narrators

we shouldn't make too much of a big deal about the nested-narrative structure of some novels. It's just a device - a fiction - that writers have used to compose their story. One of the ways that you can tell that this is true is that the outer-most narrator is usually a minor character / e.g. Lockwood in Wuthering Heights, and Walton in Frankenstein. When each character is telling their story, or their story is being told, it's told directly to the reader - it's not mediated through any of the characters further out in the structure. It's just that, in the world of the story, neither the reader nor the writer exist, so the writer needs to establish a pretext for the characters' stories to be told. 

generation

Mary Shelley wrote an introduction to the 1831 edition of Frankenstein, telling the story about how she came to write the novel during that famous summer in 1816 while staying with Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary's sister Claire, and Lord Byron's personal physician, John Polidori, in the Villa Diodati in Italy. 

The story she tells is that, because of rainy weather, the group was stuck indoors, so Byron proposed that each of them write a ghost story or horror story to pass the time. Mary couldn't think of anything for a few days, but then one night she stayed up listening to Shelley and Byron talk about the possibility of using electricity to re-animate a corpse (scientists of that era were beginning to discover that there was some kind of link between electrcity and the workings of the human or animal body). 

Then, that night, Mary had a nightmare about exactly that, and she woke up terrified, and thus was conceived the idea for her novel. 

This account written by Mary Shelley, forms the perfect outer-narrative for the novel, and because Frankenstein is structured as a set of nested narratives, with the introduction, the novel becomes a narrative (of the monster) within a narrative (of Victor Frankenstein) within a narrative (of Walton the sea captain and explorer) within a narrative (of Mary Shelley herself). 

One of the interesting things about Mary's account is that it seems to contain a number of factual inaccuracies, or, in other words, in some ways it's a work of fiction. Like, for example, she writes that no one else came up with any decent ideas for a story and she specifically mentions Polidori's idea about a skull-headed lady, but there's no evidence that Polidori worked on a story with that idea. What he did do was work on a story about a vampire (The Vampyre) which he later published and it did quite well. Some people even regard it as representing the birth of the whole vampire genre - the first modern vampire story that rendered the folk tale of the vampire in literary form. Christopher Frayling writes that The Vampyre 'is probably the most influential horror story of all time' (Vampyres: Lord Byron to Count Dracula p107). 

There's another conflict between Polidori's and Mary's account of events. She writes that, over a number of days, every morning the rest of the group would ask her if she had come up with an idea and she would always say she hadn't, until the morning after her nightmare. Polidori though, records in his diary, in the days after Byron initiated the challenge, that everyone else had begun their stories except himself. 

But I don't think the inaccuracies in Mary's story were deliberate deceptions. Maybe she was 'fictionalising' to some extent, but I think it's more the case that real life is always more complicated than any story and lends itself to different tellings. Like, for example, I did some research and found out that Polidori actually worked on three different stories, and his vampire story was probably mostly written at a later date. Maybe Mary's account of his story came from something he said as a joke or in passing. There are all kinds of possibilities. 

Even the fact that Polidori wrote and published the story about the vampire is more complex than it appears. It was actually published without his knowledge and attributed to Lord Byron, and even after both Byron and Polidori objected, Byron was still listed as the author when it was published as a book (it was first published in a periodical). Eventually, in later reprints, Polidori was listed as the author. But, to complicate things further, Polidori's story incorporated or was inspired by, a fragment that Byron wrote during the days at the Villa Diodati. Polidori also developed another of the three stories he worked on into a novella, which he published. 

One thing we know for sure is true in Mary's account is what she writes about the weather. It was more than a few days of inclement weather....it was seemingly relentless. That year has become known as 'the year without a summer'. The eruption of a couple of major volcanoes (especially one in Indonesia) resulted in abnormally low temperatures, heavy rain, and severe food shortages because of the effects on agriculture, throughout the world.  

That crisis probably shaped Frankenstein in a variety of ways. The novel is full of storms and other dramatic natural phenomena. I think Frankenstein also reflects Mary Shelley's personal experience of, not just the global weather crisis, but her own crises. Each of us is unique and we face our own personal crises, but there's also a universal aspect to the challenges we face. That's why a writer can embody these issues in their work, sometimes overtly, sometimes covertly, and they resonate with the reader. 

In her account of how she came to write Frankenstein, one of the most interesting ideas is the way that writing the story was not so much an expression of Mary's fears as a way for her to allay them. That's one of the things we do when we write....it's a way of exercising agency. 

Mary's initial response to her terrifying nightmare was not to think that that was really scary so it would make a good subject for my horror story.....no, she was trying to think of a way to distract herself and occupy her mind so that she could forget the image she had seen with her mind's eye. So, she decided to work on her story, and then it occurred to her that what had scared her would probably scare other people - so, she now had the idea for her story. 

اعلى واسفل

As i've written before, i'm not that interested in books that talk about how the internet or technology is having an adverse effect on our thinking \\\ although I did buy and read part of one such book recently, just because i'm really interested these days in views that i don't agree with. i like to know what they have to say. 

I'm very interested though, in how technology affects the ways we think and communicate. word processing and email have had a huge impact on the way we write. 

and I suppose, in some ways, it has been an adverse effect....i'm just not interested in focusing on that alone. 

I always think it's funny/ interesting that Wordsworth wrote this 220 years ago: 

For a multitude of causes, unknown to former times, are now acting with a combined force to blunt the discriminating powers of the mind, and, unfitting it for all voluntary exertion, to reduce it to a state of almost savage torpor. The most effective of these causes are the great national events which are daily taking place, and the increasing accumulation of men in cities, where the uniformity of their occupations produces a craving for extraordinary incident, which the rapid communication of intelligence hourly gratifies. To this tendency of life and manners the literature and theatrical exhibitions of the country have conformed themselves. The invaluable works of our elder writers, I had almost said the works of Shakespeare and Milton, are driven into neglect by frantic novels, sickly and stupid German Tragedies, and deluges of idle and extravagant stories in verse.— from 'Preface to Lyrical Ballads'

It's so right and yet so wrong. and it just goes to show that, if you want to see adverse influences on the quality of people's thinking, you're going to see it. You don't need computers and the internet, for the powers of the mind to be blunted. that can be achieved by telegrams and newspapers. 

or, another way to put it is that at times writers and other intellectuals have always prognosticated that technology is going to cause our minds to atrophe. i think it's always a mistake to just see the negative, or to focus too much on it. Like for example, Wordsworth talks about 'the uniformity of their occupations' and that was true in the early days of the industrial revolution, but because of technological, social and legal developments, working conditions now are generally better and work is more rewarding and interesting....not always, but in general I think that's the case. The point is that things changed, and it was a mix of positive and negative, and that's the way it always is. 

the importance of context

one of my favourite films is Heat (1995) and one of the things that I like about it is that it's much more nuanced and complex - much more realistic - than other films about cops and criminals where the criminals are the bad guys and the cops are the good guys. In the film, the commonality between Al Pacino's character and Robert De Niro's character is highlighted. One of the greatest TV series ever - The Wire - did a similar thing: showing the human drama and the common humanity on both sides of the law.

Interestingly though, Michael Mann, who wrote, produced and directed Heat says that he saw the two characters as antithetical in many ways. Yes, they have some qualities in common, but they are worlds apart in other ways ||| Mann says that one of the important ways that the two are different is that Neal/ De Niro is a sociopath, while Vincent/ Pacino is not - he has a social conscience. 

a whole other dimension....now that I think of it....of this idea of parallelism between two ostensibly opposing characters, is that between the two actors - De Niro and Pacino. Their careers seem to parallel each other in many ways, but they're also very different, of course. 

The two appeared together in another film more recently - Righteous Kill (2008) - but it was nowhere near as succesful as Heat. So, it just goes to show - just having them together in a film isn't a guarantee of success. They're such great actors though that you could almost imagine that it would be a guarantee of success, but apparently not. and it's true that, although having De Niro and Pacino together was a draw-card for Heat, it's also a brilliant example of film making. They weren't expected to make up for any deficiencies in the film. 

I think a similar principle applies to a whole range of projects and work situations. From time to time you get the right chemistry of team members and context and success is achieved. but context is crucial. someone could be highly skilled, knowledgeable, experienced, and have a lot of talent and intelligence in their field, but the work setting and the rest of the team need to match up with those qualities for them to be effective. 

Having the right person in the wrong context or role is like using a formula 1 vehicle as a taxi // it's not made for that, and it's actually not going to do a good job.  

પુસ્તકો આનંદ

one of the best books I've ever read is the Australian classic, Such is Life (1903) by Joseph Furphy (aka Tom Collins). It's also one of the most - maybe the most - difficult books I've read. It's an Australian classic, true, and it has a deeply Australian flavour, but there's nothing parochial about it. It's a heavy hitter. To my mind, it's up there with any of the classics...it is seriously good literature. 

another book I really like (and actually read around the same time, and for the same course....or maybe it was just relevant to the course but wasn't a prescribed text) is The Story of an African Farm (1883) by Olive Schreiner. It's weird....I don't remember much about the story, I just remember really loving it, and that it celebrated the value of books, which is probably one of the main things I loved about it. 

a writer that I know is one of the greats, but I struggle with, is Thomas Mann. His works are just so long and slow-moving - so ponderous and endlessly digressive, unlike War and Peace, which is very long but surprisingly readable. I think, over time, some books become inaccessible to us, because the modern mind can no longer engage with them. I'm not saying that Thomas Mann was a writer of period pieces - works that are popular in their time but get forgotten because they don't have lasting value. His works are great works of literature // not that I see it - I'm trusting Harold Bloom about it. I like the idea of Mann's The Magic Mountain (1924). Reading Bloom's commentary on it makes me want to read it, because he's so enthusiastic about it, but I've started it before and it didn't hold my interest. I just didn't really enjoy it - didn't get it - didn't see the art in it. It's on my shelf though, and I like having it there. 

that's one of the strange things about collecting books....there's a joy about having the collection that is distinct from the joy of reading all of the books. 

ಸೃಜನಶೀಲ

I cut my hair. 

with covid and everything it's been months and months since I got a hair cut, so it got pretty long and unkempt. then, as things eased up recently with restrictions, I had been meaning to go and get my hair cut. but then, now, there's a bit of uncertainty about what's happening in Sydney and whether we'll need to have further restrictions....so there's that, but also....I'm not that motivated to go out and get my hair cut. It's like one of many chores/ errands that I need to get around to and keep putting off. Going to the local shopping centre is no longer a routine thing for me....that's been one of the effects of covid. 

and then I had one of those moments that I sometimes have where I think - I'm just gona cut it myself, because I want to get it done and I'm sick of it the way it is. So I did the main cutting with scissors, and then, coincidentally, the clippers I had ordered from Amazon arrived today so I neatened up with them. 

being able to cut my own hair like this is one of the advantages of my hair thinning out as I get older. 

another thing that arrived today is a new pencil sharpener that I bought. I have a few different sets of coloured pencils, and I discovered recently that the sharperner I've been using doesn't fit my derwent pencils - they're too big. (I'm really not sure why I've never had this problem before) so I bought this quite expensive sharpener with a big and a little hole. and I've been getting back in the mood lately to do some art....I've got an idea of something I want to do...the only thing is that I'm not sure if I can do it with pencils and pens. i feel like I would need to use paint....or maybe some kind of markers? or maybe what I have in mind would be best achieved digitally. 

сэтгэлгээний арга

some people say that the way the internet fractures our attention with all the stimuli it provides, is a really negative thing that is making us dumber, basically, but I'm not sure about that. I think there is a time and place for both kinds of thinking - that frenetic, kind of distracted mode where you're working on multiple things, and the mode of sustained focus on a particular task. 

And despite what a lot of experts seem to be arguing, I don't think developing the skill of the 'distracted mode' necessarily diminishes your ability to read a whole book or stay on task for more than half an hour. That's what some books are arguing - that we're losing certain faculties...that, especially young people, who grew up with the internet, are incapable of the kind of sustained focus required to do excellent work. 

I think both ways of thinking are pretty much essential for a lot of the work we do these days. when you start a new project or task, it's good to get a sense of the whole thing \\\ to work quickly through it, making notes, plans, amendments - setting up a kind of framework. Then you work your way methodically through the project. It's not always, first distraction mode, then focus mode...sometimes you might alternate back and forth between the two a number of times...but both are important. 

even in academic work - which is all about thinking - that's the case. Even if they had the time to read every book and article relevant to their field, from cover to cover or start to finish, that wouldn't be a good use of their time. Academics need to be able to process a lot of material really quickly, and the only way to do that is to practice a mix of scanning (distracted mode) and close reading (focused attention). 

post-modernism

It's hard to understand the movement from modernism to post-modernism until you realise that there are two different ways of defining modernism, and post-modernism is more a response to the kind of modernism that it seems more remote from. 

There was the modernism of the early twentieth century, which was basically about questioning everything and embracing the idea that you could do things in different ways. Like, a chair doesn't have to have four legs and a back rest...literature doesn't have to conform to established patterns and formulae...that's modernism. 

Then, post-modernism came after that, but post-modernism is less a continuation of that questioning process (although it can be regarded as that, in a way) and more a reaction against a much broader and older trend that is also called modernism, which grew out of the enlightenment and the scientific revolution. That form of modernism is about the primacy of reason. Post-modernism questions things that used to be considered absolutes - objectivity, morality and truth. Post-modernism embraces relativism. It's easy to see how that is incompatible with Christianity, and in fact Christian thinkers have been very vocal and prolific critics of post-modernism. and in the same argument, post-modernism is often (in some ways rightly) associated with critical theory. 

it seems like history is a series of reactions back and forth, but it's not that simple. In relation to religion, post-modernism is more of a continuation of modernism than it is a reaction against it. One of the ideas that drove the enlightenment was that the old grand narrative(s) - which were based in religion - should be superseded by reason. But then, when post-modernism rejected the primacy of reason, it also rejected religion and the idea of moral good and evil being objective realities. 

Because, from a post-modern point of view, modernism - even with all of its talk about the primacy of reason - was still subject to the old narratives and paradigms. I think that's true. Isaac Newton, for example, was a devout Christian. 

But I think there's actually a positive way of viewing post-modernism, even from a Christian point of view. Because, in Newton's day, being a Christian was just the 'done thing' - it was hardwired into the DNA of society. What post-modernism does, with its intense scepticism and its representation of other ways of thinking about the world, is that it gives us a choice. It's socially acceptable in today's world, to not be a Christian, or not even to believe in God, and there's a sense in which that makes being a Christian a more meaningful thing - because you've chosen it. 

ទ្រឹស្តី

I love literary theory. that's why I often write about it when I read negative views about critical theory. Literary theory - including the Marxist and post-colonial approaches, but also others, like structuralism and post-structuralism - liberated my mind and opened my eyes to a whole realm of great ideas. 

In high school I never 'got' English. Like, for example, the idea of style. We always had to write about what the style of the writer was, and I never knew what that meant. Then I studied English at uni, and it was an amazing experience, because my teachers gave me something that I did 'get' and really liked. What changed everything for me was the realisation that you could approach and understand literature in a whole range of different ways. Learning about the different theoretical approaches taught me that, but that was just like a gateway, because it's the idea that it's possible to take different approaches that is really empowering. You can draw on different approaches and develop your own approach. That's what was missing in high school English for me - we were taught a particular approach as if that was the way - that was just the way to do English. But at uni I learnt that there are lots of different ways of analysing and thinking about literature.

That's why I can't agree with the views people express about critical theory being subversive and destructive and undermining healthy intellectual discourse. Critical theory didn't indoctrinate me or make me want to be a Marxist or even be an activist. For me personally, it was about literature and really engaging with literature and with interesting ideas and issues - it was an academic thing, which I think is how it should be in higher education.  

So, when I see all the many youtube videos that say that critical theory is incompatible with Christianity, I think they've missed the point. Another thing that I notice is that a lot of the most vocal opponents of critical theory - both Christian and secular - are not experts in literature...their specialisations are maths and science. They see all the links between theory and ideology and theory and culture, but they're not interested in the links to literature. They regard critical theory as a world view/ ideology that is diametrically opposed to Christianity (for the Christian opponents of critical theory) and diametrically opposed to good scholarship (for the secular opponents of critical theory). 

But there have been some very good literary theorists who are Christians - Northrop Frye, for example. He was actually an ordained Christian minister and one of the greatest literary theorists of the twentieth century. Besides formulating groundbreaking literary theory, he also wrote a lot about the Bible. I'm not sure how well his theology would stack up against that of recognised pillars of the modern western Christian church like John Macarthur and Paul Washer, at least according to them, but he does embody the reality that literary theory is not essentially unChristian or opposed to Christianity. 

نام

this thing would shut me down

it keeps me from expression

i'm not going to give it a name. we accept all the labels too easily.....and then, even as I assert that - express my view - i'm defeated and wrong, because i rely on the labels to get what i need

and after all it seems like it wins, because it does keep me from expression and it does keep me in a place where there's a lack of hope or meaning and a place where I'm not whole ///

if only giving up was a way to find some kind of peace

it's ironic that this thing that attacks me manifests in the appearance of passivity and apathy, which is the very opposite of my experience of it

ਮੁਕਾਬਲਾ

I was walking to the local shops today and on the way I saw a dog that I've seen around before. It's extremely rare around here to see a dog on the loose. I've noticed before that he (or maybe she, but I'll say 'he' for convenience) seems to follow people but then stop and return to a certain area....maybe someone around there owns him...I don't know. 

But he looks kind of lost and hungry. It seems like he's looking for something. He looks like a pit-bull, so he's probably a bit intimidating, but he doesn't show any aggression. 

So, while I was at the shop, I bought a can of nice dog food - not the cheap kind, but the kind with actual pieces of meat and gravy - and a couple of packs of 'straps' dog treats. On my way home, I didn't see him at first but then I looked up a side street and there he was. He was maybe 40 or 50 metres away from me. 

After I left the shop, I was thinking, I should have bought a bowl, because, what am I gona put the dog food in? But then I realised that I could put it in the plastic container that the nectarines I bought were in. 

When he saw me and saw that I was walking towards him, he wagged his tail, so that's a good sign. But then, when I got close, he wouldn't let me approach him. He didn't growl or anything - he just backed away and stood a few metres away. He seemed kind of jumpy, like he thought maybe I was going to hit him or something. He whimpered a little bit, which shows that he would have liked to come closer, but he didn't trust me. 

So, anyway, I emptied the nectarines out of the container and put the dog food in it, and left it where he could see it. Then, when I walked away and looked back, he was eating the food. 

I'll keep the dog treats in my bag (and maybe give some to my own dogs....I already gave them some) in case I see him again. 

On the subject of pit-bulls, I actually kind of like them. I haven't had much experience with them, but I've had experience with other types of dogs who are kind of known for being potentially dangerous - like the kind of dogs that make good guard dogs, and I've always found that, if you give them a good home where they are cared for and you give them attention, they're totally good natured, trustworthy and manageable. 

Of course they do also make good guard dogs. 

ଅଧିକାର

One non-fiction writer that I've been getting really interested in  lately is Chris Hedges. I've been interested in his work for a while, but I wasn't that enthusiastic about it, because his books and other writings and speeches seem to be kind of negative /// For example, his most recent book is entitled, America: The Farewell Tour (2018) /// for me, work based on negative premises is usually a turn-off. Like, all those books about how the internet is adversely affecting society - our thinking, our relationships, etc. As a matter of principle I pretty much have no interest in those books, because I think they're wrong, but also they're bemoaning the inevitable. I did buy one of those kind of books - The Shallows: How the Internet is Changing the way we Think, Read and Remember by Nicholas Carr - because, as I wrote about recently on my blog, I've become more and more interested lately in reading books and other texts and watching videos that present views I disagree with. I might write about The Shallows in another post, but here I want to write about an idea Chris Hedges expressed that made me want to read everything he's written. 

At first I thought Hedges must be an opponent of religion, and Christianity in particular, because he's written and spoken extensively criticising the radical Christian right (e.g. American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America (2008)). But then I found some videos on youtube about him debating Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and other prominent atheists. After that, I found the video that really piqued my interest. Hedges was talking about these debates he had with Dawkins and Harris. He says that, initially, he was expecting the debates to be an engaging contest of ideas - a balanced and well-reasoned discussion - but 'to his horror' (his words) he discovered that, the approach of the so-called new atheism was problematic in ways that actually mirrored the flaws of the radical Christian right. So, he wrote a book that was like a complement to American Fascists, called When Atheism becomes Religion. 

I don't know everything Hedges has to say about this issue - I'm planning to read some of his books - but it's an issue that really fascinates me. It's sometimes called the horseshoe theory - the idea that the far-left and the far-right (or any other extreme 'opposites') are not in fact opposing ends of a continuum, but are actually very similar and in some ways the same. They have a kind of symbiotic relationship - they feed each other. 

You can see this effect in the witch narrative(s). That's what I liked so much about the movie, The VVitch. It represented the reality that, in many ways, the witch doesn't manifest as a purely malevolent phenomen....it's not simply a story about the subversion of what is good by what is evil. Instead, the potency of the Puritan's hatred and fear of what they regarded as evil, manifested that evil. The witch narrative was written not by witches but by Puritans. 

As I write this, I'm listening to a talk by Chris Hedges called, The Politics of Cultural Despair (October 19, 2020). It's pretty much unrelentingly bleak. This is what I'm not that keen on. There's no (or little) positive vision. For example, he's almost equally critical of the democrat and republican sides of politics. He talks a lot about the problems and he doesn't seem to see any possible solutions to our current malaise. 

Doing further research, I'm pretty sure Hedges is a Marxist. In his book, America: The Farewell Tour, he is super critical of corporate capitalism, and he quotes from and uses the ideas of Marx himself and other Marxist thinkers, like Antonio Gramsci. He adopts their arguments into his thesis. He also has a show on RT's YouTube channel called 'On Contact' as well as videos published on Democracy Now! and The Intercept, but he also has videos on YouTube channels without that political flavour, like Rolling Stone and Toronto Public Library. But the titles of his videos give a pretty clear reflection of his views e.g.  Chris Hedges: "Democracy has been destroyed by global capitalism". 

But, whether you love or hate Marxism, and notwithstanding the bleakness of his views, Hedges's writing is just fascinating. His videos are interesting too. I watched an episode of 'On Contact' in which he interviewed the Islamic scholar Hamza Yusuf (who I know from researching Islam and watching YouTube videos about Islam) and they talked about extremism and Islamophobia. 

It's nice listening to, or reading, intelligent commentary on politicals for a change. It's rare these days. 

One of my favourite scenes in all literature is in Dostoevsky's Demons. The book is very much about ideology and extremism. In this scene that I like, there's a man who is highly respected in the community and known for his intelligence and integrity. The scene is well into the book and takes place after we have gotten to know this character very well. and the story is about a political movement/ ideology that is growing and gaining power, and of course, getting this man onboard would be a big win for the group. 

So, he decides to attend one of their rallies. There's a huge crowd and, because he's such a well respected and wise member of society - and because they want to coopt those qualities as a reflection of their group - they invite him to speak. There's a real build up to the speech...Dostoevsky evokes a sense of tension and expectation around this speech. The man (I forget his name) begins by explaining that he has studied this political movement deeply and thoroughly and discussed it with its proponents, and he has come to a conclusion regarding it and what it is about....everyone is hanging on his every word. And he says, this is what it's about: stupidity! - which leads to an uproar. 

အဓိပ္ပါယ်

I was thinking about irony because I've been reading Genius: A Mosaic of One Hundred Exemplary Creative Minds by Harold Bloom, and he writes a lot about irony. He writes about the centrality of irony in writers that most of us probably wouldn't associate with irony - like Homer, Plato and Chaucer.  

when a work of fiction talks about things that are true (in the world of the story), that is a profound example of irony. it's a truth, and not only that, it's a truth that in varying degrees can correspond to the real world - but it is contained within a fiction...so, by definition, it's not true. 

interestingly ||| though maybe this is a statement of the obvious ||| irony is a trope (like metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, etc) \\\ tropes are basically ways of creating meaning, but not only that, they are the only way we have of creating meaning. literature is made up (he he) of tropes and figures. but what actually is a trope? - what does the word mean? The word 'trope' is derived from the verb τρέπειν (trepein), "to turn, to direct, to alter, to change". The way that I always explain tropes to students is to say that a trope is any statement that is not literally true. So we create meaning by distorting the truth. 

I think that's why people disagree so strongly about all kinds of issues ⇾ very compelling narratives and explanations can be created, but all narratives are a kind of distortion. Even subject matter that is as hard and objective as mathematics and science represents a kind of fiction. A good example is the humble line. You can draw lines and use them to prove geometrical principles, but any line you draw is not truly a line, because a line is one-dimensional, and any line you can draw will have a thickness, so it's two dimensional - it's a lie you tell in order to explicate the truth. 

objective truth exists, but no mere mortal human being can express it, and that's a good thing because it's that reality that enables us to be creative and, ironically, to express the truth. 

փորձի արժեքը

what does it mean to heal or recover?

strangely, what we call sickness is (often) our body trying to heal itself. like, when you throw up, it's your body expelling the contaminant. when you have a fever, it's because your body raises its temperature to try to kill the virus or bacteria that is affecting you. Migraine is another good example. Before you get the actual headache associated with a migraine, you get (at least I do) an aura - a visual disturbance. Growing up, I never knew what that was, and then one day when it happened, I went to the see a doctor straight away. By the time I got in to see the doctor, the visual disturbance had stopped, but when I told him about what had happened he knew exactly what it was. He asked me if I had a headache now, and I was like, yes, I do, and he explained that it was a migraine and how migraine's work. 

the aura is caused by the constriction of blood vessels - for some reason your blood vessels constrict and limit the flow of blood - and then your brain or your body releases a chemical that expands your blood vessels back to normal, and that's why the aura goes away, but it's that chemical that gives you the headache. and that's exactly what happens - the visual disturbance usually clears after 15 minutes to half an hour (I think...I've never actually timed it) and then I get a headache and a kind of mild nauseous feeling. I'm lucky. For some reason I don't really get a very bad headache like some people do. I can generally go about my normal day. The worst part for me is the visual disturbance. 

I remember reading part of a book called Productive and Unproductive Depression (1989) by Emmy Gut. Her argument in that book is that depression has a purpose and, if we engage it in the right way, depression can be a productive process. It's widely recognised that depression literally slows you down /// it slows down your speech, your movement and your thinking, and of course it drains your energy and demotivates you. It's physiological as well as psychological. In her book, Emmy Gut argues that what's happening there is that a lot of the resources you need to function normally are being redirected to the problem that is at the centre of your depression, and importantly, that that is a positive thing. The path of recovery involves figuring out what that problem is and working through it. 

I really like that argument, because the idea that things like depression can be inherently positive and productive, resonates with me. It's what I believe. I've read other books in which the author's view was that there's nothing good about being depressed - that that part of your life is lost and the only rational thing to do is get through it and come out the other end and not be depressed any more - only then will you really be living. 

It's true that, with the particular book I have in mind, the author's experience of depression was particularly debilitating, so his view is understandable, and everyone is entitled to frame their life experience as they see fit, but I don't share that view. It's not that I see depression/ anxiety/ mental health issues as something benign and easily manageable. Calling depression a black dog - even though I know it's a common metaphor - doesn't really do justice to the reality of the condition. It's more like a vicious dog that actually bites and sometimes even kills. 

So, I'm not minimising it. It's tough. But I still think, as bad as it gets, there is value in the experience. 

బౌండ్

It's a weird thing - a mystery - how your own mind can cause you such intense suffering. There's something about it that doesn't make sense. How can we be at the mercy of our selves?

but I have an idea about how it works. there's something about the world or the reality in which we live that reacts in a certain way to things that are really good. For example, it's almost a given that talented comedians have severe battles with depression. I would say most, if not all, of the funniest people in the last 100 years or so struggled with depression. 

and same with other talented or smart people. Sylvia Plath, David Foster Wallace, Virginia Woolf, just to name a few.....and I think their depression is related to their intelligence. 

being good at thinking means you have the capacity to think really intensely - to worry and ruminate and over-react. people who are creative and have highly developed sensibilities that enable them to produce great music, artworks or literature, are highly sensitive, and that can lead to them experiencing a lot of pain. 

but it seems like we're all, regardless of intellect or talent, subject to this dynamic. strength and weakness are intimately bound up with each other. 

crises

It was a failure inside a success inside a failure inside a success inside a failure.....

none of those failures really bothered me. sometimes failure bothers me, but then I realise it's an opportunity to start something new. 

sometimes that new thing is more directly related to the failure. like, say if you do a course, and you fail the course, you might do the course again and work harder so that you can pass. but you have to weigh up whether that's what you want to do. just doing the course again, in itself, will not lead to success. 

then there are other times when failure represents an opportunity to do something different - to take a different course

acceptance is crucial. it's true what all the 12 step programs teach ⇾ the first step that you have to take in dealing with your issues is to acknowledge those issues. if you never accept and admit that you have a problem you will never make any progress in dealing with that problem. 

we tend to think of acceptance as a passive thing...like you can only accept bad things ||| you resign yourself to the unpleasant truth, you accept that you've lost something or failed or that you're not good in some way ¿ but maybe victory and progress are things that you have to accept as well. maybe changing your inner world involves accepting the reality that you don't have to think and feel the way you have been thinking and feeling

another example of acceptance is related to control /// especially of feelings. We begin to have more control over our thoughts and feelings when we give up trying to control them. 

a lot of this relates to the 'journey of the hero'. the first thing that happens after the would-be hero receives the call to go on the quest, is that they run away. they refuse the call, because it's overwhelming. that refusal is a necessary step. it's a natural reaction. unless the quest is something that inspires real fear in you, it's not the journey of the hero. another way to put it is to say that the call comes in the form of a crisis. it both terrifies you and motivates you. it's not an ordinary fear that you can avoid - like, if you're afraid of heights you avoid heights

this is like getting attacked by a savage beast or by a demon. you have to fight. so that's accepting the quest. you feel utterly weak and defeated but you're forced to be strong. then, at some point, when you feel at your absolute weakest and you still have to do stuff, you cross a threshold. that's when things become so hard that you feel like you literally can't go on. you have to do something and you think that you just can't do it, but you have to do it....so you do it....and it's very empowering. In that moment when you thought you couldn't do something, but then you do it anyway, you come to a new realisation about what you are. It's like a transformation. you know that you are strong, because when you were at your weakest, you didn't let that define you. 

revision

I've written before about how I'm not really convinced by a lot of Harold Bloom's views or conclusions but what draws me to him is his thinking - the way he arrives at his views. 

I think there are two key ideas that underly Bloom's theory of influence. Built on top of those ideas, there is a whole intricate system. One of those idea is belatedness and the other is about the writer's response to their own belatedness. 

So, belatedness....the strong writer realises they are a latecomer. According to Bloom, central to a writer's thinking is that perfection, as they see it, has already been achieved by their precursor(s). So the only way for them to write anything of worth is to revise the work of their precursor. Of course they don't admit that that's what they are doing, even to themselves. That's why Bloom infuriated a lot of writers. He insisted that every act of literary creation was an exercise in wilful misrepresentation of some other writer's work, and writers don't like being told that. 

Here is what Bloom identifies as his central argument in The Anxiety of Influence:

Poetic influence...always proceeds by a misreading of the prior poet, an act of creative correction that is actually and necessarily a misinterpretation...the main tradition of Western poetry since the Renaissance, is a history of anxiety and self-saving caricature, of distortion, of perverse, wilful revisionism without which modern poetry as such could not exist.

You might think - but here he's only talking about poetry - and technically that's true, but that's just because Bloom's main concern was with poetry. In literary scholarship, poetry can be defined in a broad way to include all literature, and Bloom does go on to apply his ideas about influence to other forms of literature in later books, like, for example, The Western Canon. 

So, that's one of the central ideas - that good writing is always misreading. Then, another big idea underlying Bloom's criticism is related to how and why writers do that. All creative writing is made up of tropes and figures. The way that you identify tropes and figures - in other words, the way that you tell whether a text is literary - is that it is not literally true. For example, if you write that 'the city was blanketed in fog', it's figurative /// there's no actual, real blanket involved. Bloom points out that, for the poet or creative writer, the literal truth is like a kind of death, because it negates their creative expression which is fundamental to their identity. They have to distort the literal truth - it's what they do. 

Bloom relates this distortion to his other idea about how all literature is a distortion of other literature, and then he introduces Freud to really develop his theory about how writers do this revision. Freud formulated a range of psychic defenses by which we evade the idea of death. Bloom relates each of 6 of these defences to a particular trope (irony, synecdoche, metonymy, etc) and then to his own invention - 6 revisionary ratios, or ways that writers revise their precursors. 

reader empowerment

I read an article about reading and the value of reading, in a periodical that's known for promoting the views of the so-called intellectual dark web, and of course the writer had a go at critical theory, suggesting that literally all critical approaches to literature are flawed because, while they claim to illuminate the text and enrich our understanding of it, what they actually do is act as a kind of filter that excludes anything that falls outside the theory and makes the literary work subservient to the approach taken to interpret it. 

I don't think that's true though. He writes that, because of technology, social media and critical theory, we can no longer enjoy the text for itself, but instead get caught up in all these side issues and idealogical concerns. For me that's not true. Studying critical theory hasn't stopped me from enjoying and getting a lot out of both fiction and non-fiction books. I can still appreciate texts for what they are. I don't have to impose some kind of ideological framework on everything I read. I think that's the mistake a lot of people make - they think that literary criticism, especially that which comes under the aegis of 'critical theory', has to be ideological. 

To me, it's never ideological. I suppose for some people it is - people both for and against critical theory. I don't read Foucault, Barthes, Kristeva, Derrida or anyone else because I want to subvert the social order. I read them for their ideas, and especially their ideas about literature, because I'm interested in literature. I'm fascinated by post-colonial theory, structuralism, post-structuralism, modernism, post-modernism, etc, but I don't think learning about those frameworks has ever stopped me from really enjoying good literature and good non-fiction texts. 

To be honest, in many ways I see the two fields - literature and literary criticism - as being separate but related. We can enjoy reading literature, and as a completely separate thing, we can enjoy and learn from reading and studying literary criticism and theory. And then, if we choose to, and in the way we choose to, we can relate the two fields to each other. 

Harold Bloom hated critical theory and the ideology often associated with it, that divides the world into oppressors and oppressed. One of his main complaints about it was that it doesn't help us to read more deeply and wisely. He wanted to develop a 'practical criticism' - one that facilitates a deeper engagement with the text - that illuminates the text in the way that the writer of the article I read claims critical theory doesn't. But, even though Bloom is my favourite literary critic, I don't read him because he helps me appreciate literature or be a better reader - at least not primarily ||| I read him because I enjoy his writing. And, as a side-effect, I probably do appreciate certain literature or literature in general more deeply, but it's not a simple reaction. I disagree with or don't understand a lot of Bloom's views, but I enjoy the way he arrives at those views, or the way he elucidates them, because of his amazing erudition and intellect. 

I suppose you could think of it like this ⇾ Bloom is a model reader. We can see him as a mentor. So, the point is not that, after we read Bloom, we go away and apply the framework he has imparted to us on everything we read (which is the way a lot of people seem to think critical theory works) but rather that we use what he has taught us, to read more strongly for ourselves. 

reduction

In his book, The Anxiety of Influence, Harold Bloom writes:

The issue is reduction and how best to avoid it. 

Often our way of understanding or representing ideas or narratives is to reduce them - to simplify them - to make generalisations and abstractions about them.  

One of the meanings of 'comprehend' is to contain or enclose, and sometimes the way we do this is to reduce something. 

Bloom says that we should eschew reduction, because what he is interested in is appreciation (of literature), and reduction diminishes its subject. 

you can see reduction happening in political and ideological discourse and all kinds of media, including books. Even if I agree with side A, in general, and I disagree with side B, I notice that side A will intentionally reduce (and thus misrepresent) the views, ideas, information expressed by side B. It seems to be something we just do. 

We don't see the need to really understand what the other side has to say /// instead, we have to denounce it, dismiss it, and attack it, or use it to attack them. 

As a believer, I'm often struck by how vitriolic books about atheism are, from start to finish. I don't see the point of a lot of those books representative of the 'new atheism'. Because, who is the audience? There are two groups that everyone can be divided into - those who agree with the message of the book and those who don't. Those who agree that God is a delusion, or God is not great, or that faith is, at best, stupid, and at worst malignant and destructive, and those who disagree and believe in God. But you're just not going to win anyone over by telling them how stupid they are or that their cherished beliefs are pernicious and destructive. So, it seems like these books must be written for those who already hold these anti-faith views, but if that's the case, what's the point?

I've got a copy of Sam Harris's book, The End of Faith, and on the front cover, at the very top, is a quote from Richard Dawkins, another famous atheist: 

Read Sam Harris and wake up. 

It's almost funny. I think he's basically addressing an audience of one. As one of the leading atheists he's giving his imprimatur to Harris's book. But it's problematic. Presumably, the people he's saying should wake up are people of faith, but I think that neither his book - The God Delusion - nor Harris's book, are written in a way that is going to win any believer over, and doesn't even really try to. Harris's book is extremely disparaging of Christianity, Islam and their respective scriptures. It's deliberately insulting and sarcastic. I never finished it, just like I didn't finish The God Delusion, even though I began them with great interest in what they had to say. 

I wanted to consider their arguments. But as I read those books, it became very clear that they weren't written for me. For me to accept and consider their arguments, I need to see that they know what they're arguing about. For me, as a believer, to seriously consider an argument against faith, I need the person making that argument to show some understanding and appreciation of what faith is. All I found - this is just my view - in these two books, were misrepresentations about faith and the things associated with it - that faith is irrational and that science provides the kinds of answers we need - that faith and science are opposed to each other. Tell that to the Arabian Muslims who invented algebra and ways of accurately measuring time, and translated the ancient Greek philosophical texts, including those of Aristotle, and made many more discoveries, during the European medieval era, sometimes known as the dark ages. Those advances led to the rennaisance and the scientific revolution and then to modern science. One of the reasons I give that as an example, rather than something related to Christianity, is that I'm a Christian and I want my argument to be rational and based on facts rather than defensive and reactionary. 

To have a dialogue, some kind of understanding or common ground has to be established. If you're not going to give any credit to my view and are going to consistently attack it and try to discredit it from start to finish, it's not just that I refuse to entertain your view, it's that I can't. You're invalidating me and saying I'm stupid - saying that my ideas about reality are ridiculous and delusional - but I'm incapable of taking that view, for obvious reasons. So, I can't hear your argument because it's based on false premises. 

Of course, there are some people who really appreciate books like The End of Faith and The God Delusion. It's interesting to look on goodreads and see how polarised the reception of these books is. There are a lot of 1 star reviews and a lot of 5 star reviews....but I discovered something fascinating when I went through and read some of the 1 star and 5 star reviews. Especially for The End of Faith, a lot of the 1 and 2 star reviews were written, not by believers, as you might expect, but by atheists/ agnostics/ sceptics, who disagreed with different aspects of Sam Harris's approach and his argument. Actually, most if not all of the bad reviews were in that vein....some of them may have been believers, but didn't explicitly say so, but a lot of them explicitly stated they aren't, and the criticism was of the argument made in the book, not the idea that we should question and critique faith, religion and God. 

I couldn't find any five star reviews of the book written by believers, but that's only to be expected.  

acting in good faith

something I've been doing more of lately is reading books and articles that I disagree with. 

everything is open to question, but it's possible to be sure about some things. 

when there's an apparent contradiction in a narrative or an argument or whatever, we generally think that it undermines the message, but what we see as a contradiction could also reflect our level of understanding. 

apparent contradictions can be an indication that we need a more nuanced understanding - that we are seeing circumstances and issues in a too simplistic way. 

One of my favourite illustrations of this is an example from the Old Testament. Zedekiah was the last king of Judah before its people (or most of them) were carried into exile in Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar. Both Jeremiah and Ezekiel (2 of the greatest Old Testament prophets, who were also contemporaries) were prophecying that Jerusalem was going to be conquered by the king of Babylon and that Zedekiah and all the people of Jerusalem were going to be carried into exile in babylon. Zedekiah actually locked Jeremiah up because he wasn't happy about this message, which makes sense given that Jeremiah was prophecying not only the exile of the people, but the downfall of Zedekiah. 

A bit of background though....Nebuchadnezzar had already invaded Jerusalem, taken its king into exile, and it was he who had set Zedekiah up as the king of Judah, but with the condition that he was under the authority of Nebuchadnezzar. But Zedekiah had begun to plot against Nebuchadnezzar with other states. So, one of the subtexts of Jeremiah's message is about acceptance....stop plotting and rebelling and accept the situation you're in. And after nearly all the people of Jerusalem and Zedekiah had been carried into exile in Babylon, Jeremiah continued to convey a similar message in his prophecies. He told the people that, although they would eventually return to Jerusalem, it wouldn't be for another 70 years, so they should settle down in Babylon - make homes, establish relationships, assimilate. I think part of the lesson that God was teaching them is that their relationship with him, and their privilege as God's people, was not about material things - the temple, the rituals, etc that could only be accessed in Jerusalem. They thought being in exile was the end because they had lost everything that they considered good. 

This is how this relates to contradiction ➝ In his prophetic message Ezekiel had said that Zedekiah would die in Babylon but he would not see Babylon. That seems like a contradiction, but it's exactly what ended up happening. When Nebuchadnezzar once again laid seige to Jerusalem and ultimately took control, because Zedekiah had broken his oath of allegiance by plotting with the king of Egypt and other kings, the king of Babylon was particularly brutal in his punishment of Zedekiah. That seems to have been the way though, in those times. Earlier in Israel's history, Joshua was brutal in his treatment of the kings that fought against Israel and lost. 

Zedekiah and his men tried to escape, but he was captured and Nebuchadnezzar had Zedekiah's sons put to death in front of him and then blinded him, carried him in chains to Babylon, where he lived the rest of his life in prison. So, what seemed like a contradiction was not. He didn't see Babylon, but he died there. 

something interesting I discovered....the Japanese word for contradiction contains two characters /// the first character means 'spear' || the second character means 'shield'. 

სიბრძნე

Multiple times in the book of proverbs, wisdom is referred to as female, using the pronouns 'she' and 'her'. 

Wisdom is described as being more valuable than any amount of money, and the key to real success, peace, stability, well-being. 

Wisdom is also very close to God. Proverbs says that:

The LORD founded the earth by wisdom
and established the heavens by understanding. 

As seen in this quote, wisdom and understanding are often paired in the book of Proverbs. 

Wisdom existed before anything else - from the beginning: 

From everlasting I was established, from the beginning, before the earth began.

but there's something interesting. Wisdom played a role in the creation, which is described as follows:

[when God created the world] I was a skilled craftsman at His side, and His delight day by day, rejoicing always in His presence. I was rejoicing in His whole world, delighting together in the sons of men.

so, that breaks the rule about always calling wisdom female, because wisdom was a skilled craftsman. and when you look up the Hebrew lexicon, the word for craftsman is definitely singular and masculine. 

It's mysterious. Of course, wisdom isn't always referred to as female in the book of proverbs. Sometimes it's referred to as a quality or characteristic that we can possess, like knowledge and understanding. But every other time it's personified (which it is a lot), besides this verse, it is referred to as female. 

What it tells me is that wisdom is not limited in the way that mortal human beings are. It is personified as female for a reason, but it's figurative, not literal. Both males and females can be wise. This is all obvious. Something else that may be a bit more controversial but is probably just as obvious is that God is neither male nor female. Even though God is often referred to using the words 'He, His, Him', and that is done for a reason (just like wisdom is referred to as female for a reason), God is not male. God is beyond and above male and female /// He created both man and woman in his image....so women are equally created in God's image, which means that essential feminine characteristics are a reflection of God's characteristics just as essential masculine characteristics are, and essential human characteristics are. 

There are also passages in the Bible that describe God in female terms. A couple of examples:

Deuteronomy 32:18 - 
You deserted the Rock, who fathered you;
you forgot the God who gave you birth.

Isaiah 66:13 - 

As a mother comforts her child,
so will I comfort you;
and you will be comforted over Jerusalem.

điểm

we constantly encounter the end of our lived experience. the power that writers wield is the opportunity to address the reader at that point, because, whenever we read, our whole life so far has led up to that point. 

same with writing. as I write this, writing it is the most recent thing I've done. 

I think my writing actually involves more reading than writing /// that's why I write so slowly. I read over what I've written again and again and then respond to it. 

so, the writer writes at an end point, and the reader reads at a different end point, but in some ways, it's the same point - the reader and writer focused on the same thing. 

preferences

It always interests me, how my views about literature differ so markedly from the scholarly consensus, especially when it comes to the issue of ranking books and writers. Maybe ranking is something that we ought not to do with literature || that's a question for another time || but we do rank literature, and it always seems like I see things differently from the experts. and ranking is the main issue. if some literary scholar - say Harold Bloom - made a list of the books and wrters that he thinks are canonical or valuable, I'm pretty much in agreement with what he writes. It's only when he, or any other scholar, starts to say X is better than Y, that I find myself disagreeing. 

I've written about some examples before....Bleak House is regarded as Dickens's best work, but I don't think so. I much prefer David Copperfield...and guess what - that was Dickens's favourite of his own novels. I've never even finished Bleak House, and I've read around 4 or so of Dickens's other long novels, and I enjoyed them enough to finish them. 

And then, with Dostoevsky, there's virtually universal agreement that The Brothers Karamazov is his best, but, again, I don't think so. I have read Karamazov, and it was pretty good, but, in my view, not as good as The Idiot or Demons (aka The Possessed). Those were powerful and passionate, but Karamazov is more philosophical. I like the fire. That's why Wuthering Heights is my favourite novel and I prefer Dostoevsky to Tolstoy. 

Another example is Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes. It's held in such high regard by the experts. It has a fairly good claim to being the first real novel, as we understand novels, (although, ironically, it can also be read as a story about a man who goes mad from reading too many of that era's equivalent of the novel - the romance....so in many ways it's a critique of the novel). Quite a few writers and scholars regard it as being not only the first novel but the best ever. Harold Bloom writes this about the book and the author: 

The combined influence of Cervantes and Shakespeare over-determines the entire course of subsequent Western literature. A fusion of Cervantes and Shakespeare produced Stendhal and Turgenev, Moby-Dick and Huckleberry Finn, Dostoevsky and Proust. (from Genius: A Mosaic of one hundred Examplary Creative Minds (2002) 

Given how highly Bloom rates Shakespeare, this is quite a statement.

I've read Don Quixote and I enjoyed it, but I didn't love it. It's not one of my all-time favourites. If my preferences matched the scholarly consensus, I think it would be one of my favourites. Same with War and Peace. I was surprised how readable War and Peace was because it's kind of a byword for long and daunting literature. It's definitely worth reading, but I probably wouldn't rate it as highly as the experts. Like Don Quixote, some people regard War and Peace as the best novel ever written, or at least in the top handful, and Leo Tolstoy is among the handful of writers that are the best of the best. 

But it's not just that my preferences differ from literary specialists. A lot of people besides the experts, prefer Tolstoy to Dostoevsky and prefer Karamazov to Dostoevsky's other novels. 

I wonder why we expect that there should be a consensus about these things. Maybe it's me...maybe most people do have views that reflect the consensus, but if the consensus was so clear and absolute, it probably wouldn't change over time, which it does. For example, most people, including literary scholars and critics, now regard Frankenstein as being one of the classics, but for a long time, it wasn't taken seriously. 

so what

I thought I would write a post about things I dislike in academic or non-fiction texts. I'm not going to name texts or writers. 

One thing I don't like is when writers assume that terms we use now meant the same thing in earlier historic periods. I think writers make this mistake when they're too focused on a particular argument they're trying to make. So, they'll grasp at anything that supports their argument. It seems like an insight to them. They think - no one has seen this before because they haven't viewed things from my point of view. And maybe they're right, but why I dislike it when writers do this is that they seem to rely as much on these kinds of movements in their argument as they do on more intuitive and reasonable points - points that a general reader - i.e not a subject matter expert like themselves - would probably agree on. So, they lose me because they're trying to make everything about their issue or area of interest. I suppose that's what you're meant to do when you write a book. But I think the best argument is one that gives the impression of being balanced and gives most weight to points that seem reasonable, instead of issues that are a bit obscure. Delving into obscurity might seem to reflect intelligence and insight, but it can also undermine your argument. 

The other thing I dislike - this one I absolutely abhor - is also related to the writer's perception of their own insight. This one is where the writer does a kind of scholarly detective work - consulting weather charts, diaries, historical records, as well as the literature itself - to then present their argument about what a famous writer's works 'really' meant - what they were actually writing about. This makes me want to scream for three reasons:

1. One of the main factors that endows literature with great power and meaning - what makes it literary - is that the meaning is indeterminate. When you read a good book or a great book, it speaks to you personally...it's like having a relationship. There's a creative tension between authorial expression and reader impression. Any claim that is supposedly definitive, about what the text 'really' means, shows a lack of understanding of the nature of literature. 

2. It's deeply disrespectful to the original writer. 

3. It's very self-serving. The later writer who is presenting their case, often in the form of a purported biography, is claiming some kind of special insight - into not only the works of the author but the author him or herself - that everyone else has missed. I think sometimes scholars can reasonably make that claim....there are some very good and very insightful biographies of great writers. and there's nothing wrong with making claims and backing them up with evidence, but it's that particular approach - the 'detective like' approach that yields supposedly authoritative assertions about what the literary text means, that I don't like. 

આર્ટવર્ક

What is it that makes good art? I don't know but I know that the art I like is simultaneously very realistic and very unrealistic - for example, the work of Claude Monet and Malcolm Liepke. 

in very early primary school - kindergarten, I think - my teacher told my parents that she thought I was artistically gifted

I've never been good though, at art in a conventional sense. I can't draw or paint things that look real. but then, what I've come to realise is that I don't want to draw or paint things that look real. 

I do want to have technical skills though, and I'm trying to develop them by practicing. 

I think art really has to be created in a state of what Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls, 'flow'. It can't be done as a kind of chore, even though we call them art works. 

I've noticed that when art-tubers do a time-lapse of themselves creating an artwork with a voiceover where they talk about different subjects, artistic and not, when they tell you in the description box how long the work actually took, it's often something like 8 hours. 

I was kind of surprised when I first saw something like that because I've seen someone who had had a lot of practice using a tablet and software to draw and created her own OCs (original characters) and animations, etc, and it looked like one of those time lapses...she kept moving between layers and working on different parts, and images kept appearing and disappearing. It was all very fast /// so when I first saw one of these time lapses, I didn't realise it was a time lapse, but then I read underneath the video ￫ actual time to create artwork: 8 hours. 

I don't really get that. I get bored if something takes longer than 10 minutes to draw. But then, when I think about the idea of flow, it makes sense. In the state of flow, you lose all sense of time passing because you're fully engaged in what you are doing. 

Being in a state of flow is the only way to draw or paint anything intricate or technically challenging because the state of flow removes that sense of challenge...it's as if you're completely at peace || you're not stressing about how you're going to do the art work...you just systematically proceed with it, but not in a mechanical way // there's a sense of ease, comfort, joy, even if the drawing/ painting requires a lot of 'work' or is very detailed. 

judgement

strength and weakness....I think at certain times in my life, in certain contexts, when I was part of certain groups, I may have been regarded as weak || and then you get treated differently /// you're not really important

the problem is - and I can't help this - there's something in me that is profoundly strong - something potent and powerful

but when that doesn't translate into the results some people are looking for, they see you as weak, and they're right, but it's not that simple

مسیر

it seems hopeless. the number of compounded problems automatically negates any solution

deceptions

 there are so many deceptions....'across the universe' by Kurt Cobain, when it's actually by Seether || great version though \\\ then Nirvana's 'heart shaped box' by Lana Del Rey, but it's really by Hayley Richman...again a superb version. 

my favourite version of 'heart shaped box' though is the one by Kala Rose. 

Божа!

Spoiler alert:

God wins. Without a doubt, without qualification, without question. 

लिहीत रहा

I keep having to change tactics to keep working on nanowrimo. Like, the other day, I felt like the main theme I had been writing about was becoming kind of exhausted. Then I wrote a bit more about that theme and realised that there was an overlapping theme that was also important. When I say 'important', I mean, in my life. because, that's something else I've found with this project - I'm basically writing about my life. 

but then I found that that new theme kind of petered out as well. there's a lot more that I can write about it, but just not yet. I've introduced the theme and, for now, that's all I want to do. 

So, then I had another idea about how to proceed. my work is divided into chapters, so I had the idea of working on each chapter separately - reading through the chapter and then adding to it, and doing that for each different chapter. I didn't want to start at chapter 1 though, so I decided to start with chapter 7, which is the final chapter I've worked on, although not the final chapter I have in mind. 

Why I say it's not the final chapter I have in mind....I had this idea of structuring my novel around a series of ideas or stages, and I wrote those ideas at the start of the chapter. So, after chapter 7, there are 2 more chapters where I've just written a single word to represent the idea that chapter is going to be about. 

as it's developed though, it's been more chronological - each chapter is primarily about a phase in my life and about an idea or movement secondarily, and I've been pretty flexible about the idea aspect. 

before I started working on each chapter separately, I moved 1 or 2 passages around so that it was more chronological....because I've been working on it ad hoc, I've sometimes written something about different stages in my life in the same chapter. I've probably still done that a little bit. After all, I wasn't planning on making it chronological from the start; it's just come out like that, and, for the moment, that's what I'm doing, but I could change again. Like I said, I have to keep changing tactics. 

тыгылып калды

 I felt kind of stuck in the last couple of days with nanowrimo. I just felt like - I've been writing all this stuff about the theme that my novel is about, and I'm not that motivated to write more about it, because, as it is - in the form that it's in - it's not that great. I suppose it's interesting. I don't really know. I'm probably not the best judge. 

but I thought....I'll just see where I can add a bit more, just to get something written. that's an interesting thing about the way I'm writing this ⇾ I don't pick up from where I left off. I tend to read what I've written and then add stuff in at different points. It's getting a bit confusing though, because I'm forgetting the order of things....not so much the order of things but, what I've written || for example - observations that I've made...when I'm writing, I can't remember whether I made a particular observation before the point that I'm working at or after it....it's all kind of messy, although it's roughly chronological. but yes, I find myself writing something like - X is a recurring theme because it happened then and then, but the problem is the events I'm referring to come later in the story.

anyway, I broke out of being stuck, because I started writing about the same theme I've been sticking to so far, but then I realised there's a big overlap - I realised that there's another major theme infused and intertwined with the theme I've been writing about so far. so it just gives me more to write about. I don't know how I'm going to organise it all or how it's going to come together as a story, but at least I'll be able to keep writing. 

issues

I often find it helpful in dealing with my own issues, hearing what people have written or said about dealing with their own issues, even when (maybe especially when) their issues are very different from mine. 

encouragement that comes from hearing about someone making progress with issues that are different from yours, is a gentler kind of encouragement. advice that relates directly to the problem is often strangely ineffective or useless, or sometimes overly harsh. 

structure

I haven't been writing my blog as much because I've been working on nanowrimo. I'm not on track to meet the goal of 50K words by November 30, but I'm making steady progress and working on my book every day. 

It's different from what I've always thought writing a novel would be like. It's more like I'm writing a kind of non-fiction - depicting my life experience and my thoughts about it, but doing it in a way where I feel free to bring things together that weren't together in my actual life and also to introduce elements of stories from sources other than my life ||| but I'm not really doing so much of those more creative things, actually. 

especially in this first draft, when my writing really starts to flow, it's because I'm writing very directly about my inner and outer experience. that's why it doesn't feel like I'm writing fiction. 

I don't know whether it's convertible into a story/ a novel/ fiction. but I'm encouraged that I've gotten further in writing a novel (what I'm calling a novel) than I ever have before, and, all going well, I will keep going. I might even finish the 50K words by November 30. in any case, I will have a decent draft some time in the next couple of months. 

Hopefully I will be able to shape it as a story as I go - I will be able to fictionalise and storify it. that's what I've been consistently trying to do....that's the idea I start with, but, like I said, when I get going and write a few hundred words, what I'm doing is kind of like what I do in my blog ￫ writing what I think and writing about my life. 

it's different though, in that it has a structure...there is a kind of arc. my blog posts tend not to be related to each other, but the different parts of the book I'm working on are related to each other.  

it's still not really a story, though. 

In a way, writing this is like when I was learning to write a proper essay at uni. I was lucky enough to be taught how to write an essay by an especially brilliant linguistics scholar....she really nailed it, and I will never forget what she taught us because, as an arts student, writing essays was one of the main things I did, so I was able to put into practice what she taught us pretty much straight away, and I've been practicing it and teaching it ever since. 

but I remember the struggle /// having all my ideas about what I wanted to write about, based on my thinking and research...and my thinking isn't structured like an essay, and it was a struggle to manipulate it into that structure ||| I felt that tension. I still feel it, I think. 

and now I have some ideas about how to structure a novel and what a novel is, and I have my ideas about what I want to write about, and I'm producing text, but it's not in a novel form, but that's OK. I keep finding new ways to add to it. I wonder whether what I'm writing is even a novel. I suppose it must be because I'm deliberately conflating and distorting things. I'm using my ability to write in a kind of reflective, thoughtful way add to the text, but I'm cognisant that I'm writing something creative and I can experiment with ways of expressing stuff. 

This is one of the underlying principles of novels and other forms of literature - that sometimes we can express truth more clearly by making something up.

but authors do research to write novels. there's a seam of facts running through the composition.