body’s own movements, which leave ‘some aspect of the movement standing
proud’ (McCrone 1999: 158). Why? Because:
the brain was never really designed for contemplating images. Our ability to
imagine and fantasize is something that has to piggyback on a processing
hierarchy designed first and foremost for the business of perception. And
to do perception well, the brain needs a machinery that comes up with a fresh
wave of prediction at least a couple of times a second, or about as fast as we
can make a substantial shift in our conscious point of view... it would be
unnatural for the brain to linger and not move on.
(McCrone 1999: 158)In turn, such work points to the pivotal importance of emotions as the key means
the body has of sorting the non-cognitive realm through a range of different
sensory registers, including the interoceptive (including not only the viscera but
also the skin), the proprioceptive (based on musculo-skeletal investments) and fine
touch which involves the conduct of the whole body and not just the brain.
Note that, depending on the object, there may be different proportions of
musculoskeletal and emotional accompaniment, but both are always present.
The presence of all these signals describes both the object as it looms towards
the organism and part of the reaction of the organism towards the object.
(Damasio 1999: 1 47 )Which brings us to the third source of inspiration – the much greater emphasis
that is being placed on the object. To begin with, the body is objectified as a
composite of biological – cultural ‘instincts’ which enable and in many ways
constitute thought as a result of the development of particular organs. For example,
the development of the hand, with all the possibilities it presents, was an impetus
to the redesign, or re-allocation of the brain’s circuitry so that the hand speaks to
the brain just as much as the brain speaks to the hand (E.R. Wilson 1998).
Then, these organs are closely linked with particular objects (Sudnow 1993).
Organs like the hand become as one with tools they relate to,
The idea of ‘becoming one’ with a [mechanical] back hoe is no more exotic
than the idea of a rider becoming one with a horse or a carpenter becoming
one with a hammer and this phenomenon may itself take its origin from count-
less monkeys who spent countless eons becoming one with tree branches. The
mystical feel comes from the combination of a good mechanical marriage and
something in the nervous system that can make an object external to the body
feel as if it had sprouted from the hand, foot, or (rarely) some other place on
the body where your skin makes contact with it.
(E.R. Wilson 1998: 63)Then again, objects do not just constitute an extension of bodily capacities; they
themselves are a vital element in distributed ecology of thought, so that ‘what used
Still life in nearly present time 59