Proclamation

Proclamation:

A new realism.

We don’t want the real.

We don’t want sociology.

We don’t want psychology.

We want exaggeration.

We must understand what we mean by exaggeration.

To exaggerate both means to separate oneself from what actually happened and yet provide the truth of what actually happened as it happened. It is, in fact, a double separation.

First, we must put into words what we wish to tell. The simple act of saying separates us from the actual events; writing itself distances us from the object we must write about. It specifies, directs, points out, brings to bear, forces a description. Writing can classify facts; writing can sanctify. Writing can create worlds, or reflect worlds. Writing is a tool used for many purposes - but we must be clear here. We have a specific purpose.

As Sartre says in Nausea, the big danger in keeping a diary is that you exaggerate everything. We force truth because we’re looking for something. To the narrator of Nausea, this is abominable. Nothing can be exaggerated. The exact nature of his experiences must be spelled out, classified, so as to render them concrete, real. He is not looking for something - though perhaps he actually is, and therein lies the contradiction.

But we have no time for contradictions, we only have time for ourselves and the others around us. We must exaggerate because we must force truth. We, indeed, are looking for something. We must force truth because we wish to create it. We are not looking for reflection. Chronicles do not interest us.

We want creation.

To accept this we must accept that creation involves error, caprice, destruction of facts in order to recapture new facts. We must note what it means to recapture something. Not by a classificatory action of acts, experiences, lists, and so on, but rather by an integration into an act of exaggeration.  Exaggeration is our recapturing.

Writing is the first step, as we have said. One which distances us from the subject while also bringing us closer by allowing us to stand back and see the subject as it actually is. Then, we must exaggerate. We must destabilize the living habits we abide by.  What previously seemed normal we must make ab-normal.  What is ab-normal we must insist upon.  Only in this way can we authentically build our lives.  We declare that we must separate ourselves from statistics, from definitions, from facts and normality in general - not because we deny them but because we desire something else, something more.

What we desire is search. Questioning. Building. Path-making. Infinite exaggeration, and infinite imagination.

To quote once more, and finally:

Everything here is the path of a responding that examines as it listens. Any path always risks going astray, leading astray. To follow such paths takes practice in going. Practice needs craft. Stay on the path, in genuine need, and learn the craft of thinking, unswerving, yet erring. (Heidegger)