Origin of the Idea

Origin of the Idea

I don't think there will ever be an actual ending to the development of this idea, but it may help you if I describe how it first came to me.

A few years ago, I found myself drowning in rumination. My mind had been taken over by a runaway jackhammer, and I sank into a deep and dark place where I thought in great volumes, but to little effect. Angry and sad, indifferent and compelled, manic and flat, joyous and enduring. Thinking in circles. I went in a lot of different directions to manage this thing that had happened to me, and that I had done to myself. 

I ran a lot in Brooklyn's Prospect Park. Sometimes the ruminations were so strong that I couldn't run, so I walked. I walked and ruminated. As I walked, the rumination would ease off and just become thinking, and I could start running again. At first the restarted running and thinking were soft, but as I kept going, they grew harder. Soft running and soft thinking. Moderate running and moderate thinking. Then both so hard, and soon enough I was in full sprint and screaming brain, going farther faster than I had lungs for... so I would walk again. I would walk and ruminate and huff and puff, until was able to just think and breathe easily. On and on like that, in cycles of running and ruminating and walking and thinking.  

Slowly, the sledgehammer brain eased off, but I kept up the mixed intervals of thinking, sprinting, and walking. I ran, I walked, I stood. In varying intervals, I imagined the sky, I felt the dirt, and I heard myself. In these intervals, I found myself making up stories. Stories I don't remember and they were more like dreams anyway- nonsense premises, disconnected causation, fantastical conclusions. I would be chasing demons from familiar places for strange reasons, then the demons became FDR but also my grandmother and a close friend, and together we jumped over fallen trees into labyrinthian fields, and we walked those labyrinths so delicately, lest we wake the minotaur. All of this I would promptly forget. My running pace varied, my thinking varied, and a variety of stories took shape, though they evaporated as quickly as they formed. Over time, they started lingering and stopped evaporating so quickly. As stories, they remained nonsense. As ideas, they took more time to boil away. As feelings, they became substantial. As both my mind and body moved, they spoke to each other, and as I did more of both, the conversation became more and more interesting.

What were they talking about? They weren't telling stories, not exactly. A slice of a story would arise here and there, but more as anecdote or emphasis than narrative. They weren't talking about me and my troubles nor my happiness; I had managed to move the ruminations to a space where I could manage them better, so this was no longer my overriding concern. Sometimes they seemed to talk about ideas, about philosophy, or history and politics and science and literature, but again, thoughts about these things were more tangential and in support of another conversation rather than being about the things themselves. My mind and body weren't talking about nothing either; it wasn't some perfect Zen experience where you deliberately shift your focus only on your breathing. They did talk about breathing and physical sensation, and peace even, but again, that wasn't the focus. And even though I still didn't know what they were talking about, I sensed that it was quite interesting, worth trying to capture and create something with. 

Oddly enough it was seeing the sandwalk from the movie Dune that gave me my first clue. In the books and movies, there are giant sandworms that are attracted to rhythmic sounds. So, when in the desert, in order to break up their rhythm, characters walk in a strange slow dance. How to run and think arrhythmically seemed to be a topic of discussion between my mind and body. 

The next time you think and run, try to do so without pattern while maintaining coherence and momentum. It's surprisingly difficult. 

I saw that my mind and body were working on this, and supporting each other in their efforts. Arrythmia wasn't the overall topic of conversation between my brain and body, but it was a specific subtopic. I was getting closer to understanding their discussions. Thinking about the Monty Python sketch about Silly Walks pushed me farther forward, and then remembering Calvinball from Calvin and Hobbes made it click. 

My mind and body were playing and talking about games. Weird games, the kind that didn't lack rules, but also didn't have them. This is strange- how can a game have and not have rules? Oh! Rule creation games. That's what they were doing. Make up a rule, and then play with it, adjust it, think more about it, run in a funny way according to a rule and see how that rule affects the running, then imagine a whole rule set and run with a slant according to the structure of that set, then reformat and walk and think, then sprint again, then think of another rule set and see how that one could interact with the current rule set, play with it in movement. Imagine and move.  

If I could figure out a way to catch and share some of this, I would have an art form.