Ulay versus the bones of Descartes

meika loofs samorzewski 11 May 2025

Ulay and Descartes hold up the skull of a rabbi saying "I knew Marina well" at a graveside, on an Elizabethan stage © 2023 meika loofs samorzewski

So I write about worlds, worlding, worldmaking, worldbuilding, the world, a world. How do other people use the word?

Ulay is a hard put upon performance artist with a career, or should I say, now, platform, no one is going anywheres these days, which is based in shadowing a successful New York eurotrash dominatrix from the Balkans. Ulay ist sein Künstlername.

Now I cannot stand performance art. It multiplies all my audience awkwardness. So normally I would move on past it, but moments ago on a social media platform, a meme drifted by, attributing to René Descartes the following:

“We do not describe the world we see, we see the world we describe.”

I tried tracking this one down. Doing my own research, it suggests more ancient origins in the form:

“We don’t see things as they are; we see them as we are.”

(via Anaïs Nin quoting, perhaps) Rabbi Shemuel ben Nachmani, in the Talmudic tractate Berakhot (55b.)².

“We do not see things as they are. We see things as we are.”

The Rabbi was talking about dreams. So, it’s like no one said it at all.

Even if Freud would agree, I guess. It’s like no one said… —it but it still drifts by me, and that’s cute I think. Maybe it was some AI production number?

Dreams, we see, worlds we see… —know. If we mix the meme and the Ulay quote we can get Ulay to say he only knows himself. That’s is if we substitute terms.

the/a world = what we describe = ourselves = a world

A performance artist who only know or sees themselves in the audience. “It’s alchemical," Ulay says.

I don’t enjoy that sort of alchemy, but then I have other pots to stir.

Anyway, a lot of political argument substitutes terms in order to act the method. In classical studies this is called rhetoric. Nowadays it is just the mixed metaphors of politics and we do not criticise it… —we just run away. Like what we have been told to do by psychologists when we encounter narcissists. I wonder why so many narcissists are in positions of power that they design to suit themselves?? Suit you sir. Is that why I do not wear a suit?

A lot of philosophy is suspect to many because it plays with word usage deliberately, consciously.

Carefully.

A lot of philosophy tries its hardest to get better than just wordplay and its deconstructions. Wordplay with suspect histories that we can deconstruct via etymologies of usage even when we do not seek to re-frame some poor guy Ulay with a misappropriated meme from Descartes.

But poetry does that stuff too, and if it does it well, and if it can withstand the scrutiny of the stage then we can say, holding Ulay’s bones, or the skull of Descartes.

I knew him well, Horatio.³

And the worlds I world with others, a one or two, among many more, even as I may but know them as a few, and if only but one, then I would not be sad.

Philosophy should do more poetry, at least, we all should do more poetry. For, if we have moral philosophy, we should have ethical poetry which does as much making as some philosophies deconstruct in good faith. An ethical poetry should meta-ethics into shape (or world) how an audience asks why we should of the stage.

All the world’s a stage. ³

First posted at substack.com in October 2023.