Drive

I get this thing when I'm on to something where I'm like, just let me finish it before anything happens to me, something’s going to happen to me, I know it, I can’t shake the feeling, but please just let me finish this... Cycling around becomes a whole world of anxiety because I start worrying that if I get knocked off my bike I won't be able to finish what I started, and I have to be able to, to get it done. I’m getting it at the moment, with all this stuff that I’ve been doing recently, it’s kind of taken me over, its like these things are using me, making me give birth to them, over and over, again and again, and there needs to be more and more of them. I’m getting insane re-blog rates on tumblr right now, and yet I just don’t care what people think anymore, there’s this thing I’ve got to get done and that’s it, now, as soon as possible, these beautiful babies that I have to bring in to the world. For their own sake. For them, all of them, all together. They’re using me, sucking the energy out of me. I’m at their service, doing their bidding, exercising their will. I’m barely doing anything else at the moment. I couldn’t care less if my inbox is jam packed, I’ve turned off all push notifications, I uninstalled Skype from my computer. I don’t really understand it, but I like it, like I’ve got a purpose again. This little world that I’m slowly disgorging. It’s slowly emptying me out. These objects are slowly emptying me out. One vessel at a time. I’m shrinking as their ranks grow, but I’m also growing more satisfied, calmer. They are demanding taskmasters, but I don’t mind. I love them. Looking at them in front of me gives me a sense of permanence, a sense of security -stasis- that I’ve never had before. They are me, but a purer me than I could ever be. Just a few more now…

Me Me Me Me

It is the act of copying/modifying itself that keeps the thing being copied alive, maintaining its bloodline, sustaining its aura.

Its imitators, its satirists, its defacers are all just further validation of its genetic vigour.

The larger the number of its progeny the greater its value.

Every single distorted copy transforms the original to the exact degree by which it differs from it, so that the increase in value of the original is a direct outcome of the degree to which it is being constantly transformed.

Every reinterpretation forever alters the manner in which the thing being interpreted can be understood in the future.

This is a story of instantaneous genetic evolution, millions of Galapagoses a year studied with wonder from the little HMS Beagles of our laptops.

Beneath the biological matter coming and going and breeding and dying, it is also a geological tale.

It is about the slow sedimentation of layer after layer of meaning, compressing infinitesimally into something durable, cohesive, hard and representative, a collective landmass of superficialities layered so high they have become the very incarnation of depth, there for us to excavate before the whole thing slides into the sea.

The Arctic ice cap is melting in inverse proportion to the rate at which the internet is growing. 1 gigabyte for one cubic metre.

Less is more : Mies Van Der Rohe

Less is a bore : Robert Venturi

Less is a snore : Gianni Versace

Yes is more : Bjark Ingels

More is more : Gianfranco Ferre

I am a whore : Phillip Johnson

Yantrament

When we indulge in our daily practice of controlled distraction, we become more and more familiar with the labouring processes of our consciousness, and in particular we learn to recognize the unstoppable movement of the mind, the indefatigable energy of our being which we usually experience as feelings, unquestioned drives, nervousness, anxieties, but which here we can observe objectively as so many insubstantial thoughts, drifting past like thunder clouds on the horizon.

We do this by using an object of meditation to provide a contrast, a counterpoint to what is running through our head, an exterior reference point to which we can come back and through which we can regain a state of observation over ourselves. As soon as we go off and start thinking about something, losing ourselves in the worry of having not answered this or that email, or the unpleasant sensation of our muffin-tops pressing against the waistline of our trousers, awareness of the Yantrament will bring us back.

Yantralicious.mov

Yantralicious from Adam Nathaniel Furman on Vimeo.

Despite trying to get some work done, his gaze twitched nervously across the various objects on his desk, skipping over them in quick succession, ever so briefly touching each one with his mind in a carousel of table top distraction. A porcelain figurine, a flashcard reader, a camera, some cables, a soft toy, a plastic character of graphic nature, measuring tape, mug, crystal ball, gilt frame without photo, souvenirs, speakers that look like flies eyes, some costume jewellery. Where he would usually be compelled by the invisible hand of his anxiety to check if anyone had posted on instagram every 10 minutes, recently his mental escape from the computer screen was refuge in things within a metre of him that he could reach out and touch, and which he took to moving around, reorganising in little groups, brief collections that made sense only to the edges of his reasoning, but which were gradually exerting greater and greater gravitational pull on his eyes away from MS Word to his right, or left, depending where he had placed them that afternoon. The pursuit recalled the endless fascination of playing with building blocks as a child, their willingness to absorb the implication of stories without anything being too clear, but this was more calming. As he turned them over repeatedly in his mind, the objects often merged together, sometimes one way, sometimes another, appearing in his wandering attention when he was away from his desk, so that on the tube, standing in the queue for the post office, waiting for the lift, he could turn his thoughts towards these collections of things. Shapes which now in the light of his imagination began to evolve away from their primordial beginnings on the desk next to his computer, sometimes reaching dazzling heights of kaleidoscopic inventiveness, always exercising his freedom of focus, enlarging his field of awareness to include and enjoy the creativity of distraction.

Yantralicious 04

Yantralicious 03

Yantralicious 02

Yantralicious 01

Yantra
a two- or three-dimensional geometric composition used in sadhanas, or meditative rituals. It is thought to be the abode of the deity. Each yantra is unique and calls the deity into the presence of the practitioner through the elaborate symbolic geometric designs.

Delicious
1) very appealing to the senses, esp to the taste or smell 2) extremely enjoyable or entertaining
Origin, C13: from Old French, from Late Latin dēliciōsus, from Latin dēliciae delights, charms, from dēlicere to entice; see delight