Post 24: Not-things

        As there isn't any relevant photo to accompany this post, I've decided to include a picture of the "holiday table" with "holiday train schedules" at Jefferson Station.

I never know exactly how to say this (somehow I’m constantly catching myself using extremely conclusive language [“never”] about things that are in endless flux [what I know]), but I want to say that my favorite thing about something is that it’s not something else. My favorite thing about a bagel is that it’s not a raspberry. My favorite thing about a tablecloth is that it’s not a book. Like most things that can be said, in addition to saying this I also want to ask what I mean by it. First, a few reasons that make up the “favorite” component of this. 

I love how overwhelmingly true these not-object-statements are. This point isn’t the central source of the deep intrigue I feel and associate with not-things, isn't the reason these statements surpass other statements that could be made about things, but it is (at least) a sort of introductory favorableness to them. (I’m realizing that while I call this post “not-things,” I’m really just talking about not-statements regarding things. Do these constitute true not-things? I want to leave this term open [not yet defined or occupied] because I feel there are other acts I could think about putting it to task for.) There’s something satisfying about the comedy of saying “A is not B.” Without the context of a sentence, A and B on their own stand completely separate from one another, which makes putting an “is not” between them almost feel like a redundancy to their unconnected identities. Though, that gets contradicted by the fact that I consider writing something down to be a way of calling something into question; that if words bring about clarity, it’s through their process of introducing doubt. So, if the obvious trueness to individual objects being individuals is doubly present in the structure of a not-statement, it simultaneously is resting on a ground that invites questioning. (What changes do questions bring to not-statements?)

One thing not being another--for instance, the statement "a blow dryer is not a t-shirt"--provides information about a blow dryer (and perhaps also about a t-shirt), but only a very particular amount of it--a very small particular amount. It says nothing concerning the blow dryer’s internal self (nothing about it), and everything (or, a little bit) about its role (it’s relation to other things). The minimalness of the statement rightfully seems to not intrude upon this object (a blow dryer), and accurately reflects our unknownness about it as an object in its own right. "A blow dryer is not a t-shirt" keeps itself outside of the unattainable and unexplainable territory of a blow dryer, placing me at an understandable distance from which to view it. (It's like: I experience it from its yard rather than from inside its own house.) (Do "is-statements" already begin to infringe upon an object's territory? It seems like this is what I'm saying here...)

There’s an aspect of looking at an object for me that feels similar to something like the demeanor of an “is not ____” statement. I want to include the word demeanor here specifically because the experience is not as direct as to say that looking at an object is a process of seeing what it’s not, but it's more like…the kind of uselessness to the utterance of a not-statement matches that of the unsettling unproductivity to looking at an object...

I like not-statements and also feel them to be a useful and true way of talking (writing) about objects, or anything whose first language is a visual one. I often find there’s a mismatch between the degree of presence of objects and of words, and this unequal weight is what brings difficulty to one aiming to represent the other. (Is it the difference in immediacies to encountering each one? The difference in knowabilities?) Something I’m thinking now is that the most obvious thing about objects and words is simply that they are not each other. That feels like their relationship: words are not objects and objects are not words. They relate in a way that’s like bumping into something in the dark--two things are there, but also not there. (In what ways are they there? In what ways are they not there?) At this moment, this feels to me to be a reason that speaks to why it is so satisfying to write a not-statement about an object: "A slice of bread is not a screwdriver" reflects the foreignness of language and objects getting mixed; language and objects are as much not each other as the two items being compared, yet, their relationship must be evoked in order to make this simple statement about two things.

I’ve sort of always been a believer in how fruitful “not-information" can be. It seems like an approach of digging around something rather than drilling into it. Which is not to say that positive (“is-”) statements always take on this kind of violence, but they do seem to...travel less distance that "is-nots." (Does writing that has to travel far[ther] better suit a description or discussion of objects? What is writing that travels? Object distance? Word distance?)