but incantation vs. collection [yes i just made this dyad up] is my aesthetic indecisiveness.
incantation = gives you the sense that there is a single non-paraphrasable implicature unique to this exact sequence of sentences.
collection = makes sure you don’t get the sense that there is a single non-paraphrasable implicature unique to this exact sequence of sentences.
with any semiotic artifact, the relevant ways to engage it are those that make you better understand [by your own standards of understanding] the artifact as a communicative action, on the same parameters by which we understand every action qua action: reasons, causes, intentions, techniques, impact, consequences [and the interrelations of each to each]. in this sense there isn’t a difference between what we do when we read an artifact cooperatively and what we do when we read an artifact symptomatically — to read is always to gather information [and form judgments] along these various parameters. reading is ‘symptomatic’ when the information it gathers about the communication ruins the communication’s intended impact.
to engage an artifact more comprehensively is to try derive from it a further understanding of the communicative action, in learning more facts or in developing more realized judgments. art is more ‘artsy’ the more this process bolsters its intended impact [not necessarily by being ‘intended’ itself, but by harmonizing with the intended impact].
so: artifact A is [successfully] artsy for reader R if any reading practice of which R believes that it substantially furthers his understanding of A [as a communicative action] bolsters for R what R believes to be the intended impact of A.
an e-mail from josh of ‘josh blog’ explains why-and-how our readerly mapping of relevant questions exceeds the questions we’re presently asking:
i would reckon that two things our conception of a ‘more
comprehensive reading’ tracks are:
1) our awareness that the passive aspects of reading, like
the passive aspects of our relation to any speech, are
not always within our powerto notice, control, and
understand while they’re happening - but that
we can sometimes do so after the fact, particularly
when there is aconcrete object existing independently
of our reading of it, for us to coordinate with.
2) books are just so long, and our (focal) attention
to them so variable, that it’s too much work to always
give them such full attention from word to word. this
could be made into an epistemological point, but i think
it would be better as a point about response. just like
we don’t draw on the complete depths of our capacities
for response to another in every conversation, every interaction
(many of which are routine anyway), we don’t draw on them
for response to every moment in a book; but we recognize that
a more perfect encounter with the book would remain open
to that kind of total response, on every occasion that
calls for it. and unlike our responses to others, this
doesn’t impose an impossibly, frighteningly high standard
on books that are to be met with this response. (they
won’t shrink from it as another person might.)
And on his own platform adds:
Often, with the non-artsy, I am the one who shrinks away from more comprehensive understanding: I do not want to risk a disappointment great enough to make me give up on any engagement at all.
ricochet from an e-mail argument: i take some comfort in distinguishing ‘art’ from ‘entertainment’ on the principle that ‘art’ is what makes you test its mettle with all your faculties. but is it coherent to compare artifacts as inducing a ‘more comprehensive’ or ‘less comprehensive’ readerly engagement? the puzzle is that you can only count as ‘comprehensively’ [rather than wrongheadedly] engaging an artifact if your reading asks relevant questions, and after all aren’t the ‘relevant questions’ in reading an artifact just all and only the questions that the artifact induces.
currrent take: we often know how to follow generic ‘pay closer attention’ or ‘try a more in-depth reading’ or ‘really think about what the work is saying’ commands for a given artifact [let’s say an artifact we are now in the middle of reading]. we don’t just try random cryptographic algorithms or try asking how the artifact relates to randomly chosen wikipedia articles. nor do we apply an invariant set of questions to every artifact on which we ‘try a more in-depth reading’.
prima facie this means that when we read an artifact, we also develop a conception of what reading that same artifact more comprehensively invovles. in reading we map more relevant questions than we ask. if i’m still alive this time tomorrow i’ll try saying something about what our conception of ‘a more comprehensive reading’ tracks.
noon shakes the memory as a deadman shakes a mad geranium
my most favorite art uses getting-a-grasp-on-things as a constituent of losing-a-grasp-on-things as a constituent of getting-a-grasp-on-things et cetera [can be ad infinitum or not and can start from either].
waitresses are an extension of high-school.
i’m getting more and more interested in the idea of brilliance-by-omission. reading a text that doesn’t manifest any known trope is nowadays an independently thrilling experience regardless of whether the text does anything otherwise compelling.
yes the default for ‘conventional literature’ is unsure hyperbole that pretends it isn’t. but the european avant response of committing to hyperbole means more to me than the american avant response of rejecting hyperbole.
my not-going-away discomfort with the american avant tradition has to do with its by-and-large [with exceptions yes with exceptions] distaste for hyperbole. fuck wcw.
what vanishes when you move deeper into your 20s is [the fact of] girls that are amazing on the power of their reactions alone. the art of pure personality only really lives in the 14 - 21 range [then life stops having an audience].
it’s very different presenting aphorisms one at a time.
an avant garde context is a context for which there’s no differentiating gesture from operation. it would be very exciting if someone redoes aspects of what language-writing did, without an avant garde context [why am i even talking about this now? cause i experience culture synchronously you dumb hegelian fuckers]
that a towel analyzes my microphysical constitution destroys then reconstructs it only dry instead of wet as it came in [i’m very sick]
Tel Aviv intelligentsia are adept at living their work more so than in working it. Better than the American other-way-around, given we’re not-working most life.
who’s the asshole that’s been pressing fast-foreword every time i sit down to?
