Sunday, September 9, 2012

Quantum-Mechanical feng shui


The Viennese and later Angeleno psychoanalyst, and longtime smoking-buddy of Sigmund Freud, recalls a patient:

When she was a very little girl, she sneaked from her bedroom into the dining room in the dark, because she wanted to know how the furniture, the table, the chairs, and the lamps behaved  when they were alone, without people around.  She was convinced that the room and the furniture would behave differently  when they thought they were not being observed.
-- Theodor Reik, Listening with the Third Ear (1948)


(Compare the levitating tables in the movie "Take Shelter".)

In the inimitable Betty Boop cartoons, this is exactly what furniture does:  it's alive, and full of rhythm and mischief.

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