Wild Research
Move only along the line of your love. Stan Brakhage
Transdisciplinary work is thrilling, like travel without
a map. Working across disciplinary lines also is nerve-wracking: we parachute
into specialized areas sometimes without knowing the basics in those fields.
This workshop describes the art of bold, creative, personal, transdisciplinary
research.
Intro: basics of creativity in research
Section I. Preliminary work
- 1. "Move only along the line of your love."
- 2. Roaming and pouncing
- 3. Floating: rough notes
- 4. Sorting and boiling down
- 5. Taking sharp issue
- 6. Tracking the implications
Section II. Completion
- 7. Going for broke
- 8. Crashing
- 9. Building a voice to think with
- 10. Winding up and letting fly
Intro: basics of creativity in research
Working at any sort of research the way an artist could
- an approach to the whole process from initial reading to final writing.
Ego and larger self can collaborate. This can provide a
feeling of a wise and beneficent companion in the work.
Working this way requires and creates integrity and energy.
Experiencing this way of working has epistemological implications
implications for what knowing is - but it also has ontological implications
- implications about what humans are and can be.
It is amazing how much we can know. We are more gifted
than we expect to be. It is startling and sometimes frightening to discover
this, because there is responsibility in knowing.
Section I. Preliminary work
1. "Move only along the line of your love."
Pick a real question that is hard enough for you, that
you can genuinely commit to, whose accomplishment will be significant for
you.
Why do it this way? Because you are something that wants
to complete itself. You want your project to work for that completion.
Sometimes it's a long project and this is just the first
step. Sometimes the first project is finding the project.
Often there isn't an actual question; there might instead
be an image or a feeling.
2. Roaming and pouncing
Assume some nonconscious part already knows a lot about
what you are wanting to learn. Let it lead you to materials. Later you will
have questions and will be scanning for specifics. At this point just be
loose and broadly alert. You are roaming and then pouncing when you spot
something. Besides the web, check the stacks and new book sections in libraries.
Walk around aimlessly. You might notice titles in bookshop windows.
The unconscious or larger self often moves by feeling attraction
and recognition. Make a habit of noticing attractions.
Scan dreams for clues. Notice first thoughts when you wake.
Go to the best. Maybe read just one sentence.
3. Floating: rough notes
Make loose reading notes as you go. They can include quotes
and your own remarks, with some kind of notation to track the difference.
At this stage you are keeping an eye open for structure,
but you shouldn't be precommitted to one.
Have a procedure for keeping track of references as you
go.
4. Sorting and boiling down
Here you are starting to find the structure in your material
-finding the structure rather than imposing it.
One way you can do this is to go through your rough notes
and make provisional outlines. As you make outlines you're forced to write
subject headings and subheadings. This is a process you can repeat at different
stages, and each time you may write your headings and subheadings in different
ways. You are refining your sense of your categories and subcategories,
and their relations.
Another way to get a feel for structure is to use an actual
physical surface to lay out the parts you have. Move them around in relation
to each other. Make piles of notes that seem to belong to the same category.
Find subcategories within the category piles. Then find the order that makes
sense. Keep repeating this process to get clearer about conceptual relations.
5. Taking sharp issue
This is another testing and refining step. It is often
skipped though it is extremely helpful.
When you have got a sense of your own orientation, go to
the work of people you disagree with and read them very carefully. Stick
to a very detailed reading even though you may hate doing it. Tear them
to shreds, but then do more than that. See whether you can diagnose exactly
where you feel they go wrong. Try rewriting it to fix it. You might be able
to find a deeper principle which is responsible for your disagreement.
This step honors your repulsions as well as your attractions,
and uses them to increase comprehension and confidence.
6. Tracking the implications
When you come to believe something new, that thought often
has many implications. If it is true, many other things will likely be true
as well they are implicit in your new belief.
Often these implications will just arrive as you are reading
and outlining. If they do not, your new thought may not yet be clear enough.
Section II. Completion
7. Going for broke
When you have done these kinds of preliminary searching,
testing and structuring, you come to a moment where bravery is what you
need. You say to yourself, what do I actually believe about this? What is
my personal, bottom-line truth about this? What is this really about? Be
aware if there's some way you want it to be, and be willing to sacrifice
that. Put it on the line.
If you have developed a method for talking to the unconscious
or larger self, ask it what it thinks.
The principle of the beneficence of the truth: it is never
better not to know. If the truth seems too much to bear, it is because it
isn't large enough yet. When it is seen in a larger way it is always on
your side, as well as everyone else's.
8. Crashing
Sometimes going for broke has to be emotional. Our daily
social voices often are quite dumbed-down and false, and so they cannot
do what we need them to do to get to the bottom of something. In those times
our cognitive structure has to reorganize to include dissociated parts,
which include pain, fear and feelings of utter defeat and unworthiness.
If you know what is happening and can go through the crash
patiently and thoroughly, letting yourself feel all of those unwanted feelings
while realizing they belong to another time, you can find yourself understanding
what you hadn't understood before. This often doesn't take very long.
One way to process a crash is to attend carefully to where
in the body the pain or fear or anguish is being felt. If you can just stay
with the sensation, it may shift to another location. Keep tracking it and
breathing into the painful place.
9. Building a voice to think with
Starting to write is famously a struggle. Sometimes it
is because there's a crash that has to happen first. (These last points
are closely connected.) Often it's because we need to 'find' or build a
voice we can use to think in, and this can require a lot of trying and failing.
Often what shows up first is one of the distanced voices we learn in school.
Ego has to participate in working to find the right voice,
but if all is well, in the end you may find a voice that is not ego's voice.
(When all goes well you later say, did I write that?!)
A good writing voice is both sophisticated and simple.
It is sophisticated in the sense that it can articulate all the complex
and subtle knowing you have come to; and it is simple enough so that it
can speak for the basic youngness of someone who feels like your
real self.
10. Winding up and letting fly
When you're finally ready, it can feel as if you have wound
up tight and now are just letting it all unspool. It is as if you have got
your brain organized so it generates freely like a printer when you've
already sent it a document. It just goes chonck-chonck-chonck-chonck
and you're done.
This is a difficult sensation to describe, but it's very
pleasurable in practice. It's rather god-like. It is a reward of all you've
done.
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