Intervals

22.3.2010 10.30am




Intervals are not just there until you close the gap and meet. They are set up- worked up under a regular meter that becomes incorporated- like the foundations upon which other tangents sprout. The meter becomes the invisible point of reference even when it is entirely subsumed under the counter-rhythms that only have an edge to work off from out of that implicit level. The relief builds on exactly what has just gone before even when that appears disregarded and in the shadows. More and more the shadow is implied rather than extended yet every superimposed level however brief or resounding would be wavering in midair and would fly off before it reached perceptual attention if it were not anchored loosely at least, in that residual layer- perhaps the crushed up fragments of former building statements, now the hard-core.

Intervals between different levels of attention- between the relief and the shadow- are what intone the languaging- and therefore our placement and consciousness. We work up those differentials attributing them a variegated significance as a way of situating ourselves though nuances that we forever strike up.

The clock is there in the background. I play on and off the beat. Then draw out beats, intending them by jumping a beat so that the mind joins up two incidental markers into an extension- a pause. That affects my breathing. I go down. Something catches in- takes up occupancy- I ricochet up from that paucity- seem to bounce and rebound in the minds eye through this body of thought which is inflected into a rush of counter-rhythms. They punch off and on adding to the momentum but now spacing it into bunches of runs and then an inflection like ducking for cover here and there. A further bunch of runs and then a reverse inflection. Off and on it stabilizes my virtual body in motion. My actual body at rest is performing that run between my two hands coming up and down alternatively on the side of a table and regulating my body as I would go down and push off from off of the ground between propulsion and landing.

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Autistic kids inflect a certain kind of rhythm by creating wide intervals between their bodies and others at certain times. There is a spaciousness. A slowing down of movement. A spreading out of elements. A lengthening of the time in which a relay runs its course. Rather than seeing this only as a separation or more dangerously as a lack of interest in contact, how can it be "read" back into an on-going process of making and articulating intervals? Sensing-thinking-communicating through local points of repetitious meter and the distancing and playing off of these contractive spaces in patterns and easy articulations that spin out of them both intensively and spaciously- off and on contact and refrain; the body enacting counter-point. Are they learning inflection? Is this a languaging like deaf people spacialising the intervals between their hands igniting the language areas in their brain through this physical gage? There are all kinds of organizations of multiple inflexions/inflections that meet and gather pace and gather heat and dissipate and cool, out of which language then quite effortlessly emerges. (The French Philosopher Gilbert Simonden talks of Individuation in these terms, as a kind of bubbling to the surface into instances- or resonances of resolution out of a far more dissipative process. (Look at website, www.fractalontology.com.wordpress for some translations of his work which to this day (His work was published around 50 yrs ago, is still mostly in the French original. Why?)

Co-incidentally Akinobu Kishi who teaches Seiki- A listening form of body-work, more like a contact witnessing (like Shiatsu but not Shiatsu) that stresses on/off touch through following the breath as a way to gage the rhythm of that contact. He also uses the word "Resonance". Kishi uses that word to describe the way in which at certain moments two people come into an alignment where response is easy through this kind of listening engagement. One of the preparation warm-up exercises that we do before practicing Seiki is called "Gyoki" which is translated by Kishi as meaning "Breathing between the hands". In this practice we open and close our hands in front of our chests to gradually bring in more and more movement throughout our bodies. We breathe in to widen the gap and breathe out to close the gap. It is a preparation for working with another person where again- closing the point of contact and opening it as on/off touch is a way to articulate on-going intervals that are always being modulated between containment and extension. In these terms, contact and separation does not make sense as seperate or opposed conditions or categories because all gages between closing and opening are part of the same process- an on-going modification according to the conditions in the moment between contraction and expansion. Together they create the working diagram that is both an invigoration for action and an ability to let go and do nothing. That is what Kishi means when he talks about touching without touching.



*Waraku is a practice, configured out of some of the principles of Aikido by Maeda Sensei, another Japanese contemporary teacher, which takes this playing out of intervals into the moving body in patterns of synchronized meeting, bounce and spin. Sometimes it uses special wooden sticks- called Tsurugis- with a partner. The sticks become an extension of the body. More on this some other time.