After Dr. Sexson told us that we can understand the universe through our memory theaters, I don't think its fair that we be asked to write a finite paper. It should go on for infinity and infinity and infinity. I am writing my capstone paper tonight and I can't seem to get away from some of the things we have talked about in class. So I'm going to write part of my paper about how Walt Whitman uses lists and uses corporeal similitudes to evoke a mythical sense of origin in an alienated society that is spinning off into the outer reaches of global oblivion. That's that paper.
For this class, as I am for all of Dr. Sexson's classes (and Mrs. Dr. Sexson's too), I can't figure out what to talk about because there's just too much. In one sense that is a very deflating and hopeless feeling, but it also gives me hope that I was the beneficiary of part of my tuition and not all of it went to funding the athletics program. So here is what I am thinking for this paper. I'd like, like Kevin, to know what you guys think. After all, you're going to have to hear about it.
I like the idea of electricity. That either a physical (as in science) or a metaphysical (as in the romantics) shock can excite, inspire, and recall. I like the idea that Frankenstein, a bricolage of so many body parts, can come alive with electricity. I'm interested in how electrical stimulation, in the form of television or the computers, can incite new ways of reading in each of us, but moreover, I'm interested in how we can create these simulations within ourselves--to find new way of reading and inspiration that might not come from simulacra, or outside sources. How we can have that "ah ha!" moment, when that LIGHT BULB flicks on above our head when we get an idea. I was inspired during the memory presentation when everyone looked to the sky, searching, then came back, each item of 50 a little "ah ha!" moment in itself. Maybe I'm not looking to retrieve the lost arts of a primarily oral culture. Maybe I'm just tyring to get back to the 1930's, the depression era. Things were good then--we had the economic bust we have today, but we didn't have the TV. To think back to a primarily oral culture is unfathomable, so I'll work with the last 80 years or so. I'm interested in the why, what, where, who, and how people decide to do something, like read for instance, without the pressure and insistence of the television. How did people read before the scrolling marquee across Times Square, and how did they begin to apprehend the same words differently when the lights got turned on. How do we read in the dark. There are some electrical simulations that can even help a blind person see.
I don't even know if I can write a thesis statement that is contained within a set number of pages, or even contained on paper itself. I want to make my ideas and my thesis statement light up in your brain without you actually having to read it. Like green blood, we're going for and intravenous transfusion of knowledge and inspiration...moderated by a piece of electrical equipment? I'm lost, help. When you start to imagine the world as a vortex, you can't help but find yourself in it, not knowing where youre from or where youre going. Lost. (maybe I can watch an episode of Lost and write my paper about that?)
No comments:
Post a Comment