Collecting: FEAR-ing a Speculative Practice

It’s become apparent that, though I attest to be a follower of many things, perhaps even to a fanatic level, one instantiation being my Trekkie-ness, I lack a level of subservience, an undying commitment to, and loyalty for the object or subject which I admire. This is evident, most clearly, in that I am not a “collector,” in the fanatical sense, or even, in a more reserved fashion. Yes, I might “hoard” digital media, but not out of a desire to have the media, but rather to provide it to others. This would constitute, if anything, more of a purposeful mavenry than compulsive collectorship. What has generated these considerations involves a bit of retrospective explication, so bear with me.

Tuning into the Ambiance, or, Why I Listen to Max Richter Instead of Mozart

It is perhaps appropriate that this short entry on contemporary music and listening habits be informed with a pastiche of a playlist playing in the background as I write this. Iron Maiden’s “Can I Play With Madness” could just as easily shift into Japanese indie rock (Rodeo Carburetor) or Daft Punk as it could a track from a film score like Star Trek: Undiscovered Country or Gustav Holst’s “Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity” from his sprawling “The Planets.” Mere decades ago, such a thing would be far more remote, yet today it is commonplace to have musical tastes reflect an eclectic, at times incoherent/illogical arrangement of styles, artists, and periods. This is, after all, the era of the mash-up, the time of hypermodern, auto-generated/directed integrations of disparate, dissolutely linked areas of interest. And this need not apply to just the musical world, for with the age of instant MULTImedia delivery, the hypermodern human can not only download, say, Eliot’s “Middlemarch” or a postmodern mash-up like “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter” for their electronic book reader but she or he can also tune into a tailored playlist that is informed by musical tastes that crosses boundaries and is heuristically directed in track selections, while in the background this individual may choose to playback an item that has been recorded to his or her DVR–it is all about NOW, and the NOW is the NOW I CREATE. We are no longer slave to the radio or television with its insipid commercial breaks. No, we can fast-forward, erase, copy and paste on a whim. As Kirby says, we are the authors of our own reality. But to return to music…

Battle of the Sex(es)–The Lady of War

De Facto "Lady of War?"

I’ve been meaning to write something about archetypes, or in this case, tropes. As quite a few other people who frequent the multifarious channels of the net, I often find myself returning to the ever-entertaining, yet oh-so-accurate-and-apt, TvTopes.org (this has led me to dangerously approach the Trope: “TvTropes Will Ruin Your Life” on more than one occasion). It’s a labyrinth of pop-culture idioms, tropified parcels and paths that wend into ever more complex networks of distraction and discovery. It truly is, also, a storehouse of opinion, and scarily, the opinions coalesce with startling accuracy on many Tropes. One trope that has concerned me for the past couple of years, since around the time I took a Chinese Martial Arts Film and Literature course at my undergraduate college, is titled the “Lady of War,” though, this trope wasn’t recognized as such in my class; the equivalent, and more accurate nomenclature for “Lady of War” would be the “Nuxia Pian” or “Lady-Knight Errant.”

Rounding Things Up

Over a month ago, I posted some potential projects that I’d wanted to work on over the summer. Though vague, the ideas seemed promising, and I did jump into research pertaining to many of the areas that I thought could contribute to the production of any written work. But research can get out of hand, and I’ve had to rein in my interests, and subsequently, limit the scope of any writing I do. Between you and me, dear reader, I don’t write nearly half as much as I should, and had I written half as much as I should, I’d be much closer to having something to work with. There’s the inner critic, that I’m sure every artist faces, who keeps my writing attempts at arm’s length. It’s been helpful, for instance, to use a MindMap to plot out the landscape of what sorts of things I might want to write, but having a map and using it to reach a goal, are different things. I’m mainly writing this to motivate myself to take the risks I need to in order to have material to work with. I obviously can’t set out on a book-length project at the moment, but I could, possibly, finish a short story I’d been meaning to…or draft another vignette I’ve recently had in mind. Whichever, it would go a long way toward motivating me to actually sit down regularly and do purposeful (other than meandering) writing.  So it goes…

Also, next year: http://www.artofvideogames.org/ Which reminds me, E3? From what I heard, not too exciting this year. My Playstation 3 will likely sit as neglected as it is now for the near future.

-Mt

The rumours of my…

Looking at this, sadly neglected blog of mine, I notice that it’s been several weeks since my last post. For that interim, I have nothing to comment on except that I’ve managed some different research avenues for my thesis. I’ve compiled a (for me) modest reference list with the intention of adding and subtracting sections depending on how much I think I’ll be looking back at explored territories compared to my prospective gains in new areas of inquiry. It’s summer as well, so I have excuse to include leisure reading (well, I consider any reading at the moment leisurely…so I guess I mean guilty pleasures). I prefer a mix of topics and genres whenever I set out on a big lexical journey, and my current selections don’t deviate from my generalist leanings. Sectioned off as research-oriented and leisure, my books to read for the near future include:

-Kora In Hell: Improvisations (verse narrative), W.C. Williams
-Bloom’s Literary Themes: The Labyrinth, Harold Bloom
-Unquiet Understanding (On Gadamer’s Philosophical Hermeneutics)
-The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barret Barrett 1845-1846 vol I (1899)

-The Renaissance Soul: Life Design for People with Too Many Passions to Pick Just One
-Across the Nightingale Floor, Lian Hearn
-On Speed: The Many Lives of Amphetamine
-Children of Dune, F. Herbert

Probably, this list seems ambitious, but believe me, with my slow, meaning-aimed reading habits, it will take me some time to make significant progress in any of these titles (particularly the Gadamer). Of primary interest to me at the moment is the Bloom essay series. The labyrinth, as image, theme, archetype, what have you, has some potentially powerful aspects for structuring a narrative like what I’m attempting (i.e., something multicursal, non-linear, discursive, hypertextual). I cannot say too much about how the labyrinthine fits into the project (thematic, literal, or otherwise), but, if anything I’ve come across so far as a unifying means for my writing and interests, this is as good as any. Enough about research, though, and onto matters of opinion, of matters that have come up recently in the course of discussing a rather trying issue for “aspiring” writers: publication.

Replaying, Recycling, and Paying It Forward

For my first foray into discussing online games, I was hoping for a different topic than this, something more introductory and broad-spanning. It is, however, perhaps more relevant to discuss what is of more temporal immediacy, that being, the issue of economics, value, and social hierarchies in MMOGs, specifically, in one I’ve had ample experience with over the past nine months or so: Star Trek Online. Be prepared, reader, for some potentially complex (well for me) number-crunching might be involved in this assessment.

First Post: Thumbnail Sketches of Potential Projects/Thesis Ideas

I don’t know how a stag turns/ into a stream, an arc of water./ I have never felt such accurate envy.
-Hirshfield

With the summer season approaching, I’ll have time to focus on various literary pursuits. The hope with this post is to get just rough points down for possible thesis or ancillary ideas (see: amusing writing distractions). With time, and lots of research and exploration (both fun/play and work), these points should become more constellation-like in how they’re structured. Any recommendations for relevant resources (primary or secondary) with regards to this list are, by all means, welcome.

1. A series or book-length poem(s) on consciousness, prognostication, dreams and narrativity. An investigation of the Cassandra archetype. Metaphorical representation of knowledge via Jungian collectivity and World Tree. Speaker-centric, but disjointed, or trance-like. Prose poems interspersed with vignettes and a(e)ssays related to physical or spiritual (dreams) theories of time and causation.
2. A hodographic text on Bodies (note divergence from critical topology). Marginal use imaging/photos/tomography alongside ancient medical texts (Greek and Chinese).  An elucidation of formation and  distortion of body functionality, dis-ease diagnosis and treatment. Hybrid, interconnected essays on conceptions, both corporeal and mystical, of embodiment and psychopathology as it pertains to religiosity/sensations perceived during peak experiences. Experiment in intertexuality. Religious/scientific/philosophical implications of being “em”-body-ed. Key point of conflict: difficulties within neuroscience in quantifying mental experiences and epiphenomena.
3. Short story–purely for my enjoyment. Alternate history “ghost story” (maybe this would be Gaslamp Fantasy?) about planchettes, curses, Fortean theories, and tragi-comedy.
4. Blog series on MMOGs. Points of discussion: aesthetics of player created content (characters, user-generated missions/objects, etc…), critique of role-playing and lack of development in the area since MUDs, retrospective on online games, gender and identity in online gaming contexts (habits of players). Possible integration of video content from actual experiences in current online games (from Star Trek Online to WoW and Lord of the Rings Online).

Right, so that’s about all I’ve got for now…dense, I know. I need to unpack some of these ideas.

-Matt