My Final Blog (of far too few)

First, a few words on today's presentations
Everyone did a fantastic job, particularly given the time crunch (I feel greedy for presenting as long as I did on Monday).
Highlights of interest for me personally:
-Kayla's closing remark, "Myth is human nature in story."
-Ishi (sp? not that it matters in orality), the last Indian to emerge from the wilderness as recent as 1911, a living exhibit of oral culture. Brought to us by Lisa.
-Two-tongued Charlie's comments about boring lists brought a nice reply from our Shaman. Lists did not exist to inform, rather to evoke a trance in the listener.
-Joan described words, and our obedience to them, as a chain reaction. We tend to obey words for the sake of politeness.
-Jana gave a wonderfully Oral (with a capital O) presentation on the power of names for the namer and the named. She moved around, conversed about and with specific people, and gave an interesting lesson overall. Never forget the meaning of "Thermal Pollution."
-Steve discussed the his failures in writing a Raven myth. The Myth itself sounded very classic from the excerpt, but his main self-criticism was the lack of cultural meaning. I think he's on the right track, I'd be curious as to the result of this project if the various lessons were grounded in modern day living?
-Parker of the Outback discussed elements of orality manifesting through films. I would really like a sequel to this about videogames.
-Chris the scribbler told the spectacular story about the monkey. Hooray for storytelling! The story was being retold from the first printed version of it straight from the source, his father. Now if only he could have learned the story well enough to tell it without his notes, then we'd have some serious storytime.
-Kari also spoke on the power of naming, but focused more on historical issues, rather than modern. Interestingly, she left off by mentioning "Spirited Away" which fits perfectly with many f the themes from Kane (the girl crosses to another realm, must give something up to do it, must learn the customs of the other realm, and so on.)
-Kate gave us Tristram Shandy and its attack on literate rules.
-Bri discussed T.S. Elliot's "Four Quartets" and also referenced...MY PRESENTATION! Hurray for more connections.

This course has brought many great topics to my attention, and many great books to my need-to-get-to list. I will certainly be making use of memory theaters from now on, (though I'll never forgive elementary school for not teaching me this technique, given that every assignment back then was list memorization!) Another major element I will take from the class is speaking and presenting more traditionally. By this I mean without notes, though with preparation, such that I can adapt and interact with the audience. I love it, I simply need more practice doing it. I'd really like to improve my storytelling capacity.

All of you enjoy yourselves and if I never see you again (though there's only a 2:3 likelihood of that unfortunate future) remember me through your mythlines. I'm never more than six degrees of separation away!

Post Presentation Thoughts

Well, it's over, I more or less pulled it off. The point seems to have come across, communication doing its job, but there are a few things I didn't get to that I'd like to address here.

For those of you who did not receive it, I passed around a sheet of paper that asked everyone to add two (or so) words to a continuous sentence, it resulted in the following:

"Checkmark's presentation is beginning full of chaos and very lively oranges, pipes; which are beach rocks that begins again in a familiar Room"

This had to do with stories, language, and culture building off of the past. I had also intended to start a telephone game, beginning with the title of my essay, "Finding Some Sort of Meaning in the Chaos of a Connected and Organic Universe Such That You Might Comprehend Your Immediate Experiences and Subsequently Achieve a Higher Perspective of the Whole." Whatever the title transformed into by the end of the presentation, that would be the new title. I figured it would be too much of a hassle to deal with and a little bit too distracting.

I was supposed to do random things while presenting (draw on the chalkboard, blow on the kazoo) but was too concerned with remembering what I wanted to say that I forgot. My biggest regret is that I didn't take a picture of the class while talking. I would then post the picture here and anyone who read the post would have a tinge of re-memory as they recall the moment I took the picture. Oh well.

My presentation mostly dealt with my paper (confused about the baby picture? Read the essay!). I also touched on de Bono, Walt Disney, and the color orange.

I really enjoy presenting things following the oral tradition, but definitely need more practice with it to smooth out my style.

Random connections:
-The theme of the magnificent scroll merges well with my own topic, though Tai seems to be rooting more for order than I am.
-Language emerging from pre-human ancestors links to my introduction
-My paper touches briefly on the orality of internet culture, but not nearly as much as it used to (when it was 12 rambling pages long). I would really like to get into how technology is bringing together groups that never could have communicated otherwise, acting like the creativity hats as a funnel for diversity. Also, I think video games bridge the gap between print-like movies and orality because they are a dialog, the player tells some of the story through choices within the larger story of the game. Plot-based and role-playing games fit into this category in particular.

Random quotes of interest that didn't make the cut:

“Creation seems to come out of imperfection. It seems to come out of a striving and a frustration. And this is where I think language came from. I mean, it came from our desire to transcend our isolation and have some sort of connection with one another. And it had to be easy when it was just simple survival. Like, you know, "water." We came up with a sound for that. Or "Saber-toothed tiger right behind you." We came up with a sound for that. But when it gets really interesting, I think, is when we use that same system of symbols to communicate all the abstract and intangible things that we're experiencing. What is, like, frustration? Or what is anger or love? When I say "love," the sound comes out of my mouth and it hits the other person's ear, travels through this Byzantine conduit in their brain, you know, through their memories of love or lack of love, and they register what I'm saying and they say yes, they understand. But how do I know they understand? Because words are inert. They're just symbols. They're dead, you know? And so much of our experience is intangible. So much of what we perceive cannot be expressed. It's unspeakable. And yet, you know, when we communicate with one another, and we feel that we've connected, and we think that we're understood, I think we have a feeling of almost spiritual communion. And that feeling might be transient, but I think it's what we live for.” Waking Life

“It is a small world. You do not have to live in it particularly long to learn that for yourself. There is a theory that, in the whole world, there are only five hundred real people (the cast, as it were; all the rest of the people in the world, the theory suggests, are extras) and what is more, they all know each other. And it's true, or true as far as it does. In reality the world is made of thousands upon thousands of groups of about five hundred people, all of whom will spend their lives bumping into each other, trying to avoid each other, and discovering each other in the same unlikely teashop in Vancouver. There is an unavoidability to this process. It's not even coincidence. It's just the way the world works, with no regard for individuals or propriety.” (Anansi Boys 247)

"[The nation] is imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion."
Benedict Anderson (2006, p.7) Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism

“Transformation implies, not an existence in one world and then in another; rather it implies existence in both realms simultaneously.” (Kane 110)

My Paper (sans title)

It's a mess, but I like it.

This paper, as well as all the other term papers, is a culmination of the teachings of Kane, Ong, and Yates, our class discussions, other courses I’ve taken, conversations I’ve had, my lifetime of experiences and in fact, everything that has preceded me. When I speak with a friend, that conversation exists in reflection of all of my previous conversations with that friend. Similarly, whenever I use a word, this is in response to having heard the word previously. At some point in my past I learned that word, just as the people who spoke the word to me learned it somewhere previously. It goes back on an on. What we say is part of an endless conversation starting when we first learned to speak, when words began, with thought, with nature, with everything. Speech is like stories, which are “told on top of the ruins of other stories like villages built on the strata of older villages that have crumpled in time,” (Kane 172). To navigate this chaos of everything being connected, we must learn to focus, as we do with our memory theaters. Language is not truly chaotic, but organic. Meaning can be found in change and repetition. Concrete rules do not necessarily limit our understanding, they simply frame it.

In the Neverending Story, the author must pull us back every time the narrative wanders off on a tangent. When we start to follow the adventures of a side character we hear some variant of “but that is another story and will be told another time.” It isn’t just a subplot. Just as in orality, it’s a link to another mythline. Everything is part of everything else. We are all physical continuations of our ancestry, so is language. Over generations, language evolved from gestures, and continues to evolve, despite print culture. “If the essence of life is information carried in DNA, then society and civilization are just colossal memory systems and a metropolis…simply a sprawling external memory,” (Ghost in the Shell 2). The physical creations of mankind are an aspect of our natural lineage. Over generations, concepts that seem to be the result of individual decisions, may in fact be revealing greater trends. It is as Michelangelo believed of his art, the sculptures already existed in the stone, but he needed to remove everything else to reveal their beauty. In Watchmen, Dr. Manhattan asks, “A world grows around me. Am I shaping it, or do its predetermined contours guide my hand?” (Moore IV, 27). Kane addresses this same concern, “In a wolf-deer system who runs the show?” “It seems as if the overall circuit governs their actions. It is as if the overall pattern thinks,” (165). Perhaps understanding fades, like in the telephone game, which is played by whispering a few lines into someone’s ear, having them recite it to the next person, and on down the line. With each exchange the message is corrupted until amusing but unrecognizable. Language is not utterly linear, however, and even when messages are not identical, truth is found in the changes. It’s these random little connections that serve us in the end.

Benedict Anderson’s thoughts on identity are discussed in the film Waking Life. “Well, he's talking about like, say, a baby picture. So you pick up this picture, this two-dimensional image, and you say, "That's me." Well, to connect this baby in this weird little image with yourself living and breathing in the present, you have to make up a story like, "This was me when I was a year old, and then later I had long hair, and then we moved to Riverdale, and now here I am." So it takes a story that's actually a fiction to make you and the baby in the picture identical to create your identity,” (Waking Life).

An understanding emerges through these sequential changes. Film writer and director David Mamet teaches filmmakers to break the story into scenes and each scene into concise little actions. This is montage. Show a man’s face in neutral expression, and then the image of a steaming bowl of soup, the man is hungry. Show the same expressionless man, followed by an old woman in a coffin, the man is sad. Eisenstein tells us, “Each sequential element is perceived not next to the other, but on top of the other,” (“Soviet Montage Theory”). On top as in layers, each understood within the context of that which surrounds it. Deeply moving stories are told through a succession of inert actions. Giulio Camillo uses the metaphor of the vast forest (Yates 143). We can understand it when we look down at the forest from a high slope but we tend to experienced it amidst the trees. We are first-person individuals trying to comprehend the universe omnisciently. We must follow our mythlines and observe, as understanding emerges from the chaos, as certain elements and connections repeat.

Communication itself is repetition. Use a unique word every time you see a horse, no one will understand. Through patterns we infer intent. Repetition invites connections. A musical motif will appear, reiterate, alter form, and vanish. Those moments of recurrence, particularly when we are not conscious of it, are strangely fulfilling. They simultaneously present the new while linking with the old. Repetition is cyclical and acts as an ever-renewing framework. Using “please” and “thank you” is appreciative, but it also smoothes the gears of conversation. Repetition acts as a sign, triggering a person to enter a certain mindset, a certain understanding. Flat characters and clichés are criticized, but they successfully convey the exact same thing every time. They convey perfectly comprehensible ideas. Clichés prepare your expectations, like movie genres. You may know nothing else about a film, but choose to go because it’s a western, or a romantic comedy, or a slasher. You must be willing to take on the proper mindset for the task at hand in order to reach your full potential. Like Raven, you must first push your mind through and pull your body after (Kane 56).

Putting on a certain mindset seems limiting, but it is necessary. Society is full of these intentional limitations. “Joining the army, putting on a uniform... You’re giving up your personal life and accepting a socially determined manner of life in the service of the society of which you are a member,” (Campbell 15). Specialization may limit capacity for adaptation, but as the old adage goes, “jack of all trades, master of none.” As we’ve been taught, we have domesticated words the way we fence in nature. We’ve tamed them. This is perfect word choice for the biological nature of language. “What does that mean-‘tame’?” the little prince asks the fox in Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s book, “It is an act too often neglected…it means to establish ties…But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world,” (Saint Exupery 66). When patterns do not present themselves, we must make them. Our decisions in this way instill value. The trick is to retain the capacity to break the patterns, to be open to adaptation and discovery. There is nothing wrong with remaining in a pattern set by someone else, the key is to understand why that pattern works, to make it your own. Videogames combine film-like storytelling with player-driven choices. In EarthBound, you choose your name and so on and the beginning, but it doesn’t affect skills or statistics in any way. For example, you can choose a favorite food. I chose pasta. Every time I returned to my game home from the difficult journey my game mother would tell me to eat some pasta and go to bed. It became a pattern, not essential to the completion of the game, but essential to the emotional ties the game forms with the player.

This time-wasting repetition of the seemingly meaningless, whether it is a favorite food or color, an epithet, saying please and thank you, or whatever else, gives power. It gives a sense of rejuvenation through repetition, just like the musical motifs. Recurrence is reassuring. We must willingly embrace redundancies. This is why chaos is beneficial. The more variety, the more chances there are that memorable connections will manifest. This is why we are all giving presentations. Some may have only loose ties to our topics, but the random little elements that make those lectures unique may be the key to remembering everything in this course for a single student. Chaos allows us to find usable order. A previous topic of discussion, the Golden Compass, brings another example. Everyone has a daemon that takes on many forms in youth but settles to one with maturity. A single form may lack freedom, but since your daemon is your soul, you gain a new understanding of your identity; your strengths and your weaknesses. Concrete rules are necessary. “Take piano: keys begin, keys end. You know there are eighty-eight of them. Nobody can tell you any different. They are not infinite. You're infinite... And on those keys, the music that you can make... is infinite,” (The Legend of 1900). Brilliance and creativity come from playing off the limitations.

Language and culture are organic. Everything connects and affects everything else. “The story unfolds over the course of its telling, over the course of a lifetime, or several lifetimes, according to the consistency of its various environments-social, natural and supernatural. Validated by this consistency, the myth is a polyphonic composition,” (Kane 147). We, however, are left to follow our own seemingly linear stories within this web. The system must be trusted to evolve on its own, it can’t be forced. However, there are inherent patterns. Following these patterns or making our own rules and frameworks, consciously limiting a portion of ourselves, allows us to progress. The world is not chaos because nothing has meaning; it is chaos because everything connects. Our experiences reveal a specific sequence of these connections and with effort some of the other stories that cross our paths. Only by remembering this, by seeing ourselves as the story characters, can we begin to view the world from above the world, from a third-person perspective.

This paper started as a list of interesting topics and quotes from the class and things that the class brought to mind. I tried to categorize them, tried to reveal some of the countless links. In the end, the subject is still vast, but manageable. I cannot limit it more, because this inability to be limited is what the theme has revealed itself to be. Nothing is truly concrete; it is simply a tight cluster of other things. Within these pages, some kind of connection has been made, and that is the point. Greater meaning will be determined by you, the reader, because, “the storytelling act is dialogical rather than monological. There is give-and-take with the listeners happening all the time with the telling of a story,” (Kane 198). By remembering some of these random little elements you can remember this paper, and subsequently the entirety of this course, and everything discussed within in it, no matter how insignificant.

Works Cited

Campbell, Joseph. The Power of Myth. New York: Anchor Books, 1991.

EarthBound. Dir. Shigesato Itoi. Videogame. Nintendo, 1995.

Ende, Michael. The Neverending Story. New York: Dutton Children's Books, 1997.

Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence. Dir. Mamoru Oshii. DVD. Go Fish Pictures/Bandai Entertainment, 2004.

Kane, Sean. Wisdom of the Mythtellers. Peterborough, Ont., Canada: Broadview P, 1998.

The Legend of 1900. Dir. Giuseppe Tornatore. DVD. Fine Line Features, 1999.

Mamet, David. On Directing Film. New York: Penguin, 1992.

Moore, Alan. Watchmen. New York: DC Comics Inc., 1987.

Ong, Walter J. Orality and Literacy. New York: Routledge, 2002.

Pullman, Philip. The Golden Compass. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc, 1996.

Saint Exupéry, Antoine. The Little Prince. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, Inc., 1943.

"Soviet Montage Theory." Wikipedia. 27 Apr. 2009 .

Yates, Frances A. The Art of Memory. New York: University Of Chicago P, 2001.

Maps

As everyone should know by now, our group presented the topic of our chapter (Maps) by each telling part of a story of remembrance. Before I get into this deeper, here is my portion (the version I had in my hand, not identical to what I ended up saying):

"I remember the long wide hallway lined with rooms. I remember the people in the rooms buying and selling. In this room a woman screamed as she saw her blue hair in the mirror. In this room a boy grabbed a box and hid it in his shirt and walked away with his prize. And I continued down the long wide hallway with great speed. I ran, I flew, I dove on this side and that, as far as I could. And I saw a place of tables and savory smells. And an old man was eating and rice spilled into his beard. And at the end of the long wide hallway was a room full of books and beyond the room full of books was the smell of butter, and they asked me for money or I could not pass, and I had none, and I passed anyway when they weren’t looking. And farther on was a room of chairs, and the room of chairs went dark and nothing was seen there, and new light came, and sounds came, and stories were told of people and places and things true and untrue, past and future, and I remembered my future, and departed from that place that smelled of butter, and there was walking in the cold and dark for a long time, and there was the building, but the sun had not risen and the building could not be entered, and I sat, and I waited.

It’s cold. My head hurts. I hear footsteps. I see a girl dressed all in pink carrying books, wearing a backpack, the pink girl laughs at me into her pink phone. I’m sitting by a door, it’s early, and cold, I stand. I ache, was I sleeping here? I enter the building, it’s warm inside. I stumble towards the smell of coffee; but I don’t have any money. I take a seat nearby, the chair is soft. There are many books here… a bookstore? No…too big, too many students. This place is familiar; I was here before, but how do I know that? By another place, or person, of any thing the image that keeps with my memory? I was preparing for something, reading, writing. Did I have a book? A sense of dread hits me. I’m missing something, something I need. I’ve misplaced something important, but what? How is it that this lives in my mind? What was it? I try to focus again. I think about the past. I know I was here before and I had…whatever it was when I was here. Now I’m here again, but what happened in between, where did it go, where did I go? I retrace my steps. I don’t yet remember what happened but I know I must have traveled to this point somehow. I ask myself, what do I remember? I ask myself where do I remember?"

As we did not meet between writing our chapters and reading them, there was a certain amount of disjointedness, redundancy, and even contradiction. This is to be embraced in the oral tradition. As I heard the others speak I tried to subtly adapt my own telling. This brings me to a topic that I've been thinking about lately. I'm getting interested in active storytelling, with less of an informative focus. Great preparation would be needed and I'm not sure what I would tell, but I will certainly try to approach that subject with my final presentation. One last remark over my sections: there is a reference to the memory caverns in the mall portion and multiple references to The Tempest in the library section.

Overall our theme was of memory being built from physical locations and sensory experiences. The chapter is a little confusing at times as to what is to be learned from specific story examples but it seems to return to the idea that our physical world can act as a map of our stories and our stories can act as maps of the physical world (both directionally and ecologically). Following the mythlines we see that every element of any story is part of countless other stories. Nothing is isolated. The Sacker of Cities brought up a point I'd like to reiterate.
As these early cultures were so constantly dependent on the land, interpreting natural signs (such as which side of the tree the moss grows on) for directions, for input about the state of the region and even as signs of things to come, they were reading the land. Reading predates writing.

My Memory Mansion

While not technically a mansion, my childhood home was rather large. I chose to use it because of it's size and variety, though I have not lived there since 1999. In fact, as I pieced together my memory theatre I actually recalled a great deal of my home that I had forgotten, though much of it is probably incorrect. Many of the film titles are remembered through images from the films, or from other films. I also will include some of the details I have added in my hopes to remember the years each came out in, every decade has a symbol for the number which is reiterated at the five year mark.

1-Wings: A fluttering bird at my old bus stop near my home.

2-The Broadway Melody: A large music box on the berm to the right of the driveway entrance, under the crab-apple tree.

3-All Quiet on the Western Front: A dead and smoldering tree on the left (West) berm over a field of clover (1930, 3-leaf clover).

4-Cimarron: strange word, makes me think of cinnabar, the driveway is now red-orange.

5-Grand Hotel: A beautiful vintage car parked at the front door, bellhop opening its doors.

6-Cavalcade: I used the second definition, and have a procession of masked ball patrons piling out of the car.

7-It Happened One Night: Along with the party, there is a Chinese lantern (for night) and a masked couple stealing a kiss underneath.

8-Mutiny on the Bounty: a sea battle, including a giant squid, is engraven upon the door, a few loose clovers have been dropped at its base (1935).

9-The Great Ziegfeld: A white tiger (Siegfried and Roy) stretches on the carpet.

10-The Life of Emile Zola: A stretch, a child dressed as Zorro stands over the tiger.

11-You Can't Take It with You: Feathers (angels, afterlife) are strewn over the stairs, having been blown there by...

12-Gone With the Wind:...a large fan halfway up the stairs.

13-Rebecca: Just a woman in a flowy checkered dress (1940, squares are 4-sided), behind the fan.

14-How Green Was My Valley: The rest of the steps are overgrown with grass.

15-Mrs. Miniver: Minnie Mouse at the top of the stairs.

16-Casablanca: Sam at his piano just inside my parents' room.

17-Going My Way: Literally a large sign pointing towards the bathroom. (Though I made it old and rickety to help the image along)

18-The Lost Weekend: A man in a bubblebath, doing office-work. He holds a large metal square in his hand (1945) which is cutting him and drawing blood (always add blood if you're having trouble with an image).

19-The Best Years of Our Lives: Snow and autumn leaves fall in the shower, flowers line the floor, to show seasons changing.

20-Gentleman's Agreement: Two men in suits shake hands in the secrecy of the closet, I technically just passed through a wall, but that's alright.

21-Hamlet- A man and woman in royal dress sit in bed, Hamlet's mother and uncle.

22-All the King's Men: Humpty Dumpty lies cracked over a chair.

23-All About Eve: My niece, Eva, stands at the balcony in a star-covered dress (1950, stars have 5 points).

24-An American in Paris: A styrofoam airplane flies from the balcony to the pastures down the hill from my house, an activity from childhood, only this plane has an American flag on it.

25-The Greatest Show on Earth: Fireworks over the pasture.

26-From Here to Eternity: Crossing a stream, the reflection of stars in the the water.

27-On the Waterfront: Marlon Brando sits by the stream.

28-Marty: My friend Martin talks with Martin Scorsese at the fence, they are holding a metal star (1955).

29-Around the World in Eighty Days: The tip (yes, we had a tipi) has images of the Eiffel Tower and the Pyramids painted on it.

30-The Bridge on the River Kwai: I have added a small bridge inexplicably leading away from the tipi.

31-Gigi: Half-Life's G-Man stands with his briefcase. G-Man...G...G-G...Gigi. Yeah, I couldn't think of anything.

32-Ben-Hur: A chariot is on its way up the hill toward my house.

33-The Apartment: A small apartment looks over the path is carbon, up the hill, diamonds rest on the table on its patio. The sixth element on the periodic table is carbon, diamonds are made of carbon, (1960).

34-West Side Story: Two "chickens" fight at the top of the hill, movie reference if you don't understand.

35-Lawrence of Arabia: Lawrence, fully robed in white, stands on a large rock overlooking the edge of the hill.

36-Tom Jones: My lighting professor, Tom Watson, at the willow tree.

37-My Fair Lady: A lovely, period dressed woman sitting and winding a...

38-The Sound of Music: Music box, with a large diamond (1965) decorating it.

39-A Man for All Seasons: A mountain man wearing a large pack and lots of equipment, walking towards the pool.

40-In the Heat of the Night: People in the pool to escape the heat.

41-Oliver!: The cartoon Oliver (different movie, I know) in the shallow end.

42-Midnight Cowboy: The corpse of a cowboy leaning on the wall.

43-Patton: Patton...patent...Thomas Edison...the hot tub full of light bulbs instead of water. These lights are multicolored...rainbow...ROY G BIV...seven colors of the spectrum (1970).

44-The French Connection: A cliche Frenchman (stripy shirt, etc.) tying a knot on the pool fence.

45-The Godfather: Marlon Brando, again, in this film's character, opening a door to the house.

46-The Sting: A bathroom full of bees.

47-The Godfather Part II: Marlon Brando yet again!

48-One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest: The laundry room full of nests, including one with a large, multicolored egg (1975).

49-Rocky: Rocky, leaning on a rock outside.

50-Annie Hall: The main couple lounging on the trampoline. When I had trouble with it, I imagined the trampoline descending into the ground as a vertical HALLway.

have 8 tentacles).

54-Chariots of Fire: Inside the extra garage, chariots on fire.

55-Gandhi: The man himself sits cross-legged in the driveway.

56-Terms of Endearment: Another deer in the main garage.

57-Amadeus: A piano crashes down the stairs, just through the garage house-door.

58-Out of Africa: At the top of the stairs, a giraffe, a person in safari gear, and a giant spider (1985, spiders have 8 legs).

59-Platoon: In my brother's bedroom, everything is covered in camouflage mesh.

60-The Last Emperor: on his side of the loft that separates our rooms, a child dressed in royal clothing.

61-Rain Man: on my side of the loft, a downpour of rain indoors.

62-Driving Miss Daisy: A car crashing through the wall into my room (which is on the second story).

63-Dances with Wolves: Wolves and one cat (1990, cats have 9 lives) rush out of my closet and into...

64-The Silence of the Lambs:...the bathroom, where they kill a sheep.

65-Unforgiven: An old man is shackled to the wall of my sister's room.

66-Schindler's List: many pieces of paper covered in lists fill my other sister's room.

67-Forrest Gump: Forrest sits nearby on a stool.

68-Braveheart: William Wallace takes a zipline back to the first floor, a cat in his arms (1995).

69-The English Patient: A person in a hospital bed.

70-Titanic: A replica of the last tip of the ship sinks into the ground in the dining room.

71-Shakespeare in Love: Shakespeare sits on a cupboard.

72-American Beauty: a young woman wrapped in the American flag.

73-Gladiator: Gladiators fight in the kitchen near a broken computer (2000, for the Y2K crisis).

74-A Beautiful Mind: Russel Crowe again, different character.

75-Chicago: Richard Gere in character in the living room.

76-The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King: Lots of gold rings strewn on the couch.

77-Million Dollar Baby: a baby in a crib on a pile of money.

78-Crash: a gaping broken window, and another computer (2005).

79-The Departed: someone disappearing through said window.

80-No Country for Old Men: Multiple old men relaxing in the guest room.

81-Slumdog Millionaire: A blind and begging child in the hallway.

Blast! I Missed Class...Again!

I finally found something to base my epithet on (seeing as we've had trouble naming me) and it's visual, story-based, and slightly grotesque!

When I was around eleven years old I was at a scout camp where the meeting areas and cafeteria were at the bottom of the hill and the campsites were higher up. After an activity I was walking back to camp by myself and ducked under a log fence. Well, I came up to soon, and it hurt briefly but the pain went away. However, I started gushing blood from my head. So I return to the bottom of the camp, drenched in blood, casually asking if anyone had seen my father so that we could go to the hospital. I ended up getting stitches, resulting in a thin line of a scar on my scalp.

A couple summers ago I was working at a Blockbuster Video. I guess I hadn't had enough to drink that day because that night, just a few minutes before close, I was carrying a huge stack of dvds across the room, I felt woozy, and I woke up on the floor. I can't tell you whether I blacked out, causing the fall, or simply felt woozy, fell, and lost my memory of it because of hitting my head on a shelf. I found myself on the ground in a pile of dvd cases, once more bleeding from the head. Yet again I go to the hospital, yet again I get stitches. The kicker, however, is that the new wound actually hit the years-old one. I now have a checkmark on my head, though it's sort of curved and wonky looking. You can't really tell unless my hair is super short, but it's there.

So basically, now that you all have heard the story of the unlucky part of my head, this can be the memory associated with my epithet. For the more violent minded: "Blood-soaked Parker" or "Parker of the Bleeding Scalp" could work, but for simplicity's sake, and for consonance I think, "Checkmark Parker" should suffice. What do you think? Will "Checkmark Parker" give you an image of me in a mess of dvds soaked in blood, or do I need to put "bleeding" in my name somewhere?

My memory demonstration is of the Best Picture winners of the Academy Awards. There are actually 82 of them, so I memorized them all, I'll just recite the first fifty or the last fifty or something in class if we're short on time. Though I won't include them when reciting, I have also implemented visuals to remember the years by. So here they are in chronological order:

1-Wings
2-The Broadway Melody
3-All Quiet on the Western Front
4-Cimarron
5-Grand Hotel
6-Cavalcade
7-It Happened One Night
8-Mutiny on the Bounty
9-The Great Zeigfeld
10-The Life of Emile Zola
11-You Can't Take It with You
12-Gone With the Wind
13-Rebecca
14-How Green Was My Valley
15-Mrs. Miniver
16-Casablanca
17-Going My Way
18-The Lost Weekend
19-The Best Years of Our Lives
20-Gentleman's Agreement
21-Hamlet
22-All the King's Men
23-All About Eve
24-An American in Paris
25-The Greatest Show on Earth
26-From Here to Eternity
27-On the Waterfront
28-Marty
29-Around the World in Eighty Days
30-The Bridge on the River Kwai
31-Gigi
32-Ben-Hur
33-The Apartment
34-West Side Story
35-Lawrence of Arabia
36-Tom Jones
37-My Fair Lady
38-The Sound of Music
39-A Man for All Seasons
40-In the Heat of the Night
41-Oliver!
42-Midnight Cowboy
43-Patton
44-The French Connection
45-The Godfather
46-The Sting
47-The Godfather Part II
48-One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
49-Rocky
50-Annie Hall
51-The Deer Hunter
52-Kramer vs. Kramer
53-Ordinary People
54-Chariots of Fire
55-Gandhi
56-Terms of Endearment
57-Amadeus
58-Out of Africa
59-Platoon
60-The Last Emperor
61-Rain Man
62-Driving Miss Daisy
63-Dances with Wolves
64-The Silence of the Lambs
65-Unforgiven
66-Schindler's List
67-Forrest Gump
68-Braveheart
69-The English Patient
70-Titanic
71-Shakespeare in Love
72-American Beauty
73-Gladiator
74-A Beautiful Mind
75-Chicago
76-The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
77-Million Dollar Baby
78-Crash
79-The Departed
80-No Country for Old Men
81-Slumdog Millionaire

I'm still not entirely certain about the presentation assignment. Is it to be something specifically discussed in the books or simply a topic that fits with our class focus? I have a few topics that interest me, but honestly, nothing that has me bursting with excitement.

Print, It's Kind of a Big Deal

Just a few comments from Friday's class.

-The power of the written word was emphasized through the story of Baby M in which a surrogate mother decided to keep the baby. The courts eventually ruled in favor of the couple for whom she had carried and given birth for because of the written arrangement they had all agreed to and signed before hand. While I tend to agree with this case (she knew what she was agreeing to do) there are certainly cases when circumstances change that are beyond the scope of the original contract and even more frequently, contracts that are simply unfair. If I trick you into signing a contract allowing me to kill you, that shouldn't count as suicide. Caution and common sense should always be used in such cases, despite the concrete nature of writing.

-We discussed Finnegans Wake (Fin Again/Fun Again/Awake/A Wake) which seemed very entertaining, though nearly incomprehensible. This book was cited as an attempt to return to the style of orality. A concept I've been trying to work with in terms of filmmaking. Obviously films are capable of sound (unlike books) but given their similarly concrete nature they still lack something. I wonder if Finnegans Wake would be a good audio book?

The novel is circular. The "end" of the texts drops off in such a way as to be continued by the very beginning, thus it is endless. This concept reminded me of One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Don't continue reading this paragraph if you dislike (minor) spoilers, but the book covers the history of a fictional town, focusing on a specific family line. At the very end , both the town and the last of the family line are about to die. In the apocalyptic chaos of these final moments, the last family member finally interprets and reads a prophecy that had been written down long ago. It contains the entire history of the family, leading up to the moment that the man is reading it. It is essentially the same novel within itself. This moment invites another read and gave me an entirely different comprehension of everything I had just read.

I dare anyone to read Mark Leach's Marienbad My Love, found here. Which was basically only written to be ridiculously long in every way imaginable. It is seventeen million words long, the title alone (Marienbad My Love is the "condensed" version) is nearly seven thousand words. That being said, I've read some excerpts and there is a sense of fun in reading it, similar to Finnegans Wake. I expect there had to be, or else the aythor would have lost his mind, assuming he hadn't already.

I Should Really Post More Often

I have, once more, neglected to write anything for quite some time. I even found a paper from at least a week ago with various comments I gathered from my reading of the texts. At this point I doubt I'll understand them much but I want to take care of them as best as I can so as to be capable of moving on.

Yates
-Camillo's memory theatre drew from many ideologies as he attempted to contain the entire universe in his memory. He illustrated this goal with imagery of finding oneself within a forest and being unable to form a clear picture of the forest or one's place in it without climbing to the top of a high hill that overlooks it all. Yates quotes Camillo as saying, "in order to understand the things of the lower world it is necessary to ascend to superior things, from whence, looking down from on high, we may have a more certain knowledge of the inferior things."

-A memory system of this scale, particularly the seven parallel gates, is a systematized version of the traditional memory theatre we've seen before. Although Camillo deals with symbols and concepts I do not easily relate to, I would consider creating something like this for myelf for the purpose of exponentially expanding my capacity to remember. My current theatre works very linearly and simply. This is good for contained stories and lists. I would like to accomplish a more wikipedia-like memory system without simply complexifying each locus. How, precisely, i don't know yet.

-One last thought with this. Yates sums up Camillo's feat not simply as "a highly ornamental filing cabinet" but as an idea "the Idea of a memory organically geared to the universe." This brought to mind an image that has always fascinated me known as the "Flammarion woodcut" which I will not explain but have posted above.

Ong
-Print is imbued with a sense of closure, which is part of the reason I have trouble getting myself to write things down, yet can talk forever. I have "communication commitment issues" in that respect.

-The relationship of sounds and words and letters brings to mind waveform. Waveform is the most literal visual interpretation of sound (though it would be next to impossible to read and write with it). Most people are familiar with how it looks, the squiggly lines you see on music visualizers, and in some of our classes for film we had to edit these patterns. You have a general pattern (flat means silence, spike means a loud noise) but the more you zoom into it the more detailed it becomes. Words are rarely tidy little pieces like they are when printed, everything mushes and slurs together in waveform and reminds me of the early texts where the idea of spacing hadn't come up yet.
"My Book and Heart Shall Never Part"
-I borrowed this short film from Professor Sexson (which he and his wife, Lynda, created). Using fictional and nonfictional elements the film examines 18th-19th century children's books, their origins, and how they shaped our culture. I found the subject very intriguing, but what best pertains to our class at the moment is the educational nature of most of these books. Of particular note are the books that teach the alphabet through simple images and sayings "The Eagle's flight is out of sight" for the letter E, for example. Books like these were a natural transition between the letter and image memorization aids we see in Yates chapter five and our often less compelling modern works "A is for Apple, B is for Ball." Going along these lines and the common class theme of using grotesque imagery I invite you to read through Edward Gorey's "The Gashlycrumb Tinies" found here.

Ken, Kenning, Kennings

On Monday we learned the epithet "Keen Kenning Ben." I had just posted a blog on the word kenning and at first thought this was the same reference. It soon became apparent that they were different words and that our mutual use of these terms was purely coincidental. Therefore, I would like to write about kenning more thoroughly.

As used in the epithet, kenning seems to be a verb (to ken) meaning to know or perceive. Ben thus understands things keenly, or sharply. If there is another definition or understanding of the word I do not know it.

My use of kenning is a noun (a keening, many kennings). I found the term by looking up the phrase "whale-road" as mentioned in Ong as he discusses using formulaic language, though I think it is mentioned explicitly somewhere.

A kenning is a figurative expression used to substitute a noun. We get them from old Norse poetry, particularly from Beowulf. They can be phrases or compound words. Whale-road means sea, storm of swords means battle, sea steed means ship, bane of wood means fire, and so on. Kennings can even be used within other kennings: A raven is a war-gull, a feeder of ravens is a warrior, thus a warrior is a feeder of war-gulls.

A kenning is a circomlocution, a longer, more complicated way of saying something relatively simple, somewhat like riddles. Using a kenning rather than the literal word, further attention is drawn to the word, further thought invested than normal. Kennings are like epithets. They create memorable elements that can easily be used again and again, thus aiding the oral storyteller. Finally, most kennings create a visual that outweighs that of the literal word.

Quote of My Day

"Where there is no narrative, there is no history."
-Bendetto Croce

In the Dark Backward and Abysm of Time

It has been far too long since my last post, yet this entire time I have been making notes as to what I'd like to talk about. With massive threads of interest I did what I always do, wrote them all down and tried to link them thematically, brainstorm style. This resulted in a very cluttered mess. So many of the topics blend with so many others that I really need a personal version of Wikipedia in order to sort through them all. Finally, though, I just need to start writing.

A little while ago in class we talked about being "spectators in our own skulls." This refers to the fact that no one sees truly from the perspective of anyone else. We tend to take for granted the fact that we have literally unique physical sensory experiences, the precise things "I" see, hear, etc. More so, we have individual thoughts, inner monologues, that nobody else can hear, though we must assume everyone else is as conscious of themselves as we are. Although the actual circumstances are vague, I remember a specific moment in childhood where I became aware that I could think inside my mind and thus became much more responsive to empathy. Everyone in the world lives an isolated life in this respect. We have no perfect way of knowing what another person is aware of, or even that they are aware. If all we have to go on is perception, how can we ever communicate love, hate, etc? Thus we must formulate from knowable imagery unknowable ideas.

Similar to this method of interpreting intangibles through physical means, the truth of stories is sometimes best received through less-than-true tales. A prime example of this is the film "Big Fish," which I strongly recommend watching. The point is, we all have knowledge, whether "true" facts or moral lessons, we wish to communicate to others so that they will remember them. As we continue to bring up in this course, as long as the essential truths stay firm, everything else can be entirely false. In fact, the more outlandish and bizarre the framing of the story, the more easily the story is recalled. Not only that, but describing something simple in a nontraditional way heightens our attention and invites reinterpretation. Similar to the epithet's we have discussed, kennings are strong recurring elements of story. Instead of fire say "bane of wood," instead of blood say "battle sweat," in this way even the most basic ideas are powerful.

A friend of mine asked why memories seem so much more emotionally charged than present experience. Like any story, the handful of things that keep a particular incident in mind in the first place are heightened as we draw in other references and remove unnecessary elements. That's not to say we simplify it infinitely. We don't remember being hit by a car and it hurt alot, we remember a person we had just spoken with, or a smell we noticed just before the incident. Insignificant details can become markers in the same way grotesque imagery does. Their inclusion in a story make the story legitimate, believable, even if other elements are impossibilities.

This leads me to cultural memory. Language is an organic, flowing link to the past. If you are reading this you understand written English, most likely you understand spoken English as well, which you learned from listening to others, who themselves listened to others, who listened to others still. You could potentially trace back a conversation (albeit a delayed one) from now to the dawn of language. You could also do the same thing between yourself and nearly anyone else on the planet. As far as history is concerned, this is my biggest interest. The connections that inevitably led to this moment, the way in which everything is connected whether we like it or not.

Connections and repetitions are fulfilling. In a film, there may be the huge twist at the end that makes the audience suddenly understand everything in a whole new light. There may also be something as simple as a subtle piece of music that is played and then much later under entirely different circumstances played again. Even if the audience is not paying attention to the score they will feel a link to the previous moment, and this will once more bring an element of interpretation that was not there before.

In class, the alethiometer from "His Dark Materials" was mentioned. Hopefully I do not spoil much (you've been warned) but it basically looks like a compass with a ring of small images instead of North, South, etc. The user can ask any question and can be told the answer through a spinning needle pointing at the objects. The objects are limited, but the answers are endless because any image has many levels of meaning. A cauldron could be literal, could mean cooking, could mean cooking up a plot, plans, etc. This is a perfect example of the storyteller's art. Yates mentions the memory treatises including long lists of objects (anvil, helmet, lantern) to be memorized and used in our memory palaces. Ong speaks of the recurrence of specific lines and epithets in Homeric poetry. Just like the images of the Alethiometer, there are limited elements but infinite applications. This is practical and simplifies a still impressive task when it comes to telling epics.

Recurring phrases and image inspire memory, we've covered this again and again. "The Divine Comedy" seems to exist less as a story of what the afterlife looks like, and more as a memory aid for virtues, vices, and the like. I wonder then, how we might apply these concepts to modern stories. I could definitely see a modern novel incorporating symbolic illustrations the way we see in medieval works. It would be similar to a text heavy picture book, only many of the images would not be literal. What I'm really interested in is the way this could be accomplished in movies.

Books to Look Into

The Alphabetization of the Popular Mind by Ivan Illich and Barry Sanders
Avatars of the World by James J. O'Donnell
The Brain that Changes Itself by Norman Doidge
The Castle of Crossed Destinies by Italo Calvino

I could not find The Oral Tradition of Common People

Film and Language

I am a film student. and as we discuss the terrible nature of the written word I can only imagine what that means about movies. On the one hand, having video footage of fact or fiction may be considered an attack on the imagination of the viewer. Less thought process is needed to retain what is being told, thus retention of the idea is that much weaker. On the other hand, while it may still be a technology, we are circumventing the need to interpret the subtleties of the spoken word through the constraints of writing. In fact, we are circumventing the technology of the spoken word itself. Rather than try to capture a memory of an image in words, we are giving you the very thing to remember, though still unreal. Of course, films are based on scripts, but too much happens between the page and the movie theater to call them constrained by the text.

Of particular relevance to me is the television series by Jim Henson, "The Storyteller," it was a series based on the purest form of various fairy tales and myths. None of the tales were sugar coated or rationalized like we see so much nowadays. What's more, the show was framed around a man sitting before a fire and telling the stories to us, blended with scenes from within the stories themselves. Thus, we were given a feeling of the oral tradition while still making use of the medium to see the filmmakers' visual interpretations. As an interesting note, spoken stories are traditionally thought of being told in firelight, filmed stories are physically shown through projected light in a darkened room.

What fascinates me are the different ways in which a story may be told: first hand account (limited by one perspective), the oral telling, the written word, a documentary, a fictional adaptation, an original concept, or an interactive video game. Games can create an engagement similar to the imagination required when listening to a storyteller or reading a novel. However, this engagement is more hands on. The overall events and images are already in place, but it is up to the player to make it through. Many games focus on the entertainment value of racking up points, which is fine, but some try to go further. Many games let you customize your character and choose your path. The best of these have alternate endings to your story, thus blending the engagement of personal control with the scale of a preconceived plot. On the other end of the spectrum are games that have little free will (though enough to keep you involved) but intricate storylines that you discover as you go.

One of my favorite games of all time is "The Longest Journey." It is an adventure game, point-and-click. The actual gameplay is mostly wandering around, picking up objects, and figuring out where to use the objects. The story is on a large scale and involves your character traveling between worlds and interacting with many peoples. Along the way she accomplishes feats that fulfill prophecies but learns the stories of the prophecies as well. Much of the game involves long conversations, including a tribe devoted to storytelling, but that is what makes the game memorable. Every individual and culture has the same ideas , but reinterpreted to suit their unique circumstances.

To return to my original topic, I would link this game to Star Wars. When the final episode of the the prequel trilogy came out I watched the entire series as a whole. The moment that I found most fulfilling in those six movies is in the final film, "Return of the Jedi." After all the adventures that have taken place, C-3PO tells their story to the Ewoks by a fire, sound effects included. We, as the audience, are strongly connected to this activity because, while we were not making the decisions, we were there the entire time, emotionally participating in the story.

Word Drunk

I'd like to post some thoughts from class that I have not referenced when writing about the chapters.

-Word of the day for me:
Mellifluous: sweetly or smoothly flowing; sweet-sounding: a mellifluous voice; mellifluous tones.

-I find I am greatly interested in the flow of language. This can be in conversation (as mentioned in class) the way one topic changes, reflects on itself, broadens and focuses in over time. I once drove to California (from Idaho) with my sister and her friend. For about almost an hour I stopped participating in there conversation and instead, wrote down the subjects and how they evolved. What interested me is that the topics would blend and flow smoothly for a long time before suddenly changing with no apparent motivation for the tangent. Later on they would return to an earlier train of thought as if uninterrupted. Similarly, it is interesting when having a conversation with a friend how a very specific conversation point will occur and you realize that they told you the exact same thing days, weeks, or months ago. It's not just the subject matter but the angle and perspective from which it is approached.

Another flowing of language deals with larger stories. The Battle of Troy, King Arthur, and countless other tales began as "true" accounts told by witnesses. These would be retold, exaggerated, and re-examined countless times over generations. Certain elements would stick, others would not. Eventually we reach modern times and while different interpretations exist, we have come to know the essential stories (even though much of them are rather unlikely). Once again I turn to Joseph Campbell on this topic, who also brings up that had writing not become widespread, all of our stories would have evolved in a similar fashion. Many stories that seem hard to understand would have advanced along with us, adapted to suit our needs as a culture. Unfortunately this seems to have been lost due to writing as well as news media and increase in general knowledge throughout the world. While all of this seems like a vast game of Telephone, Campbell insists that the subconscious mind plays a major part in the evolution of a story. Perhaps with the right amount of added chaos, a game of telephone could result in something innovative.

Finally, and much more briefly as I have already written about this subject, spoken language itself flows. In distant human prehistory, certain sounds stuck and became words. As the capabilities increased, the need for specificity in communication increased as well. The way in which we pluralize, infer the past, or speak sarcastically gradually emerged. Dialects became standard languages, which subsequently broke into new dialects. Words were borrowed, reinterpreted, and forgotten. These days less and less people write freehand. The grammatical shortcuts of texting culture is affecting the spoken word. We are rapidly becoming oral again due to cell phones, webcams, and the like. Language has become international. As subcultural blends of the standard languages become more prevalent, perhaps we as a world will communicate easier. It may look as though we are speaking and writing poorly, but "Standard English" is simply another interiorized technology that may need to go.

Change is the norm, loosen up.

Wisdom of the Storytellers Chapter One

The main thing that interested me from this was the most basic form of mythic story. The kind that simply gave practical knowledge (logical or mysterious) through a memorable tale. While the stories themselves may be the main reason to tell them, attaching exciting and unbelievable aspects to something more useful (like "don't eat white berries") ensures that the important information is never lost. Our culture could do with some more of that. I wonder if we could come up with tales in a similar fashion for modern life.

The Art of Memory Chapter 1

-Simonides was the developer of the memory theatre and also conceived the concept of mnemonics.

-Rather than a specific quote, I find myself inspired by a mixture of concepts from this chapter. Our author tells us that a storyteller moves through his memory theatre in his mind while telling. Specific objects act as cues. The imagery, the cues of the mind act like the letters and words on paper. "The same set of loci can be used again and again for remembering different material." What I wonder, from all of this, is whether at any point the type of symbolism involved bleeds over to the story itself, similar to the way the rules and techniques of the written word bleed into orality.

I like the idea of using an imagined space as your memory theatre. In an art class I took last semester our final assignment was to make a visual labyrinth. Somewhat abstract, there needed to be a sense of movement, a hint as to how you make your way through the maze. Perhaps an image like this could be used as a basis for the memory theatre. While in the class we had a lecture on the story of the Labyrinth and its basis in the real world. The actual city of Knossos on Crete (the island of the mythical labyrinth) was built like a maze, with no direct path to its central courtyard. Similarly, caves found on the island are thought to have had religious ceremonies taking place deep within. We have real world structures combining with symbolic ideas. Physical journeys through confusing passages lead to rewards, wisdom, and knowledge deep within. Mental and psychological journeys reap the same benefits. In the actual myth we find the man-eating Minotaur instead, but the idea of a physical journey standing in for a figurative one blends perfectly with the idea of memory theatre.

For those of you unfamiliar with Joseph Campbell, he writes of the hero's journey, an archetypal path that most myths and many other stories fit into. He focuses on certain events (refusing the call to adventure) and characters (woman as goddess or temptress) and how they fit into the journey as well as what these elements might represent. He draws his ideas from a wide range of stories as well as from other sources of symbolism, like Freud. Regardless to the consistency of such a system, I am curious as to its effect on a storyteller's memory theatre and vice-versa. Before Simonides officially founded the technique, could storytellers of old, needing to recall so very much, have subconsciously linked stories in a similar manner? Could this method of memory actually have made ancient stories more similar to one another? Could imagery used to affix the memory of the story have become part of the tale itself? It is true that using unique, astoundingly beautiful, or hideously grotesque images improves memory, and all of those things find there way into the most epic of stories.

In a more recent context, over ninety percent of movies are written in the three act structure (setup, confrontation, resolution) that includes a few more specific plot points that should exist. This is an outline that works. Most movies use it, when used poorly we call it cliche. A prominent problem is sticking too closely to rules and guidelines such as these, using them as a crutch. On the other hand, most successful stories (intentionally or not) follow it perfectly. Perhaps there is a need to have some sort of understanding (things are happy now, everything needs to get a lot worse and then even better than before by the end of the film). It creates relatability to the movie from the first viewing. This validates that the journey is much more important than the destination but that there needs to be even the slightest hint of order to help us through.

Question of the Day

A recurring theme in this class is the negative effect of the written word. This brings to mind a question: What would the world be like if we had somehow invented audio and video recording instead of writing? Obviously this would be very challenging, since this technology is very recent in comparison, so suspend your disbelief and think about it. Also, I'm not sure if this would also remove mathematical writing as very basic forms of this began before the written word.

Orality and Literacy Chapter 1

Grapholect: The dictionary defines it as a standard written language (such as Standard English) but the way the author describes brings up standard oral communication as well. There are many things we say in day to day conversation that are considered incorrect. Context, word confusion, actually making up new words unintentionally, all may violate Standard English. Some of these elements, particularly in regards to context, may be totally ignored, others, especially regional dialects, may be pointed out as poorly phrased. The thing is, had any of these inaccuracies been present far enough in the past, they would have been accepted as linguistic quirks or even alter the rules of the language itself. Though clarity is important in communication, people are often greatly looked down upon when they misspeak, even though those rules are based on the rules of written language, which are subsequently attempts to organize and systematize oral language, which has worked perfectly fine for all of human existence without any rules at all.

Infernal Memory

I'll begin with a flurry of topics covered in our first week:

-Loci are locations that are used as an aid for memorization. One may find an "Unfrequented Church" and break that down into many loci (such as the entrance, a particular bench or window, etc.) We have been asked to find said church, though in our cases we will mostly be examining our rooms (What are on the walls? The floor? What colors are dominant?). My room is a fairly nonspecific space. I have three plants by the window, various knickknacks (an african tribal mask, an unfinished Pinewood Derby car, a Future World button from Disney World), my name written in Egyptian hieroglyphics on papyrus, a poster from a video game I liked (Portal), my computer and printer, my bed, my bright multicolored quilt, and so on.

-The first rule of the Memory Teacher is to ask, "What do you remember?" Like in "The Tempest" you find out what they already know and work from there.

-We talked about the origins of names (Beautiful Eyes). My full name is George Parker Mann. My first name comes from my maternal grandfather, my middle name was my maternal grandmother's maiden name. All of my brothers as well as myself go by our middle names because those were the names our parents liked for us, our first names are all more traditional (Charles, George, Jeffrey, Steven) so as to have the option of something more professional sounding when we reached adulthood. It didn't quite work out like that as none of us are very used to using our first names. I am in film and am trying to decide what form of my name I'd like to be credited under (Parker Mann, G. P. Mann, George Parker Mann). My mother had wanted to call me Parker for a long time, but my cousin was born shortly before I was and was given that name as well. At birth I was named George Tyler Mann but within a month my mom gave in to her original choice and had it legally changed. The actual meaning of George is a farmer. Parker comes from park keeper. Mann seems to have multiple meanings. The German origin is the most likely given my genealogy, and it basically means gentleman or master and is interchangeable with something like "mister." The English has it meaning a fierce or strong man. My favorite, however, is the Welsh, which has it meaning freckled, which I am very much.

-We've been asked to memorize the nine muses. I am learning them with flash cards.

-The muses are the daughters of Mnemosyne (goddess of memory) and Zeus (king of the gods).

*Calliope is the chief muse and muse of epic or heroic poetry. She inspired Homer to write the Iliad and the Odyssey. There is also a musical instrument named after her.

*Clio is the muse of history

*Erato is the muse of erotic poetry and love.

*Euterpe is called "Giver of Delight" and is the muse of music. Later on her role was specified to lyric poetry.

*Melpomene is the muse of tragedy.

*Polyhymnia (or Polymnia) is best known as the muse of sacred poetry, hymns, and eloquence. She also presides over pantomime. Agriculture, meditation, and geometry are also attributed to her.

*Terpsichore is the muse of dance and the dramatic chorus. She has been said to be the mother of the sirens.

*Thalia is the muse of comedy.

*Urania is the muse of astronomy and astrology.

-Image has been noted as our key to memory, which makes me curious as to what suggestions one would have for a blind person.

-A phrase I liked on day one was "Dialectical Community." It was used in reference to a meme (a unit or element of cultural ideas, symbols, practices, etc.) The meme in question was "What can I get for yah?" which has become common place in eateries across the nation.

-Memory is our focus because for the bulk of human existence most people lacked the ability to write. Writing itself began around 4000 BC. Everything before that is considered prehistory. Even after that point it was mostly used for keeping track of trade, by the leaders of civilizations, and by the upper class. It would be a long time until writing and reading were widespread. Thus people relied on their memories because, "Speech is Ephemeral," it fades away once it has occurred.

-A line of dialogue was recalled in class that would have been ephemeral had it not been repeated and written down by all of us. "Have you emptied the cooler by the window yet?" Even now I don't know if what I wrote down is the exact quote, but that doesn't matter, the idea of it, the connection it creates matters. The information is trivial, it is not important but the art of memory is.

-A concept I am interested in is the subconscious and unintentional way that ideas and stories evolve through communication. The way in which a normal sentence becomes nonsensical in the telephone game as well as the way in which a true event can become myth fascinates me.

-Always ask: What do I know that I didn't know before and what difference does it make?

-There are 3000 spoken languages but only 78 with literature.

-Always remember the nasty habit of old people. (they die)

-From now on, I will try to post on this site in the form of small passages rather than huge, unending volumes.