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.