Ars Gratia Artis
We don’t know. We really don’t. Not much of anything, about most anyone. Stories, made up of bits and pieces — of imaginations; of suppositions; of inferences not inherent, conclusions that don’t follow. But oh, the stories — so endlessly entertaining. The seduction of infinite possibility: juicy, tantalizing, mysterious (malicious? bad on you). We are all of it. We are everything. And none of it. Connections forced and missed connections. Outside our own internal experience (inside it, too?), we are invented narratives, carried on the stream of consciousness. The suspense of inconclusive evidence.
As in those impressionistic indie films that make non-enthusiasts swear by mass-market blockbusters, there’s no evident rhyme or reason here — just scenes from a (sometimes partially, occasionally barely) watched filmography, connected solely by intuition. Is there a storyline? Nope. Is there truth? Yep. What truth? Neither of us knows. It’s what caught my eye in what I saw, in combinations that thrilled me into full-body grins, sighs, or chuckles of mischief. Try to guess which is which — you won’t succeed, for the most part (and won’t know if you did, anyway). But that’s the beauty of it. You’ll embark on a journey, and emerge with only the knowledge that you journeyed. Like the carnival ride that deposits you where you started. Or does it?
The space in between, where you don’t yet know how, or even if, things will connect, is both teeming with possibility and ladened with risk.
A movie is impossible without transitional elements weaving scenes together, yet not using them to enhance a mood or hint at a direction is wasteful. A ballet dancer successfully completing the steps in a challenging routine is excellent, but the one that also curates the transitions between those steps is sublime. In the instant between a bid for connection and your response to it, you get to determine your relationship’s success. For the individual in a state of hyper-focus, transitions within the task at hand are rich, complete moments, not just in-betweenness. For the neurodiverging, a shift of attention from one task to another can be jarring, difficult to complete in an instant — but any system of normativity is in itself an impediment to connection. Neuronormativity incorrectly disables the other. Heteronormativity vilely damns the other. Cisnormativity cruelly fabricates freakishness. The masculine as norm disparagingly labels the feminine deficient, defective. White supremacy unnaturally snubs color, and colorful expression, as inferior. Any norm exerts disconnecting power over what is suddenly, though not inherently, otherness.
So where are the points of connection? How can we build fruitful links that are not about subject and subjected?
When a film or a story spells everything out, it deprives the viewer of the experience of thinking for themselves. A fascist society does exactly that. So I often gravitate toward the unwoven, the suggestive, and the loosely linked, inviting the pause that impregnates thought, the curiosity that sidesteps judgment. When you’re left in the dark, you must feel your way through. And that is connection.