The fantasy is my body anywhere in space, to leave the bounds of earth but with my stuff of earth—my body. No desire to augment my body beyond its apparent bounds. If I leave the earth’s surface, I leave none of its objects. I don’t transcend material, I just choose how I relate to space. Individual. My fantasy, my infrastructure, my mobility. A tantrum in space.
Dear God, thank you for the soft joining, meeting of my hands feet and sheets. Thank you for the way my head sinks into pillows thank you for, I might really mean, my ability to feel pleasure physically and by association. The wind is loud today and vinegar is acidic to me. I’m not settled. Help me to land on your earth and see sun on surfaces. Help me respond to my fellows with love and the robust resources you’ve given me. To love my mother well.
Can I run today?
Let me be calm and insightful, let me see what is there. I’m nervous again. I offer myself to you to do with and to make of me what you will. Relieve me of the bondage of self that I may better do thy will. Dear God thank you for my body that can propel itself through water. Help me give joy and expansion and vision to those I meet.
Lust, which points to its lack as its reason for being. Lust, which points to its hunger as its right to eat. Lust, which wants. This is its substance: lack. Or not. Maybe its substance is desire, which may no be lack.
Up is a direction and a position and a realm. It’s Asgard, it’s heaven, it’s where Jack’s beanstalk leads, it’s where the Tower of Babel tried to go. It’s upgrading, it’s upright, it’s upwardly mobile. It’s uptown, it’s upstairs, its upstanding.
Up is a position. Up looks down, and in looking down, sees. From the mountaintop, Fredric Church manifested his destiny on the landscape in his visual field. Everything the light touches is yours, says Mufasa to Simba from a high cliff overlooking their kingdom. I’m the King of the world says Jack from the high bow of the Titanic.
I want to make the point that power, in one of its mythic encarnations, is a combination of a certain type of movement and a certain altitude. And that you know this every single time you look up. Wise up.
This certain type of movement is freeform and effortless. It is freedom from gravity. It is drone videos, go pro videos, and panning through 3D rendered space. We all have physical memory of moving in impossible ways from having experienced this kind of movement in digital space.
Dear God, thank you for the soft joining, meeting of my hands feet and sheets. Thank you for the way my head sinks into pillows thank you for, I might really mean, my ability to feel pleasure physically and by association. The wind is loud today and vinegar is acidic to me. I’m not settled. Help me to land on your earth and see sun on surfaces. Help me respond to my fellows with love and the robust resources you’ve given me. To love my mother well.
Can I run today?
Let me be calm and insightful, let me see what is there. I’m nervous again. I offer myself to you to do with and to make of me what you will. Relieve me of the bondage of self that I may better do thy will. Dear God thank you for my body that can propel itself through water. Help me give joy and expansion and vision to those I meet.
Lust, which points to its lack as its reason for being. Lust, which points to its hunger as its right to eat. Lust, which wants. This is its substance: lack. Or not. Maybe its substance is desire, which may no be lack.
Up is a direction and a position and a realm. It’s Asgard, it’s heaven, it’s where Jack’s beanstalk leads, it’s where the Tower of Babel tried to go. It’s upgrading, it’s upright, it’s upwardly mobile. It’s uptown, it’s upstairs, its upstanding.
Up is a position. Up looks down, and in looking down, sees. From the mountaintop, Fredric Church manifested his destiny on the landscape in his visual field. Everything the light touches is yours, says Mufasa to Simba from a high cliff overlooking their kingdom. I’m the King of the world says Jack from the high bow of the Titanic.
I want to make the point that power, in one of its mythic encarnations, is a combination of a certain type of movement and a certain altitude. And that you know this every single time you look up. Wise up.
This certain type of movement is freeform and effortless. It is freedom from gravity. It is drone videos, go pro videos, and panning through 3D rendered space. We all have physical memory of moving in impossible ways from having experienced this kind of movement in digital space.
I played Tony Hawk Pro Skater as a kid. My body knows what it feels like to perform a handplant at the top of a half pipe. I have never been in a half pipe on a skateboard. I have never stood on my hand in any scenario, especially not one in which I am skating. I am a bad skater. I’ve fallen, I’ve hurt my body. But my same body can remember the feeling of a hand plant at the top of a half pipe. I’ve cleared entire picnic tables with my tremendous ollies.
I saw a real human man skateboarding outside of my school recently, ollying over a flight of 5 stairs. I recognized a ludicrous thought in my mind as I passed. I was sure that if I tried to olly over those stairs I would likely land it. I could do it. I recognized a fictitious muscle memory. I would eat shit if I tried to olly over anything at all. I lusted for the experience I imagined he was having. Of course his experience was much more effortful and risky than my experience of digital skating, in that it included effort and risk at all.
I saw a real human man skateboarding outside of my school recently, ollying over a flight of 5 stairs. I recognized a ludicrous thought in my mind as I passed. I was sure that if I tried to olly over those stairs I would likely land it. I could do it. I recognized a fictitious muscle memory. I would eat shit if I tried to olly over anything at all. I lusted for the experience I imagined he was having. Of course his experience was much more effortful and risky than my experience of digital skating, in that it included effort and risk at all.
But that is the experience I lusted for and continue to lust for. Tony Hawk Pro Skater has a cheat code for “Moon Gravity”. This is the feeling that could make me cry. This is the feeling of opting out of gravity, of transcending the capacities of my physical body, and with total mastery and therefor no risk.
I have dreams in which I run forever and never get tired. It is the sweetest feeling I could imagine. My heart gets sore when I think about how that hasn’t truly happened. So in February, I started going to the gym. I want to be strong. I now understand my desire for fitness as a desire to overcome the constraints of my body.
Claim:
Freedom is the power to make the world and traverse it in all directions.
Power is a certain type of movement, at a certain type of altitude.
Power is fitness to the point of disembodiment. Power is disembodied soaring over landscapes. Freedom is disembodied soaring over landscapes. Moving like you own the place.
Claim 2:
Elevation is control and escape. Power is control and escape as well.
Linear perspective conjured an embodied subject, located on a stable ground observing a stable and linear horizon. It grounded the ground and the viewer. It affirmed and placed the viewer, empowering the subject by centering them. It opened doors for types of certainty based on linearity of space, linearity of time and thus presumed a calculability of the future. Time became spatial. This vision of subject time and space had a hand, says Hito Steyerl in her essay Free Falling, in enabling Western dominance and the dominance of its concepts.
I have dreams in which I run forever and never get tired. It is the sweetest feeling I could imagine. My heart gets sore when I think about how that hasn’t truly happened. So in February, I started going to the gym. I want to be strong. I now understand my desire for fitness as a desire to overcome the constraints of my body.
Claim:
Freedom is the power to make the world and traverse it in all directions.
Power is a certain type of movement, at a certain type of altitude.
Power is fitness to the point of disembodiment. Power is disembodied soaring over landscapes. Freedom is disembodied soaring over landscapes. Moving like you own the place.
Claim 2:
Elevation is control and escape. Power is control and escape as well.
Linear perspective conjured an embodied subject, located on a stable ground observing a stable and linear horizon. It grounded the ground and the viewer. It affirmed and placed the viewer, empowering the subject by centering them. It opened doors for types of certainty based on linearity of space, linearity of time and thus presumed a calculability of the future. Time became spatial. This vision of subject time and space had a hand, says Hito Steyerl in her essay Free Falling, in enabling Western dominance and the dominance of its concepts.
Vertical perspective, she says, is a radicalization of these concepts. God’s eye view may at first appear to be a departure, but in fact imagines a located (if now floating) subject and a still-stable ground. The floating subject is disembodied, which, in my interpretation is freedom from body as well as dominion over the earth. Steyerl calls the Vertical Perspective a “proxy perspective that projects delusions of stability, safety and extreme mastery.”
Here we are back at Tony Hawk and the false memories of such stability, safety and extreme mastery over things like hand plants and massive soaring ollies.
Extreme sports, while they have existed informally since the 50’s, gained traction in the 1990s, prompting the first X-Games in 1995.
Just saying. These were the first adults to grow up with memories of virtual movement. Mario flies when he spins his cape. I am not under the misconception that parkour and kite surfing are effortless and riskless endeavors. I do, however, note that extreme sports are often judged by aesthetic criteria. Style, grace and the appearance of ease are hallmarks of winning performances of these effortful ventures. I go to the gym because I dream of being strong enough to move with the appearance of fantastic ease in fantastic effort. I want to simulate my simulated experiences. I want to learn the uneven bars. Why do we tune in only for figure skating, diving, and gymnastics during the Olympics?
The myth, of course, is that we can do more than represent this experience and the feeling of this type of movement. The myth, of course, is that freedom from gravity can be achieved, can be felt. The myth, of course, is that the world can be transcended.
The consummate question: would you rather be invisible or would you rather fly?
Both?
Here we are back at Tony Hawk and the false memories of such stability, safety and extreme mastery over things like hand plants and massive soaring ollies.
Extreme sports, while they have existed informally since the 50’s, gained traction in the 1990s, prompting the first X-Games in 1995.
Just saying. These were the first adults to grow up with memories of virtual movement. Mario flies when he spins his cape. I am not under the misconception that parkour and kite surfing are effortless and riskless endeavors. I do, however, note that extreme sports are often judged by aesthetic criteria. Style, grace and the appearance of ease are hallmarks of winning performances of these effortful ventures. I go to the gym because I dream of being strong enough to move with the appearance of fantastic ease in fantastic effort. I want to simulate my simulated experiences. I want to learn the uneven bars. Why do we tune in only for figure skating, diving, and gymnastics during the Olympics?
The myth, of course, is that we can do more than represent this experience and the feeling of this type of movement. The myth, of course, is that freedom from gravity can be achieved, can be felt. The myth, of course, is that the world can be transcended.
The consummate question: would you rather be invisible or would you rather fly?
Both?
Dear God, thank you for the soft joining, meeting of my hands feet and sheets. Thank you for the way my head sinks into pillows thank you for, I might really mean, my ability to feel pleasure (gravity) physically and by association. The wind is loud today and vinegar is acidic to me (I HEAR AND I TASTE). I’m not settled (THE HORIZON IS UNSTABLE AND SO AM I). Help me to land on your earth and see sun on surfaces (GIVE ME A BODY AND GRAVITY SUCK ME TO THE EARTH). Help me respond to my fellows with love and the robust resources you’ve given me. To love my mother well (I WILL NOT FLY OR BECOME INVISIBLE).
Can I run today? (BUT CAN I TRAVERSE IN ALL DIRECTIONS?)
Let me be calm and insightful, let me see what is there (AND CAN I SEE THE WHOLE EARTH AT ONCE). I’m nervous again (NO). I offer myself to you to do with and to make of me what you will (I CAN’T). Relieve me of the bondage of self that I may better do thy will (I AM SUBJECT TO FORCES). Dear God thank you for my body that can propel itself through water (BUT I WISH I WEREN’T). Help me give joy and expansion and vision to those I meet (AND I WILL PERPETUATE THIS MYTH).
Lust, which points to its lack as its reason for being (AND I WILL WANT WHAT IS IMPOSSIBLE). Lust, which points to its hunger as its right to eat (I WILL DEMAND OF MYSELF WHAT I HAVE IMAGINED). Lust, which wants (AND FAULT MYSELF MY FAILURE TO TRANSCEND). This is its substance: lack. Or not. Maybe its substance is desire, which may no be lack (AND THEREBY LOCATE POWER IN IMPOSSIBILITY).
Can I run today? (BUT CAN I TRAVERSE IN ALL DIRECTIONS?)
Let me be calm and insightful, let me see what is there (AND CAN I SEE THE WHOLE EARTH AT ONCE). I’m nervous again (NO). I offer myself to you to do with and to make of me what you will (I CAN’T). Relieve me of the bondage of self that I may better do thy will (I AM SUBJECT TO FORCES). Dear God thank you for my body that can propel itself through water (BUT I WISH I WEREN’T). Help me give joy and expansion and vision to those I meet (AND I WILL PERPETUATE THIS MYTH).
Lust, which points to its lack as its reason for being (AND I WILL WANT WHAT IS IMPOSSIBLE). Lust, which points to its hunger as its right to eat (I WILL DEMAND OF MYSELF WHAT I HAVE IMAGINED). Lust, which wants (AND FAULT MYSELF MY FAILURE TO TRANSCEND). This is its substance: lack. Or not. Maybe its substance is desire, which may no be lack (AND THEREBY LOCATE POWER IN IMPOSSIBILITY).