{"id":4343,"date":"2024-10-15T18:23:57","date_gmt":"2024-10-15T18:23:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/entangelments.de\/?p=4343"},"modified":"2024-12-20T22:47:08","modified_gmt":"2024-12-20T22:47:08","slug":"you-dream","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/entangelments.de\/en\/you-dream","title":{"rendered":"Resonances from you to you"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Angelus suspensus. Essays on the patience of angels (4)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"alt="In
Tom Sojer and Robert Krokowski on a walk in January 2024 \u00a9 Marlen Wagner<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I and You
Miller\u2019s cow
You\u2019re the donkey, that\u2019s true.
But not yet, not even close.
Tell me first when you\u2019ll be me.
One and two, it\u2019s through\u2014
I becomes a place,
And You slips away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Counting rhyme from The School of Narcissism<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You stepped from my dream,
I emerged from yours.
We die when one
Is fully lost in the other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Johann Peter Hebel, I and You<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You write:<\/em> \u201cOur gaze said \u2018You,\u2019 but to whom, and where? We stood before the lost \u2018You,\u2019 yet saw nothing but its disappearance. No clear form, no certainty. Yet even in its vanishing, the \u2018You\u2019 remained\u2014like an echo that never fully parted. A fragment that held us\u2014slipping away, yet reappearing in the silent traces of the unsaid. It wasn\u2019t gone, just shifted. Our speech clung to it, even as it reached out into emptiness.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You speak of a \u2018We\u2019 that formed when the \u2018You\u2019\u2014as something clear, as something approachable\u2014was lost. You speak of those in \u2018We,\u2019 who could see nothing of the \u2018You\u2019 but its disappearance. And what remains of the \u2018You\u2019 for the \u2018We\u2019 in your story is an echo. It seems that those bound in \u2018We\u2019 had called out \u2018You\u2019\u2014perhaps even shouted\u2014into something that could give resonance, an echo in response. And you tell us it had only just happened, for the echo was still audible, though what had caused it had already vanished. What stirred the echo hadn\u2019t fully disappeared, hanging still in the air, while the space of resonance dissolved.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You call that echo a fragment, something that held those bound in \u2018We,\u2019 as if it were what kept them connected, what made them a \u2018We\u2019\u2014the fragment of an echo, a remnant of the call, a summoning of the other as \u2018You.\u2019 This echo becomes, as you describe, a sign\u2014flickering at times, withdrawing at others. As if the echo of \u2018You\u2019 were something in a movement of appearing and retreating, not unraveling, but surfacing and slipping away. You say this happened in the \u201csilent traces of the unsaid.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You write that the unsaid gave this echo of the \u2018You\u2019 call a new space for resonance, transforming it. And you write that this kept alive the speech of those bound in \u2018We,\u2019 even though they had lost the \u2018You.\u2019 But the \u2018We\u2019 you describe\u2014it\u2019s not us.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I want to explain why, as I read your account of this \u2018We,\u2019 which lost its \u2018You,\u2019 I sensed that at least one of the \u2018Yous\u2019 within your \u2018We\u2019 had, by shrinking into its own \u2018I,\u2019 caused the resonance between I and You\u2014and between You and You within the \u2018We\u2019\u2014to collapse, reducing it to a trace of the echo of calling \u2018You.\u2019 When a \u2018You\u2019 is only called upon by an \u2018I\u2019 to reflect the \u2018I,\u2019 to become a mere surface for its needs\u2014when the call is made only so that the mirror aligns to reveal the \u2018I,\u2019 making it visible, audible, tangible, even danceable\u2014then the \u2018We\u2019 becomes, at least for one participant, a connection between \u2018I\u2019 and \u2018I.\u2019 Then it is the \u2018I\u2019 that takes the place of the \u2018You,\u2019 using the reflection of the \u2018You\u2019 as a space to affirm its reality. Because that \u2018You\u2019 must, for the \u2018I,\u2019 also be an \u2018I,\u2019 for its recognition to hold any worth. Solus ipse\u2014only \u2018I\u2019 alone.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You continue:<\/em> \u201cIt wasn\u2019t a secure hold, no firm grasp, but a game of language that pulled us in, only to slip away\u2014a thing that flowed through our fingers when we tried to seize it. This \u2018You\u2019 was an attempt to grasp the ungraspable, always retreating. It couldn\u2019t be bound, disappearing into the depths of its own meaning. A name, always just a reaching. And yet, when \u2018You\u2019 was spoken, it seemed to merge with what we sought\u2014a moment that pointed beyond mere words. A sign never fully within reach.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Narcissism, solipsism, egoism, vanity\u2014so many terms try to explain the transformation of \u2018You\u2019 into the mirror of \u2018I.\u2019 But what happens is the exclusion of the You, the exclusion of the stranger within us, as well as the other as stranger. You speak of the ungraspable slipping away, of the failure to name it\u2014and how the \u2018You\u2019 remained a faint echo of a resonance that once gave the \u2018We\u2019 something beyond language, beyond words. You try to grasp this relationship in the \u2018We,\u2019 describing it through the figure of the ellipse, as we once discussed\u2014explaining why the concentration of \u2018I\u2019 on itself is something altogether different from the focusing of \u2018We\u2019 on the other as \u2018You.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You write:<\/em> \u201cThe relationship between us wasn\u2019t a center, no static force, but a movement between the foci of the ellipse. \u2018You\u2019 and \u2018I\u2019 stood in relation to one another, not through central attraction, but as two poles, constantly renegotiating closeness and distance in a dynamic constellation. The connection wasn\u2019t in the center but through the open ellipse, passing from one point to the other.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Had the relationship in the \u2018We\u2019 you describe been like that between \u2018You\u2019 and \u2018You,\u2019 each in the foci of an ellipse, its center left empty\u2014no place for \u2018I,\u2019 only a threshold between \u2018You\u2019 and \u2018You\u2019\u2014then perhaps the \u2018You\u2019 wouldn\u2019t have had to shrink to the mere echo of a call. The connection held by the space between the \u2018Yous,\u2019 exploring the possibilities of nearness and distance, would have been a mediation between You and You, not a merging of You with I. The intensifying effect of such movement in a \u2018We\u2019 that allowed for \u2018You\u2019 through elliptical alteration to maintain a space of openness might have dissolved the self-centered collapse of resonance between I and You, You and You, within the \u2018We.\u2019 The fading echo of the call \u2018You!\u2019 might not have been the only lingering sound in that unfolding. Perhaps, after such an embrace between You and You, a sound would remain at the threshold of their encounter, holding the \u2018We\u2019 in the balance of You and You.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You write:<\/em> \u201cWe carried \u2018You\u2019 in our language like a scar that didn\u2019t fade. But the wound wasn\u2019t the \u2018You\u2019 itself\u2014it was what \u2018You\u2019 stirred in us: the encounter with the lost. A wound held in \u2018We.\u2019 It was the intertwining of word and presence, revealing that \u2018You\u2019 was always just an attempt at contact\u2014a gesture of touch that always missed. The \u2018You\u2019 formed nothing graspable. It wasn\u2019t a vessel that held securely, but something that slipped from our hands, forcing us to reach, to fail again and again. A sign that challenged us. In our encounter, we left traces on one another, but never fully\u2014a mark, an echo that never became a complete form.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes. You speak of that attempt, from the echo of calling \u2018You,\u2019 to draw forth a sound that might reveal that something more could be found in the resonance between You and You, within the \u2018We,\u2019 than the hollow space where an \u2018I\u2019 had settled.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You write:<\/em> \u201cThe \u2018You\u2019 could be suffocating, too close, an overwhelming presence. Yet it remained a word, a sign cast into the world, with no certainty it would land. It was spoken\u2014we wanted it whole, but knew it could only be an approximation, an attempt at something that forever withdrew. And still, the \u2018You\u2019 was irreversible. It remained\u2014not the word itself, but what it meant: the trace of the other, living on in us. But that irreversibility was laced with doubt. Had the intended person truly been reached? Was justice done to them? The \u2018You\u2019 carried this ambivalence\u2014the question of whether the sign could ever fully encompass what it signified.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Did those bound in \u2018We,\u2019 as you describe, truly know this? If it unfolded as you narrate, then those bound as \u2018I\u2019 and \u2018I\u2019 in the end could no longer maintain the suspension between You and You. That\u2019s why you capture it so precisely\u2014this configuration of a \u2018We\u2019 made from \u2018I\u2019 and \u2018I\u2019.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201c\u2018You\u2019 couldn\u2019t be contained in words, yet it was only through words that we existed. Always, it was a gesture of language pointing toward truth, toward a silence no language could break. Perhaps it was in this very failure of words that \u2018You\u2019 lived. It was the \u2018not-enough\u2019 of language that reminded us that the sign could never fully embody what it signified. And if wholeness was promised, it was only as an imperfect attempt to feel closeness. The \u2018You\u2019 remained a point on a hyperbolic path, a runaway force that, in its fading, revealed the essence of this impossible encounter with the null point. Not unity, but constant struggle, a resistance, an edge. The words always led only to the border, never beyond. It was the imperfection that gave \u2018You\u2019 its edge, enabling a new beginning even when failure was certain. The space between us was a realm of stitches, a plane where entanglements touched the other, a compassion without total overcoming of estrangement. The \u2018You\u2019 was the other, revealed, yet never fully comprehended\u2014a protest against us, a trace that remained, always a fragment.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Haze-thin chances of friction losses kept in gaps, as long as they go unnoticed. Each exhibition a moment presented. Wandering through vanishing viewpoints and over-grazed fields of sight. The flash of an eye meeting touch strikes the mind. A hug feels like a dance. Sometimes an attempt to cross a line, to overstep a boundary, a shift of place, a threshold exploration, a transformation of no-man\u2019s land into terrain vague is accompanied by a raised finger: YouYou!\u2014as if it were child\u2019s play, as if it were dream-walking simplicity. When and how do reflections become sources of resonance?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You pause, look at me, and say:<\/em> Between us, nothing but a space in suspension, an edge of light and emptiness, where the echo of \u2018You\u2019 fades and awakens anew. Reflections become sources of resonance precisely when they abandon their claim to solidity, when they cease to be just smooth surfaces and, like a silhouette, become translucent to the depths of the between. A space with no center, needing none\u2014a place of becoming, present in absence, absent in presence. The \u2018You,\u2019 it remains, a red tone dissolving into dust, swirling, scattering, rediscovering itself in the hovering of the unspoken, woven into the language of air. Not held, never fixed, always only a breath that brushes the hand and vanishes, a red residue that breathes on after speaking. Not a center, not a fixation\u2014it remains the floating, the speech from the world\u2019s edge, the never-here of \u2018You.\u2019 As the ellipse loses its focal points, as the threshold is no longer a threshold, only a step into uncertainty, a space that cannot be closed. Between us, the red tone, in echo and reverberation, where closeness and distance lose meaning, and everything, even the unspoken, is softly said again in the fractal sound, quieter and quieter, until we no longer hear it. Because it becomes too soft for us. And it still hears us forever. Because it becomes too close for us. A \u201ccurrent space,\u201d you once called it\u2014a place neither fixed nor closed, always in transition, a space where the \u2018You\u2019 unfolds without fully revealing itself. Where the red tone stays soft, haze-thin, making the skin of language brittle, cracking it open and letting it bleed. Not a place of boundaries, but one of painful permeability, not bordered, but dripping, setting its marks. A space that holds you and releases you, where seeing and breathing are the same, at once, a silence that doesn\u2019t break. And so, the \u2018You\u2019 remains\u2014abraded by sandpaper, the red tone dust in the breeze, promising nothing, holding nothing, only lingering in the moment. Its movement is no goal, no hold, only a brush, a touch, fingers full of dust, a not-losing, caught in the motion that returns from the silence and withdraws. The floating between us\u2014the \u2018You,\u2019 the false secret, the red residue that gives an echo, remaining without fully being. The gaping wound that grows through centering, and heals only by opening the possible, by letting go, by giving space. A red tone pointing to the desert, laying down the weight, not rising but expanding, releasing, the unknown\u2014a letting go to experience the other. An un-thing that never becomes graspable, finding its beginning in its brokenness, in the collision that separates us, that binds us\u2014a sense that stays, always a remnant, a \u2018You,\u2019 a broken You, a fractal work that repeats, multiplies, carrying the whole in every shard, and yet never becoming complete. A \u2018You\u2019 that lives in the fracture line, dividing and transforming, always appearing in new angles and reflections\u2014a game of parts that knows no wholeness, a red echo in the cracks of fragmentation, that stays. The \u2018You\u2019 is not identification or comprehension, but the condition for the possibility of the between, which it lets emerge\u2014a space that exists only in openness, a threshold that opens, a movement that allows us to dwell in uncertainty, to remain in the fragment that never wants to be whole, to allow the (im)possible to happen anew.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes: origin is the goal. This is why it\u2019s so fascinating to follow the red resonances between You and You. And the question of what this has to do with the patience of angels and the image of the Angelus Suspensus is answered quite simply: because the \u2018We\u2019 is about the difference between the reality of the I and the realization of the You. Even the \u2018We\u2019 in suspension is on the verge of leaping. The \u201cred tone\u201d makes the suspended chord as much a musical \u201cthreshold\u201d as a Colgada is in dance.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tom Sojer
Robert Krokowski<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Angelus suspensus. Essays on the patience of angels (4)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":4339,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[169,166,103,175],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4343","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-angelus-suspensus-essays-on-the-patience-of-angels","category-angelus-suspensus-essays-ueber-die-geduld-der-engel-en","category-robert-krokowski-en","category-tom-sojer-personal-contributions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/entangelments.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4343","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/entangelments.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/entangelments.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entangelments.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entangelments.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4343"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/entangelments.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4343\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4419,"href":"https:\/\/entangelments.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4343\/revisions\/4419"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entangelments.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/entangelments.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entangelments.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entangelments.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}