brief thoughts about frames and the power of suggestion

Quote of the day: "If you want somebody to grow up as a thief, you call them a thief"--Dr. Sexson. Indians (though I didn't write down which ones) don't have a word for stutter, and as a result, stuttering does not exist. People always called me Stutter or Stuttering Sutter, but I never did stutter. Why is this so interesting? I think it lends itself to the power of suggestion. In Don DeLillo's White Noise, the poisonous cloud causes symptoms such as nausea or vomiting in those who have been exposed, but people do not feel these symptoms until the radio or television tells them that these are their symptoms. It's all about the power of suggestion, and I would add to this by saying that we as free-thinking individual humans (though I'm not entirely sure what I mean by that generalization) are indeed just the opposite of that because rather than being suggestive of anything, it seems that we are only a suggestion of the words and simulacra that we are exposed to. It is another way of understanding how writing restructures consciousness. Here is a link to a previous blog I did that was also part of a paper: metanarrative escape.


Also in class Dr. Sexson spoke briefly about frames. The idea of frames and metafiction is somthing that is very interesting to me, and I think that is mostly because I think it is possible to see our own life as a framed story (such as the movie The Truman Show). When we are granted the ethereal divine gift of recognizing our daily lives as such, it makes them mythical, and often very obscure, weird, and intriguing. I guess its another way to look at life. The French refer to the idea of frames as "mis-en-abyme", a term which basically means an infinite abyss. It is a term Dr. Sexson told me about last year, I was able to discuss it with a Frech psychology student travelling in Argentina, and now understand that infinite abyss, those vast unending reflections and innumerable links between everything, as the cave flown through by St. Augustine. Here is a link to a previous blog post I did a while ago concerning frames and Alice in Sunderland, a graphic novel our children's literature class was reading. I intendend only to provide this link, but, like frames, the story and the conversation can go on forever in innumerable tangents, like our memory theaters. Tangents are good, Dr. Sexson will tell you. Literate people, however, will tell you tangents are bad...