I believe this enquiry about seeking and making new language and linguistic tools is utterly vital, and I appreciate your waymarkers here.
I read "the dragonfly is the new Messiah" last year and loved it. It's invigorating to hear it back through your experience. Incredibly Fukuoka's solitude didn't occur to me once!
I've held this line as something of a compass in recent years: "What poets have seen and want to say cannot be said." (Rubem A Alves) - but yes, the word "felt" is conspicuously absent.
The more I undertake embodied practices and try to describe the experiences I have - first to myself, and then to anyone who will listen - the more I wonder, even though I love words, "is this even the tool to use?!" I don't know any more... But I'm having a good time trying, so I'll keep going, for now.
I'm glad Dougald linked your writing in his writing today. I enjoyed reading your words and for me, it led to another layer of processing regarding my own use of words.
The English language really is woefully inadequate. I've often pondered how words can be so important to me as a writer and poet, and yet, the more I realized that I have things to say that are very important, the less helpful words seemed. In the past I thought I was a very inadequate poet, because I didn't use all the skills of words, metaphor, and rhythm to come up with the most interesting ways to say things. But somehow, I am learning to make the bridge from what is inside, the part of me that is one with all, to the outside world of words. And in some magical way, the words of some of my poems say exactly what they need to! And so, I am also learning to believe in magic.
Wonderful! Found you via Dougald’s latest post. Thanks for your notes on Fukuoka’s book. Will absolutely pick that up. I wonder if it was written in Japanese, and if translation altered its language? In any case, I’ve long been fascinated by the ways that a tool of the right-brain, words, falls short to convey the ineffable and numinous. I embrace the struggle! Weirder is wonderful.
Thanks also for mentioning Amanda Baggs’ film. I’ve been listening The Telepathy Tapes podcast, which brings together many threads about human consciousness and wider reality. It’s absolutely connected with creativity.
Delighted you found your way here, Julie. Yes, the book was translated into English for western release - Would love to chat to someone who had read it in more than one language! Fukuoka’s sense of self is so strong in the writing, and I’ve pondered how much of that is the kind of ‘English speaking man’ I’m imagining as I read. Love the Telepathy Tapes, love the obvious (to you) connection to art - Yes!
At the Illich gathering last week, I found myself saying that, more and more, when I speak in a room full of people, I've come to trust the music beneath the words as more important than the words themselves. It's a strange thing to say, because on the surface, what I do can look a lot like what people who work in some corners of academia do. I'm often conjuring with the same names, tracing lines of thoughts, even making arguments. But I only trust arguments in a very limited way, and maybe the same is true for words.
When we had the reading group around I & Thou earlier in the year, I was tickled by a story I came across about Jorge Luis Borges reading and enjoying several books by Martin Buber, then discovering to his surprise that Buber was meant to be a philosopher. He hadn't realised, he said, because Buber wasn't making arguments, but invitations. I don't trust arguments, or not very much, because they seem to say "Refute me or submit!" Whereas invitations seem to say, "What if...?" Or simply to gesture towards another possibility, another way of looking at things, another way of being together.
Thank you Lydia, this is so rich and lovely.
I believe this enquiry about seeking and making new language and linguistic tools is utterly vital, and I appreciate your waymarkers here.
I read "the dragonfly is the new Messiah" last year and loved it. It's invigorating to hear it back through your experience. Incredibly Fukuoka's solitude didn't occur to me once!
I've held this line as something of a compass in recent years: "What poets have seen and want to say cannot be said." (Rubem A Alves) - but yes, the word "felt" is conspicuously absent.
The more I undertake embodied practices and try to describe the experiences I have - first to myself, and then to anyone who will listen - the more I wonder, even though I love words, "is this even the tool to use?!" I don't know any more... But I'm having a good time trying, so I'll keep going, for now.
Thanks again for shaping this 💚
I'm glad Dougald linked your writing in his writing today. I enjoyed reading your words and for me, it led to another layer of processing regarding my own use of words.
The English language really is woefully inadequate. I've often pondered how words can be so important to me as a writer and poet, and yet, the more I realized that I have things to say that are very important, the less helpful words seemed. In the past I thought I was a very inadequate poet, because I didn't use all the skills of words, metaphor, and rhythm to come up with the most interesting ways to say things. But somehow, I am learning to make the bridge from what is inside, the part of me that is one with all, to the outside world of words. And in some magical way, the words of some of my poems say exactly what they need to! And so, I am also learning to believe in magic.
Wonderful! Found you via Dougald’s latest post. Thanks for your notes on Fukuoka’s book. Will absolutely pick that up. I wonder if it was written in Japanese, and if translation altered its language? In any case, I’ve long been fascinated by the ways that a tool of the right-brain, words, falls short to convey the ineffable and numinous. I embrace the struggle! Weirder is wonderful.
Thanks also for mentioning Amanda Baggs’ film. I’ve been listening The Telepathy Tapes podcast, which brings together many threads about human consciousness and wider reality. It’s absolutely connected with creativity.
Delighted you found your way here, Julie. Yes, the book was translated into English for western release - Would love to chat to someone who had read it in more than one language! Fukuoka’s sense of self is so strong in the writing, and I’ve pondered how much of that is the kind of ‘English speaking man’ I’m imagining as I read. Love the Telepathy Tapes, love the obvious (to you) connection to art - Yes!
Brilliant. 💚
Excellent and galvanising thoughts for the day (and weeks) ahead. Thank you 🙏
At the Illich gathering last week, I found myself saying that, more and more, when I speak in a room full of people, I've come to trust the music beneath the words as more important than the words themselves. It's a strange thing to say, because on the surface, what I do can look a lot like what people who work in some corners of academia do. I'm often conjuring with the same names, tracing lines of thoughts, even making arguments. But I only trust arguments in a very limited way, and maybe the same is true for words.
When we had the reading group around I & Thou earlier in the year, I was tickled by a story I came across about Jorge Luis Borges reading and enjoying several books by Martin Buber, then discovering to his surprise that Buber was meant to be a philosopher. He hadn't realised, he said, because Buber wasn't making arguments, but invitations. I don't trust arguments, or not very much, because they seem to say "Refute me or submit!" Whereas invitations seem to say, "What if...?" Or simply to gesture towards another possibility, another way of looking at things, another way of being together.
Thank you Lydia—I read and reread that last paragraph like a prayer. ✨
Also, going to read that book. 🙏🫶