Heading to the Left Bank

Charles Olson developed much of his poetry out of the annotations he made in the margins of the books he was reading.  While studying his practice it was always interesting to track the stream of thought out of the given book, through notebooks and letters he was writing, at times across paper place mats from the local tavern, until the drafts of the poems would begin to emerge.

I’m struck how our interactions in social media can be of similar use.  Take this conversation I had last night with feelgoodguru on twitter.  In it we were both formulating, sharing from a “what if” posture.  In the end I came away with a clearer sense of something I’ve been pondering.

Starting with @feelgoodguru’s question concerning what makes for quality in art, I thought of the Jungian model of transference, which posits twelve possible channels of communication when two people are in relationship:

Person A ego to Person B ego

B ego to A ego

A ego to A unconscious

A unconscious to A ego

B ego to B unconscious

B unconscious to B ego

A unconscious to B unconscious

B unconscious to A unconscious

A ego to B unconscious

B unconscious to A ego

A unconscious to B ego

B ego to A unconscious

All that can be visualized as a box with with an X in the middle, arrows at the end of each line, with the ego’s and unconscious’ each taking a corner.

Not all relationships operate through all 12 channels, but we tend to know when they do.  Likewise, if we place the work of art into the equation for one of the people, we then have an interesting model to consider how the work effects us, and even more interestingly, how we effect it.

All of our interactions in social media get captured and can be searched at a later time.  If we approach our interactions with a creative posture, these tools might aid our creativity in ways that we are only beginning to realize.  Chris Brogan has an interesting reflection on cafe shaped conversations posted today.  While he reflects on the marketing challenges of this platform, he drills down into the essence of the potential unfolding in social media.  If this were Paris, I’m heading over to the Left Bank…

(Image via Wikipedia)