T E X T this

Really, these are not rants. They’re very much sane. And very much honest. And there might be some lyrics in there, so cheers! to selling one’s soul, draining one’s “life” reservoir in order to fill up the “art” one. I will leave a literate landfill of broken and fragmented thoughts behind, for experts to sift through. Might as well point them in the right direction, eh?

Tues, Feb 12, 2008, 10:52 a.m.
- I love your brittle, bleached teeth that will fall out prematurely. I love your black lungs that can’t inhale without spasming into a throat-ripping cough. I love your fake hair that you have to keep frying because the healthy, natural look is so cliché and boring. I love your jeans that are not worth two hundred dollars for which you’ll gladly pay without batting an eyelash, you Citizen of Humanity, you, with your neverending debt and your neverending legs with the varicose scars, and your neverending sleep with its snores and farts and twitches and adorable cheek creases from your pillow. I love your terrible diet that you don’t even care about changing and the exercise and activity that you don’t even care to attempt, except for those adorable sit-ups on your living room floor and that little extra skip in your step that happens when you get excited about something, like the trip from your kitchen to your bed, and how best to shorten it and fast forward to the sex that you want so badly sometimes[...]


Tues, Feb 12, 2008, 11:01 a.m.
- I love all that, and the long socks, doubled always – and the long-necked sweaters, and the long face when I tell you “I Love You” – and your short patience, and you’re shorter than me and that’s very cute, and the short shorts that you’ll wear in the summer for those short-lived flings and their even shorter promises and the short sun and the short fun and the short life that will end before you know it, and your short list of accomplishments. And the short deliberation on Judgment Day, deciding whether you will float or burn – I will wait for you in the flames with my pitchfork and my hooves and my black, soulless eyes – I will burn here for all eternity so that one day my Queen Katie* can join me. I love your sin and vice that is just an escape hatch, a drug to hide the fact that you are the most wonderful person underneath it all – you’re just ashamed of it. I love your blindness and your cluelessness. Who else could? Who else will? I really hope you read this. I love that you won’t, because you already know these things – like you already know that I LOVE YOU.

Where is the line between "life" and "art" anyway? The Romantic poet William Wordsworth, in a Prelude to his work entitled Lyrical Ballads, proclaimed that, within it, he sought to recreate the language of real men: the common man, the rustic, the creature closest to nature because he didn't pause to reflect upon his diction, did not aspire to adhere to an accepted aesthetic measure of expression, a man who simply existed and spoke and did not give a single thought as to how he said something, only what was being said. Mainly, Wordsworth was reacting against Alexander Pope's declaration, in his Essay on Criticism, that a poet should aim to present some truth or insight that was commonly accepted but "ne'er so well expressed." A classic example of the battle between high art and low art, of elitism and egalitarianism.

If we fast forward to the turn of the 21st century, we find a similar battle brought on by the advent of text messaging (previous incarnations of which include e-mails and chat rooms, but they may conceivably be lumped together under the umbrella category of "digital communication"). Text messaging exists in a digital arena of trial and error, a vestibule wherein one may send one's own words to oneself to be audited, edited, corrected (if necessary), and, finally, sent to the intended receiver - all in real time. It is the social version of turning in a paper to an English teacher: you write a rough draft, read it, make the necessary adjustments until you're happy with the finished product, and then finally "turn it in." The lag time allows for so much emotional complexity to be either added or subtracted that it is quite unnatural.

Of course, there are exceptions to every rule, and no where does this apply more fittingly than to text messaging. There is a gigantic margin of error: the wrong message can be sent to the wrong person; an emotionally heated message may be littered with so many typos that it is unreadable and the intended sentiment is not accurately expressed; along the way shortcuts are discovered which cut to "the heart of the matter," which, upon examination, appear to be a "deadening" of language that many preservationists find appalling. The ambiguity of black and white text allows for so many interpretations of exactly what is meant that it becomes very difficult to decipher at times without the visual and auditory clues of gesture, tone, and silence. Text messaging has become its own language, to which anyone with a younger sibling can attest.

My desire is to re-present (as in, present again) a project I presented for a Poetry Writing Workshop two years ago here at Wayne State (appropriatetely titled TEXT), consisting of a long series of snippets from text message conversations I had with primarily one person (although it does include a few others), edited to illustrate the dramatic arc of the relationship. Now, because I've taken our class, ENG 5080, as an approved substitute for English Seminar (meaning this is my Writing Intensive requirement), and with the creative aspect of the project already complete, I will write the paper that the workshop never required me to write, explaining my reasons for endeavoring in this somewhat unusual yet, in my opinion, unique undertaking.

These text messages (an excerpt of which I included above) were culled from a four-month long affair that was turbulent, sexual, and emotional, and affected me deeply. They are my interpretive yet, I feel, quite readable attempt at blurring the lines of the perceived digital distance afforded by this technology, at exhibiting the emotional acuity heightened by the ability to articulate EXACTLY WHAT ONE WISHES TO SAY.

The reason I invoke Wordsworth and Pope is to show that, with this new technology, one can express oneself in the "real language of men," while at the same time utilizing the discipline of the poetic mind to either radically abbreviate or expand what desires to be expressed, to separate one from the common pack.

If this is a futile endeavor - if it smells like a copout - or if its ramifications deserve further explanation or clarification, please feel free to comment. I intend to fully explore any scholarly literature that has been attempted on the subject, assuming that such literature exists.

-M.C.

*Once again, names are changed to protect privacy.

†r@n$

Terrific!

Tired of it!

Too too tired, but-

‘Tis my turn tonight,

though I’m turmoiled and trodden;

though my treasures may taint

and my tale turn you rotten;

may this torrid affair

test time unforgotten:


†


Is this the track?

Truly tactless!
Tried taking the time to travel and tame

the troubled terrain,

tread carefully, sustain

a total transience…

instead-

Treason! Treachery!
Total trash!
Teased, tempted, transubstantiated;

torn apart,

tethered to titillating trifles,

‘tis true;
a teenage tramp

truant,
teeming with transparent triumph,

pertinent tasks postponed,

entrenched in topographical tyranny,

a
poetry of tepid torpor,
typical:

tried to trump truth with thought.

Tsk tsk tsk... too bad…

tread on!

Trim the tangled Tree of Time!

Tinseled intolerance for trinkets and trends! ­­­

The trunk for tables

to type on and

-teach-

trophies of justice

to trade and

impeach

the temporal tryst of terror and TV
where tangent trivialities target toddlers and 'tweens–

TRY ME!

and my twice bitten, still timid,

spirit of the times:

tech-talking a two-step with a twinge of tension

as tongues tie and

tender torsos

twist
to

a

point

.

A trap!

Is this a trick?

†

Tired of it!

Too too tired, but-

‘Tis my turn tonight,

though I’m turmoiled and trodden;

though my treasures may taint,

and my tale turn you rotten;

may this torrid affair

test time unforgotten…

©2007, 2009

- M.C.

©

No sooner had I finished posting last week that I realized I wasn't discussing who or what an author is (or was). I was discussing who or what I wanted an author to be. Only trouble is:

I've run out of vocabulary for it - at least, in the sense that an author is the creator of a strictly literary property.

I've had a chance to glance at some posts. There's a running theme I've noticed that seems to put the stability of copyright into question. I watched a special yesterday on OvationTV (superb programming about music and the arts and all sorts of goodies; if you haven't before, I suggest you check it out) about Ron English, who is a pop painter/illustrator/guerilla billboard artist, specializing in pastiche and parody of the melange of pop culture iconography accumulated over the better part of the last century. As you'll see when you click on the link above, his style is very decadent, grotesque and subversive. Much of his agenda is comprised of attacking the hypocrisy of the technicolor, "kid-friendly" marketing campaigns of some of the world's largest conglomerates: Camel, KOOL cigarettes, McDonald's, Disney, the Church (*snicker*). He takes all of these ingredients, adds the most recognizable figures of pop culture (Marylin Monroe, Andy Warhol, Marvel superheroes, Charlie Brown and Peanuts, KISS, Jesus), and places them all within the contexts of some of the most famous modern paintings and paint styles (Picasso's "Guernica," Van Gogh's "Starry Night," Warhol's Factory prints, neo-classicism, 16th and 17th century European portraiture, abstract expressionism, Buddhist mandalas) to create a disturbingly hallucinatory and hypnotic array of bold faux-iconography.

The ones that strike me as the queerest are his images of children: highly saturated, high-contrast, deliriously colorful canvasses of children in various poses, wearing different costumes replete with face paint (clowns, KISS members, superheroes/heroines, cartoon characters). This all doesn't seem so striking (even after you accept the sinister sneers on their faces) until you realize that they're all smoking. Be warned that this effect is quite unsettling. Be even more warned that, according to the OvationTV special, he uses his own children as models for these images (and I was starting to wonder why all of the faces strangely resembled one another).

I won't get into a discussion about the possible exploitation of his kin for the betterment of his own career, but I did want to elaborate upon the context in which he paints these essentially anti-smoking images. If you click on the link that says Billboards, you will find a decent archive of all of his guerilla billboard advertising (I say "decent" because there would be no realistic way to recover those lost, destroyed, or confiscated by police and/or disgruntled citizens). The TV special followed English, along with a crew known as the (B)illboard (L)iberation (F)ront, as they defaced existing billboard advertisements with their own subservise, and illegal, art. This art, if you check it out, is political and social commentary, all done very professionally. It is very graphic (in the sense of simple, direct, and eye-catching), very bold, and almost always very clever.

The reason I bring up the billboards is that the source of their inspiration for Ron English was the contempt and disgust with which he met the marketing campaign that Camel cigarettes used to target children in the '80s: Joe Camel. He was moved to paint some of his own faux-advertisements, pushing the limits of hyperbole as well as taste, and the result was his now-famous motif of smoking children. In effect, Camel cigarettes eventually discontinued their campaign, and you can see for yourself why: the images are quite shocking.

But after all this nonsense, after championing the neo-folk-heroism of this creative and inspired, if not necessarily inventive, artist (see There is nothing new under the sun), I must say I uttered a chuckle when I first went to his website. A large banner at the head of the website proclaims the title, "POPAGANDA: the life and crimes of Ron English." But what strikes me as ironic is the familiar copyright symbol (registered trademark) adorning the logo. Furthermore, right-clicking on any given image does not prompt the familiar command list we expect to find on most websites nowadays. All that comes up is a litte dialog box exclaiming, "all images ©2008 Ron English. all rights reserved."

Ron English has become a Registered Trademark.

To echo a statement that's been made in class: "You can only fight for so long..."

-M.C.

Authorship: a Eulogy

My ruminations on the subject have somewhat reluctantly led me to conclude that I have no idea what the hell an author is and the only reassurance I can offer myself is that, according to Kastan in Shakespeare and the Book, neither did anybody in the late 16th century. Now, I've thought about this before, and if I can be allowed to venture off on a self-absorbed tangent:

I recently discovered a journal that the teacher of my fifth grade class at Webster Elementary in Hazel Park asked our class to keep; not unlike this here blog I'm so diligently updating on a regular basis (*smirk*), but more of an arbitrary little manuscripted tome filled with responses to random prompts she would present on the board throughout the year. I would furiously scribble my impassioned epistles, hastily close the precious 1-subject notebook, and rush to the front of the classroom, dropping my entry on the teacher's desktop, grinning from ear to ear in anticipation of how she might receive my "work," pleased with myself that I was the first one done.

The topics we were asked to write about were... well, elementary, if I may. They ranged from diatribes about the exciting things we did (or did not) do over the past summer to semi-professional critical reviews of our favorite scary movies. One in particular has had quite the peculiar effect on me now as I read it again. In a response to a question that asked us what we wished for I wrote,

9-11-95

If I could have one wish it would be to become an author. I love to write stories. I want to be like R.L. Stine [author of the then-popular Goosebumps series for kids]. I have already printed two chapters of one of my stories on the computer.

To this, Mrs. Arden* wrote,

Of all the wishes I have read about, I bet yours comes true. You can be anything you want to be. You certainly are a wonderful writer. I'm sure I'll see your name in the bookstores in the near future.

You can imagine my pleasure upon reading that. I was positively floored. Me? A writer? A real writer, Mom? Do you think that I could be that? Mom, of course, thought that I could be that. Only trouble was: I didn't think I could be that. Only years later would the pressure implicit in such an aggrandizing assertion make itself known to me, applying itself stronger and stronger. So many people to avoid letting down... so little time...

What I'm loosely trying to get at is something on which I was commiserating over at Ian's blog:

As time proceeds and technology advances, the ways individuals can leave an imprint on history has become easier. Once someone posts something on the Internet it will remain there indefinitely, floating in cyber space (view).

My question is: has my wish come true? Have I become an author? Or am I merely adrift in a sea of expectation and potential? This blog has tenuously allowed me to establish my authorial presence, to coalesce the illusory stardust of my ill-defined ideas and musings into celestial bodies of a certain gravity that has attracted at least a few of you extra-terrestrial travelers to my little solar system at the end of the universe. This very post has told you a story, has it not? Hell, that last sentence was at least an anecdote! So, haven’t I fulfilled my objective to some extent? Sure, my name is not (yet?) “in the bookstores,” as Mrs. Arden so faithfully avowed would happen, but am I so unsure that there isn’t a copyright in some form or another for something like this? If not, well, shouldn't there be?

If only it were that simple though, right? Even if I was afforded the honor of being considered an “author” from these very meager offerings I’ve posted throughout the last couple of weeks, the question is still as muddled and convoluted as it was in Shakespeare’s day. Without getting involved in too much of a discourse, I will simply (in an homage to Mrs. Arden) prompt the reader to consider some ideas:

· The controversy over authorship, as we have read, was very much a moot point in the late 16th century, where publishers held the rights to printed works.

· The idea was further complicated in the world of theatre, where playbills were drafts which actors would often alter improvisationally; indeed the whole of the production was a collaborative effort over which a mere script could not claim agency.

· Compare this with today’s primary performance media, film and television: an ensemble of characters, not just on-screen but also behind the scenes, is involved in the creation of a single movie or TV show; none is given primacy over another (not even a director or screenwriter can claim authorship over the finished product: the director being a composer of the constituent elements, never fully usurping their individual accomplishments, merely arranging, instigating, documenting; the writer, a catalyst for plot and characterization and other structural elements to the black and white of which only the subtleties of performance can add shades of gray, color and texture notwithstanding) .

· The internet, with its vast and often unmitigated access to a wealth of intellectual and creative resources, offers interactive websites, the content of which people can add or subtract to with virtually (pun intended) no sense of academic honesty, and literally (again, pun intended) no regard for copyright law, either through piracy, ignorance, incompetence or sheer laziness. Indeed, the very branches of modern science and academia and their respective histories have become narratives in which all human beings have now discovered they have a part; while such a de-centralized view of the authority on knowledge and truth is quite liberating, the universal relativism implied creates many difficulties for the question we originally posed: Who is an author?

Am I an author?

-M.C.

*The teacher's name has been changed for privacy purposes, but for a bit of Shakespeare trivia, can you figure out where this fictional name comes from? (There is more than one right answer)

Wax On

I am -

yours

- for dissection.

I am -

into consciousness, confusion and constipation

- born.

I am -

with pączki, pierogi, wódka, hygiene and hospitality

- raised.

I am -

by stay-at-home mom, work-a-day dad and devil-may-care self

- driven.

I am -

from language, literature and aesthetics

- derived.

I am -

for your pleasure

- not mine.

©2007, 2009

-M.C.

Post Modernity

Two critics - one Marxist, the other literary - walk into a bar discussing Ronald J. Deibert's book, Parchment, Printing and Hypermedia.

The literary critic says, "In addition to being a book densely packed with information painstakingly researched and conclusions clearly and expertly argued, I was sublimely surprised to discover within Deibert's pages a compellingly epic historical narrative interwoven among the threads of thought and currents of conjecture in which he constructs, out of an expansive and apparently inexhaustible nebula of citation and cross-referencing, a massive, gaseous giant of an essay on the changes in modes of communication and their correlative transformations of the contemporaneous world order."

To this, the Marxist, visibly perturbed, replies, "You and your holistic, elitist perspective embodies the oppressive and self-appointed exclusivity that only serves to perpetuate the subjugation of the underrepresented masses whose viewpoints, perched precariously on the precipice of academic oblivion, subsist only on the self-delusion that those in power may have a vested interest in their preservation, when in fact those Traffickers of "truth" and "knowledge" in the Markets of Information (in which the underclassed are mere consumers), those Curators of Global Museums of hypothesis and speculation (in which the proletariat are mere spectating pedestrians) are concerned only to the extent of producing a new clever aphorism to join the established proverbs that decorate the day-to-day calendars on sale in the gift shops. Fie on your interpretation of the text in question!"

A social epistemologist nearby, whom the escalating encounter had repeatedly distracted from a text message reply, glances up at the two quarreling companions with a look that asks: Wtf? But, somewhat amused by this academic altercation, he decides to intervene:

"Excuse me. I couldn't help but overhear your discussion, and if you'll allow me to impart some premature wisdom upon you without your permission, I would just like to say that what seems to be at fault here in this decidedly dogmatic dialogue is a lack of perspective; of a coherent and agreed-upon vocabulary in which to engage discussion on an equal plane without the hierarchical framework to which your respective disciplines somewhat primitively tend to have recourse. You see, there is no privileged value system that exists for any of us to try and uphold here. You must be aware that you are the intoxicant-imbibing patrons of a dim, smoky, grimy social establishment on the outskirts of a local urban university campus, engaged in an intellectual conversation which is ultimately of no consequence to the unremarkably non-intellectuals among you. Since the effectiveness of each of your claims is contingent upon the other's level of tolerance (or lack thereof), your individual judgments are irrelevant and, therefore, expendable. You must admit this is a hopeless endeavor. Now: who wants a shot?" he says with a smile.

The Marxist and the literary critic glance at each other, dumbfounded at this interjection, and then, turning to the epistemologist, exclaim in unison, "Fuck off, poser!" and, with a clink! of their mugs and a hearty L.O.L., continue with their conversation...

-M.C.

Practical Impact

God.

How depressing.

One blog thus far under my belt.

What happened to the quiet, reserved, dilligently well-rehearsed student I used to be?

He talks now, is always talking.

Those who know don't speak; those who speak don't know.

I'm graduating in December (hopefully), and yet I feel I'll have none of the tools necessary to help succeed in my target career of...

Well, at any rate, I admit all the blame. My bad, folks. I've caught a second wind and promise that I will be more proactive at this blogging thing. And I will I will I will respond to all of you at least once. It's just taken a little getting used to 4 English classes and a Speech class; I'm the world's worst time-budgeter.

But enough of this self-pitying nonsense. Wait - is it nonsense?

This is the escape from the public sphere that Chartier mentions in his "The Practical Impact of Writing." Isn't it? Blogging is the new library. And maybe if I decide to venture off on a self-absorbed, narcissistic tangent. So what? Find a new book. Put this one away.

I'm not always so hostile. It's a symptom of my kill or be killed mentality; years of repression and practicing the defensive arts knotted up and convoluting around the spine of my self-defeat. I've been in Chartier's library for as long as I can imagine. "The tension between the desire to withdraw from the crowd while at the same time maintaining control over the world is probably symbolic of the absolute liberty made possible by commerce with books, hence of the possibility of complete self-mastery without constraint or supervision" (Chartier, 130). I blame these books for my hermitism. They enticed me into a world (or did they create it entirely?), took away my eyesight (or turned off the lights?), and left me groping for an exit along this cool, smooth, stone.

Like Samuel Pepys, I knew not how in the world to abstain from reading. Like John Locke (although not to the obsessive-compulsive extent to which he endeavored), I organized my books, once alphabetically, once chronologically. I liked to pause and look at the cover every so often - as a gauge of my progress, no doubt, but also a reiteration of the world that was within being created (since then I've learned much in the way of how, specifically, the cover art of a novel affects the author's words, and how, generally, the editing and publication and marketing choices affect the public perception of a given work of art).

Reading was very much a private experience for me; so much so, in fact, that I could never have imagined a time when people didn't read silently. It almost seems absurd to us now, but logically, it follows very much the transition from an oral society to a print society, a kind of liminal stage - a Venn diagram, if you will - wherein certain attributes of the preceding stage have been filtered out and replaced by certain attributes of the succeeding stage.

Chartier's account of this transition is cohesive and illuminating, ascertaining that these new kinds of reading evolved out of either necessity or by arbitrary coincidence. Either way, it was a natural evolution, and no amount of opposition could stem the acquisition of this new skill: "Silent reading was faster, easier, and more immediate in its impact on the inner self" (Chartier, 125).

As it has been for me.

Thank you, Silent Reading.

Thank you for keeping me in the social cocoon to incubate longer than those around me. In postponing my metamorphosis until just a couple of years ago, you guaranteed I would emerge twice as awkward, twice as insecure, twice as timid, and twice as pitiful.

Yes. I admit. I owe to you my somewhat confident writing voice. But I am appalled at what cost to the surety of my public voice, my speaking voice, my "vocal" voice!

Ahem.

-M.C.

I've lost my knack for creating clever titles

I figured it was about time I was ushered into the "Me" Generation, so here I am (somewhat against my will, as I'd always suspected), writing about what I think.

I can't remember the last time I kept a journal. I can't remember what my last paper was about. Sometimes I consider myself a fraud. I tell myself, ineffectively, Quit while you're ahead. You're a fraud. And very soon everyone will realize you know much less than you think you do.

Nowhere was that made more clear to me than in my attempt at reading Old Books and New Histories. Now I don't consider myself a slow reader. In fact, I consider myself a very competent one. I do not admit to having an extremely large and broad vocabulary, but I feel mine is sufficiently placed above the average for a human being (although I do not, unfortunately, possess the necessary evidence to confirm this; suffice it to say, I have a hunch). And I have not only felt, but on more than one occasion, it has been mentioned to me that I have somewhat of an acute sense of disseminating complex ideas into more easily digestible and readily available language; a "tutoring" instinct if you will, targeting those who seem to struggle with said concepts.

Yet I, quintessentially, forever remain a lay person. I am resigned to this fact. I will always be a professional at nothing, an amateur at everything; a jack of all trades, but king of none. How did I come to this depressing conclusion?

I could not concentrate on this book.

I refuse to stoop to the level of the sophomoric and call it "boring," for I am intelligent and insightful enough to recognize that Howsam's self-proclaimed "little book" contains more than its fair share of academic merit (beyond all of the fancy and completely esoteric citations which mean little more to me than a game of bibliographical Mad-Libs), but I. Could. Not. Follow. Along.

Could I be stupid? Lazy? Disrespectful of the hard work and concentration of others? Have I lost the magic?

Or could it just be that I don't give a shit that Howsam wants to validate her obscure niche in the academic cave?

And it just cannot be that this is entirely my fault, because I will direct you to the second paragraph of page 34, the moment that any interest I had in the further reading of this book all but dissolved. Howsam found it relevant to add a juvenile argument by Adams and Barker over semantics that only serves to perpetuate the accepted view of bibliography as a "'handmaiden' to another discipline." An academic pissing contest I am not interested in, nor in the inferiority complexes of its insecure constituents.

Don't get me wrong. I love reading. And I tried reading this. But I had to persevere. And at least after a 5k run, you walk away with a feeling of accomplishment and satisfaction.

After this reading, I think I was startled awake this morning from some sort of Oedipal nightmare about being trapped in an insane asylum and yearning for the comforting embrace of my mommy... but that could be totally unrelated...

And it's true I've been remembering my dreams more vividly since I quit smoking...

-M.C.