Haha.. I used to say that to my bike.. :D Thank you for the clarifications Alan.

Thread
 

You used the word “Thread”. I feel that this word, as you use it, is huge. Is there a place where I can get info on this ‘thread’?

You’ve seen the Keris with Petruk, and very fine ‘sungginan’ that I found in a pawn shop; I had dreams about it before I bought it. I totally relate to ‘soul’ in an object. Musical instruments can have a huge load of that. I’ve got a few, and when you pick them up you know in very few minutes whether you have A- an instrument, B- a VERY FINE instrument, and C- something that will have an incredible effect, a thing that can touch the hardest heart and heal the worst pain. I’m lucky to have a few of those, and the ones I’m fortunate enough to be a custodian of told me they were my friends within a few minutes of touching them. And their appearance? They are all beautifully made, perfect in shape, proportion, material, and execution. None of these have any special decoratio; they are fully functional. And yes, I talk to them: “Get in tune, you sob, or I’ll sell you to a collector who will put you on his wall!”

The thread I mentioned is the force of nature that binds all things in creation.

Some people will think of this thread as the Naga, others will think of the thread as God, perhaps neither of these concepts are adequate, they are just pegs to hang a thought on, something to help focus.

Perhaps our minds are too limited to grasp the idea of a natural force that flows through everything in creation, but if we pause for a moment, we empty our mind and think of perhaps a pumpkin, then focus on the stem of the pumpkin, on the stem we will see tiny hairs, focus on one of those hairs and continue that focus until there is nothing but the hair, this might open the door that will permit us to feel the one binding thread that holds the cosmos together.

I use pumpkins, others use something else, I believe a bowl of water is good.

That thread is perhaps beyond understanding, but for some of us, it is not beyond feeling.

In any aspect of art, there is both “knowing“ and “feeling “. and dealing with such things as “Tosan Aji” is clearly a blend of both. Thank you for your reply.

Montino, if i might resort to a somewhat over used pop cliché, Use the Force Luke! ;)

Montino, when I initially used the word "thread", what I said was this:-

" the thread runs through everything in creation"

the idea is that everything in creation is connected.

I was not talking just about keris or other tosan aji.

the wanda or personality of a keris is something that is felt, but that personality is not a part of the classification system that we call tangguh. Tangguh is no more than a rational system of evaluation that we use to classify a keris. That system relies upon appraising certain characteristics of a keris, in accordance with established parameters.

It is an opinion of the applicable classification or group that a keris will fit into. There is an element of feeling in this appraisal, but it is not a spiritual element, it is a physical element, for example, how heavy does it feel? what is the texture of the material? This sort of thing, it is not anything to do with our feelings about whether it makes us feel negative or positive or as if a demon has been set free.

Art is not a part of the equation.