4. and 5.~~~~~~~~~~~~

That moment when we sense we have found a form for our life that suits us is an event of great significance to us as individuals. It is particular, marked off from moments of the everyday; later, it shines out at us as the foundation of our story. “Now I know what I really am, what I really want, what will fulfill me.” It is an assertion of choice, often a risk against obstacles and well-meaning others; at the same time it seems like the final discovery of something essential, what has been waiting for us as our true nature. It could be a choice of sexual preference, or artistic direction, or political commitment, or an obsession to get to the bottom of some peculiar question. We feel we choose it at the same moment it chooses us, we are at the meeting point of our individual history and the world’s many options. That moment of conscious choice seems magical and subjective rather than a rational conclusion, and frees us from questions about the choice we’ve made. There is even a roadblock of unquestioned absolutism particular to our selfhood that hinders our retreat. For instance, for me the answer to, “why do you play only improvised music?” is not the good reasons I could give for valuing it but the moment that choice became clear to me. That moment of discovery feels like an infinity, without limit to the unfolding of the form. Similar is the moment years before when I heard an SDS (radical student group) speaker in 1965; I knew where I had to go without knowing any of the details, I found out who I already must have been. A few more of these moments would go far to describing the general path of my life.

Each such form is specific, one among many, that we then proceed to fill with content. Each is a possibility for our being to resonate in the world, and only in the world can we be received and assigned a meaning, whether welcomed or rejected. The moment in which the form appears to belong to us and us to it is a conjuncture between our singular self and the world, a moment that one’s life conjoins a moment of the world. Henceforth we define it and it defines us. Since the world is another word for all others and all forms, it is a moment of relation with all human existence, with one’s own existence as a human being. We may be hidden in our lair, our fastness, like a Zarathustra, but we are still only concrete human beings. We are found out by forces within and without, and after that we can no longer rightly maintain the myth of our isolation. That is, we might call ourselves isolates, but that is our form of defining ourselves in relation to others.

Of course there are many forms that are initially given by our family, class and society that we have not chosen but rather inhabit. There is no magic to these forms, we merely learn them as the given, in the unconscious interest of psychic or physical survival. We have not yet developed any reason to resist and reject such forms, nor the ability, drive and confidence to do so. Deferring to family ties, choosing a heterosexual partner, driving on the right side of the road, responding to the friendly greeting at the checkout counter, following automatically the succession of stages in academic life and employment, are diverse examples of forms that the vast majority of us reproduce but have never specifically chosen. It takes little effort to do such things, we could do these things in our sleep. We look around us and find broad agreement and that’s enough reason not to disturb others with eccentric behavior that would call attention to ourselves. Here we are in the mainstream, as are also the narrative form of writing, the song form of music, the masterpiece orientation in art. Today we could also include acceptance of marketplace democracy, for which there is no alternative in sight. The list goes on, down to the details of our gestures and behavior, by which an acute observer can distinguish an American from an Italian with only a moment’s glance. These forms we think as morally and politically indifferent, we might search but cannot find the interest to question them or choose something else, to be something other than what is initially given in our surroundings. In most cases we invest ourselves in such forms so deeply, with ramifications and obligations so convincing, and resistance so perilous to our pleasure system, that to break with them or even imagine what a different form would be like is highly improbable.

It would be interesting, and probably disturbing, to view every form we inhabit as contingent, originally prescribed by our environment and then locked in a security/insecurity system that--how can we not be sure?--betrays us. If only for a few moments, as a harmless exercise of the imagination, we can distance ourselves from our knee-jerk behavior and beliefs that are so familiar we don’t even know they compose who we are. For instance, to consciously walk down the street with a limp, for only one block of a city street, would be frightening and liberating--an enlightening experience we would never forget if only for the flood of self-consciousness chatter we would hear in our minds. One would think, everyone is noticing me, I am lying to all these strangers—and yet really, what does it matter? It seems foolish to do this until we realize that despite our huge claims to have chosen to be who we are (unlike those poor souls of traditional society), we have a huge, anxious and irrational resistance to do this simple thing. We learn that we identify ourselves with forms that only seem to be natural, that we have accepted without thinking. We have defined “natural” as the path of least resistance. This experiment (just one example of harmless nonconformism) threatens to be a permanent change that cannot be rescinded, opening a floodgate to others, a betrayal of our self-concept. Our supposed individuality is highly selective; we don’t really know who we are after all. It opens up the realization that we live in an iron cage of our own making. But if we look for traces of resistance to ourselves not outside but inside ourselves, we can view such paths and self-questioning as a necessary complement to our need for a secure unity. That unity is always there yet outside our grasp; the mind--in its phase as ego--teases us with the thought that we have grasped, comprehended and approved ourselves, or at least we know what we don’t approve of. But there is no end to ourselves, and to the forms, the ways we can be.

A new, chosen form to which we are magnetically attracted is a quite different thing, building rather than threatening our individuality. It seems like a line extending who we truly are towards the world; at the same time, since we have chosen one form among many we are aware of our separation, our distinctness. At any rate it resonates in both ourselves and the world. But we fool ourselves, necessarily, in thinking it will continue to have the same meaning. By choosing it we risk staking ourselves on something that will change and make our relation with the world obsolete and ourselves abandoned. We initially, usually with the boldness of youth, trust something that will carry us through a fluid world, yet as the world changes the form may become a hindrance. Or it may become so much a part of the world that it is no longer a line extending from us in our distinctness. It loses its adventurous and risk-laden character and becomes the norm, diluted, without delineated edge or imagination. This is even considered “success”, when the tension with the world is relaxed in general toleration, as if our goal had been to convince everyone to adopt that form.

If at the moment of our choosing we were to think through this problematic fate we might be more tentative, and not take the bold actions of creative work. There is a tension between our desire to be part of the world, to have a place for our being that resonates with others, and our awareness of the ephemerality of the forms we once blindly chose. Lleftist politics is a good example; the desire to be effective is often hidden behind political ideals, and what “makes a difference” today will probably not do so tomorrow. The moment of choosing founds or changes the story we have of ourselves, our personal myth, in fact it creates a new one with a positive, confident direction. It projects an image of our future, and we forget that a story can only continue, it has no future that is beyond change, dissolution and betrayal.

Our conscious choices, grounding us as autonomous subjects and true believers in ourselves, is immanent to our lives, yet we tend to seek legitimacy for them in some transcendent reasoning. I choose improvisation and so have sought out the reasons that would convince others of its value, transcending my strictly personal choice. Similarly, I work today to transform my political commitment of forty years ago into something valid today, rather than think it just my personal quirk. We can at least imagine a subgroup that might respond to our choices, and we are one of that group. A form belongs only in the world, so it has others who can not only relate to it but adopt it and put energy into it. A form gives us a human community, at least potentially. And that can change more rapidly than one’s own attachment to it.

When our chosen forms lose their energy and capacity as vehicles of self-definition we continue to assert their reasonableness, but now it is in retrospect. Perhaps the form has lost its strength to define us as individuals and become broadly acceptable and routinized, pursued by those for whom the desire is success rather than adventure. Viewing this development enhances the power of “I told you so”, selectively applied. We look at our past choices and think, certainly it is clear that I would go this direction, use this form for my life, my art, politics, etc. rather than another. The choices were inherent in me, natural. I haven’t been wasting my life, we would say; I’ve been accomplishing what I was supposed to do. The unspoken corollary to this is, now I can die in peace, as if this had been the point of the adventure.

In that monologue the mind is teasing us with an image of unity and personal fulfillment, the common theme of our therapeutic society. Better to live at the point where we don’t expect ever to know if our choice was the right one. Absolutely certain that we don‘t know, we move ahead on with the full assurance of the naïve adventurer.  ¶ 9:18 AM