The READIN Family Album
Me and Ellen and a horse (July 20, 2007)

READIN

Jeremy's journal

If you take away from our reality the symbolic fictions which regulate it, you lose reality itself.

Slavoj Žižek


(This is a page from my archives)
Front page

Archives index
Subscribe to RSS

This page renders best in Firefox (or Safari, or Chrome)

Saturday, May 7th, 2011

🦋 Dogwood Funeral

One of my very favorite-ever pictures of myself is this one, taken 8 years ago, when Sylvia was 3 and my parents were visiting -- I believe it was their first visit at our new house, the house we live in today. My dad took this picture of 3-year-old Sylvia on my shoulders, entranced by the dogwood blossom.

Every year since then, the dogwood has produced fewer blossoms, fewer leaves; and this year it is well and truly dead.

I spent some time this afternoon cutting off its limbs. For Sylvia's documentation of the process, look at our family album.

Update -- a year later, it is down.

posted afternoon of May 7th, 2011: 1 response
➳ More posts about Sylvia

🦋 Inspiration, Perspiration

A question I need to ask myself about The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind: What does it mean for me to say I like this book, to say that it has influenced my thinking?

I read a lot of novels and stories, and the notion of being influenced by a book I've read is a familiar one to me in the case of fiction -- it means the images from the story have become part of my intellectual currency, part of the landscape of imagery on which I live my internal life... Jaynes' book is clearly not a novel; in order to assimilate his imagery do I need to make the assertion that I believe his psychological theory to be true?

That would be a difficult assertion for me to make. I am not a historian or a neurologist -- while some of the historical and neurological evidence he lays out to back up his theory sounds convincing, some sounds strained, I don't ultimately have the background to judge it valid or not. I appreciate his literary analysis of The Iliad -- it greatly enriches my reading of the poem -- but have trouble accepting that as the basis for a historical theory of consciousness. So I am going to go with the much weaker assertion that Jaynes' model resonates with me: that it gives me a plausible means of understanding my own consciousness, one that matches up with the moments of inspiration which have been part of my experience.

And ultimately that is really what I'm looking for -- a way to understand inspiration. What I'm looking for is a way to write, and to write I need inspiration. The idea that the inspiration coming all-too-seldom to me is the pre-conscious voice of an internal God, and that the perspiration necessary to turn that voice into writing is the process of giving birth to consciousness, well... it works for me. YMMV. (And note, this blog post like most of my posts is almost completely inspiration-free -- a couple of wording choices may have the freshness of inspiration, but in general it is written self-consciously, a product of striving to get at the source of inspiration... That is for me a necessary part of the process.)

posted morning of May 7th, 2011: 2 responses
➳ More posts about The Bicameral Mind

Thursday, May 5th, 2011

🦋 Varieties of Religious Experience: Prophecy

I've been rereading Julian Jaynes' The Birth of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind -- a book which I read shortly before I started blogging about reading and which has pretty strongly influenced my ways of thinking -- and thinking there is a lot I want to write about it; but nothing is coming together yet when I sit down to write about it. Instead I want to quote a passage from another book, from William James' The Varieties of Religious Experience, a passage which surprised me when I happened across it this afternoon.

I was raised a Quaker but never really learned much about George Fox. I guess to the extent that I have any image of him, it is as an ethereal, meditative pacifist, a thoughtful, reflective man. Below the fold, James quotes a passage from Fox' journals which shows him in full-on bicameral, hallucinatory prophet mode. Check it out.

posted evening of May 5th, 2011: 1 response
➳ More posts about Varieties of Religious Experience

Wednesday, May 4th, 2011

🦋 Chauvet Lions

Alas! It looks like Sylvia and I are not going to make it in to the city to see Cave of Forgotten Dreams before the end of next week, when its run will be ending. I am hoping against hope that it gets a broader distribution, either now or at Oscars time -- how could something like this not get nominated? If not, well, I guess we'll watch it at home, without 3D... Julian Bell's review in the current NY Review of Books makes it sound unmissable.

posted evening of May 4th, 2011: Respond
➳ More posts about The Movies

Tuesday, May third, 2011

🦋 I'll believe in anything they tell me how to think.

The Cars have a new record out, Move Like This; and it is just marvelous. You can (for the time being) stream it free from their facebook page.

Update: Seriously -- what a great record!

posted evening of May third, 2011: Respond
➳ More posts about Music

Sunday, May first, 2011

🦋 Ernesto Sabato 1911-2011

Read what inspires passion in you; this is the only thing that will help you bear existence.

-- Ernesto Sabato
Before the End

Ernesto Sabato died yesterday in Buenos Aires, 99 years old. He lived a truly remarkable life and left behind three novels reputedly in the top echelon of 20th-Century literature, El túnel, Sobre héroes y tumbas, and Abbadón el exterminador -- I have not yet read them, I am going to make a top priority of correcting this lack.

Sabato also leaves an important legacy in his directorship of CONADEP, the Argentine National Commission on the Disappeared, committed to documenting the abuses of the junta.

posted morning of May first, 2011: 3 responses
➳ More posts about Obituaries

Saturday, April 30th, 2011

🦋 Heirloom

This is my grandfather's violin, which I've been playing (with significant interruptions) since I was 12 years old or thereabouts. Today I gave it away, to my daughter. A couple of thoughts --
  • Wow, Sylvia is playing a full-size violin now! It seems like the transition from ¼-size did not take a very long time.
  • I have really switched over pretty completely to the Stroh fiddle in the year or so I've had it. It feels like my native instrument now. I was playing this violin with Bob and Janis earlier today and noticing it felt a little foreign, the sound was not the Stroh sound which I have acclimated to.
I took the pickup off; if you're looking for a cheap Barcus Berry transducer to mount on your violin, give me a holler. It is nothing fancy but it served me well. Of the two stickers on the case, Sylvia will be keeping "Katze und Mädchen, ein komisches Paar" and getting rid of "Future Corpses of America" -- probably a wise decision. Need to get a better bow for Sylvia as I cannibalized the good bow for my Stroh fiddle.

Sylvia was going through the stuff in the outer pocket of the case and found sheet music for "Old Joe's Hittin' the Jug", which I had forgotten I had, and the dvd of Elixirs and Remedies. (Which, nice, I'm watching now.)

posted evening of April 30th, 2011: 2 responses
➳ More posts about Fiddling

🦋 4/30, 5/1

So tomorrow is May Day, International Workers' Day; it is also the anniversary day of St. Walpurga's canonization, making this evening Walpurgisnight. Hope the occasion finds you dancing naked and setting fires.


(I did not know this: St. Walpurga lived in the Ⅷ C. ad and was an English missionary for the Roman church in central Europe, evangelizing to the pagans of the Frankish empire. She is credited as being the first female author in England and in Germany.)

posted morning of April 30th, 2011: Respond
➳ More posts about Birthdays

Sunday, April 24th, 2011

🦋 Not understanding the dialog

While we were in China, 20th Century Fox's Rio had its premiere worldwide. By happy coincidence, Michael's House, where we were staying in Beijing, is right around the corner from the China Film Art Research Center and its attached first-run theater; so Sylvia and I got to watch Rio dubbed into Chinese. (To be specific, dialog was dubbed into Chinese; song lyrics were left in English and subtitled.)

It was, well, a really good movie to watch in a language you don't understand. The plot and characterizations were broad enough, the motivations and emotions corny enough, that we had no trouble following the story by just watching the zany, pretty charming animation -- and I'm pretty sure I would just have found the dialog and the non-visual jokes annoying, that they would have hampered my enjoyment of the movie.* And watching it in a language you don't understand is way better than watching it with the sound turned off -- the clues you get from gibberish dialog about who is speaking and what their mood is, and the clues you get from the soundtrack about the direction of the movie, are important.

(I wondered, and have no idea, whether the Brazilian characters were speaking Chinese with a stereotypical Portuguese accent.)

* (Sylvia enjoyed the movie in Chinese but wants to see it again in English. She will probably get more out of the jokes than I would.)

posted evening of April 24th, 2011: Respond
➳ More posts about Language

🦋 The Hard Sell

A story idea (or, well, a character idea -- nothing happening in the story, yet) that developed in China as I interacted with vendors at the Shanghai textile market. I was not really there to buy anything, just keeping Ellen and Sylvia company in their hunt for silk...

So the idea is, there's this character, a sexually/interpersonally-frustrated American businessman who spends time in China working for his company. Not really sure of the details of this, possibly I would model him on a British expatriate we met in Suzhou who had lived there for several years doing marketing for a British telecommunications firm. I think the character's name is Morris Babel, just because I was reading 100 Years of Solitude recently and thinking what a great character name that would be, and it seems to work for this character. Babel's business does not involve textiles but he develops the kink of hanging around the fabric and clothing markets having people sell to him -- the salespeople, who are generally attractive young women, make eye contact, greet him, ask him to look at their wares, and if he pauses to take a look, aggressively market the merchandise, pulling him in and connecting with him, or creating the appearance of a connection. Babel finds this addictive and returns daily to the markets, buying clothing and fabric and trinkets he does not have any use for in exchange for this experience of feeling wanted.

It seemed to me at the market like this form of direct personal marketing was the primitive form of the advertising industry I have been exposed to all my life in America, probably (almost certainly) more effective on a per-exposure basis than mass media advertising but of course much less efficient in terms of money, since labor is involved in each exposure.

posted morning of April 24th, 2011: Respond
➳ More posts about Writing Projects

Previous posts
Archives

Drop me a line! or, sign my Guestbook.
    •
Check out Ellen's writing at Patch.com.

What's of interest:

(Other links of interest at my Google+ page. It's recommended!)

Where to go from here...

Friends and Family
Programming
Texts
Music
Woodworking
Comix
Blogs
South Orange