| Yet in Arcadia Ego |
[Jan. 6th, 2010|01:57 pm] |
The funny thing is I've never even read Rebecca; the opening lines are just so immediately evocative.
Manderley Again
The paths to the past lie in dreams
A silver cord stretched through the night
From our first to last memories it streams
With its brilliant, crazed, enchanting light
In which glow our lost selves' faces seem
Clear or dim; some dark, some bright.
I cannot release it nor it me
This red string that has me bound
In whispers of "what-if" bygone days
Still rich with scent and sight and sound
Of what now little remains but decays:
That which I lost, was once thought found.
So night after night unrelenting
The selfsame scene I see:
"I dreamt I went to Manderley again",
But the gates were closed to me. |
|
|
| The Cambridge paper I can't leave behind |
[Jan. 1st, 2010|11:09 pm] |
The Tragedy paper is often known to be the most challenging (and some say most straightforwardly difficult) in the undergraduate syllabus. It's the one that has never quite let me go, although as my best-scoring effort you'd think I'd have the most closure there. Some of you might think it inauspicious for the first post of a new year to be a meditation on tragedy, but you'd be wrong. On to another attempt to introduce underappreciated fantasy classics to the world: John Barnes' One for the Morning Glory. It's a darkly tragic tale disguised as a whimsical fantasy romp, and as such an enduring favourite. It puts its finger on the whole "does tragedy require a sad ending" with a single pithy line: the world is not as it was before. Tragedy is about many things, but tragic endings are catalysts. The generic comedy ending is that of the restoration of order, or an affirmation of the status quo. This is why comedies tend to end with music, dance, weddings, or any combination of the three. A tragic end is one that denies such easy resolution. Tragedy is absolutely a good way to begin a new year. The world is not as it was. Posted via LiveJournal.app. |
|
|
| "monocle" should be a verb. Or at least an onomatopoeia |
[Dec. 30th, 2009|01:03 pm] |
The results of a fruitful Internet harvest.
First off, for all those of you who are as frustrated as I am by the consistently obfuscatory nature of academic writing and insist that strong arguments should be delivered with wit and verve instead of robotic adherence to an accepted conventional grammar, there's the aptly-named Postmodern Generator, written using the even more aptly named "Dada Engine" to randomly generate essays that sound perfectly acceptable and might actually make it past a negligent marker. Take that, postmodern sociological/anthropological quacks! An end to your reign of meaningless neologisms is in sight!
On a lighter note, Space Nazis from the Moon (not the official title) is a movie I'm just dying to watch. Cord, you're morally obliged to watch this too so we can discuss it. And maybe write an article comparing it to Jules Verne or something. |
|
|
| Flashmobbing |
[Dec. 29th, 2009|11:00 am] |
|
On one hand, it's incredibly endearing, in a "let's inject some spontaneity in a grey corporatised urban landscape" kind of way. On the other, there's something just a little bit sinister about the sight of part of a group of "us", disparate people on the streets on our own business, suddenly forming a collective "other" that is united in purpose and synchronised in action. Perhaps both effects are intentional; the latter especially gives rise to questions about whether in the face of a united subversive front, is it us or them who are being "othered"? |
|
|
| Unexpected surprise |
[Dec. 28th, 2009|11:51 pm] |
|
Gankutsuou: The Count of Monte Cristo is possibly one of the best print-to-screen adaptations I've seen of anything ever. It certainly beats the 2000-something movie hands-down. |
|
|
| potential future research topic |
[Dec. 19th, 2009|10:22 pm] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | one of god's better people - robbie williams | ] |
The future of the hero
1. Campbell defines the hero as a figure who mediates between change and continuity:
- the hero is compelled to leave the fixed rules and norms of his birth-culture
- he is exposed a world with different rules and cultural norms (figuratively, in the form of monsters and demons, or allegorically in the form of moral challenges (the Faerie Queene loves this; to a lesser extent, Journey to the West does as well with the kingdom of women, etc)
- after he undergoes his ordeal, he returns to his people but not before being changed in some way (bearing a scar or token, or having his moral compass recalibrated)
- he must re-integrate with his birth-culture, and either share with them his new perspective or otherwise suppress the ways in which he has changed (or accept that he will never be able to return to his birth-culture).
2. In a world without borders where everyone is exposed to shifting moral compasses all the time, what is the value of a 'birth-culture', how does one leave it, and how does one return to it?
- where accessibility is universal (or nearly so), who undertakes this? is the 'hero' still capable of being an individual on behalf of his society, or is everyone venturing into the unknown alone?
- where are the frontiers for the hero to venture beyond? where are the 'safe lines' beyond which re-integration becomes difficult or impossible?
3. Assuming these frontiers cease to be geographical (putting aside the valid interpretation that they never were about geography in the first place) but instead cultural, or worse, economic or intellectual, who are the figures who are deliberately blurring the lines?
- people who by definition exist along the margins don't count, since they create pools of stability even across strata (such as subcultures)
- assuming the frontiers are intellectual, are scientists and social engineers the new pioneers?
** they are the ones uncovering new possibilities and the moral complications that arise from these options
4. Given all this, what part does the 'common person' play in the whole hero-cycle? Passive observer? Beneficiary?
blah blah, okay, this whole thing wasn't very well thought out to begin with, just putting some notes where hopefully they'll remain for me to pick up on later.
Tentative (very tentative) working titles include Beyond the Sunset, because Tennyson is awesome. |
|
|
| One in a million |
[Dec. 17th, 2009|03:04 pm] |
No it wasn't Bateman's prices
Nor it wasn't Billy's song
But it was Peggy Bateman
That kept the queue so long
She was shapely as a mermaid
And her lips were red and wet
Her eyes as bright as herrings
Flashing in the net.
And to carry home a portion
And unwrap its fishy charms
Was to dream of nights of passion
In lovely Peggy's arms
Only the British could come up with a song that sets sublime beauty, true love, and the casual cruelty of women in a chippy and make it work. |
|
|
| the limits of considering the past |
[Dec. 15th, 2009|04:54 pm] |
Ross has always been an advocate for the application of martial arts concepts to daily life. I like wing chun ones. Don't step back. Always move forward. Always maintain contact. Greet what arrives, escort what leaves, fill empty space. Strike for effect.
Don't move back. Always move forward. |
|
|
| solitary somnambulist |
[Dec. 14th, 2009|10:50 pm] |
There really are too few nights in a lifetime for anyone to actually want to spend any one of them alone.
Perhaps this is a vestigial leftover from our prehistorical racial memory, hints of recollection of humanity's retreat from the glaciers' encroaching hegemony, sheltering in caves by hard-won, reverently-tended fires, seeking shelter from a hostile world and the brutal cold in closeness. Still, there's an undeniably elemental comfort gained from simple physical closeness. No carnal contact necessary - that's another kettle of fish.
In less affluent times, framed beds (as opposed to what we shall charitably refer to as biodegradable bedding) were rare enough to be passed down as heirlooms. Such "joinéd beds" were treasured, symbolically powerful, and expensive parts of a household, as opposed to being purely functional furniture. It wasn't uncommon for unmarried relatives or even acquaintances of the same gender to share scarce bedspace, both for comfort and for warmth.
Maybe they knew something that we don't: people today complain about the unrelenting encroachment of surveillance and technology upon our small oases of privacy, yet 'privacy' is precisely an entirely modern concept, completely unknown in the households of earlier days, where undressing behind a screen would probably have been a luxury. We struggle to project and protect these little bubbles of self-determined space, an absolute terror field holding out closeness and contact.
There is something intensely, immensely comforting and fulfilling about being so exposed in a time of complete vulnerability and torpor to contact with another person, something inimitable to the falling asleep and waking to the rhythm of another's breathing.
One of the reason Written on the Body is one of my favourite novels to date is that it acknowledges and exalts the undeniable importance of comfort and familiarity with another's body to any relationship.
Sometimes we're tempted to think in terms of another's mind as if that were a kind of shining star concealed within an ungraceful meat-suit. But metaphysics aside, as far as our abilities to interact meaningfully with our environment and each other is concerned, we are our bodies, and we deny that knowledge to our peril.
Why is touch so taboo today? |
|
|
| Dogs are awesome |
[Dec. 9th, 2009|03:16 pm] |
"A trained dog can easily determine the direction of the sniper from the sound of the bullet and will lie down with his head aiming at the sniper to give his handler the direction of the firing."
Thank you, Wikipedia. |
|
|
| Between the sublime and the merely sentimental |
[Dec. 8th, 2009|01:37 am] |
For whatever reason, I've just read Sharon Shinn's "The Shape-Changer's Wife". For nine parts of the book I was having Wizard of Earthsea flashbacks. And yes, that's a good thing, potentially even a great one in itself. I felt like I was reliving a very special part of my life. I wasn't a child when I read le Guin, but there was something undeniably magical about the narrative in A Wizard of Earthsea that I felt truly childlike while reading it. A sense of wide-eyed wonder. Nine tenths of The Shape-Changer's Wife was like that although I really don't know whether I cared for the mishmash of Ged and Austin Powers that the protagonist occasionally resembled. Blame tvtropes for infesting my language, but the remaining bit of the book is a crowning moment of awesome and heartwarming and heartbreak. I've read the classics - well, some of them at least - and I'm not necessarily the biggest fan of the "accessible language intensifies emotion" camp (fuck you Coleridge) but there's part of the book, rendered with incredible simplicity that was nonetheless powerful enough that I actually had to put the book away for a bit. "I love you, but I don't love you enough." Of course, at the height of my paroxysm I nonetheless had to fight off the impulse to set that scene to that "there's a danger in loving somebody too much" song (I actually think it's called Sometimes Love Just Aint Enough, fancy that). Hence the title of this post. I nearly drowned myself in kitsch. I've had a bit of a soft spot for Shinn and her speculative-fiction romances, but nothing she's written since this her first novel has ever affected me with such simple and unwelcome truth. Yeah, so I'm a big softy. So what?
EDIT: Also, Lilith's tsundere act is pretty classy.
Posted via LiveJournal.app. |
|
|
| Tom Waits - Singapore |
[Nov. 30th, 2009|02:35 am] |
We sail tonight for Singapore,
We're all as mad as hatters here
I've fallen for a tawny Moor,
Took off to the land of Nod
Drank with all the Chinamen,
Walked the sewers of Paris
I danced along a colored wind,
Dangled from a rope of sand
You must say goodbye to me
We sail tonight for Singapore,
Don't fall asleep while you're ashore
Cross your heart and hope to die
When you hear the children cry
Let marrow bone and cleaver choose
While making feet for children shoes
Through the alley, back from hell,
When you hear that steeple bell
You must say goodbye to me
Wipe him down with gasoline
'til his arms are hard and mean
From now on boys this iron boat's your home
So heave away, boys
We sail tonight for Singapore,
Take your blankets from the floor
Wash your mouth out by the door,
The whole town's made of iron ore
Every witness turns to steam,
They all become Italian dreams
Fill your pockets up with earth,
Get yourself a dollar's worth
Away boys, away boys, heave away
The captain is a one-armed dwarf,
He's throwing dice along the wharf
In the land of the blind
The one-eyed man is king, so take this ring
We sail tonight for Singapore,
We're all as mad as hatters here
I've fallen for a tawny Moor,
Took off to the land of Nod
Drank with all the Chinamen,
Walked the sewers of Paris
I drank along a colored wind,
I dangled from a rope of sand
You must say goodbye to me |
|
|
| Times like these, I love the Internet |
[Nov. 28th, 2009|01:13 am] |
-watching a live streaming broadcast of a cosplay photoshoot, complete with on-camera costume changes-
The chatroom is clamouring with the usual juvenile requests for TITS OR GTFO and the just-as-inevitable white-knighting DON'T CALL HER FAT SHE'S BEAUTIFUL and YOU'RE ALL SO IMMATURE.
-the female model, after having been strategically coated in what might be lube, is having her hands bound in preparation for the next phase of the shoot-
Chatroom participation spikes; people debate fiercely whose job is more desirable: the guy squirting the lube on her, the guy tying her hands together, or the cameraman.
-a fluffy black cat strolls into the shot in as classy a manner as can be imagined, and begins to lick itself-
Chatoom adopts gaijin 4koma pose en masse and melts. KITTTTTYYY!!!!
Moral of the story: there's hope for humanity yet. |
|
|
| Eh |
[Nov. 23rd, 2009|05:52 pm] |
Discussion of someone's oeuvre eventually leads to all sorts of extraneous multilingual quotations that exist purely as an indulgent attempt to cultivate je ne sais quois and assorted related faggotry.
I love my sister the way I love the sharp shining sarcastic silver needle I use to puncture the bulbous malignant pustule of my own ego.
'For there is no friend like a sister
In calm or stormy weather;
To cheer one on the tedious way,
To fetch one if one goes astray,
To lift one if one totters down,
To strengthen whilst one stands.'
- Christina Rossetti, Goblin Market |
|
|
| Department of Redundancy Department |
[Nov. 22nd, 2009|11:52 pm] |
This stuff is apparently hot shit for education. Personally, I don't see what the fuss is; it's probably designed by the sort of guy who goes to school in a business suit and insists on shoe-horning Powerpoint presentations involving brightly-coloured 'corporate models' and other diagrammatic bullshit into every meeting and briefing and lesson. Its big idea is "the big idea": that you identify one big understanding that you want students to swallow by the end of a particular lesson/unit/whatever.
Now, there's nothing wrong in that per se.
Except that it's redundant. Or at least, should be. Sure, I mean, 'backwards design' education sounds reasonable and all; shouldn't WHAT we want to deliver be identified before we work on the HOW? There's nothing WRONG in that. Except you mean you goons out there haven't REALISED that by now? Teaching by rote repetition has been out of fashion since the 18th century.
Also, 'six facets of understanding'? PLEASE. Catholics identified VERY early on what the necessary elements for life-altering learning were: understanding, contrition, penance. Or, for all you newfangled touchy-feely social-science-is-the-way-forward-types, intellectual recognition, emotional acceptance, and behavioural correction. Which basically sums up all the other stuff that came after. Marslowe was hardly revolutionary even during his day, you know.
If there's one thing the proper study of history should convince someone of is that there's very little new as far as social developments are concerned. I think the only real big advance in our era was the Internet and the kind of communication freedom it allows; most everything else can be chalked up to moral hysteria, ignorance, or a faddish desire to fixate on the 'modern' and advanced.
I feel like Charles does whenever he points out that someone excited about a 'new development' of Chaucer's probably hasn't read his Cicero, or whatever.
That is, very, very old.
|
|
|
| navigation |
| [ |
viewing |
| |
most recent entries |
] |
| [ |
go |
| |
earlier |
] |
| |
|
|
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
torscha's journal