A Rainey Tuesday

Bryn who helped me work at the Venture yesterday may have Covid so I'm limiting my contacts and its raining so I can't work at the playground anyway.  I miss my dog today as he would make me go for a walk and I would feel better for it.

I always start my blog post by reading and editing the last post. It's like the bit at the start of box sets that quickly fill you in on the last episode. This is good because I tend to sleep through more and more telly unless its Money Heist which has kept me completely gripped. 

I have clearly had a bit of a Deleuzian phase as my writing is filled with a strange and dislocating passion that even the odd well placed self deprecatory joke does little to counter.  I must admit when reading back in the clear light of distance chunks of the writing don't sound like me which is because there is a development.  

Yesterday Bryn asked me about my PhD and Patrick was listening and I tried to explain the artists residence and new materialism and the idea of a life  from Deleuze that was in the world, or the plane of absolute immanance.  He asked me if this was phenomenology and I explained that although I find a lot in Heidegger and his Phenomenology that seems to fit  there is in this thinking something human (often a white man) at the center of experiencing the world.  I tried to explain about flat ontologies but then heard Maggie's voice from my transition Viva saying that all I did was keep saying flat ontology.  I diverted the conversation with a joke about the wide mouth frog that eats only nuts and flies.  There is a connection but its a long joke I may tell it in my field notes.  The punchline paraphrased could come from my Viva

Steve - Hello I'm a new materialist and I eat flat ontologies

Maggie - I am clever and I  eat naive new materialist for breakfast. 

Steve - Ohhh you don't see many of those about nowadays do you ?   

In a way though things are moving and it has to be in some sort of line for me.  I have had to build something that is of significance that has taken time and is real as essentially this is my artists way to build and make something that is real and functions on many levels.  As I actually step across the threshold into my final year there is a real progression towards finding out where I am and where I sit in the mesh-work of relations between world - thing- thought .  In using this language of separation I recognise that the problems we tackle are contained within the language we use and that is why the things/stuff/materilities/objects/events/ in and of themselves beyond text are rising to the challenge.