surface tautologies: landscapes in the imagination

Eugene Benson in the introduction to Elaine Nardocchio's Theatre and Politics in Modern Quebec quotes from a poem by Miriam Waddington:

we look
like a geography but
just scratch us
and we bleed
history

I wonder if it works in reverse i.e. if we look like history and we bleed geography. We carry with us a space and a time; even migrations of long ago leave in their wake what might have been.

I like to juxtapose these musings against a statement by Stephen Kuusisto in Planet of the Blind "I believe that in every blind person's imagination there are landscapes."

And so for day 414
31.01.2008

Prescriptions and Atmospherics

Brent Ledger, a columnist for Xtra! in the January 31, 2008, edition tackles the topic of "musical monotony" and the setting of tone.

Music in a bar is not exactly the same as music at home or in the concert hall. It's more of a psychic suggestion than an aesthetic experience. It's the fourth wall of the bar, providing emotional hints on how you're supposed to behave.

He goes on to conclude the article on a consideration the times where you don't want to simply have fun and indulge in upbeat music.

But some days you want to slouch and some days you want to grouch and sometimes you want to slink, slowly, through the nighttime streets. the music ought to reflect that.

And some days ...

And so for day 413
30.01.2008

Bridge Walking

Stephen Kuusisto in Planet of the Blind has a stimulating description of the Brooklyn Bridge.

The Brooklyn Bridge has a civilized, old-fashioned promenade deck, with teak benches and intricate wrought iron lamps posts. This walkway is sensational, crossing the bridge at its highest altitude. Cars and trains are far below, half heard through the wind. Out here, trembling like a compass needle, I tilt my face in the glorious light. I'm wearing the darkest glasses because my eyes ache where there is brilliance, but the light is perfection, the naked sun coming now as if Corky [the guide dog] and I are prayerful gnostics who have silently identified the proper secret names for air and sunlight.

In Toronto a similar experience can be achieved by walking over the Bloor Viaduct with its Veil.

And so for day 412
29.01.2008

Sounds Like "Writer"

A fictional Duke of Wellington in Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell has this to say about the handling of certain experts

Keep him to his task, but shew no surprize at any thing he does. That, my lords, is the way to manage a magician.

And many other folk too.

And so for day 411
28.01.2008

Telling Typo

In a previous post quoting from Inventing Kindergarten by Norman Brosterman, "act" appears for "art".

A chair might become numbers, numbers act, and art either or both.

And so it appeared on day 122 (15.04.2007) under the rubric "More on Diversity and Moral Character".

Action and the play of the mind available at will! Insight into movement ...

And so for day 410
27.01.2008

Gifts

Inventing Kindergarten by Norman Brosterman is a beautiful book. Design complements content. Which is fitting in a book devoted to Froebel's system.

[...] the ultimate lesson of kindergarten was straightforward: the world (nature), mathematics (knowledge), and art (beauty) were interchangeable, and their perceived border was misleading, artificial constructs.

I am always impressed that the gifts, the material support for the learning activities, come in sets. From the get go there is play with combinations and more combinations. This to my mind strikes closely to the story telling core of human activity.

Take for instance Brosterman's description of what can be done with the first gift, a set of six coloured balls.

In play, it [a single ball] might become a bird as it flew, a cat as it sprang, a dog jumping over a hedge, or indeed any one of a million other everyday events in the life of a child. Mathematically, it was a point and the number one. Together, the six balls represented the realm of knowledge in the form of a line for counting and a set for learning addition and subtraction and the beginning of multiplication and division. In the realm of beauty, the balls together encompassed the primary colors — red, blue, and yellow — and the synthesis of their unions — violet, green, and orange.

Marvellous!

And so for day 409
26.01.2008

Sounds like Simian

Eugene Fiume "Going Digital is Going Human" IDE&AS Volume 4, Number 2

Simulation comes easily to us. We are wired to simulate. Recent discoveries in neuroscience suggest that we have "mirror neurons" that, among other things, help us to understand the feelings of others through imitation and simulation.

A predisposition to mimetic behaviour and story telling? Sounds like a good story.

And so for day 408
25.01.2008

Chambers and Antechambers

I have of late been thinking about public/private spheres and intermediary zones and was very pleased to come across these lines from "The Grand Dance", a poem by Gwendolyn MacEwen:

[...]
I am simply trying to track you down
In preworlds and afterworlds
And the present myriad inner worlds
Which whirl around in the carousel of space
[...]

Pre, after and inner — an interesting cartography emerges

And so for day 407
24.01.2008

A favourite passage on what matters in what happens

Stein, Gertrude. Narration. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1935.

Narrative concerns itself with what is happening all the time, history concerns itself with what happens from time to time. And that is perhaps what is the matter with history and that is what is perhaps the matter with narrative.

That subtle distinction between "of" and "with" is here the matter of the unsaid but hinted element of the discourse.

And so for day 406
23.01.2008

Another hand mapping

I have developed a mnemonic device to capture the important elements of time management for myself. On to the image of hand, I place "decision" at the opposable thumb and on each of the four fingers, the four traditional Ds for dealing with a task:

Dump
Defer
Do
Delegate

The thumb reminds one of the many little moments of "going meta" to direct the flow of attention. The four Ds are useless without the practised grace of pausing.

And so for day 405
22.01.2008