saturation point
Folds by Anthony Easton (I think)
It is repeatedly said that in the digital age, everything is available, and nothing is special. In terms of data, perhaps this is true. Whether it is poetry or pornography, data flows from an inexhaustible source. You can’t touch it or feel it; one little click and it is gone.
A similar kind of data can be contained in a touch or a weekend, a day. Maybe two. The connection is tenuous at first, uncertain, tremulous, and all the more exciting for it. Confidence builds quickly. Other feelings do too. They may reach a peak more than once, or not at all.
In time, the body will prove a poor database. When the object of desire is no longer at hand, assuming it ever was, it will be impossible to retrieve uncorrupted. The smell of skin, a sunlit castle, a two-colored cat, a wave moving toward you and receding to the depths.
When the point of saturation is reached, any further collection of data is superfluous, in the sense that it yields nothing new. Analysis breaks down; repetition takes its place.
posted by soap at 9:30 am
3 Comments:
hopefully, technology will never go that far - we would never need to leave our homes if such a thing happened...
a funnier comparison would be like putting the stove next to a toilet...you would'nt need to get up... (dont think too hard - its a joke :)
The body knows that it is a poor database. It is well aware of the fact that, the moment after the experience of the actual touch, the data will all start changing, become blury and hazy, corrupt, influenced, entwined with other bits and pieces of information, unable to be re(-treived, -played, -membered).
So it will yearn for repetition, oblivious to the "Sissoula theory of the saturation point", or rather determined to prove it false, and propose a new theory of the body and soul, in a desperate attempt to make the moment last forever.
Of course, as we all know, it will fail. But what a convenient way this is for keeping a flame alive, or rather re-powering it with every touch, as if it were the first and last one at the same time...
(PS. Hey, I tried, OK? She's the poet, I am just a clown, give me a break...)
inspiring thoughts sis [hallo sis!] i am afraid i am becoming a fan which makes your post seem all the more bitter sweet.. [good belgian chocolate yet, again!] ..and if i said repetition is the only source, perhaps even delusion; of continuity, of the sense of infinite, of pleasure discovering and, loosing and, finding again the rhythms of life..
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