happiness like motion!
even still, 492,126 miles per hour
TL; DR: bodies, rest & motion (The Window photos project, Part. 44)
“Lie back…” says the meditation instructor. “Feel the weight of gravity on your shoulders…your spine… your legs. Take a long slow breath.” I do. “Become stillness.” I don’t. I mean, how could you — the planet* is spinning like an enormously torqued merry-go-round, trying to fling us off at 1000 miles per hour! The Earth is also racing around the sun at 67,000 mph, like a desperate-to-win interplanetary NASCAR driver on the final lap. Not only that:
Our solar system is careening around the centre of the galaxy like a meth-snorting dirt biker loop-de-looping inside a metal sphere at the county fair at 492,126 mph. Our galaxy is spinning like an overclocked whirling dervish at 600,000 mph, and oh, by the way also hurtling outwards at 372 mph. (Oops, wait, that’s per-second. It’s actually 1,300,000 mph**).
And OMG, even space itself moves — the entire universe is expanding like a (well, like a universe expanding so insanely they measure it per million light years) at 357,000 miles per hour/mly.
Hold on tight, there’s more: no such thing as inertia for the universe, only acceleration: it’s growing infinitely bigger, faster.
So there’s a clear reason for white-knuckling that guided meditation.
“Imagine you are floating...” As the rain sticks are tipped to elicit soft white noise, and crystal bowls are caressed to sing, I do imagine myself floating, in a kayak on a river. On the bank I see trees. On the right is a magnificent maple, red as an inferno, each leaf a flame. I want to study it in detail, but I keep drifting backwards in the current. I paddle furiously to stay true to the tree, straining and j-stroking just to be still.
“Visualize your life goal a little bit in the distance. Now move to it, easily, in a gentle straight line.” Okay, the earth is rotating on its axis while orbiting the sun inside a solar system that is circling the centre of a galaxy that is spinning… To travel a “true” straight-line amidst all these turnings and velocities, I have to correct my trajectory by spiralling, arcing, and looping — my path a long convoluted fusilli through three-dimensional currents.
Tough. But also: fun. Who wants to get on a rollercoaster that remains level, goes only straight, and rolls slowly? We want the dizzy, the discomfort, the speed, the accelerations. We want the ride designed with fast spirographs.
Who hasn’t twisted the chains of the swing around and around to let go and get lightheaded, or tried doing a wheelie on a bike or skateboard, or sped the scooter or wheelchair or car that much faster than safe… “Movement is life” said Jules Verne (and Moshe Feldenkrais, and Hazrat Inayat Khan, and Isadora Duncan, and and and). “Still life” is an art oxymoron, of course. So bring on the hypotrochoidal movement, and at speed!
Even while sitting still, or asleep, or meditating, you’re moving at more than 429,126 mph. So spiral, loop, arc and accelerate. Who cares if your knuckles whiten, and ache.
NOTES:
- *btw the continents are also moving, at one inch a year, so add that to your velocity.
- **or 2,092,147.2 in kilometers. Even faster! Sorta!
- Full Jules Verne quote: “Movement is life; and it is well to be able to forget the past, and kill the present by continual change.”
- some sonic convolutions: “Happiness Like Motion” is a lyric from the song of the same name, and is on the same album as the sequel song “Mrs Major Tom” (which Sheryl Crow later covered), and “Box the Gnat” (electronic square-dance), all three songs re: movement, happy and sad. (And written by me, released under the names K.I.A., as well as Shinjuku Zulu — and, on theme, see also the SZ songs “Slow Is The New Fast” (jazzy rap, or rappy jazz) and also the meditative acapella “Sweetness Likes the Reverb” ….which, circling back, was sampled in “Happiness Like Motion”
- this post was initially called “Wheeler’s and Wheelies Part Two”. See part one below.
- Newton's First Law of Motion states that a body at rest will remain at rest unless an outside force acts on it, and a body in motion at a constant velocity will remain in motion in a straight line unless acted upon by an outside force.
- as always, all photos are from The Window, a 24/7/365 photo project (all images unstaged and from one location***
-***now two; we had to move. pavement was the original, bricks is the sequel.
PREVIOUS POSTS (on topic):
BONUS PHOTO: bodies, rest & migration
CRISPR SCULPTR, an installation I did for a Banff Centre residency, of infinite possibilities & scales, here in 3 iterations: a spiralling version; a curving linear install; and a migrating version (rendering) where the work is to pass through and around the institution and other art there over time (necessitating negotiations, treaties and agreements for the art’s borders/territories and path). More images & info HERE
