Things and not-things

I was thinking about–or, I actually made a note to think about–the fact that a lot of the things I’m currently making are planned out, plotted out, started in a notebook. I work on them flatly, small-ly, without the dimensionality that they end up with. (A dimensionality I often feel unsure about...)

  “ It was the first poem I had experienced not just as verbal or intellectual construct, or even as music, but somehow as a material object, a kind of sculpture. ” 1

It occurred to me that to say “some objects are quiet” (Post 1) is to imply that those objects do actually exist on a spectrum of volume, within a realm of sounds--taking place at some point on a line that runs from “silent” to “impossibly loud.” (How do you know when/whether or not to include “silent” on a volume spectrum?)

I’ve been thinking of things like street signs as interruptions . The “t hings like” includes things that advertise, display, convey a specific meaning--things that speak in the name of explicating or describing. I find that these all seem to exist as interruptions to the self-evidence that the surrounding world sits in . These interferences feel like a change in tone. I could definitely say that this has to do with the words on signs (often these are present) being a change in feel from the un-worded world that contrastingly resists clarification, but aside from full on words (maybe words are the most extreme version of this phenomenon), anything that acts as an indication of something else--a red stoplight, black and yellow striped tape-- behaves like a declarative statement, whereas everything these things are not seems to be present as a question (perhaps just a subtle question, or only barely a question--faintly articulated). The intervening attitude of street signs and other i...

There are a lot of things that sort of look like stripes. These sort-of stripes are all series of things next to each other. Things next to each other may be my favorite relationship for things to be in--my favorite setup for things to interact (with)in. The individual things that make up this kind of scenario always appear aloof to one other, though they have an undeniable relationship-- but, the relationship exists only because of something as seemingly inconsequential as their proximities. For me, this leads to a feeling of something accidental or unintentional about these things being side by side. Surely if you really wanted two things to interact with each other, you’d put them in a closer relationship than just being next to each other. Next-to-each-other has this offhandedness--it doesn’t matter, no one’s trying that hard, a group picture where everyone has their hands at their sides. A stripe is kind of interesting as an entity (I wouldn't call it an object, so I'm st...