Cultural Perspectives
By Tim Hazell (August 11, 2006)

Body Eloquence Beautiful animal, beast of prey! When we cross the river With wild birds in our savage hands,  We'll have come home!

As we customize volumes of two- and three-dimensional space, how to best interpret body language becomes a natural concern in theater, graphic arts, dance and sculpture. This active or passive association with ambient reality, its provocative or elusive and poetic characteristics, has motivated an array of questions delving into the intent and consequences of physicality. Casual motion may involve the efforts we make when balancing a drink and sandwich tray, or ascending a flight of stairs. Beyond these gestures lies a riddle of possibilities for meaning and interpretation. 
How metaphysical mystique suspends disbelief is a study in human nature. For languages of politics, gesture can communicate integrity where self-interest is the true objective. We reinvent the nature of action, agency and duplicity to serve the demands of mass media. Religion has done its share to create dilemmas. Moral and immoral body eloquence mesh for the censors. Decision making and legislation can help to champion liberal thinkers or push us into another cultural retrograde. Poet Dylan Thomas's early masterpiece "The Hand That Signed the Paper" addresses relationships between action and culpability, when judgment has been suspended: 

The hand that signed the paper felled a city;
Five sovereign fingers taxed the breath,
Doubled the globe of dead and halved a country;
These five kings did a king to death.

The mighty hand leads to a sloping shoulder,
The five finger joints are cramped with chalk;
A goose's quill has put an end to murder 
That put an end to talk. 

The hand that signed the paper bred a fever,
And famine grew, and locusts came;
Great is the hand that holds dominion over
Man by a scribbled name.

The five kings count the dead but do not soften
The crusted wound nor pat the brow;
A hand rules pity as a hand rules heaven;
Hands have no tears to flow. 

We watch agencies of purposeful and casual behavior in animals, struck by their resemblance to sustaining patterns of our own. In organisms with decentralized brain functions, such as sea urchins, starfish and insects, locomotor movement still fulfills an aim and is subject to the animal's control. Complex activities performed by mammals and birds have much richer psychological overtones, involving passionate states of being in life. Specialized predators such as the cheetah hunt while monitoring their progress as energy expended versus opportunity-and gains. Reasoning behavior such as this startles us because we apply similar techniques of analysis to ambitions and goals within our societies. Humans modify primal tactics, coping with modern dynamics of stress and achievement.
Propioception has been described by Charles Olson as "the cavity of the body, in which the organs are slung, the viscera, the old psychology of feeling, the heart; of desire, the liver; of sympathy, the bowels of courage-he kidney-gall." If body eloquence is the visible manifestation of our ideas, then action, intent and resolution are conditions of existing in flux. This excerpt from a poem by Stephen Fama describes propioception as whole-body awareness, an innate comprehension coming from all of our distinct components. Making decisions about metaphysical variety in unity can engender states of harmony and balance as we care for the soul.

PROPRIOCEPTION
is the true sixth sense
not defined as Olson does it
but as the perception of the body
of its parts in relation to its whole
it is about balance
or lack thereof
it is how we walk
without tripping or falling
it is the knowledge built into the parts
of the placement
and location
of the other parts

Tension, resolution, activity or repose are components of body vocabulary, resembling phrasing integrated with speech and music. Aspects of continuous gesture turn up throughout the liberal arts. Sound innovations, rhythms and flurries of graphic lines come from a readiness to act following stasis or repose. Proactive involvement engages our senses; we feel a rush of excitement and adrenalin that precludes creativity, until reserves drain and need to be replenished. At this juncture work can be interrupted by someone entering a studio, rehearsal hall or laboratory. This is a time for relaxation when critiques become part of the evaluation process. 
Human/machine interaction, or synergy, dependent upon our ability to encode body eloquence, provides design breakthroughs for machines capable of gesture, speech recognition and artificial intelligence. A better understanding of movement and metaphysical language and its implications has brought new hope to those who wish to resume fruitful and productive lives.
Tim Hazell is a multidisciplinary artist in the areas of painting, music, theater, education, writing and research, specializing in Latin America. He may be contacted at hazel@unisono.net.mx  or at his website, www.timhazell.com