When I first was in college in 1983 I had known I wanted to "be a writer" since I was nine years old. But I received a warning through a book by John Gardner called "On Becoming a Writer" at that time. He recalls how he witnessed a gruesome highway accident at one point and was trying to come "to the rescue," but the whole time he was peeling away metal and freeing body parts he kept thinking to himself, "I've got to remember what I'm thinking...I've got to remember what I'm feeling..." According to him, he had programmed himself so much to think like a writer that he couldn't experience anything at face value any more. He says, "Don't let this happen to you." Mostly I look at things through a very different lens, but something I saw yesterday reminded me of his warning.
Recently my brother Greg shared with me a speech on the internet from someone named Slavoj Zizek at an Occupy New York event. I really liked the speech and so yesterday I was looking at clips about him on You Tube for something to comment on in my blog. I found most of the clips pretty mediocre, but I thought it might just be me, which, of course, it is. Then i noticed comments below the film window and one of the comments was, "Why are you watching a facsimile of a film about Slavoj Zizek?" I'm busted again. But I've also been thinking since that happened and I think that's what the comment-writer wanted. I think I have an answer to his question and I think you want to know what it is.
Why do I seek stimuli so I can blog about stimuli? First of all, we live in a world where most people spend all their free time online and I just can't fight that particular trend any more, because I can't stand the loneliness. Second of all, I decided it finally matters to me to publish my writing and blogging is a way of doing it that feels less nepotistic to me than the journals and magazines. All I have to do is get people to read my blog myself. Of course, there's no one else to filter out my bad writing from getting on the net, but maybe I wouldn't want that anyway. As to the content of the blog, I took an art history class at Cabrillo College a little while ago in Aptos CA and I felt I had unfinished business when the class was over. I really loved writing a paragraph or so each about all these different random pieces of art or package culture: in fact I stole this blog's whole concept from "Approaches to Understanding Visual Culture" by Malcolm Barnard, which was one of the main textbooks for the class. I felt I still had lots and lots of art I wanted to comment on. Mostly I use what he would call a very casual hermeneutic analysis: what is "God" telling me through this experience? I'm pretending you want to know.
And now for reason #3: my defense of seeking to experience the world only through extremely mediated experience. Marshall McCluhan says some people prefer to experience art and life though "hot" media, like painting, sculpture, poetry, theatre and architecture, while others prefer "cool" media, like fiction, philosophy, photography and cinema, though what goes in what category is a matter for debate. I feel like a little of both, like I like to experience "hot" experiences through the filter of a "cool" medium, or even a facsimile of a facsimile of one. I think if you've read books on he ancient Egyptians, Chinese or Mayas you'd agree a greeting from beyond the grave can shake off thousands of years of gunk and grab you just as vigorously as if you heard it firsthand today. Part of what I'm dealing with in responding to the question in the comment is precisely such an unmediated experience. Hermeneutics-- which comes from the name of theGreek god Hermes-- means precisely that, that no matter how you remove the message from the receiver, it just adds that much more force to the message when the signal is finally received and recognized, and nothing can stop it from being recognized if the receiver is receptive to it at that moment. The advantage of experiencing art as well as life is that I interpret events in my life as God or the Devil attempting to convey a message to me, but if I try to tell you about it, you might disagree about what God is telling me, so that I might become isolated. However, if I write about what God is telling me through art, you can believe me that "God" is telling me that without having to believe he or she is saying that to you or anyone else. Therefore, if you judge me for it, it's just your problem unless I'm somehow making you listen to me. Anyway, for those of us who write, writing is really hard and I think looking to experience pleasant things in a pleasant way so you can write pleasantly about it is perfectly all right and I contest that everyone who writes does that anyway, whether we're too jaded to admit it or not.
Recently my brother Greg shared with me a speech on the internet from someone named Slavoj Zizek at an Occupy New York event. I really liked the speech and so yesterday I was looking at clips about him on You Tube for something to comment on in my blog. I found most of the clips pretty mediocre, but I thought it might just be me, which, of course, it is. Then i noticed comments below the film window and one of the comments was, "Why are you watching a facsimile of a film about Slavoj Zizek?" I'm busted again. But I've also been thinking since that happened and I think that's what the comment-writer wanted. I think I have an answer to his question and I think you want to know what it is.
Why do I seek stimuli so I can blog about stimuli? First of all, we live in a world where most people spend all their free time online and I just can't fight that particular trend any more, because I can't stand the loneliness. Second of all, I decided it finally matters to me to publish my writing and blogging is a way of doing it that feels less nepotistic to me than the journals and magazines. All I have to do is get people to read my blog myself. Of course, there's no one else to filter out my bad writing from getting on the net, but maybe I wouldn't want that anyway. As to the content of the blog, I took an art history class at Cabrillo College a little while ago in Aptos CA and I felt I had unfinished business when the class was over. I really loved writing a paragraph or so each about all these different random pieces of art or package culture: in fact I stole this blog's whole concept from "Approaches to Understanding Visual Culture" by Malcolm Barnard, which was one of the main textbooks for the class. I felt I still had lots and lots of art I wanted to comment on. Mostly I use what he would call a very casual hermeneutic analysis: what is "God" telling me through this experience? I'm pretending you want to know.
And now for reason #3: my defense of seeking to experience the world only through extremely mediated experience. Marshall McCluhan says some people prefer to experience art and life though "hot" media, like painting, sculpture, poetry, theatre and architecture, while others prefer "cool" media, like fiction, philosophy, photography and cinema, though what goes in what category is a matter for debate. I feel like a little of both, like I like to experience "hot" experiences through the filter of a "cool" medium, or even a facsimile of a facsimile of one. I think if you've read books on he ancient Egyptians, Chinese or Mayas you'd agree a greeting from beyond the grave can shake off thousands of years of gunk and grab you just as vigorously as if you heard it firsthand today. Part of what I'm dealing with in responding to the question in the comment is precisely such an unmediated experience. Hermeneutics-- which comes from the name of theGreek god Hermes-- means precisely that, that no matter how you remove the message from the receiver, it just adds that much more force to the message when the signal is finally received and recognized, and nothing can stop it from being recognized if the receiver is receptive to it at that moment. The advantage of experiencing art as well as life is that I interpret events in my life as God or the Devil attempting to convey a message to me, but if I try to tell you about it, you might disagree about what God is telling me, so that I might become isolated. However, if I write about what God is telling me through art, you can believe me that "God" is telling me that without having to believe he or she is saying that to you or anyone else. Therefore, if you judge me for it, it's just your problem unless I'm somehow making you listen to me. Anyway, for those of us who write, writing is really hard and I think looking to experience pleasant things in a pleasant way so you can write pleasantly about it is perfectly all right and I contest that everyone who writes does that anyway, whether we're too jaded to admit it or not.
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