Shut up Head!

So, I'm really tired and don't feel like blogging, but I'm afraid I'll forget the things I've been thinking about this evening if I wait til morning. Plus, Happy Valentine's Day from the future.

I FINALLY finished What is Literature? by Jean-Paul Sartre. As you may recall, if you've been sticking with this blog from way back when, I started this book, forever ago. Well, it was hard for me to read post college because the French are extremely esoteric or at least the translators are. So their books are often way more difficult to read while fatigued than the Germans, at least that's been my experience and that seems to fit with the cultural stereotypes as well.

To be honest, I only read 3/4 of the book because the last quarter is specifically addressed to the French writer in 1947, which, happens to be nowhere near me, so I decided to skip it, even though, yeah yeah, I probably could've learned something from it. Well shit, I'm in bed and the book is across the room, so perhaps detailed reactions etc will have to wait for another post. But as you also may recall, I really enjoyed the first half of the book where Sartre has this great distinction between poetry and prose and the use of words and language etc. For everybody's sake, I think I'll make a brief outline for this post, to help me stay on track.

1) Sartre's use of words (ok I just got distracted re-reading old posts to see if I've discussed this before) I think I promised to, but never did. My theory on my own use of words and why I always misunderstand/am misunderstood.

2) my growth as a writer eerily paralleling the historical progression of literature Sartre outlines in the third quarter of his book. (this will have to wait until I have the book in my hands as opposed to across the room)

3) thoughts on community size, as it relates to government, literature and cultural saturation, the need to categorize and therefore classify people (the myth of a classless society), how this all ties in with ethics (prompted by thoughts of 1, 2, many).

I think those three will be good enough for now. There were more, but I have Alzheimer's and what I've remembered is enough to make me not feel bad for letting it all go.

Ok, Numero Uno:

Recall from my previous quotations of Sartre about the difference in language use between prose and poetry. Gross summarization, Prose=words used as signs Poetry=words used as objects/sounds

Ok, well I often get in vociferous arguments with friends, family, and strangers that often are entirely due to the fact that we aren't using language the same way. This started most noticeably in high school where I could almost universally get defeated in debate over some technicality or inconsistency in my argument. This was the main thing that has made me skeptical of a life in law. While I've improved my ability to argue, I can tell I still have that weakness and continue to use words in the same way I did in high school.

My theory, is that as an extremely sensitive (not romantic, just sensitive) person, I tend to use words, certainly as Sartre says they are used in prose (or in normal conversation for that matter) as signs. However, while most people's word use acts as sign pointing to the commonly agreed objects, like bike referring to the object with two wheels and a handlebar. I find my own word use tends to refer more to an emotional state I've associated with the word. (No wonder I'm impossible to understand, right?) Now this isn't completely crazy, here me out. I think being sensitive also means you have a fairly well established ability to empathize. So, my word use often refers to not purely MY emotional state but a more general 'agreed' or common emotional state. Should I clarify emotional state?

By emotional state I mean, your feelings, perceptions, associations, psychological relationship to whichever object, the word normally refers. So for example, a normal person would use the word bike to refer to the two-wheeled machine, and would use the word bike when trying to communicate about the two-wheeled machine. With me? Pretty straightforward.

The difference I perceive in my own word use, is that sometimes I will use a word, like bike, to not necessarily communicate any thing to do with a two-wheeled machine, but instead to communicate fondness for a recreation, nostalgic childhood affiliation, or general unattached affection. Do you see how all of those things can be tied into the word 'bike'? So, I catch myself (this is NOT on purpose) using bike in a situation that has nothing to do with bikes, because I'm not talking about wheeled objects, I'm talking about childhood affiliation. (does this mean I speak with an even further removed metaphorical language? weird). Anyway, I catch myself doing this a lot and most of the time, it confuses people. I don't know why I do it, I think it is because I do see words as colored with feelings, emotions, and so many more things than the object.

Actually, I think everyone does this, but perhaps just not to this extreme. Like for example, think of when you get angry with someone and intentionally try to hurt them with your words. You can a) call them names b) bring up shameful or stupid things in the past c) threaten them with some sort of punishment but what are you really doing? Do you actually think that this person is an anus? Does it make ANY sense in an argument to dig up unrelated past events? and are you really never going to talk to them again? Obviously, none of these things are true, and obviously in this situation you are using your words metaphorically. But you can see how those words are not acting to refer to the objects that they 'actually' mean, you're using them to evoke a feeling in the other person. You're calling them an asshole, not necessarily because they are one, but being one makes one feel bad (you hope, to have the intended effect). Is this making any sense?

Ok, well, I sort of communicate in this manner all the time. And, for all the confusion and misunderstanding, I kind of really like using words that way. I'm aware of it and I'm not gonna stop. Words refer to feelings, not things. The only reason, this mode of communication SORT OF works, is because of empathy and the sensitivity to shared feeling associations to certain words. Like, I'm sensitive to the fact that you look fondly on riding a bicycle as a child, and so can select bicycle as the word to communicate nostalgic happiness. Haha, I feel like I'm admitting I'm crazy.

Wow, that tired me out more than I thought. Well we're skipping two anyway.

Numero Tres:

I'm not sure I have the energy for numero tres. So this might just be little notes to remind me what to fill in later.

New Zealand is small and easy to govern. There aren't any "greats" in literature like there were in the past several centuries, I attribute this to everyone becoming a writer (literacy a bad thing? haha, kidding) just like Walter Benjamin talks about in Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction about how the cheap camera made everyone a photographer, or the photograph made everyone an artist, or whatever. I can't remember exactly, but it was this democratization of art, that suddenly saturated the world of art. And Benjamin's conclusions/opinions aside (I don't really know for sure what they are, he's tricksy), I'm opposed to this. Is this because I'm in a pseudo-aristocracy (oh shit, that was supposed to be explained in numero dos, but we skipped it, so try to re-read this post after next post, please). But, the general feeling I have of this day and age of literature, art, and yes, even academia, is this overwhelming feeling of lost, and lostness, and an inescapable milieu. Yes, Sartre, being situated is ok and inescapable, and yes, Sartre, the adolescent writer writes to escape his milieu, but what happens when everything you write ALWAYS shoves your milieu right back in your face and that milieu is such god awful mediocrity!? There's a craving for direction, but nobody can decide on a direction and we still have a sizable constituency arguing against the possibility of a responsible direction. What the hell?

How am I supposed to write? Who am I supposed to write to? To write is to commit to at least the idea that you can make a difference (he says that somewhere early on) but in such a saturated market of writers, how the hell does one go about making a difference? Especially when you have to wade through tons of shit to find a half-decent contemporary book out there. Perhaps, it's all there and I just dislike the current style. hah. But seriously, I think there's just too much, too much everything, choice in jeans, writers trying to do their thing, too many people.

Whoa, I guess this is ethically dangerous, but I have to pursue it. Doesn't a society get too big? Like, can you reach a critical mass of independent minds/voters that can actively and responsibly participate in governing themselves? I suppose that's why we graduated to elected democracy, but are we getting too big for that? I mean it worked in the past when you only had an elite ruling class, bourgeoisie, aristocracy, what have you, governing and any one else in the 'society' was just labor or consumer or whatever. (it worked, not that it worked well, or ethically) but what I mean is that government could operate because those who were included in running it was small, the unethical part was that it governed more than just those responsible for governing. So is most of our political structure overblown? Do we need to downsize? But what of community, it doesn't change the literary saturation that bothered me to begin with. There is no escaping the global community and the like. And I suppose, I can't argue for limited literacy (although, its happening whether any argues for it or not).

I guess what I'm really asking is, where is the intellectual elite? Everyone has become "elite" in their little "specialization" which pretty much negates any elitism, it's just fragmentation then...and as an independent mind (heh, I hope?) I cringe at this realization, but I'm longing for some leadership. Which, I think affirms/confirms my idea that we're just really lost. So I kinda forget how this related to limiting community size, in order to maintain ethics and how it would somehow improve the literary condition...

I just realize that I don't know enough to get us out of this mess and so I'm looking for help and I don't want to despair at the thought that nobody knows how to get us out of this mess. (they don't need to know they know either, they just need to do what they do and have it be it)


this is a pretty long heavy post for having been so tired, so I think I'll just hit it and quit.

Oh but actually just kidding. In honor of Valentine's Day, I will reproduce my favorite Valentine's Day poem that I came across a few years back and still delights me to no end:

It's so nice
to wake up in the morning,
all alone
and not have to tell somebody
you love them
when you don't love them
any more.