The kernel of your question, I think, is whether I’ve ever constructed an action whose etiology was radically compacted — as in, have I ever accomplished any act swiftly and for its own end. As if cocking the gun were actually firing it, or lifting the pen were the completion of the manuscript.

In that case, then yes I have.

I think that the everyday-ness of life contains as much or as little intentionality as thought you give it. I mean, if you think about it. I don’t even know if that there was supposed to be wordplay, or if the possibility of the concept of play can only arise within or at least be preceded by language.

I read an article this morning on The Atlantic.com about computers seeing faces everywhere and it made me realize that there is no rigorous thought given — maybe — to the dialect presented by representation and reality except, maybe, in film/culture/media writing because the actor-character dichotomy presents explicitly (in your face, as it were). And even that dichotomy is collapsing in expected and (for me, at least) dispiriting ways. Cf Kristen Stewart’s damn’d if you do, damn’d if you don’t media engagement anti-strategy.

Without thinking about it, what I’m saying, is that every act is “walking into a store to buy something just for the sake of buying something”. If you don’t reflect on the space between act and intention (or object and representation) then every act is sort of a-intentional and features a compressed (or totally evacuated) act-intention relation. That is the brilliant thing about writing: it’s really the only act that creates a simultaneity between act and intention, thereby stretching out the intentional moment into an indefinite span that allows for understanding or interpretation. It is literally “thinking out loud”, which can be, of course, totally mundane. But more to the point, it’s a really revolutionary act in the face of the everydayness of action vis-a-vis action’s meaning (that is, cleaving open a space between act and intention to allow interpretation to enter).

Of course (big breath) the way the historicity of action, intention, and meaning play out through the waves of time, you could say we’ve already been through this period, and simply acting for the sake of acting (quickly, with finality, avoiding interpretation and intentionality) could be said to be the revolutionary brand of act. Think: “the Decider”.

I suppose I can leave it up to you to decide (ha ha) whether we’re in the former arena or the latter, or in some other predicative third phase in the history of the interpretation of action. I really don’t know. But that is a really great question to ask, and you should really never stop asking it.