October 10, 2003
if i'm writing about art, i'm not thinking about the bad things: responding to movements
So a lot of my ideas stem directly from my own observations. I constantly play around with things. It's probably just as much a nervous habit than anything else. I'll pick things up and throw them in the air to see how they react. I push things around on an unusual axis to see where their balancing point is. I often come across things I like. I write them down and move on, but to return to them another day. I'm responding intuitively to most of these. I don't know why something in particular catches my eye, but I go with it. It's taken a while just to start figuring out how that process works for me. Initially, I know they just feel right. Most of the movements I enjoy, I like to call "conservative movements." I refer to them this way because they conserve the motion and energy of the movement and usually have soft endings and beginnings. Some common place examples are, for one, an experienced raver doing some of the interesting spinnings with glow-sticks, and another, in some cases, ballroom dancing, particularly the waltz. Those are usually some sort of continuous motions. Another type I've noticed is shorter and has harder starts and stops. These types seem to focus more on balance and weight shifts. A nice one of this type is to take a long board and set one end on the ground, holding the other in your hands. You can then throw your end of the board up to flop the board over. For this, I'm not really interested in the end, the crash part. I'm responding to the control of the throw and the state of limbo when the board is no longer under you control and it might flop over or fall back towards you. I like the idea of extending this limbo as long as possible. To do that simply takes practice and making yourself aware of how the throwing motion feels compared with the results. In theory, in a perfect environment, you could get good enough to throw it just right, to make it balance on end. At that moment, I believe you have kinesthetic enlightenment. It's bound to whack me over the head one of these days.
