Emphasis = ignorance

The answer comes from what is called.

My hands. I used a tripod and the tip of my nose to photograph them both. I do no longer think God reaches out with one finger of his one right hand. It looks good on a painted ceiling. It does not represent my reality. The one hand approach is emphasis, a mouse pointing and clicking and dragging and dropping. Not actual interaction. You cannot build a world with one hand. (And this is of course meant in a metaphoric sense, a both hands approach is fully possible with no hands at all. These hands represent a way of approaching what is out there, nothing more, nothing less.)

The title may sound like a philosophical statement and it might well be but it comes from my hands. I lead a practical life. I make stuff. Handle tools and materials. I interact with the physical. Don’t we all?

Nah, I’m not so sure, I suspect too many no longer do have a healthy and direct exchange with the stuff of life. Especially the ones doing most of the talking.

Modern man has an endless list of misconceptions that he is so proud of you cannot touch them. Try and you’re in for a beating. Verbal mostly. A lot of accomplished men do their doings with words. Often they are all talk. And talk is emphasis. And yes, emphasis is ignorance.

This is a deep subject. Complex. You’re not gonna like it if you are a typical emphasiser. I’m taking the chair apart. The one you sit on so comfortably. If you let me I’ll take down the whole building you live in and make money off. Verbally of course, not really. Not yet.

If you sense some underlying anger, I say well done, good sensing. It’s not personal though, just business, as you like to fend with. This argument indeed comes from anger. I have turned the energy into something else though. It took me a while but here I am.

It’s not at all that I have come up with the right answer. So I can have a quibble about who is right. It is about you being wrong in a way that has hurt too many. It is about you being the bully and me stopping you and saying I am done being bullied. Who is the you I am pointing at? Hmm, them, they, you, me. Does it matter?

This is going to hurt. Verbally. I am confiscating your favourite toy. Enjoy.

Linearity.

Placing one thing after the other is a convenient way to impose order. It makes things taste better. Like sugar and salt. Great stuff, until you start putting it in and on everything. Until it has replaced actual food almost completely. One step after the other you move away from what is to what you’d like it to be. More sweet, more savoury, more rounded, more smooth, more available, more quantity and quality, more, more, more.

Oh and don’t step into the trap of the apparent opposite, which is joining the club of less. More of less is more too. Indeed less is even more. You don’t get away just so easily from this….

You order, to size, to shape, to weight. You tag to impose value. You order everything to your liking, to your emphasis. You name to emphasise. You name to ignore. You say this comes after that and hide how the same thing is on top and beneath, and after this too.

Nothing is linear. Not really. It’s just a convenient way to see the world, to process it, to make it so you can see it. In reality everything is all at once first. And in that all at once are aspects resembling linearity. If emphasised. Smart as you are, you chose them as your favourite toy and started wielding that magic wand. Ordering the chaos. Ordering around everything and everyone. Moving from name to number. Form value to price-tag. Nobody ever told you it is ignorance.

Advertising is emphasis.

Not a small thing, it is everywhere, nagging about certain features of some thing. Giving us lists of what the object will bring us. Including unspoken false promises. It never says what it will take away. (Unless that’s the thing they’re trying to sell, then the complementary burden dumped for free in your backyard is carefully concealed.) We ignore the unwanted that comes along. The actual face behind the filter. It all comes down to packaging, n’est pas? Until it is the packaging bringing us down. Then it’s a wrap. Emphasis is ignorance.

I imagine leading the attention is high, very high on the essential skill list of dark magic. Of bad politics. Of imposters. War merchants. Of people who want very specific outcomes. Of will imposers. Growing ignorance is an important chapter in the hidden book. It is done by emphasis.

Thinking you are well informed, up to date, moving forward with eyes wide open is the single best way to walk into big trouble. You don’t know what you do not know.

Why don’t you want to hear you are ignorant? That you do not know nor understand. Why do you emphasise what you do? Why is there no awareness of what you do not grasp? You emphasise the seeing, ignore the blindness.

Its okay to be ignorant.

It is not okay to impose that ignorance as truth. As medicine that is pushed down everyones throat, into all veins you can force into compliance.

You have crossed a line. The one you drew yourself. And I’m rubbing your nose in it. One line after the other. Erasing them. For now. Until I break your habit. Your addiction on coercing reality with emphasis.

Humans are emphasisers. I agree. We are great at narrow focus. But not just. We are, or can be even better at estimation. At getting the bigger picture. At standing back in awe.

Focus is weird.

Have you ever noticed how narrow focus is promoted in education? Don’t be distracted. Only deal with this very specific thing. We are trained to narrow our focus. Collective focus gets right out scary. Virus, war, outrage, disaster, election, scandal. A billion focal points directed at the same spot and we wonder why the world is burning?

When I come across well trained people in my painting classes, or while on a building job I shiver. I know we are in trouble and will lose a lot of energy and momentum. Because art and making are not about zooming in on the detail. You get lost in tunnel vision. In worrying about the smallest of flaws while unable of spotting the icebergs. Not seeing the big picture, the whole thing is missing out on the opportunities along the way. Narrow focus goes straight for the one thing the mind is set on getting. Focus is a rabbit hole. Eternally deep.

You need to step back and let go. It is not yours to take, to kill, to own, to fix. Nothing can be taken, killed or owned without consequence. You have emphasised one end of the deal for too long. No longer can the other halve be ignored. Healing is not about taking away the bad thing. It is putting the sick part back in place, reducing its influence, becoming immune.

Taking, killing, owning, joining, cutting, drilling, climbing, descending and many more are sacred actions. No matter you consider them big or small. The cutting of a line has the same energetic consequences if done thoughtlessly in some household chore as when done with lives hanging on the other end. Emphasis on the known results of an action is not enough. Claiming you know gives false permissions. It leads to overreaching.

Uncovering the tricks of emphasis will take a while. Once tracked, you discover it’s ways embedded in every aspect of modern life. That is very confronting. Daunting. We are dependant on emphasis, addicted to its conveniences.

Doing away with it for even a moment allows you to reset (yes the hijacked word, propaganda is emphasis too), and appreciate the importance of emphasis. I do not want to get rid of the sugar and salt. This is about nuance. Moving from black and white, or from those strange ‘primary’ colours, the fixed palette, back to all possible colours. The wide, wide range of subtle shades that actually provide the beauty in the painting. Including the bright ones -that now take up all the space- moved back to their serving position. Tiny highlights are the most powerful.

De-emphasising is not easy. There often are no words for those movements. We have focus, no phrase for the opposite. We have linear, not the opposite. Language itself is emphasis. It cannot handle the not emphasised integrity of the actual real. It needs to pick apart, name, separate. The whole purpose of calling is to place emphasis. That’s fine, as long as we do not loose track of how the called forth is embedded in -and stays embedded in- no matter what. Calling is questioning. That is the task of language. Not answering. The answer comes from what is called. The language of words must answer with a question. True answers are matters stripped of the words. The things that matter are matter. Not some collection of characteristics that can be known. But simply the matter itself in its inseparable embedded wholeness. And that wholeness includes the unseen energies and entities. The waves and the collapsed state. Everything matters. Blatantly obvious if you work with your hands, not so clear if your world mainly consists of words. Difficult to explain for a handy person, easy to ignore away with emphasis for the brainy type.

One more thing. In music emphasis is very important. As in life, things would be very dull without tension, stretching, pushing and pulling. Without the hold of the heavy note. It always is a relative emphasis. It never is separated from what it is in contrast with. Not taken out of context by placing the best note or phrase in a glass box. The best and only the best is a ridiculous notion in music. Emphasis is possible by the grace of the unemphasised. It is the emphasis that presents itself as unbound that is the most ignorant. Harmony never is the absence of tension, it is consonance not equity. Very obvious and totally ignored in our age.

There is more to say. Let’s talk about colours next time. Because there’s a subject of ignorance and emphasis if ever there was one. It is everywhere and goes unseen despite being blindingly bright. Until then, be sensible....and stay in touch.