A Wee Thought

Here’s a wee thought, on a Thursday afternoon. Narratives presented to us by culture help us structure and give meaning to our lives - whether they be large cultural stories about the value we give to things like celebrities, personal appearance, sports teams, etc., or more literally, narratives such as those furnished by TV shows and films - but we seem not to care about the ontological status of these narratives. I think that religion has historically functioned as a narrative-provider, a progenitor of stories which inhabit the individual and collective human psyche and allow life to seem structured and meaningful - but religion is contingent on belief, which throws the question of “true or false” into a deeply important light. How has the significance of the ontological status of a narrative or narrative-provider shifted, diminished, or increased over the course of history, especially with regards to The Enlightenment?

I totally don’t have enough time to expand on this right now, but yeah! These are the kinds of things I think about at work. That and the watermelon puree/champagne cocktail I had at dinner last night. It was so good and I want one so hard, now. Just saying.

(((emma)))

Umberto Eco and The Useful Fiction of A “Structured Life,” pt. 2

Barbara Ellmerer, Amanita 

Barbara Ellmer is a Swiss-based painter who “paints objects of her subconscious manifestation with the unconstrained flip of her wrist and a surreal color pallet” (quotation culled from this interview, in which she brilliantly elucidates her methodology and philosophy of art). Her work intrigues me, as it offers an aesthetic perspective on transcendental experience that seems to evoke the ambience of such situations, rather than attempting mimesis (Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, why is my spell-check device indicating an error at the word? A harbinger of newspeak’s advent, my friends; gird your loins and keep your dictionaries close) or fidelity to an original vision which by its very nature is transcendent - fleeting.

Therein lies my theoretical contention with the art of Alex Grey, actually. By my estimation, he seems to aim for a direct reproduction of psychedelic visions, but there’s this weird disjuncture between the slickness and clinical feel of his art and the qualities of transcendence from which they, at least nominally, issue.

That’s the long and short of what I have to say about that. If what I am about to write feels a bit distant, or playful, , it is because I am resisting the sudden urge to fingerpaint.

Toward the end of this post, I mentioned that I had “a ton more to say on the subject”. What follows is a fraction of that ton.

I have long been fascinated by metafiction (I wrote my senior thesis about it, natch, and the interest extends back to age 14, when I first read this book ). When something of both a highly conceptual and specific nature holds my attention over the course of multiple years, I think it is worthy of attempting to discern a function, or group of functions, that define the thing. In revealing its character this way, it also reflects on my thought provess and allows for a more profound and intimate connection to the seemingly abstract and remote.

This explains why I am excited about the concept that metafictional literature might surpass non-metafictional literature in its function to aid the reader in self-fictionalizing (e.g., creating meaning from what objectively might appear to be a dispersed and heterogeneous human existence). According to Umberto Eco, that is exactly why people read. 

I like to think that metafiction creates a benefical catch-22 which finds the reader forced to envision themselves as part of the story.  I choose the word “forced” carefully: this phenomenon occurs regardless of her or his complicity with a narrative or its assumed “message.” The consequence of this is that they are empowered to view their lives from an aesthetically distant perspective, making life appear more cohesive, elegant, and structured.

These thoughts! They simmer like primordial soup under the lid-pot that my skull undoubtedly is. Definite forms will emerge from this, I am sure of it. I feel them slinking inexorably to solid ground; maybe - just maybe - a Real! Live! Paper! will be produced from their exodus, to add to some sort of not-yet-existent writing portfolio. The missing link will thus be restored and harmony will prevail between my ears until something else comes along to frustrate (I mean, tantalize) me. My problems: terrible and adorable all at once.

Love,

Emma

Umberto Eco and The Useful Fiction of A “Structured Life”

This photograph was taken by Josef Albers in Anahuacali, Mexico. My (admittedly tiny amount of) research has not provided me with a date for it. I think that’s heaven up there, obscured by the wall to our left.

OH! BUT THIS IS SOMEWHAT NOT ENTIRELY PROBABLY UNRELATED:

As the result of a work environment which permits me to wear headphones most of the time, and the subsequent overexposure to (awesome) music which this situation has produced, I have ventured into the world of audiobooks.  It bears an even lesser resemblance to actual reading than I thought it might, initially, although it isn’t without its charms. As frustrated as I am by not being able to set my own pace, as a reader, I like the way in which it makes me notice my attention - certain topics, words, or turns of phrase will restore my focus to the audio when my mind drifts, as it inevitably does (I mean, I am at work). It’s fun to think that the pattern which emerges from the links between these terms is some sort of unique mental imprint, a sort of fingerprint for personal interests than run deeper than that over which we exact willful control. 

This evening, I finished Umberto Eco’s Six Walks In The Fictional Woods. I was actually looking for Italo Calvino’s Six Memos For The Next Millenium when I happened upon it. As such, audible.com did not have the text I sought, but Eco’s book looked promising enough. This was my third attempt at getting into his work, and this time, it worked. Granted, I wasn’t really “reading” it, and it’s not fiction: inspired by Calvino’s series of lectures on literary values (delivered just before his death and collected in Six Memos), Eco undertook a similar project, the results of which comprise Six Walks (which is dedicated to Calvino).

This was probably not the best thing to do, as a duty-driven employee, because I’ve spent a little too much time over the past few work-evenings furiously scribbling down notes inspired by Eco’s brilliance when I should have been doing my job. I guess that’s what happens when you mainline brilliant commentary on subjects such as: referential/contextual framing within a text, the difference between an invented literary figure and a real dead person, and Why Fog Is Always Awesome In Fiction (fog meaning both the appearance of real fog, as weather phenomenon, and a “fog” created as an affect of style in the writing).

What really got me worked up, though (…I promise I have a life, you guys, really, I promise) was his declaration that people tell stories, and have always told stories, to give form to their real lives. That’s some serious paraphrasing right there, but it’s the gist of it. He goes on to explain how we must imagine our lives as some sort of fictional work to provide a structure (such as a narrative arc or linear progression) necessary for us to make some sense from what would, without such a framework, much more closely resemble James Joyce’s Ulysses than, say, Ivanhoe: a life comprised of dispersed, heterogeneous moments which perpetually debase their own conditions for being true or meaningful. A life void of perspectival viewpoint, negating the very possibility of individuality or selfhood (or so some would argue, at any rate). I’ll take Ivanhoe, thanks…

My specific interest in Eco’s conception of the use of fiction-reading is its function with regards to metafiction. My wacky idea is that texts which call attention to their own status as fiction, and in doing so trouble or “make strange” the distinction between the work of art that they are and the reader’s real life, provide the reader with an ability to narrativize and structure their own lives that is both stronger and more instructive than that provided by non-metafictional works of fiction.

I’ve got loads more to say on these matters, but I’ll hold off until after I get some rest. If I get some rest. I hear there isn’t much around for the wicked these days.

((( emma )))