As X walked away, the words of Empedocles stuck in their craw: “those who change their bodily condition deem to change their thought.”

X recollected being caught time and again in the throes of physically challenging engagements during which hexis, a somatic disposition acquired through training, had its way with phronesis, or practical wisdom. Moreover, the annals of torture were replete with zealous accounts of mental compliance systematically obtained via stress positions. But the chain of influence could be productively reversed, affording a given abstract configuration—such as a set of shrewdly massaged melodic contours—the capacity to reorganize corporeal inclinations. It was easy to see how the melancholia of The Brown Study could be upgraded into a chronic syndrome, lingering unbidden, seeping into everyday infrastructures, eventually rendering the body pliable to other trajectories.

Bergson and Bachelard, at loggerheads once again, returned to refine this open-ended digression. X thought about…