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September 28, 2006
Plasticity of Motion
After reading the first few pages of Plasticity of Motion where so much concentrates on the act of walking, I was reminded of some advice I received shortly after I graduated college from a writer here in New York named Adam Sachs. I'm not sure if he heard this somewhere or if he made it up, but it's stuck with me and it's pretty humorous: he told me to get a funny walk. He said it would serve three purposes: a) a funny walk will help you standout in the crowd, b) it will keep you entertained on any journey and c) if I were to step in shit, it would look like it's all part of the act. I can't say I took his advice literally, but I figured his words might serve as a light contrast to those from the opening of the essay.
I did appreciate some of the larger ideas from Plasticity of Motion and Paul Tortsov. The line "If they would lend an attentive ear to their own mechanics, they would sense an energy rising from the deepest wells of their beings, from their very hearts," takes me back to an oil painting class I had has a teenager where my teacher would ask me to always stand while painting and feel my energy rise up from my stomach through my arms and to use that to paint with. It seemed like an odd thing at the time when I was more concern with learning brush strokes with my hand and my teacher was asking me to pay attention to the rest of my body instead. The idea of the unbroken line certainly works for me as a metaphor as to the artist's need to be honest in feeling and to remain true to an expression until the expression is complete. This echos a similar plea from Wendell Berry in his essay 'The Responsibilities of the Poet.' And when the ideas of tempo and rhythm were discussed, not only did I think of poetry but also of basketball, a sport that has often served me with a zen like state when I have the opportunity to escape to it. Perhaps the physical motion I have practiced and considered the most in my life is the jump shot/cross-over dribble and the mechanics associated with it. I decided to use this as the inspiration for my project.
Posted by Charles Miller at September 28, 2006 10:11 AM