003: guided by fish
Let's talk about fish. And monkey ghosts.
This week is about multitudes.
To imagine beyond, to manifest better alternatives. There is no future, there is no past, there is only the present.
There are many presents—understand multiple truths, lean into abundance. There are infinite worlds within us—the infinite within, the infinite beyond.
One quick thing about fish: A school of fish, a manifestation of structure in the open sea. There is no hierarchy, they move as a unit, a mega-organism.
A longer thing on fish...
On the West Coast of America, there’s the journey of the salmon. As anadromous fish, they are born in fresh water, travel to the salty ocean for their adult lives, and then swim upstream—counter-current—back to fresh water to spawn.
There is the obvious kinship with an animal that swims against the current in order to reproduce and continue the lineage.
An opposite journey occurs for American Eels, all American eels are born in the Sargasso Sea in the Bermuda Triangle, the only sea surrounded, not by land, but entirely by the ocean. From there, they swim up to the rivers of the East Coast, where they spend their adult lives before traveling back to the Sargasso to spawn.
These two species, on two coasts of America, on opposite journeys.
Like American eels, European eels also spawn in the Sargasso Sea, but instead they travel east to the European continent. The same origin, towards different destinations.
Diverging journeys.
When we're asked what a fish looks like, what it REALLY looks like, to be as accurate and true as possible, what do we imagine? Perhaps it's a traditional scientific illustration/photograph, a perfect side view, top view, bottom view. Every detail is replicated in stunning detail, the colors of the scales, the tiny curves in the fins. But no fish looks exactly like that, one might have a dorsal fin that has sharper edges, another might have duller colors due to their diet.
Even beyond that, ask someone to describe what a fish looks like, and you'll be presented with a wide range of answers. Someone might say the salmon they saw had a fat body, the width being attributed to the angle in which the person saw the fish and how the light's refraction. Ask someone that was swimming with sharks and they might speak of wide jaws and large teeth, the size corresponding less to what was seen and closer to what was felt.
Which is closer to the truth? Closer to reality? Western science might propose an answer, break out the rulers, use the most color-accurate cameras (even that is up for dispute, color-correct to be true to what?), and start measuring and quantifying. But why adhere to a singular truth as dictated by Western science? How is any other interpretation any less true, why can't we hold multiple truths and realities in our hands?
Another week, another one from the archives. This time I talk about a movie that changed my life, Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Uncle Boonmee...
A collective haunting is occurring. The place that Boonmee is standing on, in Nabua, is the site of violence enacted by the Thai army on communists and communist sympathizers. The way that a group of Monkey Ghosts stare at the humans, the violence that gets enacted when humans abstract themselves away from the nature they are damaging. Or the ways in which humans think they can abstract themselves outside of the historical context they are standing on. The haunting might be a byproduct of these transformations and changes, or they might be the connective tissue itself. The film form is haunting the digital form, the myths haunt scientific knowledge.