Spiritual Journey? Obviously it is a strange tour of the road.
What is jazzing?
The concrete jungle of urban streets in which we live is fraught with danger.
And Gadner, who looks up to the stars, is obsessed with jazz, and doesn't care if his underwear is torn. As soon as he joins a great band, he will announce this breaking news to everyone on the road;
He stuttered along the way, and passed by the god of death several times - the bricks that crashed at the construction site, the banana peels all over the ground...all issued warnings.
But he turned a blind eye and ignored the soles of his feet, so he stepped into a hole without a manhole cover and escaped into the underworld—that is, the Great Before in the film.
But his bigger forgetting and turning a blind eye are:
Jazz is not originally, and its essence, the highest state is not - the term jazz, an object to be pursued;
The 22 who don't jazz take it as a verb, and it's in progress - jazzing, but grasps that - jazz is an action in progress, it's played.
The great thing about jazz is that when you get carried away with jazz, you don't know what you're going to pop.
More importantly, so is life, existence itself - not static goals, but present tense.
When creating this film, the creator was worried about Gardner's character design - a scientist? Or a businessman?
Until they were struck by the words of Jazz legend Herbie Hancock in a master class .
Hancock recalls a concert he played with jazz superstar Miles Davis. While Davis was playing the trumpet solo, Hancock went awry:
It was a technical error (at the time) so to speak. I thought I had ruined everything and let that great night come to nothing.
And Davis just took a breath and went on playing, correcting my chords back.
I have no idea how he did it. It sounded like magic at the time, you know!
It took years for me to realize what was going on. That is: I judge my playing. And Davis didn't.
He just accepted what had happened as something new that had just happened, and did what any jazz musician should try to do—make anything that happened worthwhile.
(In the video of an online MasterClass by jazz legend Herbie Hancock, Hancock recalled a concert he was playing with the late jazz icon Miles Davis wherein Hancock “played something that was... you could say technically wrong” right during the middle of one of Davis' trumpet solos. “I thought I had just destroyed everything and reduced that great night to rubble. Miles took a breath, and he played some notes, and he made my chord right, and I could not figure out how he did that. It sounded like magic, you know?" Hancock said. “It took me years to figure out what actually happened. Here's what happened: I judged what I had played. Miles didn't. Miles just accepted it as something new that happened, and he did what any jazz musician should always try to do , and that is try to make anything that happens into something of value.”
https://www.ign.com/articles/pixar-soul-jazz )
This is the emotional hook of the whole film : the spirit of jazz, the true meaning of life - jazzing, is to unconditionally accept the present, to miss the moment , to turn accidental chance into necessity, to enhance life .
Although he inadvertently stepped on the air, which made Gardner almost miss the "peak of life", it also gave him the opportunity to taste the true taste of life again——
Despite the twists and turns, he still made a half-day cat.
As the poet Joë Bousquet famously said:
My wound existed before me: I was born to embody (embody) it.
("My wound existed before: I was born to embody it".)
That is,
I am hurt so I am here.
(Yang Kailin, "Two (Singular) Points and One (Abstract) Line - General Topology of Deleuze's Thought")
Philosopher Deleuze also followed Busquet's words, to take mistakes and injuries as their own internal causes (quasi-cause. Note: not the real cause, but the non-essential ones identified when looking back at the event) reason), can
Deserving of what happens to us... Whatever happens, be it a terrible disaster or a good luck.
(..."being worthy of what happens to us" whatever it is, whether it's a horrible catastrophe or a lucky streak.
"Anti-Oedipus and other thinking" (Anti-Oedipus and OTHER Reflections) discussion Lecture 2 classes )
And the philosopher Bernard Stiegler, who loves jazz, also said that misses or accidents are necessary for jazz, all music, and even life;
Even, it is such a potential "timing (vertus), and the necessity of imperfection" that makes a point of "shit" like Davis become gold.
( "Anthropocene in artificial intelligence and artificial stupidity" Artificial Stupidity and Artificial Intelligence in at The Anthropocene)
He cites a counter-example: Stigler was director of the Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique in France, where there was software that could only produce “accurate” sounds. And the "music" made in this way, such as the aria "Queen of the Night" from "The Magic Flute", is completely unbearable.
why? According to Stigler:
The artist is one who can regulate the essential sensibility and the accidental sensibility.
This adjustment is also action, making accidental (non-essential, contingent) necessary.
Art-making is the process of making the unexpected anticipated, that is, the accident is taken as a necessity, because they are the conditions for the transformation to take place.
It is unexpected because it is informative, it deviates from the norm, norm, or what has been expected, thereby opening a new circuit of individuation (Simondon) to achieve a new normative.
This individuation takes the form of cognitive "acting out", that is, crossing a threshold, like a quantum jump, from one energy level to another; or, in other words, this individuation is mystagogy ).
(Recursion and Accident, p. 260)
Philosopher Xu Yu understands this in terms of recursivity:
The recursion is established through the work, constituting the self-knowledge towards the end, and the end is always mysterious, like the teaching of the secret method, a purposeless purposiveness.
Most important for individualization is me and our tension, through the inevitable movement driven by tension and resolution, metastability is achieved.
Metastable states can only be diverse, because the outcome is always mysterious and individual to each recipient;
Metastable state is stable, but not equilibrium, on the contrary, it means that the outcome is not the finality of use, but a process, a transitional state - when a new individuation is triggered, it may turn to another stage.
That is to say, jazz and life are always in a metastable state, stumbling to find a balance like Gardner and 22 roaming the streets:
It sounds like a climax, but one wave has not subsided, and another wave has invaded;
It seemed that it was coming to an end, but I didn't expect that the music was still unfinished, and there was another improvisation.
When you jazzing up, whether it is to "express yourself" with jazz, or to live your life well, you will always infect others to swing together .
Hearing the little girl playing the trombone with enthusiasm, the world-weary 22 was overwhelmed with emotions; but the little girl was about to quit the group, but after she finished playing the trombone, she carried the trombone back home with certainty;
Even, following Gardner's "Dream Showbiz", 22, who is lazy than a cat, suddenly wants to live and love!
And after installing a mentor for 22 of the special life mentors, Gardner saw the "uncomprehension" and the emptiness behind the "obsessed" from the almost static replay of the scenes.
Such a historical manifestation, as Benjamin put it:
Every time, the past can only be revealed and captured in an instant in the form of an image, and it is gone forever.
...every image of the past, unrecognized by the present, seen as a stake in ourselves (as our own present concerns), is in danger of being gone forever.
(The Outline of the Philosophy of History, translated by Zhang Xudong)
So, although there are several images of the past at the same time, Gardner can't help but pounce on one of them - the image is a lonely, lonely "he".
By identifying himself in this image, he grasps the past and cares about the present.
The philosopher Agamben went on to say:
Every moment, every image is full of history, because they are the door through which the angel of the Messiah comes.
(Each moment, each image is charged with history because it is the door through which the Messiah enters.
"Difference and Repetition: On Ji de Boer's film" Difference and Repetition: the On Guy Debord's Films )
It was from this image that Gardner began to become aware of this dasein, helping 22 find the "spark" of life, thereby redeeming himself.
So, for Stigler:
The task of the artist is not merely to make contingency necessary—as an operation of contingency, but to elevate the spectator as revelation.
...If the work of art is the result of perceptual technology, which uses perceptual technology to introduce the soul of knowledge into the social circuit (note: that is, circulation), then the artist plays the role of a facilitator of individuation. (Note: Refers to encouraging the audience to also move towards technical, mental, psychological, and social individuation)
...artists are not people who create works of taste, but have the ability and responsibility to create a circuit for the hyperindividuation of me and us to take place - the form of the work of art that externalizes the sensibility, or the writing of books, programming also Same.
(Recursion and Accident, p. 259)
True jazz, or the core of jazz, jazzing , like all arts, cannot be taught ;
In life, it is impossible to have a life mentor.
Today, when everyone is doing bullshit jobs and carrying mortgages and car loans, the "spark" of this life is being made more and more mysterious, like the "spark" in our hearts but not in our eyes. Travel" that stomping, never starts.
But obviously, we can all be such artists, once jazzing up, it's fascinating, and then like branches, bifurcations.
Spiritual Journey? ? Obviously it is a strange tour of the road.
In this way, the little girl played a trombone solo, jazzing (playing jazz);
Gardner should play his own melody with the band leader Dorothy, which is jazzing;
And Gardner and 22 friends walked the city, and even got yelled at on the dirty subway.
That is to say, the realm of jazzing can be achieved by walking on the street.
Didn't you see Gardner touching the cover of the Beatles album Abbey road? Ma Lu is clearly the staff.
So, what kind of notes are they playing in the song "Walking"?
Cats steal pizza, lick lollipops as they go, lie down on the manhole cover of steam pipes to blow air, maple berries swirl and drop like butterflies...
They ate, touched, and looked at the city in this way, dancing a beautiful and harmonious "street ballet" (Jane Jacobs, "Death and Life in Great American Cities"),
Weave spaces together (They weave places together. De Selto)—
Pizza parlors, homes, barbershops, mom's tailors, jazz bars, and even "the erratic attention to events on the street" (De Selto) - like gossip bouncing around in a corner coffee shop.. . again like
Chinese speakers use their fingers to trace stroke by stroke on their hands, deeply embedded in a container.
(They are no more inserted within a container than those Chinese characters speakers sketch out on their hands with their fingertips.
de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life. Vol. 2, Living and Cooking, p. 97, Translated by Timothy J. Tomasik. University of Minnesota Press. 1998)
A person, a cat, walk all the way, chat all the way.
In fact, except for that person - Gardner, everyone knows that cats can't talk;
Why would one design a character to appear as a cat, as a walking companion for another?
It's certainly not just a comedic gimmick.
The film may want to say that if there are cats, you can take your cat to the street;
If you don't have a cat, you can also treat your soul as a "cat" - that is, the interlocutor, watching the scenery all the way, thinking about the things on your mind - how happy!
You see in the end the cat was taken back to the cage, and Gardner stepped out the door by himself, which was exactly what he planned.
Because walking is such a thing -
It is the parole spoken by the philosopher de Certeau, the pure communication of the moment, like the earliest simple words acquired by children (ibid., p. 99);
Existing streets, like those in New York, which are often stodically named with numbers, are just langues and do not provide a "handbook for rolling the road."
So in fact, ignore it, Gardner can create a new grammar with his own "11 bus"!
As Selto said, this is the relationship between the individual (or the cat) and the city -
The city exists in their walk.
...the movement of pedestrians forms one of those real systems whose existence actually makes the city. It is they that are spatializing",
(...pedestrian movements form one of these "real systems whose existence in fact makes up the city. it is rather they that spatialize.)
In the planned city, another active city is created.
(ibid., p. 110)
Like Chaplin in "City Lights", they don't walk well, and every time they start a street riot, causing crowds and traffic to jump;
While using the terrain system (appropriat, i.e. inhabiting), while abandoning and deconstructing the original spatial elements, the urban planning is torn to shreds, like opening a canvas and drawing a new painting:
22 Either hide like a cat in the corner under the steps and use that as a safe haven, or find the feeling of weightlessness in the steam of the plumbing manhole.
Therefore, even though Terry, who is in charge of the "Book of Life and Death", has a heart for street design, he still can't see through and manage Gardner and 22's "devil's footsteps", and the set of designs has failed.
Because walking is impossible to define. Every time he walks out a path, no one can predict it.
It's not until you get tired, play the piano all night, and can't walk, that you can call for a taxi.
They walked many streets, but all we remembered afterward were these evidences—
Pieces of pizza, lollipop sticks, maple berries...and the piece Gardner composed with the shards of these traces lined up in front of him.
why? Sellto said:
The city, in the strongest sense, is "poeticized" by the subject (interjection: like 22 trapped in Gardner's body, and Gardner in cat's skin):
By dismantling urban installations, the subject also acts as a consumer of space and imposes its own laws on the external order of the city, thereby re-creating the city for its own use.
(The city, in the strongest sense, is "poeticized" by the subject: the subject has refabricated it for his or her own use by undoing the constraints of the urban apparatus and, as a consumer of space, impose his or her own law on the external order of the city.
ibid, p. 13)
Or in the words of the philosopher Henri Lefebvre:
Urban space, first and foremost, is the space in which we have lived.
(The Production of Space, trans. by Donald Nicholson-Smith, Blackwell, 1991)
Cities are just some of our lived experiences.
Imagine: you suddenly like a Terminator, descending on the downtown area of Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou or New York, and you have to learn to walk from scratch...
That's the script thrown to 22.
When she was first reincarnated into this strange body, "she" refused: why did she leave? What's good about going?
When she was thrown out of the door at first, and the noise and vitality of the whole world rushed to her face, she panicked and was overloaded with information.
But after a while, she became addicted. why?
It's not that "you live in my body that understands music" as Gardner thought at first, that you have a sensitive heart/soul;
And just because 22 has a body—any body can resonate with the rhythm of the city;
The essence of the city is rhythm - it has music everywhere! Even if it is a cement drilling machine that sounds like a ghost.
In Manhattan, New York, the center of the whirlpool of global capitalism, 22 initially struggled to keep up with the flow of people.
But slowly, the rhythm of her body and the rhythm of the city capture each other, like a pas de deux, or the interaction of strings and wind instruments in a symphony
(Rhythmanalysis: Space, Time and Everyday Life, pp. 27, 30, 31, London: Continuum, 2004):
Following the smell of pizza and licking the lollipop, the feet naturally move;
If you don't agree with that stinky cat, you can even run away!
She stepped out of her own rhythm. Perhaps, like Lefevre, she will praise the street:
All elements of urban life, freely fill the streets, flow through the streets to the center, meet, interact. The streets are chaotic and vibrant. it creates. It's surprising.
(Chapter 1 of Urban Revolution, translated by Liu Huaiyu et al., Capital Normal University, 2018)
Sometimes, like 22, we are a little afraid of this incredibly full world .
How to do it?
So we planted wheat and made a lot of delicious high-carbohydrate foods—pizza, bread... We kept pressing the button that secretes dopamine in our brains, and walking was much easier;
We go to familiar places to get a haircut, mend trousers, listen to jazz, and confirm ourselves from social interactions - "Mr. Tony" also feels that "shaving your head is to save your life";
But the most important thing is to fill that hole in our hearts.
You Seminar in the movie has a Hall of everything, and that's what it does. All the props for the baby to catch the week are put in this warehouse.
Before Gardner was born, he must have grasped piano and jazz. Without this transitional object (Winnicott language), he would be meaningless to live, and even lose the courage to walk out the door.
But in fact, the designed and built urban spaces are transitional objects, or props, and even the props room full of props, waiting for us to collect them one by one.
As long as we walk around the streets, we can capture the perception from the city, make jazz, life, and the city into our own works , to accept the world, and even treat the city as prey (Selto). For example, "Gardner", for the music dream of "only for this time in his life", was walked around by the cat in his territory - "neighborhood" as Lefevre calls it.
Time is tight and tasks are urgent, and everything has to go through the back door, including asking "Mr. Tony" to do her hair, and mother Yang to mend her pants.
Luckily, Gardner has a great place here - that's what Selto said
The time and space most beneficial to the occupant is a small city that separates his private and public spaces."
(ibid., p. 10)
The spatial function of the neighborhood is here:
Maximize time with the least space (use as little space as possible to produce as much time as possible), freeing up the possibility of individuals roaming urban space.
(ibid., p. 13)
Neighborhood is the continuous privatization of public space, ensuring the most private things -
The hole in the trousers, the "emergency" of the hairstyle, and the continuum of the most unknowable space —the unfathomable New York Manhattan and even the rest of the world when seen from above .
Neighborhood is the spillover of the dwelling, the sum of all the trajectories of the inhabitants from the dwelling, offering each (Gardner) the possibility to inscribe a narrative trajectory in the city—
Create the "I am a cat" legend while walking. and
The core of these trajectories, always in the private sphere (ibid., p. 11)—
So do you believe Gardner changed into a cat?
Of course, if this prop was messed up, we'd fall under the street.
But you can still climb up from the hole like Batman;
Move "Ye Wang Ye" like Gardner, and make every time you go out, it's as exciting as a soul possessed and reappearing in the world.
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