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)