The fallen figure - perception after a fall

We live with gravity all our lives, our muscles and bones articulating that balance that keeps us upright and moving forward. Gravity is always there but often only becomes apparent when we trip or fall or drop something. The sudden acceleration of a body or object identifies the force of gravity and its potential. A sudden fall, when a person is unable to regain that lost balance, despite instinctual attempts to grasp something or steady themselves, reveals the human condition in the physical world. So much of our perception, our sense of power and self determination, our respect for others and self-respect is based on the ability to move and articulate ourselves without tripping or falling.

The head carried high and steady, the elevated and protected brain where thinking and seeing are sited. The grace and purpose of movement preserve a sense of grace and purpose in our thinking. When this is not present, for instance in illness, disability or drunkenness, when are bodies are uncoordinated and we are prone to staggers or falls, we sense that thinking is similarly uncoordinated and muddled. The trip or fall of a public figure can be seen as a sign of human frailty or lack of control. Our trust in a person is affected by outward signs of clumsiness. We perhaps start to distrust their thinking or decision making.

Our perception is so based on the upright posture and the human controls over gravity that there is perhaps another view to be gained from the collapsed, the fallen, the unsteady, the precarious. The falling figure becomes a metaphor, signifying the loss of control, a fluid state somewhere between voluntary and involuntary movement, between process and collapse. The interruption and readjustment of perception after a fall has its effect on thinking. In this changed and fluid state, the mind must exist without the anchor of physical stability, the process and orientation must be reinstalled each time from a different starting point.