the yam storehouses of the soul

This blog suggests to some of my teachers and outside observers that I am a capable thinker merely because I have accumulated an extensive collection of quotes and associations between ideas. This blog thus leaves the impression that I am able to churn out academic papers if I so wished. [...] Also, Peirce wrote there no so such thing as an absolute individual, meaning that an individual person is always syncretic with his circle of society. Thus, we may very well discuss something like a persocion. What use that would be, I cannot say. -- soul searching: Kockleman Biosemiosis post

It's possible that people do not write, but -- we might say -- only persocions do.  On my blog I've taken this to an extreme, and almost always post quotes, and sometimes scribblings, rather than essays.  I have a private notebook for that.  (And to be honest the notebook has some problems too but this is an issue to take up separately.)

The quotes on the blog show the trace of some ideas or emotions, but I don't always tag or timestamp them, and if I look again, everything is rather likely to have changed its meaning.  Still, as a collection of inspiring and poignant ideas, it is potentially useful.  If I'm feeling inspired and a bit jigged up, I might search through for a keyword, say, for example "metal".  In this way, I forge (ha ha) a totally appropriate connection between Lucretius and Private Joker -- one that nevertheless would not have occurred to me.

Deleuze and Guattari talk about metalworking, and this is taken up by Tim Ingold in his book Making.   He talks there for example about the "dance of agency" between potter, wheel, and clay or flyer, kite, and air (p. 100).  (He illustrates this with a picture of a triangle.)  This is precisely analogous to and perhaps explicitly derived from D&G's idea of following the materials, thinking from materials, finding "the consciousness or thought of the matter-flow" (Making p. 94, quoting A Thousand Plateaus, Continuum Edn., p. 454).

I mention Ingold because he makes a big deal of the idea of envorganisms in his book on The Perception of the Environment.  But really I mention this only because it may be inspiring at least to consider the idea of following the materials in your writing.  Where are the yams and spiritual storehouses that are relevant to the cultural workings that you're inspired by? 

One other related connection is the work of James Leach, who writes about the meaning of creativity in Papua New Guinnea, which is rather different from the western form.  Not irrelevant to the whole business of yam storehouses or phatic communication...

It must also be pointed out that in this third "relation between relations" the receiver can interpret most anything as a message referring to some code. (ibid.)

This is also something Ingold seems to be into, especially in comparison with, for example, Geertz, who is contrastingly clear on "symbolic communication" and "the interpretation of culture" as opposed to Ingold's emphasis on "meaning making."