Now there is a boat;
Its direction is sharpness.
Although I am an improviser, I make many maps that add interest to the journey. My scores come from layering almost unrelated systems in order to come up with a very detailed composition by which a real-time improviser must interact. The system that is created approximates the complexity of another consciousness; a very adept consciousness that is also aware of what I am doing. That may be merely a useful fantasy, but it is one which is similar to what has been used by shamans and hunters of indigenous people to help them make decisions. Eskimo hunters would heat a bone of the type of animal there were pursuing. The cracks would help them determine the direction they should go.
147
Advantage in advancing
By retreating.
All of my work tends to be self-consciously avant garde both in form and content. I prefer to use a cyclic form rather than the straight linear way of the Western perspective particularly in the work which you are now reading. Ideas may come back just like the cold weather in Spring.
I believe that one's morals and ethics should evolve taking in as many thoughts and feeling of others as possible while staying honest; true to oneself. The prevailing morals and ethics of the day make me want to move farther away, as can be possible, from Western ethnocentric and/or sexist perspectives. This is difficult for a Texas-born white protestant male; however, even the most "macho" Texan could find and learn from the feminine side of himself. Fortunately, I haven't felt the need to buy into machismo very much.
"He who knows the male, yet cleaves to what is female,
Becomes like a ravine, receiving all this in Heaven.
"[Thence] the eternal virtue never leaks away.
This is returning to the state of infancy."
Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching1
The narrative for the Oshkosh Novena presents a challenge for me to try to speak in a woman's voice; one with which I am intimately acquainted. However, an astute feminist will still hear in her voice symptoms of a male dominated environment. I will not make this whole piece from a feminine or Native American perspective. I can't do that. I can merely soften the European male linearity by using a structure that better fits the balance of personalities that I find in myself.