Freedom Comes from Thinking

October 01, 2015

Freedom Comes from Thinking

"While my mother and father were kneeling to Jesus and Bacchus
I was left with a couple of simpler gods, Fantasos and Alone also known as Set.
We became friends for life.
Inseparable
we drilled ourselves towards the center of the earth
and flew to the outskirts of the universe
Like bumblebees ignorant about the curved space of Einstein".

Riber Hansson, December 13, 2011.

The very memories explaining to us how a master of Riber Hansson's caliber came about. The inquisitive mind, not even distinguishable from his companions as they roam the infinite black, the white lines creating a flickering light that is theirs, never resting, never tired of exploring new realms.

The inquisitive mind. Life is a cumulative process, as Ian McEwan constantly stresses as quoted by Riber Hansson from today's Dagens Nyheter:

Riber Hansson, À propos Boko Haram, May 14, 2014.

"(There) is a freedom, which is essential and without which the diversity of the values that are squeezing themselves in beneath the umbrella of freedom would never have materialized. Every freedom we own or are struggling to achieve has first been thought out, said and written up, and for that reason the freedom of expression is the cornerstone upon which all the others are resting. The ability to give and to receive information, to reflect, criticism, fantasies based on the full expanse of our intellectual ability is that freedom from which the others are hatched. Freedom has a tendency to grow and evolve - if you let it do so. " (emphasis by LCL)

To which Riber Hansson added his own thoughts:

"I am delighted that he points out a thing that I have tried to bring up a few times, the importance of the possibility of taking in information, which is in my view, forgotten in the debate, but an equally important part of the freedom of expression".

The importance of taking in, listening, learning, never make the silly claim of being the first of one's kind. What it means, is what we have before us. Riber Hansson places the apparent randomness of today's actions within an existential frame, in which the black of ink in the instance above is turning so dark that the knuckles shine towards us on the lives crushed. Any lives. All lives.

The inquisitive roaming child has never ceased to roam in his own poetically inquisitive way. The wind for instance. Could it be the one tamed by the tree? "