From one place to another.
When I cross the threshold of my home into the outside world I become a completely different person. Nothing changes about me physically, mentally, emotionally, or metaphysically. Yet I am different nonetheless.
What is it that our distinction as humans from ‘in’ and ‘out’ give us a pre-conceived notion that our selves must also be dual in nature?
I forever differentiate the two circumstances because I have once crossed the threshold into the contrasting ‘out’ condition. Not only as an exterior force upon me, but also associated internally within myself.
I, as a human, will continually be inclined to become dual in nature. Yet I will also continually search for how these dialectics do not define my edges. Similar to ‘in’ and ‘out’, ‘up and ‘down’, ‘black’ and ‘white’, ‘darkness’ and ‘light’, & ‘life’ and ‘death’.
To think of these absolutes in their dialectic nature is to think logically. Bringing full circle that as a human I’m also gifted to think outside of logic.
When I was in architecture school I realized I have always had a fascination with doors. How people circulate through them was enough to grip my attention. But this led to a study of their incredibly hard edge nature to create incredibly contrasting conditions of ‘inside the building’ and ‘outside the building’.
I wrote an extensive article on this concept for one of my term papers relating it to landscape architecture. I then picked up a copy of Neil Gaimans ‘Neverwhere’, and was only reinforced by my pure obsession of these THINGS.
Knobs, levers, handles, locks, keys, hinges, bolts, arches – all doors. The ability for us to reach our hands out, in any condition, grasp the hardware, and transport ourselves from one environment to the next was what fueled this obsessive fire.
As I’m writing this, the wind has brushed up against my patio door, ever so carefully swinging it into a fully open position. I hear a diesel truck 4 floors below me on the pavement and I think of my father. A man who has been a huge influence in my life and path to ‘thinking differently’.
These thresholds reinforce our way of thinking as humans or the ability to think phenomenologically (outside of logic). To understand more on phenomenological thinking, read THIS ARTICLE ON ALGORITHMIC THINKING. These architectural elements have not changed since the hut. To go even further back they have not changed since the cave.
In a cliche manner here, I will reference Plato and his cave. His prisoners knew not of the ‘outside’ condition. Only the ‘in’.
We are capable of learning many things in this world ‘a priori’ – prior to experience. This is a tool that academia uses and how many students become successful, both in learning from others mistakes, and from knowledge of past generations. Yet in order to understand ‘a priori’ an individual first has to understand experiential learning.
This kind of learning is hard, tough, and it hurts.
Many people remain in ‘experiential learning’ their entire lives. Yet the problem exists that by nature this kind of learning relies heavily on the obvious ‘experience’ and many times can be misguided.
Personally, I absolutely love learning from experiences. I would not have described how the wind blew my door open if this was not true. I would not describe how, as I’m writing this sentence, a helicopter disrupts my thinking by flying over head.
Yet I also love learning prior to experience. This type of learning leads to creative abilities, and thinking beyond and outside of logic.
Which leads me back to Plato and his prisoners inside of the cave. Being so diminished to only experiential learning, they had yet to ‘learn how to learn’ if you will humor my lack of words. Since they were being shown and told what to ‘believe in’, they were still attempting to understand what it meant to ‘learn from experience’ – let alone even fathom the idea of learning ‘a priori’, or prior to this.
Therefore, inside of the ‘cave’ (both literal and figurative at this point, for they resided not only in the dark cave on the cliffside, but also were inhabitants of a different cave, a metaphysical cave within their own mind) they could never conceive of the ‘outside’. Never could they have imagined a world outside of this, because they had yet to learn how to ‘imagine’.
It was not enough for one of them to walk out of the cave. If I were a prisoner in this instance, seeing someone else walk out would only confuse me. I would have to walk out myself to understand exactly what it meant to have a different condition other than ‘inside’. Only then could I define what it meant to have this ‘dual’ condition of ‘inside’ and ‘outside’. This is the singular moment in which ‘dual’ or ‘contrasting’ thinking arrives. One cannot conceive of an ‘in’ without an ‘out’.
I would be absolutely sure, because I was told to believe so, that while inside the cave the ‘in’ was all that existed. Even if I was at a loss for words to define ‘in’, it would still be the only occurring condition.
This long-winded and over-emphasized musings of thought on thresholds has led me to a pure obsession with doors.
I’m able to think outside of doors, and within them. I love my ability as a human to stare at a door handle, and wonder what is on the other side. But only because I have learned to open the door.
Through learning from experience, over time we may be able to understand what it means to learn prior to experience. We can learn to imagine.
Imagining what’s on the other side of ‘that door’ has pushed me to open every door I can, seek out every opportunity. I don’t want to trespass. I don’t want to overstay my welcome. But I do want to test out my hypothesis, I want to see if my imagination was more interesting than reality.
More often than not reality is less interesting. Yet this does not stop the artist from imagining, and creating the world around him to be the most interesting it can be. That is the beauty of literally manifesting a concept as an artist.
The words I write are dripped onto the page from my mind.
The forms I mold are ripped from my mind into 3 dimensions.
The moments I capture are frozen images of time stretched from my mind.
My only acceptance of reality is in my sheer rejection of it.
In order for a rejection to be possible, I must first accept it as existent. It is a constant cycle of going ‘in’ and ‘out’ of the door.