Friday, June 20, 2014

Crisis

"My heart is crammed in my cranium
And it still knows how to pound."
Frank Black

The Pangrammaticon is founded on the notion that we can be as articulate about our desires as we can be about our beliefs. For every statement or formulation of belief there is an equally articulate statement of desire. I have, lately, begun to doubt the correctness of this assumption.

Perhaps only our beliefs, our thoughts, are truly "articulate". Perhaps only our reasons constitute a system of discrete elements joined together in artful ways. Perhaps our passions are not structured, perhaps they have no grammar, but are, instead, a fluid force that carries itself into the meaning of our actions.

"Only by making this distinction—krinein in Greek—not between one being and another being but between being and beings," said Heidegger, "do we first enter the field of philosophical research. Only by taking this critical stance do we keep our own standing inside the field of philosophy." I have been assuming that there is only silence in regard to being, but that we can speak again when we speak of specific becomings. (There is also only silence with regard to becoming as such.)

Now, I am not so sure. When I consider the difference, even just the physiological difference, between "thinking" and "feeling", I wonder if I am right to imagine that my feelings are, or at least can be, as a articulate as my thoughts. I think in the head; I feel in the chest. (My mind is in my head, my heart is in my chest.) What I feel is not something that can be captured in a formula. I can be held back (the usual procedure) or it can be unleashed (usually with disastrous results). Our thoughts, our beliefs, perhaps provide a disciplined context, a structured frame, in which to experience the rush of emotion, the flow of feeling through us. But that structure is not of the feelings themselves. It is merely how feelings feel in the mind.

My articulateness, such as it is, may be entirely intellectual, even when ostensibly applied to my feelings. I pursue clarity in thinking by this means. Is that also what will produce intensity in feeling? What role should my emotions play in dealing with the fluid force of feeling? Is it like the role my concepts play in thinking?

No comments: