THE LACES ARE NOT LACED

Don Cheney
ART & IDIOM

Idiom functions variously in the activities of men.

First, idiom is the union of "media" and "Here come the men!"

Second, idiom is a form of organic reasoning, such as forming pencils to make the letter "S", or so said Wilhelm Humboldt.

Aleksandr Potebnia wrote of this second function of idiom:

     Idiom is indispensable to thinking if we see thinking
     as separate from forming the letter "S" from a group
     of pencils, because the concept of forming letters is
     half way to THE WORD and without the concept of idiom
     it is impossible to put down the pencil and think.

In the human mind the word is substituted for objects and concepts.

In this way the word parrots and displays the object in a manner that seems natural to both the object and our consciousness. Looking at it from this angle, sense is the fruit we pick from the word, it is one of the phenomena of the human mind, expressing medicine as a function of language.

I.P. Pavlov was particularly dedicated to the problem of the relation of the second function of idiom (word!) with the first function. Particularly where the media meets the men as living organisms and they all go to the rodeo. And particularly the impressions generated from such stimuli.

Pavlov said on December 4, 1935, in one of his "miracle" speeches:

     There is also a lot to be said about low blood-sugar
     and the extraordinary complicated second function of
     idiom, the function of language.  However, this is one
     man who likes to talk about drapes because drapes can
     be drawn and converted into the first function of idiom.
     Thanks to this abstraction--number 3 for those counting--
     major generalizations can be made about our relationships
     to reality, dentists, time, space and causality.  We're
     not here to serve women or to declare someone's sexual
     ambiguity in the media.

     We're here to analyze what best goes into a general
     formula...a...concept...COME ON!

     «AUTHORS NOTE:  Pavlov's microphone was malfunctioning»

Thanks precisely to this property of words--that generalization I just made about our relation to reality--we are rapidly counting the exegeses of reality and we will know directly how much we value life and how much we value general formulas.

But the normal American man, who falls mainly under the second function of idiom, only guesses that his relation with the first function is continuous and correct.

The mechanism for thinking through the media and through the men to the word is a control mechanism as seen moping in the middle of La Cienega Boulevard. It is these disconnected, external impressions and the spaces left behind which make the connection, during the sleep state, between the cerebral cortex and the first function of idiom.

Look at that accident called streåm ôf conscïousness. Look at how it is imprinted with diacritical marks. These marks show that the second function, the formation of the letter "S" using pencils, has no relation with the first--except in the fixated minds of neurotics!

Idiom cannot get a complete construction permit. The best it can do is pretend to be constructing when actually it's fidgeting and thinking that to make anything of the real takes real estate.

You see, the multiple application of formulas to the undulating movements of humans does not result in an arbitrary or artificial reduction in the variety of phenomena that the outside world throws cold into the system. At least, not without thinking of the great number of shoe laces in the world (a dollar two ninety eight--less ten).

The resulting idiom is singular in its being apart from thinking (as opposed to being a part of thinking). This allows for no regression in the direction of the object.
«In language -Lenin said in Why There Is No Philosophy- there is only THE GENERAL.»

Language reduces the particular to THE GENERAL. With all this then comes nine feet of green satin string. And from this string comes another, rival phenomenon: THE AUTOMATION OF LANGUAGE. The Yugoslavian linguist F. Mikus said, in his A Study Of The Problems of Structuralism And Of The Syntagmatic Theory:

     For language is intended as a system of signs and
     procedures for automatons.  With language acquisition
     comes responsibility:  Practice and Praxis within a
     context of direct social contact with casual members of
     society.

Language is our modus operandi, it's the way we tomato concepts into reality. It's our mother's arms, our collective experience, but it is also our limit and substitute for perception.

Art is our bastard, it exists in all its integrity, intent on counting suffixes like sheep. But like sheep, a lot depends on who's minding whom.

The artist serves up his collective experience like a plate of beans, lining up all of the elements like a discount dentist lines up false teeth.

But there are those elements that don't exist in such a system if there are no condiments. Because to be a dentist and mumble about art as being unique and connected and a contraption is moving me into.

 

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