ANSWERS! YOUR! QUESTIONS!*
SECTION 528! is an experiment in discovering a deeper understanding of what can fascinate, inspire, hurt, soothe, or relax. If it's successful, that effort might support my work in whatever future forms said work takes.
There are explorations here of what some might consider pure joys, idiosyncratic pleasures, conformist attitudes, confrontational behaviors, harmful habits, flawed judgments, dismissive assertions, and ponderous sophistries. The honest reckoning with those notions, free of judgment, should provide a more complete picture of the notion of pleasure as I seek it. The interrogation itself is part of what inspires the fun.
This is a place to collect inspirations as a prelude to acting on that inspiration. In that regard SECTION 528! acts as an annotated library, where I as caretaker—I'm no archivist or librarian—trust myself to maintain its spirit of honest discovery of what drives my joy. "What feels good?" was the inciting question. My research on that personal question over the past few years included mining past creative works, keeping and reviewing several journals, and a great deal of reading. My hypothesis is that LEARNING feels good to me, more than anything else, and I value it as what sustains me.
This experiment seeks to prove or disprove, qualitatively, whether my learning is reinforced through sharing that knowledge. In that vein there will be other experiments run, seeking to distribute the work that effort would naturally entail.
SECTION 528! uses reason (thought) to power joy through action (doing things) to grow capacity (the heart).
Why I asked myself "what feels good?" does matter, yet my immediate answer isn't novel: the world suffers more now than it did a year ago, and a year before that, and before that. I hope those words aren't evergreen, though I can make as good an argument as anyone that the vicissitudes of wars, pandemics, and privation have been with our species since the Ubaid period.
Our attention and our morality never seem to keep pace with our various revolutions of thought and action, and time acts as a drag on decisive action. Still, I find hope in all forms of evolution. I believe in their combined potential for progress; I believe there exist pragmatic, progressive solutions to our global problems. These solutions should be easy for humans, who are capable of immense curiosity, empathy, and generosity of spirit. Flashes of this may be found if sought: in our local, daily habits; suffused through our culture, when those works are merely—and gracefully—an expression of those same traits. In our striving for advancements in our technologies, from language through our experiments in fusion, the power of our curiosity to move mountains is manifest.
I am extraordinarily eager to contribute to that tradition through my art, and through assisting others, as I'm able, with their expressions of service. Yet I feel I must reach past the conventional notion of "doing my part." I want to help discover what's been lacking in our makeup that shall allow us to take leaps in our capacity for swift, responsible, empathetic progress. Contributing to that effort will feel better than filling my life with anything else on my list.
I needed an artist's statement, and SECTION 528! is it, underlining all my efforts, for what I hope is ultimately your own inspiration, should this work speak to you.
You appreciate, respect, and honor the lived experiences of others, and maintain great clarity about your own. In that personal clarity, you find your stories of your past don't excite as much as the prospect of exploration: what you might sense; learn; remember.
You see how you might become a kind, generous stranger to yourself when engaged in the simple act of doing. Your personal mythology only defines your interest in future discovery. You feel your gluttony for knowledge can grow impossibly large, in search of connections with greater capability than those forged by living for an expired past. You want to share what you're learning, because that fuels more learning.
You know the world as it is today; you see and feel its cruelties. You want to work for positive, progressive change, but by turns you find people who must or can only engage in those conversations from their perspective: whatever their history, they seek a solution to satisfy themselves. If they consider themselves terminally battered or shunned, they may shrug and say nothing at all of consequence. You sympathize and empathize with them by turns, yourself no stranger to heartache, violence, and injustice.
Yet while you remain fully destructible, you want to see beyond individual perspectives. You know that reason is universal, elemental, and undeniable, and are keen to use it.
SECTION 528!'s role as an experimental library requires two conditions to be met to remain viable: that there exist works effective when employed in service of its purpose; that I am able to maintain my role as a caretaker of those cited works.
I read a great deal, write a great deal, and when not careful I can talk a great deal. I am comfortable with the reality that most of those words are garbage, pawing at meanings without grasping them fully at first. Thinking can be an inefficient business. I write about what I read, and all my words sustain editing. In editing, I discover not only the surest path to my original meaning but suggestions of additional concepts extended through the rhetoric, whether that rhetoric originated with me or with someone else.
A visitor to this or any of the other sites within the OMNIALITY sphere will attest to my appreciation for a classic style that doesn't lack for an undercurrent of schematic thinking. I expect SECTION 528! will serve as a sort of "heat sink" for that thinking, where regardless of the style of the cited works, I will spill more words than necessary in service of uncovering data toward the experiment's goal. My theory is the knock-on effect of improving the efficiency of that thinking, leading to my writing more words with greater precision, improving with each cycle, uncovering novel perspectives and creating additional inspiration.
Writing all those words does take time, but the work of searching for sources and writing my own sort of coverage on them is integrated into both my personal and my contract work. I expect to update this site twice weekly, with more frequent additions to the notes I take which are personally sourced. With eighty list items, the "library" should seem full by the end of 2022.
As much as SECTION 528! is derived from—and meant to expand—my notions of joy, this level of openness does not come naturally to me. I suspect, however, that making the attempt will be worth that discomfort. This experiment, restricted to THIS human's condition, is an earnest attempt at identifying—if not qualitatively measuring—what some might call the contours of my soul.
I'm no theologian. I don't know if souls exist. My suspicion is that what we conventionally consider a soul lives in action: what one does as guided by their morality and their ethics. I don't think that's a dodge. I know we exist in an age wherein we have begun to reckon with the infinite shades of individual identity contrasted against the collective whole, and morals and ethics weigh heavy on our minds. I believe this must mean exploration of my curiosity, in whatever form that examination takes, is worthy of time and effort, especially if the yield is what any soul seeks: a satisfactory sort of peace in the act of living.
Whatever the label to the mystery, I want to grasp its parameters. I want a notion of it founded in reason. Like every scientific paradigm shift, I want to help create a map to that undiscovered country which stands as something greater than life or death, or any notion of a soul as any art in our culture commonly conceives it. There is a long history of scholars and artists who've explored these notions in years and centuries past, and I think it behooves anyone interested in adding to that catalog of thought to answer the question for themselves. Seeking that answer should, in turn, lead to connection with those holding similar sensibilities, and our collaborative efforts could lighten for each of us that joyful burden. If sharing my particular means of discovery helps others find a voice for their thoughts, this work will act like fusion: providing exponential good relative to the expense of energy.
AND ABOUT THE NAME?
It's a reference to a place at a ballpark with an obstructed view.
And more than that. It's a reference to cheering, and all the feeling wrapped up in a person's cheering. Those cheers contain all the joy and anger and frustration and hope one can muster, focused on a single imperative. I love cheering at a baseball game. The stakes are so relatively low, and the freedom to scream is sometimes literally encouraged. I don't go in for loud often, but I like it where it counts. I like that anyone does it: not only people with no knowledge of the game, but also those with an all-too-clear understanding of its compromises and its ugliness as well as its beauty.
I maintain that complication is important in our current cultural period. All concepts are compromised, from this or that audience's vantage. Even arguments for the concept of returning to "a simpler time" are compromised by the reality that simpler times historically have paid their bills on the literal backs of others subjugated for this notion of ease.
I can cheer on a team that has no business winning a game on a frigid, misty Tuesday night, and feel bathed in the perfect glow of a sunset. I maintain a full awareness of how ridiculous it feels, and would seem to me if I were to watch myself doing it. What the hell does all this mean? I'm entirely unsure, but I maintain the complication is important BECAUSE it's happening. It could be a clue to where we all go next.