The Blackberry Walk

On Discord, many don't send a message as just one message. The message is often split up into parts: for instance, the first message could be the setup, and the second the punchline; or the message lengths could be used to give a kind of metre to a story, with each successive line getting shorter up until the climax. Do people realise they're doing this? Most likely: it's how you make a joke land or a story engaging over text. But do they realise they are in fact poets? Perhaps, but unlikely. They're poets that don't knowit. Portioning a story into individual messages is no different from what poetry calls enjambment. From enjambment arises a slight pause or silent punctuation from one thought to the next; an exact description is tricky since its function is better intuited and felt, rather than logically explained. Similar to enjambment, the arrangement of manga panels has a kind of poesy to it: a double page spread is to be taken in slowly and felt deeply; whilst, a set of smaller panels has a kind of light-footed pace to them. Music, naturally, has metres, rhythms, dynamics, and articulation creating a kind of pattern, form, or structure to the harmony and melody received. These 'patterns of the soul' are better named 'patterns of reality' since they're not solely seen in human art, but in nature also. Watching birds fly, there's a gentle legato to their flapping, and an oddly intuitive pattern to how they move. Compared with the bird, the fly has a far more worried staccato movement, changing direction on a set timing at sharp angles. The growth of a tree and, in the pattern's most primitive state, a crystal, follow the same kinds of patterns despite not having a brain to direct them. By this point, I would not be surprised if the reader were to say: "all of this is just in your head; you're just seeing the patterns wherever you look!" A valid protest; but I'd invite you to consider the difference between what's in the mind and what's in your world. How are you so sure the lake before you is in fact blue and not red but your mind has recoloured it? How do you know that your friends are not just imaginary friends? How can you be so sure that love is merely a chemical in your head and not a really there? My intention isn't to send you into an existential crisis, but rather to show the futility of finding an answer. No amount of scientific endeavour can answer these philosophical questions. Science already has a philosophy of what's world and what's mind, so with every question posed the same answer shall be received. Any answer you can come up with in regards to the mind-body conundrum requires a mug of reason and two teaspoon-fulls of faith. Like believing my friend's are real, that a lake is blue, and that love is really there, I also believe that these patterns aren't merely in our heads: they are real and exist with or without humans to observe. To return, poetry emerges everywhere, whether on Discord or in the growth of a tree: nature can't help but express these divine patterns. A few questions then arise: firstly, what is art - can the movement of birds be compared with Berserk; and secondly, what makes man different. On the topic of art, art is what is artificial - it's what's produced by man. Art is the product of skill, whilst great art is the product of a master craftsman who has trained at an art for most of their life; the difference between the Mona Lisa and a glass of water on a shelf is that the Mona Lisa took real skill, but An Oak Tree didn't. Through exercising their craft, the work of the artist is bestowed with these patterns of reality which we perceive as beauty. On the question of what makes man different, we should consider man's ability to not just be beholden to the patterns like a bird having no choice but to fly in a certain way, but instead to be an artist and create something new through these patterns. Birds can dance, but they'd struggle come up with a new style of dance; birds can craft nests, but couldn't give their nest a second story; birds can sing, but could never hum a new tune (with the exception of the parrot, but he couldn't come up with one himself). Man's capacity to imagine and create cannot be said to be on a spectrum with animals: no, it's a different paradigm. We're so advanced, we can make anime. In short, whatever man creates possesses these poetic patterns; they emerge seemingly out of nowhere, like flowers through the pavement. But, these patterns aren't buried deep within us; no, these patterns are an integral part of the world. Mankind's ability to connect with these patterns and manifest them through art and create things is a most noble of acts - it is to create beauty in the world for others. Go write a blog - it's a lot of fun.