The see-saw of Experience & Content

I have undertaken the mammoth task of segregating, categorizing and labeling about 100 odd poems written by my father Dr. Gautam Sinha, so he can later add descriptions to them and send them across to the publishers.

To start with, I read them and re-read them before I spread them out on the floor and read them yet again before I stuck a little post-it stamp on them and scribbled things that seemed appropriate at that moment.

While it is easy to just read them for the sake of reading, it is indeed difficult to engage with the words in the same way the poet would have , while penning them down or handing them over to me for that matter! On the other hand, the disengagement is not so easy, because you know the person, but you don't know the circumstances and the moments that led to the content.

It sure is a see-saw!

I am instantly reminded of an exercise we did, where we took photographs with our mobile phones in a 'non-cognitive' manner for about an hour. Upon returning, we segregated the photographs, found patterns, labelled them and spun stories around what started as a non-thinking and non-conscious activity.

Here, we were exploring EXPERIENCE without CONTENT and it is here that I questioned if CONTENT without EXPERIENCE is any more relevant or appropriate and I think I have my answer today!

I am trying to see patterns in what is the manifestation or CONTENT of 

someone else's EXPERIENCE.

It is worthwhile in this context to put forth one's understanding of the words CONTENT & EXPERIENCE and I would like to share the same with the readers and invite them to add their own bits this dissection of definitions.

Where CONTENT could be 

- experience itself or

- a vehicle towards experience/action or

- a thought or information that gets processed or

- an outcome or 

- an output

Where EXPERIENCE could be

- content itself, so an increment in one allows for revision of the other or

- an independent action that perhaps creates content