Originally drafted Jan 15, 2010:
2 Topics to Research in 2010
Or rather: ponder aimlessly
1. Appetite - While reading the majority of The Trickster Makes this World (which I must admit that I haven’t finished), our friend Mr. Hyde discusses appetite as the principal driver for the trickster as an archetype in fables across cultures and throughout history. All the mischievousness, cunning, invention, etc. is inspired by the stomach. In fact, in the book there are several gruesome fables about the Trickster, and his battles against his stomach, forsaking it, eating it, other things.
Since, I’ve spent many a quiet pause thinking about appetite - what people’s are, what lengths we go to fill them, how to rebel against them, what happens when we do. Each to no definable effect.
Peter Greenaway’s The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover is a demonstration of the evils that exist in appetite.
Not sure how to go from there. Maybe I’ll draw a fox eating his stomach and put a survey up on Facebook.
2. Vessel - Read in last week’s Non-expert “Clay is fashioned into vessels,” reads the 11th chapter of the Tao Te Ching “but it is on their empty hollowness that their use depends.” We often pride ourselves on the container, praising its material and craftsmanship, displaying it in some fancy cabinet or on the mantle. Typically, the best containers are filled with the least useful junk. Heck, most purchase container filler - glass beads and the sort - to put in their prized piece of art. But, as Laozi states, the potential space makes it useful.
I guess there’s a debate somewhere in there between the useful and the valuable.
