Emulation

 
One thing I have noticed about Jordan Peterson is his lecture technique. He takes a long time to get to the point. This seeming defect disguises a pedagogic strategy which seems correct. That is all things, even ideas, have a certain texture surrounding them being con-texts in which the ideas are submerged. So without going through some layers first, one cannot reach the goal. That is why fishing is a good allegory of knowledge. The sea represents the great unknown but if you put a hook out, something bites. So there is hope instantiated in there somewhere in the search for knowledge as well as the willingness to confront the unknown, the unconscious, the conscious or whatever else it takes.

Emulation, therefore is a good place to start, for a creative act too is a manner of confronting the unkown. It is a good place to start, given the only path we have to the unknown is paradoxically the known. So reputations started to develop and ambitious young painters competed for apprenticeships with the great masters of their day.

With an imagination sufficiently developed, the Bible starts to come alive. In essence, it is a long anthology of aphorism intended to illuminate what we emulate. We live by emulating whether we are aware we are doing that or not. We emulate ideas and fashions but there are those who prefer to emulate those who have come before us but even more than that, by emulating, we aspire to transcend the present right back to the very origins. Perhaps the stories reveal themselves more to those so predisposed to literary persuasions intended for artistic imaginings. If words can make someone cry, there must be some germ of honesty there in the story or something that has come down to operate at the juncture between the perception and where the sentimental receptors lie.

There are other things going on in books. Things can have multiple or ambiguous meanings in the way they are interpreted but these operate through the significance of symbols and archetypes. Thus better the book, the more layers of possible readings there are inspired the interplay of the multiple forces in any singly perceived emotion.

Poor Pu Yi grows up with his palace court servants. Where is the emperor person he must emulate? What is the pyschological significance of an emperor in the first place?

Spare a thought for Moses. A recent reading of Exodus made the following sketch I once made doubly intriguing. Why did I at that particular moment in my life make an unplanned visit to San Pietro dei Vincoli to notice that the tomb of Pope Giulius II was guarded by a statue of Moses. I knew of him as the chap who brought down the ten commandments with his hair turned white after some divine brainstorming and stonecarving sessions. So I thought I'd represent him as a large double wooden doors on which each commandment is given a panel. The words are insribed in stone above the architrave. The door then being an appropriate allegory of entry into a legal studio, also because of the advocacy role played by Moses in the emulations necessary in representing whom he did. The rest of the facade is an abstraction of the tomb's elevation.

 
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