[MD] Taking Words Seriously

[Matt Kundert]

Hi Dave,

I think we've wound down our discussion.

Matt said:
In your description of DQ as not blank at all, but "rich and thick and 
overflowing," does this come from the idea that there are little 
particulates of sand that one sorts?

DMB said:
No, as I read it DQ is the ENDLESS landscape and the sand sorting is 
static.

Matt:
Okay, then we're in agreement on that point.  And that furthers my 
sense of not catching what the critical edge of your description of DQ 
against mine is supposed to be.

Matt said:
For the brick is a static pattern, still, isn't it?  Does it make sense to 
say that the girl is beginning with DQ/immediacy when she begins, 
as a practical heuristic, with the brick/inorganic-static-pattern?

DMB said:
I can see how one might take it that way, but I don't. I mean, it 
wasn't really the brick that got her going. It was the fresh seeing of 
the brick.

Matt:
I get a greater sense of a chicken/egg problem here than perhaps 
you do.  For the static pattern, as you say, "tricked her" into a fresh 
seeing.

DMB said:
The point that "one IS standards" is not at all clear to me.

Matt:
That's fair.  I haven't done a whole lot in explaining it other than on 
analogy with static patterns: one is one's standards plus a connection 
to non-standards.  That would be another way of unpacking the 
analogy.  The understanding of the force of this formula, that one is 
one's static patterns plus connection to DQ, is probably where our 
differences lie.  I find myself more willing to interchange particular 
static things into the formula through analogy in order to use the 
formula as a precept.  I am, however, unsure of how to further 
explain what I take that formula to mean.

DMB said:
But I'm pretty sure that it does make sense to say we should begin 
with one instead of the other. I'm pretty sure that his central point in 
those classroom scenes.

Matt:
Yeah, but this as critical point against me assumes that I'm 
suggesting that one _should_ begin with standards.  I don't want to 
say that, and I'm not sure that I can't have as much of the slogan "it 
doesn't matter how, just so long as its good" as you.  In fact, I still 
think I'm better adhering to that slogan (probably because I'm relying 
on the point that it makes a difference to say that "one _is_ 
standards" as opposed to formulating them as external things).

DMB said:
But it seems pretty clear that we have very different ideas about DQ. 
If I imagined it in terms of a blank page, I would NOT be making a 
case for it like I am. I mean, it would be very unhelpful to suggest 
that creative excellence begins with a blank page. In fact, that image 
only conjures the terror of writer's block.

Matt:
I'm not convinced that we know where we differ on DQ.  Because 
while on the one had you say that it's unhelpful to suggest that 
creative excellence begins with a blank page, on the other you said 
above that the girl begins by wiping the cant and seeing freshly.  You 
suggest the conjuring of terror, but that's where I started: with 
beginning by thinking practically about how to avoid the terror and 
begin.  Being an amateur can be terrifying in this fashion, but the full 
picture I wish to give is more like the girl, with DQ and SQ 
interpentrating, which is what allows her to begin: the static brick is 
in front of her, but she's seeing it freshly.

And because I don't see you really disagreeing with the spirit of that 
last reframing, or being blocked from accepting it by anything you've 
said or any Pirsigianisms, nor likewise seeing what blocks me from 
agreeing as I do with the spirit of "it begins with an honest attempt 
to render your own specific experience as opposed to starting with 
standards," I'm not yet sure where exactly we differ.

Matt