In Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values, Robert M. Pirsig writes:
At this point of Pirsig's masterpiece, chapter 20, the author is deep into his monumental philosophical discussion, trying to reconcile objective and subjective thinking, so he needs to define reality for his readers, positioning us for a long analysis of Quality.
Pirsig uses vision both literally and figuratively. We need sight to experience, but even blind people experience, that is, until they start talking about what they are experiencing. In this sense, our remembering an experience, of course, is not experience.
Read previous installments of "Splendid Sentences" in WORDS ON THE LINE:
Reality is always the moment of vision before the intellectualization takes place.I am reminded of a video I recently saw in the Whitney Museum of American Art. Shot by Jørgen Leth in 1982, it is a 4-minute, 28-second film of Andy Warhol eating a hamburger. In fact, Warhol unpacks and prepares the burger for eating for 40 seconds, actually eats it in 2 minutes, 15 seconds, sits uncomfortably in silence for 45 seconds, and finally says, "Um, my name is Andy Warhol and, uh, I just finished eating, uh, a hamburger," followed by another 7 seconds of silence. I suppose Pirsig would say intellectualization emerges, and reality disappears, at the moment Warhol speaks up.
At this point of Pirsig's masterpiece, chapter 20, the author is deep into his monumental philosophical discussion, trying to reconcile objective and subjective thinking, so he needs to define reality for his readers, positioning us for a long analysis of Quality.
Pirsig uses vision both literally and figuratively. We need sight to experience, but even blind people experience, that is, until they start talking about what they are experiencing. In this sense, our remembering an experience, of course, is not experience.
Read previous installments of "Splendid Sentences" in WORDS ON THE LINE:
- Part 1: James Baldwin on Artists
- Part 2: Stanley Karnow on the Vietnam Memorial
- Part 3: Steven Pinker on Human Progress
- Part 4: Martin Luther King Jr. on Injustice
- Part 5: Andrew Sullivan on Religious Fundamentalism
- Part 6: Carl Sagan on the Environment
- Part 7: Harold Bloom on Shakespeare
- Part 8: Richard Bradley on Openers
- Part 9: T. S. Eliot on Dante
- Part 10: Edward Albee on Carson McCullers
- Part 11: John Donne on Immortality
- Part 12: William Styron on Robert Penn Warren
- Part 13: Robert Hass on Rainer Maria Rilke
- Part 14:Lewis Thomas on Social Animals
- Part 15: Dana Gioia on the State of Poetry
