Castles of Smoke
"Man is most nearly himself
when he achieves the seriousness
of a child at play.” -- Heraclitus
I started growing buildings when I was in junior high. It's what started me smoking. I've never liked smoking, really, and don't need the nicotine to calm down, but I keep it up as a sort of nostalgia for those early castles I exhaled. They still have a purity I continually strive for, something that is perhaps only visible in the eyes of innocence. Those early castles are what inspired the whole field we now know as Grown Engineering.
In elementary school I began experimenting with growing buildings. I did it with milk inside of water. One morning, while eating my breakfast cereal, for no real reason, I spit a little bit of milk into the fish bowl on the table. I was attracted by how complex a structure the milk made in that little environment of semi-balanced gravity. Every arabesque wing and elaborate strut and the curvilinear column of the main trunk of the spit-milk revealed the amount of energy it carried as far as it did within the turbulence and drag of the water. From my deviant lips, beauty played itself within three liquid dimensions.
I kept it up, turning the fish bowl into a murky mess. Each spit of milk would shoot into the tranquil clear water with an energy. Then, it would slow into a calm stasis, become semi-stable as a structure and then begin to drift and dissipate, fading into a total graying of the water. The energy of the milk created ripples and turbulence that undid the castles. And, of course, the gold fish didn't help any. I felt his little movements destroyed things too quickly. I knew I couldn't continue to experiment with him there, so I asked my mother it I could flush him down the toilet and out to the ocean. She said, no, because he'd die in the treatment plant before making it out to sea. So, I poured him into a coffee cup and gave him a bit of clean water and a Cherrio to chew. Then I filled his bowl with new, clear water from the tap and got down to further experimenting. I refused to go to school that day, but went the next and brought my bowl to show all the kids.
As it turned out, no one understood the significance of my discovery. Some of them said, "Cool" but then just wanted to try spitting into the water from greater and greater distances, but most just said, "That's gross."
I eventually got a big empty fish tank of my own for engineering purposes.
That's where smoke castles came from. Water was a good environment to work in at first, but it was ultimately just too wet. Besides, it required changing water all the time just to see the structures. Smoke was and still is a better balance of exhalation forces, environmental turbulences, soft-gravity and spontaneity. All that, and it's more conducive to contemplation because it's dry and you can lean back in a comfortable chair.
To do anything creative, a person can't have too much control. Mastery is not the same as total control. Some parts you need to do with great skill, and this actually makes it more possible to open up larger areas to play. Then creation can happen. But, the artist's job, ultimately, is to be a passionate witness, to see what was previously not just invisible but unseeable. That's how something is made from nothing, which is where the ancient origin for the poetry can be found: “To do; to bring into form from nothing.” The best artists are those who can watch the most honestly, the ones who can see what even they can't admit is imaginable. The artist is the one who can't look away from even his own death, and in that way transforms it into play at each moment of life.
And, perhaps for this reason, the first castle of smoke I made is still the finest. Perhaps this is because I unwillingly compare all the subsequent to it--or because I have reimagined it in infinitely greater degrees of fantastic abstraction and theory ever since first noticing it churning in the air beyond my exhalation. Regardless, it has taken on the pathetic but grace-filled elements of a romantic quest. No matter how I resist it, I know I hope to see it again. To examine its mystery with the tools of analysis I have developed in the decades of reflection since then. I hope to retouch the naïve with the hands of a master. Like some sort of arrogant Utopian in the Industrial Revolution, I harbor the hubristic feeling that that castle can save us all.
The monkeyfooted punk in me knows there's nothing to save us from, but the only thing more complex than turbulence is the workings of one's motivations, so don't crucify me for my contradictions, okay?
by jerry gordon
when he achieves the seriousness
of a child at play.” -- Heraclitus
I started growing buildings when I was in junior high. It's what started me smoking. I've never liked smoking, really, and don't need the nicotine to calm down, but I keep it up as a sort of nostalgia for those early castles I exhaled. They still have a purity I continually strive for, something that is perhaps only visible in the eyes of innocence. Those early castles are what inspired the whole field we now know as Grown Engineering.
In elementary school I began experimenting with growing buildings. I did it with milk inside of water. One morning, while eating my breakfast cereal, for no real reason, I spit a little bit of milk into the fish bowl on the table. I was attracted by how complex a structure the milk made in that little environment of semi-balanced gravity. Every arabesque wing and elaborate strut and the curvilinear column of the main trunk of the spit-milk revealed the amount of energy it carried as far as it did within the turbulence and drag of the water. From my deviant lips, beauty played itself within three liquid dimensions.
I kept it up, turning the fish bowl into a murky mess. Each spit of milk would shoot into the tranquil clear water with an energy. Then, it would slow into a calm stasis, become semi-stable as a structure and then begin to drift and dissipate, fading into a total graying of the water. The energy of the milk created ripples and turbulence that undid the castles. And, of course, the gold fish didn't help any. I felt his little movements destroyed things too quickly. I knew I couldn't continue to experiment with him there, so I asked my mother it I could flush him down the toilet and out to the ocean. She said, no, because he'd die in the treatment plant before making it out to sea. So, I poured him into a coffee cup and gave him a bit of clean water and a Cherrio to chew. Then I filled his bowl with new, clear water from the tap and got down to further experimenting. I refused to go to school that day, but went the next and brought my bowl to show all the kids.
As it turned out, no one understood the significance of my discovery. Some of them said, "Cool" but then just wanted to try spitting into the water from greater and greater distances, but most just said, "That's gross."
I eventually got a big empty fish tank of my own for engineering purposes.
That's where smoke castles came from. Water was a good environment to work in at first, but it was ultimately just too wet. Besides, it required changing water all the time just to see the structures. Smoke was and still is a better balance of exhalation forces, environmental turbulences, soft-gravity and spontaneity. All that, and it's more conducive to contemplation because it's dry and you can lean back in a comfortable chair.
To do anything creative, a person can't have too much control. Mastery is not the same as total control. Some parts you need to do with great skill, and this actually makes it more possible to open up larger areas to play. Then creation can happen. But, the artist's job, ultimately, is to be a passionate witness, to see what was previously not just invisible but unseeable. That's how something is made from nothing, which is where the ancient origin for the poetry can be found: “To do; to bring into form from nothing.” The best artists are those who can watch the most honestly, the ones who can see what even they can't admit is imaginable. The artist is the one who can't look away from even his own death, and in that way transforms it into play at each moment of life.
And, perhaps for this reason, the first castle of smoke I made is still the finest. Perhaps this is because I unwillingly compare all the subsequent to it--or because I have reimagined it in infinitely greater degrees of fantastic abstraction and theory ever since first noticing it churning in the air beyond my exhalation. Regardless, it has taken on the pathetic but grace-filled elements of a romantic quest. No matter how I resist it, I know I hope to see it again. To examine its mystery with the tools of analysis I have developed in the decades of reflection since then. I hope to retouch the naïve with the hands of a master. Like some sort of arrogant Utopian in the Industrial Revolution, I harbor the hubristic feeling that that castle can save us all.
The monkeyfooted punk in me knows there's nothing to save us from, but the only thing more complex than turbulence is the workings of one's motivations, so don't crucify me for my contradictions, okay?
by jerry gordon
posted by jerry at 7:31 PM
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