2
Chapter II
‘Can you take five ideas and describe a future
worthy of living?’ Bridget wants to know. ‘Can you sum it all up?’
‘With everyone writing and talking about the same thing in his world, it was time to connect with those who also read between the lines of society,’ Frederic opened after a long silence, long enough to break trees. Him and his longtime friends Jerry and Bridget were out camping to ‘mark the long connection to society as a particular thing of its time’. Communicating as much as he could through his art, he kept a space for his emotions to bear fruit leaving them to do their thing – with him. But since he had chosen to love his emotions together forming an ‘it’ to his life, a 1/3rd that could not be denied as playing his real self,’ he had remained thankful for it. He chatted to that point Bridget. He had been lucky to accept a random party invite about 2 years ago in a lobby of 4 players. He had basically never party chatted to that point and met his two friends on the basis of an agenda, it was all set up, to meet for years on the same day. Even though there may have very well been no reason for it… but the point was always there, right in front of them, the minute they entered the door.
Knowing it had been her turn to say this specific thing Bridget retorted: ‘Reading between the lines is seeing its agenda. It is good to have ways to make yourself feel better (or worse, but better after) but if these are not contemplated, reflected, or rooted thoroughly within this ‘it’ to your life and your love, you’re missing the whole point to being alive.’
It was one of those Thanksgiving nights, where the Turkey is tender, the wine is red, and there is tea with desert. Bridget had found her friends willing to join her on an annual get-together. She had brought her 8-year-old daughter Ebbeth along, who exclaimed, at some point during a bonfire night, ‘My God, how else would we ever see each other, if we didn’t have an agenda?’
‘That’s an observative little girl, your second one.’ Jerry said to Frederic, who got to care for two little girls in his early forties. Jerry continued: ‘But what remains of her aura that is not nothing, that can be picked up or communicated?
He slowly cleared his throat, almost inaudibly, before proceeding his rather inspiring speech.
‘The 18th century famously invented the ‘incommunicable’ or that which can’t be explained. Luhmann made this bluntly into: what cannot be apprehended fully, let alone explained, because it has more than 3 layers of abstraction. Or compare it to the aura of an apparatus whose glance takes up everything and gives nothing back, which will only lead to refraction par excellence.’ Jerry knew it was a leap of faith to speak like this, but felt that was exactly what speech was intended for.
‘Except perhaps in the blink of an eye,’ Frederic added, having read Samuel Weber’s Television, Set and Screen (12:1). ‘Not auras as such but the aura of art as a work of representation. Work was i