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.