Style as a phenomenon in time and space

[Gruto]

I don't understand the need to explain something that does not address the intellect. Has anyone explained love or talent definitively and convincingly?

Surrender to it, rather than trying to understand it. It will reveal itself to you this way. Give in to it, when you see it, instead of analyzing it. Style is synthesis - the parts have no meaning of their own. "Fall in Style".

Mystifying style is a fetish, a move that doens't serve anybody exept for the one who mystifies it. It stops dialogue, it stops the spread of knowledge, it stops style.

If we shall bring style any further, we will have to leave the religious speak behind us.

[Costi]

There is no religion in Style - on the contrary, the attempt to put it into patterns and rules and doctrine is a dogmatic process.
Style is a matter of faith, not religion: faith in oneself, faith in beauty, in harmony, in one's instincts for them.
The fetish consists of turning the objects, the instruments of Style (clothes, gentile manners etc.) into idols and venerating them instead of looking for the source.
If we are to find Style within ourselves, to bring it to light, we need to free ourselves from religious dogmatism (what Style is) and fetishism (we need this and that in order to manifest Style) and have faith in our capacity to manifest Style in a unique way. Style is subjective, it happens within, in a personal manner - it is not an objective reality that we can take from the outside and use it. Style must be lived. But we can talk all we like about the infinite MANIFESTATIONS of Style, without confusing them with Style itself, so we can come closer to understanding how it works.
The truth about the nature of Style does not stop dialogue, it establishes the right premises for it; does not stop the spread of knowledge - only the spread of false ideas; does not stop the spread of Style - on the contrary, stops our drifting away further from the "style" we search outside of us.

[Gruto]

If we are to find Style within ourselves

You will not find style in yourself. You will find a disposition, a will, a drive. Style is an external phonomenon. Remember Henrik Ibsen's Peer Gynt?

"Why, you old soothsayer-humbug!
no Kaiser are you; you are nought but an onion.
I'm going to peel you now, my good Peer!
You won't escape either by begging or howling.

(Takes an onion and pulls off layer after layer.)

There lies the outermost layer, all torn;
that's the shipwrecked man on the jolly-boat's keel.
Here's the passenger layer, scanty and thin;-
and yet in its taste there's a tang of Peer Gynt.
Next underneath is the gold-digger ego;
the juice is all gone-if it ever had any.
This coarse-grained layer with the hardened skin
is the peltry-hunter by Hudson's Bay.
The next one looks like a crown;-oh, thanks!
we'll throw it away without more ado.
Here's the archaeologist, short but sturdy;
and here is the Prophet, juicy and fresh.
He stinks, as the Scripture has it, of lies,
enough to bring the water to an honest man's eyes.
This layer that rolls itself softly together
is the gentleman, living in ease and good cheer.
The next one seems sick. There are black streaks upon it;-
black symbolises both parsons and niggers.

(Pulls off several layers at once.)

What an enormous number of swathings!
Isn't the kernel soon coming to light?

(Pulls the whole onion to pieces.)

I'm blest if it is! To the innermost centre,
it's nothing but swathings - each smaller and smaller.-
Nature is witty!"

[Costi]

But what keeps these layers together? Why don't they grow or exist separately? How do they relate to each other? From the innermost to the outermost layer, each is necessary to all others. None of them can exist without the previous or the next layer. This relationship is not external to the onion - it is inherent to it.
Style is a synergetic quality, it is the relationship between the layers, not one of them or an imaginary "kernel". It is therefore intrinsic - that's what I mean when I write that we need to find Style WITHIN.