Fish In the Afternoon

“All rules for study are summed up only in this one: learn in order to create.”

Friedrich Schelling, On University Studies

Philosophy is a conceptual playground, the choreography of the imagination.

We enter philosophy through stepping into our concepts, opening the door of appearance to enter the abode of mystery. Concepts are labyrinths – twisting, turning, winding halls built from signifiers and practices of signification, fluxing pathways of discovery, inference, and application. There is no ‘truth’ – ‘truth’ is a sign at the entrance to a maze. There is no ‘self’ – the ‘self’ is an opening into a dense forest. There is no ‘wisdom’ – ‘wisdom’ is an uncharted road into the countryside. Each is a trail leading into a wilderness of rituals and rhythms of making, forming, and creating – ‘truth’ becoming truth-making, the ‘self’ becoming self-formation, and ‘wisdom’ becoming creative virtue. The name attached to a concept is only a marker orienting us to an unfinished puzzle, the title at the beginning of a poem.

But why do we need philosophy? Why do we need concepts? Why need a why? Why need a what? Because of who and when and where. Because being generates being-with and being-here and being-as. Being begets becoming, which begets being. To-be, has-been, will-be – being bears the beauty of the in-between. Philosophy is the art of creatively shaping the relationship between ourselves and the world, forming new worlds and new selves in the process.

There is no correct technique in philosophy, no methodology through which concepts must be investigated. Philosophy is polyrhythm, syncopation, and improvisation, a call-and-response stretching across history. Philosophy doesn’t aim at stasis, but at flow, groove, and experimentation, expression melding into praxis and friendship blending with co-creation. Philosophy is actioned through writing, speaking, gesturing, signaling, painting, singing, dancing, storying, imaging, drumming, gathering, gardening, growing, tending, sweating, breathing, walking, running, climbing, jumping, loving, fucking, cuddling, rolling, slipping, sleeping, waking, smoking, drinking, eating, cooking, comforting, healing, praying, affirming, denying, rebuking, joining, defending, rebelling, collaborating, playing… Philosophy is a never-ending doing, a doing with oneself, with others, and the world.

The dialectic is not an argument. It is not thought in process, the march of Spirit, or the mind in contemplation. The dialectic is an action, a motion, a performance, an art. The dialectic is the dance of enminded matter, a one-step two-step of mutual shaping through intending and attending, through imaginative melody and echolalic riffing. Coltrane was deeper in the dialectic than Socrates ever was, not aiming at aporia but at variation and exploration, progressing through ii-V-I by the light of augmented triads, arriving again at a transformed beginning. Knowledge is not found in the realm of the forms, but in the ballet of their shadows, the good of the world manifesting through adventure and care. The Demiurge is dead and Sophia arrives, beckoning from the future. Anarchy awaits – a polydoxy of ways-of-being and ways-of-loving and ways-of-creating inhabiting the holiness of creation. Rip down the academy and spill paint on the steps. Philosophy is a wandering that never arrives but instead spirals through the beauty of the cosmos.

“A concept is a brick. It can be used to build a courthouse of reason. Or it can be thrown through the window.”

Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus

Image: After the Rain 5 by Charles Gibbons (2010)