On Troubadorial Pedagogy: Deconstruction

Says the Man to the Figure

Where at once there was this token that represented value, now there is only an object. It represents neither work nor time, nor does it represent a nation. It does not have any utilitarian value. This token cannot be melted down to make a tool. It cannot be burned for warmth. It cannot be eaten.

This token has an inscription, yes. But the inscription is of a person whose ideas you and I have drifted away from. He is a man, and may as well be a character from a storybook or film that we had seen at some point in the past, but have since failed to recall. He is from a story that we believed in at one time, but that was then betrayed by the most powerful in our society, leaving the utility of his ways in a gutter, forgotten. The words, “The Highest Power Guides Us” are burned into the token's surface. You and I know what a higher power is, but each of us has already had this conversation somewhere before, and have never agreed on what exactly the highest power is. This token is worthless in your and my exchanges. Watch me throw it to the horizon.

What have we now? We have the last remnant of ordered man. Here we sit, you and I, on the ledge of mankind, after his history has dissolved and then eaten him alive. To know anything, it becomes clear that first of all, we need to know where we are. Terra incognita, la naturaleza, a landscape of hidden foliage and springs surround us in all directions, on top of which great cement buildings and roadways are laid down, that we can now regard only as abstract aesthetics.

We belong to no country, you and I. Each of us knows no fact, as the other is sure to refute such utterances of fact with his equaling fuerza, inherent in an intelligent man who is skeptical of such utterances. The language that we speak aligns itself with our own health concerns, our own experiences, each of our interests that affirm that, indeed, I will be safe into this night. I will eat something, I will remain experiencing this place for a long time to come. I will outlive this other man, yet help him if he would like to learn; I will give him nothing.

Each of us was deemed intelligent in the time of our nation's life. Each of us was quick to pounce on maledictions, and celebrate the colors of rhetoric. We were regarded as adroit in distilling the sense from the nonsense, skilled in each of our measurable fields. Degrees, we had, to assure our fellow man that indeed certain skills were embedded within us. The system of granting degrees provided a compass of knowledge, guiding those whose inclinations it was to find the most efficient routes to truth. They were endorsed by our nation, these degrees. Now, you and I sit here, exercising a new methodology for re-presenting these same mechanisms that ensure order and direction, as our words now do one another no justice within this new human politic, muddied by the dust of desolation.

Together, we sit. Civilized? Uncivilized? Together, we hunger. Do your eyes say deception? Do they say “give” or do they say “take?” How might you be regarding me during our primordial exchange? Below, man has resorted to savagery, as each has initiated his own grabbing pursuits. Our ledge, atop this piece of art, marks ambivalently the same place at which all can be seen and reflected upon, as easily surrounded and toppled.

How do we know our strengths in this, our new domain? How do we acknowledge our shortcomings? The two halves of our brains are analogous to the skills of our hands; right handed? Left handed? Ambidextrous? I claim both, but so do you. Without an order to designate our limits, we are limitless. Without limits, we are each an übermensch. But can there be more than one such man? Must not you and I, as equals, know when one is speaking outside of his realm of experience for the sake of our joint, benevolent survival? Yet I am willing to sacrifice one side for the sake of our language, for the sake of our building, our balance, for our new order of communication atop the playing out of exurbia. I choose to sacrifice for our friendship half of my ambidexterity of mind.

My memory is finding its legs, friend, as surely yours is finding its. The order of the machine has taxed my own faculties, though their recovery is now in full effect. I remember my schedule, my reliance on the clock, my dependence on the computer, my orientation with points on a calendar, holidays, seasons. Now, the seasons have changed and February is warm. The New Year was brought in with the hospitality of a sweltering heat that wrapped itself around us like a glove, and the Summertime was blanketed with white. It was to these signs that our people departed from its currency, as the measurement of time slipped further and further away like a curtain, and the movement of our currency from sea to sea was seen to be at the hands of only a small number of men. Those same men who corrupted the integrity of our story.

But panic is not an option, as the rules that once determined wrong from right, attractive from repulsive, base from moral, and corrupt from virtuous, do not allow us to identify what panic is. All we have is... well, I suppose all we have is our breaths.

Our climb was hard, friend. I have realized that elevators are an overlooked luxury, surely, after having scaled these walls. Locked doors and eclipsed laws make an object out of what was once a place of business, this monument of man that we here stand on. It is our determination of mind and physicality that has landed us atop this behemoth. Only the strong willed and strong bodied will be able to join us. Let us collect ourselves for the coming night, as it will be cold and miserable if preparations are not made in advance.