First Times

March 26, 2022

We all know the power of the first time: the first memory, the first kiss, the first trip in an airplane, the first public performance, the first death in the family . . . Every day we do many things for the first time, although it’s not every day that we notice or cherish the first-timeness of the things we’re doing for the first time.

This is the first time I have used the expression “first-timeness,” which of course Goethe plagiarized from me when he wrote Erstezeitlichkeit und die Fünf Bananen in 1804.

But I diverge (Bananen). Today I’d like to talk about some of the first-time things that jostle your awareness and mark you forever and ever, the things that open up your mind, which means the things that proved to you that your mind was closed and you didn’t know it.

In my youth I took lessons in the Alexander Technique with a famous teacher, a significant player in the history and traditions of the profession. Innocently I had imagined, assumed, and determined that the famous and beloved teacher was necessarily a competent expert. Right? Fame, tradition, history, Bananen, you name it. One day she saw me go into a squat to pick up my shoes, and she stopped me cold in mid-flight. “Never do that,” she said sternly. “It’s wrong.” And, pling ka-boom cha-cha-cha! I suddenly understood that she was literal-minded, dogmatic, and judgmental, and I suddenly understood that I had been rather silly in my assumptions. This happened more than 35 years ago, but the experience of the ka-boom has stayed with me, as if I had undergone a secret ritual initiating me into belated incipient adulthood. Believe it or not, Goethe calls it “Verspätet einsetzendes Erwachsensein,” and several characters in his Faust / Eine Tragödie undergo similar rites of passage.

The moral of the story? Make no assumptions. Among the many assumptions you’re better off NOT making, don’t assume that so-and-so is like this-and-that (or, as Sigmund Freud said on the centenary of Goethe’s death, “So-und-so ist wie dies und das.”)

For several decades I lived with the certainty that I had no talent for drawing. I could prove it, absolutely! All I had to do was to draw a crappy stick figure and say, Look! I cannot draw! Roughly 15 years ago, circumstances led me to decide to do one little drawing every night before going to bed. I started by copying photos of family members. The third night, my little drawing of my nephew as a baby came out . . . well . . . kinda super-excellent. I had to accept that I had long lied to myself, and that I had believed the lie with all my heart. The baby of hard truth now stared me in the face: I can draw. I think this was the first very substantial experience of catching myself in the act of telling-a-lie-to-myself-about-myself, which Freud called “Ego Schmego Hasta la Vista Amigo.”

The immoral of the story? If you need to tell a lie, don’t tell it to yourself about yourself! Tell it to Freud about Goethe! Or the other way around! “Von links nach rechts, von rechts nach links!”

I used to think of myself as an intellectual. Some 28 years ago, a participant in one of my workshops told me, “Pedro, you’re the archetypical intuitive.” I resented her, because—hey, intellectuals rank higher than intuitives in the DM-ID: A Clinical Guide for Diagnosis of Mental Disorders in Persons With Intellectual Disability. A real book, I swear! You can buy it on amazon.fr for 1500 euros, and I’m not making this up! It took me many years to embrace the clinical fact that intuition was my primary mode of functioning. But my point is that there was a first time when I heard the news, a shocking first time, an upsetting first time. I wish I could send a valentine to the girl who brought it to my attention, although of course I don’t remember her name, her face, or her Schweinshaxe.

And the amoral of the story? Listen to the herald bringing you good news, shocking or upsetting as the news may be. But don’t listen to what Goethe says about Freud,* because you risk going quite kuku in der Keke.

*”Du bist Bananen.”

Three Lifestyles

October 26, 2021

Grammar is dangerous, and grammar is helpful. To put it differently, grammar determines who you are. You have to watch out for its traps, and also seek its benefits.

A coffee mug is a noun, which we can also call a thing or an objet. It wants to exist as an objective reality; or, rather, we like to believe that the thing or object is, you know, objective. A coffee mug is a thing, unchangeable until you break it.

But love too is grammatically a noun, as are “beauty,” “idea,” “fear,” “performance,” and “confusion.” This is tricky, because you might really start thinking of love as an object or a thing with its hoped-for objective dimension.

A concert is coming up. You need to “give a performance.” Then you put yourself in an object-oriented frame of mind, where the performance—a noun—becomes a thing with an apparent objective reality. This is the “noun frame of mind,” with its own practicalities. It tends to make performers very nervous and frustrated.

How about you put yourself in the “verb frame of mind”? Instead of “giving a performance,” you “perform.” This, too, has its own practicalities.

Become a verb, and you’ll heal yourself from being a noun.

Action happens in time and space. It expands and contracts. It changes, sometimes unpredictably. The thing called “a performance” has measurable parameters: “I want my performance to be like this, and like this, and like that.” The action of performance is less easily measured. “I performed, and—wow. I can’t tell you what happened. In the act of performing I became transformed, and so did the public. Not everyone enjoyed it, but—wow.” Unlike a fixed object, action evolves, so to speak.

Noun: “My love for you is a coffee mug.” Verb: “I love you like flowing steam pressing against tightly packed freshly ground coffee in a De’Longhi Magnifica, no milk, no sugar, thank you. And keep the change.”

It’s not the same love, is it?

It’s a big deal to pass from being noun-oriented to verb-oriented, from thing-oriented to action-oriented, from object-objective oriented to subject-subjective oriented. I’m dying to Google-translate this last sentence into German and credit it to Freud or Goethe, but instead I’ll translate it into Fridge Magnet and credit it to Siddhartha: “Love is an action, not an object.”

Ah, irresistible.

Believe it or not, this post isn’t about the difference between object and action, noun and verb, coffee mug and caffeine jolt. Everything so far was just the olives before the tajine (“die Oliven vor der Tajine“), the anesthetics before the surgery (“die Anästhesie vor der Operation“), the cartoon before the feature (“die Micky Maus vor den Sieben Samurai”).

I like reading, studying, and learning. It’s probably the main aspect of my existence, a constant, a defining trait. An example: for the past few years I’ve been learning Spanish, thanks to books, newspapers, films, documentaries, meetings, encounters, and also lessons with a marvelous teacher. Another example: most days I visit Wikipedia and read up on stuff. Some of it is pretty straightforward: biographies of musicians, the rise and fall of the Holy Roman Empire, mating habits of extinct insects. (Liar.) I read about Johannes Brahms, I add information to my knowledge of the great composer, and I check YouTube for works of his that I wasn’t previously familiar with.

And then I try—oh, I try!—reading up on German philosophers. Schopenhauer, for instance. Or Kant or Nietzsche or Kakadu, Graf von Käsespätzle. And by the second paragraph of Kakadu’s page I don’t know what on earth Wikipedia is talking about. However many times I masticate it, the Quietscheentchen Conjecture won’t go down. I spit it out, or as Nietzsche would say, “Ich spucke es aus.”

Another ignominious defeat comes when I tackle quantum mechanics. It doesn’t matter if I approach it in English or in Sanskrit. (1) I don’t understand it. (2) Nobody does! Mathematicians and physicians. Werner Heisenberg. Ernst Schrödinger. Marlene Dietrich. But—and this is what this blog post is about—the fact that we don’t understand the probability fields of quantum mechanics doesn’t have to stop us from embracing it as a life principle.

I went onto the Marvel Fandom website (home of 250,000+ fan wikis). I don’t know Kakadu about Marvel characters and stories, but the website had something helpful to say about the probability field. Abridged:

The probability field is the fifth unifying force in the Grand Unification Theory (along with gravity, electromagnetic, and the strong and weak nuclear forces). As it governs reality, its manipulation allows various super-powered individuals to alter reality on a microscopic or even macroscopic level. The term was first applied to that which mediates between space-time and consciousness by neurophysiologist Sir John Eccles (1903-1997, Nobel Prize 1963). . . . The whole universe is enfolded in everything and each thing is enfolded in the whole; and it is the probability field that controls and connects all things.

Some Marvel characters who have the superpower to manipulate the probability field include Black Cat, Longshot, and Scarlet Witch. And, no, I have no idea who they are.

Let’s pick a score by Johannes Brahms—the “Deutsches Requiem” will do. It’s tempting to consider it as an object, a thing, a well-delineated entity that you can see, touch, and read. But its object-like dimension is secondary to your subjective action of reading it, and also interpreting it in rehearsal and performance. Brahms becomes a verb: “I’m Brahmsizing all week. It feels good.”

According to my newly acquired Marvel wisdom, the “Deutsches Requiem” isn’t an object or an action at all. It’s a probability field. It “mediates between space-time and consciousness,” that is, it offers you a labyrinth of vibrational meaning in which you, Brahms, and the rest of the whole universe become folded-in-one like a lawn chair in a hurricane. Longshot sings “Der Gerechten Seelen sind in Gottes Hand” in G-flat major. Scarlet Witch plays first horn, and Black Cat plays the triangle. The Fridge Magnet says, “Love is an action, not an object.” Marvel says, “Love isn’t an action nor an object. Love is a probability field.” The field is intrinsically uncertain. It looks and behaves differently according to who occupies it. To explore the field is to transform it. You pay attention, and the field lights up and moves. You stop paying attention, and the field dissipates and vanishes. The field is a version of you, and you’re a version of the field.

Love is just an illustration. Everything can be seen as (1) an object, (2) an action, or (3) a probability field. Each of these dimensions comes with its practicalities.

It’s good to be verb-oriented and subject-subjective-oriented. It really is wonderful. But the ultimate psychic transformation lies in going from object to action to probability field. Action implies intention and agency, choosing this path over this other path. The probability field implies infinite complexity and deep connection, all paths walked at the same time, excluding nothing and embracing everything. As Freud once said to Goethe, “Der dumme Brasilianer weiß nicht, wovon er redet, Kakadu!” Translated to Fridge Magnet: “Don’t worry, be happy.”

It’s a superpower.

Read this short blog post if you didn’t understand this long one!

The Problem Expert

February 25, 2021

We all know Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) as a poet, playwright, novelist, scientist, statesman, theatre director, critic, amateur artist, oboist, mime, short-order cook, and inventor of the Heimlich Maneuver. A hidden facet of this towering genius is a little book he published anonymously, and which survives in bootleg (“samizdat”) form. Titled Das Imaginäre Kleine Buch, Das es Nicht Gibt, the book is informally called Nichts by the connoisseurs, the cognoscenti, and the cognitively dissonant.

It’s long been a favorite of mine. I have a mimeographed copy from my days growing up under a military dictatorship in Brazil in the 60’s and 70’s. My copy is faded, smudged, torn, and illegible, but since the book is “imaginäre” the fact that I can’t read it doesn’t bother me overmuch (“zu viel,” as we say in Teutonics).

Nichts means everything to all people, but today I’d like to highlight one of its dimensions: Goethe’s wonderful way of talking about problematics and solucionatics (or “Fanatiks und Lunatiks,” as he calls them).

Abridged and loosely translated:

A problem is easier to solve if you agree to solve it (“natürlich”).
Self-solve a self-created problem. While at it, self-prevent a self-problem from coming into self-existence (“Selbstachtung”).
If you don’t have a problem, it’s a problem to think that you have a problem. Then the solution is to stop thinking that you have a problem. Goethe put it very elegantly: “Kein Problem.”
What do you like better, the problem or the solution? It isn’t a trick question (“nein, nein!”).
A deity comes to you and offers you a deal. “Pedrito mein Schnuckelschneke, mein Igelschnäuzchen, mein Honigkuchenpferd, mein Schnuckiputzihasimausierdbeertörtchen! I give you two options: I can make all your problems disappear, or I can help you become able to solve problems, one by one and in batches, using intelligence and creativity. What’s your choice?” (“¡Olé!”)
You have a problem, and you feel bad that you have this problem. Then you have two problems: the thing, and your emotions about the thing—or rather, your self-judgments and self-punishments regarding the thing. Getting rid of the extra problem often solves the core problem (“das Wiener Schnitzel Paradox”).
Some problems exist in the material realm, and some problems only exist in the psychic realm (“in deinem Kopf,” as Goethe used to say). That, too, is a problem!

This is the gist of Nichts. To end this post, I’d like to pay homage to Goethe by quoting from one of his beloved poems. You don’t need any German to understand it.