I do like looking for that in the sequences. Intermediate is more jazzy, no? Primary is more like a pop song, with its catchy repeating refrain (vinyasas).

Karen I love his books Especially the Bolden one ( jazz is my thing after all ) interesting an how many Ashtangi’s seem to like Jazz ….. Who’d have thought we’d like an improvisationary form. Makes up for not getting any on the mat perhaps.

Just sweep the floor, dammit! Here is the broom

Re: all these dead white guys, you know that I am in love with half of them (including a few gay ones, Heraclitus and Ludwig), but… sometimes… I dunno. What’s the use?

We live in this world that is so much more complex and egalitarian than their worlds. Almost ALL of them were writing reactively–hard to understand them without context. But how much less could they understand our context? We are more complex and have more resources for human connection and self-discovery than any other humans ever. Imagine telling Martin that some hybrid Indian-British contortionism practice blended with esoteric southeast Asian absorption techniques was what we found “ready at hand.”

There are potential tools everywhere now… in that context, I see a lot of value in intentionality and choice. Some tools are sharper than others; and some toys are, admittedly, more fun.

I heard the word “immanence” and was sent directly to Deleuze and Guattari, where “immanence” means, basically, “not metaphysical.” Present, everywherewhen. But then the trail led to this Laura Marks stuff I’ve been reading on sensation and cinema and how electrons have desire and how dust motes can be considered to have subjectivity, and then the discourse on tools simply vanished.

I think that transcendence, if I hear it with my “immanence” brain on, cannot mean “far from us, to be achieved” (as in, wait until the next life to reach paradise, blah blah blah). But it CAN mean that the tool is not necessarily in and of itself, the process and the end-all-be-all of the “thing” (sorry Grim, no Heidegger intended).

It’s the same mind, to my thinking, as “to look at everything, we need look at only one thing.” Pick up the tool on the immanent plane, what D and G call the “body without organs,” and suddenly the whole non-metaphysical immanence is implied. MAYBE. If we’re HIP to it, TUNED into it, even (although I dislike the agency implied here), LOOKING for it. This is how I hear Owl’s .02.
Of course if I hear Karen as saying, “Dude I practiced and suddenly the plane of immanence appeared,” then that’s also good and notably, not oppositional.

Making things for no good reason is something I learned to do in art school, and I’m so grateful for that. This reminds me of a book that’s affected me very deeply: Coming Through Slaughter, by Michael Ondaatje (http://www.amazon.com/Coming-Through-Slaughter-Michael-Ondaatje/dp/0679767851)

It’s about Buddy Bolden — trumpet player in New Orleans, who some consider the originator of jazz. The BEST part of this, at least for me: he was never recorded. All of his art went into the air and disappeared.

Pollock had paintings at the end of his work, but his work wasn’t about those paintings.

There’s something about asana that aligns satisfyingly with these examples.

back to tools and issues

Just playing here, holding a quote up to the light and turning it this way and that. Karen, I was struck by your use of process as we were talking about tools. I remember some Zen guy, forget who, who posed the glorious question … What does the Spoon want?
(loved that) have never been able to, just throw the spoons in the drawer since, they all have sit snuggly on top of eachother.
And then I got to thinking about tools and what is made. Think of sculpting and ask yourself what does this chisel want to do, or of painting and and ask what does this brush want to do. Screwdrivers want to turn screws, ploughs want to plough the ground. there’s the wonderful moment in Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy where it turns out that it’s the mice who are running us through their maze, perhaps its the tools that are employing us and remember you use tools to make a tools.

Is this crazy? your Pollock example, do you think he went out and bought paint especially for a canvas, no, i think your right, he just went into his studio and picked up whichever tins of paint he had around. It’s those tins of paint perhaps, that determined the painting, not Pollock. he just finished it off.

Like i said just playing here…. and yet…..