The Detroit Institute of Arts premiered Matthew Barney’s new film Drawing Restraint #9 tonight. In a darkened and dusty theatre, I began to think again.

1. Everything is a vessel, including people. Vessels are places that enable state change.
2. Across every threshhold is the potential for great mystery. With careful preparation we can enter into these mysteries and learn new things about ourselves and our world.
3. These preparations are respectful and cyclical, but not indempotent (i.e. they can and do have side effects)
4. We are all animals, and “human” is simply the way in which we’ve chosen to be animals. We retain our obligations and interconnectness to the animal world.

side note: The embodied restraint of the traditional japanese clothing. The falling of the pearls from mouth at the end invokes Dali’s inverted sublimated Virgin Mary. (The dual-ring formation is a total gaffe, though.)