One of the best things to happen during my senior thesis of trying to write a manuscript was the first time a computer died on me. As such, I had to do my drafting and redrafting by hand. (More info on how this effected my writing here.)
Writing by hand was much more organic. It is more free. While the final product will still be prepared to fit into a linear, textual form, the act of creation was not forced artificially to be tidy. This practice of freedom and possibility opened up new ways of thinking and visualizing the text. The constant possible distractions of the computer were voided. There was a bond between creator and creation that was not cast through a vast network of layers. What I put on the page was seen as coming from me, not a screen.
The early computers were basically giant calculators. While capable of much more than that now, it is still a world of logics where everything can be written in mathematical codes. The mathematical nature of computers implies an answer, implies conclusion, implies searching for what is right. While at times complimentary to the brain that creates art, it is also contradictory.
One of the shifts in my writing since switching from primarily working on computer to primarily working on paper is that I no longer try and find "good" endings. Things don't have to wrap up. Some of the best endings to art are the ones that leave you hanging in that world, that give you just enough. While the mathematical world of the computer suggests one to seek an answer,* one of the many purposes of art is to ask the questions that will lead to continual discovery. When writing by computer I felt poems needed to build, needed to change, needed to reach some new idea or point. Now I know they can. They can also stop in one space and stare into all its hallways. They can show what all the 99 eyes of Rumor are seeing instead of trying to tell who Rumor is, where it is, where it is going, what will happen, and why that matters. They can also just be in a moment and a place.
Today, for the first time in a long while I tried to write by computer because I was reimagining a very performance heavy older poem of mine as a prayer that would work just as well on the page. Really, I just had to slim the first stanza that it is a mixture of a more regular stanza and stage banter and help it transition into the now recontextualized second stanza that I've had memorized for several years. And then using the computer resulted in getting distracted and preventing myself from thinking into deeper imagery and being too caught up on trying too find a "right" transition that I didn't just brainstorm a bunch of possibilities and see what felt right. That's when I decided to put that poem down for a while and right this.
Long live the pen and paper. Long live not trying to find the road to follow, but exploring the paths that you didn't know could be made.
Naturally,
Jason
* That's one of the many reasons why we have search engines like www.ask.com which tries to answer your questions, or www.bing.com which advertises deciding for you, isn't it?
Note: (As mentioned in recent passages, currently reading "The Alphabet vs. The Goddess," and while I had planned to write something on this topic, I do want to credit the book with heightening my thinking around how our communication methods effect what we communicate.)
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
Sunday, July 22, 2012
Why I haven't written that vegetarian poem
So today* marks the ten year anniversary of me going vegetarian. Big part of my life that I never have tried to write about. Or have I? While I don't think I'll ever write a "go vegetarian" or "save the animals" poem, I think a lot of the same values that have lead to me going and staying vegetarian have also lead to some of what shapes my art. The summary of what lead me to turn vegetarian when I was thirteen, and what makes me stay the course ten years later, is "it's no longer necessary to kill for survival, so why do it, when we can get all our nutrients and protein through healthier forms that are better for the environment, shared with a belief that all life is valuable." By looking back at my motivation and not its manifestation, I see that motivation has continued to inspire my thought processes as they develop in art.
The two biggest examples were my creative writing and theatre theses from senior year. The Creative writing thesis focussed on using poetry to explore themes of monstrousness with hopes to humanize. In them, King Kong is a slaughtered would be lover and a cow fears for the life of her son, wishing him to be inspired by the human gouging bulls of Pamplona. While those are probably the two closest to the "vegetarian poem" in the manuscript, this continued sense of "all life is valuable" inspires the treatment of the humanity in the 'monsters' and the monstrous sides of 'humanity.' In the theatre thesis I explored the myth of Prometheus, the godlike Titan of Greek mythology who in effect gave his life to care for and save humans, even if they were a helpless life form in comparison. Interesting how the more we change, the more we stay the same.
To life, L'Chayim!
Jason
* by the time of this posting, yesterday June 21, 2012
The two biggest examples were my creative writing and theatre theses from senior year. The Creative writing thesis focussed on using poetry to explore themes of monstrousness with hopes to humanize. In them, King Kong is a slaughtered would be lover and a cow fears for the life of her son, wishing him to be inspired by the human gouging bulls of Pamplona. While those are probably the two closest to the "vegetarian poem" in the manuscript, this continued sense of "all life is valuable" inspires the treatment of the humanity in the 'monsters' and the monstrous sides of 'humanity.' In the theatre thesis I explored the myth of Prometheus, the godlike Titan of Greek mythology who in effect gave his life to care for and save humans, even if they were a helpless life form in comparison. Interesting how the more we change, the more we stay the same.
To life, L'Chayim!
Jason
* by the time of this posting, yesterday June 21, 2012
Friday, July 20, 2012
The Irony of Limited Jobs for Creative Writing, or, the post formerly known as: I Could Use a New Job in a Month
This blog was going to start as a babble of some sorts on trying to look for a job that allows me time/space/energy to write and is enjoyable enough in and of itself. Then I continued reading a really great book today, the Alphabet vs. The Goddess, and it got me thinking. It's known that it's almost impossible to find a job if you're a creative writer that you can actually make money off of. Being a writer in modern Western culture is more a respected/rarely understood lifestyle that sometimes makes money than a job. However, money as we know it would not exist without the writing of stories.
The first stories written in an alphabet (defined as 30 letters or less and each letter represents a sound, not a word or image) are myths. The Illiad and the Torah. Both set precedence for how a culture works. What was written as well as the existence of an alphabet lead to the belief in abstract thought. While the basis of hunter gather societies, cave painters, and writers of image based languages was in the concrete, the very existence of an alphabet meant that letters were stand alone parts that could create any word, thus any phrase, sentence, meaning, imaginable possibility.
In a concrete, image based world, barter makes sense. I want chickens. You want a vase. Let's exchange. Then as text is developed, the idea of symbols that do not directly correlate to what they represent rises, and the shift is from gold (again, an item given value by a culture believing in abstract thought) to different units of money that for what they were alone were worthless, but were seen as representing gold and therefore value. This is an abridged version of a lot of things discussed in that book, and of the history of money. In other words, believing in letters and an alphabet permitted hte belief in money.
However, whenever a text based culture and a non text based culture met, it was almost without fail that no matter the outcome, the textual language would live on, and the ones who wielded written word in a culture would become dominant (i.e. the Brahmin priest rise over the warrior caste in India). Text continued to dominate the world as a means of communication or as a way of ruling the ones who didn't have it. (Still true if you look at the correlation of literacy and job rates.) The usage of writing, a tool initially used to cement/record stories, not only created the possibility of money but continues to control who has the money.
In conclusion, money, arguably a form of myth, would not exist without writers who told stories through poetry. I'm a nice Jewish boy who is hugely into Greek Mythology and writes narrative poems. Anyone wanna pay me for a job that helps my writing and call it even?
Not-Quite-Starving-Artistly-Yours,
Jason
The first stories written in an alphabet (defined as 30 letters or less and each letter represents a sound, not a word or image) are myths. The Illiad and the Torah. Both set precedence for how a culture works. What was written as well as the existence of an alphabet lead to the belief in abstract thought. While the basis of hunter gather societies, cave painters, and writers of image based languages was in the concrete, the very existence of an alphabet meant that letters were stand alone parts that could create any word, thus any phrase, sentence, meaning, imaginable possibility.
In a concrete, image based world, barter makes sense. I want chickens. You want a vase. Let's exchange. Then as text is developed, the idea of symbols that do not directly correlate to what they represent rises, and the shift is from gold (again, an item given value by a culture believing in abstract thought) to different units of money that for what they were alone were worthless, but were seen as representing gold and therefore value. This is an abridged version of a lot of things discussed in that book, and of the history of money. In other words, believing in letters and an alphabet permitted hte belief in money.
However, whenever a text based culture and a non text based culture met, it was almost without fail that no matter the outcome, the textual language would live on, and the ones who wielded written word in a culture would become dominant (i.e. the Brahmin priest rise over the warrior caste in India). Text continued to dominate the world as a means of communication or as a way of ruling the ones who didn't have it. (Still true if you look at the correlation of literacy and job rates.) The usage of writing, a tool initially used to cement/record stories, not only created the possibility of money but continues to control who has the money.
In conclusion, money, arguably a form of myth, would not exist without writers who told stories through poetry. I'm a nice Jewish boy who is hugely into Greek Mythology and writes narrative poems. Anyone wanna pay me for a job that helps my writing and call it even?
Not-Quite-Starving-Artistly-Yours,
Jason
Wednesday, July 18, 2012
A Meditation on a Bathroom Graffiti at the Boston Public Library
"If you are reading this, either you are enquisitive (sp) or short"
- bathroom graffiti in the Boston Public Library, written in Sharpie under the tiles that jut out roughly 4 feet from the ground, at an angle hard to notice unless you are moving your bowels
First response: well, I'm both of those adjectives. Second response: and maybe that's correlated.
Imagine. You are a red circle. Every other person you have ever come across has been a red circle. You have no reason to believe there are other colors or shapes as there has been no evidence to ever suggest the contrary. Then a family of blue triangles enters your society. Since all you have known is red circles, you have reason to believe that the blue triangle is an anomaly or in simpler terms, wrong or bad, as people have only been shown to you as existing as red circles.
Now imagine you are a child in the blue triangle family. You know you are part of a lineage and tradition of blue triangles and that your world view is valid. While you accept that you are living in a majority red circle society, you learn to grasp that just as your experience as a blue triangle is valid and one of many possible experiences, so is the experience of the red circles. Since you know that your existence is a possibility from your society's norm, it becomes plausible that there exist shapes and colors outside of what you imagined too and you are curious to see what they might be like.
You seek out other realities. You join the wrestling team and in doing so are set farther apart from the practices of the majority of the red circles, while existing in a sub society where all that makes you a blue triangle sets you even further apart. You spend time with yellow squares and the occasional green heart during high school by getting involved in the nearby city's poetry scene. You then go to a university where as a blue triangle you are now part of the majority for a first time ever, so that denotation no longer defines you and you seek a fuller, more personal identity while exploring the world of other shapes and colors.*
Because you are short, Jewish, vegetarian, American-standard-poor in a middle class town, the child of activists, etc...you find the often red circle only experiences of your initial town limited and you want to see other possibilities.^ Because you experienced life and existence repeatedly veering from your society's norms, whether you intend to or not, you become inclined not only to explore other possibilities, but as your inquisitiveness and worldview grows, you are interested heavily in just the prospect of exploring.
Now think of some of the most creative people you know of. The groundbreaking scientists, the artists, the teachers. Now how many could relate to the experience of the blue triangle? For example, two thirds of the comedy industry is Jews, Black Americans have had the hugest effects on "American" music, and a disproportionate percentage of the theatre world falls into the queer spectrum.
So in response to the bathroom graffiti artist, I am not "enquistive or short." I am inquisitive because I am short.
Yours,
Jason the Not So Subtle Blue Triangle
* For those keeping track at home, yes, this meditation has shifted from philosophical to more autobiographical. Whatever.
^ Yep. Now blatantly, blatantly autobiographical while tying the themes back together.
(And on a note of random life correlations, in a poetry workshop Monday night a recurring motif came up about how for young children, the bathroom provides a solace where they can just be with themselves and their thoughts and no one bothers them. Interesting the childhood traits that continue.)
(swiped from http://legionofhonor.famsf.org/files/imagecache/exhibition_preview_large/THINKER_side_columns.jpg )
- bathroom graffiti in the Boston Public Library, written in Sharpie under the tiles that jut out roughly 4 feet from the ground, at an angle hard to notice unless you are moving your bowels
First response: well, I'm both of those adjectives. Second response: and maybe that's correlated.
Imagine. You are a red circle. Every other person you have ever come across has been a red circle. You have no reason to believe there are other colors or shapes as there has been no evidence to ever suggest the contrary. Then a family of blue triangles enters your society. Since all you have known is red circles, you have reason to believe that the blue triangle is an anomaly or in simpler terms, wrong or bad, as people have only been shown to you as existing as red circles.
Now imagine you are a child in the blue triangle family. You know you are part of a lineage and tradition of blue triangles and that your world view is valid. While you accept that you are living in a majority red circle society, you learn to grasp that just as your experience as a blue triangle is valid and one of many possible experiences, so is the experience of the red circles. Since you know that your existence is a possibility from your society's norm, it becomes plausible that there exist shapes and colors outside of what you imagined too and you are curious to see what they might be like.
You seek out other realities. You join the wrestling team and in doing so are set farther apart from the practices of the majority of the red circles, while existing in a sub society where all that makes you a blue triangle sets you even further apart. You spend time with yellow squares and the occasional green heart during high school by getting involved in the nearby city's poetry scene. You then go to a university where as a blue triangle you are now part of the majority for a first time ever, so that denotation no longer defines you and you seek a fuller, more personal identity while exploring the world of other shapes and colors.*
Because you are short, Jewish, vegetarian, American-standard-poor in a middle class town, the child of activists, etc...you find the often red circle only experiences of your initial town limited and you want to see other possibilities.^ Because you experienced life and existence repeatedly veering from your society's norms, whether you intend to or not, you become inclined not only to explore other possibilities, but as your inquisitiveness and worldview grows, you are interested heavily in just the prospect of exploring.
Now think of some of the most creative people you know of. The groundbreaking scientists, the artists, the teachers. Now how many could relate to the experience of the blue triangle? For example, two thirds of the comedy industry is Jews, Black Americans have had the hugest effects on "American" music, and a disproportionate percentage of the theatre world falls into the queer spectrum.
So in response to the bathroom graffiti artist, I am not "enquistive or short." I am inquisitive because I am short.
Yours,
Jason the Not So Subtle Blue Triangle
* For those keeping track at home, yes, this meditation has shifted from philosophical to more autobiographical. Whatever.
^ Yep. Now blatantly, blatantly autobiographical while tying the themes back together.
(And on a note of random life correlations, in a poetry workshop Monday night a recurring motif came up about how for young children, the bathroom provides a solace where they can just be with themselves and their thoughts and no one bothers them. Interesting the childhood traits that continue.)
(swiped from http://legionofhonor.famsf.org/files/imagecache/exhibition_preview_large/THINKER_side_columns.jpg )
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