nebula
twang (vol 2)

PROLOGUE: PECULIAR FORMATIONS !!!!!!!!!!

I float above the river delta
Immersed in the Big Air I shout

Give it back!

Give what back, the dragon asks

My subjection, I reply; my constructed infinity; my helpless end; my joyous pain and my ecstatic suffering; my thriving ecosystem of pinnacles, covered in friendly mold; the branches of intuition that grow through glass; the melted sun and the frozen, happy swamp that safeguards the dinosaur teeth

No, I hate you, the dragon replies

I. HOMONCULUS, MICROCOSMS AND ORANGES IN SUPERPOSITION

Homunculus is diminutive fully formed human body that is historically believed to inhabit a germ cell and to have the ability to grow and eventually give rise to a fully grown human. It was first introduced in the texts of alchemist Paracelsus, who claimed he had created a synthetic human whom he called Homunculus. The word has later been used to widely refer to the creation of a miniature, fully formed human.
The concept of a homunculus is fairly complex, leaving large room for semantics and precision, but let’s take it as the above definition and think of it as a synthetic token for a miniature; a smaller copy; a microcosm of its creator. It invites to think of structures and phenomena, be they human or, say, volcanoes, as units that exist as monoliths, possessing the same structures and body, existing and appearing in different scales in different places - inside of themselves, as well.

The fire pit of a cigarette probably has a similar structure as a burning tree or a burning skyscraper; inside a burning skyscraper there must be miniatures of the burning skyscraper, maybe burning pencils or chairs that possess the same fire pit that burns and decomposes in the same manner.
So, there are same entities that appear in various scales and universes, with certain tweaks or simplifications. They also exist on an abstract, conceptual idea-level: we are inhabited by various homunculi of ourselves, projections of who we are and how we see ourselves; micro-characters and neuro-digital twins of us. They’re in a constant dialogue, waging proxy-wars and interpassive debates inside of our consciousness.

A homunculus is a sort-of-a-microcosm; the qualities of a larger entity decreased and diminutized to a miniature, a twin. If we think of the universe of our mind, where the above-mentioned characters and worlds exist - abstract; hyperreal; idealized; fabricated and generalized - in the monolithic context of homunculi, miniatures and microcosms, we could see metaverse-y online spaces as a projected twin of the monolith of the Mind. These spaces are reflections of the processes and entities that exist in our head; the interactions of the various miniatures that inhabit our consciousness, characters we assign to represent things.
When these projections, these digital twins or replicative, metaverse-y contexts of existence are brought to be, they create a new layer to the same meta-existence it is mirroring, that now has a programmed nature and a pseudo-independent ecosystem. It can interact with its original sub-layer, or create synthetic, new layers on top of it. They then start to converse and feed material through each other, leading to a structure of symbiosis between a set of the master, homunculi and its twins. The hierarchy of which are homunculi and which is the patient 0 or the master - who has a somewhat final agency - then becomes debatable and unclear.

A STORY ABOUT ORANGES

There was an Orange who was composed of many oranges; its blood and liquids passed through its many tissues and left the surfaces in a state of scarring - a generative scarring, a state of transition and growth, a movement. The Orange wanted what the oranges wanted, its peels melted in an infinite symbiosis; I guess that is what eclecticness is, the combining of combinations.
If you zoom and zoom and zoom, you can create a micro-compartment for EVERYTHING; every unit of existence is a distinct category, and when they’re combined, it’s eclectic. The Orange was the mother and it was the child, unable to assess who came first; children give birth to mothers as much as mothers give birth to children. Inside, the Orange carries all the oranges that came before and all the oranges yet to come.

Eternal tears flow through the oranges; they cry the same tears and lick the same, salty drops

All oranges fall in love when one does; all oranges die when one does

To be an orange is to surrender to the orange bloodline

When one is sold, the seeds of all oranges are acquired

All oranges are the Orange; all oranges are in superposition

All oranges explode

II. DIRAC-DELTA FUNCTION, WITNESSES AND QUESTIONS THAT ARE EITHER DEAD OR ALIVE

The Dirac-Delta function, also known as the unit impulse function, is a function that has an infinite value at one, very specific point, and zero elsewhere. It basically describes an impulse that takes place at a very specific time. Simplified, it looks a bit like this:

The interpretation of it could be a binary shock; an observable, piercing phenomenon that leaves no waves in its media of visit; something that only exists when it exists and outside of that, doesn’t.
In a symbiotic, complex world, there are very few Dirac-Deltas - they often have to be constructed; phenomena have to be completely cleared of their surroundings. It’s something binary, like an ultimate, absolute truth: it’s only here, and nowhere else. A Truth can be determined when all variables, their covariances and combined effects are known; yet, an existence of one truth does not negate the existence of other, different truths that can all appear as viewpoint-specific Dirac-Deltas.
An impulse needs a medium, and the medium not reacting to the impulse, i.e., the impulse creating no waves to it, could be interpreted as the impulse being invisible, unobservable to its environment. In their full, natural contexts, impulses usually create movement, some scarring to the tissue. Impulses then carry on through the other tissues, the other layers; the other fronts they impact.

Dirac-Deltas take place in dead tissue, in a medium that has seized to react; in constructed theories of natural sciences, in non-reactive material; in a body that has no pulse. An interpretation of the Dirac-Delta would be the absence of a witness - a deep, absolute solitude and ignoreability. It’s the falling tree in the forest with no ears present; it’s the lonely whale who sang in a different frequency than its mates.
It relates to solipsism: the thought of how one can only validate the existence of one consciousness, their own. If we see the Dirac-Delta as a sort of a binary truth, truth is subjective and so are Dirac-Deltas. We can, surely, validate our own experience, be present in what takes place and not need a witness, but without a witness, an experience lacks attachment to a context. Can we, ourselves, be our own witness; who’s the true Stranger in the book?

SUB-EPILOGUE: ALIVE QUESTIONS AND DEAD QUESTIONS

What makes these questions interesting is that there is no true answer; only mere sets of values through which we can determine a relative true answer. This brings us to the nature of questions: there are living questions and dead questions.
A living question would be an open-ended question: a question with an undefinable context, infinite ways of looking at it; a sense of the jury still being out, a sense of them maybe eternally being out. A dead question, again, would be a question where the determinist logic of arriving to an absolute answer is available - a mathematic function with variables whose all qualities are known, an answer you can find through known deductions. A dead question is analogous to an undiscovered tomb: it exists, it’s out there, you just have to find it, and you technically have the means to find it.
Still, many dead questions might seem like living questions (and we might mistake alive questions for dead questions), as we don’t know what we don’t know; a certain Schrödinger’s cat in the shape of a Truth, a superposition. If we find a truth, it means it exists, and if we can’t find it, we can say that it simultaneously exists and also doesn’t.

I know you think that I shouldn't still love you or tell you that
But if I didn't say it, well, I'd still have felt it
Where's the sense in that?

I promise I'm not trying to make your life harder
Or return to where we were

But I will go down with this ship
And I won't put my hands up and surrender
There will be no white flag above my door
I'm in love and always will be

III. MONOLOGUE & STAGE DEATH: THE INTERTWINEDNESS OF AUTHENTICITY AND INAUTHENTICITY

TIME OF THE MURDERER; the present extinguished in the chokehold of the past and the future; the present plagued by concepts from the Was and the Will; the present denied of its nature, consumed by the atomic bomb and flying cars

ACT 1 OF 1

SCENE 1
To communicate is to conform

To communicate is to conform; in order to be understood on the short term, one has to communicate through established symbols. The more sophisticated and significance-filled a word, the more it contains subjectivity and meta-values; the more it is a word that not only carries a specific meaning, but also testifies and ratifies its context. The more sophisticated and significance-filled a word, the less it is a direct reference to something indisputably observable and the more it carries synesthetic synthesis.

Letters are symbols of sounds, words are symbols of real-world things. We can then build power-to-X structures where words can be symbols of other words - proverbs can be symbols of more complex stories; essentially longer series of words, and we can coin terms for very particular feelings that only exist in certain constructed universes of contextual emotion.

Words also accrue nuances and added context through their use, and within their relative environments a certain word has a co-created, average meaning; what people refer to as anxiety might obviously differ between individuals, but the word has gathered a specific meaning that everyone understands, and so we use the word closest to our experience.

SCENE 2
To be is to perform

To be is to perform; in a constructed world, all existences are constructed and performative for the same reason: to communicate is to conform. The understanding of this exists, yet there is much observable attempt to divide performativity into the authentic and the inauthentic.

We obviously have different levels of performativity: using the word frivolous is surrendering to a concept that comes from the outside and stuffing whatever your experience is into that; replicating a game character skin in the way you dress is a different quality and intensity of performativity. In their basic nature they can still be the same: having a sensation and finding something as close to it as possible to communicate that very sensation to the outside with.

Rooted in individualist values and an artist-myth of some sort (a genius whose own subjection is just so superior and self-aware that its best expressions are already within; a certain putting-on-a-pedestal of non-universality and crypticness of expression; crypticness of expression being seen as proof of heavy processes of synthesis (authenticity)), there is a clear, universal pursuit towards some utter authenticity that is being referred to through shallow accusations of inauthenticity and the calling-out of low-synthesis performativity.

SCENE 3
Obsession with defining authenticity

A conscious pursuit of authenticity is somewhat paradoxical and could even be seen as inauthenticity; it’s an act of regulation, an act of oversight. It’s rooted in the perceived dichotomy of substance (influence, references; external content) and some independent, metaphysical, soul-sent curatorial synthesis (agency, authenticity; yourself), while the latter, too, is a power-to-X product of the former.

To problematize and bring to societal context: this obsession with authenticity is a convenient problem-framing that enables consumerist culture and dissociation through a lifelong attempt of reaching some final purity of existence. It splits the individual into two: the observed consciousness that is a multi-channel broadcast of both the internal and external, and the observer that tries to define which are internal and which external; which a reflection of a curatorial selection and synthesis, and which just internalized environment. This is also where certain alienation stems from: the attempt to name and compartmentalize intra-head processes through external languages and concepts; the attempt to reach a distanced, godly know-all position within the mind.

The search for some final authenticity and the constant desire to triangulate its true nature is a problem that struggles to exit semantics, and hence exists as a mere vehicle of control and hegemony.

SCENE 4
The agency of authenticity

Sartre, Heidegger and Kirkegaard discuss authenticity in their works a lot, and the three arrive at similar definitions of authenticity that is somewhat as follows: authenticity has to do with creativity; a starting nudge toward action that comes from the inside; an absence of some inauthenticity that could be characterized as basing one’s actions to external expectation and abandoning one’s moral and aesthetic views.

The thing with this definition is that it assumes knowledge and some factual nature of these moral and aesthetic views; the assumption that within the individual, there are impulses of desire that can be correctly interpreted, and that the source of these impulses (internal or external) can be detected (or then it is a theorem meant to be interpreted only in instances of having this knowledge, implying the existence of an area of inapplicability).

Whatever comes from the inside, when put into a language of a constructed world, was surely put there from the outside: a thought-play of a human growing in a sensory-deprivation tank, denied of any interaction-passing instances would underline that the only things we truly have inside are biological impulses of survival and some existentialist potentials in the shape of temperament traits or a set of sensitivities.

SCENE 5
Hearing authenticity

The previous means that authenticity could be seen as these temperament traits and sensitivities being infinitely free in searching for their incarnation and target in the relative environment; you develop a taste through an iterative process of finding out where these traits and sensitivities gravitate towards. Their sounds are silent and often camouflaged: seeing and hearing them and being able to isolate them from external noise is a result of routine and acquired ability.

All shapes and sizes of non- or miscommunication - i.e., something we might refer to as inauthenticity - are somewhat rooted in an inability to express. The state of wanting or not wanting to express - and having something to express - becomes secondary if the protagonist lacks the language in which to do so. If one hasn’t developed a way of expression (be it emotion, identity, a personal way of talking about a certain topic, etc) that feels natural, right and true, you have less resources and tools for being authentic.

We then get to the point of both knowing-what-you-feel and how-to-express-it being results of some level of privilege: freedom of expression, safety to explore expression, and having a large range of material around oneself in order to collage, mirror and form opinions more often.

SCENE 6
The radical abandoning of authenticity as a binary

If we take authenticity as a neutral quality that can take place anywhere and any time (i.e., is not only possible after an extensive time of exploring and learning to express), we could say that unknown and unintentional inauthenticity, i.e., going against these original temperament traits and sensitivities as a result of alienation or an inability to read oneself, would still be authentic.

If this is not a definition we accept - that authenticity can take place anywhere and any time - we would arrive at the thought of some existences being solely inauthentic by nature, which would mean the absence of an adaptive consciousness; the absence of the base set of impulses and sensitivities; the total truancy of an existentialist root.

This is not to negate the fact that some expressions of performativity and synthesis entail more discovery, innovation and accurate representation of authentic subjection than others; it’s simply to say that behind some authenticity is also undeniable inauthenticity; that authenticity and inauthenticity are existentialist palindromes in a constant state of gerrymandering.

SCENE 7
The dead ones don’t see you

Performing is something that allows an individual to exist in multitudes and disconnect their expressive desires from material limitations; to operate in the same logic as the hyperreal, ambivalent world and collective consciousness; to free an individual from the infrastructural need to build bridges in order to enter territories.

A quality of performativity that could be deemed inauthentic - some abandonment of internal moral or aesthetic views; getting somewhere before certainty of will - can still result in more capacity for authenticity: expressions and experiences that have false or ingenuine roots can still result in more knowledge and performative tools for authentic expression, if we keep in mind the iterative process of developing taste and expression; inauthenticity can give birth to authenticity

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy!

SOUNDS OF EXPLOSIONS

HOLD ON THE VISUAL TIMELAPSE OF THE CONTINENT; THE AVERAGE LIFESPAN OF A CIVILIZATION IS CLOSE TO 340 YEARS; the less you see, the more you describe; certainties are often quiet; within loudness there is search and within silence there is finding

THE END

EPILOGUE: IN THE SUSPENDED CEILING !!!!!

I love sitting with my knees in my mouth
I love closed-ended positions
Bends are hidden and they maintain temperature

The dust is everywhere, I think it’s in my organs by now
My heart is a lodestone that pulls it in
Sediments on sediments; the layered Roman terrain

The swollen dead rat in the corner clears its throat
Is this yours? It asks

It’s not

Ellen Järnefelt 2024