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All posts for the month March, 2013

Turn your weakness into a strength.
I used to tell my students that whatever made their work imperfect had to be turned around to become part of their message, i.e., video was only the poor parent of film until… its raw quality could be perceived as the 60’s rallying slogans, ¡Si se puede!/Yes we can! – Do it your way!
This is not unrelated to Grotowski’s Towards a Poor Theater or the techniques used by Third World Cinema as they thumb(ed) their nose to Hollywood’s status quo.
Here though the principle is applied in a completely private way, and is imperceptible.

Everything depends on you.
I have mentioned this earlier, but without realizing this “within your bones,” there is no way to proceed. We may or many not be surrounded by loving individuals but anything that counts, anything that will ever take place and make a huge difference comes from you.
It should not be tainted by sadness or joy but should be seen as a fact.
Life is much simpler once we deal with facts, not that complexity ever leaves us.

A corollary:
Everything that counts has to be discovered alone.
The more alone and the more shapeless and unfiltered the experience,
the more unable to catalog it…
the more it will have a chance to remain anchored inside you.

On mesure la richesse de l’homme à ce dont ‘il peut se passer. Proverbe Zen cité par Michel Vaujour
One measures the richness of a human being through what he/she can live without. Zen proverb mentioned by Michel Vaujour

Everything is always about everything… And in the deepest sense, everything is a reflection of nothing.
If this fact emerges as a reality, these words which seem to belong to the realm of thinking probably engage resistance, and thus defeat my purpose.
What I say here is unrelated to mysticism, philosophy, and nihilism.

The world of ideas is not my domain; these are not elements to be discussed or argued with.
Actual silence or your own death could help me, but you would misunderstand these suggestions.
Words seem only one way to reconcile what I know.