jeblog

my curse reversed

I know I said in a blog entry yesterday (early this morning actually) that commercials were the devil.

But I saw one that aired moments after the Red Sox clinched the World Series which I found extremely well done and poignant. Seeing a certain slogan and well-known symbol, I went to their web-page and found the URL. I do not endorse the product (or business practices) of this company but I think the commercial is well worth seeing.

http://www.nike.com/usa/justdoit/v2/index.jhtml

curse reversed

A Red Sox World Series victory.

What can I say (especially after watching so many commercials) except:

Priceless.

Gates of Paradise Plate 2

Plate 2.

When I mentioned this "game"--downloading pages from William Blake's Gates of Paradise and "reading" it as computer wallpaper--I suggested leaving the image up on your computer monitor for a 24-hour period. Well, I kept plate 2 up for more than three days because I promised to blog after each plate, and since I couldn't find time to blog, the plate stayed up.

I don't recommend keeping plate 2 as your wallpaper for more than 24 hours. I was kind of sick of it after 2. That said, I'm eager to move on to plate 3. But first, my "reading" of plate 2.

Plate 2, being rather crudely engraved and uncolored are not as interesting as many of Blake's other productions--certainly not his illuminated prophecies.

Visually, the image is fairly simple, employing iconography that is common to the Romantic period (and other, if not all, periods of the modern era): namely, angels. There are two angels facing each other, and the title text, in the middle of the plate. There are also indeterminate figures above the angels doing angel-like things--flitting about--without the aid of wings. This is also common with Blake: using the position and movement of figures to imply flight, which implied, for Blake, freedom. These figures also have the functional role of adding emblems to a page, filling up space.

Nothing remarkable, nothing surreal, here as in plate 1. A traditional title page. To be fair, this is a title page, so the visual narrative is necessarily barebones, if present at all. The images in Blake either illustrate the narrative, tell a parallel narrative, or, as is the case here, merely adorn the text as emblems (which may have some narrative functioning, though they often stand alone, and so may be single-image narratives).

It is the text that has prominence on this page (though, frankly, I hope this is not the case for the rest of the book, since I favor the visual over the verbal Blake). Here is the text:

Mutual Forgiveness of each Vice
Such are the Gates of Paradise
Against the Accusers chief desire
Who walked among the Stones of Fire
Jehovah's Finger Wrote the Law
Then Wept: then rose in Zeal and Awe
And the dead corpse from Sinais heat
Buried beneath the Mercy Seat
O Christians Christians: tell me Why
You rear it on your Altars high

Hmm. A classic convoluted Blakean textual morass. Typical of the later Blake. Not a surprise to see it here, since this title page, composed in 1820, was a new edition to the Gates of Paradise text, which was originally composed in 1793.

A preoccupation with religious, rather than political and social hierarchies. The premium put on mutual forgiveness, which is the central message of Jerusalem. That is, love and compassion in social relations take a precedence over ritual, which is here depicted as a kind of necrophilia, with the rotting corpse being exhumed and reared upon the altar. Blake's message seemingly: a living, spiritual religion flourishes in authentic social relations, and must take precedence over the religion focused on rituals, which almost always celebrate death.

The accuser here takes a prominent role in the narrative here. He (or they--in this case, Blake leaving off the apostrophe is quite strategic; and the accusers in Jerusalem, composed about the same time as this plate, are decidedly plural) has nothing to do with mutual forgiveness: rather the accuser glories in law-breaking, relation-breaking, even lying. Blake was pretty much obsessed with accusers when he was composing this plate, having recently been accused by a soldier and brought to court to defend himself (a similar case at this time, also based solely on verbal evidence, resulted in the sentence of death by drawing-and-quartering, later commuted to mere hanging, for a British army captain).

In terms of the narrative: the accuser forces Jehovah to create the law, which causes Jehovah to weep, knowing that law constricts and rarely liberates.

Here, again as in Jerusalem, Jehovah is an ambivalent figure (perhaps even an "equivocal being," as Mary Wollstonecraft would put it). In Blake's early books, Jehovah is very Urizen-like: the great tyrant/oppressor. But in Jerusalem, as here, he seems to have a more positive role. He creates the oppressive law but has sympathy for those who have to suffer under it. And he exhibits "zeal and awe," which seems to be positive in this context.

But then again, playing devil's advocate, he does have that body buried under his throne (Mercy Seat). And he does quickly flee the scene after he's made the law. I suppose the verdict will have to stay out until I see read further plates.

Stones of fire--reference to the bloody Druidical religion explored (exposed) in Jerusalem? Could be...

That's all I got for this one. Now I go to get the next plate, to play another round of this new media reading game. I'll blog my reflections on plate 3 in a day or so.

And now, finally, I will let myself go to bed...

existential game 18: impersonating a cultural anthropologist

The same setting as existential game #17: the sports bar.

This time instead of turning it into your personal living room, pretend that you're in fact a cultural anthropologist studying sports culture in the early 21st century. More specifically, someone doing a study on the interface of media with popular leisure as seen in baseball World Series broadcasts.

It's an easy game: you just sit in a chair and takes lots of notes in a little notebook. Ignore the 20-and-30-something yuppies staring at you. You can make it even more interesting but wearing cargo pants, as if you were bushwacking through the jungle of New Guinea.

Again, as the previous game, this one can be seen as a kind of eccentricity, or mild performance art. But don't let that deter you. Play is always a kind of madness, a social sacrilege. You have a right to your leisure. Just do it.

existential game 17: living room large in public

This is a game which may seem to many mere eccentricity (which, for me, is a very ludic social phenomenon). Either that or a mild form of performance art.

Go to a crowded sports bar and turn it into your living room.

I did this at Buffalo Billiards, at Dupont Circle, Washington DC. First I got a drink from the bar. In my case, a softdrink, but a glass of wine would probably be more appropriate for the game (tea, I suppose, would be out of the question, unless your brought your own. You could bring your own thermos. I may do this next time. Or if you really wanted an interesting game, you'd bring your own teapot).

Then I found a comfy chair, a fake-leather arm chair, perfect for scrunching down in. You should probably, as I did, turn the chair away from the coffee table and couches it faces, and turn it turns the television. This might seem slightly unsociable, but then this whole exercise is predicated on pretending that all those inebriated yuppies don't exist. Just don't block anyone's view if you can help it.

Then I watched the game in my comfy chair. And drank my soft-drink. And scribbled in my notebook. And read from George Eliot's Middlemarch during commercials. This, I thought, was the piece de resistance. Reading the Victorian equivalent of good television, the social novel, in the mock-setting of the Victorian reading parlor--mock, because it was, in fact, a 21st century sports bar!

If anyone would like to play this game on your own, please feel free and email me with your experience. Or this might be a fun game to play with others. I'd certainly be up for it.

but wait there's more

A few more comments on baseball and new media, this time focusing on commercials.

First let me say that I don't watch much TV, and almost always have some reading material, and the remote with mute button, nearby to zap commercials. Most of the time I consider commercials the devil.

But occasionally, when I am watching a sporting event (baseball, basketball; don't care much for football), I intentionally watch commercials just to see what Madison Avenue is hawking now. Not watching much TV, or many commercials, I think I bring some freshness (not to mention healthy cynicism) to the proceedings.

There is no doubt that some of the most brilliant and creative minds are doing commercials these days. Visually many of them are very compelling. For instance, there is a series of commercials from Sharp (Aquos), which presents, in chapters, a Fellini-esque mystery involving a key, a beautiful woman, a rich older man, and a car going into a pool (just went to the website for the commercial--got the URL from the commercial on TV--and found a little treasure-box of media which I will analyze another time).

But I, for one, would like some space that is not constantly invaded by pop-up commerical culture. I don't really want to keep seeing a computer-generated GMC truck driving across the screen as I'm trying to watch the game. I don't want the AOL logo popping up and pitching at me some piece of baseball data (and I CERTAINLY don't want to see that commercial with the soccer Mom getting up on the AOL board room table. Would someone PLEASE lock the door when that woman leaves. Enough already!). I don't even want to see the Polar Express barrelling into the screen, which must, in part, be a punning reference to that first Lumiere brothers film, when the train came barrelling into the camera and the movie watchers jumped out of their seats so as not to get run over!

Where is the line of demarcation between the commercial and the leisurely (and ludic)? I'm afraid it's been effaced, like the chalk baselines at the end of the baseball game. And it's been effaced because it is media that is continually crossing the line (which is mostly what I've been reflecting on tonight). More media means more avenues for the commercial to invade our pasttimes.

A couple more points and I'm out of here.

I noticed the majority of commercials now have URLs appended. I'm sure that the major corporations and licking their chops at the prospect of something I mentioned in my last post--the swallowing up of the television by the computer, making it interactive television (I know this has had its failures but I think television-computer remediation is inevitable anyway). So we'll have pull-me data to go with the current television push-me data (data that can be queried as opposed to data that is delivered). A trend to watch.

Secondly, I noticed this about text in commercials: the more prominent the company, the less text (and the more visual narrative) appeared; and the less prominent the company, the more text and less visual narrative. Narrative, in this sense, is something of a luxury, which is a curious thing for me to think about as an aspiring novelist and story-teller. I suppose we've been seeing this trend for a few years now, in terms of scripted television being overtaken by "unscripted," "reality" TV, which is much cheaper to produce, which is what the suits like.

Thirdly, I might say a few things about the paratextual relationship between different visual media (maybe we should just call it paramedia?) such as webpages, on the one hand, and television commercials. When a commercial has a URL appended, you can follow the link later (as I did with the Sharp commercial) and you find data, and media, that act in a paratextual manner, that is offering a kind of "window" on the main media object, making more pleasurable the consumption of the main media object, in preparation, it is hoped (by the advertisers) of consuming the product advertised. There are often video and sound files on these web pages, as well as lots of information, and opportunities to shop. There are also, in some cases, games. There's plenty of opportunity for interaction, anyway.

Tomorrow (or soon) I hope to do more analysis of the points raised above, looking in more depth at the Sharp commercials, the Major League Baseball site, and the U2 music video/ipod commercial website.

more baseball media

Just got back from a sports bar where I watched the Red Sox in the World Series take a 3-0 game lead on the Cardinals.

One thing I noticed: there was lots of text floating around. In fact I thought it ironic that a loud sports bar is one of the few places left where you can have a multimedia experience that includes text.

Usually I would watch the big-screen TV. But I couldn't hear very well. Which was fine because there was plenty of text on screen to look at, during the coverage of the game. There were always little bits of text popping up to read. (This was true, of course--perhaps moreso--during the commercial breaks).

A particular example would be when the "reporter in the stands" would find someone of some renown to interview. Usually explanatory and contextual info would appear below the interview. Like when the reporter found a guy wearing a Red Sox cap in the stands and interviewed him. I didn't recognize the guy, but text popped up to inform me he was a hockey player for the St. Louis Blues, but was born and raised in Massachusetts.

After I realized that there must be people on hand--probably on computer, Googling away--who's job was to look up information on these random interviews. Once again, the database makes an appearance at coverage of a sporting event.

But that's an example of non-stationary text. The stationary text was on screen all the time, at the top, with information such as batter, batting history for the game, pitch-count, etc. It closely resembled a navigation bar on a webpage. In fact, the whole set up closely resembles a web page on a computer monitor. Which, I'm guessing, is anticipatory to when most of our television will be watched on computer, presenting information, in database form, that is queryable, as well as lay-out that can be manipulated (foregrounding video, backgrounding text, or, later, the opposite.

Special text appeared on another TV, which brings me back to the bar setting, and its advantages for multimedia--including text--consumption. Since the big screen TV was too loud, sometimes when there was special commentary, I would consult another, smaller, TV, that had--as bars are wont to do--textual transcription. An example would be one of the new Miller Lite commercials that feature football refs bursting into everyday scenes to call a penalty. They are very funny, clever commercials, but relying more on dialogue than most. I had to read the script (though I still didn't get it; I was expecting the commercial to air again twenty times but, proving to be contrary, it only aired once).

Then there were, as I mentioned in this blog a few days back, signification happening in the stands. One sign said "May the Force Be With You." I thought it might be a Red Sox fan, since that sort of quasi-religious sign epitomizes the superstitious Red Sox fan; but there was no recognizable sports team logo on the sign (at least I didn't catch it). Then underneath "May the Force Be With You" there were some numbers. Initially I didn't know what the numbers referred to. Were they the numbers from a Powerball drawing? An ISBN number? A DNS number (which is close to my suggestion that someone put a URL on a sign at a sports event broadcast). No, I eventually figured out (because I'm a long-time baseball fan), that they were the years the Cardinals won the World Series (I just went online to confirm that: first the MLB.com site, which was only marginally of help, then Googled "St. Louis Cardinals history" which brought me to a page, cbs.sportsline.com, that quickly gave me the info I wanted).

Before I quit, let me mention one more sign which I was surprised to find in the stands at Fenway Park in Boston (Game 2), that very Catholic city. It was a sign of the resurrected Jesus Christ with Johnny Damon's head (helmeted) attached. The sign said: "Johnny Saves." Certainly sacrilegious, but to which I must intone, "Amen."

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Gates of Paradise Plate 1

Plate 1. Frontispiece.

As wallpaper for my computer for 24 hours, I have to fight against getting used to Blake's surreal images. Because it if becomes too familiar, it loses its ability to spur a new way of seeing (reading). That is Blake's agenda, as stated in his text-motto on the plate:

"The Sun's Light when he unfolds it
Depends on the Organ that beholds it"

This is Blake's great theme: we create our world in the seeing (reading) of it, and re-create it when we learn to see it in a new way.

So we shake the scales from our eyes, and look again, and again...

There is a baby who is half-worm resting on a leaf. The top half the common emblem of the babe in a cradle; the bottom half, grafted on, a worm, our form in the vegetative (non-spiritual) world. But only if we look with the eyes of the vegetative state. If we look with the eyes of an enlightened state we see something else. We see an angel, perhaps. We see beauty instead of the grotesque. We see contraries in harmony.

It's not just the child/worm that is surreal. There is also a caterpillar, another symbol of the vegetative world. But it's a caterpillar with an eye-ball attached. A pun on the "Organ" of sight. Again, as if to say, we can view the world from the vegetative organ--or not.

It will be interesting to see what the last plate looks like (but I can't look at it yet--need to take each plate/page in order). Will it mirror this one, showing the view from a higher (non-vegetative) state?

In what ways do I live my life unconsciously, vegetatively? In what ways does this image open to me a Gate of Paradise? In what way does it bring me to the next spiritual level? Does it?

In what way is my computer monitor acting as a reading-machine, a mechanized book? How do I feel about using such a machine-book for my spiritual reading?

existential game 16: Blakean new media spiritual exercise reading

This game is not a game--that is, not a joke. It is a game that I will actually play. It is a game that is a new media moment, a spiritual exercise, and, more importantly, a new-media-moment-as-spiritual exercise.

It is also a new-media-moment-as-spiritual-exercise-reading. In this game, we will be reading something in a new media way.

The game will be to read William Blake's For the Sexes: The Gates of Paradise, (electronic edition of copy D, owned by the Pierpont Morgan Library, originally designed in 1793, re-worked in 1820 (three new plates added at end), copy printed 1825, published by the Blake Archive), by saving each plate as wallpaper for your computer.

To play the game, first you download the image (I will not tell you how, or give you the image, because that might get me in trouble with the most-respected Blake Archive). You may need to crop it slightly (not taller than 700px on a 17-inch computer monitor). I am leaving the background color white, which works well with copy D, which is uncolored.

Secondly, you keep the image as your wallpaper for an entire 24-hour period. If you're home computer is your day-work computer, like mine is, this is easily done. If you have a different work computer, perhaps you can upload the plate as wallpaper in that computer. The same if you feel like hanging out at a coffeehouse with your laptop. The idea is to have the image/text ubiquitous, there everytime you close out your programs, which gives you a moment to reflect on it.

Thirdly, after the 24-hour period, blog (or log if you want to play only "on-paper") some reflections on the image. Reflection points:

1. Basic reflections on the image/text. What is Blake up to here?

2. How is this reading a new media moment?

3. How is this reading a spiritual exercise?

4. How is this reading a new-media-moment-as-spiritual exercise?

5. How is this reading a new-media reading?

I follow with my blog entry on Plate 1 of the Gates of Paradise, copy D.

playoff signification

Still stuck on the baseball theme.

I was intrigued by all the signification during the baseball broadcasts during the Red Sox-Yankees series.

I read one sign, in Fenway, which said: "Just when I thought I was out, they drew me back in." A paraphrase from The Godfather, my housemate told me. It summed it all up, the masochism of the typical Red Sox fan, the addictive behavior of that fan in October, the obsession with the train-wreck of Red Sox history, no escape. Resistance is futile. So many metaphors for the (until very recently?) pitiable condition of the citizen of Red Sox Nation.

Lot's of other signs of course, most of them hand-made (but I didn't jot any down). I realized after a while that part of the game is the game of signification, in the stands. The many hand-made heart-felt signs, competing with the other signs for the eye of the camera. It's a whole other subculture that someone should document, and a whole other sign-system (fill in Derridean truism here).

Remember (some of you) the guy in the play-offs and World Series who would hold up the John 3:16 sign behind home plate? Bringing Biblical exegesis to the ball-park. More signification. The equivalent today (and I'm surprised we haven't see it yet) would be a sign that shows nothing but a URL.

Maybe you'll see it during a broadcast of the World Series. A sign that says:

http://jeb.wordherders.net

multimediaencyclopedic baseball

Been watching a lot of baseball lately.

And thinking about baseball as a new-media experience.

At one point in the fifth game of the Red Sox-Yankees series, one of my housemates wondered aloud about the year won-loss record of the pitcher, Bronson Arroyo.

His daughter, who had her lap-top on (so she could IM her friends during the game) the whole game, went to the Major League Baseball website and found out. There it was a database/encyclopedia at our disposal. Having stats available at all times is of vital importance for the baseball fan, since it's such a stats-worshipping game (epitomized by the GenX General Manager of the Red Sox, Theo Epstein, who is famous for playing by the numbers).

It also seemed to me that there were other database/encyclopedia aspects of the game presentation, with the computer-generated graphics, such as the (extremely annoying) talking baseball, and the pitch presentations by Al Leiter.

A far cry from my teen summers, in the 70s, long before cable, long before laptop computers, watching the Chicago Cubs every day on WGN. Jack Brickhouse and Jimmy Piersol in the announcer's booth. No fancy graphics then, or encyclopedic presentations (no nightgames either, unless the Cubs were on the road). It was magical, even without computers, even with the Cubs never even coming close to first-place after mid-July.

Oh, and I almost forgot: we even got to vote, on the MLB website, for the Red Sox Best Hair: Pedro with his "jeri-curl" look, Manny with his near-dreds, Bronson with his corn-rows, and Johnny with his Biblical locks.

We voted for Bronson because he shut down the Yanks in the 7th, and not for Manny (the runner-up) because he failed, once again, to hit a homerun in the top of the inning.

0-3 2 4-3

Unbelievable.

Just finished watching the Boston Red Sox complete their historical come-back from a 0-3 deficit to a 4-3 defeat of the Yankees.

I was there in front of the television when Pete Rose hit that double that beat the Red Sox in Game Seven of the 1975 World Series (though I was really too young to appreciate it).

I was there in front of the television in 1978 when little Bucky Dent of the Yankees hit that three-run homer into the net on top of the Green Monster in Fenway, defeating the Red Sox in a one-game play-off, to win the division (after the Red Sox blew a 14-game mid-summer lead on the Yankees). I spent the whole summer doing a spiritual exercise: praying every day that the Red Sox would win the pennant. I remember after that game having a spiritual crisis, weeping in the bathroom. "God how could do this to me?" My first effort at theodicy, which is a key part of the spiritual life of the Red Sox fan...

I was there in front of the television in 1986 when that ball went under Bill Buckner's legs in Game Six of the World Series against that other New York team, capping a three-run rally for the Mets after the Red Sox had taken a two-run lead in the top of the 10th. (But I've always blamed Bob Stanley for that loss. He was the one who blew the Red Sox lead. It should never have come to the point where a gimpy first baseman had to preserve the Red Sox lead. After that loss, it was a fore-gone conclusion that they would lose Game 7. And they did.

I was there in front of the television when Bret Boone of the Yankees hit a walk-off homerun off Tim Wakefield in the seventh game of last year's (2003) American League Championship, after Pedro Martinez was left in one too many innings and gave away the Red Sox lead in the 8th inning. I had spent most of that game walking around Dupont Circle (hanging out in used-book stores) to avoid watching the Red Sox blow it again. When I thought it was safe--around 11:30pm--I went home to find the game in extra innings. It was the will of the universe that the Red Sox break my heart one more time.

And now, tonight. The Red Sox turning the Yankees into the seeming-cursed team. It almost makes up for all those other heart-breaks. Or is it--Red Sox fan speaking here--just the set-up to the greatest heart-break of all?

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existential game 15: too much information

This is a blog game.

The participants cruise each other's blogs and when they see an entry which they would classify "too much information," they comment as such.

These entries are then collected and published at a separate blog called, you guessed it, "Too Much Information."

It's sure to be popular, such that it is a species of reality-embarrass-yourself-to-point-of-self-parody games found all throughout the radio and television spectrum.

What do you think, wordherders?

existential game 14: soy purging

Spend 24 hours eating nothing but soy products. It also helps this game if you have somewhat of a delicate digestive system.

Then set up a pool at your office, asking people to lay down money on how many times in the next 24 hours you will have to take a dump.

The one who guesses correctly wins the pool (though you should be allowed to take a cut for your gastronomical sacrifice).

(Is this what they call "too much information?" If you can't talk about taking dumps on a blog, where can you talk about it?)

existential game 13: anachronistic napping

Take a nap in the middle of the day, preferably late afternoon. When you get up, act as if it's the beginning of your day. Go to the front porch in search of the paper (of course, your housemate brought it in hours ago). Have some granola. Make and drink your coffee. Download your email. Then, when it's dark, go outside with sunglasses on and try to sunbathe.

This game will be more enjoyable for you than for others, particularly if you're the sort who's bubbly when you wake up and the others are just coming home from work, and especially if you ask people to get out of your light 'cause, hey, you're trying to get a tan here!

The reward of this game is that you trick your body into staying up even later, and you can get by on even less sleep!

review of "I [heart] Huckabees"

Saw I [heart] Huckabees today (anyone know the HTML code for a heart symbol? What are the other new media reviewers doing I wonder?). I really liked it. It reminded me, in its goofy, warm-hearted surrealism, of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which I thought was marvelous and is one of the few DVDs, at this point, that this poor grad student would be tempted to buy. I don't think Charlie Kaufman had a hand in this one, though David O. Russell (didn't they do a film together? Aside: just Googled Charlie Kaufman and had to tear myself away before I purchased the DVD of Eternal Sunshine online).

I should say, Huckabees also reminded me of Garden State. There seems to be a spate of goofy, warm-hearted surrealistic films coming out lately, a trend which I heartily applaud.

The direction was sure (as sure as surreal can be), the acting very good--I especially liked Dustin Hoffman and Lily Tomlin as the existential detectives, and Jason Schwartzman, last seen by this reviewer in Rushmore, another, need I say it, goofy, warm-hearted surrealistic film. Though, I must admit, I could see a little less Jude Law, who seems to be in every film coming out lately (was he in Vanity Fair? I think he was one of the dancers, in drag, in the Bollywood scene).

A couple observations I'd like to make. First, the philosophy behind the film is very zen buddhist. Impermanence and non-self, two of the three main "signs" of zen, are key concepts. Sure, they are ridiculed a little bit in the film, but it's part of a program of equal opportunity ridicule. And besides, zen buddhist history is replete with rogues who used roguery to teach these basic truths, including whacking students, a la Three Stooges, in the head.

And the great revelation of the main character, Albert...wait, should I reveal it? Let me just say that his combination of the "dark side" and the "light side" is basic buddhism: 1. there is suffering (dark side) but there is also 2. a way out of suffering (light side, consisting, for the most part, of paying attention to your suffering and learning to open your heart and let it teach you).

Second point: there is a lot of art and animation in the film which is clearly inspired by Photoshop and, I'm guessing, Flash. I suppose there was cutting-and-pasting of images before in film (most prominent example coming to mind being Salvador Dali's artwork in Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo), but programs like Photoshop and Flash have made it easy (and affordable), and much more common in films. I think this is definitely a case in which new media has infiltrated an older media, to the benefit of both.

I'm glad I got to put that in, since I've been categorizing my little film reviews as "new media" and I'm wondering how new a medium film is (better consult my Manevich).

And here's another new media angle, in fact an example of new media paratext: just a moment ago I went to the official film website and found it very diverting indeed. Even the whatchamacallit thingamajig that you watch while a page is loading is entertaining. Avail yourself of the opportunity to experience it yourself by following the link below.

Final word: Albert says of the rock he has saved from developers: "Rock, you rock!" The same goes for this film. ("Film, you film!").

http://www2.foxsearchlight.com/huckabees/

nap as rewire job

Just finished a paper for my Victorian class: "Law as People's Festival in Bleak House." But don't ask me to explain it. A friend asked me earlier today to explain it and I kind of gagged mentally. There are some things I can only explain digitally--that is, using my fingers, typing into a keyboard. Which shows the extent to which keyboards and such have re-wired my brain. That old theme.

Speaking of which: I've blogged before on how I've re-arranged my schedule so that I can blog at night. That's a kind of re-wiring, changing habits, etc. But it's also been a chemical re-ordering: namely coffee.

Today I was going to write in the morning, but I got up late and then I was invited to go see a film. I considered for a nanosecond sticking to my schedule, but then told myself it was a holiday and I should go see the film (which I review, ABOVE).

I also remembered a trick of mine back when I was working part-time in the morning and afternoon (pre-grad school) and trying to write a novel in the evening. Generally I'm a morning person, and was then, but my schedule demanded that I do some re-ordering. So, typically, I would work, come home and take a nap for an hour, so that when I woke up it was like a brand new day. This trick somehow gave me the energy I needed to sit down and work for four hours, when normally I would be nodding off in the early evening (this was before I drank coffee).

Anyway, that's what I did today. After the film, I came home and took a nap. Then, when I awoke, I made a thermos of coffee and went to work. And finished my paper.

The drawback, of course, is that now it's 11:30pm and I'm wide awake. That's a drawback? You can blog for another couple hours!

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existential game 12: find-the-quote

OK, I'm getting lazy with my existential gaming.

This one is a find-the-quote game:

"Read, read, read, read, my unlearned reader! read--or by the knowledge of the great saint Paraleipomenon--I tell you before-hand, you had better throw down the book at once..."

The prize is a special cupcake, whose specialness will be clear once the riddle is solved!

bleak houses

I bought a new Bleak House today. The one with the nicer paratext, that is, pictures. So there's no need to go looking through every copse looking for my previous copy (see BELOW). Let it return to the elements.

I was very pleased with my new book. But. Then I found another version in the university book store. It had a preface by Terry Eagleton. I'm a big Eagleton fan--an Eagletonite. So this version had nice pictures AND a preface by Terry Eagleton; its paratext trumped the paratext of my new Bleak House.

Did I buy that one too? Somehow I managed to resist the temptation. Instead I went and bought a pen and notebook and came back to the third Bleak House, to the Eagleton preface, and took notes.

I must have looked a sight, standing there in the aisle of the university bookstore, scribbling notes into a notebook. Academics are strange but this may have gone beyond the pale.

What will he do next, bring his dulcimer into a bookstore and sing the poems of Robert Burns? Or better yet Blake's Songs of Innocence and of Experience. But then folks would look at the book and say, "Of course, Blake--Blake does that to people."

Anyway, please benefit from my weirdness:

"One of the very images that unifies the fragmentary world of the novel [Bleak House]...testifies at the same time to that world's mysterious impenetrability," Terry Eagleton, Preface to the 2003 Printing of the Penguin Classic version of Bleak House.

memorial procession

It's been almost a week, but it's still with me. The sight of the coffins laid out on the Ellipse, to symbolize all those fallen in the Iraq War.

Also still with me is the sight of some of the mothers, and other family members, weeping at the make-shift memorials they set up for their lost loved ones.

Most of those mothers spoke at one point during this, a memorial procession from Arlington National Cemetary to the Ellipse. Every speech was heart-rending.

It was a privilege to be part of this event, as part of the Rhythm Workers Union, providing the dirge beat for the march. It was, unfortunately, easy to be solemn.

Are you absolutely certain, Mr. Bush, that these men and women died for a just cause? Yes, you are certain, which makes it all the more infuriating. So many dying because of your moral certitude.

It's time to bring the troops home and leave Iraq to the Iraqis.

phoku.8

existential game 11: number mystery

I will not describe this game (really a puzzle) because description would ruin it.

If you solve the puzzle, I'll send you a copy as a prize (clue!). Here's the game:

PR4592.P45S35

PR4580.094

GV76.E6S884

GV76.E5C86

GV75.B33

DA110.T46

lost books & paratext addiction

RE: the previous entry (below, phoku.7), I lost my copy of Bleak House tonight, sometime after class (it may be in a certain copse). So if anyone sees it, please let me know.

Actually, I discovered in class today that the more recent Penguin Classics edition has better illustrations (the same found in Dicken's original edition). The ones in my older edition are smaller and less clear--they are full-page in the newer edition, only partial-page in mine.

So I was thinking of buying the newer version, just because it has better pictures.

We have this to deal with too: not only my love affair with books, but also my love affair with paratext (the two, of course, are not unrelated).

My passion for paratext may eventually impoverish me. A couple months back, I bought an old used, hard-back version of Tristam Shandy, because it had interesting paratext (and other textual tricks, such as the famous marble page). But then, when I was visiting Chicago, I came across another hardback edition, which had even better paratext, so I bought that one.

Parents, are you monitoring your children's book-buying habits? They may be exhibiting the signs of a vicious paratext addiction...

phoku.7

a voluptuous reading

I had a voluptuously multimedia reading experience of William Blake tonight. I was at the library at school, for one thing, which always seems more volumptuous to me because the library for me was (and is) the original pleasure dome, the palace of imagination, ever since I first picked up a book. It helps that I have a desk at MITH, the humanities computing lab, where I can drink tea as I read.

So I was in a library, for one thing, where I feel very comfortable, and was drinking tea. But the multimedia voluptuousity was due to the fact that I was reading Blake--America a Prophecy, to be exact--using the Tate Gallery (Princeton University Press) version, and reading it at the Blake Archive at the same time.

What makes the Tate Gallery edition so voluptuous is that not only are there reproductions of the original, 1793 edition of America, but also an introduction to the narrative text, AND another introduction to the plates (describing each plate visually), AND endnotes on text and images together, all done by D.W. Dorrbecker, and done well. There's also a transcription of the text available in this edition when I couldn't read the plates themselves.

So I was reading the book, with one finger bookmarking in the introductory materials, another finger bookmarking the endnotes, and when these were exhausted I would reach for the mouse and bring up the plate at the Blake Archive.

I'm finding that the Blake Archive does not present (at present) the most optimal reading of Blake, but as a scholarly tool, accompanying a well-made book such as the Tate Gallery's, it makes for a...well...voluptuously multimedia experience.

The tool function of the Archive that I find most valuable is the compare function. It's an excellent way to look at Blake's publishing history, and the larger history in which Blake's history is embedded.

For instance, looking at the Archive's four versions of America plate 4, you see, in some versions, some text at the bottom, in other versions no text. What is this text? It's text that describes the Bard, ostensibly the speaker of the previous speech (which forms the preludium to the book), destroying his harp, out of a sense of shame in what he has previously uttered which, most readers will know, describes Orc breaking his chains (and, it must be stated, his rape of the daughter of Urthona). I am not going to go into the implications of most of that (I'll save it for my seminar--and my dissertation), but it is important to note that many commentators, surveyed by Dorrbecker, suggest that in this passage Blake is expressing his disillusionment with the French Revolution and revolutionary violence in general.

The compare function at the Archive helps the reader evaluate this interpretation. Is it a coincidence that the disillusionment text does not appear in the first, 1793 edition of America, before the excesses of the Revolution and the Terror became well known, but does appear in (was written for) the 1795 edition, after those excesses were well known (it should be noted that the coloring of this 1795 edition is the darkest of the four versions in the Archive)? This seems to confirm those commentators who construe this passage as a commentary on the Revolution. But then why does Blake blank out the text in the 1807 edition, and then return the text in the last, 1821 version? An enigma certainly, but one that tempts investigation.

And I will say nothing about the whale (symbol of Orc, derived from orcus, the killer whale) that appears and disappears in various versions of plate 6.

Fascinating questions, fascinating reading, and a reading which would be very difficult without the multimedia publication of America at the Blake Archive, in conjunction with the book media (Dorrbecker's introduction, transcription, endnotes). A multimedia reading. A voluptuously multimedia reading (especially when you add it all up, including the library and the tea!).

Afterthought: there must be some theorist out there who has claimed the term "voluptuousity." If not, I do. Is this what Marshall McCluhan is talking about when he says, "the media is the massage"?

writing by candlelight

OK, I'm doing this by candlelight, even though I have a perfectly fine electric light. I'm doing it by candlelight, frankly, because that's what my masthead picture is doing, scribbling by candlelight (See above).

For the same reason, I've totally reworked my schedule in order to be able to blog at night, and only at night. Because of that damn image. Because he is the nighttime scribbler.

That image has changed my life--that's the power that images have. At least, once you acknowledge the visual to be as important as the verbal. I have William Blake, and the web, to thank for that. The two, in tandem, have made me a much more visual person--perhaps to the point where the visual actually eclipses the verbal.

I admit that I'm writing at candlelight, and at night, because of my nostalgia for books and book culture, a nostalgia for a culture that perhaps never existed. What is my masthead image but a romanticization of the lonely scribe? I want to be that romantic, though lonely, writer. That's why I chose the image and why I conform to it. I wish it to me by blog persona. I wish to be that figure in this virtual space.

If my little masthead image rewires me, in the way described above, what does reading William Blake's illuminated books--as I am doing now in my scholarly life--going to do to me? Stay tuned.