Mystery, language, silence, music, reading with coffee

Much of this here i read before.

Paul Goodman is new to me here.

I will read his book as soon as i get it.

What R.Solnit tells us on art and criticism,

this does not go just for art.

It goes for all "good" interaction between inter-dependent

human beings.

There is no reason at all

to elevate art

above communion.

And we are all a mystery

and part of a mystery:

as for me, however much

i  project and imagine possible 

worlds and spheres  i always leave an open end,

i leave an opening for surprise and astonishment and changes

of which i do not know at all what they will bring.

So, here I am, i feel unwilling just to post

well done or beautiful formulas

and art,

all must also be personal,

digested and incorporated,

and in this a way approaching

my truth, there are many truths,

and my life

and even

my needs and desire.

All appears simple

and all slips through the fingers

of one hand.

All is mystery.

And no man or woman is an island.

Spirals are open both ways,

in and out,

and when we can see:

they move,

they dance.

And this gives me a smile,

the loop of eternity doesn't.

                                                John Vernon Lord

Rebecca Solnit,Woolf’s Darkness: Embracing the Inexplicable

"There is a kind of counter-criticism that seeks to expand the work of art, by connecting it, opening up its meanings, inviting in the possibilities. A great work of criticism can liberate a work of art, to be seen fully, to remain alive, to engage in a conversation that will not ever end but will instead keep feeding the imagination. Not against interpretation, but against confinement, against the killing of the spirit. Such criticism is itself great art. This is a kind of criticism that does not pit the critic against the text, does not seek authority. It seeks instead to travel with the work and its ideas, to invite it to blossom and invite others into a conversation that might have previously seemed impenetrable, to draw out relationships that might have been unseen and open doors that might have been locked. This is a kind of criticism that respects the essential mystery of a work of art, which is in part its beauty and its pleasure, both of which are irreducible and subjective. The worst criticism seeks to have the last word and leave the rest of us in silence; the best opens up an exchange that need never end."


"Mystery is the capacity of something to keep becoming, to go beyond, to be uncircumscribable, to contain more."

                                       pic: You are stardust

Robin Wall Kimmerer, Gathering Moss
Gathering Moss

"In indigenous ways of knowing, all beings are recognized as non-human persons, and all have their own names. It is a sign of respect to call a being by its name, and a sign of disrespect to ignore it. Words and names are the ways we humans build relationships, not only with each other, but also with plants.

[…]

Intimate connection allows recognition in an all-too-often anonymous world… Intimacy gives us a different way of seeing."

A.Huxley, The rest is silence

"From pure sensation to the intuition of beauty, from pleasure and pain to love and the mystical ecstasy and death — all the things that are fundamental, all the things that, to the human spirit, are most profoundly significant, can only be experienced, not expressed. The rest is always and everywhere silence.

After silence that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music."

Tove Jansson

Paul Goodman, Speaking and Silence, A Defence of Poetry

"Not speaking and speaking are both human ways of being in the world, and there are kinds and grades of each. There is the dumb silence of slumber or apathy; the sober silence that goes with a solemn animal face; the fertile silence of awareness, pasturing the soul, whence emerge new thoughts; the alive silence of alert perception, ready to say, “This… this…”; the musical silence that accompanies absorbed activity; the silence of listening to another speak, catching the drift and helping him be clear; the noisy silence of resentment and self-recrimination, loud and subvocal speech but sullen to say it; baffled silence; the silence of peaceful accord with other persons or communion with the cosmos."

Paul Goodman, soundcloud

note: brainpickings.org is really a place to find treasure. Thank you.