24-02-2021
(ballad)



^{[UNDER CLOUDS OF VIRAL AIRES]}
… things accumulate, stagnate or grow, for sure, throw shadows.
how could they not?
how could things resist their growth and still be unchained, unblocked?

how to cope with the too much and the too little, when all we need is peace of mind?
peace of mind to understand how we are doing
both just perfect and far from okay.

how to distinguish a paradox’s joy from our confusion’s pain?
how to differentiate between just some mad mess and things being kicking and alive?

kicks and spirals all day long, upwards or down… it’s hard to remain,
it’s fucking difficult to keep a thing in place!

just for a while, shed light on things and set them free — into the dark
alternatively, fetch them from where we can’t see, make them alive — where we are bright.


^{[IN SITU]}
… much is called in situ — contexts float and so do we.
I realize that here at the house in situ starts to make some sense:
    the same way as an archaeologist would search,
    we want to see what is already there,
    what rests ‘in it’, what stems from here.

when an archaeologist finds something made — an artifact — in situ,
it means the thing she sees had never been removed from where it is.
it means that it belongs where it is found.
there! it does contain the culture that produced it.
 
Somewhere I read approximately this:
    an artifact ‘in situ’ is critical to how we interpret that thing itself,
    and, consequently, of the culture which in/formed it.

as such, I start to understand the ‘radical’ in the house we work from:
    we accept the fact that here we find ‘made things’
    not only artifacts, but also mental constructs, and codexes of how to see and not to be.
    next to the bricks, that make its walls, here lives a form of housing that we call a ‘family’
    — more generally — the culture of just settled and domestic life.

all of this — ‘massively present’ — right here.
how we interpret these things will show if we can see a change in them or not.

let’s take a closer look …



^[ETHOS]
here runs a research project called just ‘HoP’ — ‘house of practices’ in full.
two principles form the basis of all presence, action, form
which stems from, makes and shapes the time that one will spend sur place.

    don’t anticipate,
    start at this spot and only when you have arrived   

                &

    be curious! what does it mean to go beyond
    the boundaries of such community
    you seem to be …
    part of …
    or not.

what can, will, shall, or needs to be produced?
hosting, housekeeping or building some thing?
maintaining what we call a practice?
as such, act from a practice's core within these two strains.

meanwhile I think that it is only with what comprehends itself
that we can proceed in situ — and also become critical …
in front of that which we invite,
of what its proper premises already are.

what is our place? where do we come from?
what governs (us) here, over there and far from home?
another guru says: wherever you will go, there you will be. om.


^{[THE WILD]}
using the house to whatever end
seems not to be what we just called in situ.
let’s say it’s rather wild, and let’s take wild to mean untamed.

when moving wildly, a place installed, affords one to adapt,
adaptation thus all over, yes, just everywhere — but when does it start to be a critical device?

curiously enough, the moment being host,
keeping in place what makes more space,
users seem to question their will to open up to change.

the house remains a house — it’s not a theatre machine,
it does not pretend to make a thing or people high or fly,
and cubic meters don’t become a l’infini …

the host as keeper — the one that neither gives a “yes” nor “no”,
the one that causes change, not in terms of substance, structure, ways,
but by mirroring what users want and can desire
to realize or rethink.

consequently enough,
the house’s body, its ghosts — and shadows as well —
present authorities it needs to see, examine, listen to …

^[MANIFESTOS]
when the house — any house — has limits,
when a keeper — any keeper — doesn’t want war,
peace is made by those who have agreed on things:
    without further notice, never discussed, neither met with skepticism nor disgust,
    things worked similarly, smoothly, so much so
    that one did not see the sameness of one’s milieu and cast.

but when an encounter enables us to understand the same thing
as different, regardless of what we intend, reason, and claim — there is no peace assured.

any ‘thing’ has a way of being.
here at the house, things get re-set:
    we re-set things and times and ways.
    accumulation, clutter, traces are all temporary means.

why is that?

because those who live here make some pace, so others can be more than guests.
being ‘more than guests’ involves so many cool and also messy things:
    listen and melt, receive and learn,
    or just grasping the house, occupying all its rooms,
    also destroying the building, burning, even stealing it
    or selling it — peng! — overnight.

so here it is: we need a space within the place,
where different worlds can be — can say what they need and for how long.

the house decides then, together with the ones that live in it,
together with the ones that come as friendly or estranging guests.

when dialogue is what we preach, we invite encounters of extremes,
listening to what does not yet charm, assure, confirm the way we sense and think.
eventually it might remain a fact that freedom lies on either end:
    the house can always keep some things outside, and what’s withheld will need another—
    another place or time or talk or shape … how can we leave each other undefined?
    How can we set free, but also assist, the selves and others we are and still can become?


^[BOUNDARIES]
When, amongst those who have a place and others that arrive at one,
this or that is unwelcome, it does not mean we have to take a flight or start the fight.

it means we can just start to see …
how things could move so boundaries dissolve or healthily exist.

this might mean a hell of work, tears, pain and laugther,
some transformations take much-much time and so-called long breath.


^{[TOO MUCH]}
… to deal with.


^{[TOO LITLLE]}
… to be something.


^{[JUST ENOUGH]}
… a ritual that came about when rain killed fire, and candles made it seen:
    we suffer. more and more. heavily, individually, collectively at last.
    we suffer under lived sensations of not and never-being-enough.

the spirits we gave way to — that night of winter solstice —
were the demons of the ‘never ever ok and forever dismissed’!
their strangled voices — surrounded by our listening gaze — said clearly:
    just give up the will to understand the parts and dare to comprehend the whole —
    dissecting reason gives no means to flourish, under existing models we will not succeed.
    rational rations will always tailor all that may appear
    to what you know and that is not enough.

but what can be learned is to glimpse into the dark …
accept that nothing is solely ‘ours’ or ‘private’ —
that human reflection needs to take another long walk in the park!
that could be just ‘just enough’.


^{[HOSTING and KEEPING]}
… under clouds and viral aires
amongst the too-too much and too-too little
I wonder why we still seem to ask what art is and what it is not.

what does it need to live in times of deep distress, distrust?
if not continually building confidence in-situ — such faith that makes us accept
to do that which needs so much to be done.

be it too much, too little, too mistaken, too unshaped
we might move invisibly, and that might be some future leader’s must
leaders who want to mediate … rather than to show off.

to lose contours is easy to predict, it’s much harder to maintain with grace
a place that is difficult to catch — not to be defined, impossible to profile,
(a model of growth would just bear good old pain)

the world keeps turning, shows must go on
but which ones can and do we want to make continue?

how to host unanswerable riddles — of the abysses we are?
how to keep to practices we can — we must — afford!?

subtle unfolding and the bonding of houses might become a new groove,
show each other what we see, and what we hear where.
gather together and feel — where it can go from there …