Manifesting

"Hamm: Me-

(he yawns)

-to play."

(Samuel Beckett, Endgame)

It's become rather common of late (by that I mean since the late 19th century) to begin projects, movements, schools -and even blogs with a declaration of purpose, a Manifesto. 

manifesto: From the Latin, to make public, these documents are declarations of being. They say: "this is what I shall be. This is what I am!" They are simultaneously the programme and the manifestation, a self-contained completion.

Bright flashes they are, promising everything -then dying.

History tells tale of Manifestos perptually (a brief survey of Avant-Garde movements will reveal this. Try futurism). The manifesto is like a candle which flares at the end of it's wick. It is a patient dead on arrival. It is simultaneously production and suicide.

The unfortunate truth is, to become visible or to made public, is to die. When one is revealed, unfurled, denuded -one has reached conclusion.

I write this not to establish some sort of foundation of pessimism nor to make some sort of statement about the efficacy of school or movement -it's much less ambitious than that. If I can make any vague gesture at the purpose of my blog, it is it.

This page is about manifesting. As Hamm says many a time, it is about the "Me" to play. I am performing myself so that I might begin to appear. This blog performs me so that I might catch refracted glimpses of that manifestation also. I cannot say what it or I will be. The Me to play has yet to arrive.