i'm blogging over at html giant now. you can read my interview with the kickass, smart, charming, and talented jeremy davies.
i've moved to canada.
i'll probably start blogging again here some time soon. maybe. we'll see.
happy new decade, everyone. a new decade. wow.
Showing posts with label things i like or dislike (things i am confused about). Show all posts
Showing posts with label things i like or dislike (things i am confused about). Show all posts
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Monday, November 9, 2009
wittgenstein, emoticons, & the death of email
yesterday, i was schooled by austin choi-fitzpatrick. apparently, email is dead. email is "so 2006." according to choi-fitzpatrick (wtf? i'm citing him like he's the fucking scholar he is), email had it's heyday from 1996-2006. now, email is a dead form. for him, email is only his inbox: subject headings, nothing more. for him, it's all about facebook, text messaging, etc. we, as humans, reduced to 140 characters or less as our mode of communication.
this morning, i read wittgenstein's notes & lectures on aesthetics, psychology, & religion. wittgenstein argues that language is not universal; however, physical reactions are. he talks, at length, about the inadequacy of words such as "beautiful" or "lovely," that "beautiful" comes to represent not what is beautiful but an interjection. he argues,
but this got me thinking about what austin had to say (see here how i've switched to calling him austin): what if we play wittgenstein out to his logical extreme? in this increasingly technologically fragmenting world, what if rather than communicate via facebook or text or even email, we just used emoticons, as our way of expressing emotion & feeling? rather than say, "i had a shitty day," i could just put up a some frazzle faced grumpy tired face? here's the thing, as austin pointed out, we can't just have our 10-20 emoticons. we need combinatory abilities. then, we'll create a new language, one with more capacity for miscommunication & confusion.
one of my colleagues, a philosopher, asked me, as i was thinking out loud about this earlier this morning, what does this reduction of experience into 140 characters do? i had my standard answer, nothing sophisticated or new: well, obviously, it breaks down communication, such that we're nothing but quippy cleverness that generates as many "responses" as possible. real life people, we're bound to disappoint, but on facebook, we're clever.
this is particularly pertinent to these blogs popping up everywhere. i'm a fan of html giant, but what's there is a lot of self-referential cleverness. is big other any different? is my blog any different? no! but you get a bunch of writers in a room together without booze, and what happens? i remember walking around awp, a freaked out zombie, unable to talk to people. i remember walking around &now, eyes racing from person to person, hiding & wanting to be seen. i'd like to blame technology for that, but it turns out i've just got social anxiety. but the thing is that everyone today has social anxiety, and that's something for reals we can pin on technology. are you cooler than your facebook persona? that's the real question.
and as for email, i love email. i have long email exchanges with many friends. it's my preferred mode of communication. i mean, i'd love to sit & talk to most of these people, but email gives me time to think over things, ruminate, delete, cut & paste, etc etc etc. that, & i don't actually have to leave my house.
this morning, i read wittgenstein's notes & lectures on aesthetics, psychology, & religion. wittgenstein argues that language is not universal; however, physical reactions are. he talks, at length, about the inadequacy of words such as "beautiful" or "lovely," that "beautiful" comes to represent not what is beautiful but an interjection. he argues,
would it matter if instead of saying 'this is lovely,' i just said, 'ah!' & smiled, or just rubbed my stomach? as far as these primitive languages go, problems about what these words are about, what their real subject is, don't come up at all.whereas i get wittgenstein's point--words like beautiful or lovely are at times empty, they come to mean much less than what we mean them to mean--i don't think we could simply substitute a grunt or a physical action. and i agree that words like "beautiful" never conjure up the same thing to any two people, that does not make the word itself--or words in general--obsolete. after all, facial expressions, gestures, etc. can be just as misleading, if not more so, than words.
but this got me thinking about what austin had to say (see here how i've switched to calling him austin): what if we play wittgenstein out to his logical extreme? in this increasingly technologically fragmenting world, what if rather than communicate via facebook or text or even email, we just used emoticons, as our way of expressing emotion & feeling? rather than say, "i had a shitty day," i could just put up a some frazzle faced grumpy tired face? here's the thing, as austin pointed out, we can't just have our 10-20 emoticons. we need combinatory abilities. then, we'll create a new language, one with more capacity for miscommunication & confusion.
one of my colleagues, a philosopher, asked me, as i was thinking out loud about this earlier this morning, what does this reduction of experience into 140 characters do? i had my standard answer, nothing sophisticated or new: well, obviously, it breaks down communication, such that we're nothing but quippy cleverness that generates as many "responses" as possible. real life people, we're bound to disappoint, but on facebook, we're clever.
this is particularly pertinent to these blogs popping up everywhere. i'm a fan of html giant, but what's there is a lot of self-referential cleverness. is big other any different? is my blog any different? no! but you get a bunch of writers in a room together without booze, and what happens? i remember walking around awp, a freaked out zombie, unable to talk to people. i remember walking around &now, eyes racing from person to person, hiding & wanting to be seen. i'd like to blame technology for that, but it turns out i've just got social anxiety. but the thing is that everyone today has social anxiety, and that's something for reals we can pin on technology. are you cooler than your facebook persona? that's the real question.
and as for email, i love email. i have long email exchanges with many friends. it's my preferred mode of communication. i mean, i'd love to sit & talk to most of these people, but email gives me time to think over things, ruminate, delete, cut & paste, etc etc etc. that, & i don't actually have to leave my house.
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
On Regrets
This semester, I taught Jane Gallop's FEMINIST ACCUSED OF SEXUAL HARASSMENT, which is a very provocative book on many different levels, but I won't go into that now. After reading the book, I emailed Gallop & asked if she'd be willing to field some questions from my students later in the semester. She graciously accepted. So that's the back story.
One of the questions the students asked was, "If you could change one thing about your memoir, what would it be?" Gallop responded, "Honestly there hasn’t been one thing I’ve thought of changing. I’m not that kind of writer. I go on and write new books, but I don’t think about doing over those I’ve published. Which doesn’t mean I think they’re perfect, but that I think nothing is perfect. I think every book is a document of its moment in time, with the perspective of that moment."
Whereas this response received mixed responses in class, as a writer, I am quite honestly in awe of her point of view because I am "that kind of writer." I wish I could rewrite most of PARABOLA and delete a great portion of CHANGING. And they were only published within this last year! I can't even imagine what I'll think in a few years. Or a decade. Whereas these books are documents of their moment in time--my time--and I can appreciate that, it's for precisely that reason that I am most regretful for their existence.
I think it's brilliant that Gallop can think this way. I am humbled by her confidence and wise perspective.
One of the questions the students asked was, "If you could change one thing about your memoir, what would it be?" Gallop responded, "Honestly there hasn’t been one thing I’ve thought of changing. I’m not that kind of writer. I go on and write new books, but I don’t think about doing over those I’ve published. Which doesn’t mean I think they’re perfect, but that I think nothing is perfect. I think every book is a document of its moment in time, with the perspective of that moment."
Whereas this response received mixed responses in class, as a writer, I am quite honestly in awe of her point of view because I am "that kind of writer." I wish I could rewrite most of PARABOLA and delete a great portion of CHANGING. And they were only published within this last year! I can't even imagine what I'll think in a few years. Or a decade. Whereas these books are documents of their moment in time--my time--and I can appreciate that, it's for precisely that reason that I am most regretful for their existence.
I think it's brilliant that Gallop can think this way. I am humbled by her confidence and wise perspective.
Friday, March 13, 2009
honesty
Yesterday morning, I saw this interview with Jonathan Safran Foer, and it's stuck with me ever since. Think what you will of Foer, but when asked about his writing, he said that his main goal is to write honestly, from a place of honesty.
So obviously, this made me wonder about my own writing. While I was in grad school, this was very important to me: to write an authentic story, not necessarily a realist story but one that conveyed an honesty. So I wrote PARABOLA and CHANGING. But since then, this need for honesty hasn't been a concern. At all. It's as if I needed to do it, and once done, it was done. That was that. The summer after grad school, I wrote THE EVOLUTIONARY REVOLUTION (which will be out with Les Figues in 2010). I had no desire for honesty. I just wanted to have fun. This, of course, does not mean that the novel is dishonest or even that it doesn't show authentic emotion (I'm talking more about process here than product), but I simply stopped caring about honesty. (This brings me another point, which I'll blog about some other time dealing with genre. I often call this a science fiction novel, but when pressed on, I have to admit that no, it's not science fiction at all. It just has non-realist characters & elements: a two headed boy, girls with wings on their thighs, an earth composed of only water, etc. This doesn't really make it science fiction though. It makes it fabulous.) I'm currently in the copy-editing stage with this book, and now, as I read it over again, even though I was unconcerned with honesty, there is a lot about humanity in there.
But moving on, last summer, I wrote INVISIBLE WOMEN (coming out with a kickass web-based version with StepSister Press in Oct. 2009). My goal here was simply to converse with Calvino's INVISIBLE CITIES, only instead of cities, women. Instead of Kublai Khan & Marco Polo, Freud & Lou Andreas-Salome. Again, I had no desire for honesty. I wanted to play, have fun, and even though honesty wasn't the concern, reading over the ms, there it is again.
And moving on again, this past winter break, I wrote OLD CAT LADY. (Don't worry. That ms doesn't have a home, lest you think everything I write finds a publisher, unless you are a publisher & want to publish my book. Then, by all means...) With this book in particular (it's a choose-your-own adventure love story), I actually tried not to be honest, but there's something about multiple endings that--whereas it's entirely unreal--is very honest. The honesty lies in the possibilities, the small choices, we obsess over, the fact that we all have regrets, desires for do-overs, mourning the loss of some small choice made wrong.
As a writer who's not trying to write honestly or even from a place of honesty, there it is. It crops up when you're not looking. So then, is Foer wasting his time focusing on the honest? In fact, if you're a writer, is it really even possible to write dishonestly? It doesn't matter how realist or fabulist your writing is, this honesty , this desire to convey some sort of truth or authenticity, keeps emerging. If this is the case, why Foer? Why waste your time trying to write an "honest" novel? Why not just write?
So obviously, this made me wonder about my own writing. While I was in grad school, this was very important to me: to write an authentic story, not necessarily a realist story but one that conveyed an honesty. So I wrote PARABOLA and CHANGING. But since then, this need for honesty hasn't been a concern. At all. It's as if I needed to do it, and once done, it was done. That was that. The summer after grad school, I wrote THE EVOLUTIONARY REVOLUTION (which will be out with Les Figues in 2010). I had no desire for honesty. I just wanted to have fun. This, of course, does not mean that the novel is dishonest or even that it doesn't show authentic emotion (I'm talking more about process here than product), but I simply stopped caring about honesty. (This brings me another point, which I'll blog about some other time dealing with genre. I often call this a science fiction novel, but when pressed on, I have to admit that no, it's not science fiction at all. It just has non-realist characters & elements: a two headed boy, girls with wings on their thighs, an earth composed of only water, etc. This doesn't really make it science fiction though. It makes it fabulous.) I'm currently in the copy-editing stage with this book, and now, as I read it over again, even though I was unconcerned with honesty, there is a lot about humanity in there.
But moving on, last summer, I wrote INVISIBLE WOMEN (coming out with a kickass web-based version with StepSister Press in Oct. 2009). My goal here was simply to converse with Calvino's INVISIBLE CITIES, only instead of cities, women. Instead of Kublai Khan & Marco Polo, Freud & Lou Andreas-Salome. Again, I had no desire for honesty. I wanted to play, have fun, and even though honesty wasn't the concern, reading over the ms, there it is again.
And moving on again, this past winter break, I wrote OLD CAT LADY. (Don't worry. That ms doesn't have a home, lest you think everything I write finds a publisher, unless you are a publisher & want to publish my book. Then, by all means...) With this book in particular (it's a choose-your-own adventure love story), I actually tried not to be honest, but there's something about multiple endings that--whereas it's entirely unreal--is very honest. The honesty lies in the possibilities, the small choices, we obsess over, the fact that we all have regrets, desires for do-overs, mourning the loss of some small choice made wrong.
As a writer who's not trying to write honestly or even from a place of honesty, there it is. It crops up when you're not looking. So then, is Foer wasting his time focusing on the honest? In fact, if you're a writer, is it really even possible to write dishonestly? It doesn't matter how realist or fabulist your writing is, this honesty , this desire to convey some sort of truth or authenticity, keeps emerging. If this is the case, why Foer? Why waste your time trying to write an "honest" novel? Why not just write?
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