"I've got to tell you something and I know you'll excoriate me," says he as I drive through the rainy streets of the city thinking of ways to improve two things I'm currently struggling with. Driving, like working out, is a good way to clear my head. Another way is going down by the beach, sitting on my favorite bench that's usually unoccupied around 9pm and between 7am-8:30am.
"What makes you think I'll excoriate you?" I say to him as I make a right turn.
"Because I know you. Plus, I know I'm in need of being excoriated." he adds. Usually, I would have interjected one of my usual one-liners known only to those who know my discursive routines. Instead, I say nothing. I'm in too involved a mood. My mind's busy. I say nothing and almost enjoy the silence for a bit.
"I might have something you'll excoriate me about, too", I finally say, "but let me hear yours first."
He proceeds to tell me the details and I ask him if he needs to hear from me the same thing I've told him a number of times in the past. He says he does. He feels like a review. "I feel like a good review," he says. Thus, we review.
I've thought a lot about happiness recently and how it relates to micro and macro sociality. Blame it on the rain, I suppose. It does have a tendency to lead to written fecundity. Writing pours out of me when it rains. Incidentally, I just finished a draft I'm submitting in two weeks. But back to the happiness thing.
Happiness cannot happen without self-examination. This is not some adage I had to think long and hard about. This is what the Western canon has taught me since early childhood. Start way South with Sophocles, move on a bit North to Plautus, pick up a bit of Dante in the neck of Florence, head North and West to Shakespeare, head back South and pick up some Goethe and, while you're at it, swing by France and have a sip of existentialism and what you'll end up gleaning is the following: Happiness cannot happen without self-examination. We cannot know the other, without knowing the self. Nobody can tell us what feels good to us, unless we experience it ourselves. I love the smell of pines. Absolutely, love it. It drives me insane with happiness. I discovered it when I was fourteen, right after learning how to dance with a tall boy with whose family we were vacationing and who was a horribly bad badminton partner. Happiness needs context in order to get registered. It needs a vehicle of narration. Without storytelling ability, it cannot be.
And it most certainly cannot happen without a clear grasp of history, one's own history. There's a better chance to face what's around the corner when you know and understand the corners you've left behind. And living because one can is no answer to existence. While existence might be nothing more than a string of coincidences, what our canon teaches us is that collectively we feel better about our individual and collective experience in life when we view it in connection to something larger than ourselves, like a bigger group of people, or a larger cluster of interests.
One of the first Shakespeare bits I memorized as a teen was a Hamlet soliloqui. I mostly saw Hamlet as a spoiled brat, not that different from other spoiled brats I knew growing up. And yet, I was in love with his eloquence. He was a brat who had a way with language. I've never been able to resist this kind, the kind that has a way with language. And my history will back this up.
"What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how
infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and
admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like
a god! the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals—and yet,
to me, what is this quintessence of dust?"
I always found it curious that while most people responded to the first verses, I was always keener on the "quintessence of dust" part. For some reason, I mostly use this phrase when break into German. I really don't know why. Translating Shakespeare into German is almost as sacreligeous as translating Goethe into English. My German counterparts often say, "Was ist denn mit der Quintessenz?!" Essence is fine enough a word, no? I wanted to say Quintessenz on Saturday. I didn't. I remember the context well. I was simply too tired to use it as using it would invite even more questions as to why my speech is often peppered with uncommon words.
The reason why I always respond to the "quintessence of dust" bit of the soliloqui is because it encapsulates the notion of life and human existence most fundamentally. And yet, it's poetic. It's association with nothingness is poetic. While our entire literary canon suggests than meaning resides in tropes, sometimes it feels better to embrace the simplicity of experience for what it is, a speck in time, a cluster of little somethings, some of which are good and others the stuff of anxiety, which inevitably make up one big trace.
The thing is, happiness is about shared experience. We need canon to live well. We can easily survive without a historical blueprint of existence. Animals do it. But to live and to want to live well, a script is needed, a well written one. One that says that happiness is our duty and that to go after it is somehow lofty a pursuit, noble even. We spend our lives going after goals, hard ones, to reach a level of happiness much of which seems to be rooted in status and accomplishment.
Without connectivity, we have no context, no history and few things taste better to one than being known, resisted, and eventually agreed with. Happiness is having someone who truly knows you and whom you truly know say to you that they've said or done something you'd excoriate them about. Bottom line, they know how you'll react and they know they'll feel better after sharing with you their short narrative. And while you've read their script over and over again you somehow feel good that they feel you know how to read them and, like a forgiving teacher, you'll excoriate them briefly but then you'll write little notes on the margins of their essay and they'll know how to get better and do right by you.
Familiarity gives me comfort because familiarity gives us all comfort. Humans like routine. It's
due to our enculturation. We have no say in the matter. It's like saying we like how water tastes after being deprived of it. Another synonym for familiarity is intimacy and intimacy is harder for some for it resides in the territory of vulnerability where impulse and unhoned instinct doesn't do very well and where damage can easily be dished out. Giving intimacy means getting known and there is no ouvre bigger and more significant than that. C.S. Lewis wrote that we "read to know we are not alone."
Those who say they can do without familiarity have never had the courage to acquire it, they're strangers to it. And one could never rely on someone who refuses familiarity because to refuse it means to refuse a shared history, connectivity. And while contentedness can happen free of context, happiness needs more, at the very least, it needs a semblance of importance. The feeling of sucking on frozen grapes makes some, including me, feel content. Wearing silk panty hose with a form-fitting black dress hand-made in Berlin in the early 90's while wearing high-heeled boots as I meet someone for dinner makes me feel good. I do it when I feel like my inner self needs excoriating so that it can get to feeling better.
Showing posts with label Dante. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dante. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
When in Doubt, Think Dante
I think about Dante all the time.
All the time.
I especially think of Dante when in times of hardship.
Of course, it helps that since the age of nine I got in the habit of maniacally memorizing verse after verse and, oddly, have yet to forget a single stanza in the terza rima. Dante helps me organize my thoughts. His work helps me get centered and put things in perspective.
As a doctoral student in Germanics, I took a PhD course in Dante's Inferno. I was the only non-Italian PhD candidate in the course. The professor, one of the better known Dantisti in the States, asked me one day, "Brikena, come mai Dante?" i.e.: "Brikena, how come Dante?"
Stutteringly, I said: "Perche, eeee, insomma, perche mi parla...." i.e.: "Because uhm, well, because he talks to me."
Since early childhood, I've most likely spent thousands of hours reading Dante. Easily. Dante never feels like reading. It doesn't feel like work. It's like listening to music. It speaks to me. And unlike much else, it never disappoints. It always gives me something. It doesn't just take. It gives. Therein lies its unfading novelty and attraction. Novelty and attraction can only work well in the confines of giving. Deprive them of it and they'll vanish.
Dante understood that the human experience is marked by universality. He knew that while we might term certain emotions and feelings differently, our experience of the great basics, i.e., love, pain, anger, anxiety, difficulty are fundamentally the same whether one is professor Brunetto Latini who's condemned to inferno for eternity (see Canto XV) or Virgil, the guiding poet, who was unluckily born a few decades 'ahead of his time.'
Feeling good is 'dolce' and feeling badly is not. The dichotomy is clear to all. Dante refers to himself as two separate entities. On the one hand, there's the generally cerebral Dante, il poeta laureato, and on the other hand, there's Dante, l'uomo, the highly emotional man. The man, who faints at the sight of the great emotional pain of Paolo and Francesca in Canto V.
Dante embraces his emotional and cerebral sides fully. In my view, this is what makes me be as Dante-centric as I am. Dante fills a need. A need to self-soothe and inevitably self-ameliorate.
Why Dante, others, other than Prof. Di Tommaso have asked me. Why not Sophocles or Shakespeare? Or Goethe, even. For crying out loud, especially Goethe!
The answer is easy. I've long held that we don't get to choose art. Art chooses us. I believe this. As a matter of fact, I'll venture so much as to say that few things are solely choice-based. Very few. We think we choose but in most situations we are swayed to go one way over another.
Daily, I'm amazed at the multitude of applications that La Commedia lends itself to. And daily I'm tempted to apply it.
Dante spoke to me first on a cerebral level as someone with a doctorate of philosophy. He spoke to me equally strongly on a personal level. My whole life I've had difficulty with displays of emotions. I've always privileged my cerebral side. And unfairly so at times. But the older I get and the more I experience raw life, the more I allow myself to taste the opposite of ease, levity, and happiness, the more I'm drawn to Dante. It's hard, no, impossible, to ignore something that reaches you both on a cerebral and emotional level contemporaneously. Try it. You'll most likely fail.
What's been claiming most of my thoughts recently is the notion of the pursuit of happiness and it tenability. I've long wondered what it is that Dante must have experienced to write in Canto V that there's:
Nessun maggior dolore
Che ricordarsi del tempo felice
Nella miseria (lines 121-123)
There is no greater sorrow
Than to be mindful of the happy time
In misery.
Cerebrally, I've always known this. I've lectured on it plenty. Emotionally, I'm convinced that the only way to get happiness, to truly capture it albeit fleetingly, is to see it in conjunction with pain and memory. Happiness cannot exist in the confines of complacency. It couldn't. It needs the oxygen of immediacy. It can't be without. Happiness can only be when ridden with the anxiety of potential loss.
Being, at times, happy is the hardest task to accomplish. Some are aided by their respective genetic makeup to have a somewhat easier/harder time with happiness. Generally, however, happiness takes much conscious work. If left to chance, the end result will undoubtedly be difficult. The gift of introspection, some call it. This ability that some have to look inward to find answers to the human condition. Introspection is not a gift. Introspection is work, a lot of arduous work. Introspection cannot be given one. It needs to be acquired. One individual at a time.
All the time.
I especially think of Dante when in times of hardship.
Of course, it helps that since the age of nine I got in the habit of maniacally memorizing verse after verse and, oddly, have yet to forget a single stanza in the terza rima. Dante helps me organize my thoughts. His work helps me get centered and put things in perspective.
As a doctoral student in Germanics, I took a PhD course in Dante's Inferno. I was the only non-Italian PhD candidate in the course. The professor, one of the better known Dantisti in the States, asked me one day, "Brikena, come mai Dante?" i.e.: "Brikena, how come Dante?"
Stutteringly, I said: "Perche, eeee, insomma, perche mi parla...." i.e.: "Because uhm, well, because he talks to me."
Since early childhood, I've most likely spent thousands of hours reading Dante. Easily. Dante never feels like reading. It doesn't feel like work. It's like listening to music. It speaks to me. And unlike much else, it never disappoints. It always gives me something. It doesn't just take. It gives. Therein lies its unfading novelty and attraction. Novelty and attraction can only work well in the confines of giving. Deprive them of it and they'll vanish.
Dante understood that the human experience is marked by universality. He knew that while we might term certain emotions and feelings differently, our experience of the great basics, i.e., love, pain, anger, anxiety, difficulty are fundamentally the same whether one is professor Brunetto Latini who's condemned to inferno for eternity (see Canto XV) or Virgil, the guiding poet, who was unluckily born a few decades 'ahead of his time.'
Feeling good is 'dolce' and feeling badly is not. The dichotomy is clear to all. Dante refers to himself as two separate entities. On the one hand, there's the generally cerebral Dante, il poeta laureato, and on the other hand, there's Dante, l'uomo, the highly emotional man. The man, who faints at the sight of the great emotional pain of Paolo and Francesca in Canto V.
Dante embraces his emotional and cerebral sides fully. In my view, this is what makes me be as Dante-centric as I am. Dante fills a need. A need to self-soothe and inevitably self-ameliorate.
Why Dante, others, other than Prof. Di Tommaso have asked me. Why not Sophocles or Shakespeare? Or Goethe, even. For crying out loud, especially Goethe!
The answer is easy. I've long held that we don't get to choose art. Art chooses us. I believe this. As a matter of fact, I'll venture so much as to say that few things are solely choice-based. Very few. We think we choose but in most situations we are swayed to go one way over another.
Daily, I'm amazed at the multitude of applications that La Commedia lends itself to. And daily I'm tempted to apply it.
Dante spoke to me first on a cerebral level as someone with a doctorate of philosophy. He spoke to me equally strongly on a personal level. My whole life I've had difficulty with displays of emotions. I've always privileged my cerebral side. And unfairly so at times. But the older I get and the more I experience raw life, the more I allow myself to taste the opposite of ease, levity, and happiness, the more I'm drawn to Dante. It's hard, no, impossible, to ignore something that reaches you both on a cerebral and emotional level contemporaneously. Try it. You'll most likely fail.
What's been claiming most of my thoughts recently is the notion of the pursuit of happiness and it tenability. I've long wondered what it is that Dante must have experienced to write in Canto V that there's:
Nessun maggior dolore
Che ricordarsi del tempo felice
Nella miseria (lines 121-123)
There is no greater sorrow
Than to be mindful of the happy time
In misery.
Cerebrally, I've always known this. I've lectured on it plenty. Emotionally, I'm convinced that the only way to get happiness, to truly capture it albeit fleetingly, is to see it in conjunction with pain and memory. Happiness cannot exist in the confines of complacency. It couldn't. It needs the oxygen of immediacy. It can't be without. Happiness can only be when ridden with the anxiety of potential loss.
Being, at times, happy is the hardest task to accomplish. Some are aided by their respective genetic makeup to have a somewhat easier/harder time with happiness. Generally, however, happiness takes much conscious work. If left to chance, the end result will undoubtedly be difficult. The gift of introspection, some call it. This ability that some have to look inward to find answers to the human condition. Introspection is not a gift. Introspection is work, a lot of arduous work. Introspection cannot be given one. It needs to be acquired. One individual at a time.
Saturday, June 5, 2010
Lost and How Camille Got Me Interested
I wasn't aware of the ABC show Lost till after my friend Camille (I reviewed her first studio-released album here) told me about it as we were chatting one night circa 1AM my time and who-knows-whatAM/PM her jet setting time. I think Camille was in South Africa then and she would use her iPod to watch some shows as she'd unwind from a long day of travails.
At the time I wasn't watching commercial TV with the exception of HBO's Curb Your Enthusiasm. Generally I don't do 'conventional' TV, i.e., the kind where commercials always interject at the most inopportune time. Interruptions tend to vex, or more importantly, they tend to make me lose interest and I give in to digressions. See, they've done it as I'm writing this. Point made!
A year after learning about the show from Camille, I got a call from another pal of mine who was asking me what I thought about Jack and Kate and John. I think I said something akin to 'I'm a year behind but will rent the first season soon.'
And that I did.
I remember finding the pilot interesting mostly out of novelty reasons. There was nothing on TV that resembled the intensity of storytelling of this show. It took me a few days to carve out enough time to catch up on the show. I remember I was teaching a graduate course on Middle High German during the time I got caught up on Lost and I remember a sensing some compatibility between the texts I was using in my course and the content of the show. The first thought I had while watching the show at the beginning was that the creators were either educated in the literature and philosophy of the Middle Ages or they had some interest in medievalism and the rebirth of interest in things medieval back in the 19th century.
Esoteric talk aside, the reason why Lost made me think of the Middle Ages is because of one person: Dante. Dante, in his Divine Comedy, details the journey of Dante, the man, as well as Dante, the poet, through Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. The Divine Comedy is fundamentally about a person's journey to find the ultimate meaning of living with others and, most importantly, with one's self.
The in-between seasons of Lost, i.e., what transpired between Season 3 up to the season finale resembled the awkward journey of an adolescent where much doesn't make sense but other stuff oozes potential even though it might not actually get actualized.
The season finale, however, was to my liking. It seemed, to me, to be a tip of the hat to Dante's Divine Comedy. The show made me think of Dante's journey through Purgatorio where the damaged souls still have a chance to purge themselves of past foibles of human life and find some redemption. The remaining characters in this unusual show find moments of connectivity and human meaning but for a few moments as they touch one another and memories of a 'past life' or past experiences come to life. It is during these moments that the finale truly delivers. What made this show interesting in the beginning is that it dared to ask questions about the meaning of life and a person's journey through various challenges and crises.
Of course, Lost is an unusual TV accomplishment. There was nothing like it on TV when it first premiered back in 2004 and there's not anything at all like it in 2010, a time when commercial TV is full of embarrassing reality TV where so little of it is TV and much of it is only real in the brain of some producer who is convinced that everyone wants to see people make fools of themselves in front of the camera. But I digress, again.
Lost is one of those shows where the viewer was still given some dignity and respect, for the most part. The viewers were given the impression that they mattered and that they could enjoy 40+ minutes of modern programing that somehow felt informed, enamored of meaning, and soundly literary.
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Friday, May 22, 2009
New Videocast: What's Up with Dante's Pettiness?
In this episode I talk about Dante's rarely discussed 'petty' character.
This was first inspired by a conversation I had with a close friend about Dante's choice of characters in his Inferno.
You may view this episode here.
Feedback welcome.
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graph per http://www.texttribe.com/gallery/Gustave_Dore/index_Dante_Divine_Comedy.htm
Friday, May 15, 2009
Genius? No, I Do Not Agree with David Brooks
If you think the word 'genius' gets thrown around a lot in the vernacular, raise your hand. Well, metaphorically. Unless someone reads this to you out loud and you end up raising your [well, my, in this case] hand accompanied by a pronounced rolling of the eyes. Then you've entered another realm of bizarreness. But that's another story.
Let me explain why I am of the opinion that the word 'genius' is disrespectfully and superfluously exposed to the vernacular without much thought. The reason why I'm giving this some thought at this point is because of the recent NY Times piece on the topic by David Brooks.
Consider the following from said article. Brooks notes:
" What Mozart had, we now believe, was the same thing Tiger Woods had — the ability to focus for long periods of time and a father intent on improving his skills. Mozart played a lot of piano at a very young age, so he got his 10,000 hours of practice in early and then he built from there.
The latest research suggests a more prosaic, democratic, even puritanical view of the world. The key factor separating geniuses from the merely accomplished is not a divine spark. It’s not I.Q., a generally bad predictor of success, even in realms like chess. Instead, it’s deliberate practice. Top performers spend more hours (many more hours) rigorously practicing their craft."
You can read the rest of his piece here.
Brooks' article was the focus of much of our Sunday conversation and I thought I would share some of the thoughts shared.
First, Brooks seems to reduce genius to much fundamentally concentrated practice. Granted, practice is indispensable to success but there is something unique that natural ability alone coupled with utter dedication can contribute. Brooks mentions Tiger Woods. The reason why Tiger Woods is the best golf player to ever practice the game is not because of his long practice sessions. There comes a point where sheer talent catapults one to a point beyond compare. What marks him so very uniquely is also what he does off-court and how game-centered he is. Extremely high results are not derived only from focused practice, a strong desire, and ultimate focus but rather a combination of all of these things plus a good measure of raw talent/natural skill.
Genius is about achieving machine-like results through analogue processes. It's a holistic process that approximates the slow, methodical tedium that David Brooks calls genius. By way of his own admission, Brooks is coming from a modern point of view which is why his discussion of genius is incomplete. What constitutes 'genius' is a modern view, which is exactly why modernity is so bereft of real genius. Now granted, we have many, many examples of competency in our day and age. There is certainly no shortage of pluggers away which, naturally, is a positive.
Brooks mentions Mozart and how uncomplicated his earlier works were. Well, what about his later work?
Only people with a superficial knowledge of a field recognize its greatest figures because of the things they did well through practice. Granted, Mozart practiced a lot and his early compositions are ordinary and imitated but the prodigy aspect of Mozart isn't what people in the know respect most about him. What inspires awe are works like Mass in C Minor, the Requiem, the mature operas and symphonies. The greatest works weren't arrived at by driveling away in the menial fashion the way David Brooks suggests in his awfully superficial treatment of this very important concept.
Now let me submit another example. Dante. Dante wrote his Divina Commedia in the 'terza rima.' A total of 100 cantos all written with unbelievable precision in the third rhyme. The Divine Comedy comes to us circa 1300. Dante was in exile, he had no access to Ivy League libraries, super computers and resources, or even an iPhone with incredible applications. Jest aside, what Dante had, other than much dedication and work ethic, was incredible literary talent. He had that which many other writers didn't. Naturally, a whole lot of menial years are required before great works are accomplished. But hard work alone is not sufficient. A lot of people work hard and a lot of them are great at certain tasks. However, they're not producing Comedies or Requiems a dime a dozen.
Tip of the hat to my dear LS for the food for thought and always delightful conversation.
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graph per http://api.ning.com/files/hNNaLD8LfkQ6Gf0tugOiRCnUzampowuX2IYwQAh5qdRgdSrJciRZVpyuUlNlZ6J1-Bd1VaxCJgp5Zr1gzBCm-W3kCg2XC4xj/talent.jpg
Monday, March 9, 2009
Great Article on Economics and Dante
The true perk of Twitter is the info it gives me re: good new pieces to read.
The following is one such example.
I concur with the premise. What's even more amazing to me is that it is written by a Columbia College junior majoring in English called Lucy Tang.
Tip of the hat to you, Lucy!
As a matter of fact, we just talked about something similar in my medieval course today.
Dante, and the Middle Ages, are always relevant, folks. And I'm not just biased. I like to think I'm right. :)
"What Dante knew during the Medieval Ages still resonates strongly today. He finds usury distasteful because moneylenders generate money from money—not actual work. Like St. Thomas Aquinas once said, “It is in accordance with nature that money should increase from natural goods and not from money itself.” The crash was a huge wake-up call for former investment bankers—it essentially revealed to them that their life source had no grounding. Everything they dealt with dissipated within days.
Dante’s vocation as a poet, while considered laughable by many today, has a sense of enduring purpose. He can at least point to his poems and declare, “Here, I wrote this. These words are mine!” God, or nature, or maybe even DNA has endowed people with imagination and creative inspiration, and what could be more wonderful than revealing this innate potential?"
Read it all here.
The following is one such example.
I concur with the premise. What's even more amazing to me is that it is written by a Columbia College junior majoring in English called Lucy Tang.
Tip of the hat to you, Lucy!
As a matter of fact, we just talked about something similar in my medieval course today.
Dante, and the Middle Ages, are always relevant, folks. And I'm not just biased. I like to think I'm right. :)
"What Dante knew during the Medieval Ages still resonates strongly today. He finds usury distasteful because moneylenders generate money from money—not actual work. Like St. Thomas Aquinas once said, “It is in accordance with nature that money should increase from natural goods and not from money itself.” The crash was a huge wake-up call for former investment bankers—it essentially revealed to them that their life source had no grounding. Everything they dealt with dissipated within days.
Dante’s vocation as a poet, while considered laughable by many today, has a sense of enduring purpose. He can at least point to his poems and declare, “Here, I wrote this. These words are mine!” God, or nature, or maybe even DNA has endowed people with imagination and creative inspiration, and what could be more wonderful than revealing this innate potential?"
Read it all here.
Monday, December 29, 2008
New Podcast: Finale of Fiction Narrative
This is Part Three of the three-part podcast we started a few weeks ago. In this project, I am using fiction as a way of making sense of and decoding literary theory. The text of fiction you are about to hear is heavily laced with gender theory references. The gender ambiguity of the characters was informed by Dante's "Canto V" of the Inferno (Divine Comedy) and its two most important characters: Paolo and Francesca.
Click here to listen to the podcast. Also, the new podcast is available on iTunes under Gendering the Media with Brikena Ribaj.
Subscribe to Gendering the Media Podcast
graph per black book
Friday, December 19, 2008
New Podcast: Narrative, Part II
The below attached is Part Two of the three-part podcast we started streaming last Friday. In this project, I am using fiction as a way of making sense of and decoding theory. The text of fiction you are about to hear is heavily laced with gender theory references. The gender ambiguity of the characters was informed by Dante's "Canto V" of the Inferno (Divine Comedy) and its two most important characters: Paolo and Francesca.
I wrote this piece of fiction which I originally entitled "The Third" when under the strong influence of Dante's "Inferno V." Through this piece I intend to interpret some aspects of Gender and Literary Theory. The second piece is about 10 minutes long. As always, feedback and reactions are welcome.
You can listen to it here.
Also, this new podcast will be available on iTunes circa 5:00 PM today. And, as intimated earlier, a new podcast will be available in iTunes every Friday evening.
I wrote this piece of fiction which I originally entitled "The Third" when under the strong influence of Dante's "Inferno V." Through this piece I intend to interpret some aspects of Gender and Literary Theory. The second piece is about 10 minutes long. As always, feedback and reactions are welcome.
You can listen to it here.
Also, this new podcast will be available on iTunes circa 5:00 PM today. And, as intimated earlier, a new podcast will be available in iTunes every Friday evening.
Friday, December 12, 2008
New Podcast: Fiction Explaining Theory
This is Part One of a three-part podcast. In this project, I am using fiction as a way of making sense of and decoding theory. The text of fiction you are about to hear is heavily laced with gender theory references. The gender ambiguity of the characters was informed by Dante's Canto V of the Inferno (Divine Comedy) and its two most important characters: Paolo and Francesca.
I wrote this piece of fiction which I originally entitled 'The Third' when under the strong influence of Dante's Inferno V. This piece is about 10 minutes long. As always, feedback and reactions are welcome.
Also, this new podcast will be available on iTunes circa 5:00 PM today. And, as intimated earlier, a new podcast will be available in iTunes every Friday evening.
Listen to the piece here.
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Who's Your Literary Crush?
I regularly contribute snippets of conversations I have with various people during the day.
Here's one:
Person: 'So, who's your literary crush?'
I: 'Beg your pardon?'
Person: 'Which author is your, you know, favorite? Dante, right?'
I: Well, Dante's gravitas doesn't allow him to be just a crush. You know Canto 3 of the Inferno, right? We're past that point, he and I. A crush would be the South African novelist, J. M. Coetze.'
Person: 'Why's that?'
I: 'He economizes on speech.'
Here's one:
Person: 'So, who's your literary crush?'
I: 'Beg your pardon?'
Person: 'Which author is your, you know, favorite? Dante, right?'
I: Well, Dante's gravitas doesn't allow him to be just a crush. You know Canto 3 of the Inferno, right? We're past that point, he and I. A crush would be the South African novelist, J. M. Coetze.'
Person: 'Why's that?'
I: 'He economizes on speech.'
Saturday, August 11, 2007
"On Friendship and Philosphy" to the Muse
On Friendship and some Philosophy
“Ok, define ‘friendship’ for me, will you?”
This is a question I received from my muse, the person whose presence has inspired me as much as Apple’s best invention in the 21st century.
And I gave the muse the answer that is somewhere to be found in this entry marked by non-sequiturs and early morning cravings of miscellaneous oddities.
This post is sort of Derrida- and Plato-informed and I will get to this analogy in the conclusion. Or somewhere near there. Why be linear when I could pull a good serpentine at 4 AM ET?
We had a decent dinner tonight but I have an ironic habit of working really late, i.e., after socializing, especially on the weekend. Ideas are born then. Or something. Or perhaps writing offers a good escape. Isn’t that the beauty of web logging, after all? Couldn't we think of a better word for blog? A bilabial and a liquid together: It's not not that beautiful to the ear, no? But I digress.
My people have always had a hard time with the post-midnight switch, i.e., why I choose to write instead of socialize. However, writing, bad, mediocre, or good {notice the hierarchy!} needs to happen at some point and 4AM ET is as good a time as any.
But I digress. Again.
Fortuitously, I spoke to one of my closest friends today. A person I have known since 2002 and whose discourse always manages to inspire me. Always. We went to graduate school together, experienced many a new things together, traveled together, felt time literally come to a stop while at the Olympic Rain Forest in Washington State, shared many linguistic, mental, and emotional intimacies together, helped each other out a number of times, and if someone was not fair to the one, Oy Weh, may G-d protect them from the other. ☺ My friend, this little 105-pound structure from Schleswig-Holstein has the actual presence of a giant. You know when she is around. I sure did and do.
I mention this for a reason and a good one at that.
My good friend is now residing in Germany and she belongs to that niche in my Palm Pilot I have appropriately given the designation of ‘friends.’ Fastforward to a few hours later. Someone I met a year or so ago enters the context.
She is no German friend, that’s for sure, but she is someone I know. Derrida has a name for people like that. They are valid people, of course, they perform important functions, but I have difficulty applying the term ‘friend’ to them. Why? I simply feel like such a semantically loaded lexical choice brings much with it and applying it carelessly would be like calling one of my grandma’s orange trees a tangerine. And had you met my grandma, you’d know that her Mediterranean-touched skin was not one to play such fruity jokes with.
Yet another non-sequitur, but one I enjoy. Thanks, Joyce. James, that is.
To answer my muse’s question, I reserve the designation ‘friend’ for people with whom I share substantial history, people who know more about me than the inconsequential marginal stuff, people who know what I enjoy doing every Saturday at 10:45 AM PT and every Wednesday at 9:00 PM ET, people who know I don’t do yolk or Old Navy, but I opt for egg whites and Ben Sherman lines instead. And most importantly, they are people about whom I know similar esoteric and idiosyncratic things.
And that, O Muse, is what I mean by friendship. Along with a myriad others. I think. Perhaps I’m misreading the newly departed Derrida, or the long departed Plato, but the attempt is there. At least I’m not pulling a Dante, the inferno kind. First I’d have to do the third rhyme. So, scratch this bad analogy but try and appreciate the joke. Those who don’t do the third rhyme, critique?
So, o muse, who has been shedding light on me since that lovely spring of 2004, what is friendship to me? Well, as I derive from Plato in the Symposium, it is having a bunch of unlikely people over to break bread and discuss such strange things as love, culinary habits, seating charts, and hiking shoeless around Athens city walls. And lip gloss. Oh, and also never revealing personal information when asked a direct question [how blanche is that?] but rather over metaphors that are rendered lucid with time and earned familiarity.
But if thou, Muse, are unhappy with this answer from your most loyal servant, I will continue to brood and attempt again. For ever, thy slave.
“Ok, define ‘friendship’ for me, will you?”
This is a question I received from my muse, the person whose presence has inspired me as much as Apple’s best invention in the 21st century.
And I gave the muse the answer that is somewhere to be found in this entry marked by non-sequiturs and early morning cravings of miscellaneous oddities.
This post is sort of Derrida- and Plato-informed and I will get to this analogy in the conclusion. Or somewhere near there. Why be linear when I could pull a good serpentine at 4 AM ET?
We had a decent dinner tonight but I have an ironic habit of working really late, i.e., after socializing, especially on the weekend. Ideas are born then. Or something. Or perhaps writing offers a good escape. Isn’t that the beauty of web logging, after all? Couldn't we think of a better word for blog? A bilabial and a liquid together: It's not not that beautiful to the ear, no? But I digress.
My people have always had a hard time with the post-midnight switch, i.e., why I choose to write instead of socialize. However, writing, bad, mediocre, or good {notice the hierarchy!} needs to happen at some point and 4AM ET is as good a time as any.
But I digress. Again.
Fortuitously, I spoke to one of my closest friends today. A person I have known since 2002 and whose discourse always manages to inspire me. Always. We went to graduate school together, experienced many a new things together, traveled together, felt time literally come to a stop while at the Olympic Rain Forest in Washington State, shared many linguistic, mental, and emotional intimacies together, helped each other out a number of times, and if someone was not fair to the one, Oy Weh, may G-d protect them from the other. ☺ My friend, this little 105-pound structure from Schleswig-Holstein has the actual presence of a giant. You know when she is around. I sure did and do.
I mention this for a reason and a good one at that.
My good friend is now residing in Germany and she belongs to that niche in my Palm Pilot I have appropriately given the designation of ‘friends.’ Fastforward to a few hours later. Someone I met a year or so ago enters the context.
She is no German friend, that’s for sure, but she is someone I know. Derrida has a name for people like that. They are valid people, of course, they perform important functions, but I have difficulty applying the term ‘friend’ to them. Why? I simply feel like such a semantically loaded lexical choice brings much with it and applying it carelessly would be like calling one of my grandma’s orange trees a tangerine. And had you met my grandma, you’d know that her Mediterranean-touched skin was not one to play such fruity jokes with.
Yet another non-sequitur, but one I enjoy. Thanks, Joyce. James, that is.
To answer my muse’s question, I reserve the designation ‘friend’ for people with whom I share substantial history, people who know more about me than the inconsequential marginal stuff, people who know what I enjoy doing every Saturday at 10:45 AM PT and every Wednesday at 9:00 PM ET, people who know I don’t do yolk or Old Navy, but I opt for egg whites and Ben Sherman lines instead. And most importantly, they are people about whom I know similar esoteric and idiosyncratic things.
And that, O Muse, is what I mean by friendship. Along with a myriad others. I think. Perhaps I’m misreading the newly departed Derrida, or the long departed Plato, but the attempt is there. At least I’m not pulling a Dante, the inferno kind. First I’d have to do the third rhyme. So, scratch this bad analogy but try and appreciate the joke. Those who don’t do the third rhyme, critique?
So, o muse, who has been shedding light on me since that lovely spring of 2004, what is friendship to me? Well, as I derive from Plato in the Symposium, it is having a bunch of unlikely people over to break bread and discuss such strange things as love, culinary habits, seating charts, and hiking shoeless around Athens city walls. And lip gloss. Oh, and also never revealing personal information when asked a direct question [how blanche is that?] but rather over metaphors that are rendered lucid with time and earned familiarity.
But if thou, Muse, are unhappy with this answer from your most loyal servant, I will continue to brood and attempt again. For ever, thy slave.
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