Cloudfold

September 20, 2019

Cloudfold

I find myself writing again. I got discouraged after an auto update deleted all my data. But while on a flight to see my dear baby sister,  I was looking outside the window and saw that we were flying through a cloud; a translucent veil of cloudy mist reveals only more clouds below. The sky sovereign above our aerial cruise. 

I am cloudwatching. The last time I did was with Renzo, a dear friend of mine. We would jam outside the music room beneath the sky in the key of D: just two classical guitars in dialog with the sky. 

The philosopher Martin Heidegger describes existence as coming to presence through the "fourfold": earth, divinity, mortal and sky" (See Building, Dwelling, Thinking). Through this quartet manifold do we relate to the world poetically. We are above the ground, beneath the sky, among others and, most difficulty, relate to higher powers/beings. 

And here I am, engaging with the vast openness of the sky, with more above. The horizon not merely a straight line, but a cascade of cloud ranges; air and water taking such detailed shapes yet can't be felt as we imagine them. The world indeed is opening up, but in what capacity? Flying is such a unique privilege. The window presents quite an unusual view to the land-dweller. The sky is no place for dwelling; the land beckons; the divine calls forth. 

I write, hundreds of feet from the ground, streaks of clouds pass me by; the occasional jet zooming through. Some clouds look like giant floating islands, or look like they're becoming one. They are so vivid; below only vague miniature depictions of the earth lived on is seen-- from afar.

I close my eyes and think of my body, I don't feel like I'm moving at 300 km/h. I'm stationary in myself yet my mind extends space: I am here but also becoming there. I find my breath; we are united in flux – the saving power of technology: this flying metal bird; the life giving breath. This givenness: in and out– this is the presencing of the divine. 

Phantom Limb

"Phantom Limb"

You are my phantom limb

I still feel your touch lingering

Your presence enduring, emerging

yet incorporeal.

Your distance haunts me,

boundless beauty shrouded in

regret and relief

invisible, astral, untraceable

but painful all the same.

In my sleep, I transcend to your higher plane

I still feel your touch deceiving

your essence pervading, preserving

yet illusory.

Your messages torment me

terrifying allure transmitted through

plain english and emojis

deceiving, dwelling, destining

but devastating all the same.

You were an incomplete separation

a part of me that's

unhealthy, unhomelike, uncanny

Your parasitic paws claw at my

unclandestine addiction

to your affection.

Your affliction has infected my

subconscious, my slumber ill with

voodoolike nightmares of you

The pangs of you participate 

in your ghostly tethering,

pulling at the scar underneath

my severed chest–

vestigial yet vital

all the same.

What is left but your residual blueprints?

Remnants of our unreal estate crash

investing, building, foreclosing, demolishing

yet imaginary.

These hallowed halls, where your shadow

visits, inhabits:

spooks my soul.

My longing for your deliverance from here–

unconscious.

I sense you when I shouldn't;

you are a specter,

danger close;

my inner demon,

extended substance;

my doubting,

my inertia,

my evil queen.

You come and go,

my extremities always

just a resting place

before you are called

beyond this grave,

wandering away

towards the unknown,

elsewhere from

my predictability,

my obvious obliviousness.

You are so close but

absent, indifferent, uninterested;

yet the hurt is all the same,

just as when we were once joined,

locked arm in arm, united and in sync.

I wish for courage,

my tissues bruised

from all the blows of

your tears meant for

another shoulder.

I pray for temperance,

my temples throbbing

from the joy of your company

being inseparable from the

sadness of our severance

I ask for wisdom, 

my anticipation always errs in foresight

when it comes to us;

your eyes can see clearly–

we weren't meant to be.

And yet I cling on, reaching out

to your spirit already

ascended, abdicated, departed.

I know you are gone.

All that remains is

your immaterial form,

a shape of you

glued to this organ,

playing a fugue

3.3 beats a second.

This dying waltz;

a broken record

for the broken hearted,

going the distance

to my neverland,

this lost boy who

refuses to grow up,

to move on,

who takes comfort in childish games,

whose Wendy has come 
to excise their umbilical cord,

but he tries to escape;

tripping, hiding, running into things–

embarrassing all the same

To you, my mind's figment

that manifests sharp thorns

throughout my body,

our connection is cordially

sustained through wireless waves

that come crashing down

whenever we perform

our ritual texts,

this black magic

is unsettling, your

power only grows to bring 
misery to my memories.

Keep them safe,

you are the key

to my chains,

you can unlock

these aches,

and awaken again

these phantom pains

from far, far away.

I only hope you find 

what you're searching for.

As for me, 

if necessary,

do it–

amputate.

Abstractions

To be taken out of context. The tree that finds itself still amidst a wind of colorful rain. The petrichor of youthful bliss. In bloom; the belle of the ball. Footprints in a sandy aisle; those white petals drizzling in my mind; those vines grappling at your tendrils– a travesty. Sorrow emerges from the ground of uprooted soil; the stains of wet paint calcified on your bedrock.

What have those words given me? A thunderstorm. A sunset. A horizon. Sight; sighs. A crown of ink. These hands. To have the ground underneath rumble words of betrayal. A thin film of soapy residue, bubbling in a vacuum.

And what did Plato really mean by the good? What were Nietzsche's dancing stars? Why Darwin when in the end, you lose? Lost without a cause, body without embodiment– the wind whispers the screech of your mind's window.

I know better than your impermanence; your non-cyclical metamorphosis. Angry or tragic? No either/or within the choice of the same problem. What else? I'll take twenty! Find me in the lost and found. I'm locked in a cage of two-toned sunburst Fender Starcasters, showroom paranoia in a downtown ceiling, meteor dressing in disguised metaphors. "Only a god can save us"*; no, we are already saved. Grace calls us to melt our hearts into a photosensitive gaze.

While modernity fabricates clothing with meaning, martial arts with feeling, philosophy with religion– you betray these words with those words. You hear my words as those words (those threats to stupid action), dumbfounding. No world can console a worldless phenomenon.

Rows of light, rivers divide, cast a spell on the sensuous tonight. More-than-human, with human, witholding your cards, keeping your faces on. Traverse, travel, journey along with the key, put her in your lock and never let go.

The gap widens above, in the sky. A slit of time, a ripple in distance, stretched to a gape. Agape is foreign, out of this world, but this world passes away; it was coming up, crashing down and turning inside out what remained of my core. My rootedness is in my stretching–we were a stretch: different, separating, becoming new immanently.

My legs are adventitious, mobile, kinetic; just as you wander into loves, I wonder at the world you've shaped and left behind.

You creep into my thoughts; I want to trap you! You, me, any outstanding grudge on who should be responsible for all this mess. My! My! Can a philosopher be ruled by love?

I am a rising tide without a shore to crash into. My thoughts are filled with sea shells and crumpled receipts; my pockets aren't lined with anticipation anymore, just reminiscence and my phone.

I want to say something but I'm paralyzed by your indifference to my wanting to say something.

Philosophy is a kind of poetry; our existence is poetic; commit to the flames my romanticism, my ideation, my existence, poetically and with every burning intent.

My life is now ambient; light embers kindle the sparks of little moments that contribute to the background aesthetic.

The drone of life hums along until from out of nowhere you're stuck with the simple realization that life's terrors come from its farness above us, ready to obliterate our life, and turn it into a state of groundlessness.

Show me a philosophy of life, I'll show you a theology of death. The distractions in-between have become apparent.

You held on, I leaped. You harden not my heart, I seek a new one. Renew in me my faith in your goodness. The heart rules the sight, the mind rules the magic, Your love persists even when I fall out of it. My prayer is a call. What calls for prayer is a calling. To focus attention on the inner life, bustling, rumbling, shaking, beating, living, dying, recycling. My heartbreak is no coincidence for prayer; in fact, prayer constitutes such possibility for a heartbreak. For my heart cannot break if not for it becoming soft– open to being of all kinds: Being-in-love, being-in-the-world, being-towards-death, being-broken-hearted. It is only in You that may make my heart anew, to build up, to edify my base, to prepare for fallen time to fall away, and contemplate goodness; this is my salvation– I am saved out of love and it is through love, a good love, that I may gaze into the world again and disclose the being-toward, being-with, being-for. Immortality through You; with open arms, I leap.

In losing you do I realize how much you're worth; lingering doubt for the lies of the star studded sky. But now, I leave you as you did me, to go and do something else. We've lost each other, we were always present but not anymore. We lost our essence**, and endure no longer.


* From "Only a god can save us"
** from the roots of the german word for essence: [Wesen] as derivative of "sein"– being, enduring as presence.

What is Philosophy?

Part 1: An analysis of the question "What is Philosophy?" 

The question "what is philosophy?" is a question that is not as easily answerable as the question "what is biology?" or other fields. This is so because the answer is defined by the person who describes it to you, generating an impression of his worldview. Indeed, asking a biologist what philosophy is compared to a physicist will tell you more about the speaker than the field. The wider sense of the word found in the context "what is your philosophy?" sparks a similar response to the question "what is philosophy"? Whether it's "I don't take any advice from no one!", "Yolo" or "life is suffering", you indeed are given an example of philosophy rather than a definition. Indeed, our western oldest instant of philosophy puts this example on a pedestal: when Socrates is speaking with Euthyphro regarding the nature of piety, Euthyphro tends to only give examples such as doing whatever the gods are doing. And so can this be applied to our current predicament: "what is philosophy?": "White dudes in their armchairs and ivory towers", "a never ending field of asking why?", or "people with no jobs". Ironically, philosophy as professed by many philosophers, are acutely aware of the problem with defining their field.

The most vague and catch-all definition for philosophy is that philosophy is the "love of wisdom" which is really just a translation of the Greek terms: philo- love, sophia- wisdom. Saying this standard definition of philosophy doesn't really say much other than (again) revealing something about the person. 

Is the question "what is philosophy?" then, merely a litmus test to find alike minded people or to find people to persuade? Another inadequate definition that's popular is "learning to ask the right questions", which slightly probes deeper into the question. However, that would mean all the experts competent in their field would become full-fledged philosophers by the snap of a finger. These language games don't help, detracting us away from knowing more about philosophy itself. 

After a few rounds of giving one's definition of philosophy then subsequently finding it inadequate, frustration settles in. And perhaps by proxy, relativism would start sneaking in: "philosophy is just everyone's opinions that aren't better than any other really, it's all just relative". In the face of relativism, I take a step back from cranking the wheel for ideas of what philosophy is. 

When do we feel the need to ask the question "what is philosophy?". What kind of situations and contexts arise to reflect on a field that is hard to define but easy to cite examples of? I imagine many would tend to reflect on "the thinker" statue. What philosophers do is "think". But what does it mean to think? If anything, shouldn't philosophy be the resilience to stop at dubious propositions and confusions, consider further the notions we take for granted? Is this thinking? 

Perhaps as a result of all the confusion building up from all the examples and counterexamples considered, we may be losing sight from the point of reflecting on the question "what is philosophy?" We're expecting a concrete answer but are left with more questions. If we don't like the question "what is philosophy?" perhaps we should look at it a different way. Maybe we should approach the question more as a demonstration of itself. Maybe the question itself is the answer.

The question "what is philosophy?" itself points to philosophy is without having to go towards a definition or cite examples of philosophy. This ends up with the conclusion that the answer to "what is philosophy" ends up being what is philosophy?

Part II: Lessons from the 20th century

The answer posed to the question "what is philosophy?" with "what is philosophy?" will likely cause several negative responses; ones of anger, confusion and impressions of empty pretentious BS. And all those are so, even I had cringed at my own response. But on reflection, I stuck with it for a reason. And if a person does the same, will get to walk along with my journey through this puzzling tautology. 

I drew inspiration for this kind of response from the 2 greatest thinkers of the 20th century: Ludwig Wittgenstein and Martin Heidegger. 

The philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein in his early career is centered in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, a treatise of philosophical logic, ultimately arguing for anti-philosophy— being against the enterprise of philosophy itself. Here Wittgenstein makes the bold statement: "whereof we cannot speak, we must remain silent", alluding a polemic against philosophy. The treatise is a work of philosophical logic that was intended to "solve" philosophy. Here, Wittgenstein takes logic as an idealized "language" to see how it interacts (if at all) with the world. Throughout the argument, we come to realize that a lot of the philosophical statements of the past may merely amount to linguistic confusion. What interests me most about this treatise is that he shows the limits of language (and hence the limits of philosophy) by describing the world of facts not through explanation, but primarily through showing or pointing. 

So the confusing tautology: "what is philosophy? what is philosophy?" can be traced back to Wittgenstein's priority of showing or demonstrating rather than try to categorize a concept, especially something like "philosophy". 

The philosophy of Martin Heidegger, on the other hand, inspired me in terms of his later works on the nature of language. For Heidegger, "language is the house of being", a place where man and being connect with one another. But Heidegger would stress that they are not separate entities. Rather, man discloses being— "man is the Shepard of being". With all these profound statements, Heidegger focuses less on polemics and brute force philosophy idealized by Wittgenstein, but rather puts a different spin on the idea of "showing" what something is for what it is. That is, leaving behind our preconceived notions of "philosophy" and instead, let the encounter with the sentence "what is philosophy?" expand our horizon of being. While this is arguably harder to grasp, Heidegger's approach allows us to approach the question of "what is philosophy?" less as a question to be answered but rather a question to be explored. 

Heidegger's early works also deal with expressing some sentiments of anti-philosophy, but mostly aimed at the branch of philosophy called "metaphysics". This field of inquiry primarily deals with the big questions philosophy is stereo-typically satirized for (as well as glorified by our hipsters): what is everything made of? Where do we come from? What is reality?. For Heidegger, the Western field of philosophy has overplayed their alleged "progress" from their rather antiquarian notion of "being". From Plato onward, the established dogma of how to define being was related to the idea of forms. This was taken up by the Christians later on and has culminated in the notion of being as "creature" or a "subject" of God. This kind of approach to being from an essence related to its ideal form to a creature of God was called by Heidegger as "ontotheology" (onto-being, theo-god). For Heidegger, since Plato, ontotheologic confusion was the reason for the stagnation of explorations into the question of being. 

These sources of inspiration provide lessons from the 20th century on the question "what is philosophy?" by their engagement with trying to define what philosophy was and shouldn't be. But we don't come to understand their arguments by simply reading it. Rather, Wittgenstein and Heidegger demonstrate and show what philosophy is for what it is, in their own ways. 

Part III: What is philosophy? 

Insights from thinkers that we've come to label as "philosophers" are all well and good but doesn't it fail to truly solve the problem of the question "what is philosophy?" Aren't I simply just showing you different ways to approach the question? At the end of the day both approaches: trying to define what philosophy is through definition or examples; and the 20th century philosophy-inspired "showing" and "encountering" the question; end up in the same opinionated conclusion. But when you think about it, philosophy really does express opinions. The enterprise of philosophy, as I said previously, is the irony that it is aware of the fact that it expresses opinions, some even going so far as to claim that all fields express opinions. Opinions are grounded on different assumptions that give rise to different worlds that we as human beings can incorporate. Our mere ability to posit the question "what is philosophy?" is symptomatic of our philosophical nature as human beings. Upon introducing the question "what is philosophy?" one already has taken an opinion on what philosophy is. Asking the question aloud merely allows us to connect our notions of philosophy with others who themselves, when asked the question, ask it to themselves, and thus taking another stance on what philosophy is. Thus, I still believe that the best answer to the question "what is philosophy?" is the tautologous "what is philosophy?"; whether or not someone actually takes the smart-alec route and says it aloud as a response or lets it resonate within himself and encounter the question on its own terms is all the same journey but on different paths.

I end with a quote by the philosopher David Lewis:

"One comes to philosophy already endowed with a stock of opinions. It is not the business of philosophy either to undermine or to justify these preexisting opinions, to any great extent, but only try to discover ways of expanding them into an orderly system" (Lewis, 1972) 

4/18/2019

Thought I'd take a stab at poetry before I turn 22.

4/18/2019

You are my friend,

who rules as a queen should—

justly

You who provides strict rules you decree for others

and hold up for yourself.

This providence builds your kingdom.

A friendship with you is a sought-after association with royalty.

Even though we don't see eye to eye,

I still believe in foresight,

though I creep in the shadows,

I remain within,

searching for a clearing.

You are familiar with me

though only within shades of grey,

blurred between roses and those castle walls.

I am your fuzzy friend,

whom you love as your favorite feline,

but whom you come to despise for my faculty of freedom

to abide or to turn away,

conscientious or unconscious,

fated or destined

I am your subject

whom you subject to expectations.

You are my subject,

to whom I hold as a subject of fascination.

We are our subject,

who we are about, acting on other objects.

They are our subjects,

thrown under your citadel

To be your friend, I slip out of the dark

into your light

Chasing you but chasing my tail,

Trying to escape this hermeneutic circle

You are my friend, but always are the monarch,

always hiding between your majestic law

But always residing in its fixed architecture.

I hope to one day unearth my structural foundations,

so firmly grounded in soil so impotent,

and be a friend beyond those measured with a grain of salt

whose friendship is the exception that affirms the rule in plenitude.

Underway

Under way

Muddy steps on hidden footpaths

through forests upon forests full of tall trees,

climbing the heights of dreams to no relief,

 striding along instead to blend with the scenery;

treading, pacing, being–

there.

No blazing trails, 

only petrichor.

The dew dripped and dried

leaving behind damp and doused,

dipped and drenched, 

Da-sein.

Stumbling on a clearing

feels like a missteppe

followed by a quiet trot coming to a stop.

Shifting weight 

from body to embodied immersion

in a river–the body of water 

always underway.

Oh how we think we think thoughts most provoking!,

marching onwards with a steady gait.

But only when memory unlocks its gate

to what's most important–

letting nature speak,

through worlds beyond and beneath–

concealed, covered in bloodied soil

of those fallen leaves,

drifting wind

bustling along, 

hovering over ground,

mixing with dust's short ascent–

lingering, dwelling, dancing

being

On Death Cab for Cutie's Northern Lights

I found myself clicking on a notification on Twitter today from a performance of the song "Northern lights" by Death Cab for Cutie on James Corden's Late Late Show. Northern Lights is a song from their 9th studio album "Thank You for Today". I remember loving the song a lot when it came out, particularly with the addition of guest vocalist Lauren Mayberry from Chvrches. Her voice fits the synth-pop esque soundscape that this song was conveying so well. Along with the Ben Gibbard style of songwriting ("I remember your silhouette, on Dyes inlet), I came to appreciate the new sonic energy that Dave Depper and Zac Rae have contributed to the new Death Cab sound. The call and response of Zac Rae's cold and shimmering piano melody contra Dave Depper's persistent and similar (dare I say synchronized?), yet wavy guitar have added an additional synesthetic experience of what I think I would experience watching Northern lights up in the northern parts of the world. And this "co-led" melody that Zac and Dave deliver fits perfectly well on the well-established style of Ben Gibbard's fingerstyle alternate picking technique (like in the song "El Dorado"), Jason Mcgerr's idiosyncratically mesmerizing drumming and Nick Harmer's driving and tenor-voiced bassline glistening with a beautiful chorus effect. 

I didn't really notice this impact much on the studio version, unfortunately. I thought it was the magical wizardry of producer Rich Costey, who I thought made a similar glossy 80s like contribution to the previous studio effort, "Kintsugi", that made the songs sound like this (like in "Everything's a ceiling"). Now that I'm re-listening to the studio version, I really get to hear and understand more how the band had thought of the development of the songs at a more personal level. Not only are Zac and Dave adding their own spin, they are also in dialogue with Death Cab for Cutie's entire discography. In this live version of Northern lights, I can appreciate the icy desolate landscape that Zac Rae's background drony synth pick that I can only describe as "transcendental" or "out of this world" before I'm reluctant to admit that his backdrop brings about the "northern lights" that this song draws from. It fades away in the chorus but comes back in the second verse, and now I'm inclined to admit that the desolate feelings emphasized in the lyrics of the verses leading up to the profound yet terse chorus: 

"Northern lights,

filled our skies.

Empty nights, 

synchronized"

Not only is this chorus emblematic to the staple we know with Death cab (distance, longing, etc.), it also speaks of the sort of "Cosmic loneliness" that the philosopher Emil Cioran had described as distinct from personal loneliness. And all this without any visuals! Only the music, thought in motion, and the lyrics that clues us into the world that are these "northern lights"! 

When Ben Gibbard sings:
"I'll never be that close again, to your lips and perfect skin
as the tide receded into the unknown"

This transitions to cosmic loneliness, only to be broken by a bridge–a recapitulation of the first line that set this landscape up and gave it meaning: "I remember your silhouette, on Dyes inlet". That builds up with a small bass solo run by Nick Harmer, speaking tones from the sonic landscape– to sing the reluctant refrain once more:

"Northern lights,

filled our skies.

Empty nights, 

synchronized"

Call me crazy but I can't help but feel that it's sung differently–not in the lyrics, but in the meaning! I can feel my own input, a visualization I can only describe as my spirit moving with the music, soaring through the skies, through the Northern lights! It's in my participation with and interpretation of the music– my involvement and engagement– that I get to immerse myself in the cathartic but also transcendental experience of "Northern Lights". 

And even with the lack of Rich Costey and Lauren Mayberry in this live performance, I can't help but fill in the rest with my own imagination. The song has already left me some room to dwell in the moment of unity the song's chorus keeps making me sing. And every time I do this act again–listening to the song, I am begun anew with significance, maybe pertaining to my personal life at in one moment or simply engaged in listening in another. As I dwell, I disclose more concealed truths not just to the song but to me and my being-in-the-world– now fused with the world of Northern Lights. But isn't the definition of insanity doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result? Well, I'm pretty sure I've already passed that trying to uncover more than the usual review that sticks to how well something corresponds to indie pop songwriting.