Are You Experienced?

Posted on June 29, 2005 by Tito

As I wait for specific citations of Vollmann’s ‘bad writing’… I’ll throw in my two-cents worth in response to this discussion at Scott’s …

There are four commonly accepted types of experience:physical, mental, emotional and spiritual. Given your own predilections, you may assign more weight or validity to one type over another. It seems to me that physical experience is often afforded the most ‘validity’ because it is most easily observed by external parties, and therefore more opportunities for shared or common physical experiences. Who has not stubbed a toe, etc…? As a result, we have a pretty rich language which supports the expression and communication of physical experience, and to a lesser extent emotional experience. Mental & Spiritual experience may be the hardest to express/communicate because there are not adequate tools to quantify or qualify them .Without an elusive common ground for beginning a discourse, how can you reasonably expect to reach shared conclusions. (Personally, I find the Joy in the journey — without ever actually trying to reach a conclusion, but happy to look for it).

So how to legitimize some some Mental & Spiritual experience over others…which to trust? My (and possibly others) first source is to trust my own personal mental & spiritual experiences. This didn’t last too long for me, as I am skeptical to the point of not even trusting myself, and insecure enough to seek validation by affiliation or association with others. Better yet, why not trust those who have been there, those who were "in the shit", so to speak? So immediacy of experience (first-hand, second-hand, etc…) has some part in the path towards understanding. The more I can understand about experience in general, the more I can understand my own experience. I  trust this quest for understanding to be important. Here I can get into trouble, because in seeking understanding, I can get derailed by knowledge, and possibly authority.

While I don’t dismiss authority out of hand, I am certainly wary of it — not necessarily because the authority  is wrong, but because authority can be conferred upon some one/thing for dubious reasons — all too often because followers were simply looking for something to latch onto. I’ve come to suspect that authority can just as easily be nothing more than a wolf in the sheep’s clothing of understanding.

How does this all tie to WTV? For one he certainly has (or claims) to have experienced physically (and possibly mentally/emotionally) much more than the typical American. You could guess that (and he apparently has said as much in some interviews) that Vollmann feels the need to experience things first hand to sate his own curiosities and quests for a valid understanding. Since these quests seemingly stem from a distrust of external or other authoritative accounts, it is logical to assume that he does not expect us to confer any authority upon him for the same reasons. If I may indulge you with my own experience of  (pause for affect) Vollmann In The Flesh© — he struck me as hyper-logical and the thought that he should be granted any status or authority based solely on his experience would strike him as ludicrous. The vitriol for dogma run amok as opposed to theology / spirituality that I find in Fathers and Crows supports with my suspicions, I suspect.

But then again, what do I know?

P.S. I am wishing I took better notes when I saw Martin Jay’s talk (last year?) in Berkeley - so I could at least have a better understanding of the vocabulary for discussing experience.

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