[FRIAM] The danger of a single story

[Jon Zingale]

"""
I argued, like with the Necker cube, you can't do both at the same time.
Jon questioned that ... implying disagreement.
"""

My disagreement is mostly with the suggestion that I either hold one
phase of the Necker cube or the other, I am unsure how to express my
perspective on *becoming other*. In the Necker cube case, I find it no
harder to hold the image as flat as it exists on the page, denying the
image its "cubeness" altogether.

"""
But that's not my point, here. I think this setup might help us
understand gatekeeping like liberal vs woke. How much *easier* is it to
put yourself in another's shoes if that other is within scope?
"""

To some extent, this is something I find interesting about a p-adic norm,
and since we are painting in metaphor, that two numbers are measured in
terms of a common *affinity* (a multiplicative abundance) of a particular
prime.

"""
The conclusion that the deepest math structures are innate and the "finer"
structures are acquired is interesting and suspect. Do we have source
material for that? I didn't see any in the knots book.
"""

I have no idea if anyone has really worked on this in any scientific
sense. Really, it is non-identically tangent to my curve. I have heard
the tale of the blind geometer many times and while I have never known
one, I generalize its lesson and found more anecdotal evidence to
fit an enlarged class. Three data points come to mind:

1. A blind friend and artist in Cleveland named Marv Smith[♘].
2. A ceramics instructor at Feats of Clay in Austin.
3. Mixing records before I could afford glasses.

I am not sure what to say about the first case, it would be cool if I
could transfer my experience to others, but I can not imagine how.
In the second case, I asked the instructor about classes at the studio.
As I listened (with my eyes as well as my ears) I became impressed at
her *embodied* gesticulation, her ability to speak with her hands. At
moments she would hold her hands in front of herself and motion with a
concreteness that only one who has dedicated the hours to her art can
deliver. I left with the feeling that ceramics would make me a stronger
public speaker.

In the last case, I logged a few hundred hours in-studio mixing tracks
for small and no-named bands. My mixing console was an analog board
pulling audio from an ADAT, i.e, not a digital editing station like
Pro Tools or whatever with the tracks rendered as time series on a screen.
I couldn't afford glasses at the time and soon I noticed that I didn't
seem to depend on my eyes as much in daily life and more so I noticed
depending on my ears. The experience for me was one of being situated
differently, my eyes slack and my ears scanning. It was years later that
I got glasses and the opposite seemed to happen, I became more engaged
in what there was to see. To this day, it still makes me *cringe* when
I watch someone edit audio visually, not that I don't think one can do
it well with practice and guidance.

Experiences like these (and a great many others) make me wonder about
how one develops and tunes the seat of awareness. It doesn't really
surprise me when I hear about blind skateboarders or when I think that
another's investment in their different senses is likely to be weighted
differently than my own. I assume novel insights are to be had by all.

[♘] http://www.artistsarchives.org/event/upmarvin-smith-renaissance-man/
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