Thoughts from Senior Symposium

These are some things I wrote on the back pages of Susan Sontag's "Regarding the Pain of Others" while discussing it last night.

The sublime is just a concept invented by western intellectuals in an attempt to escape their overwhelming edification of themselves.

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Images of violence set people apart. They reaffirm group boundaries as we identify with either the perpetrator or the victim (or as not being a part of the situation at all, as in, that's happening over there). Whereas erotic (not pornographic) and romantic images tend towards and opposite effect of bringing people together, of softening the divides between different groups. Perhaps this points to part of the popularity, and institutional approval, of violent imagery in our society.

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This next one is an almost verbatim quote from a prof:

"Aphorisms are mental laxatives. They're like a piece of chocolate x-lax. They contain some element with which one feels compelled to agree, and another with which one cannot but disagree."

"In 1820, for example, 70% of American workers were in agriculture; today 2% are. If all those workers had remained tilling the land, America would now be a lot poorer." (The Economist. "The Great Jobs Switch". Sept. 29th 2005).

I liked this point for the perspective that it gives to contemporary debates about the merits of outsourcing (I know that I've said I wouldn't use that word in this context, but I've succumbed to the force of popularity). Would the opponents of outsourcing really have us maintain the status quo indefinitely? Would they prefer that we all return to some sort idyllic community of farmers? Though there are certainly some who would answer in the affirmative to the latter question—and we have term for them, "hippies"—I'm quite happy to not be living in an agrarian society, dream as I might about someday owning a vineyard.

morning

Apparently, I wrote that last post today. Blogger clearly does not understand the proper meaning of night and day, of yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Days do not change until I've slept. I'm a little hungover this morning, but I've work to do so back to work I go.

evening

Someone came home crying this evening. I wasn't sure what to do. I do realise it till I heard them break out in sobs in their room. Sometimes, I just want to be alone and cry. Crying alone. And yet, I was tempedt to go and offer a should, or some bourbon.

Anyways, the person I though was crying just came down in her cute underwear and appeared not to have been crying, though I'm a little to drunk to tell from far away, especially without my glasses. We exchanged a few normal words, but I'm pretty sure it was her.

So now I'm outside. Listening to Honig on my ibook and typing this. Enjoting the cool evening air, without a care for my typos.

For the first time, I did lest than I was supposed to the paradox. oh my, was I tipsy. Counting one dollar bills has nevenr been so hard.

Jelly joe is on now so it's time to say goodnight to y'all. it's time to embrace the aching corner of my heart.

I hope you're well.

love ev

On Punctuation

"If you really want to hurt your parents, and you don’t have the nerve to be a homosexual, the least you can do is go into the arts. But do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites, standing for absolutely nothing. All they do is show you’ve been to college." - Kurt Vonnegut

Things to say when you're feeling miffed

"Go shake your ears"
(Maria to Malvolio in Twelfth Night)

To give it a little more ummphh, one might add a contempoarary edge, such as "go shake your fucking ears". Then, at least, it would be undeniably clear that it was meant as an insult, even if the recipient did not understand that you were calling them an ass (donkey).

"Pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo" from one of Catallus' "love poems"

variously translated as:

"Bugger off and get stuffed"

"I'll bugger you and fuck you in the mouth"

"I will assrape you and make you blow me"

Two of these translations are (I think) thanks two a couple of reedies over on a reed journal.

Be warned, the rest of the poem is rather homophobic. I pass it on only because it is in Latin, which, of course, makes it cool in a nerdy sort of way. Next time I will post some of Louise Labé's poetry.

On not working

I really don't feel like working. So instead I am writing this. The small window to my left, open just a crack because it doesn't open any more, lets in a faint cool breeze. The crisp evening air keeps me from nodding off, but the sounds of evening rush hour interrupt my thinking. Thinking hasn't been going too well today, though I don't mean that in an academic sense. I've already accomplished my most important task for the week. My thesis topic is now formulated as a question, "How does art manage to escape the metonymic contingencies of place and time and instead exist as a metaphoric unity?" Remember that this is art as represented in Proust's In Search of Lost Time, specifically in the first two books, Swann's Way and In the Shadow of Young Girls, and in the last book, Time refound (regained). Notice that my project has both expanded and become more specific (though I now have a question, I also have one more book to write about). I fear that this may become the pattern of my thesis. Moments of insight will be followed by flooding questions and uncertainties, and my feeling like I'm surrounded by an abyss of incommensurably expansive jest. Yes, a noun without a place, or an undeclined verb, things don't quite fit together, and yet they do in the reading.

My heart's been heavy today, but I see no reason for it to be so. This is why I said thinking wasn't going so well today. Reason has brought me no solace and I've no time for murky self-reflection. My sorrow hangs heavy in my chest and I've not found a cause to ground it.

In more cheerful news, I've developed rough ideas for a three volume magnum opus, but they shall remain secret until I've completed the first draft, or at least just for now.

A question for thought: Can protest be productive without an alternative in mind?

Afternoon thoughts

It's Sunday afternoon and I've just finished Jboard training. I'm about to head to the gym, but before doing so I thought I'd mention that y'all should really check out Yonderboi, and in particular his debut album "Shallow and Profound". I imagine that it was Jedd who introduced his music to me, probably when I was up in Vancouver in June, but I'd not given the album a thorough listen until yesterday. The title is disarmingly apt. Some tracks waffle along in superficial exchanges of electronic call and answer, creating enjoyable mood music and little else. However Yonderboi is at his best when he's slowed down, finding more complexity in his samples, and allowing himself the time to weave them together and play them off of each other. There are at least two outstanding tracks on the album, maybe three, and many others have the potential to develop with further listening. Really, the most interesting aspect of the music is how it successfully alternates between the shallow and profound, between the superficially entertaining, and the genuinely emotive.

Free Beer

Not here, I mean this is after all an address in the cyber néant, and even if my prose may give it a certain je ne sais quoi sense of presence, I don't see beer oozing out of your keyboards and seeping through your fingers any time soon. At least not because of me. And no, this isn't in these here United States of America, nor even over yonder in Canada. Alas, most all of North America is a tad too puritanical to give away booze. No, you must make your way to Germany, and go see Bayern Munich play, and then cheer agains them till they lose. As reported on the Guardian Online today, Bitburger, a german brewery based in Munich, has promised to give away 10,000 L of beer to the supporters of the first team to beat Bayern. Bayern has won each of their last 15 games, six this season plus the nine ending last season. So who wants to go watch some football in Germany?

On Description (by me and Hamon)

This is an excerpt of some musings I wrote the other night before I set out to read Philippe Hamon's book Du Descriptif (Of the Descriptive)

On Description

First, my own thoughts (as they ramble, babbling through my head);

To describe is to attribute qualities to something, it is to make it (that something) an object of thought and a subject of discourse, and in doing so, to differentiate it from other things—to make it no longer some thing, but a particular thing, distinguished as an individual entity, or, as part of a larger group that is different from other groups . Above all, description is expansive in nature. It enlarges the footprint that a particular entity occupies in our imagination. To a character in a novel, it may bestow certain qualities whilst depriving others, and similarly, when describing a friend, we are attempting to create a picture of that person and communicate it to someone else. The colloquial phrase, “can you give me a picture of it,” hints at part of what is at stake: we are not simply supplying a list of attributes and expecting that to suffice, but instead, we also supply or assume a coherency as all of the attributes are bound by the context of being applied to a particular person or thing (or idea). A good description should bring its object to life, therein making it a subject. To describe then is often already to assume existence, either as an existing object with duration and extension, or as an imagined possibility, that nonetheless has some sort of coherence. We should be careful to not always assume this to be the case. Indeed, many modern novelists have employed descriptions in ways that directly challenge our attemps at coherency [this needs thought in particular needs work]. By "coherency" in the last sentence I mean an a priori belief in things existing as they are in a manner (roughly) synonymous with things as we perceive and understand them. [This las sentence need flushing out to be sensible]

As a particular category in literature, description has traditionally been opposed to narrative (advances in the story). In this view, description is that which does not advance the plot, and was thus sometimes seen as superfluous. Characters’ actions comprised the story, and depictions of their demeanor or physique, or of the place they inhabited, were taken to be exterior to the story. If we limit a story and its importance to what might be conveyed by the simplest of point form fabulas, this could seem almost correct. However, even in the choice of verbs with which the action is represented, there is a process of differentiation. At its basis, description is the creation of difference, without which a particular thing could not be perceived to exist.


Now on to Hamon’s introduction (“Du Descriptif”, 1993):

“The essence of description (“du descriptif”), if there must (“devait”) be one, its effect, would be in one effort: an effort to resist the constraigning linearity of the text,…” p.5

This is surely one of the effects, and perhaps principal uses, of description, and it suggests the traditional notion of the descriptive as separate from the plot driven (actions and events), but it ignores the many ways in which description can appear within a linear progression. For example, take the sentence, “Natas overheard Chris talking on the phone”. Depending on the reader’s familiarity with “Natas”, it may carry very little or a great deal of meaning as the subject of the sentence. If we are partway through the story, then all our acquaintance with Natas thus far has the potential to affect our understanding of this sentence. The reader may also recognize “Natas” as being “Satan” spelled backwards, and then wonder if the author meant to ascribe to Natas some sort of satanic sense of being. Next, we might imagine that the author had simply written “heard” instead of “overheard”, or perhaps “listened to” or “eavesdropped on”. Each of these verbs carries different connotations, and thus differs in the way it describes the action undertaken by Natas. Again, the proper name “Chris” may invoke particular associations, which is just to say that even the choice of a proper name can be an aspect of description. To take an example from literature, the character “Bottom” from Réjean Ducharme’s Dévadé has a name that umistakably conveys two aspects of the character’s life, which are also themes of the novel (Bottom’s name is important both for its being in English in an otherwise mostly French novel written by a francophone Canadian, and for the actual meaning of the English word). We might also substitute different verbs for “talking”—yelling, screaming, whispering, chatting—many come to mind, but the point is that in choosing a word we make a choice amongst many other possibilities, and if we accept Saussure’s idea of diffentially established meaning [cite, syntagmatic v. paradygmatic axis, or Jakobson’s metonymy v. metaphor], which I do, then we will agree that even word choice involves a process of differentiation, which is then mirrored (though not precisely, more to say on this, though it may not be relevant) by the reader while deciphering the text.

evening thoughts (from Ludwig Wittgenstein)

Our language can be seen as an ancient city: a maze of little streets and squares, of old and new houses, and of houses with additions from various periods; and this surrounded by a multitude of new boroughs with straight regular streets and uniform houses. (Philosophical Investigationsp.80 or so I think)

So I knew that one day I would eat these words, "Proust is better than sex". It's now about six months later and I find myself reading Proust again. Who knew that a brief two week fling would turn into what is sure to become a year long obession. Our courtship has only just begun, but already I wish I were...well...not having sex, but drinking, yes drinking would be better. In fact, that's what I'll be doing in about an hour and a half, but for now, I am thinking about my new mate, discovering those parts I adore (the ways in which Marcel's dreams and memories unfold into his reality), and also those that I hate (probably the corpus of "theories of description" with which I'll have to come to terms). Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy literary theory, and it will probably constitute the bulk of my first chapter, but I just don't know how many different times I'm willing to read the same goddamn thing (So much literary theory is just a repackaging of things that have come before, and it seems that few are willing to properly admit and reference their intellectual debts, though perhaps they are simply unaware.)

in the reading

"Not even Shakespeare can write well without a proper subject. It is a vain endeavour for the most skilful hand to cultivate barrenness, or to paint upon vacuity."
—Dr. Johnson - from "Johnson on Shakespeare, p.556 (quoted by Norman Rabkin, "Rabbits, Ducks, and Henry V," Shakespeare Quarterly 28 (1977): 279-96.)

Sometimes the correct course in life is clear, and yet it can be the most difficult path to choose. Though the path may indeed be the goal, it is difficult to understand without a view of the end.

Smiling, with tears in my eyes, and nothing really to say, I sit here wishing I could talk to you. There are many possible referents for that "you". Chances are, if you're reading, it probably includes you (unless you got here by pressing that annoying "next blog" button).

Anyways, as I said, I don't really have much to say, but I think I'll continue rambling on, hoping that something will come up, or at least that I'll feel soothed at the end.

Oh yes, anyone have any good alternatives to capitalism? I've become something of a fan over the last few years, but I still long for a utopic world of rainbows and pots of gold for all.

more on last night

While eating breakfast this morning (soft boiled eggs and toast), I thought of some problems with regard to what I wrote last night. The obvious case: lyrics. I don't tend to listen to lyrics, so they hadn's initially occured to me. It's not that I don't listen to vocals, but I listen to them principally as part of the instrumentation. That's part of why I hate most Pop music. The vocals are usually so far forward that the mix is unbalanced (not to mention the overall suckiness part). But I digress. So clearly I am forced to admit that music does communicate. Now, I have a hairbrained idea for maintaining my own intuitions about music, but it requires an elaboration of the essence of good poetry, and then, seperately, of the relationship between vocals/lyrics and the rest of the mix. As for the former (the poetry part), I actually have some ideas. They'd be intellectually indefensible (in a western sense), as they rest on a phenomenological understanding of poetry and its effects, but they make sense if you're willing to accept an appeal to personal and shared experience. As for the latter part, I've no idea and am entirely out of my league.

I'm going to go have drink.

Cheers!

Love Ev

And it was said again. _—{ t h oughts o n musi c }—_

For what is the world in which live, without all this discourse? A whole lotta something. I've just given myself the gift of music and it is good. A salve for my wounds, it mysteriously sutures my heart without me understanding why. And that is precisely the seat of its power. Between me and music, between music and I—it matters really not, and therein lies the point—there is something special. It's not that music transcends language, as I don't think it right to say that music communicates. No, it's that music manages to be evocative without entering into that subject/object relationship that so defines discourse. Listening to music I know (there's always an exception), it feels as though it were a part of me. At least that would be an easy way of putting it. To be more precise, I think we listen to music to transform—whether that be to diminish, accentuate, or alter—our sense of self. Not in any permanent way, simply for the duration of our listening experience.

In more mundane news, I've partly unpacked and cleaned my room, and as you may have guessed, I've finally hooked up my stereo. Classes are going well. Shakespeare and Pascal (and even Descartes, for whom I've grown rather found) are incredibly interesting. I have a thesis topic and an advisor and I am very excited about both. My topic is "Description and Subjectivity in Proust", or some such exploration of Proust and subjectivity. I am as excited to have picked Proust as I am to have relinquished the chains of the French New Novel. That might have been a disaster as I'm not sure I could really have put up with much more of their discombobulated prose.

I hope all is well in your worlds far and near. I expect these lines are the begining of a more frequent presence here.

Ev