part 1 (of 3) of "THE ROOM": A GESTALT MUSICAL MONOLOGUE BASED ON CHAGALL'S "THE BIRTHDAY". see the commentary: "BACON, HAMANN & NACHMAN" at my website, franklynwepner.com. in spring 1991 a young man i used to know (who surprisingly has the same name that i have) improvised this monologue while living in a small rented room in brooklyn, new york. the original tape included music which he improvised simultaneously with the text. that tape with the original music is lost, but fortunately the text which i typed up based on that tape is still here in 2012, 21 years later in israel. so we have, first of all, the interesting situation of a stodgy 70 year old israeli recreating the work of a lusty 50 year old new yorker. during those 20 years the stodgy 70 year old has written loads of essays about the same process that the lusty 50 year old was probing rather naively. and so at the risk of making a mountain out of a mole hill i am referring you to an essay i wrote recently about section 4 of nachman of breslav's "collected essays" ("likutei moharan"), entitled: "bacon, hamann & nachman". if the video is itself borders on the limits of acceptable free expression on the net - even for secular folk - likewise this essay is sure to raise a few dozen red flags among the faithful of the breslaver sect. how dare i compare their beloved nachman to the likes of gestalt therapists, renaissance scientists and christian theologians! my justification is that for those who wish to get beyond the words and get to the ideas underlying the words, my video, nachman's "likutei moharan" and the work of perls, bacon and hamann are all, in fact, saying more or less the same thing. of course, moses is not jesus, and the man/woman relationship in the video is not quite exactly the way breslavers envision the kabbalistic chochmah/binah, wisdom/understanding, relationship of the holy "sefirot" (numbers, enumeration of the divine attributes). rather, let the overall "existential message" of the gestalt therapy process i am carrying out on chagall's painting symbolize "chochmah" (wisdom, the idea, integration), which is the end result of integrating inductively, intuitively, all the different elements of the painting ("binah", understanding, fragmentation). then, imagine the all these fragmented elements (room, floor, walls, air, man, woman, etc.) need to be impregnated by "the word" which is the existential message of the "dreamwork" i am doing on the painting. and now perhaps the correspondence becomes more clear. of course, this implies that you, the audience person, use all your wits when you seek to grasp the message of the video, and not filter out half of it due to emotional prudery or intellectual laziness. after all, "b'chochmah pote'ach sh'arim", "with wisdom he opens the gates". FRANKLYN WEPNER fwep@earthlink.net June 2009 LM 4: BACON, HAMANN AND NACHMAN CONTENTS (1) INTRODUCTION (2) BACON TO HAMANN TO NACHMAN (3) BACON AND PERLS (4) LM 4 (5) HAMANN ON LANGUAGE: (a) imagery ("bilder") (b) analogy (c) parataxis (d) paradox (e) multiple levels of language (f) affective terminology (6) CONCLUSION REFERENCE: "JOHANN GEORG HAMANN, BY JAMES O'FLAHERTY (1) INTRODUCTION FW: The Breslaver Hassidic movement as it is set up and operates today is an introverted sect, in contrast to the Chabad Hassidic movement which is set up and operates today as an extroverted sect. Breslavers tend to keep to themselves, while Chabadniks drive around town in Mitzvah Tanks seeking wayward Jews as potential recruits. But opposite as the two sects are in that respect, one thing they have in common is an aversion to "philosophy" in its traditional academic sense. Both sects condemn "philosophy" as "chochmot chizoniot" (external wisdom) or "avodah zorah" (strange work). even through ironically they both embody philosophy in the most profound manner possible. Breslav is largely Jewish neo-Platonism, while Chabad is largely Jewish rationalist Aristotelianism. However, since, of course, their educational curriculums contain no Philosophy 101 course. they pay the price of ignorance and intolerance as a result. The Chabad press, for example, once published Nissan Mindel's excellent "The Philosophy of Chabad", but today that book is almost impossible to find, and Chabad has no plans to republish it. The book is being supressed most likely because in that book Mindel contends that Chabad is ideologically within the tradition of Moses Maimonides' "Guide For The Perplexed", which, as everybody except Chabadniks themselves know, is ideologically within the tradition of Aristotle. Breslavers are even more anti-rational than Chabadniks, since their theory base is primarily neo-Platonic mysticism. Merely mention the word Plato at a Breslaver shul on the Sabbath, and you can be sure nobody will invite you to dinner! Or go to a Breslaver mikvah after demonstrating your ph

• published: 17 Apr 2012
• views: 3041