13 July 2003
Words to Remember
Haven't read these words in a dog's age (seven years?), but they came across my mind again tonight:
Strange how that quote immediately turns my mind in two directions, to the "fragments I have shored against my ruins" from T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land and F.'s instruction in Leonard Cohen's Beautiful Losers: "Connect nothing! ... Place things side by side on your arborite table if you must, but connect nothing!"
Hmmmm. Sorry, no profound response here; just a few things to contemplate.
Haven't read these words in a dog's age (seven years?), but they came across my mind again tonight:
Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer.
--- E.M. Forster, Howards End
Strange how that quote immediately turns my mind in two directions, to the "fragments I have shored against my ruins" from T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land and F.'s instruction in Leonard Cohen's Beautiful Losers: "Connect nothing! ... Place things side by side on your arborite table if you must, but connect nothing!"
Hmmmm. Sorry, no profound response here; just a few things to contemplate.
Summer Movies: The M.A. Program
Here is an interesting article: unfortunately it doesn't follow through on its promise and winds up petering out, but it does provoke food for thought, especially for archetypists. I particularly like this sentence: "This summer, millions of teenagers have been invited to experience the tedium and pedantry of graduate school in Dolby surround, accompanied by the latest in computer-generated special effects." And this one: "So excuse me while I turn my attention to Aristotle's "Posterior Analytics," which my colleagues tell me is crucial to understanding "Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle.'" Again, you need the Times subscription....
Here is an interesting article: unfortunately it doesn't follow through on its promise and winds up petering out, but it does provoke food for thought, especially for archetypists. I particularly like this sentence: "This summer, millions of teenagers have been invited to experience the tedium and pedantry of graduate school in Dolby surround, accompanied by the latest in computer-generated special effects." And this one: "So excuse me while I turn my attention to Aristotle's "Posterior Analytics," which my colleagues tell me is crucial to understanding "Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle.'" Again, you need the Times subscription....
12 July 2003
On Collage and Theft
This blog is painfully aware that it is itself a kind of collage of material, some of which may still be owned-- although issues of intellectual and creative 'property' are far muddier and murkier than copyrights laws allow, and which things like the internet make far more complicated than was previously assumed. So, to any writers out there that I may quote here: please know I do so usually with merely the intention of exposing your words to a small reading public that may not be aware of your words' existence. In most cases, I offer them approvingly, and I receive no fiscal or otherwise comparable benefit from them; in a way, it's a typical teacher's gesture, directing people toward what I think relevant material.
It's also occurred to me that I should add a general thanks to Dave Barry, whose blog has provided me much enjoyment, and whose links have often found their way onto this site. (Or is it Claire Martin's blog now? ;-) ) So, Mr Barry, if you ever see this pissant little site, know you're thanked, and please don't sue. :-)
My God, writing this seems counter-voyeuristic: it's as if the TV can look back at you and see you watching it....
This blog is painfully aware that it is itself a kind of collage of material, some of which may still be owned-- although issues of intellectual and creative 'property' are far muddier and murkier than copyrights laws allow, and which things like the internet make far more complicated than was previously assumed. So, to any writers out there that I may quote here: please know I do so usually with merely the intention of exposing your words to a small reading public that may not be aware of your words' existence. In most cases, I offer them approvingly, and I receive no fiscal or otherwise comparable benefit from them; in a way, it's a typical teacher's gesture, directing people toward what I think relevant material.
It's also occurred to me that I should add a general thanks to Dave Barry, whose blog has provided me much enjoyment, and whose links have often found their way onto this site. (Or is it Claire Martin's blog now? ;-) ) So, Mr Barry, if you ever see this pissant little site, know you're thanked, and please don't sue. :-)
My God, writing this seems counter-voyeuristic: it's as if the TV can look back at you and see you watching it....
Further On the {ahem....} Dylan-Saga Saga
See this article from the NYTimes, which uses a vocabulary very similar to that offered by yours truly. ;-) He he; remember, you have to have the free Times subscription to access it.
See this article from the NYTimes, which uses a vocabulary very similar to that offered by yours truly. ;-) He he; remember, you have to have the free Times subscription to access it.
11 July 2003
A Horrible Day
Banks, computers, family.... What a misery of a day, all on no sleep; as of this writing, the Doctor has been on call for almost thirty hours straight.
As for the other major matter of the day, this blog doesn't want to talk about it except to say that it wishes it hadn't become inevitable. A guy really could have, Chaulssitae. I wish things were different, but my magic fails me.
I wish.... the worst words in the world.
And if this makes me a sentimental old fool, so fuckin' be it.
Banks, computers, family.... What a misery of a day, all on no sleep; as of this writing, the Doctor has been on call for almost thirty hours straight.
As for the other major matter of the day, this blog doesn't want to talk about it except to say that it wishes it hadn't become inevitable. A guy really could have, Chaulssitae. I wish things were different, but my magic fails me.
I wish.... the worst words in the world.
And if this makes me a sentimental old fool, so fuckin' be it.
Krapka!
Figures that I would only now notice that the film Kafka was airing tonight, a film I don't think I've seen since it was first released in the theatres in 1991. It's a peculiar film (very, very much so), but it has some magnificent cinematography, and the penultimate cinematic performance of Sir Alec Guinness as the Chief Clerk. It's odd to think about that, to reflect that the last time I saw this movie I was watching what turned out to be Guinness' last significant role. (He had an unbilled cameo in the film Mute Witness, a movie Guinness, as he wittily recounts in one of his journals, didn't even realize he was in; he apparently did some shots totalling fifteen minutes of time as a kindness for the young film director Anthony Waller.) It'e eerie to think of things in such terms now, especially because Guinness was one of my childhood 'heroes,' for lack of a better word; he always represented to me versatility, intelligence, civility, humour, and genuine class (as Dick Cavett once recognized, brilliantly, to be an anagram of Guinness' name). There are so few examples of this 'total package' these days, and it reminds me that much of what was said in the myriad articles published when Guinness died in 2000 was true: that he was the last of a generation, the last of a breed. At the risk of seeming sentimental, Sir Alec taught me a lot about the man I wanted to be, or at least wanted to emulate in my own way. In an increasingly ill-mannered society this is harder and harder to do, especially when people no longer attend to subtle of gesture and word and resonance, when the rampant screaming and shouting of Larry David's Curb Your Enthusiasm is heralded as genius. Guinness was an actor who could convey more with a pursing of his eyelids than most could with entire soliloquies; and he always emerged, even from the hype of Star Wars, with dignity entirely in tact. I admire that, I admire it a lot.
Figures that I would only now notice that the film Kafka was airing tonight, a film I don't think I've seen since it was first released in the theatres in 1991. It's a peculiar film (very, very much so), but it has some magnificent cinematography, and the penultimate cinematic performance of Sir Alec Guinness as the Chief Clerk. It's odd to think about that, to reflect that the last time I saw this movie I was watching what turned out to be Guinness' last significant role. (He had an unbilled cameo in the film Mute Witness, a movie Guinness, as he wittily recounts in one of his journals, didn't even realize he was in; he apparently did some shots totalling fifteen minutes of time as a kindness for the young film director Anthony Waller.) It'e eerie to think of things in such terms now, especially because Guinness was one of my childhood 'heroes,' for lack of a better word; he always represented to me versatility, intelligence, civility, humour, and genuine class (as Dick Cavett once recognized, brilliantly, to be an anagram of Guinness' name). There are so few examples of this 'total package' these days, and it reminds me that much of what was said in the myriad articles published when Guinness died in 2000 was true: that he was the last of a generation, the last of a breed. At the risk of seeming sentimental, Sir Alec taught me a lot about the man I wanted to be, or at least wanted to emulate in my own way. In an increasingly ill-mannered society this is harder and harder to do, especially when people no longer attend to subtle of gesture and word and resonance, when the rampant screaming and shouting of Larry David's Curb Your Enthusiasm is heralded as genius. Guinness was an actor who could convey more with a pursing of his eyelids than most could with entire soliloquies; and he always emerged, even from the hype of Star Wars, with dignity entirely in tact. I admire that, I admire it a lot.
What slim youth, Phyrrha, drenched in perfumed oils,
Lying in an easy grotto among roses, roses,
Now woos, and watches you
Gathering back your golden hair,
With artless elegance? How many a time
Will he cry out, seeing all changed, the gods, your promise
And stare in wondering shock
At winds gone wild on blackening seas!
Now fondling you, his hope, his perfeect gold,
He leans on love's inviolable contancy, not dreaming
How false the breeze can blow.
Ah, pity all those who have not found
Your glossy sweetness out! My shipwreck's tale
Hangs, told in colors, on Neptune's temple wall, a votice
Plaque, with savaged clothes
Still damp, vowed to the sea's rough lord.
--- Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus), Odes 1.5
Tr. Cedric Whitman
Ed.: Have been trying to find a decent translation of this lyric for some time and have been invariably thwarted at many turns, either by the mere finding or the quality of the translation. This will have to do. *Shrug*
A Misremembered Lyric
A misremembered lyric: a soft catch of its song
whirrs in my throat. 'Something's gotta hold of my heart
tearing my' soul and my conscience apart, long after
presence is clean gone and leaves unfurnished no
shadow. Rain lyrics. Yes, then the rain lyrics fall.
I don't want absence to be this beautiful.
It shouldn't be; in fact, I know it wasn't, while
'everything that consoles is false' is off the point--
you get no consolation anyway until your memory's
dead: or something never had gotten hold of
your heart in the first place, and that's the fear thought.
Do shrimps make good mothers? Yes they do.
There is no beauty out of loss; can't do it--
and once the falling rain starts on the upturned
leaves, and I listen to the rhythm of unhappy pleasure
what I hear is bossy death telling me which way to
go, what I see is a pool with an eye in it. Still let
me know. Looking for a brand new start. Oh and never
notice yourself ever. As in life you don't.
--- Denise Riley (1992)
A misremembered lyric: a soft catch of its song
whirrs in my throat. 'Something's gotta hold of my heart
tearing my' soul and my conscience apart, long after
presence is clean gone and leaves unfurnished no
shadow. Rain lyrics. Yes, then the rain lyrics fall.
I don't want absence to be this beautiful.
It shouldn't be; in fact, I know it wasn't, while
'everything that consoles is false' is off the point--
you get no consolation anyway until your memory's
dead: or something never had gotten hold of
your heart in the first place, and that's the fear thought.
Do shrimps make good mothers? Yes they do.
There is no beauty out of loss; can't do it--
and once the falling rain starts on the upturned
leaves, and I listen to the rhythm of unhappy pleasure
what I hear is bossy death telling me which way to
go, what I see is a pool with an eye in it. Still let
me know. Looking for a brand new start. Oh and never
notice yourself ever. As in life you don't.
--- Denise Riley (1992)
10 July 2003
On Dylan's 'Plagiarism'
As some of you may have heard, Bob Dylan has been charged with plagiarizing from a Japanese novelist. If you haven't, info can be found here and here.
I'm not sure how much to make of any of this, partly because the links are pretty tenuous (the phrases I've seen compared are not especially 'unique'), and because I have some doubt about whether or not Dylan was actualyl exposed to the works of the novelist in question, Junichi Saga. But even if the lyrics are 'lifted' in one form of another, I'm reminded of these words from a little-read article on Van Morrison, here talking about the song Real Real Gone:
Artistic 'lifting'-- if that is indeed the case-- is always a difficult notion to assess, and it can become bloody impossible to tell if the artist in question is stealing, alluding, or using another form, often called 'collage.' Lines, for example, can become what are called objets trouvees, 'found objects,' that are put together in new forms and fashions, as, say images and logos from magazines can be pieced together in a collage. The trick is understanding the reshaping and the remaking of their surrounding context.
This is always an interesting issue. Is Marianne Moore plagiarizing when she includes fragments from newspapers in her poems? Is Eliot? And, even more interesting, is the scenario of the infamous Ern Malley scandal, for which I'd recommend people consult Michael Heyward's book The Ern Malley Affair, one of the more hilarious examples of Theivery For A Purpose.
So, as for Dylan, I'll have to reserve judgment and wait for more-- including my own listening of Dylan's album, and my own reading of Saga's novel. But, even in Dylan's own canon, this is nothing particularly new, so I have to wonder what the fuss is really all about. I'm at least pleased to see Saga is not contemplating suing.
The quote, by the way (so I won't be charged with plagiarism) is from "Beautiful Revision: The Fearful Symmetries of Van Morrison and William Blake," an article in Wavelength 10 (December 1996), by Jeremy Sharp. I assure you, Mr. Sharp will have no problem with my quoting him here; he and I are very familiar with one another.
As some of you may have heard, Bob Dylan has been charged with plagiarizing from a Japanese novelist. If you haven't, info can be found here and here.
I'm not sure how much to make of any of this, partly because the links are pretty tenuous (the phrases I've seen compared are not especially 'unique'), and because I have some doubt about whether or not Dylan was actualyl exposed to the works of the novelist in question, Junichi Saga. But even if the lyrics are 'lifted' in one form of another, I'm reminded of these words from a little-read article on Van Morrison, here talking about the song Real Real Gone:
The song, perhaps more than saying anything per se, functions as [a] textbook example of how Morrison uses allusions in his songs: sometimes they are clear, even quoted (as with the closing roll-call that begins with "Wilson Pickett said..."); others are at once obvious and sublime. Consider, for example, how lyrics from Leon Russell's A Song For You ("You're a friend of mine") and The Beatles' Help ("Don't you know I need your help") climb almost seamlessly into the text of the song, and without emphasis being placed on their original source. Even the song's title, from a John Lee Hooker song of the same name, is embroidered into the lyric in such a way as to be patently obvious to the careful listened but almost oblivious to the careless one. It is as if Van Morrison has stolen a brick from every house in the neighbourhood and built his own home from the profits.
This kind of lyrical thievery is not necessarily to be dismissed: T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land probably commits more thievery than any poem of the twentieth century. Instead, an awareness of how a work takes from other works can add depth and texture to an understanding of what a song (or poem) can mean.
Artistic 'lifting'-- if that is indeed the case-- is always a difficult notion to assess, and it can become bloody impossible to tell if the artist in question is stealing, alluding, or using another form, often called 'collage.' Lines, for example, can become what are called objets trouvees, 'found objects,' that are put together in new forms and fashions, as, say images and logos from magazines can be pieced together in a collage. The trick is understanding the reshaping and the remaking of their surrounding context.
This is always an interesting issue. Is Marianne Moore plagiarizing when she includes fragments from newspapers in her poems? Is Eliot? And, even more interesting, is the scenario of the infamous Ern Malley scandal, for which I'd recommend people consult Michael Heyward's book The Ern Malley Affair, one of the more hilarious examples of Theivery For A Purpose.
So, as for Dylan, I'll have to reserve judgment and wait for more-- including my own listening of Dylan's album, and my own reading of Saga's novel. But, even in Dylan's own canon, this is nothing particularly new, so I have to wonder what the fuss is really all about. I'm at least pleased to see Saga is not contemplating suing.
The quote, by the way (so I won't be charged with plagiarism) is from "Beautiful Revision: The Fearful Symmetries of Van Morrison and William Blake," an article in Wavelength 10 (December 1996), by Jeremy Sharp. I assure you, Mr. Sharp will have no problem with my quoting him here; he and I are very familiar with one another.
From the Prologue to Ralph Ellison's magnificent novel Invisible Man:
I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquid-- and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you sometimes see in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination-- indeed, everything and anything except me.
Nor is my invisibility exactly a matter of a biochemical accident to my epidermis. That invisibility to which I refer occurs because of a peculiar disposition of the eyes of those with whom I come in contact. A matter of the construction of their inner eyes, those eyes with which they look through their physical eyes upon reality. I am not complaining, nor am I protesting either. It is sometimes advantageous to be unseen, although it is most often rather wearing on the nerves. Then too, you're constantly being bumped against by those of poor vision. Or again, you often doubt if you really exist. You wonder whether you aren't simply a phantom in other people's minds. Say, a figure in a nightmare which the sleeper tries with all his strength to destroy. It's when you like this that, out of resentment, you begin to bump people back. And, let me confess, you feel that way most of the time. You ache with the need to convince yourself that you do exist in the real world, that you're a part of all the sound and anguish, and you strike out with your fists, you curse and you swear to make them recognize you. And, alas it's seldom successful.
09 July 2003
String On
If what I hear in this article is true, then the recent production of Twelfth Night is a disaster. Evidently, someone's not understood the play...
If what I hear in this article is true, then the recent production of Twelfth Night is a disaster. Evidently, someone's not understood the play...
Honestly, This Is Not A Joke
From The Voice of the Shuttle comes this call for papers. *Shakes head*
Today is definitely one of those days when the Doctor will be 'oh my god'-ing to himself an awful lot....
From The Voice of the Shuttle comes this call for papers. *Shakes head*
"I just followed the bodies": Corporeality and Buffy the Vampire Slayer
The Northeast Modern Language Association Convention
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
March 3-7, 2004
In the episode "Seeing Red," Willow tells Tara, "We'll decipher codes and foil evil schemes." Her statement speaks to the ways in which the plots of/in Buffy the Vampire Slayer center on acts of (re)interpreting signs. Throughout the series, Buffy's life is marked by a "slay-study double feature" as characters convene in the library, their homes, the Magic Box, to research the Hellmouth and its demonic activities. The "study sessions" that are guided by the Watcher who pours over ancient texts and Willow who searches the web illustrate
different methods of identification and interpretation. In the episodes, bodies are transformed-from human to demon/vampire/god, from innocent bystanders to victims, schoolgirls to slayers-and replicated-as spells and magic breed doubles and switched-bodies. The "evil schemes" are mapped on/through the characters' bodies, illustrating the possibilities and limitations of transforming the body, (re)signifying shape and form. These bodies perform as texts for others to (mis)read. After seven seasons, the closure brought by the series' final episode leaves another body in its wake: Buffy the Vampire Slayer as a textual body. Angel's statement, "I just followed the bodies," performs in myriad ways, demonstrating the ways in which characters decipher the signs within the series and the ways in which one begins to critically dissect the text of/in Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
In the series, plots hinge on the (mis)readings of replicated, transformed, switched, and marked bodies; this panel will explore how we read the body in/of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. This panel will explore the conversations between contemporary "body theory" and the bodies inscribed within the series to analyze the relationship between the body and discourse. How are the bodies in Buffy the Vampire Slayer inscribed and then read? What are the limits and possibilities of reading and reinscribing the body revealed in/through Buffy the Vampire Slayer? How do we critically approach the bodies within the series and the series itself? How do we critically (de)construct the body of Buffy the Vampire Slayer?
Deadline for 1-2 page abstracts is September 15, 2003. Please send them via email (in text of email) to Lisa Perdigao at Lkperdigao@aol.com or in hard-copy to
Lisa K. Perdigao
Department of English
406 Holmes Hall
Northeastern University
Boston, MA 02115-5000
All accepted panelists must be NEMLA members by October 15, 2003. For more information about the convention see www.nemla.org.
Today is definitely one of those days when the Doctor will be 'oh my god'-ing to himself an awful lot....
He he he.... Satire!
Follow these instructions:
Ed.: It still works as of 7.30 this morning, at least at google.ca.
"You're either with us or you're against us." -- W
(With thanks to Anne)
Follow these instructions:
1) Go to www.google.com
2) type in (but don't hit return): "weapons of mass destruction".
3) Hit the "I'm feeling lucky" button, instead of the normal "Google search" button.
4) READ what appears to be a normal error message carefully.
5) Enjoy.
Ed.: It still works as of 7.30 this morning, at least at google.ca.
"You're either with us or you're against us." -- W
(With thanks to Anne)
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