Comic Summa
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hen I began writing this treatise, at approximately 15:05, in the
summer of 2013, on a day that hit triple digits, causing me to seek refuge in
the cool sanctuary of my library, I intended an even more irreverent work than
this article might suggest. My model was to be a Robert Burton-like Anatomy of Stick Figuring, a thousand
page rumination on Stickfigurism that
would dazzle academics and street artists alike.
My hero and
mentor is a Stick Figure. In fact, some of my best friends are Stick Figures, and
for better or worse, they serve as my critical guide and conscience.
Nevertheless,
thinking, or rather, overthinking, is my undoing. Even before an extraordinary
series of experiences, I could not sustain the challenge without being
profoundly affected. Traces of the marvels and madness associated with thinking
abide in this treatise, and yet it may be that all I think is an enthusiastic
curiosity for the act of thinking itself.
When not
thinking, I write. I write to cure my thinking and my learnedness. I received
the first rudiments of learning from my maternal grandmother, who read to me
from the Encyclopedia Britannica and The
Reader’s Digest. She said that children’s stories bored her and that someday
I would thank her for giving me “bigger thoughts” than those related to Spot’s
terrestrial locomotion. She did not quite say it that way, but that is how I
like to remember it.
My thinking has
its origins, as "thinking" does for most, in imaginative thought, playing outside with
friends, and from books; though my favorite type of intelligence is gathered by
means of interpersonal contact ~ the kind provided by human sources. Like all
sources of learning, we eventually seek a way to rate the reliability and
accuracy of information. Until then, most information sounds a bit like jejunish (jejune gibberish) that can
lead one to entertain extraordinary thoughts like those associated with
believing there exists an advanced race of beings that created us for their own
bemusement. These maundering thoughts can easily affix themselves to the weakly
laid synaptic connections our brain makes when trying to organize what is
otherwise a recalcitrant mind that yields whenever a random song takes hold of
one’s thoughts and refuses to let go… until it is replaced with another seemingly
random song or something that breaks the mind-body-song connection. I cannot
help but think this phenomenon could be due to poor algorithmic programming.
Given what I know about programmers, there is always a glitch that does not get
resolved until the software is rolled out to millions of unsuspecting users. I
am not saying we were created by an advanced race of superbeings or even a god,
mostly because it sounds archaic and metaphysical, but also in part because of the
negative connotation associated with religion and "otherworldly" beings and the
colorful personalities who plaster conspiracy theories, fractal art, and
mathematical spirals found in nature on their Facebook pages. Still, unbiased
thinking can lead one to entertain stuff like this if only out sheer
entertainment and the recognition that knowing - and therefore judging or labeling - anything for sure is as futile as defining truth or beauty without a comparable
by which to make the association, which is then subject to personal experience
and interpretation, ad infinitum.
Thinking
about things does not imply believing in them, which is a psychological state
in which an individual holds a proposition or premise to be true. Being a
logician, someone who has studied the modes of reasoning (those that are deemed
valid, and those that are deemed fallacious) as well as the use and worth of
valid reasoning, the moment someone expresses an adamant belief, a very loud buzzer
goes off in my mind and I incline toward questioning all the conclusions that
are derived (including my own).
When this
happens, and it does frequently, I find myself smiling. Recurrent smiling, as I
have learned, can give others the impression that very little is going on
upstairs. Perhaps I am describing a European reaction rather than an American
one; nevertheless, people often times make snap judgments before their brain
realizes it has even happened.
Without
careful thinking and examination of our thoughts, we cannot have faith in the
post hoc rationalizations we make. Speaking of those rationalizations, some
readers will skip over this section entirely and go to the first paragraph in
chapter one (once available) to determine whether or not this treatise is worth reading; some
readers will only read this introductory post or the back of the final publication, deciding right then and there if
this treatise is worth buying (or buying into); while some readers will buy this publication solely on
account of my extraordinary stick figuring skills and never read a word one.
There is
something about Stick Figures that has struck a cord with me; be it their
stylization, their big red heart, or the fluidity of the lines; the more I draw
them, the more animated they become. So, it is out of sheer curiosity and entertainment
that I write this book; for those people, like me, who find themselves oddly
attracted to Stick Figures, curious about their lines, circles, and geometric
figures and their aesthetic relationship to thinking.
At first
blush the connection between Stick Figures and thinking might seem a bit odd, a
highly unusual linkage, but if you’re anything like me, you’re probably bored
by the standard linkages one makes in life and looking for something different.
After all, novelty is the brain’s aphrodisiac.
Still,
others, perhaps even you, are just wondering where all of this is nonsense headed
and hoping that I get to the point soon. Of course, that type of thinking would
be like going through life with nothing but the end in mind. For whatever reason
you felt compelled to read a treatise on Stick Figures, I can tell you that what I have to say
about Stick Figures has little to do with any currently fashionable accounts of
them ~ not that there are any.
As such, I deem
it necessary to introduce Shakespeare, Dr. Johnson, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe
Shelley, Giacomo Leopardi, W.B. Yeats, James Merrill, the Orphic Hart Crane,
Walt Whitman, Cormac McCarthy, and many other writers of note as it is, at
least in part, their influences that animate my Stick Figures.
The
combination of imaginative literature, philosophical thinking, and Stick Figure
drawing is more about appreciating the vast spectrum of thoughts available to
us at any given moment than it is about literature or art.
You might
consider this an eristic-like exploration without any reasonable goal, and you easily
justify that belief. Still, I like to think that throughout this undertaking I
am keeping an eye on objective truth, even if that truth remains seated
comfortably in my rearview mirror.
I aim to entertain
more than proving any theories. In a universe where we cannot know truth beyond
that which is inherently available to us through our connections to others, formulating
any thoughts and/or opinions ~ including the one I just threw out there ~ seems
like more of an impossibility than a reality worth pursuing. Moreover, why
would I want to define truth or reality? Could it not be a fluid concept we
cocreate just because we can?
I will close
with this idea in mind: A is an X. A can also be a Y. Now, why As can be Xs
and/or Ys is something that cannot be fully deduced, irrespective of how
convincing the reasoning sounds. It is with this thought that I conclude this
Praeludium Absurdism.
California
8 June 2013
Well...
