The Anchor and the Madness

I am re-reading our posts on the blog and thinking about what we have explored and touched on....

one of the things that comes to me in this is a kind of two poled structure... (but i don't want to make that heavy... its not a key to it all, but rather just something I am noticing that has evolved in how we are searching into this)....

i will call it the Anchor and the Madness

the Anchor is the location/presence/activity/'reason' of Being Rational, of Being Sane, of Being "Normal", etc.

and the Madness is the location of all That-Cannot-Be-Expressed-In-The-State, all that is Weird, all that is Not-Normal, all that is Angry, "Aggressive", etc.


The Anchor provides distance, safety, common-sense, perhaps even the fold and inter-personal dynamics of an imagined community, it provides a good virtuality, a space where we can all 'come-together' and feel ok (not nervous, not too overwhelmed), etc.

The Madness is a space 'outside' this field that the Anchor argues is always-there. The Madness defies the Anchor.

The Anchor must struggle with the Madness...to find good reason, to re-assure, to be here/now in Good Sense...

and at moments these cross into strange new re-surfaces.... where both share the stage... in the spectacle...

and at times, now, these are given expression in simple pulp fiction "good vs. evil" manifestations

and this western tendency to split the difference, to create absolute poles.... is not always in the world the 'norm'.... often, in places like africa, the good vs. evil expression (in the realm of fiction, play, etc.) is not so strictly bound, but rather a different horizon of possibilities and relations, in a certain way... the role of shaman, of festivals, of durative fictional plays is quite different...