Bird on fire, tide at rest: paint spilled in the desert

Don Van Vliet: Heinz, you ever hear a tree laugh? I was out in the desert, and this big old Joshua tree was just cracking up, shaking its needles like it knew a joke I didn’t. The world’s like that tree. It laughs at you the second you try to nail it down.

Heinz von Foerster: Perhaps, Don, the tree was laughing with you. Systems don’t laugh or cry; they hum. Like a chord struck somewhere deep, out of reach. When you hear it, you’re part of it, whether you know it or not. Wait…. You have something there…

[Reaches behind Van Vliet’s ear, pulls out a quarter. Examines it with awe, whereupon it goes up in a flash of light and smoke]

DVV: …

DVV: Sounds like you’re trying to trap me in a spider’s web. I don’t hum, Heinz. I screech. I squawk. I’m the bird flying into the sun, feathers catching fire, no plan for landing. You telling me that’s a system?

DvF: Of course. Even a bird on fire has a path. The flames, the air, the wingbeats — they all shape each other. That’s the system: the dance of what is and what’s becoming. You might call it chaos, but I see a kind of harmony.

DVV: Harmony? Harmony’s a con, man. I told the guys in my band, ‘Play like you’re spilling paint on the floor — messy, alive, no patterns allowed.’ They thought I was crazy. Maybe I was, but it sure wasn’t harmony.

HvF: And yet, it works. Your music pulls itself together even as it falls apart. You might call it a self-organising system. The mess is the pattern, Don. It’s like the waves on the ocean — they don’t need a conductor to crash just right.

DVV: So you’re saying my music’s got tides, huh? But what about when the tide just stops, dead flat? No waves, no wind — just this big, empty silence?

DvF: Silence is part of the system too. It’s the pause that gives the music its shape, the stillness that makes the wave possible. You can’t have a hurricane without a calm eye in the centre.

HVV: The eye of the storm… But storms don’t sit still, Heinz. They keep moving, wrecking everything in their path. You think you can handle that kind of wild?

DvV: Wildness is where systems thrive. A storm doesn’t wreck — it transforms. It’s only wreckage if you’re clinging to the old shape. Let go, and you’ll see the beauty in what it leaves behind.

HVF: So maybe music’s like a storm, tearing up to make room for something new. But tell me this: if the storm’s doing the tearing, who’s doing the listening?

DVV: The storm listens to itself. That’s the secret. Every crash, every howl, every silence — it’s all part of the loop. You don’t just make the music. The music makes you.

HvF: Maybe it does. Maybe it’s like that laughing tree — got a mind of its own, but somehow, it’s got my fingerprints all over it. You ever listen to a tree? Really listen?

Every day, Don. And sometimes, I swear, they’re listening back.

Originally posted at https://www.linkedin.com/posts/antlerboy_don-van-vliet-heinz-you-ever-hear-a-tree-activity-7277236866985201664-QYUp