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i used to believe in this kind of relation--i liked the story of from plato that is the basis of it--two souls united at some level broken apart when they shift into this world and so are like two pieces of a whole (i think of this whole as a donut) searching for each other. but experience erased any access i might have once had to this kind of story.
then i realized that i do not know, and have never known, what the word "soul" means, except as a label for music by james brown, wilson picket, etc.
i generally encounter it in conversations with people, all of whom act like they know what the soul is.
i know the religious traditions that enframe the terms in various ways.
but to accept that register of explanation, you have to accept much else, starting with a basic level of belief, which i find uninteresting personally--so these systems are mostly strange proofs operating on particular premises.
usually soul is essence for humans.
so humans are things, like tables or rocks, except not quite because---well---of vanity?
humans can change, they deploy over time, they can make and remake themselves--if that is the case, even at a surface level, then what is the function of a soul or essence?
is it energy, the soul?
well, if that is what is being described, why use the word "soul"?
it seems that the word individuates a phenomenon that is not necessarily individual at all (though it can be--what "it" is is a function of how you understand it)
is it a way of designating the experience of consciousness, the mediation of a platform that seems to float above physical determinants? then why is the soul not simply a default term, something that indicates the limits of the logic that has been used to think about consciousness rather than a way of designating a coherent attribute?
these things frankly confuse me.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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