UPSURGENCE

A brief introduction is advisable in order to be clear in what way one upsurging field of awareness, for example music, can appear through another, a painting, storytelling or a public lecture. Chudovski, writing about Čiurlionis, points out that Čiurlionis painted his music and even his poetry. How can one field become a calling, creating an entire mood or atmosphere in which daily events, people and environment are encompassed by a dif- ferent vision? It seems that we are confronted by an awareness called synesthesis. The term signifies a basic domain of overlapping and interpenetrating awareness in which one field, such as the visual field, is transcribed directly into another, such as audial or tactile. One sees loud, exciting, hot colors, hears angular and sharp voices, tactile, scary and encasing darkness. Synesthetic awareness opens an understanding of how a written text and visual art allow access to the voices, feelings, joys and anxieties of another culture, another time. This is evident in personality cults, for example those originating in the Middle East, where the will of the father written in stories, depicted in paintings, chanted in temples, or the promises of the son, heard after thousands of years. It is evident in the voices of shamans, or the resonances in a desert cave, commanding “repeat”, send millions into “holy wars”. Such events show a presence of awareness which does not have any specific features, although everything is pervaded by it as being in excess of every specific event, and yet present in our own daily encounter with and in indefinite ever-surging fields. This excess will be called in this presentation aesthetic and in some narrower sense, dimensional.