--I know that this is a little late, but I do not expect to be graded on it. I suppose that this is the semi metaphysical aspect of my paper…it does not matter if it’s missing or not. The reason I choose—possibly, not immediately consciously when composing my poem—to write:
Or remember a song sung
In memory of song sung
Along the Nile
Through the coasts, and up Mark Twain’s Missipi…
Were my soul still swoons in green patterns, and falling raindrops,
were my father hitched the highway
with a promosing young thumb
headed west for the first time
eyes on that foliage littered road, misted over perfectly
Like the twang of a rabid Banjo.
Was that poetry, like Joyce’s riverun is everywhere, and a return to the cusp of all truths in a platonic plane. I wonder if this why all humanity like Melvelle says at the beginning of Moby Dick is driven to the water…is it that fury, and sublime power the ocean holds, or is it when it rains we feel the power of the ages soaking are clothes, and our souls. At the end of the dead by Joyce he say’s something along the lines of “snow fell upon all the living and the dead”. It is at this moment realization the protagonist realizes the power of all the event that proceeding a single moment of utter pain.
These are just some thought………..
Saturday, May 2, 2009
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Last Blog
everyone's doing it, and its a nice gesture I suppose. well see ya.
Remember meeeee!!!!!!!
Remember meeeee!!!!!!!
Thank You
I just wanted to give my thanks to kevin, and zack of the saving bells for the information that helped me write my paper, Also i thought i would give a cut of my paper that was intreasting, and relatevly less adressed than past subjects. also if you like reggae music this will be cool.
Mythic context (as I have defined as ever changing) is extremely relevant to this notion of situational representation. My poem in its totality has closure, and an explicit ending, but this is just because much of the elements in this poem are from the literate tradition. The songs that contain the epithets themselves are as Ong quoting Horace states, “[an] epic poet [that] ‘hastens into the action and precipitates the hearer into the middle of things (139)’”. This is quite an adequate explanation of why when someone looks at the lyrics of songs, versus when they are performed, the performed song seems to make more sense, even though they do not contain a lengthy back story. It is also an explanation of how Oral Poems and reggae songs such as this, invoke empathy in the listener. For example, the song Johnny Too Bad by The Slickers (the first song that is sung in my poem) seemingly has benign and irreverent jargon for lyrics to a reader. Yet when it is performed orally in verse, the sound jumps off the page, and invokes emotions that mean numerous amounts of things in Jamaican mythic context. The author of the book Cut ‘N’ Mix, a chronological study of the progression of culture in Caribbean music makes this point about Jamaican music:
“African, Afro-American and Caribbean music is based on quite different principles from European classical tradition. The collective voice is given precedence over the individual voice of the artist or the composer. The rhythm and the percussion play a much more central role. In the end, there is a link in these non-European music’s with public life, with speech with the textures and the grain of the living human voice (p.11)”
The author of this book also gives more information into how this music is steeped in the oral tradition. Paraphrasing him he makes the point that this term “versioning” is one of the most important terms that can be assigned to reggae music and its subsequent paradigm shifts. What it means is constantly rearranging songs in new formats to represent new contextual moments. For example: if a politician was shot, an older reggae song might be versioned to add another element to the song to keep up with the contemporaneity. In terms of relevance in a broad perspective, African Caribbean music has had some of the biggest impact in returning western culture to orality.
Mythic context (as I have defined as ever changing) is extremely relevant to this notion of situational representation. My poem in its totality has closure, and an explicit ending, but this is just because much of the elements in this poem are from the literate tradition. The songs that contain the epithets themselves are as Ong quoting Horace states, “[an] epic poet [that] ‘hastens into the action and precipitates the hearer into the middle of things (139)’”. This is quite an adequate explanation of why when someone looks at the lyrics of songs, versus when they are performed, the performed song seems to make more sense, even though they do not contain a lengthy back story. It is also an explanation of how Oral Poems and reggae songs such as this, invoke empathy in the listener. For example, the song Johnny Too Bad by The Slickers (the first song that is sung in my poem) seemingly has benign and irreverent jargon for lyrics to a reader. Yet when it is performed orally in verse, the sound jumps off the page, and invokes emotions that mean numerous amounts of things in Jamaican mythic context. The author of the book Cut ‘N’ Mix, a chronological study of the progression of culture in Caribbean music makes this point about Jamaican music:
“African, Afro-American and Caribbean music is based on quite different principles from European classical tradition. The collective voice is given precedence over the individual voice of the artist or the composer. The rhythm and the percussion play a much more central role. In the end, there is a link in these non-European music’s with public life, with speech with the textures and the grain of the living human voice (p.11)”
The author of this book also gives more information into how this music is steeped in the oral tradition. Paraphrasing him he makes the point that this term “versioning” is one of the most important terms that can be assigned to reggae music and its subsequent paradigm shifts. What it means is constantly rearranging songs in new formats to represent new contextual moments. For example: if a politician was shot, an older reggae song might be versioned to add another element to the song to keep up with the contemporaneity. In terms of relevance in a broad perspective, African Caribbean music has had some of the biggest impact in returning western culture to orality.
My paper: semi edited.
Oral Traditions Term paper
Dr. Sexson
John Nay
What shall become of time,
lapping back and forth?
To begin, this essay is neither conclusive, nor has a real beginning in a linear academic sense; but is a true gestation of what I have learned, or perhaps remembered, in the course of a semester, and the breadth of my entire waking life. This is why epistemological understanding and education for me is about involving oneself in the embodiment of the material physically. Perhaps this is why I wrote a poem for my oral performance, and still perhaps why I use the nine muses as a mnemonic tool to remember things throughout my life.
And…In order for me to accomplish this feat—“a true gestation of what I have learned”, if at all possible,—I will explicate my oral performance in this essay; in a manner that demonstrates poetry’s power to veer through time—in and out the of human consciousness—in the oral world, the literate world, and the shaping of the prevailing mythic world that continues to construct a collective cultural consciousness. And In short, demonstrate life as an object, captured perfectly in remembrance of song sung, or rather songs to sing…in the fury of poetry through the ages.
Myth is perhaps the underlying subject matter of this essay. For it is not something that has ceased to exist—rather it is adaptive to a changing world—and the power it evokes (even in contemporary life) is not something to be taken lightly. For myth is an entity that is neither visible, nor tangible, but merely unconsciously lived in a removed sense. If one were to analyze cultural values in any part of the world, it would become apparent that they are mythic fulfillments, and not underlying truths, other than the truth that a particular culture deems them underlying truths. In a profoundly enlightening novel on this subject matter titled Ishmael, the protagonist (who is a telepathic guerilla) in a Socratic dialogue asks his pupil, “if he thought the Greeks were livid in a world constructed out of myth”. When the student answers no, the discussion continues in a new plane of understanding. Like I have said, Myth in its contemporary form is not tangible, nor was it tangible to any persons living through out it.
Sean Kane in his book, Wisdom Of The Mythtellers, starts a discussion that reflects some of these points I have made. In his study he distinguishes between three distinct eras that he will expand upon, “they are the Paleolithic, the Mesolithic, and the Neolithic—that is, Early Middle and Late Stone Age. It is from these different kinds of earth relatedness that we will take our stories (p.16)”. Perhaps, this quote does not immediately seem self evident on its relevance to the subject of poetry, or mythic fulfillment—but it is. The mythtellers of these eras (as a contemporary would perceive them) were poets in a preliterate sense, and this “earth relatedness” is what I want to address to expand my subject matter. A bond, and a relationship to the earth is something that is unquestionably true in any human endeavor—yet, isolation and deprivation from the world as it naturally exists is becoming a dominant worldview. And in the minds of scholars like Walter J Ong—the advent of writing progressed this isolation of the human life world into abstract forms such as the novel, and modern western world perspective.
Kevin Luby, in his paper The Memory, Imagination, and Soul of Mythtelling gives insight into the subject matter that has exponentially expanded my perspective on the subject. In his essay he writes:
“The myths of oral storytellers create the dialogue with the earth that taps into its available knowledge. As Sean Kane states in his book, human tradition dictates myth thus allowing them to be apart of the conversation. The earth learns of humans just as humans learn of the earth, through the mythic conversation.”
This is an incredible comment if one is really to reflect upon it. If this is in fact true, than humanity with the advent, and prevalence of agriculture, and increased individualism during the Neolithic era, consciously pitted itself against the earth by creating a sense of personal domain and property—in a world that was once abundant, and harmonious in its resources to all earth’s creatures. This is perhaps why Sean Kane explains that when studying past myth, we are jaded, for we have no real context in fully understanding ancient perspective. Sean Kane makes further assessment on this subject when addressing a myth such as Demeter and Persephone, which has been dismembered by modern interpretation. In the Wisdom Of The Mythtellers he states, “The example of the textbook Demeter demonstrates a myth held in suspended animation in two individual contexts: an ancient context involving a transfer of power from plants to kings, and a modern context involving a transfer of power from storyteller to author(P.231)”.
The context which I attempted to provide in my poem is I hope somewhat reflective of this statement, on a smaller scale of course. For I know that these former statements in my paper were largely political, and this was not really my aim for my poem. Yet it doesn’t matter, for no matter how much things are avoided, poems are mythic invocations of time present, and time past. And the purpose of verse such as this, “We are certainly not who we were/ When we left cracking snow this morning,/ And we are never who we are/when we arrived at crimson dusk;/What will we remember at the beginning, middle, and ending/if anything at all…”,is to invoke a context that is relevant to the class in its momentary reference to snow, its larger reference to memory as primary subject matter, but is also an attempt to leave this poem ambiguous enough to draw a larger body of input from any audience. Another angle I approached to express a sediment of context was to draw soley on personal expression, “Were my soul still swoons in green patterns, and falling raindrops,/were my father hitched the highway/with a promising young thumb”. In this line of verse, I have added myself as subject matter; for everything is relevant to the context of this poem that is attempting blend orality and literacy in a context that is remembrance of this class, in song sung of an ever-changing myth.
The context of the poem, and the verses I just spoke of was primarily in the literate tradition, and as I said in somewhat different words, my goal for this poem was a marriage, and an alignment between orality and literacy. So, what I choose to do to represent a sense of oral tradition in this class was to reinvent popular reggae songs with everyone’s class epithet. Walter J. Ong, in his book Orality and Literacy, has systematically demonstrated the power of epithets in oral verse. In the chapter, Some Psychodynamics Of Orality, he demonstrates how epithets are tools to increase memory in an oral culture. Literary cultures, as we know, find this redundant, and prefer the arsenal of a dictionary rather than these clichés (P.38). But in terms of creating oral epics—which I contend many songs are, especially African Diaspora music,—the epithet and situational scenarios play a particularly important role. Ong states that:
“Oral cultures tend to use concepts in situational, operational frames of reference that are minimally abstract in the sense that they remain close to the human lifeworld…[for example]…the epithet amymon applied by homer to Aegisthus: the epithet means not ‘blameless’ a tidy abstraction with which literates have translated the term, but ‘beautiful-in-the-way-a-warrior-ready-to-fight-is-beautiful (49)’”.
This situational stream of thought that is prevalent in oral cultures is not only representative of every changing context; it is also representative of the interiority of sound.
Ong makes it particularly clear that sound is itself “exists only when it is going out of existence (70)”. This is why, “In a primarily oral culture, where the world has its existence only in sound…the phenomenology of sound enters deeply into human beings’ feel for existence, as processed by the spoken word (72)”. So by creating songs that mimicked these theory’s that Ong has presented, I hopefully have created a poem that unifies the oral world, and the literate world.
Mythic context (as I have defined as ever changing) is extremely relevant to this notion of situational representation. My poem in its totality has closure, and an explicit ending, but this is just because much of the elements in this poem are from the literate tradition. The songs that contain the epithets themselves are as Ong quoting Horace states, “[an] epic poet [that] ‘hastens into the action and precipitates the hearer into the middle of things (139)’”. This is quite an adequate explanation of why when someone looks at the lyrics of songs, versus when they are performed, the performed song seems to make more sense, even though they do not contain a lengthy back story. It is also an explanation of how Oral Poems and reggae songs such as this, invoke empathy in the listener. For example, the song Johnny Too Bad by The Slickers (the first song that is sung in my poem) seemingly has benign and irreverent jargon for lyrics to a reader. Yet when it is performed orally in verse, the sound jumps off the page, and invokes emotions that mean numerous amounts of things in Jamaican mythic context. The author of the book Cut ‘N’ Mix, a chronological study of the progression of culture in Caribbean music makes this point about Jamaican music:
“African, Afro-American and Caribbean music is based on quite different principles from European classical tradition. The collective voice is given precedence over the individual voice of the artist or the composer. The rhythm and the percussion play a much more central role. In the end, there is a link in these non-European music’s with public life, with speech with the textures and the grain of the living human voice (p.11)”
The author of this book also gives more information into how this music is steeped in the oral tradition. Paraphrasing him he makes the point that this term “versioning” is one of the most important terms that can be assigned to reggae music and its subsequent paradigm shifts. What it means is constantly rearranging songs in new formats to represent new contextual moments. For example: if a politician was shot, an older reggae song might be versioned to add another element to the song to keep up with the contemporaneity. In terms of relevance in a broad perspective, African Caribbean music has had some of the biggest impact in returning western culture to orality.
If I had had more time I would have made a point in memorizing everyone’s names in a memory theater, and invoking these epic songs in, as Walter J Ong has called it, “the singer’s memories of songs sung (143)”. The purpose of this feat would have been to see if there were any incongruities between what I wrote, and what I remembered, and to see how adaptive song is to present conditions in different moments.
Bringing this paper to my final point, I want to address tonality, and how tone is a method of situating poetry, and even prose in a marriage between orality and literacy. Zach Morris has written a paper that substantially deals with this topic. In his explanation of how tone can become settled in the abstracted universe of the print culture he states, “By imagining a particular mood, and by writing in such a way as to compliment that mood, the author can imagine the tone in which the reader would probably use to read the letter”. And this is, I suppose, is what I was attempting to do when I made the change in my poem from sung verse to that that which was tonally intact in of itself. In lines such as this, “Click: He switched the station after he had enough—His withered fingers told stories that were content with his age, And his eyes were quite with the years…”, I am playing the role of a narrator that is not physically engaging (such as in the oral world of verse) but rounded as Ong states is essential to the print tradition (148). The “click” is the onomatopoeic signifier that bridges orality and literacy in this poem. With subtle changes in my invocation, and conscientious moments of tone difference, I hopefully made this clear in my mode of conveying my poetics.
I developed this idea of a radio as a means of oral expression, and oral diversion from the novel Sometimes A Great Notion by Ken Kesey, for it is a work of fiction that is extremely tonally aware. Music, dialect, and a conflict between high literacy and low literacy are extremely prevalent themes in this book, and the conflict that arises in the typical Freytag’s pyramid is not only a dramatic linear plot of literary events, but a clash of the oral tradition and literary tradition. The novel which is actually named after a country-western-song, constantly breaks into verse from truck radio’s, portable radios, and even begins chapters with popular folksy verse. When I read it the first time, I constantly caught myself singing along in a mystic forgotten recollection of the power of poetry. This novel, which was a huge inspiration to me for creating this poem, and understanding literature in general as I do, is a perfect example (tonally speaking) that it is possible to have this marriage between orality and literacy in written form. It is a novel that hopefully with a more in depth understanding, will receive the esteem it deserves.
To conclude in a matter of a lack of a real conclusion, I would like to comment on James Joyce’s masterpiece, Finnegans Wake as the beginning, middle, and ending of everything that I have to say in this essay. In short, it is the return mythically, musically, and tonally of orality through the media of literacy. It is poetry in its purist, and most abstracted form, it is everything and nothing at the same time. It is in a sense more readable, or audible than Ulysses, for there is something in it for everyone to enjoy—it will always have new context.
What I initially stated in this paper, was that song is remembrance of song sung, and that poetry has the power to transcend all human emotion in any era, and practically any mode of expression, and that poetry is not only the breadth and voice of myth, but the mender and creator of it. Is it not possible then, as Dr Sexon has stated in his article, that what Joyce has created is, “not vague recollection but the fashion of a body, wholly body, replete with regenerative functions…the finding of all the missing letters (litter) and the reshaping them into a text with texture, taste and tactility (3).” Perhaps this absurd, and more complicated than anything needs to be, perhaps I have no Idea of what I am talking about…perhaps I will walk out of this room without the slightest idea of what this essay was really about.
Oral Traditions Term paper
Dr. Sexson
John Nay
What shall become of time,
lapping back and forth?
To begin, this essay is neither conclusive, nor has a real beginning in a linear academic sense; but is a true gestation of what I have learned, or perhaps remembered, in the course of a semester, and the breadth of my entire waking life. This is why epistemological understanding and education for me is about involving oneself in the embodiment of the material physically. Perhaps this is why I wrote a poem for my oral performance, and still perhaps why I use the nine muses as a mnemonic tool to remember things throughout my life.
And…In order for me to accomplish this feat—“a true gestation of what I have learned”, if at all possible,—I will explicate my oral performance in this essay; in a manner that demonstrates poetry’s power to veer through time—in and out the of human consciousness—in the oral world, the literate world, and the shaping of the prevailing mythic world that continues to construct a collective cultural consciousness. And In short, demonstrate life as an object, captured perfectly in remembrance of song sung, or rather songs to sing…in the fury of poetry through the ages.
Myth is perhaps the underlying subject matter of this essay. For it is not something that has ceased to exist—rather it is adaptive to a changing world—and the power it evokes (even in contemporary life) is not something to be taken lightly. For myth is an entity that is neither visible, nor tangible, but merely unconsciously lived in a removed sense. If one were to analyze cultural values in any part of the world, it would become apparent that they are mythic fulfillments, and not underlying truths, other than the truth that a particular culture deems them underlying truths. In a profoundly enlightening novel on this subject matter titled Ishmael, the protagonist (who is a telepathic guerilla) in a Socratic dialogue asks his pupil, “if he thought the Greeks were livid in a world constructed out of myth”. When the student answers no, the discussion continues in a new plane of understanding. Like I have said, Myth in its contemporary form is not tangible, nor was it tangible to any persons living through out it.
Sean Kane in his book, Wisdom Of The Mythtellers, starts a discussion that reflects some of these points I have made. In his study he distinguishes between three distinct eras that he will expand upon, “they are the Paleolithic, the Mesolithic, and the Neolithic—that is, Early Middle and Late Stone Age. It is from these different kinds of earth relatedness that we will take our stories (p.16)”. Perhaps, this quote does not immediately seem self evident on its relevance to the subject of poetry, or mythic fulfillment—but it is. The mythtellers of these eras (as a contemporary would perceive them) were poets in a preliterate sense, and this “earth relatedness” is what I want to address to expand my subject matter. A bond, and a relationship to the earth is something that is unquestionably true in any human endeavor—yet, isolation and deprivation from the world as it naturally exists is becoming a dominant worldview. And in the minds of scholars like Walter J Ong—the advent of writing progressed this isolation of the human life world into abstract forms such as the novel, and modern western world perspective.
Kevin Luby, in his paper The Memory, Imagination, and Soul of Mythtelling gives insight into the subject matter that has exponentially expanded my perspective on the subject. In his essay he writes:
“The myths of oral storytellers create the dialogue with the earth that taps into its available knowledge. As Sean Kane states in his book, human tradition dictates myth thus allowing them to be apart of the conversation. The earth learns of humans just as humans learn of the earth, through the mythic conversation.”
This is an incredible comment if one is really to reflect upon it. If this is in fact true, than humanity with the advent, and prevalence of agriculture, and increased individualism during the Neolithic era, consciously pitted itself against the earth by creating a sense of personal domain and property—in a world that was once abundant, and harmonious in its resources to all earth’s creatures. This is perhaps why Sean Kane explains that when studying past myth, we are jaded, for we have no real context in fully understanding ancient perspective. Sean Kane makes further assessment on this subject when addressing a myth such as Demeter and Persephone, which has been dismembered by modern interpretation. In the Wisdom Of The Mythtellers he states, “The example of the textbook Demeter demonstrates a myth held in suspended animation in two individual contexts: an ancient context involving a transfer of power from plants to kings, and a modern context involving a transfer of power from storyteller to author(P.231)”.
The context which I attempted to provide in my poem is I hope somewhat reflective of this statement, on a smaller scale of course. For I know that these former statements in my paper were largely political, and this was not really my aim for my poem. Yet it doesn’t matter, for no matter how much things are avoided, poems are mythic invocations of time present, and time past. And the purpose of verse such as this, “We are certainly not who we were/ When we left cracking snow this morning,/ And we are never who we are/when we arrived at crimson dusk;/What will we remember at the beginning, middle, and ending/if anything at all…”,is to invoke a context that is relevant to the class in its momentary reference to snow, its larger reference to memory as primary subject matter, but is also an attempt to leave this poem ambiguous enough to draw a larger body of input from any audience. Another angle I approached to express a sediment of context was to draw soley on personal expression, “Were my soul still swoons in green patterns, and falling raindrops,/were my father hitched the highway/with a promising young thumb”. In this line of verse, I have added myself as subject matter; for everything is relevant to the context of this poem that is attempting blend orality and literacy in a context that is remembrance of this class, in song sung of an ever-changing myth.
The context of the poem, and the verses I just spoke of was primarily in the literate tradition, and as I said in somewhat different words, my goal for this poem was a marriage, and an alignment between orality and literacy. So, what I choose to do to represent a sense of oral tradition in this class was to reinvent popular reggae songs with everyone’s class epithet. Walter J. Ong, in his book Orality and Literacy, has systematically demonstrated the power of epithets in oral verse. In the chapter, Some Psychodynamics Of Orality, he demonstrates how epithets are tools to increase memory in an oral culture. Literary cultures, as we know, find this redundant, and prefer the arsenal of a dictionary rather than these clichés (P.38). But in terms of creating oral epics—which I contend many songs are, especially African Diaspora music,—the epithet and situational scenarios play a particularly important role. Ong states that:
“Oral cultures tend to use concepts in situational, operational frames of reference that are minimally abstract in the sense that they remain close to the human lifeworld…[for example]…the epithet amymon applied by homer to Aegisthus: the epithet means not ‘blameless’ a tidy abstraction with which literates have translated the term, but ‘beautiful-in-the-way-a-warrior-ready-to-fight-is-beautiful (49)’”.
This situational stream of thought that is prevalent in oral cultures is not only representative of every changing context; it is also representative of the interiority of sound.
Ong makes it particularly clear that sound is itself “exists only when it is going out of existence (70)”. This is why, “In a primarily oral culture, where the world has its existence only in sound…the phenomenology of sound enters deeply into human beings’ feel for existence, as processed by the spoken word (72)”. So by creating songs that mimicked these theory’s that Ong has presented, I hopefully have created a poem that unifies the oral world, and the literate world.
Mythic context (as I have defined as ever changing) is extremely relevant to this notion of situational representation. My poem in its totality has closure, and an explicit ending, but this is just because much of the elements in this poem are from the literate tradition. The songs that contain the epithets themselves are as Ong quoting Horace states, “[an] epic poet [that] ‘hastens into the action and precipitates the hearer into the middle of things (139)’”. This is quite an adequate explanation of why when someone looks at the lyrics of songs, versus when they are performed, the performed song seems to make more sense, even though they do not contain a lengthy back story. It is also an explanation of how Oral Poems and reggae songs such as this, invoke empathy in the listener. For example, the song Johnny Too Bad by The Slickers (the first song that is sung in my poem) seemingly has benign and irreverent jargon for lyrics to a reader. Yet when it is performed orally in verse, the sound jumps off the page, and invokes emotions that mean numerous amounts of things in Jamaican mythic context. The author of the book Cut ‘N’ Mix, a chronological study of the progression of culture in Caribbean music makes this point about Jamaican music:
“African, Afro-American and Caribbean music is based on quite different principles from European classical tradition. The collective voice is given precedence over the individual voice of the artist or the composer. The rhythm and the percussion play a much more central role. In the end, there is a link in these non-European music’s with public life, with speech with the textures and the grain of the living human voice (p.11)”
The author of this book also gives more information into how this music is steeped in the oral tradition. Paraphrasing him he makes the point that this term “versioning” is one of the most important terms that can be assigned to reggae music and its subsequent paradigm shifts. What it means is constantly rearranging songs in new formats to represent new contextual moments. For example: if a politician was shot, an older reggae song might be versioned to add another element to the song to keep up with the contemporaneity. In terms of relevance in a broad perspective, African Caribbean music has had some of the biggest impact in returning western culture to orality.
If I had had more time I would have made a point in memorizing everyone’s names in a memory theater, and invoking these epic songs in, as Walter J Ong has called it, “the singer’s memories of songs sung (143)”. The purpose of this feat would have been to see if there were any incongruities between what I wrote, and what I remembered, and to see how adaptive song is to present conditions in different moments.
Bringing this paper to my final point, I want to address tonality, and how tone is a method of situating poetry, and even prose in a marriage between orality and literacy. Zach Morris has written a paper that substantially deals with this topic. In his explanation of how tone can become settled in the abstracted universe of the print culture he states, “By imagining a particular mood, and by writing in such a way as to compliment that mood, the author can imagine the tone in which the reader would probably use to read the letter”. And this is, I suppose, is what I was attempting to do when I made the change in my poem from sung verse to that that which was tonally intact in of itself. In lines such as this, “Click: He switched the station after he had enough—His withered fingers told stories that were content with his age, And his eyes were quite with the years…”, I am playing the role of a narrator that is not physically engaging (such as in the oral world of verse) but rounded as Ong states is essential to the print tradition (148). The “click” is the onomatopoeic signifier that bridges orality and literacy in this poem. With subtle changes in my invocation, and conscientious moments of tone difference, I hopefully made this clear in my mode of conveying my poetics.
I developed this idea of a radio as a means of oral expression, and oral diversion from the novel Sometimes A Great Notion by Ken Kesey, for it is a work of fiction that is extremely tonally aware. Music, dialect, and a conflict between high literacy and low literacy are extremely prevalent themes in this book, and the conflict that arises in the typical Freytag’s pyramid is not only a dramatic linear plot of literary events, but a clash of the oral tradition and literary tradition. The novel which is actually named after a country-western-song, constantly breaks into verse from truck radio’s, portable radios, and even begins chapters with popular folksy verse. When I read it the first time, I constantly caught myself singing along in a mystic forgotten recollection of the power of poetry. This novel, which was a huge inspiration to me for creating this poem, and understanding literature in general as I do, is a perfect example (tonally speaking) that it is possible to have this marriage between orality and literacy in written form. It is a novel that hopefully with a more in depth understanding, will receive the esteem it deserves.
To conclude in a matter of a lack of a real conclusion, I would like to comment on James Joyce’s masterpiece, Finnegans Wake as the beginning, middle, and ending of everything that I have to say in this essay. In short, it is the return mythically, musically, and tonally of orality through the media of literacy. It is poetry in its purist, and most abstracted form, it is everything and nothing at the same time. It is in a sense more readable, or audible than Ulysses, for there is something in it for everyone to enjoy—it will always have new context.
What I initially stated in this paper, was that song is remembrance of song sung, and that poetry has the power to transcend all human emotion in any era, and practically any mode of expression, and that poetry is not only the breadth and voice of myth, but the mender and creator of it. Is it not possible then, as Dr Sexon has stated in his article, that what Joyce has created is, “not vague recollection but the fashion of a body, wholly body, replete with regenerative functions…the finding of all the missing letters (litter) and the reshaping them into a text with texture, taste and tactility (3).” Perhaps this absurd, and more complicated than anything needs to be, perhaps I have no Idea of what I am talking about…perhaps I will walk out of this room without the slightest idea of what this essay was really about.
Shandian piece
I saw brandon put his shandy piece on line, i shall do the same.
the last part is the best, so feel free to skip ahead
A Semester’s worth of Digression,
Opinions of John Nay,
Undergraduate
Introduction
To interject in a non subordinate way; I wish to give equal weight to all my opinions and observations thus far—which is not very far for you dear reader—but certainly far enough for me. This is an essay about consequence, and the consequence of opinion, or rather, lack thereof—because realistically, who takes English major’s that seriously. To give some location, and direction of time and context of where this essay actually starts, I will state that this paper begins with me—somewhere typing it (feel free to guess). If you would like to experience the actual feeling of me typing, here—I am thumbing and fingering words on a blank page, in a soft, white, blank absence of any real empirical opinion, in a blank room that exemplifies a mood of definable blankness that is certain and bleak in its sustaining blankness—because in my opinion—visually taxing the reader with blankness is quite appropriate. In an attempt to further one’s education in the field of dull colors, I suggest reading Melville’s story about a whale and its whiteness—I guarantee the anesthetic qualities of my first few sentence’s, and some of his thoughts on the color white are equally effective.
For even though I give blankness its’ Aesthetic merit—in the quality of sleep one might get (especially when composing and constructing essays) I like to let the reader know a certain innovator in blankness, and sleep improvement will have his opinion—a paraphrased literary critic---------but then, on waking from the best slumber available in the undergraduate market (a night out with Levi-Straus)—I think to myself; I would rather drunkenly gaze at the light break through the blinds in my apartment, illuminating the iridescent fibers as they find a momentary glow, then read another word of Aristotle’s Poetics in (as I have already said, and the reader knows) a white and blank room.
Sitting on my couch, reflecting on fibers and their divine quality, in a day’s worth of delightful laziness and perfected procrastination; I realize blankness has a certain color other than that shade of white, I might have above mentioned. For to be a learned participant in the English Literature department, at Montana State University, one has to amass a certain amount of literary wit—weather it pertains to the text or not. I suggest reading Rawson—he exemplifies a lovely color of blankness, and its importance in a field that is beyond the genius of the text. For example: he has taken careful measure to document one of the only two times Jonathan Swift laughed in his lifetime; and he has also demonstrated the appropriate use of the words “Proloxities” and “Solecism”, in the English Language. Don’t worry reader, the essayist is here to clarify what he meant: the use of Fielding’s long winded sentences were seen by upper class reader’s as ungrammatical—but in the context of the time period, were appealing for that reason. I think rule 14 in, “An Approach To Style” by Stunk and White, would be quite an appropriate solution to de-intellectualize Rawson. But who cares, the real objective of his writing is to test how long a hundred dollar bill can be tucked in the leather binding of a book without being found, in the course of 20 years. Hmmmmm—these are all interesting topics—but this is not an introduction to an essay. No, an introduction to an essay is supposed to be the cusp of a thesis statement. Which I have not done; perhaps my thesis statement will go something like this:
Thesis Statement:
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
Body of the Essay:
Argument 1:
—All right, so I do not have a thesis statement yet; I decided in this moment of intellectual catharsis—which is happening precisely at 2:48 pm on a Sunday—to let the reader take a glimpse of my life.— Today is April 2, 2009. A day that I care about as much as any other day—which means I must care quite a bit. I jogged this morning—for the first time in months—and saw the world for all that it was, hypothesized its evils, felt moist spring wind on my cheeks, smelt dog shit in the dog park, and watched snow scorch into steam off the black tarmac, and finally fell into a fit of laughter as I neared the end of my run on Garfield and 5th,to the image of a sorority girl who slipped on the black ice, and smeared dirt on her jeans…I have to interject here…if this were in a serious piece of prose I was writing, I would have to delete that to the moment stream of consciousness farce I just wrote—with all the ferocity the backspace button has to offer.
Argument 2:
My word count is at 790, which means I am half way through, without a serious bit of reflection, interjection, and a profound epiphany other than that—the quality of the coffee in the library is awful. Which means in a Platonic sense, its artifice is a poor one when trying to achieve the ideal plane of coffee—that being a cup of Starbucks. Still, in Plato’s eye’s(yuppie eyes), at least library coffee has its purpose; which brings this essay to perhaps its dominant argument of ambiguities, definition of words, word play, word fun, and the opinions of Samuel Johnson. Samuel Johnson, like many other Samuel’s I have met, is melancholy, obsessed with opinions, and Tibetan prayer flags. Samuel Johnson— my dear reader who is familiar and agreeable with all the opinions of Plato—had the audacity to embellish the nature of being a poet in an unsuccessful work (like his dictionary) called The History of Rasselas, Prince Of Abissina. To quote him is to degrade him—so I will quote him, “for every idea is useful for the enforcement or decoration of moral or religious truth; and he, who knows most, will have most power of diversifying his scenes, and gratifying his reader with remote allusions and unexpected instruction (21) ”. What awful tripe. And to think, the literary critic has the tedious obligation to decipher this whole mess, and assert their genius on the work, in order to understand the components that make a work even readable.
Argument 3:
I am the writer…and am not actually of the opinion of Plato. This is just a note: an opportunity for myself to not literally become the paper, or its opinions.
Argument 4:
I have come to the conclusion, that argument four will be written at 6:30 pm, which it is, as I speak, being written now. Argument 4 will be on the topic of conclusions, if I could formulate a thesis, I might have the ability to discuss how—Jonathan Lamb proposes an interesting idea on Sterne’s readability to his contemporaries—and how it might relate to my opinions, mixed with Deconstruction opinions, Richetti’s opinions, and finally attempt to answer the overwhelming question that has been eluding this whole essay. What makes Tristram Shandy a novel, and what 18th century elements does it have, that exists in all of our texts we have read thus far. If I could answer this, perhaps I could rant about the contribution of Tristram Shandy to the genre, societal judgment, epistemological inference, and the altering affects that might have arisen if this novel had not been written. It’s sad and disheartening, but I am not very original, and the feeling of being drawn out, like a haze into the atmosphere of forgotten obscurity always lingers.
Argument 5:
But it isn’t worth it after all to live, love and lust after morning dew, and then watch dawn’s haze and recollect moments past. To remember the dirt brown cannel’s of Holland, the purple-green fragrant blossoms spouting out of the concrete walls, and my yellow lab that ran along the shore of the beach with me—in the ocean’s gray haze, and cold breeze. And later, when I was teenager, in the old green wet hills near the lakes—New Hampshire, New England. The infinite long, and windy back roads through the fall’s yellow and red dropping leaves, the white churches, and the perfume from those first lips—the cascade of her blue eyes and that white dress, spring 2005. And the first time I really loved Montana’s mountains—when we were all still best friends playing catch outside—watching crimson-red fleeting-orange swirls—the last of days the sunlight, fluster in the clouds on the snowcapped mountains above the evergreen and aspen trees. For, in that final moment between light and dark, a coyote howled at 9 pm on the pastor, behind RJ’s fence, and that—that was my last best memory.
Conclusion:
“And what was all that about”, my proof reader said on finishing the essay. “A Cock and Bull essay” I said—“Cock and Bull Essay, and the best I have ever wrote”.
the last part is the best, so feel free to skip ahead
A Semester’s worth of Digression,
Opinions of John Nay,
Undergraduate
Introduction
To interject in a non subordinate way; I wish to give equal weight to all my opinions and observations thus far—which is not very far for you dear reader—but certainly far enough for me. This is an essay about consequence, and the consequence of opinion, or rather, lack thereof—because realistically, who takes English major’s that seriously. To give some location, and direction of time and context of where this essay actually starts, I will state that this paper begins with me—somewhere typing it (feel free to guess). If you would like to experience the actual feeling of me typing, here—I am thumbing and fingering words on a blank page, in a soft, white, blank absence of any real empirical opinion, in a blank room that exemplifies a mood of definable blankness that is certain and bleak in its sustaining blankness—because in my opinion—visually taxing the reader with blankness is quite appropriate. In an attempt to further one’s education in the field of dull colors, I suggest reading Melville’s story about a whale and its whiteness—I guarantee the anesthetic qualities of my first few sentence’s, and some of his thoughts on the color white are equally effective.
For even though I give blankness its’ Aesthetic merit—in the quality of sleep one might get (especially when composing and constructing essays) I like to let the reader know a certain innovator in blankness, and sleep improvement will have his opinion—a paraphrased literary critic---------but then, on waking from the best slumber available in the undergraduate market (a night out with Levi-Straus)—I think to myself; I would rather drunkenly gaze at the light break through the blinds in my apartment, illuminating the iridescent fibers as they find a momentary glow, then read another word of Aristotle’s Poetics in (as I have already said, and the reader knows) a white and blank room.
Sitting on my couch, reflecting on fibers and their divine quality, in a day’s worth of delightful laziness and perfected procrastination; I realize blankness has a certain color other than that shade of white, I might have above mentioned. For to be a learned participant in the English Literature department, at Montana State University, one has to amass a certain amount of literary wit—weather it pertains to the text or not. I suggest reading Rawson—he exemplifies a lovely color of blankness, and its importance in a field that is beyond the genius of the text. For example: he has taken careful measure to document one of the only two times Jonathan Swift laughed in his lifetime; and he has also demonstrated the appropriate use of the words “Proloxities” and “Solecism”, in the English Language. Don’t worry reader, the essayist is here to clarify what he meant: the use of Fielding’s long winded sentences were seen by upper class reader’s as ungrammatical—but in the context of the time period, were appealing for that reason. I think rule 14 in, “An Approach To Style” by Stunk and White, would be quite an appropriate solution to de-intellectualize Rawson. But who cares, the real objective of his writing is to test how long a hundred dollar bill can be tucked in the leather binding of a book without being found, in the course of 20 years. Hmmmmm—these are all interesting topics—but this is not an introduction to an essay. No, an introduction to an essay is supposed to be the cusp of a thesis statement. Which I have not done; perhaps my thesis statement will go something like this:
Thesis Statement:
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
Body of the Essay:
Argument 1:
—All right, so I do not have a thesis statement yet; I decided in this moment of intellectual catharsis—which is happening precisely at 2:48 pm on a Sunday—to let the reader take a glimpse of my life.— Today is April 2, 2009. A day that I care about as much as any other day—which means I must care quite a bit. I jogged this morning—for the first time in months—and saw the world for all that it was, hypothesized its evils, felt moist spring wind on my cheeks, smelt dog shit in the dog park, and watched snow scorch into steam off the black tarmac, and finally fell into a fit of laughter as I neared the end of my run on Garfield and 5th,to the image of a sorority girl who slipped on the black ice, and smeared dirt on her jeans…I have to interject here…if this were in a serious piece of prose I was writing, I would have to delete that to the moment stream of consciousness farce I just wrote—with all the ferocity the backspace button has to offer.
Argument 2:
My word count is at 790, which means I am half way through, without a serious bit of reflection, interjection, and a profound epiphany other than that—the quality of the coffee in the library is awful. Which means in a Platonic sense, its artifice is a poor one when trying to achieve the ideal plane of coffee—that being a cup of Starbucks. Still, in Plato’s eye’s(yuppie eyes), at least library coffee has its purpose; which brings this essay to perhaps its dominant argument of ambiguities, definition of words, word play, word fun, and the opinions of Samuel Johnson. Samuel Johnson, like many other Samuel’s I have met, is melancholy, obsessed with opinions, and Tibetan prayer flags. Samuel Johnson— my dear reader who is familiar and agreeable with all the opinions of Plato—had the audacity to embellish the nature of being a poet in an unsuccessful work (like his dictionary) called The History of Rasselas, Prince Of Abissina. To quote him is to degrade him—so I will quote him, “for every idea is useful for the enforcement or decoration of moral or religious truth; and he, who knows most, will have most power of diversifying his scenes, and gratifying his reader with remote allusions and unexpected instruction (21) ”. What awful tripe. And to think, the literary critic has the tedious obligation to decipher this whole mess, and assert their genius on the work, in order to understand the components that make a work even readable.
Argument 3:
I am the writer…and am not actually of the opinion of Plato. This is just a note: an opportunity for myself to not literally become the paper, or its opinions.
Argument 4:
I have come to the conclusion, that argument four will be written at 6:30 pm, which it is, as I speak, being written now. Argument 4 will be on the topic of conclusions, if I could formulate a thesis, I might have the ability to discuss how—Jonathan Lamb proposes an interesting idea on Sterne’s readability to his contemporaries—and how it might relate to my opinions, mixed with Deconstruction opinions, Richetti’s opinions, and finally attempt to answer the overwhelming question that has been eluding this whole essay. What makes Tristram Shandy a novel, and what 18th century elements does it have, that exists in all of our texts we have read thus far. If I could answer this, perhaps I could rant about the contribution of Tristram Shandy to the genre, societal judgment, epistemological inference, and the altering affects that might have arisen if this novel had not been written. It’s sad and disheartening, but I am not very original, and the feeling of being drawn out, like a haze into the atmosphere of forgotten obscurity always lingers.
Argument 5:
But it isn’t worth it after all to live, love and lust after morning dew, and then watch dawn’s haze and recollect moments past. To remember the dirt brown cannel’s of Holland, the purple-green fragrant blossoms spouting out of the concrete walls, and my yellow lab that ran along the shore of the beach with me—in the ocean’s gray haze, and cold breeze. And later, when I was teenager, in the old green wet hills near the lakes—New Hampshire, New England. The infinite long, and windy back roads through the fall’s yellow and red dropping leaves, the white churches, and the perfume from those first lips—the cascade of her blue eyes and that white dress, spring 2005. And the first time I really loved Montana’s mountains—when we were all still best friends playing catch outside—watching crimson-red fleeting-orange swirls—the last of days the sunlight, fluster in the clouds on the snowcapped mountains above the evergreen and aspen trees. For, in that final moment between light and dark, a coyote howled at 9 pm on the pastor, behind RJ’s fence, and that—that was my last best memory.
Conclusion:
“And what was all that about”, my proof reader said on finishing the essay. “A Cock and Bull essay” I said—“Cock and Bull Essay, and the best I have ever wrote”.
Saturday, April 25, 2009
This is what I wrote, or rather, orally composed for class. My essay, when it is completed, will explain in full detail the relevance of this piece. Oh yeah, I am adding the songs that I drew inspiration from for this in the spots were I sung. The songs are italicized, and there will be youtube links.
Poem for class:
Erato:
What shall become of time lapping back forth—
counting damp minutes?
We are certainly not who we were
When we left cracking snow this morning,
And we are never who we are
when we arrived at crimson dusk;
What will we remember at the beggening, middle, and ending
if anything at all…
Will we encase an everlasting picture of this class
in some mystic never complete theater…
Or remember a song sung
In memory of song sung
Along the Nile
Through the coasts, and up Mark Twain’s Missipi…
Were my soul still swoons in green patterns, and falling raindrops,
were my father hitched the highway
with a promosing young thumb
headed west for the first time
eyes on that foliage littered road, misted over perfectly
Like the twang of a rabid Banjo.
Will I, or you, or anyone, arrive, or depart,
Ever in this world?
And Perhaps, there is a place,
Where time is cornerd
And forever still.
A place were physics never applied.
That place where I used to sit with my grandfather
And that damned, rusted radio, blurting folky verse,
In his fairytale parlour of war medals, and cracked picture frames…
With a quick smile in my direction, and a turn of a silver knob—we listned…
Verse
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfXZ9J0VrJc
And one of these days—
Check Mark parker
Deep Sea Fishing Jeff, and Big Rich Are gonna come for you…
Ooooh ooooh
Walk a new road Crazy Coffe Carly…
Ooohh oooh
Your teaspoons, and caffeine pedelling created
Carasmatic Kari
Oooh oooh
And What will you remember
Kyle of the skinny jeans…
Ooooh oooh
Will it be these tight, uncomfortable years
Or Will it be Chris of the laughing Rats.
Oooh oooh
Red Damiselle Daniell
Will you remember…
Snake Haired Kayla Sneaking through the tall grass,
Oooh oooh
Or James the Rat contended with a bit of cheese.
Oooo ooh h oo
Click:
With a smile, and that familiar old purple veined hand, he would turn the knob again…
{The harder they come:}
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGE4dnrPPZQ&feature=relatedKelsey of the Free rent,
Enjoying the view of the sky
Yes Keen kening Ben will be right with her before he( flies)
For as sure as time contends
Sweet smiling Melissa
Will have her ends
And the harder Sutter sacker of cities
Sacks cities
the softer they glow
One and
Three…
Two Tounge Charlie
Well Willy Quiet Willy trying keep
Robert of the Worded limbs down
Yes Tautological Tai is redundant like a clown
And Lisa of the little legs thinks she has the battle one
I say forgive them Chris the Scribe they know not what they have done
Click:
He switched the station after he had enough—
His withered fingers told stories that were content with his age,
And his eyes were quite with the years…
Toots:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S78VlyZYpfcAlmost Nirvana, Hyalite Canyon
Za Zen Zack
Steven of the rivers.
All my classmates there
Bright Eyes Kevin
Fishing in the river
With Wise Wandering Shannon
Chorus:
Summer Breeze Kaylaaaaaa
Take us home
To that place where we belong
Hyalite Canyon My olll mamma
Take us home
Summer Breeze Kayla
We heard
Parker of the outback
in the morning cryin
Jared
of the open planes we need to leave these places
Yes we did
Kate of the beautiful eyes
Tell Helana of the 10,000 lakes
Of this wonderful ridge
and steven’s flowing river…
Click: and then, there was a fading crackling sound that subdued into an absence. I am sorry. I really do forget his hands, and all their kindness. But there is always a rebirth, and an arrival back along the shore…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFGgbT_VasI
Old Zack of the saving Bells
yes the rob we
Minutes after they took Joan Gossimer von goss
From the bottomless pit
And don’t worry Emo Erin,
Lisa the Luddite or Bearded Brandon…
All we have are these songs of freedom
Wont you help me sing…
.
Arriving we will never ask
where the begening will be—
nor the ending?
Certainly not in this class today, or the infinity of tomorrow,
But in a dream differend crunched in a butter
Crackling under this flame of phrase.
And Are you there
…. I am john of the stripid hat…
And song is
When we are together
In fleeting moments wiped clean
From unimagined books
In the last harmony of redemption
under the flouresent glow
of room 125.
Will you be there
Even after the last kick of dust on a brown, hot coral—
Were Jana the Tamar of horses will set us free
While Shaman Sexson sings
Mememorme…o please remember me.
Monday, April 20, 2009
I was just thinking about oral poems surviving in the contemporary world. This is a link to a Saul Williams Sha Clack Clack.
For this blog I will post the lyrics to the poem, and I will also post a link to Youtube with his live performance of the poem.
Video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojDKI8JxfLs
If I could find the spot where truth echoes
I would stand there and whisper memories of my children's future
I would let their future dwell in my past
so that I might live a brighter now
Now is the essence of my domain and it contains
all that was and will be
And I am as I was and will be because I am and always will be
that nigga
I am that nigga
I am that nigga
I am that timeless nigga that swings on pendelums like vines
through mines of boobytrapped minds that are enslaved by time
I am the life that supersedes lifetimes, I am
It was me with serpentine hair and a timeless stare
that with immortal glare turned mortal fear into stone time capsules
They still exist as the walking dead, as I do
The original sulphurhead, symbol of life and matriarchy
severed head Medusa, I am
I am that nigga
I am that nigga!
I am that nigga!!
I am a negro! Yes negro, negro from _necro_ meaning death
I overcame it so they named me after it
And I be spitting at death from behind
and putting "Kick Me" signs on it's back
because I am not the son of Sha-Clack-Clack
I am before that, I am before
I am before before
Before death is eternity, after death is eternity
There is no death there's only eternity
And I be riding on the wings of eternity
like HYAH! HYAH! HYAH! Sha-Clack-Clack
but my flight doesn't go undisturbed
Because time makes dreams defer
And all of my time fears are turning my days into daymares
And I live daymares reliving nightmares
of what taunted my past
Sha-Clack-Clack, time is beatin my ass
And I be havin dreams of chocolate covered watermelons
Filled with fried chickens like pinatas
With little pickaninny sons and daughters
standing up under them with big sticks and aluminum foil
Hittin em, tryin to catch pieces of fallin fried chicken wings
And Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben are standing in the corners
with rifles pointed at the heads of the little children
"Don't shoot the children," I shout, "don't shoot the children!"
but they say it's too late
They've already been infected by time
But that shit is before my time
I need more time
I need more time
But it's too late
They start shooting at children and killing them!
One by one, two by two, three by three, four by four
Five by five, six by six, but
my spirit is growing seven by seven
Faster than the speed of light
Cause light only penetrates the darkness that's already there
and I'm already there
I'm here at the end of the road
which is the beginning of the road beyond time, but
where my niggaz at? (Oh shit!)
Oh shit, don't tell me my niggaz got lost in time
My niggaz are dying before their time
My niggaz are serving unjust time
My niggaz are dying because of.. time
Just a brief synopsis:
Saul Williams is a slam poet, which means that his performances center around the emotion of the moment. For further enquiry into this style of performance, I suggest checking out some of his other performances of this poem and others. What I noticed: was that there was changes in his lyrics, flow, and interaction with his audience. Also check out the content of his lyrics—perhaps I will do a blog just on them.
Saturday, April 18, 2009
Blog on Group:
So my group and I have just finished our project, and my, it is quite a relief. I would also like to compliment all the other groups on their work, and the entertainment they have provided. I look forward to seeing the final group’s perform on Monday.
The purpose of me writing this blog today is to explicate the script our group performed for class. I am sure all our group’s presentations will be on the test, so I hope this blog will be of some service to you in the not too distant future. I will also provide a copy of the script in this blog; feel free to read it. I am going to primarily focus on my role in the presentation—we broke our group down to individual areas of expertise—so I will not soil what my other group members might have to say on their subject. As you learned from the brief explanation provided at the end of class on Friday, my role was a teacher who was completely stuck in the literate tradition—and very stubborn about outside opinions. In the word of Chris of the laughing rats: “Freytag would be proud”. But to give some more depth to my character in perhaps the best way I know how, I shall attempt to round him in the form of literacy. My character is a man that has just recently graduated college, and is at bit of a loss in terms of finding an appropriate, and successful means of teaching his students. Other than the few (perhaps in poor taste) joke’s I made about bestseller authors(John Grishram, Dan Brown), Kane in his chapter on context—which I drew a character from—makes interesting observations on how myth is taught, particularly by none the wiser English teacher’s, in a poor way that stays completely removed from the human life world. There a few things that I tried directly to allude to from the text, but other things I incorporated in, from contrasts that had arisen out of the other books we had been reading. I noticed there was some confusion on what I was exactly doing while I was stroking the binding of a book. I was doing it in a supposedly erotic way; poking fun at what Dr Sexson has explained is an obsession of the literary tradition. Which brings me to a key point into what my character was supposed to represent, which is, the safety that many modern teachers find in textbook studies of myth—and I suppose this is supposed to be ironic, the book is erotic, yet we shun sexuality, which I made a point of doing when addressing the students.
Anyway, the reason that this is an inaccurate way to study myth, is that often times these textbooks will only give poor explanations about the meaning of the myth, with no sympathy towards the culture, and many of the contextual elements that made myths powerful and provocative when the oral poet spoke them. Instead as Kane demonstrates on the Myth of Demeter and Persephone, and the vague understanding textbooks provide, “[that] if these essentialist sentimentalities about human nature were all that mythtelling were about, myths would deserve their bad name”—which is a consequence perhaps, mostly of teachers not having any ability to expound upon anything other than that which the textbook provides.
Another point I made about a teachers inadequacy on teaching myth was—teachers often have a very difficult time explaining truly what these myths are about, and they will often rely on the books graphics, as a means of supplementing any deeper meaning. This is why when I was sitting down at the desk in the middle of the room, rubbing an apple I said, “My…look at these pictures”.
What I also tried to emphasis in this presentation was the political correctness that Kane explains has drawn out much of the meaning of these de-contextualized myths. For example, the myth of Demeter and Persephone is about fertility, and the contact between city dwelling cultures and rural cultures. Yet much of this context is absent in the text versions of these myths. Kane, in his research actually found this, “According to the sources of this myth (none of this in the high school anthology), she knows the secrets of the marriage-bed, and blesses couples on their wedding night.” Instead of including vital information such as he has provided, these anthology’s usually settle on abstract concepts such as compromise (which I wrote on the board)—which Kane explains is completely of myth a that should in fact “echo the knowledge of the agricultural seasonal cycles of the Mediterranean”.
There is much more to this subject, and perhaps a bit more explanation into what my group did, but since it is Saturday, and I am a bit de-contextualized myself in the written word, I think I will go enjoy the rest of the day.
The purpose of me writing this blog today is to explicate the script our group performed for class. I am sure all our group’s presentations will be on the test, so I hope this blog will be of some service to you in the not too distant future. I will also provide a copy of the script in this blog; feel free to read it. I am going to primarily focus on my role in the presentation—we broke our group down to individual areas of expertise—so I will not soil what my other group members might have to say on their subject. As you learned from the brief explanation provided at the end of class on Friday, my role was a teacher who was completely stuck in the literate tradition—and very stubborn about outside opinions. In the word of Chris of the laughing rats: “Freytag would be proud”. But to give some more depth to my character in perhaps the best way I know how, I shall attempt to round him in the form of literacy. My character is a man that has just recently graduated college, and is at bit of a loss in terms of finding an appropriate, and successful means of teaching his students. Other than the few (perhaps in poor taste) joke’s I made about bestseller authors(John Grishram, Dan Brown), Kane in his chapter on context—which I drew a character from—makes interesting observations on how myth is taught, particularly by none the wiser English teacher’s, in a poor way that stays completely removed from the human life world. There a few things that I tried directly to allude to from the text, but other things I incorporated in, from contrasts that had arisen out of the other books we had been reading. I noticed there was some confusion on what I was exactly doing while I was stroking the binding of a book. I was doing it in a supposedly erotic way; poking fun at what Dr Sexson has explained is an obsession of the literary tradition. Which brings me to a key point into what my character was supposed to represent, which is, the safety that many modern teachers find in textbook studies of myth—and I suppose this is supposed to be ironic, the book is erotic, yet we shun sexuality, which I made a point of doing when addressing the students.
Anyway, the reason that this is an inaccurate way to study myth, is that often times these textbooks will only give poor explanations about the meaning of the myth, with no sympathy towards the culture, and many of the contextual elements that made myths powerful and provocative when the oral poet spoke them. Instead as Kane demonstrates on the Myth of Demeter and Persephone, and the vague understanding textbooks provide, “[that] if these essentialist sentimentalities about human nature were all that mythtelling were about, myths would deserve their bad name”—which is a consequence perhaps, mostly of teachers not having any ability to expound upon anything other than that which the textbook provides.
Another point I made about a teachers inadequacy on teaching myth was—teachers often have a very difficult time explaining truly what these myths are about, and they will often rely on the books graphics, as a means of supplementing any deeper meaning. This is why when I was sitting down at the desk in the middle of the room, rubbing an apple I said, “My…look at these pictures”.
What I also tried to emphasis in this presentation was the political correctness that Kane explains has drawn out much of the meaning of these de-contextualized myths. For example, the myth of Demeter and Persephone is about fertility, and the contact between city dwelling cultures and rural cultures. Yet much of this context is absent in the text versions of these myths. Kane, in his research actually found this, “According to the sources of this myth (none of this in the high school anthology), she knows the secrets of the marriage-bed, and blesses couples on their wedding night.” Instead of including vital information such as he has provided, these anthology’s usually settle on abstract concepts such as compromise (which I wrote on the board)—which Kane explains is completely of myth a that should in fact “echo the knowledge of the agricultural seasonal cycles of the Mediterranean”.
There is much more to this subject, and perhaps a bit more explanation into what my group did, but since it is Saturday, and I am a bit de-contextualized myself in the written word, I think I will go enjoy the rest of the day.
script
Script For Class:
Scrtpit——————First Scene: A high school English teacher walks into a classroom, and sits on a desk where he processds to take the contents out of his briefcase (a notebook, several other books, and an apple”—he gazes at one particular book, a book of myth in quite contemplation: he has just recently graduated from college, and is about to teach his first class—a freshman English class that is starting with the value of myth. Before the class begins he has a brief monologue to himself about what he is going to teach.
John’s Monologue:
“Well…let’s see” He says with a sigh
“This is it, I suppose, I hope all those education classes were worth it.”
“And I hope my kids like me.”: Huffing on his apple and polishing it with his shirt
“But…ummm…let me think, what should be our first lesson…
“ahh…Demeter and Persophne…that should be an excellent topic for are first class.”
“I remember it being very appropriate…Not like that other myth garbage; rape, incest and violence—just motherly love—if I remember correctly…survey of Myth ,section I, that’s was the class”
“Great class other than the professor…what was his name…oh yeah, Dr Sexson…He got way to into it, thought myth was a physical performance…there will be none of that in my class room…besides, who would ever thought an old man would be full of such dirty jokes…slutty Shannon, corporeal similutide’s…the nerve of him.”
“He even went so far as to suggests that this story was about handing down humanity’s secerets of sexuality form mother to daughter—and that phallic symbols would be raised in respect of the this tradition…awful”
“Besides, I know this story is not about fertility”…I fondel the book in an erotic way. “This copy of Myth’s for teens is excellent”
“Much better descriptions than he ever gave…see right at the begening of Demeter and Persophne, there is a summery …it says the Myth is about compromise.”
“Compromise…” I say stroking my chin.
Action: I proceed to go write compromise on the board
“Hmm…that’s another compromise that will have to made; these children will need to appreciate the value of a book”
“I may seem old fashonied…huh huh, but in a sense I dipise technology”
“Plus, look how wonderful the print is, and myyyy…(I stroke the book erotically)the pictures in this edition”.
“If they do not understand the theme of compromise as the sole context—which I hope they do—at least they will be able to look at these wonderful pictures…”
I hold the book up
“Hale the printing press”
“There is only one thing though…I wish these stories followed more of a plot…like those wonderful John Grisham, and Daniel Brown novels.”
“But oh well.”
“At least I can guide, and teach about what is up on the board”
Action: Underneath compromise, I write Demeter and Persophne: a story of a mother only being able to see her daughter for a brief part of the year.
“Much like when I first went off to college…I missed my mother so much”
“Mythical joint custody”
Scene 2:
Class walks in, I introduce myself:
“Hello students, my name is John Nay.”
“I will be your instructor this year, I just graduated college so take it easy on me alright guys…huh huh huh.”
The class is whispering, and passing notes.
“And what we will be learning in my class this year, is the succession of events from the greek myths, to the modern and perfected novel: namely, John Grishrams, The associate.”
“Now, what are your names.”
Kate:‘I am kate of the beutifual eyes.”
Chris: I am Chris of the laughing rates.”
Kelsey: I am Kelsey of the free rent.”
Jeff: “and I am deep sea fishing Jeff .”
John: “Alrigh…hmm” I say a little confused. “So let’s begin. First, find a place of quite solitude and open your Myth’s for teens to p. 145, and read the myth Of Demeter and Persophne, and then we will discuss these that themes that I have writin on the board”
They read for a minute.
Jeff’s Part
Teacher: So even though we all know that the myth of Demeter and Persephone cannot be true, it nevertheless teaches us the power and importance of a mother-daughter relationship.
Student (without raising hand): I think that 'In whatever way a myth is told, it is true to the people who believe it. The principle of contexts only insists that a myth cannot be, or should not be, true for all people in all time.'
Teacher (aggravated): You need to learn to raise your hand son. But do you see how the myth uses language to make its point clear?
Student: No. It seems to me that the myth employs language to describe poetry that already exists in nature. You are confusing two aspects of myth. The art of mythtelling and the content of the myth are two different things.
Teacher: But you do understand that a master storyteller develops his own style to help keep his audience interested?
Student: I still don't think you are right. A master storyteller recognizes the power of myth and conveys this to the listener through his style. He checks the power, however, by periodic detachment to break the spell of the myth. He recognizes the danger such power can lead to in human hands.
Teacher: How can so much power come from language? I'm speaking now and my words don't seem to be casting and sort of spell.
Student: It's not the words themselves that hold the power, it is what they represent. Language is simply another form of domestication, and can be used to take away from and give back to nature. It is a human construct designed to organize and describe the inexpressible into a system of sounds. The description of emotions such as love and fear proves as futile as trying to describe a color in words. The oral poet shapes his style to entrance his audience so they are no longer listening to his sounds, but experiencing their meaning. This explains master storytellers, say "wansuuga" at the end of his poetry. It does not mean, "it is said" but rather "far-away saying from hear-say", or "it is being said (without knowing for sure)". It is impossible to condense the complexity of nature into simple sounds.
Kates Part:
Jon: “alright, alright…enough you Jeff of the laughing rats
Chris: That’s me:
John: whatever what did you guys really think”… not giving them anytime to really think. “Can anyone guess why myths from the oral tradition were often put into verse?
Kate: Because the word was being domesticated.
Jon: Wrong. Words aren’t wild animals; you can’t just fence them in.
Kate: Actually, that’s exactly what Neolithic tribes did to their stories. They versified them to imitate human forms, like the stomping of feet or the beat of a hand on a drum.
Jon: First of all, you just made that word up. And let’s stick to what the textbook says.
Kate: You can’t just explain myth by reading from a textbook.
Jon: Well since you seem know everything, why don’t you explain it?
Kate: Okay. When Neolithic tribes began to move away from hunting and gathering to agriculture, their stories followed suit—
Jon: Farming has nothing to do with myth. Are you making this up?
Kate: Would you just listen? Domesticating a word is like taming a goat or putting up a fence; the stanzas that are created when words are versified act like the fences around farms. The storyteller’s voice becomes measured in a regular unit and conforms to the domestication of nature that is created within the fence. So now you see that just when people began to fence in wild animals and plants, they also fenced in their stories by way of verse.
Jon: You’re just showing off. Do you enjoy making me look bad?
Kate: It’s not hard.
Jon: Thinks about it. Hey, wait a—
Kate: Interrupting. I’m not done, actually. In addition to fences imposing on wilderness and verses imposing on speech, mythologies of agricultural societies imposed upon one another.
Jon: Looking confused, does the math in his head. Gives up.
Kate: You see, when one tribe conquered another and took over their land, they had to come up with a way to deal with their new environment. The old inhabitants usually had their own set of myths, so the conquerors adopted the stories and manipulated them to use to their advantage. These signs of imposition are signs of myth in a developed agricultural context.
Jon: Sounds like a load of crap. Suspiciously. Did Dr. Sexson put you to this?
Kate: Who’s Sexson?
Jon: Never mind. Gurgling
Kate: Well I’m not done explaining and it’s just about to get interesting.
Jon: Sighs. Great, I can hardly wait.
Kate: People created these myths to deal with their surroundings. As their societies became more advanced, they imagined and created a set of higher forces that were pitted against humanity.
Jon: What do you mean by “higher forces”?
Kate: I mean gods. It’s natural for humanity to personify the forces that are acting against them, as a coping mechanism. The gods became every unknown force in the universe, for both good and evil, creating an outlet from which the imprisoned human found release. But the agricultural condition could offer relief only through transcendence—in this case, the worship of one new God to the exclusion of all others. Christianity, Islam, Judaism—these religions are agriculturalist and point to the transcendence of a limiting physical existence in which the self is felt to be imprisoned by its very efforts.
Jon: What does any of this have to do with what we were talking about?
Kate: When societies become agriculturalist, the setting is complete for a myth of transcendence. Coincidentally, when myths of transcendence arise, myth itself is transcended.
Chris’s Part:
John: Well does anyone else have anything to say on the subject.
Chris: You're very socratic, you know that?”
John: “Oh, thanks.”
Chris: “No, that's a bad thing. Like 'oh, we can't be out in the country, it's scary out here and there are animals and they're having sex and stuff, and only the cities have things to teach us'... myth isn't domestic like that. Or it can be, but in this case it isn't. You're taking out the “close to the human life-way” thing by trying to clean it up and desexualize it – or maybe that IS close to your life-way. Taking the wild natural state and domesticating it to make it not dangerous... humanized and housebroken... that's selling out. You're selling out this myth.
And you're completely missing the idea that the whole Demeter thing is about domestication and the transition from farming gods to king-type gods. Hades, prince of the underworld, raping the agricultural daughter and holding her captive? Hello! The transition and the fact that everything is always changing ...myths help us cope with that. By domesticating it and approaching it from the idea that it's static is the antithesis of myth.
John: “Young lady that is not appropriate language for the class. Please let me…”
Interrupted by Chris
Chris: Taking the consciousness of wildness and breaking it down into discrete entities instead of implying that everyone knows that the words are poor subsitutes for the reality of nature is only possible if you domesticate consciousness itself. It's the illusion of individuality. It's kind of gained a new life with the globalization movement. Are you considering the Athenian philosophers, here?
John: “Er, no.”
“The idea that oral myth is crap compared with being able to write it down and objectify it in mental frames? Give it a nice beginning, middle, and end? The Neoplatonists – and you should probably know this – said there was a mysticism beyond all the writing and beyond the nice domestic sphere. Whereas being of the Aristotelian school of thought, which is positively medieval, you've just made it all boring. Freytag would be proud. People have taken the idea of mythology and superimposed this idea that order will prevail, when it actually doesn't. It turns it all into a lie.
Chris: And just on a basic level, you've killed this myth by selecting this fatuous text, which buys into the nice clean, Aristotelian ideology. No wonder there are only four people that signed up for this class, and Dr. Sexson is having to turn them away in droves.
The Greeks that told this story didn't have television. This was their entertainment. You've made it not even entertaining. They would probably have fired you from your job as “myth guy” and made you a janitor or something where you couldn't do any damage to the entertainment industry.
Chris: You're probably one of those people who likes to summarize movies for your friends, and you would tell them that Batman is this strange guy in a bat suit who has cool toys and eventually gets the bad guy, end of story.
John: Hey I like Batman
Chris: I guess I'm saying that even literature can do justice to myths, and there are domestic-type myths, and myths about the city, but you've missed the boat. I have some book title recommendations if you'd like to hear about them.”
Kelsey’s Part:
John: well thank you Chris of the free rent, or whaterver…Since we did not accomplish anything, because all but one student today, I expect you to come prepared to talk about trickster myths for next class. So, here ome common animals displayed as the tricksters…they are the raven and the killer whale?
Kelsey: How is the killer whale tricky?
John: I have no idea- look it up yourself. Anyway, Biblical stories for instance…the Book of Job gives us a look into the trickster world, and shows how change can take place by these characters.
Kelsey: Is the change also related to weather, the human race and their choices as well as gods themselves? How are these characters portrayed as the tricksters?
John: Yes and by being tricky.
Kelsey: Did you know that Apollo and Hermes actually shared the power of civilization. Do you know that the gift of civilization is the lyre? Hermes later ends up as the mouthpiece of Apollo, with the power of prophecy. What are the chances of that?
John: 1 out of 3
Kelsey: OK... Anyway, because you have already established you want TEXTUAL evidence here you go! Page 244- We could call this outcome a "compromise." Maybe that is what we should do- but it would not work. You are too stubborn.
John: What is this about compromise? That word is not in my vocabulary
Kelsey: Authority dwells outside the story altogether. The mediator of a structure of opposition, it keeps itself hidden from questioning, being little more than the idea that a certain kind of order, the order conveyed in the story, will prevail. If this is true, you would not ask for examples but just go along with the stories, the myths themselves.
John: Let's stick with textual evidence.
Kelsey: I am... Literature is the mirror in which humanity regards itself. At the center of that pride is a notion of fixed recurrence. As you said before, 1 out of 3?
John: yes
Kelsey: With the invention of writing, an act of mythtelling can become perfectly predictable- always that same ratio. It cannot vary from the authorized version. Writing assumes that a single mind is in control, and it reinforces that illusion by habits of phrasing that suggest a consistency of consciousness.
John: a single mind huh?
Kelsey: Literacy is not a skill- it is a mentality. Body language, musical accompaniment, the breathing of listeners, the sense of event, the background noises of nature- all these go silent when language becomes a set of visual marks marching across a page. These symbols invoke their own kind of consciousness and authority, subtly pressing the newly created reader to choose which of two worlds is closer to the truth- the world of oral or the world of silent thought.
John: I like the idea of literacy as a mentality. Anyway...
“all right, I have had simply enough…
Class Dismissed!!!!!!!!!!!
Action: Everyone walks out of the room giggling and having a good time
I get on me knee’s and yell
“Shaman Sexson!!!”
Scrtpit——————First Scene: A high school English teacher walks into a classroom, and sits on a desk where he processds to take the contents out of his briefcase (a notebook, several other books, and an apple”—he gazes at one particular book, a book of myth in quite contemplation: he has just recently graduated from college, and is about to teach his first class—a freshman English class that is starting with the value of myth. Before the class begins he has a brief monologue to himself about what he is going to teach.
John’s Monologue:
“Well…let’s see” He says with a sigh
“This is it, I suppose, I hope all those education classes were worth it.”
“And I hope my kids like me.”: Huffing on his apple and polishing it with his shirt
“But…ummm…let me think, what should be our first lesson…
“ahh…Demeter and Persophne…that should be an excellent topic for are first class.”
“I remember it being very appropriate…Not like that other myth garbage; rape, incest and violence—just motherly love—if I remember correctly…survey of Myth ,section I, that’s was the class”
“Great class other than the professor…what was his name…oh yeah, Dr Sexson…He got way to into it, thought myth was a physical performance…there will be none of that in my class room…besides, who would ever thought an old man would be full of such dirty jokes…slutty Shannon, corporeal similutide’s…the nerve of him.”
“He even went so far as to suggests that this story was about handing down humanity’s secerets of sexuality form mother to daughter—and that phallic symbols would be raised in respect of the this tradition…awful”
“Besides, I know this story is not about fertility”…I fondel the book in an erotic way. “This copy of Myth’s for teens is excellent”
“Much better descriptions than he ever gave…see right at the begening of Demeter and Persophne, there is a summery …it says the Myth is about compromise.”
“Compromise…” I say stroking my chin.
Action: I proceed to go write compromise on the board
“Hmm…that’s another compromise that will have to made; these children will need to appreciate the value of a book”
“I may seem old fashonied…huh huh, but in a sense I dipise technology”
“Plus, look how wonderful the print is, and myyyy…(I stroke the book erotically)the pictures in this edition”.
“If they do not understand the theme of compromise as the sole context—which I hope they do—at least they will be able to look at these wonderful pictures…”
I hold the book up
“Hale the printing press”
“There is only one thing though…I wish these stories followed more of a plot…like those wonderful John Grisham, and Daniel Brown novels.”
“But oh well.”
“At least I can guide, and teach about what is up on the board”
Action: Underneath compromise, I write Demeter and Persophne: a story of a mother only being able to see her daughter for a brief part of the year.
“Much like when I first went off to college…I missed my mother so much”
“Mythical joint custody”
Scene 2:
Class walks in, I introduce myself:
“Hello students, my name is John Nay.”
“I will be your instructor this year, I just graduated college so take it easy on me alright guys…huh huh huh.”
The class is whispering, and passing notes.
“And what we will be learning in my class this year, is the succession of events from the greek myths, to the modern and perfected novel: namely, John Grishrams, The associate.”
“Now, what are your names.”
Kate:‘I am kate of the beutifual eyes.”
Chris: I am Chris of the laughing rates.”
Kelsey: I am Kelsey of the free rent.”
Jeff: “and I am deep sea fishing Jeff .”
John: “Alrigh…hmm” I say a little confused. “So let’s begin. First, find a place of quite solitude and open your Myth’s for teens to p. 145, and read the myth Of Demeter and Persophne, and then we will discuss these that themes that I have writin on the board”
They read for a minute.
Jeff’s Part
Teacher: So even though we all know that the myth of Demeter and Persephone cannot be true, it nevertheless teaches us the power and importance of a mother-daughter relationship.
Student (without raising hand): I think that 'In whatever way a myth is told, it is true to the people who believe it. The principle of contexts only insists that a myth cannot be, or should not be, true for all people in all time.'
Teacher (aggravated): You need to learn to raise your hand son. But do you see how the myth uses language to make its point clear?
Student: No. It seems to me that the myth employs language to describe poetry that already exists in nature. You are confusing two aspects of myth. The art of mythtelling and the content of the myth are two different things.
Teacher: But you do understand that a master storyteller develops his own style to help keep his audience interested?
Student: I still don't think you are right. A master storyteller recognizes the power of myth and conveys this to the listener through his style. He checks the power, however, by periodic detachment to break the spell of the myth. He recognizes the danger such power can lead to in human hands.
Teacher: How can so much power come from language? I'm speaking now and my words don't seem to be casting and sort of spell.
Student: It's not the words themselves that hold the power, it is what they represent. Language is simply another form of domestication, and can be used to take away from and give back to nature. It is a human construct designed to organize and describe the inexpressible into a system of sounds. The description of emotions such as love and fear proves as futile as trying to describe a color in words. The oral poet shapes his style to entrance his audience so they are no longer listening to his sounds, but experiencing their meaning. This explains master storytellers, say "wansuuga" at the end of his poetry. It does not mean, "it is said" but rather "far-away saying from hear-say", or "it is being said (without knowing for sure)". It is impossible to condense the complexity of nature into simple sounds.
Kates Part:
Jon: “alright, alright…enough you Jeff of the laughing rats
Chris: That’s me:
John: whatever what did you guys really think”… not giving them anytime to really think. “Can anyone guess why myths from the oral tradition were often put into verse?
Kate: Because the word was being domesticated.
Jon: Wrong. Words aren’t wild animals; you can’t just fence them in.
Kate: Actually, that’s exactly what Neolithic tribes did to their stories. They versified them to imitate human forms, like the stomping of feet or the beat of a hand on a drum.
Jon: First of all, you just made that word up. And let’s stick to what the textbook says.
Kate: You can’t just explain myth by reading from a textbook.
Jon: Well since you seem know everything, why don’t you explain it?
Kate: Okay. When Neolithic tribes began to move away from hunting and gathering to agriculture, their stories followed suit—
Jon: Farming has nothing to do with myth. Are you making this up?
Kate: Would you just listen? Domesticating a word is like taming a goat or putting up a fence; the stanzas that are created when words are versified act like the fences around farms. The storyteller’s voice becomes measured in a regular unit and conforms to the domestication of nature that is created within the fence. So now you see that just when people began to fence in wild animals and plants, they also fenced in their stories by way of verse.
Jon: You’re just showing off. Do you enjoy making me look bad?
Kate: It’s not hard.
Jon: Thinks about it. Hey, wait a—
Kate: Interrupting. I’m not done, actually. In addition to fences imposing on wilderness and verses imposing on speech, mythologies of agricultural societies imposed upon one another.
Jon: Looking confused, does the math in his head. Gives up.
Kate: You see, when one tribe conquered another and took over their land, they had to come up with a way to deal with their new environment. The old inhabitants usually had their own set of myths, so the conquerors adopted the stories and manipulated them to use to their advantage. These signs of imposition are signs of myth in a developed agricultural context.
Jon: Sounds like a load of crap. Suspiciously. Did Dr. Sexson put you to this?
Kate: Who’s Sexson?
Jon: Never mind. Gurgling
Kate: Well I’m not done explaining and it’s just about to get interesting.
Jon: Sighs. Great, I can hardly wait.
Kate: People created these myths to deal with their surroundings. As their societies became more advanced, they imagined and created a set of higher forces that were pitted against humanity.
Jon: What do you mean by “higher forces”?
Kate: I mean gods. It’s natural for humanity to personify the forces that are acting against them, as a coping mechanism. The gods became every unknown force in the universe, for both good and evil, creating an outlet from which the imprisoned human found release. But the agricultural condition could offer relief only through transcendence—in this case, the worship of one new God to the exclusion of all others. Christianity, Islam, Judaism—these religions are agriculturalist and point to the transcendence of a limiting physical existence in which the self is felt to be imprisoned by its very efforts.
Jon: What does any of this have to do with what we were talking about?
Kate: When societies become agriculturalist, the setting is complete for a myth of transcendence. Coincidentally, when myths of transcendence arise, myth itself is transcended.
Chris’s Part:
John: Well does anyone else have anything to say on the subject.
Chris: You're very socratic, you know that?”
John: “Oh, thanks.”
Chris: “No, that's a bad thing. Like 'oh, we can't be out in the country, it's scary out here and there are animals and they're having sex and stuff, and only the cities have things to teach us'... myth isn't domestic like that. Or it can be, but in this case it isn't. You're taking out the “close to the human life-way” thing by trying to clean it up and desexualize it – or maybe that IS close to your life-way. Taking the wild natural state and domesticating it to make it not dangerous... humanized and housebroken... that's selling out. You're selling out this myth.
And you're completely missing the idea that the whole Demeter thing is about domestication and the transition from farming gods to king-type gods. Hades, prince of the underworld, raping the agricultural daughter and holding her captive? Hello! The transition and the fact that everything is always changing ...myths help us cope with that. By domesticating it and approaching it from the idea that it's static is the antithesis of myth.
John: “Young lady that is not appropriate language for the class. Please let me…”
Interrupted by Chris
Chris: Taking the consciousness of wildness and breaking it down into discrete entities instead of implying that everyone knows that the words are poor subsitutes for the reality of nature is only possible if you domesticate consciousness itself. It's the illusion of individuality. It's kind of gained a new life with the globalization movement. Are you considering the Athenian philosophers, here?
John: “Er, no.”
“The idea that oral myth is crap compared with being able to write it down and objectify it in mental frames? Give it a nice beginning, middle, and end? The Neoplatonists – and you should probably know this – said there was a mysticism beyond all the writing and beyond the nice domestic sphere. Whereas being of the Aristotelian school of thought, which is positively medieval, you've just made it all boring. Freytag would be proud. People have taken the idea of mythology and superimposed this idea that order will prevail, when it actually doesn't. It turns it all into a lie.
Chris: And just on a basic level, you've killed this myth by selecting this fatuous text, which buys into the nice clean, Aristotelian ideology. No wonder there are only four people that signed up for this class, and Dr. Sexson is having to turn them away in droves.
The Greeks that told this story didn't have television. This was their entertainment. You've made it not even entertaining. They would probably have fired you from your job as “myth guy” and made you a janitor or something where you couldn't do any damage to the entertainment industry.
Chris: You're probably one of those people who likes to summarize movies for your friends, and you would tell them that Batman is this strange guy in a bat suit who has cool toys and eventually gets the bad guy, end of story.
John: Hey I like Batman
Chris: I guess I'm saying that even literature can do justice to myths, and there are domestic-type myths, and myths about the city, but you've missed the boat. I have some book title recommendations if you'd like to hear about them.”
Kelsey’s Part:
John: well thank you Chris of the free rent, or whaterver…Since we did not accomplish anything, because all but one student today, I expect you to come prepared to talk about trickster myths for next class. So, here ome common animals displayed as the tricksters…they are the raven and the killer whale?
Kelsey: How is the killer whale tricky?
John: I have no idea- look it up yourself. Anyway, Biblical stories for instance…the Book of Job gives us a look into the trickster world, and shows how change can take place by these characters.
Kelsey: Is the change also related to weather, the human race and their choices as well as gods themselves? How are these characters portrayed as the tricksters?
John: Yes and by being tricky.
Kelsey: Did you know that Apollo and Hermes actually shared the power of civilization. Do you know that the gift of civilization is the lyre? Hermes later ends up as the mouthpiece of Apollo, with the power of prophecy. What are the chances of that?
John: 1 out of 3
Kelsey: OK... Anyway, because you have already established you want TEXTUAL evidence here you go! Page 244- We could call this outcome a "compromise." Maybe that is what we should do- but it would not work. You are too stubborn.
John: What is this about compromise? That word is not in my vocabulary
Kelsey: Authority dwells outside the story altogether. The mediator of a structure of opposition, it keeps itself hidden from questioning, being little more than the idea that a certain kind of order, the order conveyed in the story, will prevail. If this is true, you would not ask for examples but just go along with the stories, the myths themselves.
John: Let's stick with textual evidence.
Kelsey: I am... Literature is the mirror in which humanity regards itself. At the center of that pride is a notion of fixed recurrence. As you said before, 1 out of 3?
John: yes
Kelsey: With the invention of writing, an act of mythtelling can become perfectly predictable- always that same ratio. It cannot vary from the authorized version. Writing assumes that a single mind is in control, and it reinforces that illusion by habits of phrasing that suggest a consistency of consciousness.
John: a single mind huh?
Kelsey: Literacy is not a skill- it is a mentality. Body language, musical accompaniment, the breathing of listeners, the sense of event, the background noises of nature- all these go silent when language becomes a set of visual marks marching across a page. These symbols invoke their own kind of consciousness and authority, subtly pressing the newly created reader to choose which of two worlds is closer to the truth- the world of oral or the world of silent thought.
John: I like the idea of literacy as a mentality. Anyway...
“all right, I have had simply enough…
Class Dismissed!!!!!!!!!!!
Action: Everyone walks out of the room giggling and having a good time
I get on me knee’s and yell
“Shaman Sexson!!!”
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Ecstatic Moments.
When i finished tristram shandy recently, i was asked to do an essay for Dr Lansverk's class. He offers a creative prompt, and I choose to emualte the style of tristram shandy in prose--actually it was an essay, but an essay in prose with the explcit purpose to digress from any specific subject matter. That is actually a lie, my last musing in the essay was what i found to be the most important subject matter of the book, and what I feel Dr Sexson might have been expressing as somethning to weep over when he talked abou this book in class--iknow i teared up a bit when i read this part, when young tirstram is travelling through france and he talks about young love, and then there was an external context i discoverd about the book and stenre--writing to the moment is impossible, and perhaps we need just remember our happiest memories to find that plane were beauty and immensity coincide--at least for a moment, and maybe i am too young to reall apreciate everything life has to offer, but this is what i did:
But it isn’t worth it after all to live, love and lust after morning dew, and then watch dawn’s haze roll through and reced and recollect moments past. To remember the dirt brown cannel’s of Holland, the purple-green fragrant blossoms spouting out of the concrete walls, and my yellow lab that ran along the shore of the beach with me—in the ocean’s gray haze, and cold breeze. And later, when I was teenager, in the old green wet hills near the lakes—New Hampshire, New England. The infinite long, and windy back roads through the fall’s yellow and red dropping leaves, the white churches, and the perfume from those first lips—the cascade of her blue eyes and that white dress, spring 2005. And the first time I really loved Montana’s mountains—when we were all still best friends playing catch outside—watching crimson-red fleeting-orange swirls—the last of days the sunlight, fluster in the clouds on the snowcapped mountains above the evergreen and aspen trees. For, in that final moment between light and dark, a coyote howled at 9 pm on the pastor, behind RJ’s fence, and that—that was my last best memory.
Conclusion:
“And what was all that about”, my proof reader said on finishing the essay. “A Cock and Bull essay” I said—“ ACock and Bull Essay, and the best I have ever wrote”.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
So, while I was doing some research/work/thinking for my presentation today, I stumbled on a blog idea that I thought was interesting. It relates back to the Finnigans Wake article, and is a pretty odd topic. I suppose it is one of those 3/1, 1/3 topics of coincident’s, and admiration that relates to James Joyce, and the whole world for that matter. Alright to get to the topic, my presentation topic is on context, and how myths that have survived thousands of years in the form of literature are empty shells of their former selves. Which if we reflect on the nature of this class is very true. The abstractions of writing exists in an isolated plane of existence reserved for English majors—I think Dante mentions this in his inferno—we are right between Paul Newman as cool hand luke, and Ovid writing the metamorphosis. But to retain my train of thought, what Finnigans wake has done for the novel according Dr Sexson, is put a halt to the limit of artistic expression in that medium; for there is literally nothing else that can be written that reaches the achievement of Finnigan’s wake—for this novel has everything (and as it says in the introduction of my edition of the book) something for everyone in no matter what age group, or time for that matter.
The magus as Yates has defined, is a divine being—and Bruno thought he achieved this stature with his artificial memory. Has Joyce achieved this task with the Wake? Is every song that has ever been sung vibrating out of this novel when one reads it? Is all the pain, the glory, and the anguish brimming within it? I do not know, but if they are, then the myths that James Joyce was quite fond of—such as those in Ovid—would be the myths we have all read, but they would also be the myths Kane discusses in the his book with the context we lack in understanding them. This is pretty outstanding if one really thinks about it—a book, a form of technology, echoing every human experience. What one need to do to achieve this. For to embody a shamanistic poet one needs to, as Kane says: “push the meaning away from words, [and be-] aware that no human story can be the last word on anything”. Think of the beginning and ending of this book, a circle within a square. Maybe this seems like I am giving praise to Joyce too much; but does not the bible chant similar revelations. I actually think this would be an interesting idea for a novel: a post apocalyptic world that only has the surviving text of finnigans wake. But to get back to my discussion without rambling on too long about my ideas. Only the mind of the divine could produce such, and perhaps Joyce reached this pinnacle of human existence—the pinnacle that allowed him to remember that, that was forgotten.
The idea I had other than the novel was that: perhaps the internet could bring Myth that has lost its context back to life, in a way that would allow us to return to moments throughout all human existence. The internet is such an ambiguous, democratic, undefinable, loud, and never-ending thing which adapts daily—into a non stable entity, with no true beginning or ending. With something such as this, perhaps it is possible to find that fleeting feeling the shaman had thousands of years ago when the agriculturalists plundered his village, or that lone blogger has merely just reflecting on his excursion in Hyalite canyon—where he found a voice that breezed through the trees.
Dr Sexson in his article made the point that Finnigans Wake is like a live body; that works as a living being would. The internet seems so to, it is a deep dark well of thought that has everything to say, if, and when you look for it. So I believe it does not have myths forgotten, or perhaps they are not myths forgotten, but myths that still hold true in any medium or mind as long as one is willing to engage in that particular experience which the internet has to offer—or will one day have to offer when it’s completed, and divine.
Giordano Bruno actually attempted to create the universe in his mind. With a technology such as the internet, we have the ability to create the universe with in electronic space. Everyday more information is added, more experience, more feeling. And everyday perhaps we are creating another god, another immortal.
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Music as a Matter of Discussion.
So it seems it’s time for a blog. Well to start, I would like to say that I actually have had a bunch of ideas for blogs recently, and so for the sake of making this one not to tedious to read, I am only going to expound on one idea. For a while now, I suppose, I have been trying to piece together the little pieces of humanity that have driven artistic/historical movements thus far. I realize that this is practically everyone’s conquest in life, and it is simply—pretentious of me to write a sentence like that—but for the sake of direction and a unified composition—let’s ride the crest that will define our generation, and what we do henceforth.
I was reading an article yesterday in a publication called (Addbussters). The premise of the magazine is essentially deconstructing typical capitalistic perspective’s, that one might find in a popular American magazine, by the use of imagery that mocks western over consumption, and the shallow materialism of the 21st century. In this magazine they had an article on the succession of events toward post-modern art, music, and literature. What this article was trying to express, other than the non-bias history lesson, was that in order for progressive steps to happen, people need to avoid the post-modern aesthetic for—it has manifested this sick, globalized playground for the rich, at the expense of so many—and in order for us to construct a new aesthetic, we need abandon life as we know it for a new genre, and a new perspective that will be felt in life and expressed through the arts.
Why I have mentioned this (other than I think it is extremely valuable for the survival of expression in the 21st century) is that this class—and the article I just mentioned—have essentially addressed this important question: what is the result of major paradigm shifts, and what have they done to their contemporary’s consciousness. To address this issue in a medium other than the typical examples we have been addressing in class, let us now think about how writing, and the 20th and 21st centuries technological innovations have restructured music. I am not a musician, nor a music scholar, so forgive me those of you who are reading this, who would like to know where my opinion is coming from—it is just simply my perspective. Reading a quick wikkipedia article on the subject of musical notation, and it’s emergence in the world; I found that a written form of music exists in most cultures that also had a written form of their language. Quoting the wiki article, “Al-Kindi (801–873 AD) was the first great theoretician of Arabic music. He proposed adding a fifth string to the 'ud and discussed the cosmological connotations of music”. Wow that sounds like someone we know, here’s a clue: the Magus. Anyway back to my discussion, which will focus on the evolution of music in the European world, and its roots in American music. Music like the visual artwork that was presented in catholic churches, was a means of propaganda of sorts—which really means just people trying to understand devout piousness as a means of making choices with prudence. Medieval scholar’s studying music, like medieval scholars studying writing and memory systems, struggled with an economic and practical way to organize such fleeting information. Along came, “Guido d'Arezzo, an Italian Benedictine monk who lived from 995–1050” who created the earliest form of modern musical notation that would create this notion of a composer. This form of musical notation is now the dominant pervading form of recording music and is (get this) read from right to left, subordinating and encapsulating what was once fleeting.
I got the idea to write this blog from my friend’s dad who is one of the most well renowned professional jazz guitar player’s in New Hampshire. He is also a professor at a University. When I was last home we were talking about music, particularly jazz music and we got on the topic of classical musicians versus jazz musicians. What he told me about composers, and a joke that him and his fellow friends have about them is that—it is more of a just a tribute to the writer, and with in jazz, it is more to the moment and expression to the moment is something that is likely to happen. I feel like this all relates back to let’s see, at least 1 third of what we have been talking about. Writing isolates, jazz stimulates, and in terms of music—it begins to make sense that this music came from a primarily oral culture that had for its education: the streets, the people, religious re interpretation, and most importantly the ability to express anguish rebellion and mental freedom.
And this brings me to the end of my blog. The post-modern music-art industry has been corrupted by a false pretentious aesthetic that is vile, and quickly losing its value. I ask the reader, what kind of culture are we living in that values television shows that embrace snobbery, laziness, and overconsumption.
It is at least this, if not more: it is culture that gets bombarded with a medium of information that is coated in plutocratic ideology; the rich get richer, and the poor get numbed by prescription drugs, alcohol and a dying aesthetic that is on the verge burning out of contemporary existence for ever.
I was reading an article yesterday in a publication called (Addbussters). The premise of the magazine is essentially deconstructing typical capitalistic perspective’s, that one might find in a popular American magazine, by the use of imagery that mocks western over consumption, and the shallow materialism of the 21st century. In this magazine they had an article on the succession of events toward post-modern art, music, and literature. What this article was trying to express, other than the non-bias history lesson, was that in order for progressive steps to happen, people need to avoid the post-modern aesthetic for—it has manifested this sick, globalized playground for the rich, at the expense of so many—and in order for us to construct a new aesthetic, we need abandon life as we know it for a new genre, and a new perspective that will be felt in life and expressed through the arts.
Why I have mentioned this (other than I think it is extremely valuable for the survival of expression in the 21st century) is that this class—and the article I just mentioned—have essentially addressed this important question: what is the result of major paradigm shifts, and what have they done to their contemporary’s consciousness. To address this issue in a medium other than the typical examples we have been addressing in class, let us now think about how writing, and the 20th and 21st centuries technological innovations have restructured music. I am not a musician, nor a music scholar, so forgive me those of you who are reading this, who would like to know where my opinion is coming from—it is just simply my perspective. Reading a quick wikkipedia article on the subject of musical notation, and it’s emergence in the world; I found that a written form of music exists in most cultures that also had a written form of their language. Quoting the wiki article, “Al-Kindi (801–873 AD) was the first great theoretician of Arabic music. He proposed adding a fifth string to the 'ud and discussed the cosmological connotations of music”. Wow that sounds like someone we know, here’s a clue: the Magus. Anyway back to my discussion, which will focus on the evolution of music in the European world, and its roots in American music. Music like the visual artwork that was presented in catholic churches, was a means of propaganda of sorts—which really means just people trying to understand devout piousness as a means of making choices with prudence. Medieval scholar’s studying music, like medieval scholars studying writing and memory systems, struggled with an economic and practical way to organize such fleeting information. Along came, “Guido d'Arezzo, an Italian Benedictine monk who lived from 995–1050” who created the earliest form of modern musical notation that would create this notion of a composer. This form of musical notation is now the dominant pervading form of recording music and is (get this) read from right to left, subordinating and encapsulating what was once fleeting.
I got the idea to write this blog from my friend’s dad who is one of the most well renowned professional jazz guitar player’s in New Hampshire. He is also a professor at a University. When I was last home we were talking about music, particularly jazz music and we got on the topic of classical musicians versus jazz musicians. What he told me about composers, and a joke that him and his fellow friends have about them is that—it is more of a just a tribute to the writer, and with in jazz, it is more to the moment and expression to the moment is something that is likely to happen. I feel like this all relates back to let’s see, at least 1 third of what we have been talking about. Writing isolates, jazz stimulates, and in terms of music—it begins to make sense that this music came from a primarily oral culture that had for its education: the streets, the people, religious re interpretation, and most importantly the ability to express anguish rebellion and mental freedom.
And this brings me to the end of my blog. The post-modern music-art industry has been corrupted by a false pretentious aesthetic that is vile, and quickly losing its value. I ask the reader, what kind of culture are we living in that values television shows that embrace snobbery, laziness, and overconsumption.
It is at least this, if not more: it is culture that gets bombarded with a medium of information that is coated in plutocratic ideology; the rich get richer, and the poor get numbed by prescription drugs, alcohol and a dying aesthetic that is on the verge burning out of contemporary existence for ever.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
revised prose
I remember the smell of the yellow flowers across the dewy grass when waking as a child, a breeze that fell upon my chest through the perched summer window. And I really remember hearing my grandmother in the kitchen—cooking pancakes with blueberry’s and chocolate chips. It was summer—always summer, these memories. For what is life without eternity—these small moments when we are truly awake, yet dreaming. A dream that displaces that feeling of being out in the distance (maybe not far enough)…
For there is a drunken Indian on my aunts reservation where she works, as a nurse, who has wet tears crusting around his eyes—his last drop of bourbon emptying out of an iridescent bottle, burning his lips at 11:30 in the morning. For that last drop was never enough to console him about his dead wife, his obese children, and that worthless monthly government check that hardly bought him enough to tie one on—day after day…
And there he is a few hours later, as my aunt and I approach the family park in her blue State issued ford pickup truck—drunker than hell where it is still nice—nice with the yellow flowers, the sun at noon with the little clouds dancing through the sky, and a place to dream with the little Indian children who still have the ability to imagine fame and fortune—rocking back and forth into the sky, on the new swing set the federal government finally purchased. My aunt told me Elijah (the drunken Indian) was always in the park—face turned in, and breathing the gravel. It was better than being at home alone she contended. In a matter of fact tone she looked over at me from the driver’s seat and said “he got in a car wreck a few years back breaking his wife’s neck, and shattering a few of his bones as well—that’s why when he is sober enough to stand straight, he walks with a limp…” My aunt sighed and squeezed the steering wheel a little, and told me she had been his nurse when he woke a few hours after the incident—where he learned the full details from the state trooper who was the first to arrive at the scene, and see Elijah’s wife’s flipped dangling head, and crooked neck.
My aunt said in some manner sincerity had always been a virtue of Elijah’s, and on waking from the shock he asked in his first conscious moment about his wife. The topper discontentedly reposed, but gave it out of the long nights stress, and the honesty it was worth to the fragmented middle age man, on the white linen bed surrounded by hospital equipment…“When I was about 100 feet out of the wreck—I approached what I thought to be a couple of parked cars on the highway, with engine trouble.” Pacing around and gulping some ice water never making eye contact with Elijah he continued, “and I came upon it sir, your wife next you…she, I perceived to be dead.”
In his thoughts the white 23 year old state trooper with good intentions, for the Indian reservation, and its people, was still there…coming upon the sight of the burning orange lights in the distance—the flipped rear ended red dodge pickup truck on the side of the two lane highway; a green Honda civic totaled from hood to steering wheel, and a bleeding man kneeling next to the right front tire of the crushed green steel mess with his head in his palms…My aunt said a little bitterly, “the man who was driving the civic had been drunk”.
In the bed below the bright fluorescent bulbs and the cackling fan wafting around stale air, something faded in Elijah’s brown eyes. He had seen the photos—that seemed to fill in the hazy edges were the New Mexico state trooper could not…which my aunt reasoned looking out at him now from the glaring windshield (in a recollective sort of distance from me) broke him down so much he picked up drinking himself.
As I watched him in the hot sun asleep on the grass I knew he owed the world at least that favor. What was pious sober living worth if it had brought him thus far? I knew he would rather see the rest of his days in a shade being removed. A place like the one he found himself as my aunt and I sat in the parking lot; with the children who had not yet even thought of driving on long dark highways…
That place where a butterfly could touch upon those swaying yellow mariposa’s, and return to cover as the heavy summer rain soaked the grass—and Elijah’s clothes when he was too drunk to pick himself up—a place where rainbows formed with low dark moisture and sunshine, and a place where all who saw him really tried, but could never really care—in the shade and comfort of a summer dream.
For there is a drunken Indian on my aunts reservation where she works, as a nurse, who has wet tears crusting around his eyes—his last drop of bourbon emptying out of an iridescent bottle, burning his lips at 11:30 in the morning. For that last drop was never enough to console him about his dead wife, his obese children, and that worthless monthly government check that hardly bought him enough to tie one on—day after day…
And there he is a few hours later, as my aunt and I approach the family park in her blue State issued ford pickup truck—drunker than hell where it is still nice—nice with the yellow flowers, the sun at noon with the little clouds dancing through the sky, and a place to dream with the little Indian children who still have the ability to imagine fame and fortune—rocking back and forth into the sky, on the new swing set the federal government finally purchased. My aunt told me Elijah (the drunken Indian) was always in the park—face turned in, and breathing the gravel. It was better than being at home alone she contended. In a matter of fact tone she looked over at me from the driver’s seat and said “he got in a car wreck a few years back breaking his wife’s neck, and shattering a few of his bones as well—that’s why when he is sober enough to stand straight, he walks with a limp…” My aunt sighed and squeezed the steering wheel a little, and told me she had been his nurse when he woke a few hours after the incident—where he learned the full details from the state trooper who was the first to arrive at the scene, and see Elijah’s wife’s flipped dangling head, and crooked neck.
My aunt said in some manner sincerity had always been a virtue of Elijah’s, and on waking from the shock he asked in his first conscious moment about his wife. The topper discontentedly reposed, but gave it out of the long nights stress, and the honesty it was worth to the fragmented middle age man, on the white linen bed surrounded by hospital equipment…“When I was about 100 feet out of the wreck—I approached what I thought to be a couple of parked cars on the highway, with engine trouble.” Pacing around and gulping some ice water never making eye contact with Elijah he continued, “and I came upon it sir, your wife next you…she, I perceived to be dead.”
In his thoughts the white 23 year old state trooper with good intentions, for the Indian reservation, and its people, was still there…coming upon the sight of the burning orange lights in the distance—the flipped rear ended red dodge pickup truck on the side of the two lane highway; a green Honda civic totaled from hood to steering wheel, and a bleeding man kneeling next to the right front tire of the crushed green steel mess with his head in his palms…My aunt said a little bitterly, “the man who was driving the civic had been drunk”.
In the bed below the bright fluorescent bulbs and the cackling fan wafting around stale air, something faded in Elijah’s brown eyes. He had seen the photos—that seemed to fill in the hazy edges were the New Mexico state trooper could not…which my aunt reasoned looking out at him now from the glaring windshield (in a recollective sort of distance from me) broke him down so much he picked up drinking himself.
As I watched him in the hot sun asleep on the grass I knew he owed the world at least that favor. What was pious sober living worth if it had brought him thus far? I knew he would rather see the rest of his days in a shade being removed. A place like the one he found himself as my aunt and I sat in the parking lot; with the children who had not yet even thought of driving on long dark highways…
That place where a butterfly could touch upon those swaying yellow mariposa’s, and return to cover as the heavy summer rain soaked the grass—and Elijah’s clothes when he was too drunk to pick himself up—a place where rainbows formed with low dark moisture and sunshine, and a place where all who saw him really tried, but could never really care—in the shade and comfort of a summer dream.
What Is “It”
What is the feeling when you're driving away from people, and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? -it's the too huge world vaulting us, and it's good-bye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies.””
Jack Kerouac--my first writer who was idol.
As I said I would do in my last blog—my discussion continues. What I would like to expound upon for today is Giulio Camillo’s memory theater, and how it relates to my own memory theater.
So to start:
…I remember a few months ago purchasing The Art of Memory, skimming through it briefly, reading some of the passages and pondering what (exactly did Camillo’s centerfold mean)—and thinking to myself, that this semester was going to be a tough one. And I suppose it has—but has it really been in the traditional sense of what a contemporary college student equates with hard. I start with this example: cramming for a test—I am sure every college student knows what I am talking about. We all have been fortified in that sick mindset of fluorescent light twittering on and off above our head, sipping stale coffee repeating like mad a few irrelevant concepts, for a class you hate…and there a few hours later in a drawn out solitude at 11:45 the librarian’s snaps you out of that edge of insanity reminding you that things close, and your bed is always a welcome place. Godamnit I hate that shit...So In a sense you might say, I was delightfully surprised to discover that the artificial memory was in fact aesthetic—not a compulsory technique in the typical way we remember irrevelent college drool—but an engaging experience that is everything, and which—folds neatly into your mind.
Why I chose to continue with the muses for my theater is simple: the park, the dogs, and the smell the breeze had breaking through the park trees is poetry. If anyone can recall from the beginning of the semester, Doctor Sexson on assessing the importance of remembering the muses said: what does one really have to do on a day to day basis that is more important than remembering the nine. This stuck, and perhaps I might be a mystic, but patterns of poetry and the muses riding crests of awe!!!!!! are everywhere. Weather they are divine or not, I cannot say. I Just know, like Jack Kerouac defined “IT”, that “IT” is an unexplainable plane were we truly are and above the realm of flesh and bone. Yates in her study of Camillo says that when studying his theater and its dynamics she discovered that Camillo believed in the three worlds of the Cabalist: “the supercelestial world of the sephiroth or the divine emanations: the middle celestial world of the stars; (and) the subcelestial or elemental world.” She latter goes on to explain that in a sense this notion is Platonic, and that Camillo is using the sephiroth as eternal places of his memory. And I suppose in a sense, the muses and there explicit power to evoke are engrained in my memory as Sephiroth, or “It”. Camallio believed his organic association was constructed upon eternal truth, and I suppose this is not really what I seek as the cornerstone to my theater—or maybe it is—I do not know. But I do understand my need to use the muses as a barricade and graspable objects between myself and “IT”. Finally, in a mystic sense, the practicality of the memory theater in this occult Platonic sense to myself and Camallio is that “The theater is thus a vision of the world and of the nature of things seen from a height, from the stars themselves and even from the supercelestial founts of wisdom beyond them”.
God bless the rusted water pail
Teaming with soaked green grass nectar.
God bless the old wooden white house—
In slow years they rest
Nantucket
Were blue curled waves stand still—
in that moment of memory
Were not a shade of light breaks that silence.
God bless laying in the grass
Not a moment too soon—
When Grandma loved seagulls
And my eyes covered with the summers crimson lids.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
The Magicians Tricks:
Well, I have not writin a blog in over a month. What this reflects is numerous things I suppose, but I really don’t want to expound upon them. Anyway for this blog, I wanted to talk about my memory theater and the techniques I used for its construction. This blog might seem arbitrary—because I have the impression that class time on Wednesday will be dedicated to this subject—but for the sake of clarity I prefer to write about it.
My memory theater that I used for my fifty things is a place anyone in our class can visit—don’t worry—the unwashed masses are still excluded. Here are the directions: walk to Cooper Park (it’s on Story and 8th) make sure to walk there on a sunny day so as to marvel at the sun breaking through the leaf less trees, the melting snow off of the sidewalk, the chirping birds ushering in spring, and really marvel at the pleasure you have locking at least a few fragments of the scene before you forever in your mind. Once you’re at the park walk toward the large tree in the middle that has a large stone next to it. Once your there face the tree at the angle of 8th being at your left hand, and the bronze incrusted history of the before you. Now that you are at this place recall the muses from our class room, and suppose they are dog handlers for the day. For me Erato is Erato of the terriers—and she is directly in front of me leaning on the tree behind the fencing when I am here. Her ten dogs are leashed in a sort of leash that connects them all and she is holding them with her right hand. The first of the terriers is an Airedale Terrier. This dog has a flowing drifting breeze constantly upon it and it is looking at the dog next to him, which is a black Russian terrier. This dog is wearing a soviet cap. There are 8 more embellished images of terriers for this set of ten that Erato is holding on to. The next muse that I decided to take to the park was Clio. And I felt the dog breed that best embodied Clio was the hounds she has a ten set like Erato her right hand. She is standing next to me in the park, reading the bronze commemoration. Urania is Urania of the working dogs, and she is to the right of me up in a lamp post with floating dogs and the leash firm in her right hand. And bellow her is thalia of the sporting dogs looking up at her holding her ten set in her left hand. Finally Terpsichore the tiny dancer is on a large stone to the right of where I am standing with her toy dogs starting with Affenphincher—which I envisioned to look something like a purse dog that pinch’s an attractive materlistic girls fans.
It is strange, every comment that I have herd from classmates concerning this assignment was something along the lines of this: “it was really easy, it only took me less than hour to do. I thought it was going to be much harder than it was”. I suppose the reason people seemed to float through this assignment with such effortless grace was that each memory theater was personal and reflective. By making objects worth while to be remembered it is in a cliché term cake. We are what we remember and what moves us to remember.
:Part II of my memory theater explanation will be more abstract. This discussion will be continued tomorrow.
My memory theater that I used for my fifty things is a place anyone in our class can visit—don’t worry—the unwashed masses are still excluded. Here are the directions: walk to Cooper Park (it’s on Story and 8th) make sure to walk there on a sunny day so as to marvel at the sun breaking through the leaf less trees, the melting snow off of the sidewalk, the chirping birds ushering in spring, and really marvel at the pleasure you have locking at least a few fragments of the scene before you forever in your mind. Once you’re at the park walk toward the large tree in the middle that has a large stone next to it. Once your there face the tree at the angle of 8th being at your left hand, and the bronze incrusted history of the before you. Now that you are at this place recall the muses from our class room, and suppose they are dog handlers for the day. For me Erato is Erato of the terriers—and she is directly in front of me leaning on the tree behind the fencing when I am here. Her ten dogs are leashed in a sort of leash that connects them all and she is holding them with her right hand. The first of the terriers is an Airedale Terrier. This dog has a flowing drifting breeze constantly upon it and it is looking at the dog next to him, which is a black Russian terrier. This dog is wearing a soviet cap. There are 8 more embellished images of terriers for this set of ten that Erato is holding on to. The next muse that I decided to take to the park was Clio. And I felt the dog breed that best embodied Clio was the hounds she has a ten set like Erato her right hand. She is standing next to me in the park, reading the bronze commemoration. Urania is Urania of the working dogs, and she is to the right of me up in a lamp post with floating dogs and the leash firm in her right hand. And bellow her is thalia of the sporting dogs looking up at her holding her ten set in her left hand. Finally Terpsichore the tiny dancer is on a large stone to the right of where I am standing with her toy dogs starting with Affenphincher—which I envisioned to look something like a purse dog that pinch’s an attractive materlistic girls fans.
It is strange, every comment that I have herd from classmates concerning this assignment was something along the lines of this: “it was really easy, it only took me less than hour to do. I thought it was going to be much harder than it was”. I suppose the reason people seemed to float through this assignment with such effortless grace was that each memory theater was personal and reflective. By making objects worth while to be remembered it is in a cliché term cake. We are what we remember and what moves us to remember.
:Part II of my memory theater explanation will be more abstract. This discussion will be continued tomorrow.
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Incomplete short prose.
Here is what i have been doing with my weekend. It is not yet completed; there are a bunch of stylistic errors, but enjoy if you like short stories. Oh yeah, i will something relevent for the class soon.
I remember the smell of the yellow flowers across the dewy grass when waking as a child, a breeze that fell upon my chest through the perched summer window. And I really remember hearing my grandmother in the kitchen—cooking pancakes with blueberry’s and chocolate chips. It was summer—always summer, these memories. For what is life without eternity—these small moments when we are truly awake, yet dreaming. A dream that displaces that feeling of being out in the distance (maybe not far enough)…
For there is a drunken Indian on my aunts reservation where she works, as a nurse, who has wet tears crusting around his eyes—his last drop of bourbon emptying out of an iridescent bottle, and burning his lips at 11:30 in the morning—for that last drop was never enough to console him about his dead wife, his obese children, and that worthless monthly government check that hardly bought him enough to drink as pleased…And there he is a few hours later as my aunt and I approach the park drunker than hell where it is still nice—nice with the yellow flowers, the sun at noon with the little clouds dancing through the sky, and a place to dream with the little Indian children who imagine fame and fortune rocking back and forth into the sky, on the new swing sets the federal government finally purchased. My aunt told me Elijah (the drunken Indian) was always sad like this. He was sadder than most she explained—for he had got in a car wreck a few years back breaking his wife’s neck, and shattering a few of his bones as well—that’s why when he was sober enough to stand straight, he walked with a limp, eternally reminding him of that scorching memory.
My aunt had been there when he woke a few hours after the incident, and how he learned the full details from the state trooper—who was the first to arrive on the scene, and see Elijah’s wife’s flipped dangling head, and crooked neck. The topper discontendly reposed when he was asked to give a full recount of what he saw—but, he grimly gave it out of the long nights stress, and the honesty it was worth to the fragment middle age man, on the white linen bed surrounded by hospital equipment. When he was about 100 feet out he quickly approached what he thought to be—a couple slow moving cars on the highway; when they did not move or appear to advance forward at any particular velocity he knew exactly what had happened. When coming upon the sight of the burning orange lights in the distance—he found that there was a flipped rear ended red dodge pickup truck on the side of the two lane highway, a green Honda civic totaled from hood to steering wheel, and a bleeding man kneeling next to the right front tire of the crushed green car with his head in his palms. My aunt said the man who was driving the civic had been drunk…
Something faded in Elijah’s brown eyes when he heard the officer finish recounting his nights duties, (which she reasoned broke him down so much he picked up drinking himself)…for he knew he owed the world at least that favor—pious sober living had brought him thus far, and he would rather see the rest his days in shade. A place like the one he found himself a few years later as my aunt and I approached the park; with the children who had not yet been thus far—that place where a butterfly could touch upon those yellow mariposa’s, and return to cover as the heavy summer rain soaked the grass, and Elijah’s clothes when he was too drunk to pick himself up, a place where rainbows formed with the low dark moisture and the sunshine, and a place where all who saw him really tried, but could never care for his well being.
I remember the smell of the yellow flowers across the dewy grass when waking as a child, a breeze that fell upon my chest through the perched summer window. And I really remember hearing my grandmother in the kitchen—cooking pancakes with blueberry’s and chocolate chips. It was summer—always summer, these memories. For what is life without eternity—these small moments when we are truly awake, yet dreaming. A dream that displaces that feeling of being out in the distance (maybe not far enough)…
For there is a drunken Indian on my aunts reservation where she works, as a nurse, who has wet tears crusting around his eyes—his last drop of bourbon emptying out of an iridescent bottle, and burning his lips at 11:30 in the morning—for that last drop was never enough to console him about his dead wife, his obese children, and that worthless monthly government check that hardly bought him enough to drink as pleased…And there he is a few hours later as my aunt and I approach the park drunker than hell where it is still nice—nice with the yellow flowers, the sun at noon with the little clouds dancing through the sky, and a place to dream with the little Indian children who imagine fame and fortune rocking back and forth into the sky, on the new swing sets the federal government finally purchased. My aunt told me Elijah (the drunken Indian) was always sad like this. He was sadder than most she explained—for he had got in a car wreck a few years back breaking his wife’s neck, and shattering a few of his bones as well—that’s why when he was sober enough to stand straight, he walked with a limp, eternally reminding him of that scorching memory.
My aunt had been there when he woke a few hours after the incident, and how he learned the full details from the state trooper—who was the first to arrive on the scene, and see Elijah’s wife’s flipped dangling head, and crooked neck. The topper discontendly reposed when he was asked to give a full recount of what he saw—but, he grimly gave it out of the long nights stress, and the honesty it was worth to the fragment middle age man, on the white linen bed surrounded by hospital equipment. When he was about 100 feet out he quickly approached what he thought to be—a couple slow moving cars on the highway; when they did not move or appear to advance forward at any particular velocity he knew exactly what had happened. When coming upon the sight of the burning orange lights in the distance—he found that there was a flipped rear ended red dodge pickup truck on the side of the two lane highway, a green Honda civic totaled from hood to steering wheel, and a bleeding man kneeling next to the right front tire of the crushed green car with his head in his palms. My aunt said the man who was driving the civic had been drunk…
Something faded in Elijah’s brown eyes when he heard the officer finish recounting his nights duties, (which she reasoned broke him down so much he picked up drinking himself)…for he knew he owed the world at least that favor—pious sober living had brought him thus far, and he would rather see the rest his days in shade. A place like the one he found himself a few years later as my aunt and I approached the park; with the children who had not yet been thus far—that place where a butterfly could touch upon those yellow mariposa’s, and return to cover as the heavy summer rain soaked the grass, and Elijah’s clothes when he was too drunk to pick himself up, a place where rainbows formed with the low dark moisture and the sunshine, and a place where all who saw him really tried, but could never care for his well being.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Art History Exam and Memory
I do not know whether it is through the faith of god, or the good faith of earthly relations (as Kane coins it) that my classes seem to coincide with one another in intricate ways. I feel like this seems to happen every semester—perhaps it is that there is in fact a platonic plane of true knowledge that all the arts to try to attain and rekindle.
This morning I woke up in a daze adjacent to my alarm clock that blurted visually and audibly the striking iridescent yellow 7:04; I rested for a second, and continued on a course of minit long naps until I stumbled out of bed to a grey light that barely broke through the shutter covering my bedroom window. I was on a mission—I reconciled myself—art history, the first test of the semester. Previous to this morning I had been up all night pondering the relevance of this subject matter—and how I was becoming extremely impatient with dead Italian painters, and much to my surprise an hour after this pain in the ass test--I had the pleasure of hearing the name Bosch in an English class. It’s strange though—I did not really have the pleasure of enjoying this artwork until I put down Yates’s forth chapter a second ago.
What I found striking about this chapter is the ability for--a memory that is well endowed with images to have a profound effect personally and externally. In the words of Ong, “think memorable thoughts”, or: INELUCTABLE MODALITY OF THE VISIBLE: AT LEAST IF NO more, thought through my eyes. Signatures of all things I am here to read, seaspawn and seawrack, the nearing tide, that rusty boot”. (But now it is time for revelation and scholarly thought which I do not seem to do in an organized fashion.) I will start with a term that Yates seems to employ quite frequently, “corporeal similitude” or physical resemblance. This she states is inherent when studying the use of images in the artificial memory. Which makes sense, because when one is contemplating memory what is easier to remember the arbitrary use of signs such as words relating meaning, or images that are solid in a memory theatre relating meaning. This is why even for literate preachers of the Middle Ages memory was viewed as an important skill. Preachers In the middle ages sought to express the emotion of scripture emotionally to a largely illiterate audience. In order for the preacher to successfully do this he would have to have a detailed image theater within him, and the ability to produce it outside of himself. Particularly in the beginning of the renaissance with the salvage of the ancient teachers, “The moral man who wished to choose the path of virtue, whilst also remembering and avoiding vice, had more to imprint on memory than in earlier simpler times”. Thus a system was developed to help remember these virtues verses vices. But what I have found striking--is the interrelation between corporeal similitude of memory, and how the art of memory helped to contribute to major paradigm shift in the artwork of the time. This is Madonna enthroned by Cimabue:
This is Madonna enthroned by Giotto, notice how the image is deeper in this work, almost as if the “illusion of depth depends on the intense care with which the images have been placed on their backgrounds, or, speaking mnemonically, on their loci …It is true that giotto’s images are regularly placed on the walls, not irregular as the classical directions advise. But the Thomist emphasis on regular order in memory had modified that rule”
As is visible through Yates’s perspective “the art of memory was a creator of imagery which must surely have flowed out into creative works of art and literature”. Which I find fascinating; what I also find fascinating is the renaissance emphasis on the grotesque and the sublime which I can see now is in large part attributed to a memory theater (which was not mentioned in art history class) and the embellishing of these singular ideas that make them memorable in the artist mind, but also in the viewers mind. I really had not thought of this much before—this however makes clear why artist used allegory and metaphors as mnemonic tools of ideas that convey explicit and non explicit meaning to the masses—which is represented in an art piece like this for example:
I am officially appreciative of art history now, and I look forward to using my own mnemonic tools for the next art history test, and making the experience memorable.
P.S For furthuring viewing check each out each of this images in the peoples encylopedia wikipedia.
This morning I woke up in a daze adjacent to my alarm clock that blurted visually and audibly the striking iridescent yellow 7:04; I rested for a second, and continued on a course of minit long naps until I stumbled out of bed to a grey light that barely broke through the shutter covering my bedroom window. I was on a mission—I reconciled myself—art history, the first test of the semester. Previous to this morning I had been up all night pondering the relevance of this subject matter—and how I was becoming extremely impatient with dead Italian painters, and much to my surprise an hour after this pain in the ass test--I had the pleasure of hearing the name Bosch in an English class. It’s strange though—I did not really have the pleasure of enjoying this artwork until I put down Yates’s forth chapter a second ago.
What I found striking about this chapter is the ability for--a memory that is well endowed with images to have a profound effect personally and externally. In the words of Ong, “think memorable thoughts”, or: INELUCTABLE MODALITY OF THE VISIBLE: AT LEAST IF NO more, thought through my eyes. Signatures of all things I am here to read, seaspawn and seawrack, the nearing tide, that rusty boot”. (But now it is time for revelation and scholarly thought which I do not seem to do in an organized fashion.) I will start with a term that Yates seems to employ quite frequently, “corporeal similitude” or physical resemblance. This she states is inherent when studying the use of images in the artificial memory. Which makes sense, because when one is contemplating memory what is easier to remember the arbitrary use of signs such as words relating meaning, or images that are solid in a memory theatre relating meaning. This is why even for literate preachers of the Middle Ages memory was viewed as an important skill. Preachers In the middle ages sought to express the emotion of scripture emotionally to a largely illiterate audience. In order for the preacher to successfully do this he would have to have a detailed image theater within him, and the ability to produce it outside of himself. Particularly in the beginning of the renaissance with the salvage of the ancient teachers, “The moral man who wished to choose the path of virtue, whilst also remembering and avoiding vice, had more to imprint on memory than in earlier simpler times”. Thus a system was developed to help remember these virtues verses vices. But what I have found striking--is the interrelation between corporeal similitude of memory, and how the art of memory helped to contribute to major paradigm shift in the artwork of the time. This is Madonna enthroned by Cimabue:
This is Madonna enthroned by Giotto, notice how the image is deeper in this work, almost as if the “illusion of depth depends on the intense care with which the images have been placed on their backgrounds, or, speaking mnemonically, on their loci …It is true that giotto’s images are regularly placed on the walls, not irregular as the classical directions advise. But the Thomist emphasis on regular order in memory had modified that rule”
As is visible through Yates’s perspective “the art of memory was a creator of imagery which must surely have flowed out into creative works of art and literature”. Which I find fascinating; what I also find fascinating is the renaissance emphasis on the grotesque and the sublime which I can see now is in large part attributed to a memory theater (which was not mentioned in art history class) and the embellishing of these singular ideas that make them memorable in the artist mind, but also in the viewers mind. I really had not thought of this much before—this however makes clear why artist used allegory and metaphors as mnemonic tools of ideas that convey explicit and non explicit meaning to the masses—which is represented in an art piece like this for example:
I am officially appreciative of art history now, and I look forward to using my own mnemonic tools for the next art history test, and making the experience memorable.
P.S For furthuring viewing check each out each of this images in the peoples encylopedia wikipedia.
A poem for thought:
I figure I would just share things I like with class:
Hay for the Horses
by Gary Snyder
He had driven half the night
From far down San Joaquin
Through Mariposa, up the
Dangerous Mountain roads,
And pulled in at eight a.m.
With his big truckload of hay
behind the barn.
With winch and ropes and hooks
We stacked the bales up clean
To splintery redwood rafters
High in the dark, flecks of alfalfa
Whirling through shingle-cracks of light,
Itch of haydust in the
sweaty shirt and shoes.
At lunchtime under Black oak
Out in the hot corral,
---The old mare nosing lunchpails,
Grasshoppers crackling in the weeds---
"I'm sixty-eight" he said,
"I first bucked hay when I was seventeen.
I thought, that day I started,
I sure would hate to do this all my life.
And dammit, that's just what
I've gone and done."
I figure I would just share things I like with class:
Hay for the Horses
by Gary Snyder
He had driven half the night
From far down San Joaquin
Through Mariposa, up the
Dangerous Mountain roads,
And pulled in at eight a.m.
With his big truckload of hay
behind the barn.
With winch and ropes and hooks
We stacked the bales up clean
To splintery redwood rafters
High in the dark, flecks of alfalfa
Whirling through shingle-cracks of light,
Itch of haydust in the
sweaty shirt and shoes.
At lunchtime under Black oak
Out in the hot corral,
---The old mare nosing lunchpails,
Grasshoppers crackling in the weeds---
"I'm sixty-eight" he said,
"I first bucked hay when I was seventeen.
I thought, that day I started,
I sure would hate to do this all my life.
And dammit, that's just what
I've gone and done."
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Willsall Montana 2007:
Wet dirt becomes mud, and little grey stones resurface again after their docile winter. (I hardly ever think much of these types of things—you know—that place were you remember old friends, and remember when that fluttering butterfly finally touched upon that lone purple flower in the swaying cattails teaming with nectar. That place where you had been before—were the granite tumbled and mystified you—were the tectonic plates blistered—and were the sky became so big—we had known we found it—and that plane of eternity felt almost certain.)
Bleeding-red dying-orange swirls—the last of the sunlight—fluster in the clouds on the snowcapped mountains above the last of the evergreen and aspen trees. Daylight gives way to moon light and that blanket speckled with little white dots. And the coyote howls at 9 pm on the pastor, behind RJ’s fence—there we realize—we do not care what time it is, nor what year it is.
Friday, February 13, 2009
The School of Athens by Rapheal:
This is a perfect example of a frescoe that embodies the soul of the renaisnce and class discussion:
Notice Plato and Aristotle; Plato is the old man pointing up while aristotle is the young man:
Here is the link to more info on this painting
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_of_Athens
This is a perfect example of a frescoe that embodies the soul of the renaisnce and class discussion:
Notice Plato and Aristotle; Plato is the old man pointing up while aristotle is the young man:
Here is the link to more info on this painting
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_of_Athens
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Piggie Smalls: Folklore of the streets and the trees.
In this blog I will give my homage to Ong—which could almost sound like a spiritual ohm. Sorry I like the way that sounded. I am chalk full irrelevant things. Oh wait maybe not, I just found a cliché in my writing (chalk full); what does that even mean.
Alright to start this blog off in a proper manner—which I have no notion of proper, for these blogs are all extremely informal—I will state that: after class today, and after finishing Ong’s third chapter in orality and literacy I feel much more appreciative toward rap music, and the oral culture in general.
Hip Hop music is something that is, and is not a part my identity. What makes Hip Hop a part of myself is that distinct African Diaspora sound that intertwines itself in a global psyche—particularly the psyche of those that live in the Americas. Perhaps why this is, and why music in general is so influential on people’s lives. When words are spoken they have direct oral reception, as do musical notes—thus creating more of a collective feeling and more of a real experience that is essential to a society’s conception of itself. Ong in chapter 3 contends that primary orality is much more of a community experience: “Because in its physical constitution as sound, the spoken word proceeds from the human interior and manifests human beings to one another as conscious interiors, as persons the spoken word forms human beings into close-knit groups”.
Pin pointing exactly were Hip Hop is a part of myself can be somewhat complicated. In terms of the broadest perspective, Hip Hop music is appealing to me because I am a young American, a narrower perspective would be that Hip Hop music is appealing because it rises emotions out of me that has the ability to make me feel oppressed, angry and in a sense rebellious, and what makes these feelings memorable is that all of the sounds are put in a metrical form. Hip Hop in my opinion reflects ancient poets and storytellers far more accurately in than the written tradition does. In primary Oral cultures attitude and embodiment are a part of the words being spoken, “were sight situates the observer outside what he views, at a distance, sound pours into the hearer... establishing…a kind of core sensation and existence”. This is extremely relevant to why when travelling to one of our nations metropolitan areas we here vibrant conversations that are both praising and antagonistic; I will use the city of Boston as example. The surviving elements of primary orality are perfect when mentioning this city; Boston is both the rudest and most passionate city in America—need proof—were a Yankee baseball cap at Fenway Park. How this relates to Hip Hop is that urban population tends to have more of an orally based lifestyle, and African Americans have retained much of this primary oral culture that is both representative in a large context, and a smaller context. The larger context being American culture in general and the smaller context being areas like Brooklyn New York that has unique identity within many unique identities. And this is where I am ostracized, for I am a person tainted by literary concepts and abstractions I am a white male, I am not from an urban environment and I do not participate in events that, “try to outdo the other in vilifying the others mother”.
But Piggie Smalls Does,
trust me this is a perfect example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hbwdAOogBw
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