“Thinking guides and sustains every gesture of the hand”
Extraordinary video about language, the construction of a world, thinking and personhood. Lots to think about (and more on the filmmaker’s blog), for instance:
Many people have assumed that, when I talk about this being my language, that means that each part of the video must have a particular symbollic message within it designed for the human mind to interpret. But my language is not about designing words or even visual symbols.… Ironically, the way that I move when responding to everything around me is described as being “in a world of my own.”
This video was still in my mind as I sat down to read Heidegger’s What is Called Thinking? which turned out to be serendipitous. Aside from the sentence I’m using as the title of this post, ballastexistenz’s discussion of language as a response to, not a symbollization of, the world, resonated particularly with this passage:
When we think through what this is, that a tree in bloom presents itself to us so that we can come and stand face-to-face with it, the thing that matters first and foremost, and finally, is not to drop the tree in bloom, but for once to let it stand where it stands. Why do we say “finally”? Because to this day, thought has never let the tree stand where it stands.