The more the body suffers, the more the spirit flowers. ~ David Blaine quoting St. Simeon Stylites.

I read this article in the Times about illusionist and stunt/performance artist David Blaine. It confirmed the uncomfortable intuition I had about him from watching one of his "street magic" specials. I don't pretend to have any expertise in psychology, but my immediate impression of him was that here was a guy in deep, deep trouble.

His voice is affectless in conversation, he's remarkably deadpan even when performing. The endurance challenges he undertakes smack of someone who seeks mass attention and desperately needs an adrenal rush to confirm that he's alive at all. He seems in dire need of connection and intimacy, but gives the impression of having no clue as to what that might mean, or how to go about it.

Next he'll perch atop a 90 foot pillar in Manhattan for 35 hours, then jump off into a pile of corrugated cardboard. I have little doubt that he's well-prepared, trained, and rehearsed ~ and that the apparent danger is worse than the real risk. Still, it's a very weird combination of "Nearer my God to Thee" and "Look, Ma! No Hands!" (although the tiny 20" platform will have handgrips in case of high winds, and his mother, whom he venerates, died of ovarian cancer when he was 19).

I think Blaine is interesting. He's obviously intelligent, and in his own way a seeker. But I'm worried for him, and it's got nothing to do with this week's endurance show.

More on David Blaine.

1:19:17 AM    please comment []

(Bad Pentecost pun, sorry.)

Another round of speculation about the origins of human language makes the claim that hand gestures may have been at least as early ~ or perhaps earlier, than vocal expression.

It's now been documented that babies raised by signing parents "babble" with their hands, just as babies with speaking parents babble with their voices. It's certainly indisputable that, cross-culturally, most people gesture involuntarily when they talk. Whatever inherited wiring we have for syntax and grammar is distinct from the medium in which language is expressed.

I've argued that the origin of language can be traced to two primal intuitive behaviors: the "ma-ma" sound of a baby seeking and enjoying the nipple, and the reaching/pointing gesture of the infant indicating a desired object (a gesture which is later coupled with the incessant name-query "What dat?"). The notion that hand-gesture and verbalization evolved in tandem strikes me as both reasonable and likely.

12:40:37 AM    please comment []