Perfumed Collage

“leans into microphone” - Hello again dear friends.

National Park Service @NatlParkService

Me reappearing in people’s lives after inexplicably disappearing for several months…

Not yet going places and doing things but the impulse of spring is irresistible. Here’s a little jumble/collage of things I’m ruminating on — ideas around attention or connection or communication —looking at a few different modes of perception from reading to being.

I’m still hermit-like, thinking about the big brain change we are all about to experience. We can’t take it lightly, this new implementation of AI into all aspects of our screen world.

First we were sent into screens for expression and connection, our disembodied senses stimulated and expanded into the networked exterior nervous system. We haven’t recovered from the effects. We haven’t even listed them yet. I have an urgent call in to Marshall McLuhan, who warned us about all this back in the 1960’s. Decoding what he saw then is a big process, and very few have time anymore except for his amazing grandson, Andrew, who wears the mantle and reads the volumes and shares the methodologies that can help us find the switch that just might turn the sound down to a reasonable level so we can hear ourselves think. If we can remember what thinking is anymore. Anyway, Marshall isn’t taking on any more calls, like all the greats and the poets, he’s left his work as a vocabulary for us to shape into this particular future.

Okay, so once the screens all connected with us, Covid hit. Everything closed down and we were shut indoors for a couple of years, to become even more dependent on this exterior nervous system for our connections, contacts, work and attention.

Now? Life is opened up again but our brains are flipping, and flapping hard like a fresh-caught fish on the dock. Not meant for this air, hoping that a giant hand will toss us back into the water so we can breathe again.

Have you noticed it? It seems while we were out, our world as we knew it has …poof! … etherialized! Presto change-o! Time is glitching - can any of you dear readers believe that it is the end of March? Or, like me, are you still somewhere in an imagined late February, but with a little more light in the evening?

And though I call you “dear readers” I wonder if any of you have been able to read a book straight through, like we all used to, or is it chopped into bits like a Brion Gysin/ Burroughs’ cut up? If so, have we already been absorbed into the “third mind”? Dylan said it back in the 20th century, our senses have been stripped.

So here we are, with senses stripped - cue Mr. Tambourine Man -

Though I know that evening's empire has returned into sand
Vanished from my hand
Left me blindly here to stand, but still not sleeping…
My weariness amazes me, I'm branded on my feet
I have no one to meet
And the ancient empty street's too dead for dreaming

Sounds like a downer, but that’s just how it starts. The song continues and the Tambourine Man IS coming along - perhaps with some perfume? This month I took some old faves from my perfume cupboard to help bring Spring to mind - especially the Lilac! Tiare brings in even more of a floral touch, while the Tonka & Amande is lovely for a hint of warmth in the evening.

Some spring scents

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Full disclosure: Yes, I’ve been playing with the new toys. “Very well then, I contradict myself,” as Whitman said.

Here are a few fun images about Chaldean Oracles, Greek statues, and mystic teachings of the east.

Through Pasture or Pixels

Comparing contented cows and content—“One born of earth, one of digital air.” - ChatGPT

It’s a stretch to connect the two ideas but bear with me: Filled with content from the digital feed, we think we are contented, happy, but it is ultimately both artificial and superficial. Cans of Carnation’s condensed milk came with the slogan, "Milk from contented cows" and we know those cows were not at all content. So have we as a herd become such creatures, domesticated in screen-fed confinement?

Ehrmann Tapestry “Silky the Cow” - the pixels of cross-stitch

I asked ChatGPT - How can I compare contented cows and the content of AI-generated text? In the conversation, I asked it for a short poem. Chat said: Sure, here's a short poem that compares the concept of "contented cows" with the content of AI-generated text:

I wasn’t totally happy with that one, so asked for another try:

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As the alarms are sounding, this Alan Watts quote comes to mind: “When you get the message, hang up the phone.”

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So I turn away from the two-bit wit and elementary grade 3 reading level, and enter the rich world of long-sentenced layered language like this: “If it is not possible, therefore, to form any ideas equal to the dignity of the immediate progeny of the ineffable, i.e. of the first principles of things, how much less can our conceptions reach the principle of these principles, who is concealed in the superluminous darkness of occultly initiating silence.” Thomas Taylor, The Mystical Hymns of Orpheus

It was foretold in a little Wedgewood brooch of the Greek Gods

When I picked up this little brooch at the Books and Bling sale last November, I hadn’t yet connected with the remarkable Platonic study offerings from Prometheus Trust in the UK. If you are also intrigued, their new Essentials course begins in May.

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Back to cows, in 1920, Paul Goesch wrote, “Flaubert said that a work of art should be as straightforward as a cow, that is to say, the artist must act as if he is so stupid that he doesn't understand the challenge of beauty.”

This quote is from The Crystal Chain Letters: Architectural Fantasies by Bruno Taut and His Circle, a fascinating utopian correspondence between like-minded artists on architecture of the future.

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Till next time!

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