It’s about the middle of the gestation period of the lecture I’m working on, and it’s the middle of the month. I’m behind on some aspects, ahead on others, and figure it all averages out to being just about on schedule. I had thought that this one would go long and turn into a third “Simple Machine Underwater” lecture, but that didn’t turn out to happen. And so my thoughts naturally turn toward the next lecture.

It’ll be hard to see clearly until I’m right in it, working on it, but I have a sense that it’s time for the machine to evolve a bit. Which isn’t to say it hasn’t been evolving, because it has, but it seems to have evolved in the direction of being more coherent, toward more ‘meaningfulness,’ to use a word that’s come up in the lectures already. And the problem with meaningfulness is that it’s very difficult to separate the form we identify as meaningful from content that acts in a meaningful way. Or… that’s not precisely right. 

When meaningful content is delivered in a meaningful form, the two things work together powerfully. The combination lodges within us, homes itself somewhere deep inside. But there’s something about the interaction of the two aspects that causes a problem. I’m venturing here into something I’m not certain about, but what about this? Meaningful content should be surprising or challenging or demanding, but meaningful form is familiar because by definition (though I understand I haven’t explicitly defined it) we’ve experienced it before—that’s how we know it’s meaningful. Meaningful form is meaningful because it feels like things that have already struck us as meaningful. When meaningful form and content come together, a new and powerful and maybe even dangerous idea can be snuck through our defenses, but we’re a lot better at detecting the familiar form of meaningfulness than we are at evaluating the value of the content.

Do I know how difficult it is to separate form and content? I do. It’s a mug’s game. And yet, smarter people than I have felt compelled to venture into this territory.

And all this is just to say: the Simple Machine emerged out of a fear of my own inability to separate meaningful form from meaningful content, even (especially!) when I’m the one writing it. So: enforced form, to get around that problem. But the human animal learns, and I’m worried I’m learning how to maneuver the Machine into allowing meaningfulness through.

Possible directions: stricter form, more play, more chance, less coherence, altered directionality, more interference. We shall see where these thoughts take me.