From pure sensation to the intuition of beauty, from pleasure and pain to love and the mystical ecstasy and death—all the things that are fundamental, all the things that, to the human spirit, are most profoundly significant, can only be experienced, not expressed. The rest is always and everywhere silence. After silence that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.
~ Aldous Huxley
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I’ve a system of daily reminders; of course it’s complicated.
For years now, a few of my reminders have simply been questions. I recently started writing something to go with those questions making them feel more at home with some of my other reminders and prompts which had some exposition with them when I found them. I thought it would be interesting to share what I added to this question today:
WHAT HAVE I BEEN READING? — I’ve performed this experiment countless times. Read less: nothing happens. Read more: ideas, new connections, inspiration, questions, motivation, short-cuts, wonder.
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It is increasingly clear that neither of these assumptions is correct. Despite the claims of epidemiologists, our best efforts have never been able to reduce the number of newly reported COVID-19 cases for the world as a whole for any significant period of time. In fact, the latest week seems to be the highest week so far.
~ Gail Tverberg from, Reaching the End of Early Stimulus – What’s Ahead?
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It’s not meant as a doom-and-gloom quote. The article goes on to talk about how our economies really work and what’s really going on.
I’ve a tag for Tverberg for a reason. You should read everything she’s ever written—which would be hard because you’d have to also wade through the amazing, museum-piece that is The Oil Drum. I use that site as a litmus test for anyone who ever mentions “energy”—”Have you heard of The Oil Drum site?” If they have, then I’m really listening.
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What roles do culture, community, and personal experience play in shaping the art and teaching of street dance?
Some things go beyond a passion to become a way of life… For Kyle ‘Just Sole’ and Dinita ‘Queen Di’ Clark that way of life is street dance. They share their story; how they started dancing, their backgrounds, and their work as choreographers and professors. Just Sole and Queen Di describe their experiences with dance, from clubbing to teaching, and explain the culture and community of street dance. They discuss family, home and travel, and how dance weaves through everything in their lives.
It’s actually a surrendering to music. That’s what dance says, it’s a surrendering, it’s a commitment, it’s a letting go of your preconceived notion to accept it, to express your conceived notion with it.
~ Kyle ‘Just Sole’ Clark (45:40)
Kyle ‘Just Sole’ and Dinita ‘Queen Di’ Clark are dancers, choreographers, educators, and parents. Currently college professors, they have competed, taught, traveled, and performed together around the world for the last decade. Just Sole and Queen Di founded the “Just Sole! Street Dance Theater” company, and educational program “Funky Sole Fundamentals” to preserve the culture and styles of hip hop, funk, and house dance.
The beautiful thing about hip hop and street dance culture is, you are allowed to be yourself within the culture.
~ Dinita ‘Queen Di’ Clark (36:00)
The conversation centers on the deep cultural, spiritual, and personal significance of street dance. Kyle and Dinita discuss how street dance is more than movement; it’s a form of expression and a way of life, intricately tied to music, history, and community. They highlight the role of personal upbringing and exposure to music and movement in shaping their artistic journeys, describing dance as a universal language that everyone can connect with, but only those who actively participate truly understand.
Queen Di and Just Sole also emphasize the responsibility of teaching street dance, including preserving its cultural roots and passing on its history. They address misconceptions about the art form, such as the lack of perceived technique, and stress the importance of engaging directly with the culture through clubs, ciphers, and shared experiences. The discussion also touches on themes of appropriation, education, and the universal appeal of dance as a means of connection and spiritual release.
Takeaways
Participation in culture — True understanding and belonging in street dance require active participation, not just learning moves or theory.
Teaching with responsibility — Educators have a duty to preserve and respect the cultural roots of street dance while guiding students in their personal expression.
Dance as spiritual expression — Beyond movement, street dance connects deeply to music, offering a spiritual and emotional release.
Universal accessibility — While everyone can dance in theory, achieving a profound connection requires dedication and openness.
Cultural preservation — Maintaining the history and essence of street dance ensures its authenticity and relevance for future generations.
Resources
Funky Sole Fundamentals @funkysolefundamentals
(Written with help from Chat-GPT.)
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It’s the pursuit of these things, and your attempts to avoid them, that leave you in such turmoil. And yet they aren’t seeking you out; you are the one seeking them. Suspend judgement about them. And at once they will lie still, and you will be freed from fleeing and pursuing.
~ Marcus Aurelius
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Let me tell you, then, how you must think of me. I am as happy and lively as in my best days. Indeed, these days are my best, for my mind is now free of preoccupations and has leisure for its own concerns; now it amuses itself with lighter studies and now, pressing keenly after truth, it rises to the contemplation of its own nature and the nature of the universe. First it investigates the continents and their position, then the laws which govern the sea which surrounds them with its alternate ebb and flow, and then it examines the stretch which lies between heaven and earth and teems with such tumultuous and terrifying phenomena as thunder and lightning and gales and the precipitation of rain and snow and hail. Finally, when it has traversed the lower reaches, it bursts through to the realms above where it enjoys the fairest spectacle of things divine and, mindful of its eternity, moves freely among all that was and all that will be world without end.
~ Seneca, from Consolation of Helvia (20)
This type and period of writing is referred to as “silver point.” It’s highly polished, almost performance art in itself. Some pieces of silver point—including in my opinion swaths of Seneca’s writing—are tortuous to the language. (As I understand it, tortuous in the original as well as the English.)
What I’ve quoted is the ending of his letter. 2,000 years later, sounds to me like the human experience remains identical.
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Continuing my deep dive—hopefully it doesn’t become a drowning—into Knowledge Systems: Yesterday I spent a little time tinkering with Discourse to see what I could do with it. There is a mind-numbing array of tools that could be used, but I keep coming back to the point that I don’t actually understand what I’m trying to build.
I’ve spent significant time thinking about that, and reading about that, but it’s still not clear. It’s like standing in an aisle of tools each shiny and powerful; I know people who have piles of tools. Fortunately, the best way to understand is to build. And so building I am. (Out of sight privately, sorry.)
I seem to recall hearing a metaphor about house building: Start with a sofa in the lawn, add features as needed. Be prepared to knock it down and start again.
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But happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue. One must have a reason to “be happy.” Once the reason is found, however, one becomes happy automatically. As we see, a human being is not one in pursuit of happiness but rather in search of a reason to become happy, last but not least, through actualizing the potential meaning inherent and dormant in a given situation.
~ Viktor Frankl
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Zettelkasten is usually mentioned as a note-taking method. However, the end goal of Zettelkasten is not gathering and collecting notes, but rather creating a competent and knowledgeable communication partner. The main interaction with the slip-box is not when we are writing and adding new notes, because the slip-box is not there to be an archive of our memory and knowledge. Slip-box is there to be an apparatus with which we think. Therefore, the main interaction is when we communicate with the slip-box by confronting ourselves and our thinking with our prior knowledge.
~ Eva Thomas from, Understanding Zettelkasten — What does it mean to communicate with the slip-box
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This appears to be part four of a series: On knowledge systems, Push and pull, and Commonplace notebooks. Depending where you are on your personal journey you may have been sitting back, chuckling, waiting for me to “discover” zettelkasten. …to which I reply, “y u no email me about zettelkasten?!”
Now this idea I definitely have seen before. I can recall stumbling on the idea very early in my personal productivity and self-awareness journey. Without looking, I’ll bet I found it first on 43 Folders. I had the distinct pleasure of following along through Merlin Mann’s journey—trying to keep up, but not succeeding at the time. (Posts on that site run from 2004, through 2011.) If you just went, “43 Folders? …what’s that?” You need to go look at 43 Folders.
…oh sorry, I was off on a tangent there. I just realized Mann has a podcast that’s on episode #503. Shit. Another thing I probably need to listen too. I’ll just say: My web site serialize tool can drip podcast show notes pages at me too, so I’ll drip all those so I can skim the show notes, and I’ll just listen to the few that are “must listen” [in my opinion of course.]
*shudder* I’m all over the map today. Zettelkasten, right.
When I first encountered it, I got stuck on the idea that it’s “notes” in “boxes.” Why would anyone want to do that, now that we have (back then) web sites where you can tag stuff, search, edit, etc.? Now I see this part—trimming my lead quote down—is the neat part:
The end goal of Zettelkasten is creating a competent and knowledgeable communication partner. The slip-box is there to be an apparatus with which we think. Therefore, the main interaction is when we communicate with the slip-box by confronting ourselves and our thinking with our prior knowledge.
Do you see it now? The slip-box system can be slips of paper, digital notes/files, or many other implementations. The original slip-boxes (physical things, pre-Internet… actually, pre-electricity,) were used by one person. Using modern technology we can implement one that allows people to collaborate too. (If we wanted. Not saying I necessarily want that.)
Oh, and guess what I built four years ago. A very complicated, (that’s not a compliment,) system for weaving together references, summaries, and articles on a site called Hilbert’s Library. It was literally my first attempt to build a knowledge management system. I’m now thinking it’s over-designed—I mean yes, sure… I over-think and over-design everything. But I mean that now I see why the design I built into it actually gets in the way of it being maximally useful as a knowledge management system.
What? Oh, yes, people have built lots of ways to implement slip-boxes. Notably, Emvi does that (among other things, because zettelkasten can be confusing so they pitch it in various use cases.)
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Continuing my train of thought from On knowledge systems and Push and pull, today I want to dive into something called a commonplace book. (For the third time: no denouement today.) In line with more modern language usage, I’m going to prefer commonplace notebook; books are today commonplace, and we use the word “notebook” for the ones we create privately.
Settle in, this is about to get tangential.
I first encountered this idea at 8am, November 13th, 2020. Literally. I’ve never heard of the idea of a “commonplace book” previously. And here I am in the midst of finally pulling on a thread which I’ve been calling a quest for a knowledge system… trying to solve a problem which is as yet ill formed. I’ve been reading through the entire https://fs.blog web site; it’s like 5,000 non-trivial web pages skimming a few every day for well over a year. This November 13th a little before 8am I happen to reach, John Locke’s Method of Organizing Common Place Books. Which, probably is not worth clicking through. First off, “common” modifies “place” so we can drop “common” without fundamentally changing the meaning—so sayeth grammar. Therefore Locke’s method is for organizing books about places. I very nearly didn’t even skim it. But I did. And realized it’s his method for organizing commonplace books. Oh my god Becky, that’s completely different. Wait, what’s a commonplace book? (There’s a link in that post about Locke’s method.) POW!
Commonplace books are personal knowledge libraries; notebooks full of collected ideas and bits of wisdom all mixed up together. Here, we take a look at their history and benefits.
~ from Commonplace Books: Networked Knowledge and Combinatorial Creativity
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Am I on Candid Camera? This is so apropos of my recent thinking, it’s H.P. Lovecraft level eery.
Zooming out…
The knowledge system I’m seeking is not simply a repository into which I want to toss everything. For example, Evernote is not a solution that will work. It’s too easy to put things in. (Likewise for any home-grown version I might cook up with documents or cloud storage.) Sure, Evernote and other solutions are eminently searchable—that’s a good thing. But I continue to avoid such tools because… well, because I don’t want simply a giant collection of everything. I don’t want to simply amass everything I’ve ever been exposed to. (We already have an Internet. We don’t need Craig’s Internet assembled within the other.) But, I’ll call these desirables the “power” features.
I’m intrigued by the commonplace notebook solution as it requires a good bit of effort to add things. Effort is required to evaluate each new idea to be added. Effort is required to see how it “hangs together with” the rest of what I know, at the time when I encounter the new thing. This suggests individual, manual and mental labor, [meaning I have to do everything, possibly even including manually writing things down on paper] is also a desirable feature.
Some combination of those “power” and “manual” features feels like a sweet spot.
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