Transscripted Conversations

Conversation with Thomas. No defined topic.

  • (Lukas) [                                                ] one line; who are you and what do you do?

 

(Thomas) That’s a big question. I’m confronting the future right now. I have sat some of the things I did before away, so actually everything went on pause. What I did before was more or less useable and there was a big break, and there was a big shuffling, so now I’m confronting the future with some of the things I did before, but I’m not sure it will be in any way useful. But it is useful because that is where the next step, which we don’t know, is. The new is strange because the new doesn’t corresponds to anything you know, since if you know, what it is, then it is not new.

 

  • But the new is still something interesting [                                                  ]?

 

[                                                                ] I’m where very worried, and I still am; that sometimes I will be in the middle of something new, and for some reason I don’t get it, and I first get it five years later – it’s there, but I couldn’t see it. [

 

] something new developing, something new getting on, getting sort of born, collected, and in some way, I’m not sure we will be able, you see it, grasp it, right now.

 

  • Do we need to grasp it right now? [                 ] Should we let it grow and see what happen?

 

Yes, of course. [                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 ] so, there is some kind of sensibility or, let’s say, a way of classifying happenings, things that happens in-between the objects, or whatever that is going on, into some categories that can, let’s say, be look upon – and reflected upon. [

 

] some time a reflection comes afterward [

 

] in that sense it’s not necessarily understandable. But that is the fantastic thing and the generosity [

] It’s in a way in the old world, because it has been classified and quantified and all the… you know the things we are living now has been thought for, maybe five years ago, in words and wordings [

] which is still what we are living on, these old titles [

 

].

 

  • What if we let go of the titles, the labelings, classifications and boxes, what then?

 

It’s kind of a utilitarian question. [

 

] was your question philosophical or utilitarian? Down to earth; what now, what then? [                                                       ] something one can ask oneself all the time, and it happens all the time, also before we had maps [

 

 

]

 

  • I think I’m afraid of maps.

 

[

 

 

]

 

  • [                                                                                                  ] maybe we are getting lost in all the maps and data we have now?

 

[                                          ] or maybe it’s just more pragmatic, that you have to pay for it in order to get next level or something. [

 

] Okay, the question that was asked was: does it matter?

 

  • And also, what other ways can we do stuff in besides classification, because, I think, classification is sort of a mainstream way to do a lot of things – what other ways of beings do we have?

 

[                                          ] which is one of my research topics, which is actually not a research topic because it’s so low-key. [

 

] the very very stupid, non-interesting things. Things that, once you sit in a corner every morning from one hour to the next hour regularly, you will suddenly see stuff. Because there are patterns. In life there is always patterns [

 

] if you just sit there, you have the possibility to get a kind of knowledge or some kind of understanding of things happening. People in the spaces, doing stuff. [

 

 

]

 

  • Is that even true? [                                                                                                      ] are there patterns beyond our way of grasping?

 

No, the thing is that we don’t have the time and we don’t take ourselves, we don’t give ourselves the time to observe because [                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  ] the why is the fog that hinders an observation, because why should I ‘just’ sit here and ‘waste’ my time by just looking. Which mean that I expect to do something productive, I should do stuff [

 

] it is wasteful but that’s were things happen.

 

  • I like the provocation…

 

Is it provocative?

 

  • Now I want to do something, which, for me, is meaningless [                                                                                                                                                                                                               ] how can I actually do something, that is meaningless for me? I might otherwise just project the meaning, until the tress or other things? Do you understand what I mean? 

 

[                                          ] You could do that when you were younger. You probably did that when you were, let’s say, between three and seven. You would be observing everything, and then you could lose yourself just by observing a thing a whole day. And then, wow, you would do the same the next day. [

 

 

] then you learn that you have to deliver, in some way. Now you can read. Now you can write or calculate. It’s sort of a product. We are conditioned to that [

] there is very little of non-utilitarian learning, observing.

 

  • [                                                                                            ] or the other way around: Can we now when we are passed this childish, in a good way, state of being and wonder, can we then learn to go back and learn differently? Or is it lost?

 

[                                          ] there is a lot of people earning money on selling that product to other people, who have that longing [

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

]

  • In your experiencing, how do you practice this observing in a more open way? How to lose yourself? And I’m not asking for a one-to-two-to-three-to-four guide. I’m asking in a more philosophical way.

 

[

 

 

 

] you have to packaging it as something else?

 

  • [                                                                                                                 ]

 

It would be call course 1, 2 or 6 with a task description, what its purpose is, what the outcome is and all that – but basically it’s about you having a pencil and a piece of paper. And you start looking at the world in an analytical way, but it’s not analytical in that way – [

 

 

 

] imagine now, that you have x-ray vision, and your eye is flying. You have to make a very quick drawing of an x-ray [                                                                                           ] or take you shoe off and in one minute you will have to make a sketch of the shoes as if it has exploded in infinite parts. In that way you reflect but get lost. What is the big question and how do I grasp it? [

 

] you have to bypass the why, why, why, why.

 

  • [                                                                                                                                                                         ]

 

[

 

 

 

 

 

 

]

 

  • [                                                                      ] you were talking about confronting the future – and I was wondering; how to confront the future by observing? And in what ways, maybe still in ungraspable ways, do we need to observe different in order to confront the future? What sort of observing should I let go off, and what kind should I encounter more?

 

[

 

 

] in this openness, and because the city was deserted, people started to walk. Look, we can walk together, but we need to keep distance – okay, where should we walk? – I don’t know, let’s just walk. [                                                                                                                                                                                                ] you start to see things in a different way.

 

  • [                                                                       ]

 

Walking is so stupid and fantastic.

 

  • [                                                                       ] instead of being me, Lukas, now I’m just the ‘walking’, perhaps in some meaningful way, I don’t know. It doesn’t have to be meaningful, but it makes sort of sense, because what you do when walking because meaningful in itself and I can lose myself in it.

 

One of the things that is the trick or the hinderance, is that you need a precise start but the ending should be open, otherwise you get practical and you will try to go this way to do this or that, whatever [

] it sounds easy – but many people can’t do it.

 

  • I also think that many of the endings of my walks is not in my control – often do the endings find me.

 

When do we stop? [

 

 

 

 

]

 

  • [                                                    ]

 

[

 

 

]

 

  • Thank you very much. I will end this recording.

Conversation with Mingo. No defined topic.

  • (Lukas) [                                                         ] what does it mean to expand?

 

(Mingo) Mmh… I don’t know.

 

  • [                                                               ]

 

Maybe it like being: uuh what’s that? [                                                                                                                                     ] the amount and the weight of it is the same, but inside of it, that part change places nonstop. Maybe it’s a little bit like that. That I’m me and I don’t know if I expand, but I just look for new combinations all the time. [                                                                                              ]

 

  • [                                                                                 ] maybe things don’t physically change but the way we think about these physical things change and that generate expansion.

 

Yes, looking for new combinations between those neutrons, or whatever, I don’t know, it’s a very abstract way of explaining that: oh, I can also think like this, I can also do it like this, I didn’t know it was within me. [

 

 

] maybe that is expanding.

 

  • What drives you to seek that out? Why do you want to meet all these new people and different perspectives?

 

Because I think that I haven’t found ‘my thing’ still. That I’m still looking for maybe this ideal situation, which might never happen. Looking for partners, I guess. To work with. [

 

] It’s not possible, we are in a bubble, and we are groups for bubbles, and we act in a similar way as cells would inside our body. We form new organisms. [

] to recognize something, and to go together from there. [

 

 

 

] My longing is to find people who want to go together.

 

  • [                                          ] what is the hope, or potential of, having a partner, or group to be and work with?

 

I think it changes everything. [                                                                                                                                                  ] It’s quite hard to be alone. You have all the responsibility, and the failure is also only on your shoulders, and you have nobody to tell whatever, let’s go on. [

 

] two is just so much better than one, and three is even better. [

 

]

 

  • What would you then be doing – what would be going on between you three partners?

 

I don’t know.

 

  • Is that the amazing part? That you don’t know what is going to happen?

 

I just want to create, and I want to think and analyze. Work with all kinds of subject. And provide, I don’t want to use the word change, but maybe some kind of relief trough my work.

 

  • Relief of what? Or from, or how? What lies within that relief?

 

I don’t know about you, but for me, if you have a piece of music that you kind of love, and you listen to it, and it can make you happy, or you read something and you say yes, I don’t feel like that, but it was for me. I think it’s kind of relieving the loneliness everybody has in them.

 

  • In terms of the future [

 

] what do you thinking loneliness have to do with it? [                                                                                                                                                                             

 

]

 

Well, if we are together, we are affecting each other all the time and we create a common space of thought and action and we really really really need to act together now. Loneliness creates fear and insecurity in people and frightful people start to do incredible stupid things sometimes, and they kind of generate some kind of negative power, often, sometimes, and we need to deal with that.

 

  • [                                                                                                                                      ] the interdisciplinaryness, because I find it hard to be alone in this way of being and working, so you need the other in order to do it. How do you feel that loneliness challenges our attempt for the interdisciplinary?

 

[

 

] we need to teach ourselves and our children, and everybody else, to think in a way that opinion… – you can have opinion, that is fine, but opinion belong to the same box in a way as taste. It’s totally subjective. So, if we would give up the idea of opinion as something that is based on facts or truths or whatever and accept to be this creatures who are free to say: I don’t know, but let’s try. [

] If all people would say: I don’t know, I think then we can bind anything together and work stuff out.

 

  • We might need more disciplines, such as mathematics, social science and so on that recognize that within themselves – that we don’t know – and perhaps therefore need to, and might find it easier to, move outside of one’s discipline and work together with others. I don’t know about art, but sometimes with philosophy, because we don’t really have a discipline as such, we talk a lot about what we don’t know. [                                                                                                                                                                   ] how does art works with what it doesn’t know? How do you work with it?

 

I feel like a newcomer all the time. My professional root hasn’t been a traditional one [

 

 

 

] I couldn’t learn it from anyone. [                                                      ] whatever I do it’s for the very first time, and I have no idea what I am doing.

 

  • To endeavor into something that is unlearnable or to some degree just less in the sense that there are no facts, or no one to ask. What then to do? Maybe you in that situation recognize what one doesn’t know and becomes interested in other disciplines and fractions of answers that we all holds to something without holding the big answer.

 

It teaches us to be humble. We are all, all the time in the unknown.

 

  • [                                ] my brain is working against me in this way. If we really want to recognize or find out the big answers within what I don’t know, then I am challenged because my body, the way ‘I’ work, and all my tools and disciplines, is fixed in different ways. Do you think art holds a potential in this matter to be with the unknown in, I don’t know, a productive or good way?

 

Maybe if we think of art as a way to stay playful, in a way. Stay curious. Yeah, to be more like children: open to discoveries. Whatever we see, it’s the thing we already know yes, but maybe if we say to ourselves: it’s not what you see. Because I don’t know. I came with my ready-made perception and answers, but I know I am wrong.

 

  • We have the tools to shift perception. [                                                                                                                       ] we can play a game where we say: I am wrong. That’s a powerful tool.

 

I admire people who are not afraid of their insecurity. Or pretentious. Who are honest and sincere to say: yes, I am scared and don’t know. I think that is a force – a driving force. And maybe we have that more in the arts. I don’t know. We are constantly looking for something. [

 

] I don’t know, but that’s okay.

 

  • [                                                      ] that’s a really difficult task. [                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         ] We must play by the fixed idea of something, and if we challenged people might take a distance to us; not helping us in this endeavor.

 

They must be people. They must show example. It’s like being a master, a little bit – it’s our obligation in a way.

 

  • Is that also a way to confront the future? To be that role model, or master, or trade spaces where people can be more unsure and sincere?

 

I think so. We need to confront the fact that nothing is stable. Absolutely nothing is stable. But this is how it should be. Rather than say: I want to fix things. Put it where it should be. This is by the book. There is no book.

 

  • Or maybe there is thousands of books, so in that sense, if you start reading you can read forever [           ] maybe there are so many rules that they become meaningless in a way. [                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         ]

 

Of course, we will go crazy if we have no structure at all, but I think in a way it’s idealistic, like an abstract way of thinking. We make decisions every day and there is a social system we have to follow, and we have to exist with other beings. You cook something and we have a lot of ingrediencies but then you add something, and it changes everything. So, I think, maybe this constant reminder of that everything changes as the only right way of existence is like the spice to the food.

 

  • [                                                           ] if we think of change as the only constant, then, maybe, change is not so difficult to deal with. Often changes are difficult because we believe in a different sort of constant, a more fitting or unknowable constant. [                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            ]

 

It’s accepting the fact that we are growing old and are dying, and I think most people are fighting with it. They have nothing to do than accepting it, but it’s hard for most people – you try to pretend that you are younger or in better shape or whatever, but it doesn’t change anything beside you feeling sick all the time, because you can’t be what want to be.

 

  • Thank you very much.

Group Conversation. No defined topic.

 

Because of the nature of a group conversation, who said what is less important. The structure and flow of speech have therefor been singularized, and only the shift of the speaker is included.

 

  • What does it mean to expand? [                                                                                                                        ]

 

  • [                                                              ] To me, expanding is not in the doing, as a very active thing, it’s also not passive. It’s more falling. Mentally. Going inwards and from there something emerges or expands [                                                                                       ]

 

 

  • [                                                                                      ]

 

  • I connect to what she is saying that is can be like falling, for the moment. It can change. It’s not always like that, but for the moment it feels like falling, which is scary and uncomfortable, but if you let yourself do it, it will take you somewhere, and it expands and excites.
  • [                                                                                                                                                      ]

 

  • [                                                                           ] what is the implication? Falling is not necessary in my control, so are the means of expansion also outside of my control? What can I do to expand if the issue is that I must fall?

 

  • More a feeling of, that when you are going somewhere that you can’t control, if you let yourself go somewhere and you for a while can’t control it, you will at some point land somewhere, and it will be a new place, and that will automatically expand, something, in you.

 

 

  • [                                                                                                                                                          ]

 

  • Like what I choose to do with the fall – or how I am, become, with the fall?

 

  • I had a negative association with the word, expansion, in the beginning. With economic expansion, with destroying nature [                                                                            ] I had to think of forests, which are being removed [                                                        ] I didn’t connect it to myself. [                                                                                                      ] but maybe, what I could agree to, is to take up space, to be courageous and taking space, as a woman for example because that can be a struggle. [                                                             ] You need an awareness of what you are expanding to because it has radical consequences.

 

  • What about awareness as expansion, that I don’t have to cut down the trees, but me being aware of the trees is expansion of my awareness. For me that would be positive. [                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         ]

 

  • I was thinking of my geographical life – my grandparents never left the country [                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   ] I can’t unlearn what I have learned. [                                                                                                     ]

 

  • Can we even escape to expand? Can we not do it? Can we be able not to grow and expand? Do we even need to? [                                                                            ] just with life, because of life, I end up being part of expansion. [                                                        ]

 

  • Yeah, I guess it’s possible – you can go to a monastery. But obviously, there is also inner expansion.

 

  • [                                                                                                                                                          ]

 

  • [                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   ]

 

  • I feel that it’s very much like a balloon that you are blowing into, and air is going out, and you blow into it again. So just 15 minutes in a day can be very expansive. [                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          ] It’s how I feel it is. And then, periods in your life, some years, maybe two years, where you are less expansive, and then suddenly… which I think is fine.

 

  • [                                                                                                                                                                 ] other times, when I felt very expansive were then I only focused on my breath for ten days. The repetition of very small things can be more expansive than going on a world trip.

 

  • [                                                                                       ]

 

  • But do we need to expand? [                                                                                                            ]

 

  • [                                                                                                                              ]

 

  • I have two things to that. There is something with words. They can really shut down, and make it very narrow in some way, and words can really open-up for questions [                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 ] similar to dissolving. [                                                                                                                                                                 ] I’m completely merging with it, in some way. So, what is it that expands? Or what is it, within that expansiveness, that disappear? What dissolves? [                                                                                                                                                 ]

 

  • That makes me think of the falling. That in some way by falling you leave something, maybe the cliff top or the world, and all that is lost, but you, somehow, emerge or merge with…

 

  • Into another space. [                                                     ]

 

  • [                                                                                                                                                                    ] when it happens to you, you are sort of detached to time and space, in a way. It’s like timeless. [                                                                                                                  ]

 

  • [                                                                                               ] how do we facilitate us meeting the non-space and non-time expansion? How do we make that come into being?

 

  • [                                                               ] this is where the ego comes in [                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              ] what are spaces really? What does it take to create empty spaces? In the calendar for example. [                                                                                                                                                                                                                ] and allow the gaps and empty spaces to fill it.

 

  • [                                           ] I’m always looking for a sense of timelessness but the media that I’m using needs time. [                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   ]

 

  • [                                       ]

 

  • I don’t how I will do it, but that is what I’m after.

 

  • Is it maybe because the non-time or non-space grabs us, and not the other way around? [                                                                                                                                             ] as you say, I can’t really put it into words, but only sense it.

 

  • I think you can do a lot preventing it to happen. So, it’s always there, we are just super busy and covering it up with be busing. And that we can pay attention to. [                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  ] maybe someone must tell you, that’s okay, and then you go back to breath. Meetings takes time, but don’t be hard on yourself. [                                                                                                                                                                                                                       ] there is some pain in my back, but pain is okay, it can be there. And then go back to breath. All the noise, all of that, and it’s okay. And I really think we must embrace all of that, without going into it, but just noticing that it’s there. [                               ]

 

  • But is it enough? Sometime there is things, that I don’t want to say; it’s there, and it’s okay. There is thing I want to get rid of. I want to get rid of racism, for example, and other things I wonder, how to balance the things I want to accept and the things I must change, because they are too much, and they prevent me from being in the non-time and non-place.

 

  • I’m now comparing it to happiness. Expansion and happiness. Maybe it is the attitude towards it, so you accept that there is no endpoint. [                                                                                                                                                                                          ]

 

  • [                                                       ] that is comparable to the universe, which just expands [                                                                                                                                                                                                         ]

 

  • [                                                     ] life being this forever unfolding movement, expanding into being.

 

  • Yeah, and death right. Did I read that? Hear that? Embrace death just as much as life. They are complete combined, without life no death, and no death no life. It’s not just about being happy. It’s also the conditions and embracing all of that. [                                                                                                                                                                                         ] that’s a little bit like dying. Giving into sleep. Kids being so afraid of falling in sleep because you must let go. That’s also within the falling.  [                                                                                                                                                       ] that feeling of falling backwards is like rolling in. It’s like when you are walking [                                                                                         ] I just love that fact, that walking is not where you hold your balance, it’s like falling, ahead. Balance, there would be none without the ability to fall. [                                                                             ] it’s not like you a courageous person, it’s within the situation that a courageous person become. It’s not something you ‘possess’. [                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 ]

 

  • I think all the Gods would agree with you. I think they are very bored. [                                                                            ]

 

  • [                                                                                                                ]

 

  • [                                                                                                                ] is the falling part meaningful to all endeavors? Like if I want to ‘fall’ in love, should I then also ‘fall’ into meetings and ‘falling dialogues?

 

  • Yeah, you can’t sit and wait until you know where you are. You can’t embrace yourself. It is that falling. [                                                                    ] you might fall and really hit yourself. [                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             ] that’s a very precise question.

 

  • In regard to the future, which is also something we might have to fall into and explore, because that’s something, where we really don’t know in which ,what we are looking for, and maybe we think that we do, but then meeting the future, and the exploration begins, because what you discover there, in the future, is complete unknown to you, and I’m just wondering, if we want more people to fall into the future, where should they then start from? How to learn or prepare the fall into the future – do you have any ideas? Not like a 1, 2, 3 guide.

 

  • My advice would be to fall into the presence. To be presence.

 

  • [                                                                                                                                                                             ]

 

  • [                                                                                                                      ] I don’t know. [                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       ]

 

  • [                                                           ] you will break a lot of bones if you anticipate the smash. In order to not break your whole body, you should be flexible, so I guess that is also related to the lesson for the future. If you are going to fall into the future, you going to know that there is nothing you can prepare for.

 

  • You must be soft.

 

  • And, all your plans, make plans, and the change them along the road. You need plans to get out of bed, but you cannot stick to them.

 

  • What does it mean to be soft – in a way of thinking?

 

  • Be sensitive, and practice sensibility to your surroundings [                                                                               ] you are not like a fixed thing [                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  ]

 

  • [                                                                                                                                                                                                 ] living beings are sensitive and are relating constantly. [                                                                                     ]

 

  • It also has something to do with trusting your sensibility, and that is quite a courageous thing to do, because you have to unlearn sudden behaviors, techniques and strategies to do that. [                                                                                                                                                                                         ]

 

  • We are going to fall together in a soft and presently way. I like that.

 

  • [                                                                                                                                                         ] there is something about having intentions on the behalf of the future [                                                                                                                                                                                ] the relationship between intentionality and attentionally. Practicing attention rather than intention. [                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              ] not judging, just noticing. That’s hard. But I think, to listen first and then see [                                  ]

 

  • I just going to fall, and I will not pretend to know what I am landing at, or how, I will just try to be soft enough…

 

  • And to do so, you will bump into so much intentionality, that lies within rules, or wishes or wanted outcomes [                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             ] the only thing you can do is to practice softness [                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          ] just hang on people, let’s wait, something is happening here.

 

  • Maybe falling back forward, in some way…