A concise explanation of our presentation

Our group used "Maps" as a jumping off place for our ideas. Because we didn't have much time, we all decided to write our own little stories within the context of a larger one, hence invoking the idea of frames. Numerous allusions to texts such as F.W., Ozymandius, and the Divine Comedy were made to also enhance the mis-en-abyme effect of our story. We did not know what the other stories were prior to reading them, but if they had not fit together that would have been fine because so many of the myths in Kane jump from place to place that you start to get the idea that theme connects the events rather than cause and effect. We told the story of a man who had been drunk the previous night and was in search of a book he had lost. The only hitch was that he had no literate means of re-tracing his steps. We figured that an inebriated individual was the closest thing to a primary orality we could effectively and believably write and personify (except for maybe a dog), yet there is still some "residual textuality" left in our story and in the perceptions of our protagonist. The biggest qualm that anyone has, including Plato, is that we cannot express oral perceptions in a textual way.

So off went our adventurer retracing his steps, using everything un-texual to find where he was going. In this way we were easily able to use Kane, who explained that oral myths were rooted in the land, and that "what holds the whole elaborate structure of stories fresh in memory is the likeness of the patterns of story to the life of the land." As such, we also wanted you as a class to use the "lay-of-the-land" to try to determine where we are going. Each place on our route was, as Kane would describe, a "place of local meaning where mystery is felt". Because myths use maps, but not of the chirographic kind, it would seem that one must incorporate elements of synesthesia into his or her natural way of life. You need to develop different sensory ways of perceiving the same material.

The route went as such: Library, Spectators, Stadium, Montana Hall, Duck Pond, Cooper Park, The Barmuda Triangle, Pita Pit, the "M", Bozeman Beach, GV Mall, and back to Renne Library. I'm am positive that there were things I didn't catch in our story, but each locale had a certain association, or maybe mnemonic device, which made the map like a memory theater. Jose Arcadio Buendia's suicide smelt like the gun powder they use to blast off the cannon when the Cats score a touchdown, MT Hall is where the moocow was led but unable to walk down. I think one of the larger themes that we tried to exemplify was a way of telling a story, understanding history, and organizing ideas through agencies other than text, because, it would seem, once text gets involved in these processes the possibility of their manifestation has "gone to shit". There is no socially coherent way of mapping (the origins, limitations, mores, etc.) a community when typography makes that community expansive and global. But, when we use non-textual devices to try to describe where we are in Bozeman, it becomes something known only to locals, it becomes esoteric.

I'm going to end there. So much for conciseness. Read Melissa, Robert, Karrie (sp*, sorry), and Parker's blog because I am sure they had different ideas about our objective, but nonetheless they presented wonderful versions of the whole that surprised and entertained me as much as you (I hope).