How can the production of notions be reduced There are too many notions. There are too many notions as there are too many clothes. There are too many a hell a lot of other things. There are so many those other things that are too many that the following statement is absolutely justified: there is much too much of too many. Clothes are not better example than many other examples, though it seems they are. It seems so because clothes can be easily thrown away. For example to the world’s driest desert. There is nobody who could use these new clothes dumped there – nobody will put them on, wrap in them, make a cosy nest, line a burrow. It only seems so, but it’s only the matter of time. Yes, it’s only the matter of time when various beings and creatures will start to come looking for such an easy trophy and even the toughest conditions will not stop them. It’s only the matter of time, too, when this desert will disappear under the giant and vast mound of clothes. The sand-rock-stone-ground desert will be transformed into a textile desert. Clothes are a good example because when a store is brimful of what is out of fashion and a room is needed for what is just in fashion, then what is out goes out and what is in comes in and that’s all. This can be easily considered a metaphor of an overloaded head. Well, it’s enough to throw away a part of the stored notions. That’s all. No, it’s not enough. The following question must be answered: where can we throw them away? to which desert? Maybe it’s better to bury them. In a ground absolutely barren, even lethally contaminated, to make them infecund, to let nothing grow up from particles, threads and scraps they turn into. This metaphor is only partially accurate. It is glamorous in the beginning. It’s even more gimmicky than glamorous. A lot can be stored inside a head, incredibly lot. But in spite of its almost magic abilities to expand in all direction changing no measures, the head feels overloaded sometimes. Something disturbs, presses and pinches under the skull. We can feel the head is too heavy, it’s a burden to carry, like a bag full of potatoes, while it should be like a balloon which floats freely through a thick, supposedly stinking air… So it looks like we should not deflate the head, but inflate it. Before we do anything, we must say and write it clearly that a notion is not a word. A notion is not an image. Nor is a sound. Nor a smell. Nor a touch. A word, both in its phonic and graphic form, an image, either abstract or realistic, a sound, a smell, a haptic sensation, these are but various outfits a notion puts on – they themselves are not notions, just like a shirt and pants are not somebody who wears them. So we need to remember that dumping words, images, sounds or smells we not necessarily dump notions. If it happens we throw away with a word, image or sound also a notion hidden in them, that’s good, that’s better if we throw away only words, images and sounds. It can happen, too, though not so often, that we throw away a notion itself, while a word, image, sound remain. Is it really possible? Does it really happen? In such case we would have empty words, empty images, empty sounds… Notions are like hairs. We can split hairs. We can plait or dreadlock them. We can get bald. We can wear a wig. Another very important problem should be solved: are notions simple or complex by nature, or both? If notions are simple by nature, then should be thrown away, dumped, annihilated, so they won’t be able to proliferate. If notions are complex, then there are basic and additional notions, primary and secondary notions, more important and less important notions, necessary and unnecessary. And so on. Then the basic ones should be found, those one the complex notions are composed of, and only these basic ones should be stored. Let’s take a look at some examples. A theological (divine) example: We are looking for a notion more important than the others. The simple-complex division is of no significance. Any division is to be rejected. Among those more important notions we are looking for even more important. It’s absolutely obvious that right from the beginning we are looking for the most important notion, and right from the beginning it is known this notion is the one that hides in the word god. Any hesitations and doubts that may appear refer to saints and prophets, and to the divine family, cousins and in-laws of GOD, nevertheless only He is the point (if this is he not she or it). If this notion is the most important, if it is above all other notions, if it is a kind of super-notion, overnotion, if it is also under and around all other notions, so covers them and contains them, then it is absolutely self-sufficient. It needs no representations, no imagery, because they can only blur it, distort, falsify, and if it doesn’t need them, they should be eliminated as soon as possible. Thus the giant set of notions explaining nothing will be replaced with one notion explaining everything. The head is empty. Like a balloon. Light. Very light. So light it can hover and take us to the infinity of heaven. That’s good. Let those who follow this example stay there for ever. There will be more room down here on the ground. This is an extreme example. Neither surprising nor bizarre. This is an example of extreme cakewalk. A notion which explains everything, explains nothing, according to the following equation: EVERYTHING = NOTHING and NOTHING = EVERYTHING. It should be added, that a head filled with one notion, is not an empty head, but a devastated head, and devastated heads devastate the world. A linguistic (fucking) example: Or linguistic-theological, because a devilish one. The former example could be hardly defined as worshiping one – this one could hardly be defined as cursing one. Both are based on reduction. In the former example everything has been reduced, in this example the language is being reduced. However it is being reduced in a special way. The way of speaking, an emotional uttering, is crucial – when the emotions are sufficient one can say everything using only a few words, at least it seems so for those who apply such reduction, provided anything can seem to them because not only a language is being reduced but the ability to reflect, too. The reflection reduction makes this example very similar to the former one which will stubbornly admit that the reflection has not been reduced but has achieved its peak, so high it has just vanished… What the fuck! That’s nice, that’s fine, but how can we write fucking poems?! And why them fucking poems? What do we make the fucking writing for? An audiovisual example: It is said each drawing is but a combination of dots and lines. Like every composition is a combination of sounds and rests. So, this very text, it is a combination of what? What is a dot and a line, a sound and silence, in a text, in a speech, in thinking? And? Even if it was so, even if it is so, what should we do with these brimful book, audio and film libraries? with servers growing like mad? with more and more threatening tangles of visible and invisible wires? Notions are like humans: a few billions of humans and trillions of outfits. While it would be enough if we hadn’t lost our furs. A trichological anti-example: Writing metaphorically getting bald is better than splitting a hair. While getting bald is considered an upsetting inevitability, and splitting hair is appreciated though often considered unnecessary. Splitting a hair is not easy, it is a sort of art. This is why a modern dissertation on poetics is usually a non-poetic mumbo-jumbo, gibberish which even its author can not understand, while Aristotle wrote about it charmingly not proliferating notions that later would float over the reader’s head like a cloud of buzzing flies. What a conclusion can be drawn? Write fucking simply, concisely and beautifully. Oh, I haven’t answer the fucking question. Then what the fuck did I ask it for? <<<