In dreams the physical landscape doesn't have to be stable. Yesterday, for example, a field where people were launching large model airplanes caught fire and I could put it out by rolling up part of a rug that was inside a building I was in. We had to evacuate, but weren't sure of where the fire was.
The mind forges the dream landscape out of its own imagination. In real life the world takes care of its own consistency: the mind doesn't have to worry about the consistency of everything. So much of the spatial and narrative incoherence of dreams comes from this amorphous quality of what is generated by unconscious thought without real life constraints of time and space. We think of this quality as mysterious, but it is the product simply of the lack of constraint. The mind is not constructing a place for the dream body will exist in geometric terms, but according to the dictates of phenomenological reality.
Tuesday, November 26, 2019
The End of Diversity
A video a student showed in class for a presentation went from biological sex, to other factors (gender expression, sexual orientation), then deconstructed all the binaries of the original four categories, and finally reached the conclusion that there were as many possibilities as people on the planet: every person has a unique sexuality. What promises to be infinite diversity, then, ends up being the end of diversity, since you can no longer find two people alike. This means that any group of 10 people chosen at random is as "diverse" as any other. This was not meant to be a reductio ad absurdum, but it ended up like that. If everyone is equally queer, then it turns out nobody is.
It would be a bit like an analytical tool so fine that it ends up being not a surgeon's scalpel but a blender.
Without the original binary of biological sex, nothing else makes any sense. For example, being a Lesbian means being attracted to ... what exactly? We can't say if we don't have a concept of being or not being a woman. The proliferation of categories seems promising, but then ends up destroying any coherent thought.
It would be a bit like an analytical tool so fine that it ends up being not a surgeon's scalpel but a blender.
Without the original binary of biological sex, nothing else makes any sense. For example, being a Lesbian means being attracted to ... what exactly? We can't say if we don't have a concept of being or not being a woman. The proliferation of categories seems promising, but then ends up destroying any coherent thought.
Monday, November 25, 2019
some jokes
Kierkegaard tells of this one: A man taking a walk sees a sign in a store: "We press pants." He goes home gets his pants and brings them there and they look at him quizzically. He wants his pants pressed. They tell him, no: "We sell the sign."
***
"My husband and I decided we don't want children.
We are going to tell them tomorrow after school."
***
Ben is pacing the house. His wife asks him why. "I owe Saul $20,000 dollars, The note comes due tomorrow and I can't pay him."
His wife calls Saul: "Ben can't pay you the money he owes you. Maybe you should be pacing the house instead of him."
***
"My husband and I decided we don't want children.
We are going to tell them tomorrow after school."
***
Ben is pacing the house. His wife asks him why. "I owe Saul $20,000 dollars, The note comes due tomorrow and I can't pay him."
His wife calls Saul: "Ben can't pay you the money he owes you. Maybe you should be pacing the house instead of him."
Composers?
What composers do like? I'm thinking of ones that might be relatively obscure. I'm not much interested in whether you like Bach or Haydn or Stravinsky.
The reason I'm asking is that I sometimes discover a new-to-me composer and wonder why nobody told me about them before. Here is your chance to tell me. I'm currently delving into the music of Paul Bowles, but I have discovered Mompou within the last few years as well. I'm thinking of people of that level of fame, but not of composers who are obscure for very good reasons.
The reason I'm asking is that I sometimes discover a new-to-me composer and wonder why nobody told me about them before. Here is your chance to tell me. I'm currently delving into the music of Paul Bowles, but I have discovered Mompou within the last few years as well. I'm thinking of people of that level of fame, but not of composers who are obscure for very good reasons.
The Untuning of the Sky (1961)
This book by John Hollander, who was also a well-regarded poet back in the day, was one I read and then didn't look at for several decades. It was a dissertation at the U of Indiana. The thesis of the book is this:
"From the canonical Medieval Christian view that all actual human music bears a definite relation to the eternal, abstract (and inaudible) 'music' of universal order, to the completely de-Christianized, use of such notions in late seventeenth-century as decorative metaphor and mere turns of wit, a gradual process of disconnection between abstract musical terminology and concrete practical considerations of actual vocal and instrumental music occurs." (19).
Note the richness and specificity of the thesis. This is something that needs a book to document, not the kind of thesis one would expect in a 6,000 word article. The historical scope is broad, and requires knowledge of intellectual history, British poetry of the periods involved, and music, both in its actual forms and in what Hollander calls the "musical thought" or "ideology."
I recommend, too, another book by JH on The Figure of Echo.
I had remembered this idea in vague terms. What interests me here specifically is the transition from musicality as a profound trope to a weaker one, described as "decorative metaphor and mere turns of wit." Yet with romanticism and symbolism music becomes, again, a deep metaphor, not a decorative one. A retuning of the skies, but without the medieval belief in the literal "music of the spheres"?
"From the canonical Medieval Christian view that all actual human music bears a definite relation to the eternal, abstract (and inaudible) 'music' of universal order, to the completely de-Christianized, use of such notions in late seventeenth-century as decorative metaphor and mere turns of wit, a gradual process of disconnection between abstract musical terminology and concrete practical considerations of actual vocal and instrumental music occurs." (19).
Note the richness and specificity of the thesis. This is something that needs a book to document, not the kind of thesis one would expect in a 6,000 word article. The historical scope is broad, and requires knowledge of intellectual history, British poetry of the periods involved, and music, both in its actual forms and in what Hollander calls the "musical thought" or "ideology."
I recommend, too, another book by JH on The Figure of Echo.
I had remembered this idea in vague terms. What interests me here specifically is the transition from musicality as a profound trope to a weaker one, described as "decorative metaphor and mere turns of wit." Yet with romanticism and symbolism music becomes, again, a deep metaphor, not a decorative one. A retuning of the skies, but without the medieval belief in the literal "music of the spheres"?
Saturday, November 23, 2019
The Master's Tools
You can, in fact, dismantle the master's house with the master's tools (Audre Lorde). Tools do not know whose they are, so that if you break into the master's toolshed and steal his chain saw, it will in fact do as much damage to his house as if it were YOUR chain saw.
So this is an example of a metaphor that seems to work at the metaphorical level, without being valid at the literal level. It "works" in the sense that people assent to it, or don't question its logic. It sounds good if you don't really think about it.
But then the question is whether it works at the metaphorical level either? In other words, if the master's tools are rhetorical or discursive devices, etc..., or other things that are not tools in the physical sense, why can't those tools be used in ways against the master's interests? I'm asking because I've always wondered why this was considered to be a good slogan. Isn't the most fundamental characteristic of a tool that it can be used in ways independent of the user's positionality?
So this is an example of a metaphor that seems to work at the metaphorical level, without being valid at the literal level. It "works" in the sense that people assent to it, or don't question its logic. It sounds good if you don't really think about it.
But then the question is whether it works at the metaphorical level either? In other words, if the master's tools are rhetorical or discursive devices, etc..., or other things that are not tools in the physical sense, why can't those tools be used in ways against the master's interests? I'm asking because I've always wondered why this was considered to be a good slogan. Isn't the most fundamental characteristic of a tool that it can be used in ways independent of the user's positionality?
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