Aesthetics of Everywhere

Forget writers – few people are even earnest readers of literature. Serious readers are relatively scarce, which might explain why I get excited about meeting and talking to people who share my love for books. There are people who go their entire lives without picking up a novel for pleasure. Maybe we are a postliterature society – sure, we all know how to read, but we opt not to do it. The majority of Americans love the news filtered through the IV-drip of television, which can accompany any activity they find more stimulating than reading the newspaper. Immediate gratification through image, sound, action, flash.

Look at Wikipedia’s predominance. Many turn to it as if it were the source of information, rather than the collectivized and simplified online encyclopaedia that it is. It’s certainly a valuable resource (re-source) but we should not be satisfied, after reading a Wikipedia article, that we really understand anything. There’s added understanding to seek through conversation with someone who has a passion for the topic or a first-hand encounter to share. Read an entire book on the subject. Don’t shy away from thoroughness.

What’s necessary is for someone who can see clearly to draw your attention to your inattentions. (I am ignoring the dotted red line that does not accept “inattentions” as a word.) This is where the literary writer steps in. Reading, the act of sitting with a book in hand, does temporarily remove you from the multitasking march of days. We read when we have time to devote to the act, for instance when we’re waiting for something that cannot be sped up. It’s a recognition that we can go places purely through language. Storytelling’s not dead.

Storytelling has been used throughout human history to narrate life, to give it an order and bestow a moral sensitivity that is necessary to live in a conscious manner. Verbal creation tales are included when I discuss narratives, of course. This is not a question of gods, but it is spiritual. It is the understanding that perhaps meaning can’t be found in a definitive manner; instead, consider that life can be lived meaningfully.

I think my new goal is to restore sincerity to all who have lost it. Didn’t we start off as children, each one of us? When did we get to be so fleeting, sarcastic, vague, distracted?

Oh, and this why I write, why I think writing’s so important.

It’s been rather hectic, as it usually seems to get around this time of year, so since school’s started up again I’ve been doing my reading in the little snippets I can snag between work and classes. I do a disproportionate amount of my reading through Google Reader and Twitter links. O Internet how you so facilitate acts of low commitment. I probably need to kick my mind back into a state of concentration with a giant novel. War and Peace is still largely untouched I’m sad to say. Or at least write more blog posts, because like essays, they’re at least a concentrated meditation on a topic.

Recently finished reading Don DeLillo’s Mao II and even as it drags in places, there are some harrowing scenes of the very real cult of Sun Myung Moon, of fictional terrorist cells, and of characters constantly battling these forces. DeLillo’s anxiety about individualism’s fate in the Western world is pronounced, especially in this novel. It’s the kind of crowd mentality which is attractive to so many that signals a danger to independent consciousness, to free will, and to the mind itself. Sects rely on programming minds.

On the cult of Moon (you may know them as Moonies), I’m no expert. The “new religious movement” of the Korean Reverend Sun Myung Moon is perhaps most visible through mass marriages that he leads. Moon is the one who makes the matches – often the members of his church being married do not see their chosen partner until the day of the ceremony – and these events are huge. Thousands are joined at once, wedding vows conferred in a stadium or other public space.
I do remember a friend pointing out to me a Moonie church – the Unification Church near Adams Morgan on 16th Street – so there is a definite presence here in Washington, D.C. Here’s an article on the Unification wedding that took place at RFK Stadium in 1997 – right in D.C., not that long ago.

Since I’ve not touched much on DeLillo’s Mao II – named after the Warhol prints of Mao Zedong – I’ll at least leave you with a passage, to peak your interest. This is the experience of a father watching his daughter getting married at Yankee Stadium, among a countless throng of others:

When the Old God leaves the world, what happens to all the unexpended faith? He looks at each sweet face, round face, long, wrong, darkish, plain. They are a nation, he supposes, founded on the principle of easy belief… All things, the sum of the knowable, everything true, it all comes down to a few simple formulas copied and memorized and passed on. And here is the drama of mechanical routine played out with living figures. It knocks him back with awe, the loss of scale and intimacy, the way love and sex are multiplied out, the numbers and shaped crowd.

What may be seen as overrated in certain primary-school settings – “free writing” time, stream of consciousness writing, free-association, whatever you call it – may be undervalued as a personal act.

I spill some ink on a few blank sheets… and emerge with a haphazardly-organized set of ideas (okay, more like idea seeds) and a better-organized collection of the week’s input, those jumbled thought-bits that are compacted and wedged into classes. The sounds I gather walking through the city. The tangible transitions from cold A/C’d offices into warm, humid masses of moving air.

It is raw, surely, but it’s usable with reshaping. The ordering’s required because we need to see them placed once those parts have surfaced into our consciousness. They need an organization in the world, whereas before they’re experienced in unconscious immediacy – swirled into an indiscernible mass of being. Once the sensed is made cerebral it takes on form, a psychological mass and so a requisite settling. It’s there and maybe it’s ready to be allowed words.

Started reading through Marshall McLuhan‘s The Medium is the Massage on/off as time dictates and the book comes with my recommendation, especially for aesthetic inspiration or a well-needed conceptual nudge now and then.

Over a year into this blog now, and have I learned anything yet?
In short, yes.

I’ve learned over and over again that success is about showing up. Commit to writing regularly on whatever schedule works for you… mine isn’t even a set time of day or week, though I try to spread them out rather than having bursts of posts followed by a silence. Start writing a post even when your thoughts are half-developed. Having the initial start will prompt you to follow up with research and some deeper analysis. If you’re anything like me, you’ll not want to abandon an entry once it’s there as a draft. Psychologists study the much greater value that people attach to an item they own, known as the “endowment effect” or “status quo bias”, and I think that’s applicable here. To “delete” is so hard. (I often think the Internet has made it so easy to “save” content for yourself online that it has contributed to pack-ratting in new forms. Digg, I’m looking at you. But not only at you.)

Fresh content is important, but make sure it’s not a continuous rehashing of what’s already been said. When re-posting an article or blog post, insert your opinion or take on it. Your readers are following your blog because they value your perspective. Or they mistook you for that other guy.

Also, it’s the Internet, possibilities are wide open, but don’t try to do everything. I’m often guilty – I want to write about everything that catches my interest, which is a lot.
I’m starting to look at stats such as search engine terms to find which posts are bringing in traffic, and it’s primarily the ones related to writers and literature. Take for example my post from 5 months ago on Art Spiegelman’s Maus talk, which is still bringing in new visitors almost daily. Maybe this will help me find my own focus. Since I do spend a lot of my free time reading (and writing about English lit at university), I should set a goal to post more book reviews and analysis.

Although my readership and blog engagement is still getting off the ground, I’m working on being a better blog citizen. I’ve been following many many blogs – you should see my Google Reader, I can’t ever keep up – and I’m now setting a goal to take more time to comment on others’. Bloggers value your input much more than you think. Hint, hint.

This all being said, here’s to the start of another school year for me, and continued blogging for any readers out there in the inter-web-space.

“You like?”

“Yeah, I feel the music. This story’s been told. Here, I’ll tell you why. It’s true, I’ve found the tale, and let me assert that yes, it is wrapped up complete with mind-blowingly packed prose and a plot to end your need to nestle up close to any human. It inhabits the music and it is ecstatic. It rocks all mankind.
Yet meaning chomps at the muzzle, and no one is sad enough to believe in their own ability to translate. Lyrics are pained. They cannot express what they are saying. The artist is the most powerless at times. He is not a first person but a channeler for music. His aural sense can be in-tune or out-of- or raw, utterly raw. It doesn’t make significant difference: his bones and his muscles and his tendons and soul may comprehend while his words fail him. We know it’s there, when we don’t know what it is. Transfer requires no understanding. ‘Share’ everything, right?
This is one narrative that unlocks song.
It’s a constant teetering on the edge. No end exists that you’d want clasp to your chest as ‘meaning.’ The harmonies are bunk, the frets reek of intellectual poverty, and the alcohol’s often drained of content, watered-down.”

So we say, “Just play. Please. I want to hear that song again.”

Ah, the complexity of our languages.

Anyone who has had a foreign language class in earlier years knows that online language translators quickly reveal that they are, well, only human creations… and entirely without the adaptive, context-based understanding we possess (which makes us the big softies we are, ha).

Take a look at what happens when you try to use web-translators for your poetry. Or further, this could be the rumblings of a modern, experimental sort of poésie – you heard it here first! I tried inputting a block of poetry and told Babel fish to “translate” into Russian, French, and Korean.

Russian / русский язык:

Не знает форму, ни правду, как раз функцию.
Я слышал довольно бит о чывстве рта слова
которое иногда мы забываем. Несоответствие
смысловая плоть и internalspace unforgiven.
Путь из их ловушки предательское ползание в
ваши. И вы будете превалированы на для того
чтобы дать вверх, для того чтобы отбелить
belles-lettres. Выйти снова животное проголодал,
толщино задыхающся на время прежде чем эти слова
стали лимитированными, просто производные номеров.

French / Français:

Ne sait pas la forme, ni la vérité, juste la fonction.
J’avais entendu tout à fait un peu au sujet de l’effet
dans la bouche d’un mot que parfois nous oublions.
L’anomalie entre la chair sémantique et l’internalspace
impardonnés. Une sortie de leur piège est un rampement
déloyal dans vos propres. Et vous serez régné au moment
pour se donner vers le haut, pour blanchir le belles-lettres.
Pour se laisser encore qu’un animal est mort de faim,
abondamment haletant pendant un certain temps avant que
ces mots soient devenus limités, simplement dérivés des nombres.

Korean / 한국어:

모양, 도 아니다 진실, 다만 기능을 모른다.
나는 때때로 우리가 잊는 낱말의 입의 감촉에
관하여 조금이 확실히 들리고 있다. 사이
어긋남 unforgiven 의미 살 및 internalspace.
그들의 함정의 탈출구는 당신의 자신으로 믿을
수 없는 기어가기이다. 그리고 당신은, belles-lettres를
희게 하기 위하여 포기하도록 위에 통용될 것이다.
이 낱말이 한정되게 되기 전에 다시 동물을 남겨두기
위하여 굶주린, 시간 동안 두껍게, 단지 수의 유래물 헐덕거리기.

It’d be fairly useless to do more as I can’t read any other languages well enough. Russian, French, and Korean are the main three languages I’m working on. Ignoring the numerous grammatical technicalities that cause issue with these translations, I noticed that “unforgiven” doesn’t seem to translate in either Russian nor Korean directly.

Anyone have a copy of the OED handy? I’m curious about the origins of “unforgiven” – I did, however, stumble across this while doing a quick search online: the Book Scraper tool, for analyzing the occurrence of words across a number of classic works of literature.

Also, if you are reading and have experience with any of the above languages, take a shot at putting the text back into English from these shaky web-translations.

A really well-thought out article called “A book is a place” deserves your attention if you have any interest at all in the roles that different media play.

An excerpt:

…In the course of these experiments I realised that my functional definition of a book was changing again. I was now thinking of a book as a place – a place where readers, and sometimes authors, congregate. Along with that came the realisation that this new formulation required a wholesale re-thinking of the roles of different players.

…With books, as we redefine content to include the conversation that grows up around the text, the author will increasingly be expected to be part of that ongoing conversation and, of course, expect to be paid for that effort.

Writers are increasingly expected to engage (and now have more accessible paths into doing so), and much of that involves just showing up. Remember: the web’s a conversation.

Online chatter… Blog entries, posts to forums, “tweets.”

In writing for social media you must keep in mind the story you’re trying to tell – make it engaging and personal. Posts in various social media may resemble traditional articles, but are actually closer to editorials. Over time, a user’s personality emerges from the unique blend of topics covered and that user’s method of listening and responding in the web space.

Unfortunately, devoting your energy into social media (esp. if your job description lists social media duties outright) can result in a lot of blurring of that line between your personal life and your professional life. It’s something that’s simply more common in these fields that involve Internet communication, marketing, and brand management. I’ve been seeing a lot of this because I do a lot of social media monitoring at my internship. And I spend additional time researching best practices. I’m cool with providing tips for people here – if it results in a single person finding use, I’m satisfied.

Quick, web-friendly takeaway tips for promoting yourself or your company’s brand through social media:

• Keep it concise. People are statistically more likely to read lists, and short ones at that.
• Look good. Most of us are visual learners; hence YouTube’s viral success.
• Provide value. Why should anybody read your blog or follow you on Twitter?
• Engage. There’s no mistake as to why it’s called “social” media. It’s a conversation, made global through the Internet.
• Always assume everything you say online is public. Because most of it is.
• Be on time. By this, I mean – post things as they are relevant, new, and interesting. There’s less time for fact-checking, but there’s also more ability to correct and edit afterwards.

Speaking of being timely, I forgot to mention when it happened that I’ve been writing this blog fairly regularly for the past year now! Cheers!

Just some musing during my re-read of The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien:
High school literature class. Learning the language of archetypes, of parallelism. Listing notes on syntax, emulating the rhetoric, claiming recognition of a “transferred epithet.” Scribbling that in the margin a half-page above an unfinished meditation on juxtaposition of -

A re-read is an instance of
notes expounding upon notes,
a book carrying a weight great
with pen-ink and trailing thoughts.

(Also confer Billy Collins’s poem, “Marginalia.”)

Go here to see the slideshow of the 20 best, ranked by Forbes.
This is pretty neat because I am looking to get out of the DC area in the next few years, mostly because I’ve never lived anywhere else. According to this list, I’d probably have to cross over to western Europe or Canada to achieve the highest quality of life… I don’t know. Anyhow, this does not help to quell my wanderlust. I’m gonna have to take a weekend roadtrip ou deux this summer.

Back to paper-writing. I’ve been just cranking out the pages lately (but of course in a more artful manner than that denotes, I should hope). Oh, and somebody remind me to write sometime about how everything I read seems to converge and allude to each other and music even, music aligns in such concord to the words on the page and the thoughts that seem to emerge everywhere. Almost enough to make one believe there is a configuration natural to living or thought… But I digress; that’s a whole ‘nother post at least. And, o! I have some fresh thoughts on social networks online and offline to expand upon, too. Possibly also a feature post on the musical genre of “freak folk,” in time. There’s a lot of writing to be had here.