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.