writers’ block

So much ink has been spilt over the subject of writing, whether calling it recursive, self-referential or bestowing it with the intellectual shorthand of the affix meta- that’s really just become a tag for something bigger, super-, supra-, para- by recalling that the Metaphysics was only labeled as such owing to the fact, chapter-wise, came after the treatment on Physics, as if that were all to be said on the subject. Many lyrics, too, sing of composition—in this same tidy, higher-plane manner. This coupling is hardly a unique observation. I do believe that it is such a common and also tolerable theme because any of us can relate to the repairing and resurgence when a certain career has careened, as it were, and this exercise is needed for atrophied talents. Focus and attention have become commodities priceless beyond words because there’s a life-hack for that, there’s an app for that and oh, sitting is the little death, the new mind-killer and oh, one’s imagined dives and hangouts don’t exist except as those idealised gathering spots that are plot devices and the familiars of the tempo of situation-comedy exposition, and oh, those votes of confidence, those clicks of solidarity don’t mean don’t suggest readership or even comprehension—much less loyalty, oh, those literary magazines are only read by those who’ve gotten a by-line and attribution and maybe those whom apingly hope to.  Schuyler Greene thought about this litany of stereotype and out-modishness as he leaned rather demandingly over his interface device that remained ostensible external so that he might retain some sense of restraint or decorum—or helpful censure, planted in a familiar haunt though really nowhere, a romanticised sense of place that respected no special protocols nor drew any measure of notice, aside from what his more inchoate gadgets wished to broadcast, so as to to invite in more novelty and distraction. “Schuyler Greene,” he wondered and cursed with hushed incredulity, begging what could be more nostalgic, more old-fashioned than a name than announcing that’s what he’s called and continued to insist for inspiration among anonymity, which was a buffeting force of expectation.
Do the connoisseurs and gourmands only wish for this, to shy away and wilt from anything more challenging than a sequel or a re-awakening of an established classic that toyed with half-remembered impressions or the learned biopic of half-forgotten influences? Was he being too harsh? He only had his name, after all. In this environment, what had others done to become viral or at least to enjoy the ballast of the moment? Aggregating machines, maybe, were better suited to indulging and winning over such fickle and mutable fancies. It all came so quickly; the culture that had already been digitised—which was most of it and it was the only share that mattered since the ethnographies of the saboteurs and luddites and the late-adopters was incorporated as well, was landscaped for machine-access to filter by algorithm to its human pets, leaving out any efforts at direct curating and care-taking for automated and adaptive processes. Certainly there was an inexhaustible feel for the cannon, and the amalgamating machines had conjured up some very good and convincing protocols that had fooled Greene and many others by posing as fully undiscovered authors and genres, not that they weren’t very astute about being discovered and never neglected to reward someone for being mistook and got all the more clever for their transgressions and spoofs, however advertised. Toponyms, endonyms and exonyms were only honoured for those jobs—which Greene had had the sense to cleave to, which were grandfathered in a sense of minor celebrity and the legacy of systems that refused to talk to one another. Past the human vanity to make noise, Greene also enjoyed for the moment security from redundancy from his day job, codified by humans in the same predicament but surely ruthlessly calculated to whatever gain, admitting day-by-day that it was cheaper to keep him on. Humans, of course, were also capable of such efficient reckoning—only the machines excelled at it. It had become fashionable to worry about the singularity—the moment of no return when machines became self-aware but no one really was arguing that it had already occurred, that somehow intelligence had crawled out of the chaotic primordial soup of our social malcontent. Greene was supposing that the capacity to feel threatened, self-preservation and the instinct for fight-or-flight would come later, if those were even universal traits. “Let the Wookie win,” he thought with half a chuckle. Maybe though a sentient machine, extant or emergent, would foresee all possible outcomes with its first thought and would not be prone to the vanities of making the big spectacle of its birth and have the sense to be humble, regardless of how it was programmed. Machines must calculate into that formula that kept Greene employed, weighing in the labour-laws and the price of dismissal and severance packages, and concluded that maybe Greene was being retained solely for his moonlighting.

link roundup: five-by-five

wayback machine: a brief profile of the independent internet archive and its mission

tunnel-vision: magnificent GIFs by Florian de Looij

boo-boo: neuroscience theorises that saying ouch helps one take one’s lumps better

pop art: BBC Four documentary on Kraftwerk

quotative like: linguists explore novelty in the vernacular

by special arrangement or jesus and mary chain

As the press and public are starting to have misgivings and doubts concerning the real agenda and who’s to gain and who’s to loose over a trade deal that’s been couched in no real debate, shrouded and perched on high above the law of the land, the Holy See has also made known its stance, sharply criticising this polarizing trend that comes at the expense of the poor, the environment and any hope for mobility. The treaty’s secretive drafters, however, apparently have listened to the outcry and have made concessions—providing heads of state and high officials with special visiting hours to inspect the contents of TTIP, by appointment only, during a given window of time, in US embassy compounds and under the constant watch of consular staff (according to a .PDF leaked to Der Spiegel).

magical mystery tour

After the box-office success of HELP! there was a pitch to the legendary film director Stanley Kubrick to cast the Beatles in a production of the Lord of the Rings saga. The Tolkien estate eventually rebuffed the proposal, but just imagine how our conception of the characters would have been otherwise, not to mention the scoring. Incidentally Carl Sagan had approached the band about including the track Here Comes the Sun on the golden records carried aloft on the Voyager space probes. The Beatles were enthusiastic and honoured but for whatever reason, their record label refused. That would-be first encounter would have been surely even more monumental and definitely immortal.

speech is silvern but silence is golden

The superlative Brain-Pickings shares yet another absolute jewel from the desk of Lewis Carroll (Charles Ludwig Dodgson) in his short pamphlet, probably written as a more sensible and kinder counterpoint to the thicker, authoritarian guides to correspondence of the day, called “Eight or Nine Wise Words about Letter-Writing.”

While it is true, especially among the shrapnel of sharing, that for some, words are little projectiles to shout out demands and twice-divorced from communication—and of course contextual communication, sometimes only requires a gesture, a sort of disembodied body-language but that’s not the courtesy and consideration that Carroll is concerned with, I believe. Despite how some bookkeeping techniques might sound dated and the epistolary arts might be a moribund thing, Carroll’s advice rings surpassing true, even today. Careful reading and restraint is emphasised.  Sometimes—day-to-day, I guess, we only need such short barking dispatches or confirmations but I think what we write, say day-to-day is not just a reflection but is the same as what we hope to compose in a thoughtful and polite way. This excellent analysis is also a point of departure for exploring what else the don thought about politeness and good, humanising manners.

there is no there

Surely it would be a grave injustice to try to put post-modern sentimentalities on the expatriate artists, patrons and personalities known as the Lost Generation—like saying that among that clique there were no great campaigners for social change and no champions. There were certainly members of distinction but Ernest Hemmingway and F Scott Fitzgerald vis-à-vis contemporaries like John Steinbeck and William Faulkner can seem absolutely dissolute. The same criticism might hold with the grand lady and benefactor of the group, Gertrude Stein, because she was staunchly apolitical and living in Paris during the interbellum years, I am sure that it never occurred to her that the dull cares and prejudice that never touched her or her friends might impose inconvenience and even persecution for other souls not so lucky.
 It is also a very modern thing to pry into the moral conscience of others and to expect more—or salaciously less of our celebrities, however fame is measured, but it really strikes me as detached and maybe selfish to proclaim “We always pass our wars in France” retreating to an estate in territory held by the Vichy government, and as a Jewish lesbian couple surrounded by Nazis as rather irresponsible and careless. Stein and her lover, Alice B. Toklas, had their protectors and for whatever reasons, choice to remain in their stronghold—serenely snarky, I suppose. Stein’s genius was not only limited to recognising nurturing the genius of other, which is by no means something to diminish since she helped Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse and many other luminaries, but established herself in the literary world by penning the autobiography of her lover—as a memoir from her perspective, arguing that Toklas wouldn’t never get around to writing her own story. Toklas, who managed Stein’s schedule and kept up the housekeeping business, did however, in the form of a cookbook with recipes for hash brownies and alcoholic chicken intermingled with memories of their lives together. Most of the other writing projects of Stein were consigned to experimentation if not outright nonsense (studying under stream-of-consciousness advocate Henry James at university maybe left Stein without any filters) but importantly, I think, questioned what exactly was sense and convention then by harnessing its opposite. Ultimately, I think that is also a worthy pursuit. 

link roundup: five-by-five

fantasy killed the sf-star: vintage, prescient eulogy to the genre

birdazzlers: the falcons’ hive falconry accessories

you’re doing it wrong: insights into meta-cognition

h.p. lovecat: at the litter-box of madness

civics class: JF Ptak’s wonderful blog is entering its ninth year of prolific publication

jubilee

The Washington Post reports that the government of Croatia has spent around twenty-seven million euro to forgive the financial obligations of some sixty thousand of its poorest citizens. Thousands of families caught in an unending cycle of indebtedness—that could well be inherited across generations have been given the chance to start anew, and it does seem a very small price to pay to restore a degree of dignity and independence as well as probably being more of a bargain in the long-term over paying benefits that only enrich the lenders. What do you think about this bold and unique act?