Q: How do you launch a book about quantum infinity?
A: Create singularity moments. Consider this YOUR invitation to create a singularity moment: At 20:20 on 0202 2020 (That’s twenty past eight in the evening GMT on 2nd February 2020 - feel free to adjust timings to suit yourself) Your creative act represents an active engagement with the ‘act’ of publication of All Moments Are One Moment - a radical work of philosophical fiction. What is singularity? As a common noun it is defined thus: the state, fact, quality, or condition of being singular. Eg: "he believed in the singularity of all cultures" Which, In common language means: A ‘unique’ and ‘specific/particular’ moment. In Physics and Mathematics it is defined as: a point at which a function takes an infinite value, especially in space–time when matter is infinitely dense, such as at the centre of a black hole. How you interpret it is up to you. From my perspective as author, when writing All Moments there was a section which for a long time was titled ‘A Singular Moment’ and/or ‘A Singular Cave’ . In the final published version you will find that Form 11 EARTH generates METAL ( and the first part of Form 36 CALLUM generates PRYCE) is subtitled A Singular Cave. This section begins: Somewhere in a conversation, characters spoke. And listened. Readers stepping into the cave may hear the voices before they see the writing on the wall.’ For me, the ‘singularity’ is about (at least) two things: 1) rendering into specific state/example, a deeper concept/part of ‘story’ 2) bringing together the strands of the stories within All Moments. And this is, for me, a sort of quantum wave pattern within quantum infinity. What is this invitation? Put simply, I’m inviting you to bring your own life/reflections into focus for a period between 20 seconds and 2 minutes around 20:20 0202 2020. It's a chance to explore your perspective of a moment Qi[m] as part of All Moments in Quantum Infinity. Qi[M]. You might like to think of it (analagously) as sitting in a cave looking at the writing on the wall. Or standing in the river. If you’ve read All Moments you’ll have more of an idea of what I’m talking about. If not, your point of reference may be like the 2 minutes silence held on Remembrance Day, but I’m suggesting that what you do is focus on ‘your life’/ ‘your place in the universe’ for this time - and if you like, think of it like the opportunity to inhabit the centre of a black hole - you may even feel the desire to use the ‘point’ as a transformative move - your own ‘Big Bang’ moment. Or not. It’s up to you. Some background for the curious: I have thought long and hard about the publication of this work - especially about its ‘birth’ or moment of transformation from ‘unpublished’ to ‘published’ which is, for me, a lot less important than how it ‘is born’ or ‘exists’ in terms of acts of individual observation, more commonly known as 'reading.' The only significance to me of publication is that more people can read it. As a commercial 'act' it's distinctly unimportant. For me publication is about widening of reader choice, not any part of a marketing campaign. So, rather than celebrating the publication per se, my celebration is around what, for me, has been a ‘moment’ of singularity I had aimed for all along - which is 0202 2020. Several things happened which allowed All Moments to ‘exist’ as it now does. The content was driven by personal relationships and the form was enabled by Scrivener software and Tai Chi/Qi gong practice. Bringing these together and reflecting on them was the key to my ‘process’. The other was 'time' in a conceptual and real sense. I had wanted to write All Moments when I was working on the draft of Brand Loyalty in 2009. I had been trying to write Brand Loyalty for nearly a decade when I finally published it. While writing Brand Loyalty I had the conception of All Moments in a loose form but had no idea of how to actualise it. I could kind of 'see' how I wanted it to be but had neither the perspective nor the ‘tools’ with which to achieve my vision. In writing All Moments one thing I discovered is that sometimes, when you can't reconcile your understanding of personal identity and time, all you need to do is wait until you find a perspective on ‘the moment’ in which things become clear. Brand Loyalty was published on 2010 2010 and it seems fitting that All Moments should work round this sort of ‘theme’ Thus 0202 2020. I have lots of thoughts about the ‘significance’ of binary/number patterns - I ‘see’ patterns of numbers in quite a unique way. And interestingly enough I’ve finished writing this at 11.22 on 2201 2020. Make of that what you will. Perhaps it just means I have ‘a beautiful mind?’ Perhaps it means I am in the open circle. Perhaps, beyond fact and fiction, the universe smiles. I like to think it's a vindication of the theory of Qi[M]. And, after all, reality is what you choose to believe. Cally Phillips You can read Brand Loyalty free online at this site and you can buy both Brand Loyalty and All Moments Are One Moment from the Unco store (and from 2nd Feb from Amazon/other online retailers - though its visibility may be diametrically opposed to the level of commerciality of the retailer. For commercial concerns stories are product after all!) Or, how I’m using chinese characters in All Moments. Your first introduction is on page 4: 我们舞蹈无翼 无耻 This expression, which I built from my exploration of characters, says - We dance wingless without shame. (It may mean other things to native chinese speakers, I’m a ‘beginner’ in this language) In pinyin it is : Wǒmen wǔdǎo wúyì wúchǐ Lit: We 我们 dance 舞蹈 without wings 无翼 无耻 without shame In Forms 29 and 43 when I removed the ‘we’ I got 舞蹈无翼 无耻 dance wingless without shame. I should probably have put a ‘to’ in front of it making it 跳舞蹈无翼 无耻 I thought about it, but I was aiming for suggesting the reader embrace an affirmation of the act of dancing rather than giving them an instruction ‘to’ dance. But why that phrase anyway? Forms 4 and 45 Deals with its ‘construction’ as follows: I was exploring fluidity of ‘meaning’ and the idea for the phrase came from the characters. I wasn’t trying to ‘create’ that phrase, it came out of the characters as they emerged. It was while I was trying to work out the many variants of ‘wu’ (before I understood the how tones related to characters in the Chinese written language.) Essentially the idea and the ‘sentence’ emerged from the characters. 舞 池 (dance floor) 无 耻 (Without any sense of shame) 无 持 (wingless) There are many other characters (tone dependent) which can subtly change the meaning of this, or perhaps express it better - If you know Chinese, please indulge me. If you don’t please go with me. It’s the ‘meaning’ beneath the words/characters which are most importance/interest to me. For example, my dictionary tells me that ‘to dance,’ (verb) is tiaowǔ 跳舞 whereas dance (noun) (a dance) is wǔdǎo 舞蹈 and (the dance) is wǔhui 舞会 Consistent is the ‘dance’ character wǔ and this interested me because wú is also 无 when it means ‘without’ ( the difference is from tone 3 to tone 2 if you're interested) Going back to the headings sections: Open Circle 开圆圈 I came across a great video explaining this (which of course I can’t find again just now) but basically I’m taking it to mean as the guy demonstrated, how if you don’t close the circle you’re able to embrace multidimensions. It’s tied up with Wuji.. I shall keep looking for the reference and insert it when/if I find it (which will be when I stop looking!) [nb - paradox accepted] WUXING 无形 The five element theory. (Also sometimes found as wuxin) I first came to this through The book QiGong and the Tai Chi Axis: And Dr Paul Lam’s Qigong for Health. WUJI
无极 Is best described as the ‘empty circle’ (the infinite emptiness) and as such related to the ‘open circle’ Suffice it to say that there seems (to me) a lot of inconsistency in sources as to many of the Anglicised versions of Chinese - which is the reason I started learning Chinese, to gain greater insight, but you’ll appreciate it’s not something that can be achieved in weeks or even months - it’s a journey! OTHER CHARACTERS... At various points in the text you may come across 是不是 The purpose of this Is not is - is to break the narrative space The character Is 是 shi And Not 不 bu Are put together this way when one asks a question such as Are you [ ] or not? So are you well or not? is You are not are well? 你是不是好吗? As below: Ni(you) 你 shi (are/is) 是 bu (not) 不 shi (are/is) 是 hao (good/well) 好 ma [ma makes the statement a question, it’s known as a question particle] 吗 While Do you like this book? Would be You like not like the book? With [like not like] instead of is not is So I put IS NOT IS 是不是 To represent the change of dimensions in the narrative. The question being asked is: Is this one place/space/time or another? It’s not a complete sentence intentionally because it’s breaking the two parts of the narrative. In Forms 15 and 44 there is a section dealing with language and thought Rendered in characters as follows: Words and ideas 言 和 思想 言 words (lit speech) 和 and 思想 ideas (lit thought) 'If you step over them into the cave which houses the walls of discourse on the nature of linguistic meaning, you may find that the only reality of linguistic science is the word. Its embodiment is its reality.' 书不尽 言 shūbùjìnyán Writing cannot fully express words or (endless books) 言 不尽 以 yánbùjìnyì Words cannot fully express what is in my heart or (endless words) I break it down as follows: 不Not 尽 Fully express 书 writing 言 words 以 heart But again, don’t quote me for purposes of accurate Chinese! Then in Forms 16 and 51 there is: 精神 舞 by which I mean Mind dance Jīng 精 and shén 神 Have many meanings even with the same tone, depending on what characters go before/after them, including ‘fine’ and ‘God’ so it can be translated as ‘spiritual dancing’ or as ‘fine God Dance’ but in my dictionary 精神 Jīngshén together is defined as ‘mind’ Hence ‘mind dance’ (not a standard phrase in any language that I know of!) And that’s how I used Chinese characters, given my knowledge and understanding at the point in the perspective at which I was working on the text. Another month or year it might have come out entirely different. But understanding what it means to dance wingless without shame, I remain shameless! 我无 耻 Having spent some time looking at the bizarre/unique way I 'see' numbers, I thought I'd share this snippet about how I see words:
I don't like Scrabble. There was a game called Boggle that I used to prefer, and maybe it's because the letters on Boggle were on all sides of a cube (like a dice). I don't 'get' Scrabble. When forced to play it (which is thankfully very infrequently) my delight comes from trying to use the tiles to make the nicest word I can think of - not to score points. Which I believe defeats the purpose of the game. But who can think that a game of words should be constructed so as to amass numbers? Ugh. My acts of resistance against Scrabble is that I will throw away/hold onto letters just to be able to put down a word like Theatre or Moose - or whatever word I feel like I want to make when I first ‘see’ a word emerging out of the letters. Playing with words is, of course, central to All Moments as you will discover if you read it. For now, this is just to warn you not to expect the standard model within my text! (Just went on the web to look for an image for this section and, as well aas the cartoon above from Kris Straub, and found these links martinshervington.com/0202-2020-is-a-palindrome/ and https://medium.com/@jake.tran42/palindromes-and-why-theyre-important-8a4d421c1da2 Perhaps I’m not entirely alone when I say, I love number palindromes. (I’m off to explore the ‘recursive palindrome’ when I post this! ) 0202 2020 is a sequence/pattern of numbers that conveys a lot to me. First and foremost there’s a sense of beauty in the symmetry. I see symmetry? Do you. The way I look at them if you ‘fold’ the numbers back on each other from the gap between them, you get the same thing, like in a mirror. Does that make any sense to you? (But of course if you look at them another way they’re not palindromes it depends how you ‘fold’ them) I like the idea of folding numbers. So much better than ‘counting’ them. I also respond to the ‘progression’ sense of patterns. An example: As regards the publishing of Brand Loyalty and All Moments are One Moment. I see a thematic progression from Dystopia to Utopia. I find this reflected in the ‘numbers’ or ‘dates’ 2010 2010 to 0202 2020 Obviously 2010 2010 and 2020 2020 would be even better but since we don’t have 20 months in a year it’s impossible. However bringing clock time into the dates and you get 2020 0202 2020 Which could be rendered backwards as 2010 0101 2010 Creating a whole new ‘significant’ date for Brand Loyalty 20:20 (24 hour clock) 02.02 (2nd Feb) 2020 (Year) 20:10 (24 hour clock) 01:01 (1st Jan) 2010 (Year) Except the ‘moment’ of Brand Loyalty was actually 2010 (October 20th) thus 01.01 has to be the time (01.01am) 2010 (year stays constant) Though also with Brand Loyalty 1010 2010 was a ‘sequence’ and perhaps this sequence speaks more closely as an analogy to All Moments 0202 2020 Let’s look 1010 2010 0202 2020 Am I the only one who sees a profound beauty in those sequences? Interestingly, in Chinese there are four character ‘set phrases’ used on paintings which usually have a moral or proverbial meaning. Such phrases are often put together in pairs. Eg 青山不老, 禄水长溜 (Green mountain not old, Green water always flows) I’m not trying to ‘prove’ anything here, just to represent how I ‘see’ things. I suspect I have a neuro diverse ‘number’ brain. Go to number theory RED and BLUE I can’t think of 1,0 without bringing into play a whole range of deep meanings AND the whole digital on/off binary stuff. For me, the excitement of 2020 and these sequences is that it explains (in thought, beyond words) something about relationships between the ‘standard’ binary world/system and quantum. So it seems to me that at present we’re moving from a world of 0 and 1 to one which uses ‘base’ (in my sense of the word base) 2 rather than base 1. It’s not that 1+1=2 it’s something more about how when you ‘switch’ from 1-0 0-1 something is happening but when you switch from 2-0 and 0-2 you’re doing that in a deeper dimension. And you can ‘play’ with 0-1-2 in a number of interesting combinations which gives yet another perspective on the dimension. But the practical level of number for me is: I still can’t multiply or subtract without using my fingers and/or paper. Along with ‘the rods’ we were brought up with Musical Multiplication Tables. I can remember the songs, but the multiplication means NOTHING. (instead of fighting with your brother, learn your sevens it’ll please your mother!) So I learned what I thought of as the backbone of each ‘table’ 2x2, 3x3, 4x4 etc and I count up and down from these using my fingers when required to multiply. When it comes to addition or subtraction, I work in approximations that are based on visual ‘size’ calculations(relating to ‘tens’ in my head rather than anything to do with using the numbers as they are supposed to be used. (A sort of primitive pie chart?) I don’t trust calculators. I always have to check them about 3 times and only when I come up with the number consistently do I accept it as ‘true.’ Even then, I find it upsetting (and unbelievable) the way multiplied numbers can mean the same either way round 3x4 = 4x3 and yet division numbers are not the same 2(oh, interesting I’ve just discovered there’s not a dividing sign on the keyboard!!!) 2/6 isn’t the same as 6/2 (I can’t be bothered to go hunting the divide‘symbol’). I wonder now, whether I have developed my own grammar (or even, watch out Wittgenstein, private language) of numbers. Go to number theory GREEN or RED I was taught to count using coloured rods. Like these. Perhaps that accounts for my particular perception of them. The analogous relationships of colours and shapes are more important to me than the bald 2+2=4 ‘counting’ feature. I don’t think about numbers that much, but when I do (more deeply than simply ‘using’ them to get by, I mean) I relate them to by colour and a kind of anthropomorphism. (I’m not alone - Two fat ladies? Legs eleven? For the record I HATE Bingo, I’m just using it as an analogy. Having to ‘scope out’ numbers is like a kind of torture to me. Keep me well clear from Sudoko please.) There are other childhood influences of colour/number. For example: BEST.DICE.EVER. The dice from Mousey Mousey, (which as the box tells you is a ‘riot of laughter and excitement, and believe me, it is)doesn’t have numbers, but colours. If only every dice were this sensible! There are other childhood influences of colour/number. For example: BEST.DICE.EVER. The dice from Mousey Mousey, (which as the box tells you is a ‘riot of laughter and excitement', and believe me, it is especially if you're under five) doesn’t have numbers, but colours. If only every dice were this sensible! I haven’t thought in a while about what colour I’d attribute to what number, (I suppress these thoughts along with my thoughts about the colour of days) but when I see numbers I can also associate them with a sort of movement or ‘shape’. For example, 8 means balance. That’s the one I’m most sure of. Though I have described it in the past as like a complacent bank manager. That was 25 years ago and I still see what I meant but interestingly (for me) I don’t see it like that any more. 25 years ago I was invited to ‘dance’ numbers. I was doing devised work on a play based around the Fibonacci sequence but my view of number was obviously too weird as the ‘artistic team’ showed me the door pretty quickly. They asked me to dance the numbers. I danced the numbers. And yet, somehow, still I didn’t see the ‘Golden Ratio’ the ‘right’ way for them. That was the first and only time (till now) that I’ve exposed myself to talk about my view on numbers. It’s hard to explain. The spectre of ‘A Beautiful Mind’ (the movie) haunts me. But we are much more ‘diverse aware’ these days, right? Even if not, I don’t really care any more whether the way I see the world is weird. An appreciation of Qi[M] will do that to you! Freedom. So, today, the best descriptions I can give as a response to looking at numbers typed on a screen - the ones that come out first without ‘trying’ are: 2 is complex - moving forward from the back in a spiral, 3 seems incomplete and yearning, (like it’s on the wrong axis by 45 degrees?) 4 is steady,firm and controlled, 5 is fast and a bit untrustworthy, 6 is boring and self absorbed, 7 is simple and free.9 is like a person who has maybe got over themselves - see 6. Which leaves us with 1 and 0. Go to number theory parts BLUE and GREEN There's nothing I love better than a narrative structure - and here's a glimpse into how mine developed along with the writing. From drawings on chalkboard, (starting with the 5 WuXing elements), I developed this complex structure which is really best understood in 3 dimensions and so isn't entirely done justice to here... Over time, while still containing most of these features, I reduced the complexity, back to the 5 WuXing elements basic pattern. But in the process of developing the complexity, other aspects of the narrative became clearer (to me!) I wanted to play around with incorporating wave/particle beyond 'duality' so wave/particle/cave (or quantum or essence - it kept shifting) with each element having its own somewhat unified structure... and that's when Forms and repetition with variation came in. But first things first.
At least I hope to show that there was/is some method in the 'madness' . As for what happens after the Intertextualities... that's another post.
A few thoughts about Form 1:
IIt is set up in three different ‘styles’ to illustrate alternative entry points. The first section can be read either left to right or up/down (as with Chinese characters, though these also were read right to left!) There comes a point if you read them the ‘traditional’ way that it stops making sense! Then you read them as two ‘blocks’ top to bottom and it makes more sense… and you understand the concept (perhaps) The second section ‘explains’ ,through another pattern, the paradox of ‘pronoun and particle’ as word and ‘being’ . Yin/yang (pronoun and particle) and suggest that paradox is the ‘core’ or vital essence of this - and all that follows. Finally a prose section - the ‘simple’ way of talking about transformation. The way you’d expect a prose work to start - where the sections before act as kind of epigrams. All three sections are designed to confound expectation, to give an idea of what is to follow and mostly, to encourage the reader to engage fully and personally, while appreciating that they not understanding is part of the journey - when we don't understand, we create (even if it's just to fill in the gaps) and thus write our own version of the story. The Open Circle contains all aspects of the work, and is revealed in 32 'forms'. It is based to some degree on the structural patterns of Five Element Wu Xing which you might like to think of as an 'embedded' pattern. Creative Balance contains 24 forms (distilled from and developed in a different 'pattern) You might think that the relationship between Open Circle and Creative Balance is like that between particle/wave. It is not so much repetition as coming at the narrative from a different perspective. Creative Balance is experienced in two parts: Wu xin - by which I’m meaning: Invisible/ without shape. There are 11 'forms' Wu Ji - by which I’m meaning: without limits. There are 13 'forms'. More about wuxing Wu xin and Wu ji I feel there is something of an issue about the ‘naming of things’ and the relationship between naming and meaning explored in a glossary. I believe that between definitions and meanings there is a ‘mind the gap’ moment where creativity can be found. Which is just a way of saying, watch out, words are being used weirdly here! And how about metaphors and analogies. I found this cool cartoon online. A problem with communicating through language is that sometimes a word means something in your head that you can't get out clearly, or that you know isn't the 'standard' way other folks think of it. It's that 'how do we know that we both see red/green' (the same colour when we talk about colour) thing that philosophers love to chat about. |
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