Transcript Slide 1

For Americans
In her volume of essays, Playing in the Dark, Miss Morrison lucidly pictures the insights that she has
gained, as an author and a reader in her native country: "It is as if I had been looking at a fishbowl - the
glide and flick of the golden scales, the green tip, the bolt of white careening back from the gills; the castles
at the bottom, surrounded by pebbles and tiny, intricate fronds of green; the barely disturbed water, the
flecks of waste and food, the tranquil bubbles travelling to the surface - and suddenly I saw the bowl, the
structure that transparently (and invisibly) permits the ordered life it contains to exist in the larger world."
In other words, she regards the …..presence in her country as a vital but unarticulated prerequisite for the
fulfilment of the American dream. Similarly, she sees whiteness in literature as having blackness as its
constant companion, the racial other as its shadow.
Andrew, after nine eleven we were asked to go and shop, on that day our leaders turned us from a nation of
citizens to a nation of consumers. Toni, will they yet become consumed?
Toni Morrison's way of addressing her reader has a compelling lustre, in a poetic direction.
When she was very young, her family's landlord set fire to the house in which they lived when her parents
fell behind with the rent. And while they were in it. Her family reacted to this absurd form of crudeness,
monumental crudeness, not with resignation but with laughter. This, says Toni Morrison, is how you can
distance yourself from the act and take your life back. You take your integrity back.
In great minds, gravity and humour are close neighbours. This is reflected in everything Toni Morrison
has written, and evidenced in her own summary: "My project rises from delight, not disappointment."
"Metaphor and simile are the
characteristic tropes of scientific
thought,
not formal validity of argument"
Rom Harré, Varieties of Realism, 1986
In the autumn of 1997 I ran
some workshops using art as a medium for change
for a company nationally and internationally
acclaimed for change facilitations that had hit a wall
to progress. During a team debrief day, having been
witness to just how people will hijack and
manipulate anything and everything for personal
ends I placed a picture on the wall to serve as a
warning to the future. The image was created by
letting a painting move along a light source -while
chasing its own tail beyond the threshold called the
speed of light. I printed into the image some text
which invited them to consider that the flame like
image might contain information about their future
in some important ways. The image and the
message went unnoticed. The programme fell apart.
For the last seven years I have been studying blends
of science, philosophy, art and social technologies
with as many sources and people as possible in
order to learn how to stop the destructive nature in
people, and help to create some of the conditions in
which constructive nature might emerge.
Memory: Becoming and Being Beyond the Speed of Light
"-scarce believe-" Einstein LO26728
05/26/01
Dear Learners,
Just who penned these lines?
"The very best constructions for organizational life imitate life itself. They continually seek new
ways to change themselves." Just who penned these lines? And, does it matter? " I know you
are distressed at the burning of foreign clothes as directed by Mr Gandhi... But consider that
by these bonfires material goods are being transmuted into dynamic moral forces for the
nation's awakening, just as material food in ourselves is transformed into vital and mental
forces for our work and for our progress. These foreign fabrics are the winding sheets of the
nation. When Lazarus resuscitates, when the nation rises from the dead, his shroud is to be
burned."
(Commentator on Gandhi's progress;-)(1921)
BUT
Gandhi urged the people not to substitute the burned cloths with Indian mill products; they
must LEARN to SPIN and WEAVE themselves. THEM<>SELVES. By example he, "-took to
spinning half an hour a day and expected ASSOCIATES to
do likeWISE." Spinning brings people SELF reliance and SELF respect, he said...(HE who HE)
"Daily spinning is a sacrament and will take the spinners mind Godward."
Gandhi.
Flames have been on my mind of late At;-) The little black lamb grows apace. The donkeys are
back in the sanctuary field. A young couple were married in the church next door this afternoon
under the seven hundred years old window. This evening the scent of flowers remains. In one
of the panels there is the representation of St Peter,
crucified upside down. The panels of stained glass that make up his figure count six or seven,
all but two were broken in the Reformation. At the top;-) his feet nailed to the planks, and do
you know what they have been painted to look like?
Flames At, like flames;-) Like flowers At flowers. Flames like scented flowers, At.
"Man hath weav'd a net, and this net throwne Upon the Heavens, and now they are his owne."
John Donne
Some psycho--logical folk think love's expensive? So love must be hard?...Mmmmm.
I feel it cheap too. Love is very cheap, so damned cheap it's free.
Why do people cage love At?
"Then folks echo a cheap new joy and a divine voice leaping from their veins:
how beautiful is candour."
Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass.
Love,
Andrew
Andrew Campbell
" - may all space and its four quarters be open unto thee for thy good
deeds."
Vedas.
St. Peter’s inverted Crucifixion C. 1299 , North Moreton
From The Book of Flames, Andrew Campbell. Forthcoming
Replying to LO26728 -Dear Organlearners,
Andrew Campbell writes:
>"The very best constructions for organizational life imitate life itself. They continually seek new ways to change themselves."
>Just who penned these lines? And, does it matter?
Greetings dear Andrew,
I do not know. Please enlighten me. I do not try to remember who wrote what and when any more. I do not even make notes or photo copies any more. I study
whatever writing I encounter carefully, trying to make sure where I correspond and where I differ. The parts on which I agree are not better than the parts on which I
differ.
The "agree" merely indicates a temporaly equilibrium which may very not exist in all future. The "differ" indicates "entropic forces" which I use to understand
myself as well as that person better. I use that "entropic forces" to let complementary "entropic fluxes" (quantitative information) flow into my own mind.
It has gotten so worse that I often do not even remember what I have written self in the past. So you could have quoted me for all which it matters. As for the present,
I agree with what you have quoted.
>Flames have been on my mind of late At;-)
Dear Andrew, this I have noticed from your recent writings and questioning.
I have learned from my own experiences as a child and comparing them with observing many other children (including my own children and grandchildren)
that when they experiment with fire, the spirit of discovery and thus humanity burns high. So I merely caution them with a family proverb "children who play with
fire may wet their beds in sleep."
>Flames At, like flames;-)
>Like flowers At flowers.
>Flames like scented flowers, At.
I had a couple of times the wonderful opportunity to look through an infrared video camera (IRVC) with a resolution of 0.1C (degrees centigrade). Looking at cactus
flowers opening at night (many species bud in the day, bloom at night and wilt the next morning) through a IRVC is a shocking experience. They look like
preciously formed flames. One cactus genus (very rare and very difficult to grow), namely Discocactus also produced the most exquisite fragrance possible. The
world seen through the eyes of a might moth is indeed a world glowing with fires. Technically, the IRVC is capable to pick up the increased metabolism and thus
associated dissipation of even a tiny flower coming into bloom. Sadly, rather than letting kids explore the beauty of nature through a IRVC, these instruments are
most secretly used by soldiers in making war whether children will be casualties or not.
>Some psycho--logical folk think love's expensive?
>So love must be hard?...Mmmmm.
>I feel it cheap too. Love is very cheap, so damned
>cheap it's free.
For me love-agape is truely free, but surely not damned cheap. The most precious way of giving love-agape is by creative collapses. For those who accumulate
wealth the giving up of wealth may seem to be cheap. And it indeed becomes cheap when done to impress people openly rather than benefit people without them
knowing what it cost.
>Why do people cage love At?
For the same reason they want to cage fire. Our modern technology is empowered by the caging of fire, whether it is nuclear fire, sun fire,
chemical fire or animal fire. Our technology is our slave, even though we conveniently forget how many souls have to become enslaved to have these slaves without
souls. Once a fire has been caged, it becomes the slave of one-to-one-mapping and thus efficiency. When the same is done to love-agape, it immerges into selfish
want (auto-eros).
>"Then folks echo a cheap new joy and
>a divine voice leaping from their veins:
>how beautiful is candour."
> Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass.
Walt knew his English. The word "cheap" like the words "cape", "keep" and "coop" come from the ancient proto Germanic word sounding perhaps like "ceap". It
meant "although obtained as if a bargain, it is an outcome worthy of intent staring." In my mother tongue Afrikaans we still ask "Kop jy dit?" Morphologically
translated, it is "head you it?" It means "do you understand it?" We also have another saying in my mother tongue "op die keper beskou" where this "keper" is the
noun formed from the verb "keep". The closest saying in English would be the phrase "observed at the edge" (of chaos?).
With care and best wishes
-At de Lange
In the early part of the summer of 2001 before, during
and after the Varela Dialogue on Leadership project
images were made I shared my work with Prof.
Michael Leyton at Rutgers University. To quote from
his publishers notes: Leyton shows that perception is
fundamentally the extraction of time from shape –
and according to his mentor Eleanor Rosch,
symmetry is the means by which shape is converted
into our memory where, memory recovers causal
history.
Among the artworks I shared was the image
preceding this one (right), out of which this was like a
resurrection from a creative collapse (de Lange).
In the middle of that fateful summer of 2001 Michael
wrote, “ Dear Andrew, Again I am totally knocked
out by the image you sent me, which feels to me like
some dark landscape that I am hovering over as if in
a dream – those night time flights that bombers had
to take in the war over foreign landscape that seemed
so beautiful and full of untold meaning.”
-- Michael.
Note:
www.dialogonleadership.org/VarelaArt/art.html
Presencing before the fact
Done by doing
Copyright Andrew Campbell 2001
.
"We have entered the third millennium through
a gate of fire."
Kofi Annan, Nobel Peace Laureate
Passion's Golden Purpled Grace
Entropic Garden No 1 May 19th 2001
' At, I gave them a vision of ten thousand angels and
they did not see it…'
' Andrew, I was wondering why you are so
quiet...
At de Lange '
July 2001
"All at once, without warning of any kind, he found himself wrapped around as
it were, by a flame-coloured cloud. For an instant he thought of fire--some
sudden conflagration in the great city. The next (instant) he knew that the light
was within himself.
Directly after there came upon him a sense of exultation, of immense
joyousness, accompanied or immediately followed by an intellectual
illumination quite impossible to describe. Into his brain streamed one
momentary lightning-flash of the - Splendour which ever since lightened his
life. Upon his heart fell one drop of the - Biss, leaving thenceforward for
always an after-taste of Heaven."
Richard Bucke
From Anthony Blake’s hosted Dialogue Digest
Found Object in Rheomode 12th January 2004
All Copyrights the Artist 2001-2004
“And did pity like a new born babe
Striding the blast, or heaven’s cherubim horsed
Upon the sightless couriers of the air
Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye
That tears shall drown the wind.”
Macbeth
photonic eye
nine eleven
purple grace
elegy and self portrait
before the fact
night time angel