Knowing and Unknowing

When I moved to Minneapolis and started this program, I had flickers of ideas in my head, thoughts of projects and areas of expertise to discover. Now, in my sixth week, something like 10,000 pages of reading later, I feel as though I've been carried off on the shoulders of the authors whose works I read; they are taking me into the world of unknowing. In this world, the constant realization is this: The more you learn, the less you know.

Is theatre anything more than representation? Can you conceive of reality beyond language? Is society a part of culture, or is culture a part of society? Does our government produce the factions that rebel against it? Can you conceive of the initial forgetting, the absence that is a necessary part of all things present? The answer here is that there are no answers here. And never answers will there be. There is only questioning and searching.

Maybe we can take solace in Socrates' realization that it is in the understanding that we know nothing that our true intelligence lies. Though maybe not, since, as is purported, the last words of the great thinker were: "I believe I owe a chicken to the lady at the end of this street. Make sure she gets it."

Of course, all these thoughts are trumped by the truly amazing last words of Dylan Thomas: 13 shots of whiskey. I think that's a record.