The Roast...An Oral Setting

Where can I find a truly oral setting, if one still exists, in today's textual culture, I wonder? I need a setting in which there are participants rather than objective observers, so a speech by a president, though it may harken to the oral tradition, is not what I'm looking for. I want something fun, agonistically toned, and definitely with some flyting, clusters of insults, old jokes that are still funny, and maybe a little stychomythia. Aside from Kevin Costner sitting around the tepee smoking a peace pipe in Dances With Wolves,the best thing I could think of is a roast. I'm sure we're all familiar with the roasting concept (and not that of pork). Roasting somebody involves the friends and colleagues of an honoree to spend a laughable evening insulting him or her, often being insulted in return, all in the spirit of good faith and camaraderie. It's a fun way to give people a chance to say what you really feel, because, "If you're going to tell people the truth, you had better make 'em laugh or they'll kill you for it." Celebrity icons are roasted on Comedy Central all the time. They are usually older and wasted up celebrities in their senescence, like William Shatner and Bob Saget, but this seems to make for the perfect combination. They are old enough to honor, but young enough to take a joke...because that is what they have made of their career. Politicians often roast each other for the fun of it...they are all doddering old fools anyways. The word senescence, from above, is from the Latin "senex" which means doddering old fool. Also where the word senate and senator, as a senate is a council of elders and a senex is someone who is old.

I just recently learned how to put movies on my blog, so bare with me while my excitement lasts. This clip is Don Rickles roasting Bob Hope on the Dean Martin Show. It's a live haranguing and the people laughing remind me of groundlings in a Shakespeare comedy. I much prefer the sense of humor of the 1960's and 70's than the vulgar lasciviousness of the roasts today. Anyways, here is an oral setting that might be worth contemplating.

Memory Trick - posted by R.Blogger

Take Note: Doodling Can Help Memory

By HealthDay - Fri Feb 27, 8:48 PM PST

FRIDAY, Feb. 27 (HealthDay News) -- You might look like you're not paying attention when you doodle, but science says otherwise.

Researchers in the United Kingdom found that test subjects who doodled while listening to a recorded message had a 29 percent better recall of the message's details than those who didn't doodle. The findings were published in Applied Cognitive Psychology.
"If someone is doing a boring task, like listening to a dull telephone conversation, they may start to daydream," study researcher Professor Jackie Andrade, of the School of Psychology at the University of Plymouth, said in a news release issued by the journal's publisher. "Daydreaming distracts them from the task, resulting in poorer performance. A simple task, like doodling, may be sufficient to stop daydreaming without affecting performance on the main task."

"In psychology, tests of memory or attention will often use a second task to selectively block a particular mental process," Andrade said. "If that process is important for the main cognitive task, then performance will be impaired. My research shows that beneficial effects of secondary tasks, such as doodling, on concentration may offset the effects of selective blockade."
In everyday life, Andrade said, doodling "may be something we do because it helps to keep us on track with a boring task, rather than being an unnecessary distraction that we should try to resist doing."

Re-membering Finnegan

Here is the link to Dr. Sexson's essay Re-membering Finnegan. I'm not going to try and explicate the essay, you really have to experience it for yourself. Dr. Sexson makes so many connections that the essay itself becomes hypertextual, an anchor to hang onto as we are led into the electrified abyss of knowledge and remembrance; and the overall effect of the essay left me feeling good about floating around in the depthless vastness of an electronic world. I would, however, like to swirl my foot around in the waters of the second paragraph on page 6. Here is the first stanza of Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll for your delight. Tangentially (which, after reading the essay, you will have learned that tangents are a good thing. The internet and Finnegans Wake are full of them!) I watch Jeopardy most nights with my neighbors. Two nights ago the final Jeopardy answer in the category "Invented words" was, "Its the made up word for Four o'clock in the afternoon: the time when you begin broiling things for dinner." I, of course, knew from what Dr. Sexson has taught me that the question (or answer) is Brillig. A day of despondency and disappointment punctuated by a brief moment of triumph!

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe.

Carroll used portmanteaus to create multi-dimensional words. One word that means two things. Joyce, in Finnegans Wake also used portmanteaus, but his one word might mean three, or four, or fivesixandseven different things--which of course makes the novel unnavigitable, but also different each time we read it. The internet is, according to Dr. Sexson (and I hope I'm not be too presumptuous) one big portmanteau, like Wake, but the internet is Wake electrified. Electricity is the lightning bolt that pilots all things! The lightning bolt incited visceral responses in pre-oral, mute cultures, and it is the thing that brings Frankenstein's creature to life. Now, I always figured that memory is the lightning bolt that pilots all things, but now I learn that it is actually a lightning bolt. I was hoping for more of a metaphor. Wordsworth, in his poem Daffodils, says the image of the daffodil flashes on his inward eye, so maybe I'm still not far off. Especially when we consider that the "re-membering" part of the essay is actually suggestive of remembering as corporeal activity whereby one pieces together different parts of a body. The book, in a Joycean sense, is a body that can, like Frankenstein's creature, rise to life from a bricolage of appendages.

Referring to some of my other blogs and Dr. Sexson's introductory quote, Marshall McLuhan believed technologies and mediums to be extensions of ourselves. Clothing is an extension of skin, housing extends the body's heat-regulating mechanisms, and the bicycle and car are extensions of the foot. Media extends communication and also our senses. Thus, it is not difficult to imagine remembering a book with a bricolage of simulacra, the stuff of the everyday, and appendages extending through, around, and over the caves of memory and communication.

The Prophet of the Airwaves

It's midnight, later, 2 a.m. I look at the digital red clock numbers. It tells me its' 4 a.m. If I go to bed now I can still catch a few hours of sleep, can't sleep, the television told me I might be one of the millions that can't sleep due to restless leg syndrome. Finally American's get the itch to start walking around and they diagnose it as a medical problem--they want to numb the itch. My friend Marshall once told me that we are like Narcissus, entranced, fascinated, and immobilized by the technologies that extend and amputate our senses. The TV fluxes and refluxes my silouhette against the dark cave of my solitary dispensation. Reruns of Lost, Are you smarter than a 5th grader?, Glamor Girls and the View. If I were smart enough to recognize what was happening to me by the "mosaic mesh of light and dark spots"...I realize what Marshall [McLuhan] said [in Understanding the Media] might be true. That "Fragmented, literate, and visual individualism is not possible in an electrically patterened and imploded society" and I can either confront this on a conscious level or repress it unil "some violence releases me from the entire burden."

The ride of your life

Bill Hicks, a prophetic comic who died in the early ninetys, usually ended his shows with this bit. Interestingly enough, the late Hunter S. Thompson was often quoted for saying "you buy the ticket and you take the ride." Life, the iconoclasts are saying, is only a ride. You can get off, or change your ride at any time, because, it isn't real in the first place. One thing we often find about myth is they too aren't real. They are great stories, but ordinary stories too, made up of the stuff of the repetitive and daily--everyday is "epic", every tiny, minute detail is of mythical proportions. The parallel between a ride and myth is that by doing both, by riding and mything (I'm expanding English verbage. We should all by mything on a daily basis), we are living each day as if it were your last. Bill says we can get out of the myth and off the ride that has become so repetitive to the point of convincing us that its real by making the choice between fear and love, alienation and cosmic oneness. I'm not going to argue with him, but from my own cumulative confusion of everything that we've read, it is that repetition that makes us a cosmic whole. The twists and turns of the ride, though undoubtedly illusory, are the stories we use to tell ourselves who we are. We use myth and cliche as a way of understanding our own culture. It's late and I'm rambling, but I think we should all find our own ride. Keep the lines down and create your own myth.

Meno's Paradox and Ramon Lull

On Friday I really enjoyed the Meno's Paradox discussion. It is the dialogue between Plato and Socrates that discusses how, though anamnesis, experience, and proper inquiry we can regain the eternal knowledge we had before the shock of birth. Before being expunged from the warm confines of the amniotic sack we flew around like chereubims in some ethereal place, but the fall to earth made us lose our angel wings. I feel like I have a special connection with this story because my dear and wonderful mother has always called her shoulder blades her "angel wings". So, when we have an itch on our back we scratch our angel wings--Plato says that each time we recollect what we have lost from drinking from the river Lethe our shoulder blades itch and grow new feathers. When we acquire somthing new, or re-member something, our wings grow just a little. Francis Yates divulges this on page 36, "Plato believes that there is a knowledge not derived from sense impressions, that there are latent in our memories the forms or moulds of Ideas, of the realities which the sould knew before its descent here below." Because this theory seems so germane to my life, you might consider me a neo-platonist.

Ramon Lull was also a Neo-Platonist, and his art of memory is described in chapter 8 of The Art of Memory. I've been spending the last couple days trying to understand more about him (merely because I stumbled upon him and I am not approaching this book from front to back). Around 1272, after he had an "illuminative experience...in which he saw the attributes of God" designed a method, which he published as his Ars Magna (the "The Ultimate General Art", published in 1305). His system was intended to win Muslims to the Christian faith through logic and reason. He invented numerous 'machines' for the purpose of conversion in which, through this system, a reader may ask a question (like an alethiometer!!!) about the Christian faith. One methodm the Lullian Circle, consists of two or more discs inscribed with alphabetical letters or symbols that referred to lists of attributes.

Designated as BCDEFGHIK, they are the dignities of God, or the 'nine' forms of art: Goodness, Greatness, Eternity, Power, Wisdom, Will, Virtue, Truth, and Glory. Llull knew that all believers in the monotheistic religions - whether Jews, Muslims or Christians - would agree with these attributes, giving him a firm platform from which to argue. The discs could be rotated individually to generate a large number of combinations of ideas. Lull's art of memory differs from classical and Socratic methods in that it is not imaged based, but combinatorial, moving disks like a compass or a safe lock to create different meanings. This is also, according to Yates, a principle difference of the Lullian Art--LULL INTRODUCES MOVEMENT INTO MEMORY. Figures are not static, but revolving. These combinations were said to show all possible truth about the subject of the circle. The divine attributes are a reflection of the Trinity in man: intellectus--an art of knowing or finding out truth, voluntas--an art of training the will towards loving truth, and memoria--an art of memory for remembering truth. His art was to be used by these three powers of the soul, which are very similar to the same powers we exercise when our angel wings itch!

For a few Lullian asides: as some of you know, Joan and I had to memorize innumerable amounts of lines for a recent production of Measure for Measure. How did we do it? Lull would say that we used our artificial memory. But not the part of the artificial memory that uses "medicines and plasters for the improvement of memory' (like opiates for Coleridge), but by "frequently going over in memory what one wished to retain, like an ox chewing the cud." This is Lull's only rule for 'artificial memory'. Constantly repeating what I want to remember is part of the Lullian Art and all its procedures. Giordano Bruno, the next chapter, uses the Lullian method on concentric, combinatorial circles as part of his memory system which I will read more about for my next blog.

Also, as we are working with combinations (refer to layman diagram above for easier understanding of how Ramon's art works) I am reminded of a Watling slot machine I have at home in Reno. My dad collects antique slot machines (he must have at least 70 by now, he has no meaning of the word moderation!) and there is one particular one that has three slot reels and each image (a bell, a cherry, a bar, etc...) has part of a sentence in it. So no matter what reel combination comes up (determining if you're a winner or a loser), it creates a unique and funny sentence that also tells a fortune. The picture on the right is not very good, but you can just barely make out that there are some words in between the reel symbols.

(Revised) Auction Estate Catalogue

Here is a list of 50 things to memorize. It is, essentially, a made up estate auction catalogue.

1) Liberty ½ dollar
2) Porcelain figurine
3) Lap desk
4) Jewelry box
5) Aliethiometer
6) Olympus OM2 35mm camera
7) JG Schroeder Mandolin w/ case
8) Antique opera glasses
9) Antique gumball machine
10) Royal cash register
11) Pair of Ruby Slippers
12) Sofa table
13) Black laquer armchair
14) Eames molded plywood chair
15) 1935 Caille “naked lady” slot machine
16) A looking glass
17) Set of sterling silver candle holders
18) J&B coats sewing cabinet
19) Subtle Knife
20) Radio Flyer wagon
21) Lot of miscellaneous tools
22) Dinette set
23) Pair of Buerman Spurs
24) John Deere 7030 Small frame tractor
25) One red hunting hat
26) 1992 Honda Civic
27) Walk in Freezer
28) Brunswick pool table
29) Antique carousel horse
30) Lot of 6 antique wagon wheels
31) Set of 20 bar stools
32) Italian Leg Lamp
33) “White Album” autographed by Beatles
34) Belt grinder
35) Hydraulic Lift
36) Subtle Knife
37) Lot of fine chine
38) Magi-cater portable grille
39) Hobart Pizza Oven
40) Lot of 6 vintage “Rat Pack” pictures
41) Faberge Egg
42) Medieval suit of armor
43) C.M. Russel’s “The Hold Up”
44) 2 outdoor heat lamps
45) This is not a pipe
46) Mickey Mantle autographed ball
47) Round of Golf with Tiger Woods
48) Large lot of cougar skins
49) 1996 Ford F-150
50) 2500 sq.ft. memory palace to keep everything in

A couple of class notes

Groundhog's Day, the movie, is on FX, channel 23, tonight at 7. We all know that today is Groudhog's Day, but it is also Cassi Clampitt's birthday (who was born in Grand Junction, CO, where the three roads meet), it is James Joyce's birthday, it is Dr. Sexson's 45th wedding anniversary (congratulations Michael and Lynda), it is also the Aztec New Year today and the Purification of the Virgin Mary. Quite a day!

But what is so important about Groudhog's Day, the movie? Let's talk about it in relation to the Myth of the Eternal Return. Written by Mircea Eliade, the blurb on the back of the book reads: A luminous, profound, and extremely stimulating work...Eliade's thesis is that ancient man envisaged events not as constituting a linear, progressive history, but simply as so many creative repetitions of primordial archetypes. It is the ability to return to myth, to exist simultaneously with the events described in myth. It is suggestive of a cyclicality, an "ashes to ashes" sort of thing, where we need the endless repetition, things always come around. Everything becomes important, a parataxis of events. Check out this philosophy blog to see what Nietzsche and other philosophers have to say about Groundhog Day.

Phil, the character played by Murray, is also, according to Dr. S., the type of character we need in a story about change and redemption. Phil is forced into paying attention to this day, to concentrate, and eventually he orchestrates everyday. Additionally, all the people in the town are literary characters, but I will learn more and report later after the movie tonight.

A conversation with my classmates

I would like to start out trying to answer Alex Emery's blog. He was wondering why, and understandably so, one would want to create a mnemonic device such as Mel Gibson eating a pomegranate when it could be easier to cut out the middle man and just remember Melpomene. Ong, on page 69, says that "colorless personalities cannot survive oral mnemonics", that in myth we create heroic and bizarre figures in order to "organize experience in some sort of permanently memorable form." This idea is the basis for Helena's Memory Palace, who said that it takes the ordinary and makes it something imaginative and different. In this way, everything is a parataxis as Kevin made a brilliant reference to, everything is important and nothing is subordinate. In John Nay's blog he talks about James Joyce's novel Ulysses and about the annual celebration in Dublin called "Bloomsday". John, in what I think is a memorable, if not genius, thought, connected Bloomsday with the Bill Murray movie Groudhog's Day, where everyday is memorable as each is effectively his last. James Joyce, says John, says that we are living in myth, whether we know it or not, and it is about making the ordinary extraordinary and mythical. James Joyce understood this, and recreated his own myth. Joyce made colorful personalities and places that organized experience in a completely memorable form. Tai mentions Marshall McLuhan, and in Understanding the Media, McLuhan says that Joyce orgainzed Ulysses "by assigning the various city forms of walls, streets, civic buildings, and media to the various bodily organs. " Kary Bowles in her blog mentions that the closing chapter of Ecclesiastes uses a house as a metaphor for the body and soul (which is why we want to keep our memory palaces clean!). What McLuhan said that was provocative is that the current technological man "prefers separateness and compartmented spaces, rather than the open cosmos. He becomes less inclined to accept his body as a model of the universe, or to see his house...as a ritual extension of his body." Considering this, I would have to tell Steve Crawford not to be apologetic for leading the class on to believe the glow in the dark stars on his bedroom ceiling were "fabulous". They really were because it is symbolic of you, Steve, trying to become a part of the cosmic oneness of an oral culture, a valiant attempt to accept your house as a model of the universe and an extension of your body. McLuhan also says that an oral culture is an "open system" whereas the textual, technological culture, whose tools are but extensions of sense, constitute "closed systems" which are incapable of interplay (as we have learned of the constraints of textuality and writing).

But it is the interplay of an oral culture which makes it so mythical. On page 134 of Wisdom of the Mythtellers, Sean Kane calls "dreming" the larger mental entergy, saying that "myth vibrates with this energy of life which is felt to be mental." At the end of my somewhat particular and overwhelmingly sensory version of Marshall McLuhan's The Medium is the Massage there is the Caterpilar asking Alice "Who Are You?", with Alice responding "I-I hardly know, sir, just at present--at least I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then." McLuhan uses this as an example of the effect the media has on our notion of individuality, saying that there is "no doubt how electric technology shapes, works over, alters-massages-every instant of our lives." Pair this up with Kane, who on page 134 says, "[physical beings] flash in and out of [consciousness] like animals caught in a headlight beam at night, just as, in the larger unconscious Dreaming of the world, the animals flash in and out of existence. But their enduring mode of being is in the spirit, which is to say the state of dreaming" one might say, like Alice did, "Life, what is it but a dream?" We are living in perpetual myth, like Joyce and John Nay say; but it is about structuring and organizing our homes, our memory palaces, and ourselves in such a way that is memorable, and, ultimately, exists as a dream punctuated by brief momements of the recognition that you are dreaming . At this point in time, the media, our hyper-textuality, would suggest that nothing is real anyways.