the love witch (anna biller, 2016)
"Witchcraft is just a way of concentrating energy. It can only work with what's already there... Women bleed, and that's a beautiful thing."
The Ship of Theseus is a philosophical thought experiment, an interesting paradox that goes like this: A ship is built. Over the years it begins to erode, and piece by piece the ship is repaired, the parts replaced to ensure the vessel remains in fully functioning condition. As time goes by, more and more parts are replaced, until you reach a point at which every single part of the ship is new. Every nut and every bolt, and no original pieces remain, no trace of its origin can be found. The subsequent philosophical question goes as follows - is this the same ship, or not? This paradox (first put forward by Plutarch in his Life of Theseus) has been perplexing people for millennia. But let's make it more perplexing. Let's create a real ship, and we'll call it The Karaboudjan and just like in the original dilemma we'll have the parts replaced over the years. But let's go one step further: let's entertain the idea that the Karaboudjan no longer fulfills its original function, it is no longer fit for the purpose that it was originally designed for. It needs to be amended, restructured, modernised. This isn't simply Theseus' Ship, this has become something different, something more complicated, more contemporary, while still retaining its roots to its past. We're not only changing every part, but we're changing what the ship was for in the first place. Is this is the same ship? Or is this something entirely new?
The captain of The Karaboudjan is a fictional character I've been working on called Eldo. And Eldo has two unusual forms of 'entertainment' on his vessel. One is about the bypassing of intellect. Not one that involves ignorance, or disengaging from the mind, but one that definitely works towards reducing the likelihood for thought to be sitting in the driving seat. One that puts pleasure, luxury, texture, or desire at the forefront, bypassing cognition. Or cognition as we normally term it.
Eldo's crowning achievement involves consumption. Some of the guests on The Karaboudjan become obsessed with something, different items for different people. These obsessions become all-encompassing, controlling the person who harbours the desire, but this desire conceals itself so strongly from the person who harbours the desire that issues of 'who is in control' become fuzzy to say the least. To clarify these issues of 'who is in control' Eldo has created a consumption system, whereby the passengers on the ship are given the opportunity to consume the object of their desire. Not necessarily because consumption is what they crave, but because this act of consumption gives them control over the object. Consumption clarifies control. But what Eldo has discovered here is interesting: once consumption has taken place, the object of desire alters in its appeal to those who desire it. In short, it ceases to become an obsession. The consumption highlights the limitations of the object. That which we desire in one way becomes something which we find distasteful in another, but we only learn this once we have dined on it. Perhaps all we wanted was for the object to become as enamoured with us as we once were with it. But when we get what we want, when we achieve our goal, we're left empty. Wanting something new.
Eldo leans forward and tells me that he got the idea for his experiment from a short story by Franz Kafka, Der Kreisel. In the story a philosopher watches children playing with a spinning top, and he becomes obsessed with the idea of grabbing hold of the top as it spins. He's not sure why, but he believes that everything will make sense once he's holding the top in his hands. And so he waits, hidden in the undergrowth, waiting for the children to begin their game, and once it commences he pounces. I'm really trying to pay attention to Eldo, but there is a woman sitting behind him and I'm finding it hard to keep my eyes off her. I'm feeling my cognitive powers lessen in her presence. Such is life on The Karaboudjan. Anyway, back to the story: it is at this point that Eldo takes a battered paperback from his pocket and reads me the following extract: "Once the smallest details were understood, then everything would be understood." I'm just about to interject when Eldo raises a finger, signifying that it is not yet time for me to speak, and he continues: "...as soon as the top began to spin and he was running breathlessly after it, the hope would turn to certainty, but when he held the piece of wood in his hand, he felt nauseated. The screaming of the children, which hitherto he has not heard and which now suddenly pierced his ears, chased him away, and he tottered like a top under a clumsy whip."
I'm about to ask Eldo what he thinks this story signifies, when I realise that I have filled my mouth with the flesh of the woman who was sitting behind him, with no clear memory of the incident occurring, only the aftermath: viscera on the outside, and all the colours of the rainbow inside, and now I'm slowly watching the relationship between myself and my own object of desire alter into an entirely new, third thing. A relationship where I find my own role complicated beyond all expectation.
The Ship of Theseus is a philosophical thought experiment, an interesting paradox that goes like this: A ship is built. Over the years it begins to erode, and piece by piece the ship is repaired, the parts replaced to ensure the vessel remains in fully functioning condition. As time goes by, more and more parts are replaced, until you reach a point at which every single part of the ship is new. Every nut and every bolt, and no original pieces remain, no trace of its origin can be found. The subsequent philosophical question goes as follows - is this the same ship, or not? This paradox (first put forward by Plutarch in his Life of Theseus) has been perplexing people for millennia. But let's make it more perplexing. Let's create a real ship, and we'll call it The Karaboudjan and just like in the original dilemma we'll have the parts replaced over the years. But let's go one step further: let's entertain the idea that the Karaboudjan no longer fulfills its original function, it is no longer fit for the purpose that it was originally designed for. It needs to be amended, restructured, modernised. This isn't simply Theseus' Ship, this has become something different, something more complicated, more contemporary, while still retaining its roots to its past. We're not only changing every part, but we're changing what the ship was for in the first place. Is this is the same ship? Or is this something entirely new?
The captain of The Karaboudjan is a fictional character I've been working on called Eldo. And Eldo has two unusual forms of 'entertainment' on his vessel. One is about the bypassing of intellect. Not one that involves ignorance, or disengaging from the mind, but one that definitely works towards reducing the likelihood for thought to be sitting in the driving seat. One that puts pleasure, luxury, texture, or desire at the forefront, bypassing cognition. Or cognition as we normally term it.
Eldo's crowning achievement involves consumption. Some of the guests on The Karaboudjan become obsessed with something, different items for different people. These obsessions become all-encompassing, controlling the person who harbours the desire, but this desire conceals itself so strongly from the person who harbours the desire that issues of 'who is in control' become fuzzy to say the least. To clarify these issues of 'who is in control' Eldo has created a consumption system, whereby the passengers on the ship are given the opportunity to consume the object of their desire. Not necessarily because consumption is what they crave, but because this act of consumption gives them control over the object. Consumption clarifies control. But what Eldo has discovered here is interesting: once consumption has taken place, the object of desire alters in its appeal to those who desire it. In short, it ceases to become an obsession. The consumption highlights the limitations of the object. That which we desire in one way becomes something which we find distasteful in another, but we only learn this once we have dined on it. Perhaps all we wanted was for the object to become as enamoured with us as we once were with it. But when we get what we want, when we achieve our goal, we're left empty. Wanting something new.
Eldo leans forward and tells me that he got the idea for his experiment from a short story by Franz Kafka, Der Kreisel. In the story a philosopher watches children playing with a spinning top, and he becomes obsessed with the idea of grabbing hold of the top as it spins. He's not sure why, but he believes that everything will make sense once he's holding the top in his hands. And so he waits, hidden in the undergrowth, waiting for the children to begin their game, and once it commences he pounces. I'm really trying to pay attention to Eldo, but there is a woman sitting behind him and I'm finding it hard to keep my eyes off her. I'm feeling my cognitive powers lessen in her presence. Such is life on The Karaboudjan. Anyway, back to the story: it is at this point that Eldo takes a battered paperback from his pocket and reads me the following extract: "Once the smallest details were understood, then everything would be understood." I'm just about to interject when Eldo raises a finger, signifying that it is not yet time for me to speak, and he continues: "...as soon as the top began to spin and he was running breathlessly after it, the hope would turn to certainty, but when he held the piece of wood in his hand, he felt nauseated. The screaming of the children, which hitherto he has not heard and which now suddenly pierced his ears, chased him away, and he tottered like a top under a clumsy whip."
I'm about to ask Eldo what he thinks this story signifies, when I realise that I have filled my mouth with the flesh of the woman who was sitting behind him, with no clear memory of the incident occurring, only the aftermath: viscera on the outside, and all the colours of the rainbow inside, and now I'm slowly watching the relationship between myself and my own object of desire alter into an entirely new, third thing. A relationship where I find my own role complicated beyond all expectation.