Keeping the Substance
Embodiment as the key to inspiration.
The style has always changed, but the substance hasn’t. At least I don’t think so. I have my seasons for writing, and each season is built on more and more and more experience and knowledge. But I don’t change the substance, the essence. And the essence is probing, questioning, and understanding myself as a product, a phenomenon of life and society and culture.
The question has always been: How did I come to be this way?
And I arrive at this answer in a thousand ways; some of those ways haven’t carried on to my later writing, and other ways return over and over again. I think I’ll always thank Roland Barthes and Friedrich Nietzsche for the few ways that do return, because it’s been an unlimited source of prodding and probing at the how of an individual life.
The known knowns. The outer form that informs the inner, but can only exist because of the inner. The supposed duality of inside-out and outside-in, but is there a third method of influence? The unknown variable that changes outside and inside the same time? My guess is the concept of embodiment. Embodiment can’t work as a style, nor can it hide expression from the inside.
Pierre Bourdieu, a 20th century sociologist, considered this concept as the Habitus: “Embodied history, internalized as second nature and so forgotten as history.” Living the que-sera-sera. Embodiment is the anti-style, as it’s ignorant to the fact that it is in fact style. It is a no-mind living, simply how one moves that is determined as product/phenomena by anthropologists in one hundred years.
There is no argument for that which is Embodied, it simply is, like a thousand-year-old tree off the interstate; it is uncut simply because the interstate did not need to be where the tree resides. If the tree is consciously respected and avoided, it is a Phenomenon of human action, and thus a Style.
To clarify, I’ve been describing the outside-in approach, and let me provide an example of the inside-out Styling, which feigns ignorance of Style but truly is. It’s the converted Atheist, who by considering the value of a religion and their current lack thereof, internalizes God and soon enough becomes outwardly expressive of it. It is possible to be unintentional in the Other’s recognition of one’s changing internal styling, though I’d guess that in an attention-starved world as ours, we’re likely to make it intentional.
The outside-in does not have to change its substance to express something very different; the inside-out will change its substance and soon enough its different expression. While I can’t argue for the truth of this next example, consider the Myth of Heath Ledger, a famous recent example of people’s conception of method acting. That an actor can be so internally tricked by their temporary outward expression presents a culture that believes that one can truly change themselves by first presenting themselves as something they’re not.
Think about the power poses, likely inspired by the most misinterpreted process in Neuro-Linguistic Programming, where the hope is that outer posture will eventually influence “inner posture”, or ambient confidence. If you hold a superhero pose for long enough, you might eventually become one. “Fake it ’til you make it.”
But when considering about Embodiment, think about the first line of the Dao De Jing: “A dao that may be spoken is not the enduring Dao. A name that may be named is not an enduring name.”
There is a magical point in time of practice that it becomes habit, and this is a good first step to Embodiment, but it’s not yet the last step. The last step of Embodied practice is that it’s not a habit but just is. Like a gathering of wind in your face, it just happens without a second thought. Per the Dao De Jing: “The achievements complete, it makes no claim to them. Because it make no claim to them, they never leave it.”
The Habitus is a never-ending source of inspiration because like Nature, it captures our attention without any intent to do so. It is effortlessness in form, and many people work very hard to look effortless. I think we are fascinated by the talents of others because they appear so close to Embodiment. The artist or musician in skilled creation looks effortless, but behind the scenes we understand how much work was put into effortless creation.
But for the averagely-talented person, there is an easier thing to Embody, though easy will be in the eye of the beholder: Love. It’s a talent that almost everyone in the world has the capacity to develop without formal or material training. And it comes in so many different forms that one nation’s Love may be misunderstood by another nation’s culture.
I don’t know if I’ve personally seen it, maybe I have, but I’ve certainly imagined it: The Embodied love of people for one another. Whether that’s in friendship or in intimate romance, I can only picture this kind of Love as if I were watching a movie, because it feels so fantastical to me, yet so achievable as well.
I picture a couple that does not claim the other, yet they appreciate each other’s company. Their Love is wordless, it is simply practiced. They acknowledge that their Love comes with the complementary duality of pleasure and pain, happiness and sadness, joy and annoyance. Harmony and dissonance that create the whole. While I imagine this picture as a movie, their Love is not seen or heard, but felt, like the energy of an actor that overshadows everyone else on the screen.
Their relationship is a forgotten history, internalized and expressed as though it is just is. It does not need to remind itself, because the why is gone and it needs no reasoning.
Well, I can only reiterate what has been said here about Love, because being is a snake eating itself. It is a downward and upward spiral that will always flow back into itself. Our societal curse is that we believe everything has to end.
What can be the endless source of inspiration? I was thinking about an emotional wave; in a sinusoidal rhythm my emotions move up and down, influenced by others but also coming about internally like a ticking clock. There are times where I can’t find the source of depression, and other times it is so concrete that I can reassure myself that I’ll get over it. And there are those happy days that just felt like it was supposed to be, and other days where I am happy because of my own satisfaction and accomplishments.
But in the emotional wave, there is an infinity of perspective. In the spectrum between happiness and sadness, and all the emotions in between, I can view the same tree from these one thousand angles. Someone said this before: When one person is tasked with taking a picture of a flower, some people just take the picture and submit it. But the person taking advantage of their emotional wave will take a picture, but then see that the sun is setting, and take another picture with the sunset. Then the sun has passed through the horizon, and the stars come out. The photographer takes another picture. The moon arrives and another picture. And then…. And then…. Another picture.
We have not seen the end of creativity, because even after a millennia, the painted apple hasn’t yet been fully expressed. The substance does not change, but the style marches on, re-discovering beauty in what always was.
Best,
Dom