Heels on Fire & The Circuit Gang

(Bajo Circuito, 6 August 2015)

Brutalism in art first petrifies objects---buildings, sculptures, clothes---and then comes to suck out the soul out of the bodies. This latter stage, a suicide by art, responds to the disappointment with the perceived human inability to accommodate each other. As is the case with most pursuits, this act of resignation is compulsive, contagious.

Brutalism has not touched the bodies under the circuit. Indeed, the venue converts the elements of brutalism without into a mat that sets off the humanity within---to the beat of the bass, to the flip of the frames, to the race of the phrase off the signer's fierce face, to the sigh of the thigh to the musical phrase, to the sway of the hip set in a tight silky frame, to the tearing of tires, to the squishing of shoes, in the highlights by headlights, to the hum of the horns, to the ding of the doorknobs of the day done. Then night.

"The Festival of Insignificance" by Milan Kundera (2013)

The appeal of philosophy is akin to the appeal of dance. Both pursuits dare grown-ups to play, unashamedly. A philosopher will entertain any question that lends itself to a grammatically coherent formulation. He will obsess over questions of little or no practical significance.

Novelists write for the same reason some pray. A novelist wishes to believe that a narrative holds a lesson, and that one's lifetime efforts will eventually pay off. A novelist creates an illusion of his own when the illusions of others he finds wanting.

Literature moulds the past. Science drafts the future. Dance affirms the present.