About a month ago I was preparing a streaming video player for an event at work. During downtime, the player streams old content from Michigan Television (public TV at U of M that has now been closed). In a pleasant coincidence, I happened to see an interview with Thylias Moss, an English professor at U-M who teaches a class on “Limited Fork Theory” in the School of Art and Design.

I figure you’re asking, “But what’s ‘Limited Fork Theory’?” It starts as a class about digital composition, but then goes way past the limits of traditional college education. As the course synopsis explains,

The approach is thematic rather than monolithic allowing students to draw information from any and all areas of their experience toward investigations of their own devising within a thematic context, this semester: framing systems. Limited Fork Theory is the study of interacting language systems: any/all visual, sonic, olfactory, tactile systems/subsystems on any/all scales for some duration of time.

Then Moss’ website 4orked.com says it

is also a Theory of Everything that not only includes, but also appreciates: imagination, the fruitfulness of dead ends, the possibilities of error, the usefulness of failure, the beauty of the many configurations of the box the limited fork comes out of and goes into, forking, reconfiguring, shaping, folding, unfolding, and bifurcating all the way.

Many paths to many worlds: one limited fork.

I’m impressed that this development has come about at a public institution. Moss was an awarded poet before developing this theory and corresponding practice. But it seems she risked more than her reputation as a writer in pursuing her passion. She was already an English professor when it began, and as she says in the video below, she interrupted the schedule of a semester course to take this new direction!

As she relates, “When I went to class on Monday, I had my students throw out everything. I said to them, ‘I don’t believe what I said when class has started. I cannot continue.’”

Moss posts online under the pseudonym Forker Girl, which she calls “the embodiment of Limited Fork Theory.” I find it especially interesting that she’s not keeping it a secret, like most professionals did with their pseudonymous work in the past. However, I think Forker Girl might be more of an alternate personality than a pen name.

Moss implies that Forker Girl is more free to express “herself,” which brings to mind the way Tyler Durden empowered the narrator in Fight Club. It seems this transition will happen more frequently in the future, as people stop allowing themselves to be limited to one professional role, trying to adhere to an imaginary idea of what’s “normal” for adults.

From Moss’ viewpoint, anyone can partake in this sort of exercise. “Certainly in imagination if no other way, you can allow these things to converge – allow something to happen. And then the role of a person who would be a practitioner of Limited Fork Theory would be to somehow document what happens.”

In a second video Moss demonstrates how even taking an abstract photograph can fuel her inspiration. “…there is no rule to the orientation of [the photo.] You see, as we turn it, we get other ideas. Other possibilities emerge. From this we get to experience and understand and analyze those perspectives denied to us based upon the limits of human perception.”

There’s a synchronicity in this story as well. I discovered Limited Fork Theory about the same time I was reading Aldous Huxley’s Heaven and Hell, a survey of tools used to induce visionary experience throughout human history — everything from precious gems to religious fasting to mescalin. To Huxley, what makes an experience visionary is the extent to which it transports a person beyond those “limits of human perception” that Moss mentioned.

Just as nicotinic acid can stop the visions caused by lysergic acid or mescalin, according to Huxley, “another inhibitor of visionary experience is ordinary, everyday, perceptual experience.” (p. 87) A person’s visionary power is defined by his or her awareness of the experience, voluntary control over it, and ability to express it to others. “For most of us most of the time, the world of everyday experience seems rather dim and drab. But for a few people often, and for a fair number occasionally, some of the brightness of visionary experience spills over, as it were, into common seeing, and the everyday universe is transfigured.” (p. 93)

Huxley makes it pretty clear that psychedelic drugs are only one way of activating the visionary mind, and a very temporary and undependable way at that. It seems that an increasing number of people today are looking for a way into the mental netherworld without having to depend on chemicals. Or stated another way (by fellow blogger Kaliptus), drugs can guide and educate us, but they are misused if the only purpose is “to get fucked up.”

The underlying goal, as Huxley puts it, is to “become capable of experiencing consciously something of that which, unconsciously, is always with us.” (p. 106) And it should be noted that, while some people are more inclined towards visionary perception, the potential exists in the psychological make-up of all human beings. “At the antipodes of every mind lay the Other World of preternatural light and preternatural color, of ideal gems and visionary gold.” (pp. 114-115)

There’s still an air of impossibility when discussing this topic in the Western world, partly because, as Huxley points out, “familiarity breeds indifference.” We live in a flashy, distracting world, and what lies outside of physical perception is almost totally omitted from popular education (whether in school or at home). That’s why it’s so exciting to see someone like Moss at a public university. The students in the video seem absolutely enthralled by the class. I’m hoping this points to a coming trend.

LINKS:
4orked.com
4orkology.com
A Limited Forker Girl’s Tines
English 414 at U of M

Psychologist Bernard travels from Great Britain to the Savage Reservation in New Mexico, where he finds a young fellow named John. John is the son of a British woman who was accidentally left in the reservation a few decades ago. John’s mindset is the combined product of indigenous mythologies and now-nonexistent Christianity. During one conversation, John says:

“‘I stood against a rock in the middle of the day, in summer, with my arms out, like Jesus on the Cross.’

‘What on earth for?’ [asked Bernard.]

‘I wanted to know what it was like being crucified. Hanging there in the sun…’

‘But why?’

‘Why? Well…’ He hesitated. ‘Because I felt I ought to. If Jesus could stand it…’

‘It seems a funny way of curing your unhappiness,’ said Bernard. But on second thoughts he decided that there was, after all, some sense in it. Better than taking soma…” (pp. 137-138).

This episode turns out to be useful foreshadowing (forgive me for even using that high school English term) for what happens later in the book. I won’t give that away specifically. The point is that civilization thrives on conformity. Sterilization of mind and body allow a society to operate more efficiently. If an individual dares to stand against the wave, he will not only feel the pain of his struggle; he will also be punished directly by those creating (or riding) the waves. This leads to my theory about The Big Lebowski, which deserves an essay in itself. With that said, I should probably collect my thoughts for a larger work.