This snippet ended up being the core of my Transmediation presentation at TQR 2019.
Here is the packaged PDF version.
“I have no idea what the author is saying!” I have uttered these words on numerous occasions, typically reading texts that require familiarity with definitions, principles, formulas, rules, and other bits of prerequisite knowledge. A while ago, I read an article about a quantum physics concept that appeared like an impenetrable wall rather than a written piece. My brain struggled to render the abstractions into useful images, and I walked away from it more confused than enlightened.
Works of philosophers are laden with abstractions as well; yet, I do not encounter them as walls. Reading philosophical texts reminds me of a working textile loom with an automated flying shuttle. Bit by bit and row by row, I weave numerous threads of the authors’ discourse with the weft of my experiences to transform written abstractions into new cognitive schemata for future scaffolding and recall. Back and forth, back and forth. I read an excerpt, then search my memory for a suitable illustration of what I just read. Sometimes these illustrations remind me of dreams–dynamic, faint or vivid, familiar, yet strange, often nonsensical–visual abstractions of text abstractions. Other times, images are still.
When my search successfully converges with an interesting or profound thought in the text, I accent it with a highlighter. I follow no color code–I simply ensure each thought stands out from the others as much as possible. Back and forth, back and forth. I rarely perceive the fabric’s pattern until I labor well into the text’s interior. Intricate patterns take longer to reveal. Back and forth, back and forth; the shuttle has a rhythm.
To say “I have no idea what the author is saying!” is to cut a thread in the warp and to cause my fabric of comprehension to unravel. This I dare not do, so when my shuttle struggles to come back to the other side, I slow down. When weft tension threatens a break, I relieve it through text transmediation.
For example, in “The Minor Gesture” book, the author Erin Manning asserts that “body-world split” is “endemic to the neurotypical account of experience” (p. 111). When I first read this passage, I had to pause my shuttle of thought to relieve the tension: I am wary of reinforcing boundaries around neurotypicality and neurodiversity because my daughter has autism. She uses these boundaries as a an excuse when she does not want to do something. Yet, the idea of a body-world split is intriguing–as if there is another way to be. Is there?
I reach into my memory for a suitable example of a body-world merge. A recent hike in the mountains of North Carolina comes up immediately: rays of the afternoon sun filtered through the thick branches of a fir-tree and split into thousands of sparkles. I captured the moment on my phone camera, and here it is, right in my palm. Easy! I immerse myself into this memory: the scent of firs and the fresh air fill my lungs with elation. I do not breathe, I drink it. A faint wisp of smoke rising from the chimney disrupts my timeline, allowing my childhood and my present to coexist: when I was little, I lived in a house with a furnace–smoke meant warmth and supper. The memory of burning wood is so powerful that it instantly takes me back forty years ago. The mountain, the smells, the sights, the memories and I are one. I am dissolved. Then I shiver. The cold reminded me of the body-world split even as I fixed my scarf to stop the air from touching the skin on my neck and chest. How funny. I do not mind the air on my inside… On the outside, my body and the world a clearly separate. This example almost worked.
I skim through photographs in my camera gallery, looking for more experiences of body-world merge. Obviously, skin is a powerful barrier between the two–it feels temperature, touch, pain… What if it is somehow made to feel less? I imagine floating on my back on a summer day in the pool. I need to conjure up sensory memories to help interrogate my body-world separation, so I reach for my tablet and search for a stock photo to aid recall. I quickly find a photograph that matches my mental model. The woman in the image looks serene. Only her head is above water, her hair, shoulders, and arms are immersed. Eyes closed. I try to imagine what she feels, but I am aware the image documents another woman’s experience, not mine. Visuals are an efficient way to access the brain of a seeing person, but the process is too quick for what I am trying to accomplish. A veteran advertising graphic artist, I routinely evaluate scores of images for use in my designs. My eyes are trained to look for specifics and make selections as quickly as possible. If I am going to use images to help me with deep reading, I need to suspend my habits. An idea comes to mind: what if I sketch the photo and transform the model’s experience into my own. I find a pencil and some poster board. I begin with an outline. My hand follows the curves of the face profile, and it puts me in the mood. Unlike straight lines, curves are liquid, and I think of the water, as intended. Next, I work on the shading: first nose, then chin. Hair is last because half of it is underwater, and it looks like a mistake with its clearly defined, but oddly shaped boundaries. It is unrecognizable. I resist the urge to heed my brain’s suggestion about what an eye or long hair should look like, and try to draw exactly what I see–shapes, lines, shadows and highlights, and their proximity to one another. The activity forces me to process each element separately, in isolation from the whole they are meant to represent. From this angle, drawing reminds me of linguistic analyses. Drawing also disrupts my perception of time and creates a mental niche where I can gather my memories and interact with them. This time, I am focused on floating in the pool. I recall the muffled sounds, ears underwater; skin is quieted, except for perceiving the soothing, radiating warmth on my face and chest. Eyes closed; they feel the assault of Florida sunlight and dare not to unsheathe. With dominant sensory channels arrested, other sensory experiences flood in. The gentle rocking of the waves. Gravity reinvented. The sound of my heart is solemn; I am amazed that it has been beating for so many years without a pause. Some day it will stop, but the thought does not upset me, it simply punctuates my experience of now. I hear the air traveling through my lungs as I breathe–it is noisy underwater–I imagine myself as a bubble. Volition is loitering somewhere on the boundaries of my self-awareness. Good. Is this how relaxation feels like? A vacation from an obsession with self-purpose? No needs, no wants, no chatter in my head. Body-world split is irrelevant. In fact, I am very much aware of my body, it is the world that disappeared. I decide my drawing is complete.
I step back, examine my drawing, and cringe. I want to share it with Janet, Jenni, and others, perhaps–but I do not want to be judged as an artist. I did not mean to create art, or engage in art-making. I do not know the first thing about drawing techniques. I feel I am a step up from a stick figure artist, but I am also a flight of stairs below professionals. The flaws are obvious. One can tell I had no idea what to do shade the nose or how to make the water look liquid. I did not even attempt to draw the immersed arms because I kept wanting to somehow draw water over them–my brain refused to see only shadows and shapes. Yet, I am proud of this sketch because I did something authentic. Above all, I managed to slow time and help my weaving shuttle make to the other end of the fabric in the making. I still do not know what the absence of body-world separation feels like for autistic persons, but I examined my own experiences, and I am better tuned in to Manning’s narrative. I am more alert.