Emotional Museography, melancholy, loss and the intellectual expressions of ....what? Do you like ruins?

This blog comprises older and newer reflections on the realm of emotive anatomy and are simply for the benefit of knowledge. If you would like to know what you are about to read, these theories are based on these 6 fundamental principles:

1. Emotion exists strictly outside your will and control. Therefore, your true self is reflected primarily and fundamentally by the Emotive Domain. 

2. Be grateful and humble to the one who gives you emotion; it is a privilege.
3. Emotion does not equal love. It is way above and beyond it.

4. Emotional closeness (read "couple") has sexual motivations.
5. Soul: seek it.

6. If you don't understand Pink Floyd as intellectual emotion, it is about time you do.

My views and theories on aspects of emotive anatomy, together with the topics in the title are the result of about 15 years of study and introspection as a learner, relationship partner and counsellor to many who, in their lives, have come to a point of emotional need (and so valiantly allowed  the privileges of such enquiry). Typically, that point indicates a conjuncture where emotive mechanisms need to be analysed and understood in order to make sense of resultant states, mostly associated with melancholy, pain and loss.

My interest, here, is in emotion as individualistic topos, not as developmental element in, say, a relationship (although, naturally, that is one its principal manifestations). Because emotion does not just “happen” (it may feel like so, at times), it requires a stimulus of some kind (e.g. event, development and so on). I am looking at emotion in its historicity.

We very rarely forget emotions.

And so, we come to seek emotional understanding at times when the only question of any importance is this:
Why does it hurt so bad?

To put it simply, it is because loss has occurred or a desirable situation is, for whatever reason, unattainable.
The theories explored here are one way of handling how the above feels when it does.

Emotional Museography is a framework which seeks introspection within the past facets of emotion as experienced by one individual, in an attempt to structure. It is a search through layers of personality long settled in one’s past ages. A (re-)discovery of what has remained and sedimented in someone’s life journey.

Why? Because, in order to know the present, then you must understand the past, as the old saying goes. If you cannot do that, there is little chance of handling present emotion and, most importantly, the impact on your life.
Life is hard to live with a bag of unsolved emotions.

However, EM is not simply an exercise of remembrance. It is a rational, critical investigation of formations of feelings as you associate them with certain life events.

Think of this metaphor: YOU as a museum. For you are one. You are an institution of education (to yourself and others), as well as a closet of past experiences which, if they ever meant anything, must have done so through emotive associations. Superficially, I find, most refer to this as affective memory. Yet, that only refers to one recorded event as it stood, and is interested less in analysis and criticality. 
 

Unlike a museum, however, your emotional past generally lacks the careful arrangements of artefacts, carefully curated by knowledgeable hands. To most, I have seen, it looks something like... this:

Or perhaps.... 

If you recognize Whitby Abbey, then you must learn that to every single person I have talked to, it is the ultimate romantic ruin. To most, the concept of "romantic" is the most accessible, familiar way of understanding an expression of emotion. The descriptions of this Benedictine effigy overlooking the North Sea on the East Cliff above Whitby in North Yorkshire, have filled many, many pages of my journals. 

This is a place of emotional pilgrimage, no less. One of fantasy, too. Pause now, for a second, and ask yourself: do you see a structure similar to this within you, somewhere?

Emotional Semantics: Melancholy and Loss

Ruins instil emotion because they represent a journey through a given historical past. During your visit, you amble alongside walls, hidden structures heavy with overgrowth, you turn corners, touch the stones, remember the story of that place and, essentially, let yourself conquered by a simple realization: how beautiful it is. And so, the ruin becomes a contributor to your emotion because it is a collective impersonation of time and the values it’s left behind. Your emotive past works in a similar way. To benefit from it, however, you must visit and amble through it.

Ruins are melancholic, you will have heard. That is true. We understand melancholy, in its simple form, as sadness or pensive reflection. It is heavy. It feels heavy.

Many have asked whether there is such a thing as a melancholic “type”. I found that, yes, there is. Typically, it belongs to those who are naturally inclined towards insight and reflection (of any kind). This is not, therefore, for everyone. There has to be some sort of interest, an attraction towards emotive structures.
There is a perception that melancholics are generally unhappy. However, melancholy does not need to imply unhappiness. There are, very often, things we can do in order to correct a state of unhappiness. That, of course, requires understanding of what is at play in that state. More about this, later.

Melancholy has to do with things which are no longer present. Gone, or eroded, or consumed. Or lost. Like museums, melancholy is fuelled by (a) history.
 

If you want to find the easiest representation of melancholy, ask yourself this question:

Do you miss someone?

When you do, you become melancholic. Melancholy is the frequent expression of longing.
Time after time, I found that the best way to handle loss is to prevent it (as in, see it doesn't happen) if that is, of course, at all in your powers. I will return to this a bit later when approaching emotion within relationship setting.
Handling loss is, crucially, time-dependant. This means that, sometimes, it is too late to recover and the loss becomes final. At other times, you may have a chance for some recovery and, by understanding your specific emotions generated by that event, you will be looking for a remedy.
A word of warning, for I must:
Your remedy is often somebody else's poison.

That emotion is one of the most complex because it is semantically heavy. What does that mean? It has significance, meaning to you.

Emotional Semantics takes learning and is essential in accessing, let alone understanding, EM. For that, you must accept a basic truth, resultant from the 1st principle of this blog, listed at the beginning:

Emotion is uneducated. Irrespective how clever and rational you are, what your life circumstances are or how crucial they are to you and others,  at the point of conception, emotion (yours, that is) couldn't care less! It dominates you. To correct this, your actions, however, must become educated.

You will never be able to structure your collections of feelings unless you are able to operate with Emotional Semantics. A simple example: when you say “I hate X!”, what is it that you mean?

Do you want to see them dead? Gone? Ask for forgiveness? Subjected to a voodoo ritual? Or, perhaps, you hate them because (be honest?) you love them so much you cannot bear the thought of damaging that, losing it and, therefore, ideally life would be so much simpler if that person wasn’t around at all?

Which is it?
Because, you see, sometimes the true emotion may well be the one opposite to what you think it is!

It seems to me that we use the words love and hate far, far too easily. I find that a sacrilege of language! And yet, one of the most frequent questions we have is this:

Is it true love?

So let me ask you: does it hurt? Yes? Then (probably) it is. As cliched as this sentence is, there is no such thing as love without pain. Yours is certainly not going to be the first!

Let me use this most talked about emotion to substantiate Emotional Semantics. Love is not one emotion but, rather, a cover term for a range of other, specific emotions. Would you recognise, in your past any of… these?

Anger

Frustration

Anxiety

Sadness

Jealousy

Dejection

You will also find that one emotion causes another. You cannot control that process, you have to accept it and understand why it's happening.

Yes, it can be very frightening.

That means that emotion is self-generative. Looking at the good-ol’ love like this is an analytical process. Splitting things up, seeing what they individually represent. EM is reliant on this approach.

I said at the beginning that Emotional Museography is one method to operate and remedy a current emotional state. The fact* is that you will only be interested in this approach at a time of crisis, that which we typically refer to as:

*In all those I have explored with, except those with a scholarly interest.

Emotional Pain

It has to do, again, with loss.

Countless times, I have had to ask:
Tell me, what does it feel like?
The words used to describe that feeling come mostly, but far from exclusively, from female respondents (on gendered emotion, perhaps, later), and are really not that varied.
Although emotion is truly unique to you, the affect of it is recognised by many as:
tight chest, weight inside stomach, churning, sensation of sickness, heaviness on heart, squeezing of heart.

It would seem that the most infuriating and frustrating thing about emotional pain is that it is, almost exclusively, caused by an external situation. It feels very unjust. This brings me to another necessity of Emotional Semantics as part of your museographic attempt, namely the connection between the Cognitive and the Emotive domains, that is thoughts/knowledge and feelings.

It is at this point where we have to cautiously revisit the basic status of emotion as a given, outside your control. That may well be, but emotions are caused/generated/produced by your knowledge of reality. The two domains, here, are intrinsically linked. You remember that old “what you don’t know can’t hurt!” saying? Is it not true? Yes, it is!

This simply implies that one way to sculpt emotional impact is to, actually, manipulate knowledge especially when we are the agent for it. Even when we aren’t, the more we seek into some realities the more likely we are to suffer. The choice is, of course, yours entirely. It depends on a huge variety of factors, such as beliefs and personal values.


Have a Soul: Intellectual Expressions of Feeling

Have you ever been to a soul-less place? Do you remember it well? Can you describe it? Would you like to visit it again? Most likely, no way!

Your museum, then, must have one!

How do I recognise "soul" into things?, you ask. Well, soul has to do with creativity and creation. It is a crafty way of doing and presenting something. It is the absolute opposite of dull.

A simple example:

You have a visitor at home and want to offer them some, say, orange juice. Great!

With soul: serve it from a jar! (as opposed to a glass which is alright, but... common)

Overdoing it: serving milk in a graded chemistry cylinder.
Why not? Because it looks like a semen sample, you fool!

Another example from around us:

Rain: dull (for comparative purposes, here, at least)

Thunderstorm: soulful!

 In other words, something "with soul" looks nice and is endlessly more appealing both intellectually and emotionally. It demonstrates that the author cares, puts heart and mind into it; it denotes attitude! Fundamentally, it contributes to the overall expression of things.

Expression of feeling, therefore: why do we need to know? For two reasons:

1. careful expression brings people closer, sooner (we like it!)

2. it will help you in your museographic design when you decide how to present your own emotions for optimal benefit.

I have, like so many, tested this in my own relationship history, whilst having to also accept the criticism that women are interested because "you can talk well to women".

I must correct this for accuracy: I appreciate the simple fact that women like the crafted word which expresses emotion. Aesthetics matter.

Think of it in terms of visual arts: all of them, any of them. Art is about one thing, I must argue: expression of feeling. Its sole purpose, I must again argue, is that. Films, music, literature, sculpture, they all serve as methods of emotive expression.

Their success at cultivating feelings resides in the fact that their creator thought and analysed very carefully, masterfully, the best ways of rendering something. It is an intellectual process overall.

Similarly, we must think and create modes of expression for our emotions. This, I will admit, is easier said than done. It takes confidence, presence and skill. However, in my experience, somebody who tries to do any of this will be perceived as such by the interlocutor.

This brings me to:

Emotion as an Act of Communication

Not communicating emotion is, I believe, one of the greatest sins we are so frequently guilty of. To put this in simplest terms:

If you feel something for someone, tell them, if at all possible (which, in some cases, it may not be due to either external factors or personal constraints).
Emotion for another, I will suggest, is a waste unless it reaches that person.
Communication is THE key to everything. Only IT can solve matters and educate. In all the cases I have advised on, including my own experiences, without one exception, one thing is true above all else:

When talking ends, hope dies.

 

This (perhaps unfortunately) does not suggest that your communicated emotion will be necessarily acknowledged or answered. That is something you can never generate, no matter how hard you may try. If somebody does not want to communicate, then they will not. It’s a matter of factual acceptance.

I am amongst those who uphold relationships above all else. One of those life gifts always worth fighting for. We are the product of relationships and, so, please remember, we owe them greatly.
Another problematic aspect, here, is the fact that the nature of emotion influences (did I say greatly?) the way we communicate it. Countless times, as we fail to control how we feel, we allow it to degrade, shall I say, the way we act or speak. It is a fact, and it is a shame also. Most unfortunately, this situation leads very so often to disaster (and loss).

You may never blame emotion for how you behave, this we must remember. That is because behaviour is an act of will which is controllable!

Emotions work very frequently against us and can turn into an enemy!

I mention this because this is an essential aspect of your ability to curate your emotive exhibits. How will you display a particular emotion, what caption will it bear, what light will you cast on it?… Because museums are also about mood.

Mood is an emotional state which does something very well: it changes. Isn’t that annoying when it happens!? It depends of course on the direction of the change, namely wanted or unwanted.

        vs            

Remember when your good feelings turned bad? Why did that happen? Because emotions changed (yes, they do have a mind of their own!). And so did the associated behaviours, most likely.

Taking (any) emotion for granted, I have found (bitterly), is a foolish thing to do. A terrible idea, one might say. To be secure within your Emotive Domain, we need to always monitor and pay attention because emotions change frequently when the stimulus which generated that emotion in the first place changes.
In other words, when things change (are not "what they used to be"), feelings change too.

This is a school and you must listen, or you will be punished.

What are emotions actually worth, many have asked... The value also changes with time and the quality of the object of emotion.
Time has a crucial effect on how we perceive our emotions. Generally, the further in the past, the more detachment we are able to attain towards a specific event. Time heals. It allows for reflection and learning.

Separating between emotion itself (the feeling) and its object (the stimulus which causes that feeling) is similar to grammatical syntax. We need to know which is which, what is positioned where, and why.
Emotions are, indeed, worth objectifying at crucial times. And all this, yet again, is part of  emotional semantics.


Incidentally, did you realise that stressed read backwards is... desserts?

(The) Emotive Polymorphism

Polymorphism is the ability to appear in many forms. Emotions can do that and can do it well. "Sad", as an example, may appear as wanting, as longing, as pain, as lethargy, as seclusion, as love, as anger, or as hate.
This may suggest chameleonic abilities, but that is not actually true because emotion cannot be altered at will.
 

And so, it is worth remembering it has become far too easy to conceptualise feelings as “good” and/or “bad”. Sometimes, in very clear situations, they may be, but most of the time any given emotion, I’d suggest, can be both good and bad simply depending on its practical circumstance.

You like chocolate because, oooh, it tastes so good? But it’s bad, for you, right…?

Longing, as another example, works similarly: it does not feel nice, but it demonstrates that you care for the subject. Because, after all, we must never discount the role of…
 

Desire

I am the first to admit that the Emotive Domain would be so much easier to manage if it wasn’t for our senses. Senses can generate feelings and, certainly, the depth of them.

Wanting is one of our healthiest characteristics, but very frequently aggravates emotion and its affect. Desire is restless, I have seen, for most. It gives us no peace and affords us no break. When it’s on , it’s definitely on. Do you recognise it? Are you willing to admit it also?

And when it’s off, the same is true. Emotions will adjust accordingly.  This is an important realisation for it helps seeing one thing very clearly: when somebody doesn’t want (you or something), then that’s how it is! No matter how hard you may try otherwise, you will know when somebody doesn’t or no longer wants you.

I am particularly observant around desire because it has a (dare I say, crucial) role in another aspect of our emotive evolution, namely our Emotional Maturity. In theory, the concept looks good and we want to achieve it. Being “smart” and “experienced” with your feelings represents both an asset and an advantage. It implies, then, that sentiments are age and experience- related. They actually are, yes.

The trouble is, however, that this theory (and it’s a good one) doesn’t seem to always work in practice. Why is that?

From own experience and that of many others, I believe that two things make the answer here:

       1.    The type of person (read “personality”) you are

       2.    Desire

The first point refers to what your tendencies are, what you are inclined towards and your personal values. Emotional maturity is influenced by these, whether we like it or not.

It is, however, desire that is crucial to establishing closeness between ourselves. Closeness is not a given, but a privilege, I would suggest. In some cases, it leads to intimacy which has to do with willingness to open to an emerging emotion at a certain depth.

 Intimacy has to do with crafting an environment, a world which is to remain private, much like a code. It’s nursing. It’s also to do with willingness to admit something that is wanted. To me, it feels like a veil which encloses. It’s communication above all else.

Intimacy must be based on trust, I’ve found, and is primarily a state of mind. Sadly, I must also stress, I find that most often people understand intimacy as a physical environment exclusively.

I believe intimacy is a drugged, indeed stoned, form of closeness. It must be unique, if it is to mean anything. Intimacy has to do with willingness to open up to an emerging emotion at a certain depth. I'd suggest, for instance, that stories move you because you are willing to open to that emotion, so its meaning becomes intimate to you. It is very much a mechanism.
Intimacy is to do with crafting an environment carefully, around for very specific emotions, a world which is to remain private, much like a code. It's nursing. It's also to do with the willingness to admit something which is wanted. To me, it feels like a veil which encloses.

Does this make sense to you?
We take intimacy for granted too easily and that is a grave mistake; sometimes it goes unnoticed, I have also seen, especially when people don't really have the time or aptitude to reflect on it.

Let me however note this: in all examples that I have observed, without exception, those relationships whose intimacy was based on emotion and mind had a substantial chance of survival in times of crisis; those based on physical intimacy, mostly, did not.

Many would recognise these ideas, perhaps, as those more commonly expressed by women, rather than men. That is not necessarily true, of course, despite the fact that women are open to talk about emotions more than men. What is true is that at play here are gendered emotions.

In simplest form: do sentiments appear different to/in women and men?

Yes, they do!

This is not a scientific claim, by any means; indeed, whoever needs that, here? It is observation and practice.  Anthropology, too.

 

Perhaps, then, this is the very place where the political debate about men/women equality should end. When it comes to the emotive domain, we are not equal at all. And, we haven’t been born equal either!

Unicity, you see, sits ill with the idea of equality. But that is, of course, another matter…

Indeed, aren’t museum exhibits by definition unique? Is that not what gives their stories value at all? If we are to determine emotions as museographic artefacts, then we’d better look into doing so by examining their uniqueness.
Some argue that appreciating how truly unique a feeling is, we need to examine it in its deepest form. I mostly agree. In other words, there’s happy and there’s happy. There’s sad and there’s sad.

To exemplify, we shall exclude from here (please!), the automatic “I’d be happy to…. (have coffee, talk, etc)”. I find that that expression means a big and total nothing. It’s a mockery of sentiment. Valueless.

At its deepest, happy may look like this:

I was so happy it felt like flying. A drunken state which you, I’m sure, could only experience in Heaven. It was as if my heart exploded with so much excitement, a fire burning so intensely it could forge metal, and consume me to destruction.

…whilst sad may look like this:

It hurt like bleeding from a deep knife cut. Was left there, fallen, with my hand stretched out shivering, and bleeding… the black was so thick around me, I may as well have been dead. No light. No light.

Now, should the dynamics of these representations suggest it’s doubtful you could ever make an emotion into a static museographic piece, then I must ask this:

Who says museum exhibits are…static?

Because they don’t move? Because they are huge or locked behind a barrier or a locked (and alarmed) screen? Is this why they are static? I shall have to disagree. Physics, here, is certainly in the wrong place, at the wrong time (thank you very much). Museum pieces are persuasively dynamic because they generate images, stories, emotions. In other words, what gives them mobility is their semantics.

An example (an emotive story turned into an exhibit):

Despair for a Demon

 

 

 Feels like the air is about to strangle you and squeeze you until you die. An army of angry beasts rummaging inside your chest , tearing with claws and teeth of rusty knives. A cloud of black engulfing and stubbing hope to death.

You, who simply walk away with boots of lead crushing dreams and life itself.

You, who's injected this poison of hate and torment, knowing of this suffering and blood trickling  and slow dying. You, who believe in God.

You, murderer and bringer of interminable pain.

For that's how Demon you feel to me.

 

Perhaps in my Emotive Museum, the exhibit for this would be Asbjorn Lonvig's Sad Days Indeed.

Is this exhibit static? Or is it so dynamic that it generates a whirlwind of interpretative feeling in which one could easily become lost, utterly?

I have heard views that museums are places of utter loneliness because they mostly showcase a past that’s gone or long dead. As such, they make good hangouts for those “into emotional reclusion”. That may well be true in the case of many. It pays, though, to remember that feeling lonely ain’t same thing as being alone. Perhaps, just perhaps, those feeling lonely at a museum go there to feel the effect from the dynamic semantics of the exhibits.

I have tested this: it does work.

However, a museum is a place of endless motion and commotion IF and ONLY IF you’re interested in its subject/-s. You may walk through the world’s best regarded museum, it would still be rubbish to you if you aren’t interested in the exhibits. This suggests it’s wise to choose your emotions for display carefully. Intrinsically, a museum also functions as a place of education, but is dependent on the quality of the curation. And that is where education, talent, vision and creation begin to matter.

A poorly curated museum offers a dull and forgettable experience (there are some). The Emotive Domain works in similar manner: to showcase sentiments to highest benefit, we need a bit of know-how.  Here, you are both the curator and the audience, only at different times; you can't "do" such museography for the sake of it.

Therefore, where would you start your museum? Which specific emotions, in other words would you choose to analyse in order to find some sort of graphic expression that is meaningful and captures that emotion well as an exhibit?

I cannot tell you which… but perhaps I could suggest a start, should you feel at a loss.

Fear              Trust

Envy             Desire

I am suggesting these because they also have a pronounced instinctual content. Knowing the difference between an instinct and an emotion is not always easy.

Instinct and/vs. Emotion

An instinct is something that you do automatically, without thought. Most of its manifestation is physical, such as retracting your hand when it touches fire (in that case, by the way, the instinct is so strong that the burnt-danger signal does not even have the time to reach the brain which is located too far from your hand, but it’s acted upon by the spinal nerves). It is an innate behaviour. As such, it is not based on prior experience and/or learning. Ultimately, instincts contribute to survival and are, as such, essential.

I might suggest that instincts have no time to faff around with matters of emotion, therefore, since most of them are designed to ensure your survival (as in, literally).

However, I’m inclined to believe that emotional experience does create some instinctual material, that is, feelings have some power in educating how we might act instinctually. This is why, I have chosen the four emotions above. I believe they contribute to instinctual diversity.

In other words, when we feel Fear, Trust, Envy and Desire, we tend to think behaviourally less. There is a reason for this, I’d suggest: knowing what an emotion is from experience creates a state of comfort and confidence which, together, enable instincts to manifest more easily.

To quickly place this pragmatically: Who said…

 

love is blind?

It was Chaucer, as history happens, in  Merchant's Tale, circa 1405:

For loue is blynd alday and may nat see.

More importantly, as I have seen in/from all those involved, this blindness is not fictional at all. Some might argue that love which isn’t blind is not “true”, but has restraints or is “contaminated” by ration.  

Emotional vs Intellectual Love

The war zone.

I’m in the camp battling for this idea: if you entertain the latter concept, then your idea of love is crippled, my friend! The more cynical amongst us might say your heart is “of stone” or that you “are English” (at that you should not laugh, for I heard it expressed precisely in this way many, many – did I say many? – times) .

In scholarly terms, the differentiation however is valid: some prefer (for such varied reasons) to intellectualise the concept of love and turn it into one fully separated, often, from emotion. Indeed, so many “love the idea of…X...” and are able to express intellectual passion for it. I’ve found that those who struggle to express emotion generally, ("Do you live amongst the English? Poor you! You ain't got a chance, do you...", a client once suggested to me), favour intellectual love with significant success.

It would be fallacious to deduct that there is no overlap between the two types: there is. Those who are inclined towards knowledge of the Emotive Domain find it easy to visit this overlap frequently, perhaps in an attempt for completeness (i.e. reaching full educational value from a certain experience).

 

As an example, more or less random (naturally), some absolutely love their cat TRULY both emotionally and emotionally. And that is no joke! Or their dog.

To return to Emotional Museography here, I wonder whether this dichotomy might be displayed somehow in my own establishment. Perhaps this:

 

 

...namely, Dornacilla Drysdale 's Emotion vs Intellect, a piece combining raw reds with the precise lines of an intellect determined to section and box the chromatic varieties spilling on canvass.

And yet, the absolute (in absolute-est terms) exhibit for emotional and intellectual love is Constantin Brancusi’s the Kiss:

The hearts are united and look as one.

The heads, hence minds, touch. There is communion like never captured by human hand in stone. This is an exhibit of love, I’d argue, in all its manifestations. Genius!  

However, museum exhibits need not be those of “genius”, but merely able to tell a story and capture graphically one emotion.

 

 

 

 

    

(...in progress, to be continued)