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REED BYE

PhD, MFA

Core Faculty, Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics

Naropa University

DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.
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DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.

     Reed Bye opens the door to his office wearing an expression like an enlightened Mr. Rogers: curious, receptive, and kind. It’s been a long time since I studied with this notable faculty of the Jack Kerouac school, but time hasn’t soured Reed’s generosity -- or brilliance -- one bit.

 

     In keeping with the trend of this series, we launch in with some of the broadest questions in Reed’s field.

 

     “Reed, how would you describe the relationship between language and the body?”

 

     Reed laughs gently at me.

 

      “Or just, summarize it?” I offer.

 

     “Summarize it, then,” he adds with another chuckle.

       “Language and the body…Well, nothing is final, I think I’ve learned that. There are no absolute truths in this realm, but there are ways one can examine one’s own experience, and come to insights about that relationship. I would hesitate to claim that they extend beyond my own experience, but there are things I have come to see as likely in terms of that relationship.

      "My involvement teaching prosody -- the study of rhythm and what structures verse in language -- makes pretty obvious to me that literature, poetry, and story have a long history in human culture. They may in fact be the original determiners of human culture; they’re certainly about as old as any forms that we know of. So, there must be some intimate relationship between language and culture.

      "Language is a transmitter of culture, but also a register of experience. We register experience, and then have the capacity to speak it. In doing that, we are involving the neuromuscular systems of the body, the lungs, and certainly the brain. This all comes together in the fact that  there is a syllabic nature to speech. Syllable are the  primary rhythmic unit of language … which arrive on the breath, and are made by the expansion of the lungs;  and through  the pulsing of the larynx, which produces pressure in relatively equal bursts. So there’s a rhythmic off-on-off-on, or in-out-in-out, now-now-now-now nature to language as it’s spoken. Once a syllable is articulated or expressed vocally, it gets into a pattern of less and more stress once it’s entered into a chain of speech; that’s another level of rhythmic patterning. The basic pulsing, and the emphasis/de-emphasis within those pulsings as they move along next to each other…. That’s clearly exploited in verse, such as rhymed meter and children songs, or song altogether; which seems to be a part of all cultures, as far as I know. That’s an unarguable relation between speech and the breathing body...  a relationship that can never really be severed.

 

“How does language create culture?”

 

     “Language as a term is fluid. If you consider language to only be speech or writing, what about gesture [and body language]? In short, I would say that culture is about communication; when you think about belonging in a culture, or not belonging in a culture, it is often based on how well you can communicate and be communicated with… Our shared language determines how well we’re able to communicate, or not.

 

    “Reed,  you expressed to me via email a concern of yours. You suggested that there’s no way for someone of Western culture to take their ‘self’ or ‘body’ out enough to critique it, without it being purely intellectualized. Can you elaborate on record?”

 

     “Essentially  what I  meant is that it’s hard to say you’ve removed yourself enough to have an objectivity sufficient to be absolute about that critique; though, you certainly can critique it, and people do every day. Sometimes these critiques sound legitimate to me,

and sometimes they don’t, based on [how well they orient to this underlying assumption]. We can’t make this a simpler picture than it is; we can’t just jump outside it and make this argument without asking, ‘who is this person making this argument against the culture that they are of, that every fiber of their [identity] is woven within?’ It’s just difficult to be too sure of one self in that way.”

 

     “Where I’m drawn to from there,” I pronounce, “is to the question of stimulus. If someone is attempting to take themselves or their bodies out of their culture enough to critique it, there needs to be some stimulus for them do that. And, the nature of stimulus is that, while we might not able to remove ourselves on the whole, within a spontaneous moment of stimulus, I wonder if the same constrictions apply.”

 

     “Maybe not,” Reed says. “When you say stimulus, what do you mean exactly? Like, motivation to do [something]?”

 

     “I mean it as some pre-conceptual sensation; a spontaneous arrival. Of course this is still of that same cultural fabric; but I can’t help but believe that because culture is at least in some part fluid, spontaneity (and what genuinely arises if someone is authentically

engaging with this question) should have more traction as an idea than something that is rooted in this unchanging, stagnant … pit.”

 

     Reed  lets out a giggle. “Yes, I think that’s a good point to get to and a very valid one. It does seem like, at certain moments, you may get a glimpse at yourself and this world you’re in. Why not trust that? … I think that happens a lot, [where we can encounter

an awareness that says], ‘Oh, something is off, here.’ To trust that is very important; in my perspective, that’s what meditation is cultivating… those little gaps between things. It’s like you said, a ‘preconceptual moment’ that touches aconceptual moment and perhaps alters how you  see or take it. That does provide a mechanism for review and correction, or redirection from insight.

     "I don’t think you want to call culture a stagnant pit, however, even at its worst. Culture is always moving, and that is kind of the problem. There are certainly bogging-down kinds of tendencies that get  entrenched… But healthy culture is another story -- something that seems healthy or vibrant arises, and then something  that doesn’t,  something that  pushes us closer to a ‘sick state’...

 

     “The idea of inclusivity,” I chime in, “is really close to me in that sense. How much are we able to embrace diversity?”

 

     “That’s where the inevitable parallels between society and ecology come in. The unarguable interdependence of all things [emerges, which suggests that] if you start to mess with the variety and diversity of these systems … you are more likely to be heading toward a stagnant, degenerate condition.

 

     “One of my areas of interests is the relationship between having body awareness, feeling our bodies, recognizing the nature of impermanence, etc, and that connection to empathy. I’m curious about…” My gaze is cast upwards towards the far cornered ceiling as I try to place words to my sensation and interest. I’m completely unaware that my hand is doing a slow chopping motion between each clause as I sound it out...  'about / how much investment /  empathy has / in the body.'

 

     “I just want to show you [the above described gesture]. You constructed that with your body. You constructed that sentence and got where you wanted to go, only with” -- Reed’s hand rises to mimic mine -- “the help / of this hand / measuring / its parts. What a beautiful example.”

 

     I chuckle at his astuteness and answer, “yeah! Absolutely. You know, if I could shoot this idea all the way down into it’s ‘long form,’ I would say that the body is becoming more and more marginalized as industrialization become more globally prioritized, along with capitalism and patriarchy… In so many ways, the body has been marginalized. Also, the body happens to be the one resource that every living person has -- regardless of culture, we  do have a body. In the field of Peacebuilding, one major fixture that allows people to be marginalized is that they’re first dehumanized, which enables people to commit things like genocide, [the idea being that the oppressed are less human than the oppressors]. My point is, if I feel my  body, and I know that you feel your body, empathy is insisted in a way that it wasn’t before. And, that having my own body-awareness is a peacebuilding tool for me to be safer in the world.”

 

“Yes, and I think that’s another reason why there is an emphasis being placed on the importance of listening today --” Reed adds, “because it’s a way of dropping into that space of communication between people without keeping the two peoples’ “ideas” as the only or even primary frame. All the quality of  their interaction -- the quality of the voices, the  way they’re sitting, and so forth, can be felt; you could put attention there. It is a kind of gamble, in re-setting the attention away from “just the words.” This is the way I see it, in terms of your picture, because I grew up (or was trained) in a world where the thing was to get the content of the words as they go by, where everything else is in the background. Without feeling the whole Gestalt of the situation, those words alone may distort the living quality - of the interaction. Sometimes they’re just an excuse for continuing  it, when there’s not as much happening at the word level as there may be in other areas. There may be some other reasons to be talking… The ability and space to be listening is rich. It’s rich.”

 

 

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       With Western culture premised largely on exponential growth with consequence, the lack of a cultural self-reflective capacity in the West is perhaps the biggest challenge and threat to global well-being today; creating space to promote this new aspect of Western understanding must among our top priorities.

 

       Erin Likins’ artistic research endeavor, PROJECT:BERLIN, investigates how Germany has achieved progressive, inclusive sustainability – both economically, environmentally, and socially – by examining the narratives individuals carry in their bodies about their culture. The research endeavors to study the German example by opening the floodgates of sensation which construct the individual constructing culture.

 

        By investigating the felt sensations of the post-Wall era, PROJECT:BERLIN will provide the compelling pair of qualitative artwork (written and performed) and quantitative data to illuminate the themes Germany has address that institutions in the US must prioritize. PROJECT:BERLIN is a critical study to undertake if the younger North American nations are to experience the hard-earned wisdom of their now-peer, Germany.

 

 

       In collecting and disseminating the individual stories that construct culture, we will take a profound new look at the values and experiences that have transformed a crushed, industrialized Western nation into a thriving, global leader of cultural self-reflection. With access to this content, PROJECT:BERLIN will collectively offer a values-based presentation of the scaffolding needed to catalyze North American social transformation. If properly resourced, this research can evolve into a service-based social enterprise with consultancies, film screenings, and speaking engagements.

 

 

       Accessing this content and uplifting its relevance is one solution to creating the direly needed quality of cultural self- reflection in the United States. We all share a stake in a global superpower’s ability to self-regulate. If we don’t investigate this now, our future selves will wish we had. 

 

       PLEASE DONATE on our fundraising platform, and join us in this powerful investigation of our shared destiny.

DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.