The Staggering Move

Beginning of the week I watched a conversation between Rick Beato and Ted Gioia.¹ Two old guys looking at the mess our culture is in. Somewhere halfway in, Ted emphasises that it is not so much decline that is doing the damage, it is stagnation. The arrogant bugger is right.

This insight ties in with an idea I had for an essay. But the tone and content kept widening, shifting while thinking about it. It keeps popping up in very different realms. And like a butterfly in a board meeting. It kept escaping me.

It has to do with movement. And the modern inability to perceive true movement, and even more important, to initiate and engage in true movement.

The first time I noticed this strange and very modern handicap, was in a painting class I taught on imitating old masters. Specifically Vermeer. Making a copy of a Vermeer masterpiece involves a long process. A complex movement of many steps. Many layers. Each helps to get from here to there. They all worked together for the stunning result (of the original I mean). But a separate step or phase does in most cases not yet reveal its function. While at the same time they often are uncomplicated moves. You cannot yet see what you are doing, there is a temporary result that seems unconnected to the goal, or even feels counterproductive in some cases. Understanding how a sequence of movements makes up a bigger movement. And that bigger movement cannot be made on its own. That's a difficult concept for us instant people. Movements within movements, are of course also core in forms of complex production, even more so probably, but most of us no longer seem able to oversee the bigger process, the bigger movement. Or the complex constellation of moves that make up all things.

This is my unfinished copy of the Vermeer, the process is very different from directly painting a subject. This is not a single surface, but a concerto of specific layers working together. A bit like how none of the band-members play the whole thing, only through the interaction of their movements it becomes something new. It creates something not present in the parts. This is too often dismissed as a mere illusion, but I think it is a fundamental principle.

Think about the following question for a second. When are you fully involved in a process that takes time and many steps? That asks of you a true movement from a beginning to a result. And is it you being responsible for the whole of that movement? I don't mean anything done collectively, of which you do only a designated part. Think about this. Really analyse what it is that qualifies as a true movement.

I think if you are reading this you are the kind of person that maybe still knows how, for at least a part of your life, to do that. You probably have this project, a garden, restoring a car, building an instrument, writing a book, questing for some deep answer to something essential. Your attempt to move for real.

How big is the part of your life that involves true movement?

The rest of the time you are stagnant. You move, or are moved, but you do not really move. And I think we have almost lost the ability to tell the difference.

Let me try to illustrate through some examples.

To make a great apple-pie, like a real experience of an apple-pie, a true scrumptious bake, you'd need the best ingredients, the top recipe, the ultimate equipment. And top that up with a heap of talent. Right?

Well, you can have all of that and still end up with something inedible. Or with nothing at all. Because the power was off. An earthquake, a pandemic, and your sister-in-law showed up. All on the same day that you had planned for making the ultimate fruitcake happen.

In the end, it comes down to the central skill of ‘the apple-pie movement’. It resembles the movement involved in countless other activities. But we leave most of that kind of moving to others. Most of the time, we do not really move in that sense. Despite the available recipes, ingredients, facilities and circumstances. Despite our collective attempt at baking the biggest apple-pie ever.

We forgot how. Or maybe we haven't learned yet.

Can you still travel? And I mean, the bit in-between being here and getting there. The movement of getting there. Which is not about waiting until it is done, sitting in a chair with wheels or wings. That's not the movement I mean, that is just semi-movement. It is not you doing the moving, is it? There is hardly any freedom of movement, you can't get off a plane when you see an interesting bit of woodland, a good stretch of river. You spend the night in a pre-booked room. You see the butterfly, but it is on the other side of the triple glazing, and you are stuck on yet another wheeled chair.

True movement depends on you, to constantly choose, how to proceed on many simultaneous levels. It is, and should be dictated by what you encounter, but it can never be planned, prescribed. You can prepare, but the true movement is improvised at its core. It deviates from the predicted.

All other action is stagnant.

And a lot of our action is. We have almost lost the ability to move with, because of our fear. We voluntarily institutionalised ourselves out of sheer anxiety. Because of our lack of trust in the bigger processes. We can no longer perceive motion.

We have gotten used to instant results. We flip a switch, push a button, open a package, squeeze a tube, pop a pill or buy a ticket and expect that move to complete a process. And except pushing that same button creatively we haven't got a clue what to else to do.

True movement isn't stopped by a faulty switch, a missing ingredient, a different song, the wrong key, a snapped string, some nasty comment or legislation.

We have tried to eliminate motion by fixation. By steadying the course, by levelling out the bumps, by straightening the line, paving the path, by speeding up, by dividing into steps, by developing fake movements that are in fact series of stills. By spoiling our senses with instant results, by hiding the real processes behind shiny surfaces. By presenting movement as something that doesn't involve you.

But it does.

We ignore the seasonal movements. We ignore the monthly cycles, we override both daylight and nighttime. We ignore place, by no longer knowing where we are. Thinking it is a place like any other. Thinking tomorrow is basically the same river as yesterday.

We ignore the specificity of each moment, every encounter, every action. We are hardly aware of the movement we are. And of the movement of all.

The movement of aging, we as a person only make once. Everyone grows old for the first time. But this doesn't say we go in blindly. Growing old, maturing, decaying, ripening, is everywhere. What was fresh yesterday is stale tomorrow. The complex changes shouldn't come as a surprise when we pay attention. The movement expected of you is around you, the response is embedded in and dictated by reality, it is signalled to you in all possible ways. This is true for all movements, big and small.

Moving is led by emotion. We move and are moved. The real information highway is as wide as your view, broadband of a whole different league. Planet wide coverage at the speed of light.

The right to make informed moves may well be the most fundamental of all for life, for living.

What movements are part of your skillset? What bigger process do you participate in with agency?

Do you see where you lack the ability to move?

Do you know how stuck you are? In what areas of your life do you feel unable to move? Do you still sense the impulse to move, and how often do you act on that impulse? How do you know that impulse is genuine?

While I am definitely no expert on Tibetan still-sitting, I can see mediation is also about true movement. The elimination of false moves.

Moving is fully minding that you are present. Learning a musical instrument is learning to align with the movements. Of being with fingers, strings, vocal cords, breath, occasion, the phrases, only to move the air harmonically. Symphonic orchestra's get together to produce movements in unison. War is a move, resistance a movement. We are pushed out into this world by violent squeezing that only has one message, move, goddammit!

But we forget. We replace the dance with steps, we frantically try to hold on to yesterday's moves. We listen over and over to somebody else's recorded movements. We use them as example to slap each other with critical cynicism. We celebrate the impossible move. We fool each other with false abilities, with the illusion of movement. We make unique fleeting moments of pleasure into the standard that lies out of reach and wonder why we feel inadequate. And all that is asked is that we get up and be moved by our desire to move. To move on. You can still hear the heart of this place beat, you hear the distant call, I know you can, when I place my ear on your chest, I sense proof, the pulse is there. That same pulse is in the rocky crust of the fireball with its thin layer of living tissue, hurdling in the brightest possible spotlight that sings of only one thing, that roars with the energy of time itself. The essence of light is movement. And we ride that wave. All matter floats on that ocean's tidal move.

Back to the practical. It is time to relearn. Time to cultivate your moves. Time to sit down and become aware of what it is you do. I cannot tell you. And anyone pretending to know is of no use for this collective move in which you only participate, in which you can only add true movement. Your signature move.

It isn't complicated. The complexity will fall into place with a grace thought impossible, with a skill that resembles a gift. Remember the gift? If you have to work for it, it is not a gift. If you have to acquire it, you desire a gift not yours. If you hold on to it, you can no longer receive with your arms and hands and eyes and ears and tongue and chest and sex and nails and nest and tool and sound and current and day and night and colour and script and plan and shield and sword and seed and male and female and mud and salt and the sweet juices that run through the veins and corridors and tubes and rivers and streets and neighbourhoods. Now move. Move with the tide. It is time to get up.

I live in Burgundy (France), and this time of year this creature is everywhere. The courage in movement they display is staggering.

(I now also get why the french enjoy eating them, they are abundant and it is either you eating the vegetables in your garden or them.)

1. Rick Beato is a musician creating a youtube archive of interviews with anyone playing a role in the craft of musicmaking.

Ted Gioia

is a rogue music critic and futurist. Both have an independent voice and share a deep love of music. You can find the interview here