The Room in Context (1)
Which was just as well. It wouldn't have coped well with such a world.
The youngling, the god-child and the mewling infant all have their archetypes from which they issue and to which they aspire or react against. There is always a woman, a man or a god, or some semi-divine or zoomorphic equivalent which provides us with a neat structure of derivation, which implies comparison.
In some ways, the creation of the Room's emotional framework is like the birth of the cosmos. Like the emergence of Gaia from Chaos, or the Biggest of Big Bangs, or the very existence of the Christian God, it is something of a mystery. Do you have sufficient faith to swallow that mystery? Or will you reject it as many have rejected the creation stories (we must tread carefully with 'myth' here) in their own societies? For this is as real as they are.
What did God model himself on? How did Gaia grow to become or create the parched spines that spanned the Ancient World? What does the babe, lacking a parent (even a substitute) emulate, imitate and eventually emanicipate himself from?
Our world is fascinated, however indirectly, with such anomalies, because to understand them, is to understand the universe, in some small, perhaps small-town, fashion. Witness the popularity with a span of generations of 'Tarzan' - on the face of it a simple child's tale, but actually a study (if unscientific!) of the translation of man's development into the natural world, with overtones of the recapture or reentry to that Eden that we have all lost.
But, how far we have come, dear (as you have now become to us) reader, from the idea and the feeling of the Room. Tarzan is a far easier vehicle for such a comparison or exploration of our nature and the nature of change, of development and of continuity. The idea of an abstract Room taking on the challenge of striving alone to define its identity with no pattern is harder to grasp, like a greased vine that sends our hero tumbling into the jaws of a dislocated (cinematically) crocodile or lion.
Indulge the Room, and its curiosities. For it may help free you from your own unrealised pre-conceptions and unconscious goals and fears. Of course, equally, it may not.
The youngling, the god-child and the mewling infant all have their archetypes from which they issue and to which they aspire or react against. There is always a woman, a man or a god, or some semi-divine or zoomorphic equivalent which provides us with a neat structure of derivation, which implies comparison.
In some ways, the creation of the Room's emotional framework is like the birth of the cosmos. Like the emergence of Gaia from Chaos, or the Biggest of Big Bangs, or the very existence of the Christian God, it is something of a mystery. Do you have sufficient faith to swallow that mystery? Or will you reject it as many have rejected the creation stories (we must tread carefully with 'myth' here) in their own societies? For this is as real as they are.
What did God model himself on? How did Gaia grow to become or create the parched spines that spanned the Ancient World? What does the babe, lacking a parent (even a substitute) emulate, imitate and eventually emanicipate himself from?
Our world is fascinated, however indirectly, with such anomalies, because to understand them, is to understand the universe, in some small, perhaps small-town, fashion. Witness the popularity with a span of generations of 'Tarzan' - on the face of it a simple child's tale, but actually a study (if unscientific!) of the translation of man's development into the natural world, with overtones of the recapture or reentry to that Eden that we have all lost.
But, how far we have come, dear (as you have now become to us) reader, from the idea and the feeling of the Room. Tarzan is a far easier vehicle for such a comparison or exploration of our nature and the nature of change, of development and of continuity. The idea of an abstract Room taking on the challenge of striving alone to define its identity with no pattern is harder to grasp, like a greased vine that sends our hero tumbling into the jaws of a dislocated (cinematically) crocodile or lion.
Indulge the Room, and its curiosities. For it may help free you from your own unrealised pre-conceptions and unconscious goals and fears. Of course, equally, it may not.
Labels: the room
posted by Dark Hunter at
Monday, August 06, 2007
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home