It is still necessary: G. Deleuze and F. Guattari, What Is Philosophy? New York, 1994. p.213.

Inside the Skull-House: In May 1997, I wrote a friend that I was working on a project titled "Dancing  With the Bones: An Osteopoetics of the Ceremonial, Initiatory. Ritualistic, and Practical Use of Skeletal Remains Through the Ages." By winter, this had evolved into "Inside the Skull-House," taking its name from the "skull-houses" discussed by Nigel Barley in "The Dowayo Dance of Death." (In, S.C. Humphreys and H. King, Editors, Mortality and Immortality: The Anthropology and Archaeology of Death. London, 1982. pp.149-59).

a journey: "One must therefore conceive of a philosophy that would no longer be founded on the classification and ordering of concepts and disciplines, but that would set out an epistemology of journeys, forging new relations between man and the world: ''The landscape contains pits, faults, folds, plains, valleys, wells, and chimneys, solids like the earth and fluids like the sea. The metaphor is geophysical here: it could be mathematical. In any case, the model is complex. Here and there, locally, I identify fractures or discontinuities, elsewhere, on the contrary, relations and bridges.'"   J.V.Harari & D.F.Bell, "Introduction Journal à plusieurs voies. In, J.V. Harari and D.F. Bell, Hermes, Literature, Science, Philosophy: Michel Serres. Baltimore, 1982. p.xxii; M. Serres, La Naissance de le physique. Paris, 1977.p.200.

epic: "Once epic is understood properly, as an innovative synthesis of older and newer genres rather than as a timeless genre, then it is easy to understand why the greatest failures in the history of attempts to write epic have been the poems that were the purest pastiches of past epics, with the least admixture from other genres." M. Lind, "On Epic." In, R. McDowell, Editor, Poetry After Modernism. Brownsville, OR., 1988. p.324.

Brain: "The human brain is made up of many parts. Each has a specific function: to turn sounds into speech; to process colour; to register fear; to recognize a face or distinguish a fish from a fruit. But this is no static collection of components: each brain is unique, ever-changing and exquisitely sensitive to its environment. Its modules are interdependent and interactive and their functions are not rigidly fixed: sometimes one bit will take over the job of another, or fail owing to some genetic or

environmental hiccup, to work at all. Brain activity is controlled by currents and chemicals and mysterious oscillations; it may even be subject to quantum effects that distort time. The whole is bound together in a dynamic system that does millions of different things in parallel. It is probably so complex that it will never succeed in contemplating itself. Yet it never ceases to try." R. Carter, Mapping the Mind. Berkeley, CA., 1998. p.10.

hero(ine): An accumulating body of research suggests that differences in male and female brains do exist. The roots of some of these differences may go as far back as when the human brain was first developing, a time when women and men performed tasks referenced to physical strength and reproductive/nurturing/foraging abilities.
The brain of a modern female seems to process information more holistically than that of a male. For example, in a test that asked subjects to read a list of nonsense words and determine if they rhyme, men and women scored about equal; however, brain scans showed that the women used both the right and left sides of their brains, while the men only used their left side. But the invention of sophisticated imaging technologies is new, and scientists are first learning how to compare and interpret results, while interpretation itself is always somewhat psycho-politically skewed. In contemporary societies, where many female and male roles are changing, exchanging, or merging, will the way their respective brains function change again?

Because it is hackneyed, the hero/heroine approach is dangerous. Hundreds of books have been written on the subject in just the last decade. This alone makes the myth worth risking apart; then re-membering, even while balancing on the edge of boredom. A long meditation, broken by links.

elegant achievement: "Some observers may fear that by pinning down its physical structure something as precious and dignified as the human brain may be downgraded or vanish entirely. But explaining the origins and workings of the mind in biological tissue will not do away with the mind, and the awe we have for it can be extended to the amazing microstructure of the organism and to the immensely complex functions that allow such a microstructure to generate the mind. By understanding the mind at a deeper level, we will see it as nature's most complex set of biological phenomena rather than as a mystery with an unknown nature. The mind will survive explanation, just as a rose's perfume, its molecular structure deduced, will still smell as sweet. A.R. Damasio, "How the Brain Creates the Mind." Scientific American. December 1999. p.117.

unravel: "It should be clear, then, that the secrets of the neural basis of mind cannot be discovered by unraveling all the mysteries of one single neuron, regardless of how typical that neuron may be; or be unraveling all the intricate patterns of local activity in a typical neuron circuit. To a first approximation, the elementary secrets of mind reside with the interaction of firing patterns generated by many neuron circuits, locally and globally, moment by moment, within the brain of a living organism." A.R. Damasio, Descartes' Error. New York, 1994. p.259.

hard problem: "It is widely agreed that experience arises from a physical basis, but we have no good explanation of why and how it so arises. Why should physical processing give rise to a rich inner life at all? It seems objectively unreasonable that it should, and yet it does. If any problem qualifies as the problem of consciousness, it is this one." D.J. Chalmers, "Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness." In, J. Shear, Editor, Explaining Consciousness--The 'Hard Problem'. Cambridge, MA., 1997. p.11

consciousness: "In both art and science now, the matter of consciousness is high on the agenda. Science is trying hard to explain consciousness, with distinctly limited success. It seems to pose the most intractable of problems. For the artist, consciousness is more to be explored than to be explained, more to be transformed than understood, more to be re-framed than reported." R. Ascott, "The Shamantic Web: Art and Mind in Emergence."

metaphor: "Speaking metaphorically himself, (W.H.) Leatherdale argues that science needs a nonliteral dimension, that a literal interpretation of the terms and concepts of scientific theories impoverishes and disempowers them...'Such an interpretation of theories would threaten to make science die of clinical antisepsis. For science needs the inoculation of ambiguity and the semantic haze that surrounds the neutral analogy of  a model or the unexplored resources of a metaphor if it is to marshal its resources for survival and growth. Too doctrinaire an exiomatization, or literal reconstruction, even supposing this were possible in any neutral untheoretically-infected way, might free science from the infection of error due to uncritical reliance on a model or metaphor, but it would kill it stone dead in the process. .'" -J. J. Bono, "Science, Discourse, and Literature: The Role/Rule of Metaphor in Science." In, S. Peterfreund, Editor, Literature and Science. Boston, 1990. pp.61-7; W.H. Leatherdale, The Role of Analogy, Model and Metaphor in Science. Amsterdam, 1974. 

"When you start to study the brain and body scientifically, you inevitably wind up using metaphors. Metaphors for the mind, as you say, have evolved over time -- from machines to switchboards to computers. There's no avoiding metaphor in science. In our lab, we use the Neural Circuitry metaphor ubiquitous throughout neuroscience. If you're studying neural computation, that metaphor is necessary. In the day to day research on the details of neural computation, the biological brain moves into the background while the Neural Circuitry introduced by the metaphor is what one works with. But no matter how ubiquitous a metaphor may be, it is important to keep track of what it hides and what it introduces. If you don't, the body does disappear. We're careful about our metaphors, as most scientists should be." G. Lakeoff, "Philosophy in the Flesh: A Talk with George Lakoff." http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/lakoff/lakoff_p1.html

mythology: "In modern science a 'fact' is perceivable because of a background of myth. Each phase of the moon would have a name and a story associated with it, as would each animal. Through myth a cumulative body of knowledge would be passed on, and the means for passing it on would be a story, an engraving on a bone, or a painting on the wall of a cave. The story or the painting would serve to connect the part with the whole, the event with the myth, the quotidian with the sacred." W.I. Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take To Light. New York, 1981. pp.101-2.

"Mythology, in the original sense of the word, is language--the Greek word mythos means to talk, to speak words, to tell something. And yet, mythos is also related etymologically to mute, dumb, and mum, as if the word were telling us that what is not being said is equally as important as what is. This relationship between what is said and what is not is the key to our understanding why language is perhaps our most fundamental form of mythology." J. Anderson, "Unknown Gods: The Mythology of Language." Mythosphere. Vol. 2. No. 1.

etymology: "Etymology is not primarily an intellectual occupation or pastime. (Jean) Piaget refers to an 'etymological instinct' in children. Max Müller, the nineteenth-century philologist, once remarked that 'there is in the human mind a craving after etymology, a wish to find out, by fair means or foul, why such a thing should be called by such a name.'" R. Kugelmann, "Etymology as a Psychological Operation." Dragonflies. Fall 1978. p.45; M. Müller, Lectures on the Science of Language, 2nd Series. New York, 1867. p.548.

hierology: "the sacred is not a stage in the history of consciousness, it is a structural element of that consciousness. In the most archaic phases of culture, to live as a human being was in itself a religious act, since eating, sexual activity, and labor all had a sacramental value. Experience of the sacred is inherent in (the human) mode of being in the world." M. Eliade, Ordeal By Labyrinth. Chicago., IL.,1982. pp153-4. 

electracy:  "Electracy is a name for the digital apparatus that is emerging within/out of literacy, as literacy emerged out of orality. An apparatus is a matrix of interdependent forces/entities/conditions: technology, institutional formations, individual identity formations. The process of passing from one apparatus to another is historical, particular, specific to the conditions of a given period and place. So the sheer introduction of a technology by itself does not determine any particular outcome (viz. the different histories of writing in the Greco-Roman vs. the Arab-Muslim worlds). Also there is a long period of transition, of adaptation and accommodation, in the paradigm shift, with many hybrids intermediate embodiments. Tragedy, for example, is still partly oral (manifesting features of ritual), but with literate additions--the parts are scripted; one actor at first, then more, is/are separated out from the ritual chorus and giving scripted parts to speak.  To get to the web, then, it is easy in the above context to see that it is transitional, manifesting some literate features (the home PAGE, the table and list as tags for controlling layout--both being fundamentally literate devices), and some electrate features (nonlinear = digital linking), picture and other graphic features, moving towards new media, streaming video, and the like. The web is in flux and is clearly a transitional medium with no established form." Gregory Ulmer, Invent-L@lists.UFL.edu. March 07, 2000

singular experiences: "The further one goes, the more private, the more singular an experience becomes, and the thing one is making is, finally, the necessary, irrepressible , and nearly as possible, definitive utterance of this singularity...Therein lies the enormous aid the work of art brings to the life of the one who must make it..." This, from R.M. Rilke, I read as opposed to Franz Kafka's apparent feeling that "the procedure is to absorb the artistic content only to the extent it can expunge the personal from its form of expression; the more impersonal it can become, the more artistic it can be." R.M.Rilke, Letters on Cézanne. New York, 1985. p.4; I. Buchanan, Deleuzism. Durham, NC., 2000. p.102. With both these viewpoints in mind, it seems to me that art incites a dialogue between the personal and impersonal, between the unique and archetypal, between all that I am and who I am not. And that this conversation, this conversion, serves to balance, and to throw into disarray, every work that aspires to be art.   

topography: "Although there is one single unique physical reality to the geographical organization of the earth, neuroanatomy must represent a variable physical reality that differs from individual to individual. Thus, human brain map atlases of structure and function require a representation that accounts for variance among individuals. Further, neuroscientists have yet to agree on a standard reference system and nomenclature to define brain location. This again differs from geographical maps, where the conventions of longitude, latitude, and altitude represent a universal standard." J.C. Mazziotta, et al. "Atlases of the Human Brain." In, S.H. Koslow and M.F. Huerta, Editors, Neuroinfomatics. Mahwah, NJ., 1997. p.255.

first person: Throughout this project, the interjection of an "I" will haunt me. The alternative would be a brain, a hero, that lives under glass, detached from a body, empty of personality, a vacuous mind that can only process facts, the experiment of a "mad scientist." While this hero assumes an ego, one responsible for its actions, reactions, interactions. To my mind, responsibility is the main point of the journey: it marks the person and tattoos the soul.   

Each segment: "I imagine that you have a whole series of nested possibilities, with one fractionating out of another. Ultimately, the kinds of choices one makes reveal something about the nature of one's self, because choices all flow ultimately out of subsurface constructs. The alternative to my model would be one in which well-demarcated, isolated modular units of representation are scanned, searched, and selected among by a conscious self. This model confronts you with the different problem of trying to unify across different contents, and explaining how a conscious self motivates choice among competing outcomes. Actually, I think a good deal of current work argues for decisions being made prior to conscious awareness." J. Brown, "At The Intersection of Knowledge and Values: Fragments of a Dialogue in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, August 1990. In, A. Harrington, Editor, So Human a Brain: Knowledge and Values in the Neurosciences. Boston, MA., 1992. p.261.

soul: "This is not a substantial view, an immortal substance separate from a mortal substance, but a functional one. Soul refers to an interpreting, integrating, adapting activity necessary for meaning within each individual and for the species as a whole."  J.B. Ashbrook, "Making Sense of Soul and Sabbath." Zygon 27 (1) March 1992. pp.45-6.

log-book: "The log was originally a speed-measuring device for ship at sea (with a a thin quadrant of wood connected to a line that was reeled out). Whenever the vessel's speed was measured, each log of the watch was recorded in a journal kept for that purpose. Gradually, this journal became known as the 'log book,' and was also used to record the general proceedings of shipboard life and navigational matters....
"Users of computer networks must usually 'log themselves in' before they can operate the system." J.D. Jeans, Ship to Shore. Santa Barbara, CA., 1993. p.194.

"Peggy Kamuf explored the etymology of the word 'book', making reference to the "beech" tree (boc), to demonstrate that the idea of the book is rooted in its construction—in the makings of its material support. (Jacques) Derrida seconded this by referring to the fact that this occurs in the Latin liber and the Greek byblos—all making reference to paper, the bark, or the tree. To further this, Derrida went on to state that the make-up of a book is not exclusively natural, that the book is a binding of natural and unnatural elements, '...natural wood, the tree, on which some unnatural, artificial, technical cultural inscriptions are invented and put.' Continuing on the notion of the book Derrida introduced the term 'volume' into the discussion to relate how the book is a totality. Earlier in the conversation there had been mention of 'The Book' as a single volume containing all texts and a concern that the book, as a formal object, would collapse under the sheer mass of texts that have been, are being, and will be created. At an operational level 'The Book', its collated strata does not require a bind between natural and unnatural elements. The tree can be a metaphor for the raw source, the potential for any functional supporting apparatus. The bind is between apparatus and appliance—between cover, binding, pages (in a very liberal sense), and writings. In terms of the web, as book, as the deposition and delivery machine for inscription, this signals Derrida's view of electronic writing." T. Memmont, "CD For Derrida: A Book/Ends Report." (From Talan Memmont's notes on The Book/Ends Conference at SUNY at Buffalo, Y 2000.)

images: "Images reign in a wide swath of science. Most scientists, like most of the rest of us, understand concepts and structures more quickly and thoroughly when they can be visualized; after all, the brain evolved to deal with images rather than abstractions. Some scientific problems cannot even be solved without images. Now digitization and other transformations in image-making technologies are revolutionizing certain sciences and slyly inserting the issues that dog more commonplace photography." V. Goldberg, "Even Scientific Images Have Trouble Telling the Truth." The New York Times (on-line edition). 21 October 2001.

animated: Admittedly crude GIF animations, jumpy awkward motion, adding some surprise, pointing toward a wedding of word and image, logos and eros, processed in respective areas of the brain. To say this project is language heavy, the images display a disprockted humor. Fumbling creations of a new genre. The hero(ine)'s further mind.

paratext: "This fringe, in effect...constitutes, between the text and what lies outside it, a zone not just of transition, but of transaction; the privileged site of a pragmatics and a strategy, of an action on the public in the service...of a better reception of the text and a more pertinent reading." -G. Genette, "Introduction to the Paratext." New Literary History No.2, Spring 1991.

In its quest: Along the way, I began to suspect that behind the biology it may be that the brain turns out to be a spiritual machine caught in midst of its evolution. I don't mean religious. This is not about established belief-systems, but profundities. What makes me suspect this is that for as long as Brain has been self-conscious, as long as we've had a mind it's been fascinated by what's beyond its spectrum of awareness. It's as if the human brain were designed for this, or it emerged from a necessity that is particularly human. The abiding philosophy of this project is: What makes us human is the unique capacity to question what makes us human. 

a larger scale: "'To see on a large scale, to be in full possession of a multiple, and sometimes connected intellection,' means to understand that the foundation of knowledge presupposes neither one philosophical discourse nor one scientific discourse, but only regional epistemologies. Multiplication, regionalization, localization--to see on a large scale this means to attempt to travel through as much space as possible, as one does at sea when one goes from island to island searching for "Northwest passages' between different spaces." J.V. Harari and D.F. Bell, "Introduction, Journal à plusieurs voies." In, M. Serres, Hermes: Literature, Science, Philosophy. Baltimore, MD., 1982. P.xiv.

linking acts: "Linking acts and footsteps, opening meanings and directions, these words operate in the name of an emptying-out and wearing-away of their primary role. They become liberated spaces that can be occupied. A rich indetermination gives them, by means of a semantic rarefaction, the function of articulating a second, poetic geography on top of the geography of the literal, forbidden or permitted meaning. They insinuate other routes into the functionalist and historical order of movement." M. de Certeau, "Walking in the City." In, The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley, CA., 1984. p.105.

conjuring a mind: "I think we who study literature or art or philosophy or history are no longer studying just the various texts or techniques in our disciplines. I think we are now...studying how the human mind works when we are doing literature or art or philosophy or history. What is art? also asks, What is mind? When we raise these questions, we humanists are in much the same position as the neuroscientists. For them, too, the ultimate goal is the discovery of mind--What is it? How does it work?" N. N. Holland, "Neurosciences and Arts." PsyArt. http://www.clas.ufl.edu/ipsa/journal/index.htm#contents