open dialogue

John Hopkins 17::September::2009 12:05 → permalink

What of the experience of an opening, an open, dialogue? Re-creating that experience of presenting the Self to a random collection of Others. Or to a single Other. I keep thinking of identifying, finding an Other who would be willing to have a series of dialogues that would be re-produced for the purpose of mapping out the initial space wherein the model (as script) is to be constructed. The script being a primary resource for a 60-80 hour workshop (which would never be used because the workshops are open systems and have to leave a script behind soon after starting). It would merely point in the direction for certain issues (resourcing them), giving a framework that is an optional (inspirational) component for the process. As a multi-modal hypertextual object within a social networking space, it would imitate/mimic the knowledge-flow features of a more traditional teacher (and little or nothing else — memesis of a teacher being a fundamentally antithetical concept regarding outcomes of learning!). Fundamentally, the workshops are about attentive presence, that crucial realized, actualized, and embodied facilitation process. You had to be there. (So, back to the conundrum of being and not-being when documenting, re-producing life.)

Memory — especially the memory of human encounter — is the tangible, real resonance between the Self and Other, arising through the movement of energies. Memory is a re-configuration of the energy-field that is called body; it is a dynamically persistent re-configuration of the Self. This re-configuration requires the movement of energy between the Self and the Other. I’ve been thinking about you a lot. That is the minimum requirement, and, perhaps is the only requirement, as it is the essence of the process of encounter. It is the encounter, and the flows that are the event of encounter (the Light coming from the body of the Other, the sounds emanating from them, their cumulative presence) which precipitate change in the Self. The only further commentary might come from a qualitative exploration of the flows, and the possible blocks to flow that are ever-present in relation. This view of communications does not fall easily into the traditional phenomenological tradition of communication theory. And indeed, most theories of communication that I have run across are tightly focused on language and meaning rather than any acknowledgment of a real and tangible exchange of energies that occurs in any human encounter (even when subject to the relative intensities of mediation which, in fact, are simply the presences of different forms of energy pathways imposed by cultural conditions (both internal and external to the encounter)). [burbling parenthetic expression, uff]