Pre-Face of the 'Post'
August 19, 2019
I always end up writing conversations between two people I don’t know. May be I create them as I write, then I try to forget them because they become so real and try to invade my self. They try to convince me that I am them, or one of them, or the other person about whom they are talking. There is always a third person in the dialogues that I write. That is me. But this is not new. Men have talked about this before. They know that an ideal conversation can begin from nothing and end in nothing, or its beginning cannot be traced neither its end can be found - but that conversation never happens. A conversation, in reality, always ends up in exchange of statements. Assertive, interrogative, exclamatory statements. Like the lives we live. It’s a polylogue but no conversations. Just exchange of some statements, accepting or rejecting those.
So, a conversation should be like a dream. That does not begin nor end. Sometimes conversations can begin and have an end. So dream, can it be called an infinite series of conversations? May be conversations, but in different languages. Suppose two people are talking about poetry in English. Then they stop at Keats and shift to French, starts from the point the previous conversation ended and tucks Baudelaire in. Then they shift to Bengali with Tagore. And then other Languages. A conversation, is it? A dream? Or should it be different persons, same language? Two men start talking about Tagore and then two other comes and take hold of the conversation with Jibanananda Das? Then two other characters intrude. Is that a conversation? An ideal one? Then an ideal conversation cannot occur between only two persons speaking the same language because inadvertently statements will pop in. And break the dream. Like the rupture in the physical stability breaks the dream. But does it break the dream or the sleep? When sleep breaks, does the dream remain? No it does not remain, but it does not conclude either. So the tragic flaw of dream is that it is depends upon sleep. Sleep betrays the dream. No I am not talking about daydreams, or ‘dream’ that denote our goals which are designed in compromise with the structures of our society and civilisation. I am talking about the dreams that we do not control. Everything else is a statement.
So, coming back to statements. Statements, then, are very much physical, because they are subjective. And conversations, that supposedly exceeds the subjectivity (or does it?), is metaphysical. Then metaphysical is a community game, since a number of people or a number of languages are involved in an ideal conversation to happen in the given human condition? The spiritual community, then, is a community of theology or a community of discourses?
But the confusion lies elsewhere. Language is always before subject. It is prior to the speaker. Then before speaker, was there any conversation? But without speaker, how can language come to a dialogue? The ‘meta’ of the physical is the language and the ‘physical’ of the meta is the subject. Then where is the third? Isn’t the conversation present in somebody’s cognition, or isn’t it un-present in somebody’s / something’s cognition? Where is the petite object of the conversation? What are they talking (or not talking) about, if there is no third? Can two people converse without a third? Imagine there is a desert, a void, a nothingness that has overwhelmed the array of perceptions, a nothingness which is even unpresent in the ‘idea’ – and a conversation is happening there. Two people (or languages), or more, talking about nothing. Not even about themselves. How do they know that they are conversing? Speech, however prior it tries to go before the language, has to have a reflecting point outside the speakers. May be a listener, may be an object, may be a tree, maybe ‘nothing’ but then it is ‘nothing’, not nothing. Nothing is the third. One who dreams (?). Or the one who is in the dream.
The dreamer, or the object of the dream, does not belong to anyone, anything. They are lost by none and found by nobody and lost and found in the meta-unconscious. The conversation is going on, but it is unwritten because it comes out of someone whose essence is unbelonging. Or someone’s unbelonging. The ideal conversation is, then, unfound, but ever-happening.
Of course I am not going to write that. I always end up writing conversations between two people I don’t know. May be I create them as I write, then I try to forget them because they become so real and try to invade my self. May be you know them. I don’t give a darn. Take’em.
So, a conversation should be like a dream. That does not begin nor end. Sometimes conversations can begin and have an end. So dream, can it be called an infinite series of conversations? May be conversations, but in different languages. Suppose two people are talking about poetry in English. Then they stop at Keats and shift to French, starts from the point the previous conversation ended and tucks Baudelaire in. Then they shift to Bengali with Tagore. And then other Languages. A conversation, is it? A dream? Or should it be different persons, same language? Two men start talking about Tagore and then two other comes and take hold of the conversation with Jibanananda Das? Then two other characters intrude. Is that a conversation? An ideal one? Then an ideal conversation cannot occur between only two persons speaking the same language because inadvertently statements will pop in. And break the dream. Like the rupture in the physical stability breaks the dream. But does it break the dream or the sleep? When sleep breaks, does the dream remain? No it does not remain, but it does not conclude either. So the tragic flaw of dream is that it is depends upon sleep. Sleep betrays the dream. No I am not talking about daydreams, or ‘dream’ that denote our goals which are designed in compromise with the structures of our society and civilisation. I am talking about the dreams that we do not control. Everything else is a statement.
So, coming back to statements. Statements, then, are very much physical, because they are subjective. And conversations, that supposedly exceeds the subjectivity (or does it?), is metaphysical. Then metaphysical is a community game, since a number of people or a number of languages are involved in an ideal conversation to happen in the given human condition? The spiritual community, then, is a community of theology or a community of discourses?
But the confusion lies elsewhere. Language is always before subject. It is prior to the speaker. Then before speaker, was there any conversation? But without speaker, how can language come to a dialogue? The ‘meta’ of the physical is the language and the ‘physical’ of the meta is the subject. Then where is the third? Isn’t the conversation present in somebody’s cognition, or isn’t it un-present in somebody’s / something’s cognition? Where is the petite object of the conversation? What are they talking (or not talking) about, if there is no third? Can two people converse without a third? Imagine there is a desert, a void, a nothingness that has overwhelmed the array of perceptions, a nothingness which is even unpresent in the ‘idea’ – and a conversation is happening there. Two people (or languages), or more, talking about nothing. Not even about themselves. How do they know that they are conversing? Speech, however prior it tries to go before the language, has to have a reflecting point outside the speakers. May be a listener, may be an object, may be a tree, maybe ‘nothing’ but then it is ‘nothing’, not nothing. Nothing is the third. One who dreams (?). Or the one who is in the dream.
The dreamer, or the object of the dream, does not belong to anyone, anything. They are lost by none and found by nobody and lost and found in the meta-unconscious. The conversation is going on, but it is unwritten because it comes out of someone whose essence is unbelonging. Or someone’s unbelonging. The ideal conversation is, then, unfound, but ever-happening.
Of course I am not going to write that. I always end up writing conversations between two people I don’t know. May be I create them as I write, then I try to forget them because they become so real and try to invade my self. May be you know them. I don’t give a darn. Take’em.
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