Silencio... Silencio...

A response to Friday's class...

Please allow me to list some ideas about silence:

• There is no noise during silence.
• Silence can also mean no activity whatsoever--tranquility, if you will.
• Silence is often considered peaceful.
• Silence is often considered uncomfortable, perhaps awkward.
• That which breaks silence often has more of an impact (gains more attention) than that which blends in with sound and or other activity.
• Silence allows less distraction.
• Silence allows more distraction.

Given the right time and place, all of these ideas I believe are true.

Now, allow me to list some ideas about authority:

• One is not to disobey or disrupt authority (I'd consider this the definition of authority--that which has more importance, and therefore should not be interrupted)
• If one has authority, then he has not been interrupted successfully.
• Authority can aid.
• Authority can destroy, ruin.
• That which disrupts or disobeys authority has more of an impact (gains more attention) than that which obeys and follows authority.
• Authority can provide protection.
• Authority can provide danger.

Given the right time and place, all of these ideas, I believe, are true as well.

So it looks like silence and authority have some things working together.

Let's take the fine example of Mr. Tony Prichard, and the folks who showed up to hear him teach on Friday January 22nd, 2010.

During the course of this class session, Mr. Prichard spoke very little, and at one point resorted to not speaking (silence, at least on his part) for mostly the remainder of the class. Where does this leave the class? Silence replacing authority? Shucks.

I liked the class, though. It was nice not having a teacher, or a professor, or authority, or whatever you want to call it for a while. Or at least, I should say, it was nice having a replacement for them for a while--just to see how things would go, you know? Or at least, I should say, it was nice believing that I had a replacement--or should I say it was nice being tricked into believing there was a replacement. Allow me to explain what I mean in one sentence, or maybe two:

By Tony's not talking/speaking/making vocal noise, silence filled the classroom, causing our attentions to be so directed at Tony that he had more authority than ever. Silence took the place of authority and spoke to the class these silent words: "Talk amongst yourselves, because I didn't say so."

So we forgot about Tony (or at least gave up on hearing him talk), and commenced our own conversations. This made me think about this "authority" idea, which Mr. Nanotext was so intent on having us explain. To quote plurk, "Nanotext [asks] what sort of authority do I have, and why are you letting me have it?" (http://www.plurk.com/p/3h676z)

Maybe we're paying to give him authority...? Maybe it's self-inflicted? Nanotext, do you have authority simply because you asked that question? Certainly the question entails that you do have authority, or else you could not ask "why are you letting me have it?" By this I mean, if you had none, then the answer to "what sort" would be "the none sort," after which asking "why are you letting me have it" would not make sense in any context as far as I am certain, thus proving that either you have authority because we are letting you have it ("no authority" requires no permission from us), or perhaps you do not have any authority whatsoever and have created a question that is meaningless to answer (given x=not true, to ask why x? is like trying to divide by zero).

The fact of the matter is, we all paid attention to the question, let it shape our thoughts, considered it valid in every sort of way, because authority is what Mr. Prichard, or Nanotext, or whoever was asking, had. The power to control our minds... To interrupt our thoughts, and implant new ones. To make us or break us (thanks grading systems).

And then Mr. Prichard was gone in silence, and we were without a leader for a moment. No more authority. So my question is, did the silence take the role of the authority, in once again shaping our thought processes into ones devoted to class-discussion purposes? Or perhaps, did Authoritative Tony (form of: man) almost literally--(to be continued)...

A side note:

I must use the word "literally," always almost un-literally, by placing an "almost" in front of almost literally every utterance of the word "literally," for fear of:

1. scrutiny towards my perhaps slightly incorrect usage of the word.
2. using the word correctly to a person who's understanding of it's definition is incorrect (confusion).

For the supplementary "almost" has almost literally no definition, and only suggests a state of becoming, as opposed to a concrete being or non-being in any given form. "Almost" makes almost literally any word mean almost literally almost anything that you could almost literally almost want.

...(continued)--become its doppelganger form: Authoritative Nanotext (form of: silence, plurk-lurker) who holds just as much power, but is so unfamiliar to us that we are tricked into believing the authority has been shifted to us?

Aye ca-rumba. Authority, to me, once meant "My parents, and the cops."

I wish it was still like this, but no. Now authority means a lot of things. Some things... Many things... Something. Anything. Or at least maybe anysomemanythings that shape thoughts, or just influence anything in any way. And is lack of authority really a lack of authority? Or is it "almost authority," or maybe "almost literally authority." I'm almost certain it's not "literally authority," almost.

Okay I'm almost there.

C.S.

More words about context, in a different context.

The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr... Pretty great book. I can't help but admit that. But the context issues presented to me are just plain blowing my mind...

So we have this story of a cat--a rather intelligent cat at that--all written in the words of mankind. And, the story itself is written upon paper that also contains the story of Mr. Kreisler. So we have two stories. We readers could each as being in the context of the other, or we could find ourselves reading both as in context of a novel cunningly written with two plots intertwined (in the context of E.T.A. Hoffman's imagination, I'd imagine), but regardless of what's what, we can't avoid the fact that each plot has something to do with the other.

Now, I suppose I could read simply one of the plot-lines while ignoring the other. For instance, every time I see the letters "W.P." I could simply skip ahead to the next "M. Cont." and completely ignore the Kreisler story altogether. This is, I suppose, what bothers me most. Because now I'm stuck reading Tomcat in the context of ignoring half of Hoffman's work, thus making it only half of a Hoffman story, which suggests to me that doing this would take the story completely out of context, if you will.

So this is my lament. I'm beginning to understand the impermanence and flow of context from place to place as our thought can alter it. Constantly our entire understanding of the world is interrupted--be it by the ring of a fresh plurk, or by the interjection of some complicated words from Kreisler's biography into the story of an incredibly educated feline, or perhaps the sudden desire to post some blogged wisdom [I wish that to be pronounced "blog-ed wisdom," (here is an interruption within another parenthesized interruption)] in the midst of reading that very book, Tomcat.

The best part of all of this is that from a certain context, from many for that matter, these words would mean something, or anything completely different from the idea I'm trying to consider here. And how wonderful it is, that maybe I've written sense and nonsense ubiquitously and simultaneously, constantly and never, and yet it all means something to somebody somewhere, and changing from context to context to context like a ______(fill in blank with simile that would best fit the context).

-C.S.

A First Blog Post

So this is blogging. Blah Blahg Blog. And here I am. I've never posted a blog before--though I've always meant to. I suppose I just needed a little push to get it started. So I send out my thanks to Nanotext, for making me do this once and for all.

I would also like to thank Mr. Nanotext, as well as Mr. Austin and Mr. Derrida for pushing me to great questioning of life, the universe and everything--or maybe just some things--through the means of deconstructive literary analysis. Gee whiz, I thought I had a good handle on philosophy and the language arts, but I suppose I'm wrong.

Or am I?

I'm stuck considering the idea of "context," these past couple weeks, just as many men before me have. Perhaps, in one context, the word may convey the idea of... Let's say: "a situational determinative of meaning," or something of that sort. That was my understanding of context for most of my life--something that determines what stuff means. But woe is me, I had never considered that a context might have had a context...

This is what, I suppose, is the groundwork for the deconstruction presented in Austin and Derrida's writings. Now, I'm only beginning to dig deeper into these ideas--but what I'm understanding right now is this:

A context can change depending on anything--one could say a context can change depending on its context, which is thus alterable depending on its context, and so on and so forth. This, I hope, is the general idea of Austin and Derrida--to suggest communication is something perhaps subjective of context, moreover all words can mean different things depending on when they're used, who uses them, who's hearing them, why they're said, etc. etc.

So for a few days I was at a loss, as I'm sure you would be if you too had:

1. Never heard of deconstruction
2. Never considered context's intricacies and inner workings
3. Never seen Cronenberg's Shivers, or for that matter, never analyzed a horror film
4. Never considered a beneficial goal to skepticism

However upon some deep and thorough mind scraping I've been able to figure this stuff out in a general way. I get the point of deconstruction, and I understand it's not like skepticism at all--it's just a method of breaking stuff down to it's roots of impossibility and infinite, sometimes paradoxical nature. And no, it's not a reason to be depressed, nor is it a reason to give up--but rather it's enlightening! As Mr. Nanotext Prichard has made it clear, by witnessing such irregularity and ever-changing definition in literature/communication, how can anyone help but be left in awe of the way words affect us on a daily basis? We truly can't explain them. We truly can't. Really.

So I break stuff down, shred it to pieces, break it apart, and attempt to find meaning, all the while knowing that the deeper I go, the farther I'll get from it. And that's the point! Meaning is subjective to context, which is something that is seemingly undeterminable. How stellar. How majestic! How infinite and divine!

It occurs to me only now why it is that I am supposed to be the acid-blood from Alien... Or perhaps I can see now why I am parasitic in nature. Depending on the context, of course, I could be the blood burning through the floor and ceiling--a metaphor of course, "I" being the blood, the "floor/ceiling" being any text I can imagine. I am a parasite, squirming through text, living and breathing with it, changing depending on context of context, blah blahg blog...

Until later tonight,

-Cowboy Sterling