A CONVERSATION…
Started in response to a group discussion title ‘Defragmentation/Disruption of Politics & Ideology/De-linking from Structural Thinking‘… that neither of us quite understood…
Yuun is in South Korea, Chris. is in London…We have a time difference of 8 hours (Korea is ahead of London) which was a spring board for our attempt to deconstruct the meaning of this title.
We agreed that ‘Time evaporated…’ especially during this unique time where the world is facing a pandemic.
Time controls us… Time is still going… dormant… Human control, set, define Time… There are Time is still going… dormant… Human control, set, define Time… There are so many ways Time is defined: seconds, days, months, seasons, biological, historical, archeological… Memories… How is time passing? How do you feel time? How to capture something that disappears?
(put glass of water still cut. link: kiimyuun)
3 DAYS OF CRYING…
This pandemic stole huge life, without any time to be sad for them. There remains only in number, count. 514,107. The number has been crazily rising, that was life. How do we remember them?
In Korean there is the tradition, 3일장, translating as ‘3 days of crying…’
Yuun remembered this as unclear memory, to cry for the deads for three days.
Here is an uncertain belief.
Hearing is the last sense to leave the departed (another word for dead). So the deads will be able to hear the sound of people’s crying, then they could feel their grief, finally being comforted as they pass away to the death realm.
Yuun “3 Days of Crying”, written letter, 2020
First day of death, I saw my father crying first time and my mother too.
I could remember my mother’s tear. Everyone looked sad and quiet.
The new death.
Second day of death, now they cried only sometimes, I guess, three times of a day. Morning, Afternoon, and night. They had to cry three times a day for the death. Now they didn’t tear but just cried and still sad.
Third day of death, they cried still three times a day. Only sound of sad was remaining. They made a sound for the death. Sometimes it was intended. Or they pretended to cry for making sounds. The ears of death were listening. This was the last thing that the death could do before real death, they believed.
So, we talked about beliefs and traditions as links to the past…
And we wondered how do we know the things we know, and how do we learn the things we know? We thought that this distinction between ‘knowing‘ and ‘learning‘ was important in our search to understand ‘De-linking from Structural Thinking’…
3 days of crying is new for someone with a different culture. Then what would it be for them? What would it mean to them?
Here, Chris. imagined a possible origin:
Chris. “Three days of crying”, written letter, 2020
‘… clothes have a present use, a historical origin and a special symbolism…’. From ‘The importance of wearing clothes’ by Lawrence Langner
‘I would argue that Rituals are like clothes…’ The Author
The historical origin of this traditional ritual is difficult to prove as the evidences have evaporated and thus cannot be corroborated. Yet an illuminated manuscript from the XIII century might give the source of the ritual – in the text and in the illuminations that line the left and right side of the text. We learn from the text the story of a Monk who had left to visit grieving relatives. The text tells of a person the monk keeps meeting on his journey. They meet by a tree when refreshing themselves and replenishing their water groudes. He then sees him on the parallel bridge from the one he was walking on and they shouted hello to each other. They saw each other again, the person walking up a mountain while the Monk was walking along the foot of it. They could not hear each other so waved.
The Illuminations depict the monk grieving for a rare, delicate plant that did not survive a most sudden and unseasonal heat wave. The illuminations show a tear that falls on the plant and describe with most finesse the journey the tear takes from the petal to the leaves to the stem to the root and finally the soil. There are 3 rising sun, suggesting a 3 day journey and it is difficult to ascertain if they correspond to the travel of the tear or to the travel of the Monk.
SO MANY THINGS BEHIND US…
There are so many things behind us that we don’t really know…
Beliefs, truth, religion, tradition, knowledge, history, biases, mores, rituals, laws prejudices, language… All structures… that shape our thoughts and representations of the world… a narrative background… Not fixed… that affect everybody, every culture and society but in their own way…
– What would happen to us if we’d ‘de-link’ from the structure?
Here, we are simply attempting to notice and become more aware…
BALANCING…
There are some fundamental things… like time, like space, like earth, water, oxygen, like light, stone, wood, plants, like fire…
All structural and vital materials that also hold us together… that keeps us alive…
THE SHAPE IN OUR MOUTH…
“Le Professeur: Resumons: pour apprendre à prononcer, il faut des années et des années...”
Eugene Ionesco – La Lecon
Try saying:
Musculus orbicularis oris, Buccinator muscle: maxilla and mandible, Levator labii superioris muscle, Depressor labii inferioris muscle, Mentalis muscle, Risorius muscle, Levator anguli oris muscle, Depressor anguli oris muscle, Zygomaticus major and minor muscles…
Not easy to say and as we try, we activate those exact muscles that surround and form our mouth.
Those muscles are directly responsible for the way we sound, for the timbre of our voice, for our accent. Gently developed as we learnt to speak, they are the structures that shape the sound of our voice. This soft construction becomes a constraint when we attempt to learn a new language. But being made of flesh, we believe it is flexible and thus can be remodelled to expand toward new ways of speaking.