Issue #4 - Scaffolding
Scaffolding: that preliminary architecture upon which your edifice is built. What, then, holds the scaffolding up? What other, than itself?
What we're interested in today is self-propulsion, that initial aspect of all creative and interesting pursuit that is reliant on nothing than itself, yet paradoxically enables fertile growths from its originally arid soil. How can we set this up?
Am I wrong if I immediately contend that I simply don't know? I don't. I'm unsure that any algorithmic instruction set could properly provide guidelines for building guidelines. What should be two distinct levels of abstraction would quickly coincide and, at best fail.
Therefore, responsibly, I must contend myself with the knowledge that such architecture already exists. Professional athletes historically make poor coaches. Perhaps it's the sort of thing that only exists in the mind of the "do-er", he who is in constant action, who is worried less about imagery and recording but rather about completion and connection.
Therefore, be worried about completion and connection! Institutional goals are not goals at all. Be worried about self-defining goals. I believe that it's unnecessary to create guidelines for self-defined goals, in much the same way that a Zen "School" is impossible. We can find other parallel metaphors in practices like the koan. For example, perhaps having periods of intentional emptiness - boredom, fasting, or solitude - can aid one in their quest, not as a means of addition, but in additive subtraction. I don't want to dance around words any more.