“Perhaps the role of art, then, is to put us in complicity with things as they happen”
- Lyn Hejinian, Happily
To know is to trap.
Which is to say that which is known has often been defined. We know this thing, and because this thing is known, it cannot be another thing. We know it as this thing. If this thing stops being this thing then it is no longer a thing we know. Or rather, we are less likely to recognize it as the thing we know.
Does this mean freedom has no space for knowledge?
Or, particlularly, does this mean it is impossible to know freedom?
A man was seen seated on a chair at the end of a runway. As he watched the models walk towards him, then away, it became clearer that things he knew had lost their freedom a long time ago.
Where do ideas that have been chained go?
Do they get institutionalized? Is there an idea correctional facility somewhere where ideas are locked up? Do trapped ideas write poetry with freedom dreams? Do they have freestyles in corridors where they spit bars about what it would be to one day break away? Do idea gangs sit around marking territory and shooting bad looks at anyone who walks by?
Say a naïve idea walked out onto the lot and challenged the dominant member of the idea gang, would that idea have a short lifespan? Would they look for it during breaks with a hastily made shank? Would the guards look away? Is plausible deniability in the correctional facility?
If, as the idea bled out, it began to think of the past, would it remember the fashion show? Would it think fondly of the days when it was free? Or would it smile, finally having been known?
I once knew something, but I have since forgotten. Am I free? Or do I walk around oblivious of my trap? Things continue to happen. I write.
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