Shannon McCarthy
Forum Replies Created
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Hi Peter,
These are cool. Thanks for sharing. Is it all first made with paper that you cut by hand?
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Isn’t that delightful that criminal behavior and religious fundamentalism overlap? Oh dear. I suppose that’s par for the course.
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Hi Anthony,
Congratulations! 🎉
Happy for you!
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Hi again Whit,
I’m glad we both are interested in the space. What does Laura Otis say about the different capacities with the visual and the spatial? (Are you an art historian?) I’d like to hear your ideas about bringing the spatial into the mix. What are you imagining?
I’m just coming off some focal seizures on the left side that affect language- I know the words are there, but they are difficult to retrieve in speech. I’d believe it too that LH is needed in proprioception. However, whatever the confusion that happens with language from compromised LH temporal area, I think spatial understanding from a distance is not affected. Like, I may have trouble with the written grocery list, but if I make a map of the kitchen in my mind and remember a star over the areas which need something, I can get it. Pictures and their relatives can be separate from words. Also, I think my painting is still fine, technically, which requires depth/ relation/ space perception even with a slow language center. Anyway sorry to talk about my own self here, just where my mind is currently.
Isn’t the meaning of guru the one who dispels darkness? In that respect I think he’s already done it. And I hear you- we ought to keep asking questions, and I do agree that looking to advance his work and question what else could be is a way of respecting its importance.
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Hi again, Jeff, just read your account again. I love all the subtle details you share, especially the balance between looking big and strong to her/ defending your food, while communicating your awe and respect. I was telling my eleven year-old son this morning about your encounter, and he said, “Mom that has to be a joke. A grizzly mother bear with her cub?” He just finished reading a book about grizzly attacks. I assured him that it was real, then told him about your sense of being unified with the mountains and the woods. He said, “Wow maybe I’ll feel like that today.” He’s going camping with his Boy Scout troop in the New England woods.
My friend told me that his guru says that peak states can never be over-recalled, that we should contemplate them as much as possible so that they elevate our everyday consciousness to their higher plane.
I did have an experience when I was 21 that was kind of similar. When Jill Bolte Taylor’s Ted talk came out after it happened, that was the first time I wondered if it was a hemisphere-based event. I was crossing the street on my bike in gridlocked traffic (or so I thought). I failed to see the car speeding in the left hand lane, and it struck me. The left side of my body smashed against the car, and I soared upside down through the air for a long time. Time dilated, and I saw a vast web of lines, like a web of lovingness. My body was filled with ecstasy to know and be known by this beautiful is-ness. Each juncture of the lines had a bell, a bell unlike our mechanical ones, instead knowing bells of subtle abilities that could ring-speak near or far depending on the needs of the loving responsive web. I said, “but I don’t want to die,” knowing the fate of watermelons dropped on concrete. The web coagulated into an angel, which embraced my body, and the angel landed me in a miraculous way- first bouncing perfectly vertically on my helmet, then rolling so that my backpack and the groceries it held absorbed the impact and road lacerations. I do have injuries from it, but I have life. For weeks I could only think of life in terms of the field. A glorious wonder that we are. Then I fell into a dark depression. I white knuckled my hold on life for a year, mostly by reading Hafiz in Daniel Ladinsky’s translation, The Gift. I later came to Vedanta and the Net of Indra and was over the moon to read Iain’s mention of it in the Sacred chapter in the Matter with Things.
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Hi Jeff,
Wow! What an encounter! You are blessed. A mother grizzly with her cub?! I would not expect many to come back from that able to tell the tale. There’s a lot there.
Long time ago I interviewed many people in South Africa. All kinds of people. I really liked almost every single person. What made them so dear? I thought and thought for a long time, trying to figure out what they each held in common, and could find only two things: a post-apartheid country and exposure to apex predators. I began to think about this more a few years back, pondering my own childhood by the swamp full of gators and later by the sea with the sharks. We knew we could be eaten. That does something to a person. You describe it wonderfully! I’m grateful you have this beautiful story to tell.
And it fits so nicely with how Iain says the LH grabs and gets, and the RH looks all around at the whole environment. When we are at risk of becoming prey, the emissary may only then cede to the real master.
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Hi Jeff,
Sure thing. Yes it is shocking to me too that this would get through all their creative, advertising, and managerial boards. Yikes!
If you look at the link Peter posted above, the page shows a reverse video by an artist that makes the whole thing come back to life, using the same footage backwards. A bit more inspiring!
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Ha! Oh gosh that is funny.
Speaking of jokes, there is one going around about small fish. If you hear it, please let minnow.
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“The Parallel Architecture on Language and Elsewhere”, 2023- just gave it a read- thanks for letting us know.
“We do not understand conceptual structures very well yet.” -Jackendoff
It all seemed pretty straight forward until he gets to the Spatial Structure part. I can see why you’d want to talk about his ideas on parallel architecture and maybe his thoughts on tonal music theory and its implications or overlap with the hemispheres! Nice little bit here:
“Further consideration suggests that Spatial Structure cannot be just a <i style=”font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; -webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;”>visual representation. The size and shape of objects and their spatial layout can be determined haptically, that is, through the sense of touch. In addition, information about the spatial configuration of one’s body comes from proprioception (Lackner, 1988; Lackner & Dizio, 2000). All three of these—vision, hapsis, and proprioception—have to be correlated with each other in order to understand what is going on in physical space. This job belongs to Spatial Structure. Moreover, Spatial Structure is not just for perceiving: it also has to be used to plan action in the world.”
What part are you thinking about? I’m curious!
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Hi again Whit,
Jackendoff is new to me, thanks for the heads up. It looks like he has two great books out. Is it A User’s Guide to Thought and Meaning that you recommend, or his 2002 Foundations book?
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Whit,
Was just remembering something Gilbert Stuart (he painted George Washington’s portrait and developed a cohesive palette system still in use) wrote about color that you might like. He posited that all the great colorists were Northern European and that the sun’s angles and lesser presence allowed for better understanding of light and color. He sensed that the Mediterranean sun was too bright to allow accurate perception of color, just too much washing out going on. So I wonder if that may be a factor in the Dutch approach.
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Hi again, Whit,
And sorry to be so late a replier. That is a very interesting idea from “The Art of Seeing”. Maybe I will have to read that book, as I have often wondered about this topic, and didn’t know that anyone had addressed it. I admire the Northern Renaissance paintings for their directness. Vermeer is like a zen master of light apprehension. Does she say anything about Turner or Whistler?
I just saw the Siena: Rise of Painting 1300-1350 exhibit in NYC at the Met that closed yesterday. It goes to the Louvre next, not sure where you are? They showed 1200’s intricate ivory carvings made in France that were exquisitely made and joyful! It has me wondering about the pre-plague mind.
I wish I truly knew the difference between spatial and visual processing but I don’t yet so I’m no use on this topic, unless there’s some article online that differentiates it? I would like to learn.
Do you like the vanitas still life paintings or have any thoughts about those?
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Hi Gary,
I like reading your post. Thank you for the update- how lovely that living organisms show greater entailment power. A lot of good news here!
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Hi Peter!
“Compression of Life” 😞
I love that rewind version! How wonderful. Technology under the thumb of a robust value system- that is a hopeful image. Thanks!
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Hi Whit,
True enough. Well, I see a machine crushing beautiful meaningful things, and ‘replacing’ them with a flat computer. To me, it is an accurate narrative of the left hemisphere overpowering the right, showcasing its failure to comprehend what is beyond it. What is unique, precious, memorable, and human is destroyed by a machine to make a machine. In one minute it tells the terrible story.
I think public outcry for the arts is good. It demonstrates that we do still hold some things sacred.