It appears that meaning arises only at the right velocity.
A story-teller will work out the parts of a story until the parts flow freely and smoothly, with momentum. The goal is to allow the parts to not be perceived separately. If, in the telling, the story is frequently interrupted, in order to scrutinize details, the whole degenerates into parts — the plot remains as a string of facts, but the story is gone.
The steps of a dance have to be practiced individually until they’re second nature, then they have to be practiced together so they flow together as continuous motion. As long as they remain conscious steps to be reproduced, prevent the dance from emerging from a performance. Until then, there is no dance — only steps.
The same is true with music. A child practices a piece of music on the piano, concentrating on more difficult parts, playing it slowly, carefully, note by note, until it can be performed through at the proper tempo. Music played too slowly becomes a sequence of individual sounds.
And of course, this is also how morality works. We begin by following individual rules of conduct until we are habituated to a certain moral state, and then our behavior flows spontaneously from a moral vision, not law-by-law but by heart.
Finally, thoughts: We can learn intellectual movements, different styles of interpreting experience, practice them in reading and understanding, slowing down, combing sentences into words and analyzing each one, then rereading the sentence, the passage, the book rapidly. Eventually the speed of our interpretation matches the speed of life and we can understand more and more of life as it happens, and see our world differently — perhaps not precisely as the author sees it, but certainly by his influence. As we learn this way we gain freedom to take responsibility for reality as we live it.
*
Cook Ting was cutting up an ox for Lord Wen-hui. At every touch of his hand, every heave of his shoulder, every move of his feet, every thrust of his knee — zip! zoop! He slithered the knife along with a zing, and all was in perfect rhythm, as though he were performing the dance of the Mulberry Grove or keeping time to the Ching-shou music.
“Ah, this is marvelous!” said Lord Wen-hui. “Imagine skill reaching such heights!”
Cook Ting laid down his knife and replied, “What I care about is the Way, which goes beyond skill. When I first began cutting up oxen, all I could see was the ox itself. After three years I no longer saw the whole ox. And now — now I go at it by spirit and don’t look with my eyes. Perception and understanding have come to a stop and spirit moves where it wants. I go along with the natural makeup, strike in the big hollows, guide the knife through the big openings, and follow things as they are. So I never touch the smallest ligament or tendon, much less a main joint.
“A good cook changes his knife once a year-because he cuts. A mediocre cook changes his knife once a month-because he hacks. I’ve had this knife of mine for nineteen years and I’ve cut up thousands of oxen with it, and yet the blade is as good as though it had just come from the grindstone. There are spaces between the joints, and the blade of the knife has really no thickness. If you insert what has no thickness into such spaces, then there’s plenty of room — more than enough for the blade to play about it. That’s why after nineteen years the blade of my knife is still as good as when it first came from the grindstone.
“However, whenever I come to a complicated place, I size up the difficulties, tell myself to watch out and be careful, keep my eyes on what I’m doing, work very slowly, and move the knife with the greatest subtlety, until — flop! the whole thing comes apart like a clod of earth crumbling to the ground. I stand there holding the knife and look all around me, completely satisfied and reluctant to move on, and then I wipe off the knife and put it away.”
“Excellent!” said Lord Wen-hui. “I have heard the words of Cook Ting and learned how to care for life!”