second test

test yeah

test

this is a test

my take on the wake.

I wrote this piece about my first experience with Finnegans Wake. I actually was forced to finish it for a portfolio that was due for my professional writing class. At any rate, HERE IT IS!

saterd ay red

mis-en-abyme

Anyone else feel like they can't get away from this class? The themes! it's the themes man. they are following me.

follow this link right HERE

and you will find an awesome example of a frame story. It is a comic that comes from pbfcomics.com


Into the abyss! story within story. it never ends. You are seeing what you are seeing what you are seeing what you are seeing and so on forever and so on forever and so on forever and so





and by the way, good luck to everyone on the final exam. and a good summer too.

final post.

This has been a very rich class. I like getting done and feeling that if someone asked me about orality I could talk to them about it for hours. Also, I love the fact that I now have resources that I would have never had before. I can assure you that if it wasn't for this class I probably wouldn't have read The Art of Memory, Wisdom of the Mythtellers, and definitely not Orality and Literacy.

As I started The Alphabet Versus the Goddess just a couple of weeks ago, I purchased a copy on Amazon so that I could return Shaman Sexson his copy, and I'm going to finish it. This additional material makes drawing conclusions much easier, and helps papers for other classes too!

It was fun, entertaining, and great for the mind. Thank you Shaman Sexson for such a great class!

Cheers everyone!

practical memory.

Memory practicality was not my biggest concern when I heard about memorizing fifty things. I know that it was a tool to help us delve deeper into the magical qualities that memory can take on. However, I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of use my fifty items had.

I work construction, and one of my coworkers loves the blues like I do. I don't know how many times we talked about the top fifty guitarists that I memorized, but it was a very substantial amount. For me, this exercise turned out to be extremely practical.

I hope that I continue to create memory palaces long after this class is over. Has anyone else used their memory palace to include other things? I'm glad that I was forced to do this, because I probably never would have on my own.

orality in climbing.

I've been thinking a lot lately about rock climbing. It is still too snowy and wet to go outside, but soon the weather will improve and the climbing will commence. The thought just crossed my mind that in certain circumstances climbing commands are more and less a part of the oral tradition.

Communication between climbing partners is essential especially when the only thing separating you, your partner, and a long fall to the ground is some man made equipment and the knowledge of how to use it. So, climbers engage in certain commands that allow one to know objectively what the other is doing.

example:
P1: You're on belay
P2: Climbing
P1: Climb

later...
P2: Off Belay
P1: Belay off

Ok, these commands are very simple and efficient. In each circumstance each person knows exactly what the other is doing or going to do. If any of these commands were misinterpreted, serious injury could result.

However, there are many times (especially on wandering Montana routes) where the partners cannot hear one another even when shouting. Therefore, they have to come up with a system of rope tugs that correspond to different commands. For example, two sharp tugs mean 'off belay' and three sharp tugs back means 'belay off.' Here we have a sort of gesture language.

However, if it is a gesture language, it is the least advanced kind. The human to human gesture that characterizes the oral tradition is extremely advanced, and complementary to the language itself. Gesture doesn't stand in for language, it adds to it. Therefore, just as Wise Wandering Shannon mentioned in her presentation, sign language (and rope tugs) are not a kind of kick back to the oral tradition, but rather a product of the literate tradition.

This picture is from a couple years ago when my friend Kyle and I had a particularly awful epic at Humbug Spires. That is the Wedge behind us in the photo, and at this point we were both shaking so bad from the cold that I couldn't untie my shoes or take off my harness. If our communication had been any worse during the hour before this picture was taken, things could have turned out very very bad.

climb safe.

the curse of the alethe (sp).

We generally think of unforgetting as a good thing. Something to strive for and if we gain it we will be better off. Yes, with enough unforgetting we might even become gods. Or will we? Here is a story about a very interesting case. A woman plagued with unforgetting.

Story from Wired.com

Is our position determined by our level of remembrance? OR have we been given the gift of forgetting?

first book.

Do you remember your first book? Do you remember the feeling of the binding in your hands and the smell of the pages?



Well...

Books are metamorphic. You can revisit a book that you have read a hundred times, and the hundred and first time that your eyes scan the words – they change. I was curious. After fourteen years I was curious about a book that I found in the youth section all that time ago.

We had a tradition in my family – in order to get the privilege of having a library card, we had to first read a book, cover to cover, to our mom. I went to the brick colored building downtown, walked to the eye-level shelfs and grabbed the one. It was called “Bored Nothing to Do,” and it had an airplane on the front – I was instantly hooked. I sat down with my mom at home and read slowly over each word, each sentence, translating the print into imagination as two boys built an airplane from common household items.

As far as I was concerned, the words had a performative effect on me. When the two boys became bored with all their toys, so did I; when they were scared that their dad would catch them pulling the engine and gas tank out of his VW beetle, I was scared too. I was completely empathetic as my mind rose to meet their makeshift plane – our mom, I mean their mom, yelled at us to come down. What a kill joy.

The morning was warmer than the weather report predicted it being. I was on a mission and jumped out of the car as my mom yelled a question about needing a ride home. I shook my head and told her I would walk. The brick building smelled the same, it looked the same, my legs almost shrunk as I waited for the automatic door to open. This time however, I was tall enough to reach the computer. I searched for the book in question. In my experience, public library computer searches never work right. I began to sweat. I had one last chance with the lady at the youth reference desk. She looked busy. I swallowed hard and choked back my childish pride to find it on my own. Hi, I said. She looked up at me. I'm looking for a book I told her. She can't find it.

I made some comment about nostalgia and sulked my way upstairs. When I was small, the spiral stairs led to another realm. The upper tiers were reserved for the reading elite and “Bored Nothing to Do” was surely on the first floor. There was a point, a vague shift, where I threw off the robe of the short stacks and climbed the slowly spiraling center piece to the monstrous collection of fiction and computer manuals.

My feet crowned the top stair and I suddenly found myself among the clone shelves of literature. I passed the “H”s – then the “I”s – my stride began to slow without any intervention on my part. I hit the “J”s. By now I was scanning the bindings searching – searching – searching – Joyce! I pull a thick book from a sandwich of Dubliners – in scripted letters the cover read Finnegans Wake. Holding it tightly I walked to the far back corner, far from the other library patrons, where the sun poured in from the south, warming a fake plastic plant.

The story continues.
I bask in the literate tradition.

another example of orality.

As I think back through my weekend I realize that orality shows up everywhere. This has been a main theme of the class and by now it is getting pretty easy to see instances where the typographical tradition is somewhat swamped by the oral thought process.

For example, this weekend I watched the movie "Return to Oz." In many ways it exemplifies the attributes of the oral thought process. In particular, it is very complementary. With the original movie, the relationship between the Rock King and the Emerald City, etc.

This is a pretty creepy movie, but interesting as it takes a lot of elements from 'The Wizard of Oz' and twists them a bit to reveal a darker side to the story.

thoughts about music.

Music, as many of the presentations have addressed, is based strongly in the oral tradition to some degree or another. Specifically thinking of genres, I believe that many styles of jazz have roots that are deeply implanted in the oral thought process. For certain there are styles that are written out, to be followed, and analytical, but there are others that are free and open and flow only with the thoughts and whims of the performers.

Most types of music rely on a set structure. Is this from the oral or literate tradition? To an extent I think it shows the analytical side of music (the 12 bar blues for instance), but at the same time the music (if it is good) is felt, not just played. I think that the emotions that are associated with music are deeply rooted in the right side of the brain and as such are given to the characteristics of the oral tradition.

What about free style rap? Very much a part of the oral tradition? Or are there very analytical thought processes that go on while trying to rhyme phrases of the top of the head.


Gesang ist dasein

Synecdoche.

Last night as I lay in bed at 1:30 my mind raced. I tried to focus. Count slowly... 1... 2... I know I could write about!! no. no. 14... 15... I really want to climb. 16... sheep sheep -- the count ... 17 or 18? or where was I? My mind was having none of it. I decided to just watch a movie till I fell asleep.

So I opened up my 'movies' folder and chose one that I have been meaning to watch for a very long time. It is called Synecdoche, New York. This film is amazing. Throughout the film I felt like crying many times but I was thinking too much, too fast for any tears.

This film should be required material for the course. It is the perfect example of mis-en-abyme. The main character is a director that puts on a production that lasts years, and covers life. Literally normal life, that is played within normal life. As the movie progresses, so do the boxes of narration. Story within story within story within story -- continuous ... forever.

During the whole film the lead character tries to figure out how to do the play right. At one point his true love tells him that "the end is built into the beginning." She dies that night after making love.

This film is beyond brilliant, and I will have to watch it at least a couple more times to appreciate its complexity. Watch it. You won't be dissappointed.

Synecdoche, New York @ IMDB: HERE

My happy plant.

As I have mentions before, I really like the beginning of Kane where he talks about the connections that reside just below the surface in the natural world. We cannot see them but they exist and thrive as the animals seemingly are in a tight bond with the earth. It is staggering at times and yet, can be seen in the simplest of ways.

For example, I have a plant that has been struggling through the winter. Not being particularly good with plants, I assumed it was my ability to care for it and not its environment. At one point I thought that the whole thing was dead, and didn't throw it away only because of a tiny amount of light green that barely rose to the surface of the leaves. Recently however it exploded. Interestingly, it hasn't been excessively sunny or warm. In fact during these spring days while it is snowing and I am grumbling, my plant is raising its leaves high, straining in delight against the soil and the white pot.

My plant knows that it is spring. Maybe it can hear the birds singing in the morning, or feel summer in the few rays of sun, or maybe the earth whispered quietly to it and told it of the warm weather to come, the sunny days and soft spoken nights. Maybe it heard the earth and found the will, the perpetual will of the earth in its 'diurnal course.' Always... constantly...

Snow is in the forecast for tomorrow. Seventy percent chance they say. It is night time. The sun is warming the other side of the globe. Yet my plant is stretching over there, anticipating the weather that is coming, always hoping, always dreaming. It is a reassurance to me as I try not to get bogged down with finals.

Better weather is coming! Life and breath and dream will return once more to this cold valley. With two weeks and lots of work left, the situation can look bleak. But I trust my plant. It knows.



This is definitely not what my plant looks like, but a quick google image search of 'happy plant' gave me this.

Girl Talk as a modern oral kapow!

Girl Talk aka Greg Gillis is a modern day oral storyteller. Some of you may know what I'm talking about, others may not have any idea what Girl Talk is. Greg Gillis is a one man operation that performs under the name Girl Talk. His genre is called Mashup. He takes little bits of modern popular music and creates a continuous, layered, highly danceable song.

Check out a video here: Girl Talk

I had the pleasure of experiencing Girl Talk this winter when he came to Bozeman. It was sure a party to remember and its quality of resonance was very strong. His style of music conveys the oral tradition in that it is holistic, simultaneous and synthetic. As he crafts music together across different genres and decades, a beautiful / organic / synthetic monster ensues.

I strongly recommend checking out Girl Talk. Go first for his album Night Ripper, and then Feed The Animals.

memory erasor.

Recently I watched an episode of This American Life that really resonated with me. If you are not familiar with This American Life, it is a radio program from public radio station WBEZ in Chicago and is distributed by Public Radio International on a weekly bases. Starting in 2007 Showtime started airing episodes created by Ira Glass and the team for television.

I was watching episode 6 of the first season, and was struck by the topic of memory that opened the show. The short interview detailed the findings of a two man group studying chemicals in the brain that are responsible for certain memory functions. The two found a chemical that effectively wipes out memory. If use of the chemical is stopped, then normal memory storage and functions resume. However, all past memories are wiped clean.

After the two published their findings the letters started flooding in, mostly from people not of the scientific community. There were lots of people who wanted their memories erased. There is one particular point where one of the researchers read one of the letters and started to cry. It was from a person who didn't want to remember anything that had ever happened to them and was begging for relief. It was heartbreaking.

If anyone is interested, here is more info This American Life

Emotion.

In the third chapter of Leonard Schlain's book, he talks about the evolution of males in the use of emotion. While hunting they perfected the use of the left brain which allowed them to kill without emotion. This of course, lent the male population to excel at the task of speech and writing.

When reading this, I started thinking about certain types of writing that induce emotion. Some very emotional pieces must use some characteristics of the oral based thought process to induce such reactions. This is another example of how the literate and oral traditions are not opposing, but are seen together.

today's presentations.

Great job on the presentations today. I would like to apologize for the lack of organization in mine. There are so many interesting aspects to Schlain's argument that it was difficult to choose what to include and what to leave out. I think I included to many 'half-ideas' and left out the other half of many ideas.

However, GREAT work to the others. I was extremely impressed. Checkmark Parker was intense and his presentation resonated beautifully. A definite blast from the oral tradition.

Tautological Tai also had an awesome presentation. Very creative medium! I really liked the graphical qualities of the 'scroll' and the idea of using graphics to help explain the dynamics of emmersment in media.

The Trobriand People.

During the research process for my first abandoned term paper topic, I ran into some info on the Trobriand people. I looked into it further and found quite a few articles that had been written on these primitive peoples. They interested me for a couple of reasons.

First of all, they are a tribe still nearly secluded in the oral tradition. They have texts in their language now after years of western missionaries influencing their society. However, many remnants of the oral tradition still remain. One of these, is the belief that the woman gives a child its body and soul. For them, this means that the male does not have a direct part in the baby making process. Copulation, for the Trobriands, is merely for shaping the baby and feeding it. This belief is also accompanied by many magical traditions where women have much more magical power than the males do.

These beliefs that seem quite strange to us in the literate tradition are quite natural for the oral tradition. The woman in a society that still values the feminine characteristics would probably see the female as a great symbol of fertility that must be protected and exalted for the advancement of their race. It is no surprise then that the Trobriand people trace their lineage through the female lines.

For more info, here is a start at Wikipedia: Trobriand People

Rough.

Here, a couple days late, is the rough draft of my term paper. Again, it takes a deeper look at the false dichotomy between the oral and literate traditions. Please let me know what you think!! I'm always down for some criticism.

An Extended Look At the False Dichotomy Between the Oral Tradition and the Literate Tradition

In Walter J. Ong's book, Orality and Literacy, the topics of the oral tradition and that of the literate tradition are differentiated and explored. Though each is explained in great detail, a problem exists that the text does not address. According to Leonard Shlain, in his book The Alphabet Versus The Goddess, literacy which is frequently seen as cultural progress, comes at a price. The stated dichotomy is based on an assumption that severely limits the understanding of the interactivity between orality and literacy. This also leads to limited explanations of the literate tradition's seemingly inherent patriarchal structure.

Ong expresses characteristics of oral thought as if they are in opposition to literate, or typographically based thought. For instance, while explaining orally based thought, he states that the oral tradition is “Aggregative rather than analytic” (Ong 38). Oral thought takes in information as a whole, whereas literate thought analyses and deconstructs. These two are clearly in opposition from Ong's standpoint. This is a valid observation, however Shlain uses this comparison to dig deeper into the origins of these two types of thinking.

The main problem with Ong's approach is that he opposes orally based thought to typographically based thought. In addition this also opposes the oral tradition to the literate tradition. This is a false dichotomy, and is seen as such when compared to Shlain's approach. Using Ong's term, the aggregative view of the thought process would not break it down into orally based and typographically based sections. This is because they are complements. They coexist in a medium which is impossible to destroy by any means lesser than death. If one is breathing and therefore thinking, they are allowing characteristics of each type of thought process to thrive.

As Shlain points out, “First writing, and then its more sophisticated refinement, the alphabet, tolled the death knell of feminine values” (Shlain 39). So the literate tradition caused the fall of feminine qualities in the thought process? Ong does not disagree on this point. Although it is only mentioned briefly, he believes that the rise of patriarchal values comes from the privilege of males to study certain languages which females were generally barred from learning (111). Shlain writes however, that the reason for literacy to bring about patriarchal constraints is that, “writing subliminally fosters a patriarchal outlook” (1). So the effects of writing are subliminal and not as obvious as a social construction already steeped in patriarchal tradition such as privilege.

The Alphabet Versus The Goddess starts out by defining the feminine outlook with the qualities of a holistic, simultaneous, synthetic, and concrete viewpoint. Subsequently, the characteristics of the masculine outlook are linear, sequential, reductionist, and abstract thinking. Shlain continues to explain his theory by talking about the evolution of the human brain to accommodate the invention of new technologies or other circumstances.

The right side of the brain, which developed long before the left side of the brain, handles such emotions as the state of being, and it understands things in a holistic manner. The left side of the brain developed with the evolutionary process to handle the different faculties needed to understand the growing complexity of language, and eventually written text. Shlain correctly points out that, “The left brain's primary functions are opposite and complementary to the right's” (21). It is already apparent that the characteristics of the functions of each side of the brain correlate to the characteristics of oral and literate based thought.

The next part of Shlain's argument is that the two sides of the brain function differently in concordance with the characteristics of each gender. This occurred through the evolutionary process and the early forms of gender roles. Women stayed around the home, cared for the young and gathered food, they used their emotional faculties heavily and therefore connected strongly with the right brain. Men hunted and needed to act without emotion, and think in linear forms planning the best ways to take down an animal. All of these actions relied heavily on the developing left brain which excelled in the methods of speech and eventually writing (21).

The process of reading is steeped in analysis. Shlain writes, “reducing the components of speech into their separate parts – is essential to understanding speech, especially if the content of the message concerns objective facts” (21). Taking a look back at Ong's characteristic of orality vs. literacy – orality is aggregative and literacy is analytic. Though speech uses primarily the left side of the brain, oral based thought relates in many ways to the feminine, or right brain characteristics. However, to deduce that oral and literate thought come from completely separate characteristics is a faulty assumption according to Shlain, and this mistake introduces the beautifully synergistic relationship between the characteristics of oral based thought and of typographically based thought.

Shlain says that, “the hemispheres work closely in concert with one another” (18). It is as if the two sides of the brain are dancers, hand in hand, arm in arm, moving across the floor in a complementary style. It is not that one partner is dominant over the other, but each has moments where they express their own qualities more so than their partner. If this is true with the left and right sides of the brain, it is also true for oral and literate thought. Each relates somewhat to the characteristics expressed by the individual sides of the brain, and their relationship is complex and complementary.

Continuing with the dancers, if the style of dancing relies on strength and speed, then one of the partners is probably going to express themselves the most. According to Shlain, this is precisely what happened four thousand years ago, after agriculture had already been invented, one of the dancers expressed their qualities nonstop, stifling the other. According to Shlain the reason for this was the invention of the alphabet. (39)

Because men had evolved to used their left brains more while hunting, they were stronger in the fields of linear thought and abstractions. When the alphabet made its entrance, the male was naturally equipped to comprehend writing efficiently. The female who had previously been seen as a power of fertility, now fell as the new system of literacy thrived, along with the patriarchal outlook. Ong's argument is at an immediate disadvantage because it does not look at the true origins of the characteristics that define oral and typographically based thought. Without this depth, the ways in which gender played a role in developing the patriarchal system are lost and subject to such guess work as rights of privilege. (Shlain 22)

Just as the brain works in a synergistic manner, so to does orally and typographically based thought. They cannot effectively be separated because in our current state, we cannot have one without the other. The true oral tradition was not in opposition to the coming literate tradition; the oral tradition was defined by the same characteristics as the literate tradition was going to be. In each tradition, one partner expressed their own qualities more than the other, one side of the brain worked more efficiently than the other. But now they are complements, and separating them only detracts from the whole they make together. They are not working against each other, but indeed differently for different purposes … like a dance between partners, “each of the worlds, pursuing its separate ends, resolves problems by contact with the other” (Kane 175).

Works Cited

Kane, Sean. Wisdom of the Mythtellers. Orchard Park NY: Broadview Press, 1998.

Ong, Walter J. Orality and Literacy. New York: Routledge, 1982.

Shlain, Leonard. The Alphabet Versus The Goddess. New York: Penguin Putnam, 1998.

Technical Things.

For the group presentation I did quite a bit of work making the graphics and putting everything together. I used Blender to edit some video, Photoshop CS3 for the graphics, and Flash CS3 for the actual presentation.

I have lots (seriously lots!) of images in all states (.psd, .psb, .png) and the flash files (.fla, .swf)

I consider all of this work to be free for anyone to use and enjoy, so if anyone is needing some Jeopardy graphics just send me an email and I'll be more than willing to send back whatever you need or want.


Click here to download the final .swf presentation file. (flash viewer must be installed)
(right click > save link as)

Group Presentation.

As I mentioned in the last post, my group (4) presented last Monday on the topic of complements as explained by Kane. We parodied SNL's Celebrity Jeopardy and brought into it many examples of complements.

First of all, the questions all came from chapter 5 of Kane. We touched on some of the stories that were told, and different ideas such as 'hierarchy,' that arises in complementary situations.

Secondly, the genre of parody is a good example of complementarity. The original first existed without the parody, but gains from the parody in one way or another. They are not opposites, but give each other a meaning entirely dependent on the context of the other. Interestingly, the same sort of argument can be made against primary and secondary text. Is the primary text, or the commentary more important. Answer: neither! Though an obvious hierarchy exists, each gain sufficient meaning dependent on the context of their relationship. Primary vs. Secondary.

Thirdly, Willy Quiet William's role was that of the Otherworld, which is complementary to our world. They are not opposites, but the relationship is interconnected and symbiotic.

Coming from the immersement of the literate culture, it is difficult to think in terms of complements. We as members of the literate tradition automatically think using analytic and deconstructionist methods. It seems unnatural to think of hot and cold / light and dark / black and white / God and Satan / Schooltime and Summer ( ha, two weeks! ) as complementary things and not opposites. The world however does not function as the literate mind would like. Complements surround us challanging the literate tradition's construction of the idea of opposite.

Complementary.

My group and I (group 4) presented last week with a parody of SNL's Celebrity Jeopardy. We presented chapter 5 of Kane which is Complementarity. The idea of complements is that two or more things do not act as opposites, but as complements. They complement the other in their differing levels of sameness. Often, the sameness is perceived as being so low that the objects are not just different but actually opposite.

The classic opposite is black and white. However, black could not exist without white. The ideas, notions, and symbolism that accompanies 'black' could not exist without the ideas, notions and symbolism that accompanies 'white.' These are not opposite but complementary. They exist only in context with the other.

Even when objects pursue specific outcomes that are different, sometimes very different, it is still necessary for each to exist. Kane writes, "Thus each of the worlds, pursuing its separate ends, resolves problems by contact with the other" (175). The first example that comes to mind is that of God and Satan. Two different worlds pursuing extremely different ends, needs the other to function. For instance, God seemingly works along side Satan in the persecution of Job. Though the motivations are different and could be confused as "opposite," without Satan in the context of God, the system wouldn't work -- God's plans would not function.

Complements are abundant in the oral tradition, as its characteristic holistic view allows for the understanding of two separate entities working in close relation even though highly different. The typographic tradition is highly analytic and delights in breaking things down into separate entities that can then be set on opposing sides.

Changing.

I have decided, for about the forth time, to change the subject of my paper. After doing a lot of research and finding our very interesting things about a specific primary oral culture (Trobriand) I have decided to go a different route.

In the book The Alphabet vs. the Goddess by Shlain, he talks a lot about the development and differences of the left and right brain lobes. This is very interesting and provides a very physical contradiction to Ong's false dichotomy between Orality and Literacy. More on this later.

and more on the Trobriand peoples later also.

Starting The Alphabet Vs. The Goddess

I just started the book that Shaman Sexson allowed me to borrow. It is called The Alphabet vs. The Goddess by Leonard Shlain. The very first thing that struck me while reading the preface was that Shlain is a surgeon by profession. He heads a medical department and is an associate professor of surgery and he writes books like this. First impression: this guy is making me look bad.

I just finished chapter 1 and find it to be extremely relevant to the topics of oral traditions, and closely related to Orality and Literacy and Wisdom of the Mythtellers.

Shlain argues that the invention and rise of the alphabet demoted the feminine goddess figure from her throne and replaced her with the masculine figure. He writes on page 3, "Literacy has promoted the subjugation of women by men throughout all but the very recent history of the West. Misogyny and patriarchy rise and fall with the fortunes of the alphabetic written word." He goes about explaining this by first setting up the characteristics of femininity. Shlain claims that they are a holistic, simultaneous, synthetic and concrete view of the world. The masculine qualities are opposite: linear, sequential, reductionist, and abstract.

Ong shares this point speaking about Latin on page 111, "For well over a thousand years, it was sex-linked, a language written and spoken by males." The culture that surrounded the academic Latin scene built it for the male population, however Shlain would add that the idea of Latin's alphabetic characters were the bases for why the culture catered toward the masculine and not the feminine.

Shlain argues that the process of writing and reading force a deconstructionist view in order to understand writing. This falls under the masculine qualities, as does the basic structure of writing which is linear. Since, according to Shlain, feminine views delight in images, the alphabetic word opposes a holistic, imaged based interpretation system.

I was originally going to write about the tacit connections in nature and how the attempt of science to explain those connections degrades the oral tradition. However, I might lean more toward the feminine qualities in nature and how literacy degrades them. As Shaman Sexson told me in class, "degrade" is a very strong word. I agree, however... for me to analyze the phenomenon, it is easier to see the worst, as lesser example are then easier to find.

I am looking forward to diving further into Shlain's book and learn about more interactions with the alphabet and its surroundings.

Connections in the Natural World

So far, my favorite quote from the Kane book is "The whole world seems alive with relationships we cannot see, except as the make their presence felt in other relationships that we can see (40)."

I felt drawn to this idea immediately when I read it. I love the mystery that this implies, and the fact that Science (capitalized) attempting to explain these patterns degrades and severely undermines the mystery and wonder of the natural world.

This is primarily Kane's point when he talks about the caribou and the biologists attempts at tracking their numbers. Something else is obviously going on under the surface and no amount of scientific work is going to account for the "mystical" variable.

I would like to write my paper on something concerning that mysterious element. Kane touches briefly on the impact of science on our understanding and belief about natural things. However, I would like to focus on how Science actually masks our understanding by creating a world without mystery.



If the product of all scientific research was a world without mystery, should scientific research continue? If the natural world is keeping esoteric information and or processes from us, does Science really think that the earth will hand over her secrets. She sings them to herself, but Science does not allow them to be heard. She sings them to herself, but humanity is often preoccupied. If humanity was available to listen, would she sing them loud enough for humanity to hear? Or maybe Science has masked her song enough so that humanity no longer hears a song but a bird or the wind or the waves, beautiful still but no longer part of the entire song.



Uh... I don't really hold a high view of most Science - if you couldn't tell.

My Memory Palace

I promised that I would put my memory palace up here in pictures. So, here it is. This is now what I see whenever I walk through my apartment.

Room 1 is the LIVING ROOM.





Room 2 is the KITCHEN









Room 3 is the DINING ROOM






Room 4 is the HALLWAY












Room 5 is the BATHROOM













Room 6 is my BEDROOM

The Collective Readership

We are already passed chapter 3 and I'm pushing through the stiff fourth chapter, but I wanted to revisit something from the end of chapter 3.

I was really interested by the idea that Ong brings up when talking about how reading differs from listening. Reading is not a collective activity and therefore it isolates. Listening, on the other hand, does just the opposite. An audience is brought together by a collective sound.

It is interesting how we talk about what books "say." Obviously books don't "say" anything. However, it seems as though we feel like we have to use this kind of personification, maybe to rationalize the fact that we spend hours upon hours gazing at pages covered in black ink.

The first thing I thought of was an issue I had during high school. For about two years when I read anything my 'inner voice' was the a British female. I don't know what the deal was, but please don't read too far into this -- I no longer have this issue. I generally blame it on NPR. Anyway, I thought this was interesting, because it was almost as if my mind was trying to take reading out of its literary context. In my mind there would be a British lady in a suit, behind a desk, reading the news except it was whatever was on the page in front of me.

Sadly I can't find any good visuals on Google images. sorry. blame google.

Electronically Based Thought

In chapter 3 of Ong, he introduces nine characteristics or oral based thought. He mentions that more thought must be devoted in able to gain a deeper understanding of the primary oral thought processes. In doing this, a perspective will also be gained for chirographically, typographically, and electronically based thought. (Ong page 36)

Upon reading "electronically based" my ears perked. They perked in the same way on Monday night when I watched the documentary I am trying to Break Your Heart by Sam Jones. The film is about the painfully awesome band Wilco and the troubles they encountered with the recording and release of their album Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.

There is a great interview in the film with David Fricke, who is a senior editor of Rolling Stone Magazine. In the interview he talks about the electronic culture in which we live.

“We're now in a culture, not just a business, but a culture which we expect everything to happen (snaps) – like that. You know, you have people outside, standing around talking on cell phones – you know – the gist of the conversation is: I'll be there in five minutes. Who gives a fuck, just be there in five minutes – don't talk about it.”

He goes on to explain that our electronically based thought culture expects music, art, literature, and poetry to all be done quickly and be constrained by a time schedule. As mentioned in class today, TIME is against us just as libraries and universities. At least it is against the oral tradition of thought. Here is the obvious problem with due dates on creative assignments. One thing I like about creative things, or Muse secretions (that sounds awful), is that they are organic. I mean that creative things are living, breathing and malleable. It seems that when I intervene and try to make it into something it isn't - the result is forced crap. Deadlines often do this.

The Arts as an organism makes me think of an interview of David Bazan in the short film Alone At The Microphone. He talks about song writing and the best approaches to it. Sitting down without any preconceived notions and just writing allows for the output of the muses to grow into its own product.

Going back to David Fricke's words, electronic thought waters down meaning more so than even literate thought. In the situation he describes, literate thought would dwell on these words because they are not memorable, and they are trivial. The electronic (cellphone, email, instant access) culture has instilled a hyper-heightened sense of time, which means that the triviality of literate thought is also heightened. The muses don't function well in the construct of time, and what is produced in electronically based thought cannot be a valuable creation of the truly organic muses. Electronic thought only adds triviality. The added constraint of time only fuels the flames of the ephemeral.

Fifty Items

For the memorization assignment, I decided to commit to my memory palace the first 50 of the Rolling Stone Magazine's top 100 guitarists. I would like to point out that this is probably the worst list I have ever seen, and there are some pretty lame lists out there.

So, I have matched each fifty guitarists with fifty objects in my apartment. This took awhile, but when I finished I knew them all because each was associated with an object which fell in an order that I mapped throughout five rooms. It was quite a bit easier than I thought it would be.



So... Here they are FROM MEMORY.

1. Jimi Hendrix
2. Duane Allman
3. B.B. King
4. Eric Clapton
5. Robert Johnson
6. Chuck Berry
7. Stevie Ray Vaughn
8. Ry Cooder
9. Jimmy Page
10. Keith Richards
11. Kirk Hammett
12. Kurt Cobain
13. Jerry Garcia
14. Jeff Beck
15. Santana
16. Johnny Ramone
17. Jack White
18. John Frusciante
19. Richard Thompson
20. James Burton
21. George Harrison
22. Mike Bloomfield
23. Warren Haynes
24. The Edge
25. Freddie King
26. Tom Morello
27. Mark Knopfler
28. Stephen Stills
29. Ron Asheton
30. Buddy Guy
31. Dick Dale
32. John Cipollina
33. Lee Ranaldo
34. Thurston Moore
35. John Fahey
36. Steve Cropper
37. Bo Diddley
38. Peter Green
39. Brian May
40. John Fogerty
41. Clarence White
42. Robert Fripp
43. Eddie Hazel
44. Scotty Moore
45. Frank Zappa
46. Les Paul
47. T. Bone Walker
48. Joe Perry
49. John McGlaughlin
50. Pete Townsend


And here is one of my favorites Buddy Guy who is associated with my bathroom countertop because it looks kind of like polka dots. I'm not sure what he is doing in this picture playing a Telecaster Deluxe. Whatever.

Muse Placement

Ok, here is my placement of the muses. For the record, I am writing this from memory. To be completely honest, the first time I thought this through I wrote it down. Unfortunately I still have lingering memories of how the words look in my handwriting on the page. It is unfortunate because I now have to isolate my memory palace (classroom) from my very real and material literate context. This is an attempt at keeping the palace clean. A little sweeping in the corners perhaps. However, as soon as I type these a little more debris will be added to my already cluttered brain. Here goes...


Thermostat - Of course, cannot be anything other than the great Erato. Yeah! Turn up the heat!!





Chalkboard - On the chalkboard sits Clio who is the muse of history. The chalkboard is one of those old technologies that we still see in our classroom. It is interesting that you can pull a screen down and project thousands of digital pixels onto it and still feed your nostalgia by coughing on a cloud of chalk dust. This technology is old enough to be in a HISTORY book.

Screen - On the projector screen sits Urania, the muse of astronomy. I think of my 'Mysteries of the Sky' class and the supernovas and galaxies that the professor would show us on the huge EPS projector screen every day.




"Quiet" desk - This muse would always be told to sit here during school. Thalia the muse of comedy sits atop the "quiet" desk.



Overhead Projector - Polyhymnia sits on the overhead projector. Back in the day when people actually used these things, there was one at my church and we would sing hymns that were printed on transparent paper and enlarged by this thing. Later, I would have to decipher poorly written math problems on a vis-a-vis smudged overhead in school, but it all started at church.



Brown desk - Terpsichore, the muse of song and dance holds up the muse of sacred songs. Under the more formal muse is one that is a bit more playful. The "chor" in Terpsichore makes me think of chords, like 7th and 9th chords which can be light and playful.


Bulletin Board - Calliope who is the chief of the muses relates to the bulletin board. She is the muse of speech and 'puts herself on display' just as if on a bulletin board.



Snowman Drawing - Snowmen are generally happy unless made by Calvin, examples here, therefore the good muse Euterpe who is associated with pleasing music sits here.






Double F symbol - This muse contrasts the other muse that is on the bulletin board. The double "f"s as mentioned by professor Sexson looks somewhat like a swastika and therefore this muse is Melpomene, the muse of tragedy. The "mel" beginning sounds like "mal" which of course means bad or wrong.



...and to all a good night.

My Three

So here are three things that I have found interesting in each of the three books.

Starting with Ong, in Chapter 2 when he is talking about Homer and the different ideas surrounding his work, I really found this to be interesting. Mainly, the idea that the Homeric works were written in patterns and formulas. This is expressed in the book as surprising. However, more than anything it made me begin to think about the collective unconscious as applied to tales and stories and epics. He then gets to that somewhat on page 25.

"The clusters constitute the organizing principals of the formulas, so that the 'essential idea' is not subject to clear, straightforward formulation but is rather a kind of fictional complex held together largely in the unconscious."

It was at this point that I threw up my hands in a 'what an awesome connection' sort of way. Of course Homer's epics are going to show patterns! The mind processes that wrote the story at one time are still going on - through the collective unconscious.



Ok, next with Kane.
In the first chapter, Kane brings up some very interesting things. One of these is connection. When reading about this in chapter 1, I realized that I have often been influenced in some way by connections that are invisible to me. On page 40 Kane says, "The whole world seems alive with relationships we cannot see, except as they make their presence felt in other relationships which we can see."

I really love this quote, and it provokes my mind in wondering how far the connections go. Why the connections exist. etc.


And finally with Yates.
In chapter 2 Yates talks about the ideas of memory in the ancient Greek culture. One of the things she mentions is that, "Imagination is the intermediary between perception and thought." This line found on page 32 struck me as beautiful and poignant. I read this line over about four times just to get it through my head. For some reason something about it made me mull over the words. I first thought of Kant and the perception thought relationship, but with the addition of imagination i was unsure. This is just provoking for me, because maybe I don't think about imagination in sufficient terms - maybe my ideas about it are limited and narrow.

Those are just some quick things that were underlined in those books. Interesting stuff.

The Enormity of Our Task

The impossible nature of studying orality struck me when reading Ong's book, Orality and Literacy. In the first chapter, Ong discusses the difficulty of separating orality from literacy. The example he provides describes how the word 'nonetheless' is nearly impossible to think of without the context of the written word. As I started thinking about this I found that this was nearly impossible with anything I thought of.

The essence of orality eludes me. Even if I wanted to capture it I wouldn't be able. Spoken word, to me, is the product of letters - symbols invented to drown out memory. Well, at least that is what Ong would say. He claims that literacy must be "carefully monitored" or else it "even destroys their memory." I am not certain how one could "carefully monitor" language so that it does not alter memory though I wonder at Ong's use of the word 'destroy.'

The end of Chapter 1 left me questioning Ong's argument. He claims that, "Literacy can be used to reconstruct for ourselves the pristine human consciousness which was not literate at all." I have a hard time with this because the system (literacy) from which we come blinds us from the "pristine" essence of the true oral culture. I challenge Ong, with the impossibility that he explains, to prove me wrong and give me a view of orality not in terms of literacy. I love his quote - "In the end, the horses are only what they are not."