resonance and reverberation

i have started a bit of heavy reading. reading that requires my full attention and often a re-read of a paragraph here and there. the book is the poetics of space by gaston bachelard initially recommended to me in november 2008 by the most influential mentor of my academic career. it only took me nine months to go about finding it at one of my local bookstore haunts {purchased 8.05.09 - twice sold tales} and another five months to move it to the top of my towering pile of books to read. i probably would have procrastinated a little longer {another three to four months} but it's been staring me down these past few weeks after the pile took a topple and all my neglected intentions to improve my mind and understanding of poetic imagination sulked at me any time i passed.

the final push to pick up the book came from an entirely different direction. in the process of an exam i took this week {which is something i will go into more at a later time}, i took a personality test which was fairly unsurprising and accurate for the most part. there was one moment however, where the psychologist* defined me as someone who is less driven toward specific goals and more invested in the things along the way. i know i'm losing a little specificity here that she had when she initially said it, but the point is essentially the same and in fact, articulates a major point of dissatisfaction i have with my life:

i have big dreams. i have big ambitions. i have big goals. and underlying it all is a certainty about the kind of life i will live, the role that creativity will have, and the scope to which my work will reach. and for some reason, despite all of this reason-defying confidence that patiently rides out each storm of fears and hits to the self-confidence, i never seem to get anywhere. i don't actually go in the direction i have so clearly envisioned for myself.

and so, since thursday i have been asking myself again and again and again how exactly have i held myself up? i have prayed to the part of me that has seemed to dig it's heels into the ground and keep me static in this place of relative risk-free comfort. i have thanked it. i have forgiven it. i have loved it.

but now i am done and i find myself believing that this is the year. for what? i'm not so sure yet, but i am saturated in questions of how to move forward and how to remain authentic to the part of me that delights in finishing another knitting, sewing, painting, bookbinding, blogging, {insert any/all of the other creative interests i pursuit}, project without diluting my energy so much i don't move on the big things i want to do.

so, how do i start to make work that matters, not just fun hobby-ish sorts of projects here and there?

skip back to tonight and i'm exhausted from a non-stop day beginning at 9am and day number six of work. all i can think of is the desire to take time for myself and all i can come up with is a bath. so, i scooped up committed by elizabeth gilbert {of the eat pray love fame}, which is the more predictable comfort/bath read and then also grabbed the poetics of space on my way to my tropical smelling bubbles and hot water.

and i started slugging. and slugging and slugging. and immediately the critical voice that always seems to have a lot to say whenever i read anything academic suddenly perched on my shoulder to scoff at my efforts {aside: this voice was a major problem in the 2nd half of my college career. it was absolutely certain i was in over my head and couldn't come up with meaningful interpretations, ect}.

gradually meaning started to sink into my bath-addled, overworked and under-slept brain and things started to stand out with stunning clarity and my mind would sit up and take notice and sense would suddenly come easily from the convoluted and contorted sentence structure.

the moment i really took notice was when he defined the ideas of resonance and reverberation. resonance, particularly as a response to something expressive or beautiful, is a term very familiar to me. i even have a label in my blog for posts that particularly address moments when i am so moved i feel as though i'm a tuning fork freshly struck. it's a familiar and sought after experience of my life. it's a moment of living on the edge, but it's most always in appreciation of someone else's work. here, he describes the step after the resonance:

the resonances are dispersed on the different planes of our life in the world, while the repercussions invite us to give greater depth to our own existence. in the resonance we hear the poem, in the reverberations we speak it, it is our own. the reverberations bring about a change of being. it is as though the poet's being were our being...this is an impression all impassioned poetry-lovers know well: the poem possess us entirely.

yes, yes and yes. i am no stranger to this phenomena of becoming more alive through art. and while bachelard uses the word poem, of course any means of creativity can bear the poetic image. so what next? what does one do with this heightened sense of aliveness?

needless to say, the reverberation, in spite of its derivative name, has a simple phenomenological nature in the domain of poetic imagination. for it involves bringing about a veritable awakening of poetic creation, even in the soul of the reader, through the reverberations of a single poetic image. by its novelty, a poetic image sets in motion the entire linguistic mechanism. the poetic image places us at the origin of the speaking being.

through this reverberation, but going immediately beyond all psychology or psychoanalysis, we feel a poetic power rising naively within us. after the original reverberation, we are able to experience resonances, sentimental repercussion, reminders of our past. but the image has touched the depths before it stirs the surface...it takes root in us. it has been given us by another, but we begin to have the impression that we could have created it, that we should have created it. it becomes a new being in our language, expressing us by making us what it expresses; in other words, it is at once a becoming of expression, and a becoming of our being. here expression creates being.

for the past decade or so i have been infatuated with the process of resonance without being able to necessarily articulate the reality of reverberating. by articulating the process in which i take in all that inspires me from sorbet colored sunsets to the symphony to thom yorke, and then, the crucial bit of transformation, i now feel as though i know where to direction my energy: the reverberation portion of this transformative process.

i'm still a little hazy on the questions that i want to ask myself beyond: what do i do with it beyond collecting these experiences of resonance/reverberation like baubles on a charm bracelet? how do i in turn, create work that will turn around and inspire me and others? how do i make art that is lasting, and not necessarily for a wider audience, but for me? not just something to pass off as yet another hand-made gift {not that i think they lack value, just not a value i want to build my life's work around}.

so, that's all my deep thoughts for tonight.



*no, nothing to be worried about here, folks, i promise. :)