Forum / In writing, once you discard language itself, the actual words, what’s left?
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Carol ReidAug 05, 03:23pm"In writing, once you discard language itself, the actual words, what’s left?"
Writers as architects?
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/03/writers-as-architects/?_r=0
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GoneAug 05, 03:47pmInteresting the lengths to which people will go...
A cheaper way would be to meditate on the silence between the notes in music, or to consider this:
"A room is that which does not exist, surrounded by that which does."
Or you could seek out your own Gordon Lish to whittle down your prose to the very bone. I'd very much hoped we'd gone beyond the minimal. I miss the lushness, the zaftig in literature.
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J.A. PakAug 05, 06:37pmI often think that writing a story is like building a house so this makes sense to me.
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Sally HoutmanAug 05, 08:27pmHmmmm.
I guess all forms of communication boil down to content (the words) and process (the dynamics/message/what's actually taking place in the encounter).
So I guess this is just one (rather costly and time-consuming) way to get them to focus on process...
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David AckleyAug 05, 11:15pm"...once you discard language itself, the actual words, what's left?"
"The rest is silence."
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XXXXAug 07, 02:58am
Trash.
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XXXXAug 07, 03:01am
Let me clarify: I'm not saying what is left will be trash. I am saying the question and the article are trash. Space is defined only by its binary relationship to matter. Removing language from a piece does not create silence the same way that the Liszt piece I just played two days ago isn't "just on pause" because I stopped playing, isn't on "one long silence." Even its silence does not exist because there is no matter to support it.
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Sam RasnakeAug 07, 03:47amInteresting slant, PR - I'll add my thought: the Liszt piece is still playing - no matter if your fingers are touching the keys or not. And it is not silent. Our ears are too limited, dislocated, tuned elsewhere. The music plays on. And I agree its "silence does not exist," because the music is playing. A paradox.
The same would be true for poetry. The poem exists long before it's written down. And it continues whether it's read or not.
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XXXXAug 07, 04:38am
I can't hear you over the sound of Hiroshima exploding, over my own crying from being born, and over the soundtrack of Batman Beyond I listened to when I was fifteen.
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Sam RasnakeAug 07, 01:18pm
If a tree falls, and there's no one around...
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GoneAug 07, 01:30pm
If a tree falls in the woods and no one can hear it, does it fall at all?
Carolina existentialism.
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Sam RasnakeAug 07, 01:32pm
Great point, GA. And Carolina existentialism is the best kind.
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David AckleyAug 07, 06:24pm
Ask the deaf guy it landed on.
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mxi woddAug 07, 06:37pmHa!
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XXXXAug 08, 04:28am
It is more like: After a tree falls, is it justified to say it still falls after it lands? Of course not. To say that music goes on well over the silence is just as preposterous.
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mxi woddAug 08, 04:38am
But isn't it pretty to think so..
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
wistfulness
emptiness
longing (and)
regretdepend on this emptiness-thought
in order to survive -
Carol ReidAug 08, 04:58am
I've decided this article is primarily bullshit, but it might be fun to build the models.
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XXXXAug 08, 05:10am
I agree with Carol. I've built one for Ezra Pound's Cantos.
It is just a pit, possibly filled with filth.
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mxi woddAug 08, 05:47am
you = filth
been there/done that
What else do you have as an artist?
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XXXXAug 08, 06:33am
Is the architecture supposed to correspond with the maker? Clearly, I was talking about the Cantos.
As for what I have done as an artist, I am not an artist at all. I'm a copyeditor from Manila with time between papers. That's all. I don't aspire for any of those pretensions.
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mxi woddAug 08, 06:40am
"I was talking about the Cantos."
I kind of thought you were, but the repetition of "filth" raised my antennae, as I was on a roll vis-a-vis my comments on the perfection of your last piece regarding that same attitude/noun.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
There is no inherent pretension is being creative (though perhaps in considering oneself "artistic.")
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Good to finally see you manifesting as a person with a voice and opinions.
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XXXXAug 08, 06:42am
You are very kind. I have always been a person. It is one of my life's greatest disappointments.
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mxi woddAug 08, 06:44am
Ha!
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mxi woddAug 08, 06:56am
(though it IS good to hear you finally speak up here, no matter your incarnation.
I'd like to hear more of what you think, artistically/philosophilisticalistically, about the occasionally interesting Forum topic.
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Sally HoutmanAug 08, 07:00am
Stop talking y'all!
I'm TRYING to hear the silence between words here!!!!
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mxi woddAug 08, 07:04am
look out for that.....
TREE!
(ooh, ouch, that's gotta hurt...)
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Sally HoutmanAug 08, 07:13am
DAMN!
Did that thing fall again?
I NEVER hear it!!!!
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Sally HoutmanAug 08, 07:19am
Um, could someone come lift this thing off me.
Anyone!
Hello.....
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mxi woddAug 08, 07:20am
(walks past, whistling...)
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XXXXAug 08, 07:22am
Lift it off you? It's still falling! And has always been falling, long before it fell. You just aren't attuned to it....
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XXXXAug 08, 07:23am
In fact, Sally, you have been under that tree your whole life.
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Sally HoutmanAug 08, 07:24am
That 'splains a lot.......
Can someone bring me a sandwich.
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Sam RasnakeAug 08, 07:51pm
With several songs on American Beauty, Phil Lesh had the engineer empty the studio of people, then use a live mic to record the sound of the empty room. Lesh wanted the silent room as rhythm track on the songs. The silence does add depth.
Or, according to Don Henley,
"Out on the road today
I saw a Deadhead sticker on a Cadillac
A little voice inside my head said:
'Don't look back, you can never look back'" -
mxi woddAug 09, 04:10am
Silence is golden (golden...)
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stephen hastings-kingAug 09, 11:56amMoholy-Nagy once said:
"The enemy of photography is the convention, the fixed rules of 'how to do.' The salvation of photography comes from the experiment."
Goes for writing as well. Most anything, really.
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Gary HardawayAug 09, 04:42pmI have studied and practiced both writing and architecture for 47 years so far. I fear I would fail the course the author of the article teaches. Sure, the space defined by the physical matters but the focus is invariably on the stuff that defines the space and the people who pass through it as anonymous scale figures. Surfaces and the signs they contain, by choice or accident, are also very important in architecture as well as writing. I applaud the idea of the course and the interaction it encourages between the two disciplines. But I'm much too American to enjoy very much of that one hand clapping sort of thing.
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Frankie SaxxAug 09, 05:56pm
So basically you make a cardboard model of "How does this story make you feel?"
I got some boxes, a hot glue gun, and a vast expanse of Friday night stretching out before me...
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