While I constantly come up with new ideas and concepts — for papers, research projects, etc…I’m often woefully incapable of completing them. I’m hoping this dilemma doesn’t end up derailing one of my more recent (i.e. in the last year or two) notions — compiling a series of aphorisms devoted to the development of a “philosophy of slack”. Slack may seem like a concept inimical to the rigors of philosophizing; but the reality is, I suspect, more complex. Anyway, without further ado, here is my most recent attempt at an aphorism, on “Slack and Ideal Form”. There is an absurdist quality to this one, but not all of them employ the same tone. There will be, I suspect, more to follow…
“Slack and Ideal Form
Platonic ideals are anathema to slack. For in essence slack thrives in the interstitial zone of chaos, a realm possessed of sufficiently obdurate irreducibility as to strike fear into the heart of any neo-Platonic dimwit looking endlessly for form. Plato’s metaphysics emerges as a kind of bogus two-dimensionality – like bad-tripping in Flatland. Slack, in contrast, was born with 3D-goggles on and yet also knows that only by taking them off can he truly see. Form and function dissolve into a surrealist funk – the wobbly three-legged chair balanced precariously on the backs of taxidermied Chihuahua’s, who themselves act as further “legs”. Mysteries wrapped in enigmas those forms. Ideal or otherwise.
Slack prefers the liminal beyond the a priori, a point of pointlessness, an event unscripted, being as it is a high beyond the apex. Even the slacker can ride that wave. And yet “wave” is the utterance of pure form. No good. Then how about this…
Slack rides the wave/non-wave at a point beyond the apex that’s never reached – but then gets tired, and needs to take a nap – at this, Platonic lameness seeps into his unconscious; he dreams about angry, pointy triangles. But, luckily, wakes with the setting sun and a caravan of dervishes camped by the Pyramids.”
March 2, 2011 at 8:00 pm |
This poster’s for you.
http://www.despair.com/daretoslack.html
March 3, 2011 at 10:08 am |
Well, they’re in the shape of a V, that’s almost a triangle…
March 10, 2011 at 9:16 pm |
On saturdays my father would take me sailing. this drove me crazy but now find that i love the memory of those days. we would “build the boat,” as i would say, constructing the mast and hauling the sails from out of my dad’s car truck and strategically assemble the vessel into the pre-sail formation. the boat, named after me, would then be launched and move through the harbour with me holding the rudder as my father, cigarette clenched between his teeth, would deftly raise the white early morning sun emblazoned sheets. with the seawall behind us, we would spend either a windless or non windless morning adrift on Lake Erie. what does this have to do with “slack?” well everything. in order for the boat to move, slack in the sails was necessary. my job was to secure the slack of the sails to the boom … but more importantly, the level of slackness in the sail was essential for the boat to catch the wind; to move through the water; to maintain a course even though most days we had no idea where were were going; slack is a release of tightness; a letting go of reticence; of rigidity; of the inhale so the boat could turnabout, change direction, move with wind water desire. slack does not get tired; it is always at work unnoticed, as it is with all things that are unappreciated.
March 10, 2011 at 10:18 pm |
@SM: That was poignant, poetic and…nautical. And sails are triangles. I’m going to pretend that synchronicity isn’t relevant, even though it is.