bowl, but only the inside.” I think I read or heard this in a lecture by the late Alan Watts, but can't find it now that I'm looking for the reference for you. I might have made it up, but that seems unlikely.

soft fascination: a state of mind between focused and meditative

worldhappiness.foundation/blog/happiness/how-to-enter-the-state-of-soft-fascination-and-ultimate-healing/

TED talk: go.ted.com/dorismitsch

Edmund Selous, Thought Transference (Or What?) In Birds

nature.com/articles/129263c0

Robert Dooling’s discoveries about millisecond changes in pitch in what sound like single notes of birdsong is described in the amazing book An Immense World by Ed Yong

“Bats can hear shapes.

Plants can eat light.

Bees can dance maps.

We can hold all these ideas at once

and feel both heavy and weightless

with the absurd beauty of it all.”

– Jarod K. Anderson, Field Guide to the Haunted Forest

For Anderson's other books and podcast "The Cryptonaturalist" see jarodkanderson.com/

yakisugi / shou sugi ban: Japanese wood preservation method of intentionally charring wood to create a textural surface

“I didn’t

know if I’d see snow again,

and you didn’t either, but maybe

you didn’t know you didn’t know...”

– Andrea Gibson, “The Snow Is Falling” (poem)

More information about the poet, their books, and their spoken-word performances are at andreagibson.org/

“Loss has already transfigured your life into an altar.”

– Jeff Foster, “You Will Lose Everything” (poem)

https://www.lifewithoutacentre.com/writings/you-will-lose-everything/

Upcoming Exhibition: LOCKED DOWN LOOKING UPSeptember 6 – November 2, 2024 CLAMP247 West 29th Street, First Floor, New York City Opening Reception: Friday, September 6, 6:00 – 8:00 pm

Upcoming Exhibition:

LOCKED DOWN LOOKING UP
September 6 – November 2, 2024

CLAMP
247 West 29th Street, First Floor, New York City

Opening Reception: Friday, September 6, 6:00 – 8:00 pm