Down down down into the top of the soda can the cigarette drowned. Sip sip sip into my mouth the ashen concoction fell. Now being that it may be too late to do anything about it. We can all pretend like it didn't happen, and, like good little boys and girls, if we do well enough it will disappear, like tinker-bell if you don't clap hard enough. When on my back I always think about SIDS and how maybe if I make the choice to sleep properly now, it will somehow impact my death that occurred at some point in my childhood. I remember, still being in a crib, pretending I was one of the muppet babies, gonzo would have been most suitable but I don't really remember, wishing I was young and didn't have so much stress. Satan had already fed me the apple, and I was a greedy child. "Oh Jesus, end your reign of terror and rid us of forgiveness, let us be contented with our sinfulness," I pray every night since and he refuses to capitulate. Give me a warrior god any day to this passive aggressive karmic monster. That doesn't matter though, truth I mean, it's all a matter of excepting the subtext and moving foreword I suppose. Going to zoos and watching movies, eating white pizza and wishing you were vegan, taking a nature walk and making people jealous, playing games that you wish were over so you could go back it bed, back to the jungle, back to the animals of mind, were we all can deal with you one at a time. Life is all about the salvation of the body. The mind is fucked. The soul is fucked. Don't listen when they tell you fatback is a skeleton key to the kingdom. I pretended that Hawthorne was talking to me the other day. I am reading Blithedale Romance, it is taking me forever. He told me if I listen to him I would be okay, I would be passionate and my picture would be on walls. I imagine giving interviews were I tell people that, "if there is one thing I want other people to know about me is that I am just an average guy." Carl Jung taught something called Active Imagination. After his break from Freud he had a bit of a breakdown. He couldn't read scholarly articles or write them. To me it sounded like depression, but Jung realized he had been cut off from his creativity and set about restoring it. He started to let his imagination carry him away, thoughts and games of childhood became his starting points. A time before everything became overgrown. The morass of life. When your room looks kind of weird and you wish that you weren't there, just close your eyes and make believe and you can be anywhere.

Danielou presentation page

outline

Week 7

grades/everybodyfails

define livin

my work ready for evaluating

Week 5

somethingcompletlydifferent

Week 4

everything after the fact

Week 3 Blog 1

purposeofthisclass

Week 2 ALL

http://idh4000rhetoricsofrhythm.pbwiki.com/Week-2-Goodness?doneSave=1

Blog 4

Our culture

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.

I will do my best to remove myself from the arena of pathos as the three second sound bite, "copyright is theft of our culture" resonates throughout the shrinking commons. Our society is a capitalist society. I being a product, not a victim, of such a society find myself with certain inclinations and proclivities. When a friend of mine sold an Playstation 3 for triple it's price, I felt the green within their wallets engender a green monster in my heart. Why hadn't I taken the initiative? I could have stood outside for a day and made over a thousand dollars, "impecunious student's sudden windfall" would be the caption above me dining with with some co-ed, at the tavern, "I can't believe he didn't make me pay," she would be quoted as saying. Then my slope of rational was brought to ticket scalpers. Those white trash financiers, those lolita robbing incubuses (incubi), who take advantage of.....wait, those last words, "take advantage of" a paroxysm of distain. To take advantage of is the antithesis of edification, the purpose of any progressive society. I am John's credit consolidation plan. This is not possible, on a humanistic level. We forever seek to be better than we are, to transcend, to awaken, but to do so by injuring someone or something else, in this case culture, is to deny it's inherent sameness or soul. Therefore to rob someone of an idea or a form of expression is to stave yourself. This is why the Heroes were different, this is why the Jews were different, this is why the slaves were different, it is the only way. The "haves" be it they having money or intellectual property, have sought to segment themselves from the whole. However they are the claw and we are the crab. Nobel ideals will always eventually dominate ignoble ones. The reason is demonstrated in JC Watts quote, "If you are explaining you are losing." It is only possible to promulgate sick notions of reality through chicanery and guile, before they eventually catch up with you. This is true on a small scale, ie. tangled webs, and therefore can be expanded ad infitumn. Depression is quickly becoming the number two killer in America behind heart disease. What is the meaning of life? Where do you find your value? The past is God's, but we have killed God. Our new myths can be bought at Walmart. Valuesickness. To hold onto something is to suffocate it. If you love something.....

I view rhythm as the beat between different sides, be it sound and silence, love and hate, on and off, giving and taking. This capricious beat, nonetheless, seems to be perambulating freely, haphazardly, yet with a cohesive order to it. I have heard, genius is all about finding the patterns in things, making order out of the unfathomably complex. I thought of Joyce, of Ulysses, how he started with the pattern first, then gave the reader the joy of finding the furtive truth, the nuclear core, it's message or universality, the heroics of life. Is that genius? Or merely does it allow someone else the vision to feel what it must be like to be in an ordered universe, so complex but if I read enough criticism, if I look for the patterns, then I can see them. (G---C---D----C---D--G). If rhythm is the lorgnette of the day, it is only afterwards I can hold it's comfortable against my eyes. (Hemingway writing about Americans while in Paris). The rising, the ease of morning, ephemeral enjoyment and empirical breaths (beat) penultimate rush to work (crescendo) bursts through woodwinds to dash through the door by ten o'clock (rest). Learning to play to others grooves, I let a chance street encounter forestall all plans. Setting bass lines, beats, and chord changes (tell the truth and the such) then sink into the pocket of the rhythm. Play a riff, blow their minds, destroy all the rules you laid down, everybody together now, synchronized living. Staccato love, can you feel it? I heard a man, tell me where he at, what he was thinking, what he was feeling, what it was like to be alone, he was jammin', he wasn't dubbin' the past, but jiving to who he was, i had heard it all before, yeah man, i can dig it.

Methusela6: so rhythm as in relates to literature?

Methusela6: it

watermellon72: oh ya

watermellon72: I don't know...I was thinking about what he was saying about my thesis

watermellon72: he suggested that it would contain a lot of long complicated lines and that they should be broken up by a few short sentances

watermellon72: Like hemingway versus Faulkner

Methusela6: The organization of a beat.

Methusela6: I think the beat in lain against the "groove" as structure. The 4/4 time, the 3 scaffold scenes in Hawthorne

watermellon72: Never read howthorne

Methusela6: Basically, there three dividing points to the scarlet letter

watermellon72: hmmm interesting I'll have to read that

Methusela6: each one takes place atop a scaffolding, they allow you come back to a central point, to see what developed since the last one. Like the main, base line in some jazz.

Methusela6: I like Hemingway saying that he tried to write the most honest sentence he possibly could, getting rid of all superflous information. The beat as truth.

watermellon72: short steccato beats for hemingway

Methusela6: Whereas sometimes more complex writers, a la Faulkner, make it more difficult to find the underlining connections.

watermellon72: I had to learn to appreciate the rapid rythm of his works

Methusela6: For example, the three movements in the sound and the fury only are made clear when taken as a cohesive whole

watermellon72: bigger words and more complicated sentance structure weaves a more intricate rythem

Methusela6: Benji's narrative is garbly as a stand all alone.

watermellon72: theres four movements in the sound and the fury

watermellon72: right

Methusela6: What's the maids name?

Methusela6: yes

Methusela6: benjy quentin jason and....

Methusela6: beat beat beat beat

watermellon72: I don't know the maids name

Methusela6: the base line is usually some past piece of literature, like the Christ figure, reoccurs a la old man and the sea

Methusela6: something for Hemingway to Riff off of

Methusela6: the rythm of our collective past

watermellon72: ok

watermellon72: hmmm

watermellon72: interesting point

watermellon72: I see benji's narritive like the rythem of a city street

Methusela6: chaos as rhythm

Methusela6: cacophony69 anyone?

watermellon72: disjointed and sparadic yet all apart of what makes up Benji

watermellon72: haha

watermellon72: I get it

watermellon72: kind of

Methusela6: The beat serves as structure, theme, and interlace.

watermellon72: Quintin is a long slow rythem

watermellon72: a sad ode to his former self

watermellon72: and the last was methodical

Methusela6: I see Benji as without unifying rhythm. Whereas Quintin gave in to the rhythm of the ticking clock, the ordered universe with no freedom, only suicide

watermellon72: like a bass line

Methusela6: yet Benji might be considered most free, doesn't care about being understood. like trey

watermellon72: and the maid's story was like a southern baptist hymn...joyous and full of hope

watermellon72: so you're saying are teachers retarded?

watermellon72: bad boy!

Methusela6: i didn't!

watermellon72: oh but you made that association

watermellon72: I think he's creative

watermellon72: and ingenious

watermellon72: haha

Methusela6: I was saying that what is put out there is put out there, and any unifying theory still lives room for interpretation. The ambigiouity of great art. Asskisser

watermellon72: haha

watermellon72: ya sure backpeddle now that you already made that insulting statement

Methusela6: I was really seeing Grendal in form of movements.

Methusela6: There is freedom within each chapter...however

Methusela6: only in a limited sense as it relates to the zodiac as well as the poem Beowulf

Methusela6: Beat drives form

watermellon72: I felt that the story was flowing then started to fall apart after his removal from exile

Methusela6: He finally had gained so much structure that by chapter 10 he became free.

Methusela6: He became secure in what or who he was

watermellon72: Grendel is limited in his rythem and form by our cultural context and language

Methusela6: exactly, as are we

Methusela6: any sort of break from that and you dance on the razor of insanity

watermellon72: ok....I can see that....I was looking at it as a breaking away from his superior mental state as he became apart of the danes social make up

Methusela6: what is truth? It can only be put into language within the confides of something.......

Methusela6: The individual vs. the group. The band vs. Prince alone in the studio

Methusela6: Copyright vs. freedom

watermellon72: whish is more creative

watermellon72: conforming to your own artistic standards is higher than conforming to a group

Methusela6: well, by Grendel losing himself, he gained himself....i think somebody said something like that before (Jesus maybe)

watermellon72: and you don't really conform when the standards are your own

watermellon72: no he had himself and lost himself in social conformity

Methusela6: or Soren Kirkegarrd said the group is evil, losing yourself makes you not free to make rational desision. I think the question is what "groove" do you pick. But you MUST pick one, or you are lost

watermellon72: by playing the role of the monster

Methusela6: smoking pot and playing nintendo

watermellon72: he had a choice to cast off that archetype

watermellon72: and didn't

watermellon72: I'm am suddenly reminded of that lovely music from the first mario

Methusela6: the monster, it was so much bigger than that. He took the skin or mask laid for him, put it on, and made it his own. Like someones interpretation on Mozart

Methusela6: to make it your own

watermellon72: ok ok

watermellon72: I see that>

{blog 3. I had my life spin around the tiny orb of this project all week, eventually culminating in a last minute, tape recorderless project. I met with Crystal in the academic success center, to find a way we could semi-get everything done in time for class. We spoke relativly little, trying to seclude our conversation to typing, however do to our proximity occasional outbursts. Better information would be my reasoning for not having someone record the conversation with me. Put simply, the person I was supposed to do it with went insane. He was always bordering on lines of reality and fantasy, deliusion and transendance, struture and chaos. However a few nights ago, he took the crazy train all the way to disjunction ju...nevermind...I had lost my first person to their mind, and decided to put all weight of success upon my girlfriend. However, chaos took control of the situation again, causing a second rift in my life. I tried to set a plan in motion, create rhythm and it was uprooted. It causes me to think that true rhythm can only be seen in retrospect. Each beat, is seperate onto itself, and if you are thinking about the next one, you most likly will misplay the note that you are supposedly on. All the participants must be willing for something to work. Otherwise, they have to leave the band. The urgency for creation can be manifest in those penultimate moments of procrastination, that lays a seed, saying, I must do this, time is running out. The spirit of what makes that final push, external or internal, a desire to fill oneself, or to get a "grade", may be important. I do not know though, the question of motives in relation to a final project serves to ask in what spirit was this done, and in the purpose clear}

Blog 4

http://idh4000rhetoricsofrhythm.pbwiki.com/January-10-Blog-2?doneSave=1/

I have to link Crystal's page, because she is the one who i did the assignment with. She has a completly different take on what occured, interpreting things with a postive spin as opposed to something that says we are slackers.

http://idh4000rhetoricsofrhythm.pbwiki.com/David_Wiki_Page

I just really enjoyed David's musings. Aestetically (sic) it was just cool.