In Software for People, Pauline Oliveros writes that she would like to amplify the sound of a bull dozing. In my ear, I hear a bull rushing.
Bulrushes disperse their seeds and spores via a type of dehiscence, producing millions of dust like grains that travel on wind, beaks of birds, human feet, and much more besides, moving in a manner similar to how I imagine vestibular irritations, particularly when I bring to mind Peto’s claim that whenever a person is giddy, they cannot maintain the unity of their body.
The following sections are an attempt to mix together being and doing with images of vertego (individual ever coming apart together), corresponding to a creature imaginally real.
Wild and symbolic nature of bull goes hand in hand with labyrinth, an overriding purpose and idea of being lost. Asterion is a name of a Cretan minotaur, a labyrinth, previously a dance floor, built by the inventor Daedalus. In human anatomy, Asterion is a visible point on exposed skull, just behind ear. Asterion’s presence symbolises enticement of holes, a pulse where three cranial bones meet. Many neurosurgeons use Asterion to orientate themselves in order to plot safe entry into skull. Coins minted in Knossos from fifth century show bull, kneeling, adorned with cereals and grains, underside shows a star at centre of a series of meander patterns. Star is themselves, Asterion, part of Canes Venatici. Bull emerges from their selves, more than they appear.
Many representations of bull push them into ring or farm, a soulless machine, but Asterion still wanders labyrinth. Reading The House of Asterion, a short story by Jorge Luis Borges, told from a point of view of bull, helped me to realise that dehiscent ejection of ego is also akin to receiving who returns, outside always leaks in, creating an indefinite and perpetual vacillation of egos.
Brownian motion, otherwise known as pedesis, or leaping, describes ‘random’ movements of particles, detailing how larger particles can be moved by impacts of many smaller masses. This is a semi-visible means by which to detect invisible effects, a discontinuous structure of matter who at least appears to be a one-dimensional random walk, bearing witness to some diagrams in Charles Darwin’s book concerning plant motion. This can help us imagine just how Asterion runs and walks in Borges’s labyrinth, many lines of whom, as Borges states, trace lineaments of his own face.
