These days in isolation start to blur together. There seems to be less boundary between anything, really. Memories and tasks stew together in a jambalaya of things-I-have-done and things-I-mean-to-do. Old memories pop up like they are appetizers with my breakfast: memory appetizers are a symptom of isolation.
I used to have this babysitter that could beat the NES Zelda that came in the gold cartridge, in a single night. She wore a blue sweater a lot and I remember thinking she was attractive based on her prowess in video games. In fact, I remember thinking: oh… you can BEAT this game, whereas I had always taken Zelda as a digital version of wandering around in the woods outside my house: no need to have a purpose, just find some new things in one of the 4 squares I had above, below and to the left and right; grab a tree branch, eat some dirt, throw a rock with my left or right hand.
Zelda had this very prescribed way to unfold the world: 4 directions, with a sword jabbing out of the front of Link, possibly eluding to the upcoming desires that would make girls in blue sweaters look a little different. But for the most part Link can traverse and take on narrative through a pretty simple set of devices. He can make not only make sense of the world with 4 directions in sight, but grow and become better.
And having 4 options seems like a pretty good situation. There’s a theorem in math that you only need 4 colors maximum in order to color any map and not have any edge share a color. I think Link understood this, because less than 4 options and everything starts to relate to everything else, and more than that, there’s too many categories and the world is just a breath of air broken up through a carnival bubble machine.
As far as discovery goes, 4 works out pretty well, too. When looking at generalities and specifics, it seems we start at point A, zoom in to point B, move a little over to a point C that is snuggled up to point B scale-wise, and then zoom out to point D which maybe is nowhere near point A. A little dance step between 4 points.
I was reading Negotiations by Gilles Deleuze and there is a passage where he states, “In barren times philosophy retreats to reflecting ‘on’ things.” Later he will group art and science in as equally compelling creative forces as philosophy, sharing in the fact that they should not be endeavors that reflect on things outside of themselves, but use the strengths of their internal structure to creatively ask questions; they should invent from within and not try to reflect and mimic what is being achieved in other schools of thought. In some ways this is the ABCD dance as well. Small details make up a general structure, with that general structure sharing characteristics with some other general structure, which can then help inform this second structure’s details. It’s like the lower frequency whale songs of generalities that are in schools of thought carry over into adjacent ways of thinking which we can then use to spin up the high RPM whine of specifics: tattoo machines on the skin of a poetic idea.
I like that this ABCD dance requires a plodding motion through various scales of thinking and means there is a certain discoverability in the world: the world isn’t there until we get there. Observation is required. Observation is the batteries of our environment. I’ve been reading some works of Nicolas Gisin, who kindly sent me some of his papers after I offered a drawing in exchange (pictured. It’s a parking lot in DTLA. And to be clear the religious text briefly featured in the bottom of the frame is a pamphlet that was left on my car's window titled, "How to get into Heaven", where I wrote "FUCK ______, A LOT.", where ______ is someone's name and because I'm romantic.), having to do with intuitionist mathematics. There’s a lot of nuance around intuitionist mathematics, but one of the big ideas for me is the idea that the real numbers (as defined mathematically: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real\_number]) are not actually what we witness in the real world. The real world is constructed from measurement that makes the world more and more specific as we continue to measure. There is no number with infinite long digits existing before being found. This is an important distinction as it means there is new information to be found in the world; new stories to be found and told.
And we measure the world a bit like we color it. We pick a set of tools (perhaps
4 tools work best at any one time.) and make measurements and step forward into the next map. These tools are things like love, apathy, ambition, and fear. A real smart woman recently told me that we should use tools until they stop working, and then be okay with moving on. I agree with this whole heartedly. Let go of fear, maybe hold onto love. If you color a map with the same paint brushes, over and over again, it eventually just looks like one color. Zoom in and out a bit. Try some new colors.
ABCD.