Michelangelo at Rucker Park: Full Bodied Revelation & the Combinational Lock of the Articulation of Transcendental Being on the Court of Space-Time

00:01

So I’ll hit another one here. One of the most redemptive and rewarding things about doing this work is just how profound the cultural histories of these sports and athletic endeavors are.

I was just listening to a documentary on Rucker Park, kind of tracing back Dr. J’s athletic history and understanding… it’s something that I’ve seen kind of very briefly in passing in person, but understanding the full extent of what these spaces or a space like Rucker Park avails — a deeply grounded grassroots community culture based around this profound metaphysical unveiling of the spirit.

00:51

And so I want to introduce this photo here. It’s a photo of Dominique Wilkins and Dr. J.

This is in the 1980s and they’re both, there’s this group or movement around the ball and that the ball is eclipsing the stadium light and it has this aura around it… and you can see Dominique Wilkins’ hand reaching up towards the ball — and I’ll evoke this again because it’s such a universal image — of the Michelangelo Sistine Chapel fresco with God and Adam and the outstretched hand…

And this idea of a metaphysical transference, again, a passing down through scales of something that’s profoundly human and existential. And this is why we discuss and hold Michelangelo in a larger Western cultural, civilizational and philosophical sense in such reverence — is that Michelangelo is the philosopher or the scientist, much like da Vinci, who never leaves the realm of the human for abstraction, but rather embeds a profound anatomical… again, this is a scientific understanding of creation, just as much as da Vinci embeds a profound anatomical and architectural understanding of creation… as, himself, one of the greatest scientists in all history… into his works — which always themselves end with an existential humanistic what is life in the most embodied incarnate sense in the world.

02:17

Which, again, this is the great chain of the history of ontos and the work of understanding the ontos in world history and world civilizational history.

And so far as we’ve catalogued it and beyond… the lost records of previous civilizations, tribes, group constructs and individuals who attempted to understand what is being, right? And the attempt to understand what is being is always already an incarnate process, an embodied process. It is never abstract. It is never reduced to symbolism.

Incarnation of the body is itself the incarnation of the cosmos — and this is implicit and explicit in an ontological project which has been passed down through history as a sort of pyramid of exploration and inquiry. And what I what I want to suggest here is that athletics stand right beside da Vinci and the ancient Egyptian philosophers and the… let’s say the ancient Middle Eastern astronomers and astrologers, the Daoists as well… Lao Tzu and Heidegger, right — we’re looking at a total project of ontos. I would include here Jesus Christ, the Buddha…

Where athletics itself is an exploration of the possibilities latent within the ontological incarnation of the human being, as in the incarnation, again, as we discussed — of a genetic construct, a linguistic construct… and the ontos or the will or the being rising up through this lingua franca, which is phenomenologically apparent as the human being attempting to explicate itself, which is necessarily an unlimited universal force through the limited aperture of the language of the body, which is just technologically reproduced in everything the human being does.

04:43

Language, the prosthetic technologies the human being creates, such as the internet, artificial intelligence.

These are all different ways that being is seeking to emerge through space and through time to reveal itself, as in disclosure. Right? So when we talk about athletics, we are really talking about the fundamental and foundational baseline of an ontological exploration of being, as in the literal incarnate physical embodied possibilities — the total coordination of the entire ontological force and thrust of the human being.

This is mind, body, gesture. It is every apparatus incarnate within the organism itself, as in the entire thrust of the will or the entire metabolic and organ and nervous system working in unity toward the aesthetic goal.

Which again is articulated in this beautiful photograph, which to me is as close to anything Caravaggio does or has done… as well as the Michelangelo Adam. And we discussed in one of the previous orations, the Hack Wilson oration, the chiaroscuro of being in terms of these phenomenological moments which are apertures which emerge through the lens of the cultural artifact of ball sports, which themselves are revelatory, right?

05:38

It’s so much less the historical material construct of that moment in time and the details therein as much as a phenomenological unveiling of being within the depths of history by way of and through the creation of the cultural artifact, the ritual of the cultural artifact in terms of participation… and thus, through that participation in that rote structure, it provides a rough physical diagram through the pursuit of the ball sport — in terms of the attainment of the aesthetic object — that reveals, through the Heraclitean axiom…

As we discussed in the last essay and several previous ones, the Aeon as a child that play with colored balls, reveals through this… internal alignment with that metaphysical axiom down through all of the scales, quantum mechanical, astrophysical, cellular, molecular, and of course the cultural artifact — which is the reflective device upon that metaphysical axiom and the reunion of human consciousness toward the ontological totality of being.

Reveals the latent potentialities within the will and the incarnation of the will, as in different feats and motions and movements that emerge through the shifting tectonic plates of the strategy of the game itself, which, if you can understand this, is very much so like a numeric or numerological code.

07:05

Right? Let’s say there’s a certain amount of spaces… we would provide 12 spaces and the numbers that could fit into any one of those spaces could be zero through nine. To understand, each of those digits could fit into any one of those 12 spaces. And you’re looking at it a sort of ontological combination of the lock, right? Where, wherein maybe there’s a repetition of certain codes within that system. And those codes become, become understood as ontological possibilities latent and inherent within being.

Maybe the human code, for instance, would be a numerological combination within those 12 spaces. But when you’re looking at the improvisational immediate physical imminent device of the athletic endeavor, the orientation toward ontos or toward being through the ball sport as understood through the Heraclitean axiom, there are many different strategic moments that occur within the larger matrix of that game… in terms of the chess pieces, so to speak, upon that field or that stage that inhabit various different standings at various different times and at various different junctures of the game in terms of scoring, in terms of, let’s say… in basketball, fouls, or in baseball, challenges. You have all of these different interlocuting junctures within the larger status and state of the game itself, which then themselves become strategic openings and improvisational devices for the latent will to flow through being.

This is when… it’s discussed with Dr. J, the dunk — and he said, I wanted to do something great, which I think of course is implicit in the athletic pursuit… but it was also that he was in this moment and improvisational opening availed himself.

And in that moment, he performed a series of gestures which reveal themselves phenomenologically as metaphysical acts toward the game itself and an articulation of a profound series of gestures.

09:29

And I used in the previous book cover for the Dr. J oration, the painting by Duchamp, which is the figure descending the stairs…

And to totally understand that painting itself as a deep philosophical expression of modernity, it’s the introduction of movement into frozen time, which is to say the introduction of the camera and the film camera in this impending technological evolution, which is a sort of hyper acceleration of the previous mode of human perception… and human reproduction of the experience through images, a film reel or series of frames, which are able to actually elucidate true and full movement.

And so obviously that’s something that’s being introduced in a avant-garde way and sense with Duchamp through this painting. He’s attempting to depict space and time within the rupture of the frozen painting, which is to say the single image. So when we’re looking at that painting, what’s so powerful about it is it’s a breakdown of space and time, which is to say being; eternity flowing through space-time and the possibilities of articulation, which are standings and statures and figurations of said being, which are themselves articulation of the greater metaphysical stature, articulation of the athletic — in this case… as an elucidation of the fundamental and the improvisational transcendent situation wherein the transcendental will emerges improvisationally and situationally. It’s a combinational process. If you can understand that, it’s like a combinational lock wherein…

11:23

The waiting for the second coming is so fascinating to me. And this is why Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot is so important in a modernist context; much like T.S. Eliot, he elucidates these same concepts… is that it’s the waiting for the disclosure, the emergence of the disclosure of being in space and in time through the gesture of the being, which reveals the latent inherent ontological possibilities which reunite, let’s say, the human being or the stature, the status of the human being as a limited ontological device… a delimited aperture and lens of perception, which is repeating these sort of, you could call them lower level ontological tasks — which are reproduction, consumption, survival, possession, all of these different subordinations of the will into the genetic archetypal form of the human being, which is awaiting its revelation in terms of the breaking disclosure, which liberates the human being into a total ontos, a total perception, a perception and embodiment of the ontos itself.

And this is in many ways what athletics is and does, particularly the ball sport, as I’ve been describing with baseball and basketball, as aesthetically oriented, aesthetically objective ball sports, which are oriented entirely toward the ball.

And the human being itself is almost incidental, wherein the apparatus and focus and aperture of attention, the full body of attention, which is to say the mind, the body, and all of the organs and the nervous system working in total union and synthesis toward this aesthetic object which represents the total ontology at an unconscious metaphysical level. The orientation towards that is the emergence of these latent possibilities which themselves are these perennial second comings — or as Walter Benjamin would say, the messianic moment… hidden and latent within space-time, which is always already the possibility for revelation through this metaphysical recombination and combinative lock, as we’ve described with the Heraclitean axiom.

And putting this into practice is this playing with this dimensional field of space-time, sort of turning, again… it’s the metaphor of turning the lock and the combination lock is so important here, because there are so many different statures and devices and gestures and gesticulations which can occur upon the field of play… through the total embodied technology of the human being and the ritual apparatus of consciousness, totally dedicated towards that aesthetic object, which can themselves and do themselves reveal this latent hidden pocket of energy, which is the total cosmological ontological force of will inter-dimensionally, emergent through and into space-time phenomenologically, which is the revelation of the powers of being.

14:11

As… if you can understand this, this is very much so like the gestural process of a painter on a canvas, wherein there are almost an infinite amount of different gestural possibilities which emerge within each strategic moment in terms of the painter’s interaction and engagement with the canvas, which can reveal and unveil this image of eternity or this image of never before seen emergence of the will of being.

And this is very much so the way in which photography functions in a sporting sense in terms of the capturing of this metaphysical emergence and this ontological emergence of the vision of being. The primary difference; what needs to be understood, and again, the primacy of sports or the athletic pursuit in a higher metaphysical sense and context, is that this is not a reproduction of images. Again, this is not a production of sounds.

This is a full bodied pursuit of the aesthetic object, which attains the aesthetic object. And this is the profound kind of secret hidden within the ball sport, especially baseball and basketball. The aesthetic object is not actually attained through the object itself, but it’s attained through the merging of the total technology of the physical emergent embodied human body into the strategic dynamic and process and flow of space time… is these perpetually evolving possibilities, this emergence of the human being into the tunnel of space time and the total visionary apperception in this moment of pursuit. Again, right, the ball is never truly attained or obtained within these sports. It is entirely just tossed about, glove to glove, hand to hand, air to air — in this perpetual movement which is never true attainment. But it is precisely through that perpetual movement, which is never true attainment… that true attainment is revealed and possible.

Again, through the union — as we discussed with Dr. J rocking the baby — of the union of the process, which is the temporary unity of the total technology of the human body with the ritual aperture of perception, which is the ontological artifact, the aesthetic object, the ball in space time.

16:28

The revelation of the possibilities latent within the human technology as a total cosmological civilizational organism — in that it reveals itself in that pursuit, which is a temporary unity with the aesthetic object, which is actually an eternal post temporal unity with the entirety of being itself.

And this is what’s so powerful, which is sort of the church or the temple behind these ball sports, particularly baseball and basketball — is that they ritually provide, ontologically provide these openings through which the hyperspace interdimensional object of all time and eternity is and can be achieved and apprehended. And these athletes themselves in their disciplined and disciplinary pursuit of the dimensions of this field, the practice of the dimensions of this field… which can perhaps most clearly be described as a master chess player in a total embodied sense of being on the field, or being on the board of the matrices of space-time.

They’re mastering these different matrices and pockets within this field of being, which is a simulation itself of the greater sort of unified field of the cosmos in a quantum mechanical sense. This was described by William Sidis as precisely a checkerboard of both the visible universe, which we described as 99 % plasma, and then dark matter or the unknown aspect of the universe, itself is a ritual inversion.

It is appearance and disappearance, as he describes in his thesis, as a checkerboard, as in pockets of information, which drop in and out of consciousness, in and out of availability, in and out of incarnation… winking in and out of the field as in phenomenologically star systems and species and the play of forms… but themselves are the same ritual field of emergence. And this is the play of sport and athletics. Especially ball sport.

It’s a blinking in and out of this unveiling in the moments of profound banality where the game itself fades away into total obscurity in microwave process and background radiation of flow. And then emergence into this spectacular interstellar display of fireworks, which you could describe themselves as the pillars of creation or the supernova emergence of a long latent star bursting into action in the quantum mechanical cosmological space time…

18:51

This latent process of the creation of the relative elemental unfolding of different bodies in space and in time through solidification, right? Through encrustification, through sedimentation of space time, which is the cooling of the universe itself. This is the dynamic relationship between waveforms and material; wave forms and the phenomenological appearance of matter, figures, and forms in space-time as perceived entities with mass and gravity and relational pull, force, thrust, et cetera.

And then the interactions that occur within these pockets down through scales, which are the creation again of these relative possibilities, which are interactions and recombinations unto revelation of the hidden character, the essential character of being — which was long ago understood by Heraclitus as the child at play with colored balls at all scales of being.

19:44

The ontological necessity of this realization is utterly essential for a healthy species relationship to itself, to the world and to the... the total ontos of creation in a greater cosmos sense — because this is the way of actually turning the lock of the human being consciousness itself and turning the lock of the human being aperture itself.

And again, this is why these… — I, again, I perceive them to be unconscious artifacts, unconscious cultural artifacts of baseball and basketball in an American civilizational sense… but also in a larger species scale consciousness sense are so important and essential — is that they are continually providing this cultural form as in ritual embodied practice and the field and stage of the figural chess of the bodily focus and rededication and thus emergence of possibility… to reunite the vision of all of existence and all of humanity and all of time in these moments where the well-practiced athlete analyzes the recombinative field of possibilities — again, as the painter or as the cosmos in the sense of the recombination of genetic information or the recombination of particulate structures and molecular structures to form certain bodies in space-time.

Again, with... the different elements and chemicals which are continually being recombined in space time. This is the universal process at a phenomenological physical observable level and dimension. But what is the character of the nature and the being that is at work in and through this in and at all things and all scales? How do we observe ourselves? That which we truly are, even beneath that which we appear to be?

21:11

This is a strategic movement which is primarily entirely unconscious and immediate which is being replicated in the human act. Even though the human being does, at this point in evolutionary history… have a forebrain to process and reprocess — which is to say… analyze and reflect upon information.

This is not an act of dialectical redoubling as Kierkegaard would describe it — but rather as an imminence of the immediate reactive intelligence in space, the intuitive reactive intelligence in space, analyzing in real time the possibilities of the situation and unfolding those possibilities imminently without thought, without reflection… in total flow — in total flow of processing of the organism and in total relationship in presence.

This is something that is so present in the Tao — and this is why the Tao is so important to the history of metaphysics… just as much as it is so important to the history of quantum mechanics — is that it is elucidating the characterological archetypes and the archetypal dimension of quantum mechanics as in the character and the essential nature of the field experientially as in the living relationship of the field of the Tao itself… hundreds and hundreds of years before quantum mechanics exists in a scientific sense in terms of the analysis of phenomenological reality and penetrating beneath Newtonian physics.

22:06

And this is also latent and inherent within the practice, of particularly… ball sport in an athletic sense, because again, this is the apperception of the movement of the aesthetic object and navigating the terrain to acquire or obtain or complete the gesture of the aesthetic object, which is to say the ball into the hoop or the pitch into the catcher’s mitt or the pitch into the stands as in a home run.

And this is why this athletic flow in terms of… when we’re talking about flow, we’re talking about an alignment of the literal brain waves and the method and the aperture of the processing of the human being and the human organism in a total fluidity as in the practice of the game and the ritual mastery of the game — into and through which these latent possibilities in terms of the recombinative lock of the cultural artifact of the game itself, the stage, the fields, and the play upon the field itself… can emerge possibilities which would not be visceral or visible in conscious, reflective, refractive thought.

There is no hesitation. This is a total symbiotic movement and relation in space-time, through which the phenomenological revelation of being can naturally emerge as in a hitherto unrecognized or un-possible emergent latent made visible phenomenological reality as in Dr. J’s rock the baby dunk… something which obviously had never occurred before and has not occurred since on the stage of a regular season game, which is to say in the field of play, the strategic field of play — which is very different than, let’s say… a dunk contest, right?

Because in real time, the body in space is navigating all of these different transitional objects and relationships and pathways to determine right course or right relationship or right way. And this is again being elevated above the plane and terrain of the organism surviving on the forest floor or in the desert into the primary cultural artifact of the game. It is utilizing the will as in the Tao or the quantum mechanical possibility and potentiality in imminent domain… to emerge the transcendental object at the end of time — to show the true playful character of being and to embody it… as profound ritual object; the gold of the genome at the end of time proper, which is to say the fulfillment of all things in their essence. The end of the journey of evolution at the most profound symbolic dimension and level, exclusive of any necessary movement of glacial nature.

And this is precisely what I mean by athletics as an exploration of possibilities, which is fundamentally native and totally embodied — leagues beyond what the art artifact can avail in process and in practice; in full bodied movement and total presence and orchestration of the electromagnetic field of the will and the coordinating organs and synapses therein in a total musical gesture as in the striking of the chord of being.

And is much closer to, we could say, blues or jazz music, particularly jazz music. And it’s not a coincidence that the early Rucker Park games, in terms of the early advent of basketball in Harlem… which Dr. J ends up participating in as a crucial dynamic in his career… the early music, which is emergent with this phenomenon of black basketball in Harlem, which forms the foundation of modern basketball, is blues and jazz music. This was intimately a part of the cultural unfolding in and at and on the field of Rucker Park proper as a practice of the cultivation of grassroots park basketball and the aesthetic culture of the movement and experimentational play of movement therein.

We’re talking about improvisation within space using the full body intelligence. And here this… we’re talking about with basketball — hands, feet, movement in space, dynamic, quick movement in space, fast muscle twitch reflexes, fast nervous system response. Right? We’re talking about hand-eye coordination.

We’re talking about the total coordination of the embodied powers of the being, which are practiced and practiced and practiced and thus resolved into the literal being proper in this total fluid unity, which is represented and which appears in the Dr. J rock the baby dunk, which is a total fluidity of presence, which is born in this continued practice in the street parks of his youth and then in Rucker Park, right?

25:51

So we’re looking at this profound form of mastery, which again is primary to philosophy. It’s primary to art. It’s primary to all of these cultural artifacts, which are mere reflections or refractions. It’s primary to science.

We have to understand this. Is that athletics — in terms of athletic mastery in this full bodied process of exploration of the latent possibilities and potentialities in the field of being through the aesthetic object of the ball and the relationship of that technology and the metaphysical scales implicit and explicit within that technology in terms of Heraclitus — are prior to science.

This is the science of existence. This is the science of being — which again, this is… understanding the ontos and the history of the ontos… and we have to include — deeply, deeply, deeply include and prioritize athletics in that understanding of the ontos if we are to understand it, truly understand it… because this is a participatory universe. A full bodied, incarnate, at all corners and dimensions, conscious process of the revelation of the participatory will; the dance of that will therein down across and through all scales as in a real, perennial enlightenment as to the nature of that consciousness and that will; athletic, embodied mastery within that paradigm and context of the axiomatic Heraclitean word — the word of the child at play with colored balls — which illuminates our scales in that essential character of existence and being which is supraordinate and transdimensional as in the character of the Tao and the quantum field itself proper. To know this field is characterological. It is not statistical or formulaic. To know it is to understand it — not to reduce it phenomenologically or to a technological apparatus or to numbers or to basic functions. It is a whole embodied practice and process with an essence which is in movement and yet is characterologically eternal and whole. This is, as it is understood in a Western and Eastern metaphysical context, Being and Becoming, or Maya and Brahman.

You understand — this is a participatory universe with consciousness and attention as is articulated in the dictates of quantum mechanics and is articulated in the ancient metaphysical dictates of know thyself… the emphasis upon consciousness and revelation of being as a metaphysical orientation and philosophical orientation towards life, which then avails one of the deep, latent, powerful possibilities, the willing possibilities, the power of the creative will, the playful will… latent within being to emerge consciously, in tune with that eternal infinite process of the recombinative possibilities of being… and understanding that fundamental character beneath the phenomenological emergence, which appears to be in construction and as is in process, as is unfolding and thus is seeking to attempt to express itself linguistically through the form, through the aperture, through the vessel of the body of the being.

It is to spell that name, which is so understood in a greater spiritual historical, religious, even… context, the name of God or the name of the Godhead. What that is then, what the name is, is a phenomenological appearance. It’s a form. It’s a linguistic form. The incarnation of a linguistic form which spells the name of being.

28:07

Which again, is what we’re talking about when we’re talking about genetics. It’s what we’re talking about when we’re talking about the figuration of the body in space and time. And I discussed this with the AND1 sort of… of mascot, so to speak. It’s almost… one of those marionette figurines, a faceless marionette figurine, which is doing different motions and jumping and articulating and gesticulating to play. To the court. To the will of being.

It is to represent aesthetically, again, in terms of aesthetic image, the artifact of the figure in space-time, which is creating, much like a dancer, all of these different possible formations of the figure in form and space and in time, but it is moving so... rapidly and so in flow with the relation of the game and as in relationship with the aesthetic object of the basketball… is creating possibilities of the revelation of the being out from under it.

28:51

And in an embodied sense, we really are talking about the absolutely essential.

We’re talking about, to have… because we don’t want knowledge. Knowledge does nothing. We want and we need as a species… as a revelation of the entire organism body of the cosmos, a total embodied revelation.

29:20

The presence.

29:24

The force of will of the true powers of the being and the characteristic… being itself, as the identity — which again is the child at play with colored balls.

29:39

So we have to participate in this. We have to emerge it through us, with us, in us, and create and be the cultural artifacts which represent and show us the field of being, which are the recombinative and recombinating locks which we can turn to find that precise orientation which strikes the chord, which is itself the vision and the presence. If you understand that — you’re sitting in the stands in Rucker Park or you’re watching Dr. J’s rock the baby dunk.

You have the appearance, you have the emergence, you have the vision, but at a greater and deeper level, what we are called towards is the embodiment of that.

Deeper than the phenomenological appearance, we are called to the embodiment of the revelation of the powers of being within us. Within us.

So that’s what I got. I’ll catch you on the next one.