Sink, Swim, Sense

Northrop Frye in By Liberal Things [his address upon his installation as Principal of Victoria College, 1959] invites us to contemplate the ingrainedness of practice. It rehearses for me the triple notions of immersion, acculturation and perception.

The kind of memory the university is interested in and tries to develop is practice memory, the skill and knowledge developed by constant application, the steady repetition that goes on in the unconscious, teaching us, as the proverb says, to skate in summer and swim in winter.
The seasonal antithesis calls to mind another.

Prior to a performance of Porch View Dances, following an acknowledgement of traditional territories and ancestral lands by Jim Adams, I witnessed [t]his invitation to the dérèglement des sens [I paraphrase from memory ommiting the pronominal references to "you" (implied as they are in the imperative mood of the verbs) and not wanting to trip up the euphony of the medial anaphora of the repeated preposition "with" so important to a world view where "all my relations" count].
hear with eyes
see with ears
feel with head
think with heart
Perfect advice for entering an aesthetic time and space. Practice.

And so for day 2184
05.12.2012