self, continued

just 2 days ago i included the note on our multiple selves (3 posts down, thinking about thinking). and now i just ran into 2 works on aspects of our selves:

- Palindrome / Isabelle Carbonell (videopainting about the mirror of identity)

- Fragments of our Former Selves / baron and crow (text-image-collage)

this also made me think of the Pascal Mercier quote from August again: "If it is that way, that we only can live a small part of all that is in us - what happens with the rest?" (trains of thought).

~

thinking about thinking

with all the collaborative projects i am involved in, i ran into an article about thinking - and about seeing one's own mind as a collaboration. fascinating viewpoint.

here's a bit:

We use our minds to explore alternative worlds, an indispensable skill when it comes to planning for the future. We are drawn to horror and tragedy because they are creative representations of worst-case scenarios, situations that we really need to worry about, such as being attacked by strangers, betrayed by friends, experiencing the death of those we love, and so on. ...
Even seemingly perverse pleasures have meaning; they have been shaped by natural selection to solve problems that we might not be consciously aware of. Simple pleasures aren’t that simple after all. ..
Perhaps the good life doesn’t require constant warfare. Perhaps people are better off if their multiple selves establish a truce, respecting one another’s different strengths, and working together to satisfy shared goals.
- The Long and Short of It, Paul Bloom

will go now, to have a chat with my other selves.

~

trains of thought

in 4 days this time, i will be in London. it seems surreal, but here i am, penning down places on the tube map. which looks more or less like the sketched to-do list on my desk, with all its dots of things to do now, next, before, parallel, and then after.

and just then, between all those to-do-dots, i receive this mail, a request for a bio. not the usual one. "We ask you to be expressive of yourself as a writer/artist rather than just submitting a formal list of credits."

i sit. i think. i try to express myself as a writer/artist. and of course, end up wondering where i am actually headed to, exactly.

which makes me remember the novel i read a while ago - Pascal Mercier's "Nachtzug nach Lissabon" (Night train to Lisboa). it comes with this subversive little question:

"Wenn es so ist, daß wir nur einen kleinen Teil von dem leben können, was in uns ist - was geschieht mit dem Rest?"

"If it is that way, that we only can live a small part of all that is in us - what happens with the rest?"

i guess i will ponder on that in the L-train, and probably will get lost a bit, there, between Picadilly Circus, Chancery Lane and the Embankment (of Thoughts).

~