New Spirits – Reading Deleuze in India
Consciousness exists only in connection with other consciousness
I love complexity, but sometimes also radical simplification—to gain a little clarity. For example, the history of ideas in the visual arts. In Europe, after the great migrations, art history can be sketched in broad strokes as a history of ideas: In medieval art, stories were told visually – mainly the stories of the Bible. Most people could not read, after all, certainly not Latin or Greek. The wood-panel painting of the altars is therefore a kind of comic, and…
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Today, after many years, perhaps for the first time I have arrived at the market here. There are so many economies here. Shopping – of course – following routines too… Efficiency – the most beautiful thing for the best price. Meeting people, looking out for acquaintances. What I never saw is the social. People know one another and play music for one another. Share coffee and quiche, stories, and sing together. How do you perceive a market, how do you…
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In Plato’s allegory of the cave, people sit before a wall on which the shadows of the real objects of the world can be seen. Since they have seen only shadows throughout their lives, they think these are reality. The philosopher’s task is to explain to people that they should turn around to see how the apparatus of light, which serves as a projection mechanism, produces an illusion. Once people had recognized this, they would free themselves from the chains…
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I am sitting in a café in France. Around me, lively chatter. This morning I was ‘on the internet.’ How different these experiences are. Now, pears are difficult to compare with apples, and yet we often do this. Working in an office and working from home, for example, are similar; seeking community on social networks or in a café, for example; reading in the library or researching on the internet. These are apples and pears, similar and yet categorically different.…
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In the Kena Upanischade it is described how the Self as such does not exist. Who sees in seeing, who hears in hearing? This cannot be answered. In the Christian tradition, a Self was constructed for this. I see, I hear, cogito ergo sum, imago ergo sum… What is that supposed to be, this cogito (I think), this imago (I imagine)? That I which establishes identity, bears responsibility, acts and interacts. It seems clear that thinking, when it is conscious…
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Cézanne drew and painted Mont St. Victoire more than eighty times. From different perspectives, admittedly, yet essentially simply the mountain. This mountain has been there for a very long time; it exists in another time. The fruit fly has one day to live, then it is all over. When we extend our temporal horizon, we think in generations. A few hundred years seems much to us; five thousand years ago our cultural history began. For a mountain, that is practically…
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Today I dreamed that I was drawing a boundary. I changed something in my life because I could no longer go along with it. My dream gave me an image for this that I could easily understand. Dreams have always occupied me. I dream a lot, colorfully, whole stories; I work through situations, dream of things I would like to do but that are impossible in so-called reality. A few years ago I was at a conference. There was a…
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When I was a teenager, I had lost my heart to someone who lived in Rome. I traveled to the eternal city, without money, without a plan; it was meant to be a surprise. That went somewhat wrong. We ate a pizza together; otherwise I had a lot of time to myself. On one of the hills, I spent many hours looking into the sky. I thought about Einstein. What else. Everything else seemed too banal. There, for the first…
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