Swamped and Swallowed

Posted on June 25, 2008 by Francois Lachance

From July 1997, two entries that at this remove in time echo each other nicely — they have a common theme of arrangement and its consequences.

First an entry about car culture:

2/07/97
Heard this on the radio recently: Walt Disney didn’t like what happened to L.A. in the 40s & 50s with the advent of a car culture re the transformation from city to carpolis therefore Disney World was planned so that you walk or take public transit.

And now this bit about media:

27/07/97
Felix Stadtler said at the Monday night McLuhan Seminar (21/07/97) “media don’t swallow society. they rearrange it.”

nice antidote to any surfeit of thinking of media in terms of prosthetics

And so for day 560
25.06.2008

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Interlocking Interactivity

Posted on June 24, 2008 by Francois Lachance

Sometimes thought processes are just weird. This bit comes from a long rambling entry in the main about freelancing and various projects

I want to write a quick popular guide to a concept I call “interlocking interactivity” — basically planning for learning. I want it to be something in the vein of Rheingold or Turkle: telling tales to make a big picture emerge.

and then pages and pages later after a longish section about translating an abstract for Liss Jeffrey’s dissertation (on McLuhan), the concept of “interlocking interactivity” comes up again but I am still puzzled by what it might mean

[…] going over the abstract for Liss’s dissertation I found that “literacies” implies levels of skill. I had suggested “savoir-faire médiatiques” but Liss’s revisor suggested “maîtrise des médias” which for me is mastery which would include papermaking i.e. for me mastery implies actual construction of the channel — this comes from an appreciation of telecommunications engineering TCP HTTP etc. and the expertise it takes to run a server or a press even. So I suggested to Liss something which she really liked maîtrise de l’utilisation des médias which nicely expresses know-how at the level of accomplished user. This reminds me of the levels used to assess skill level in a learning organisation
: exposure
: proficiency
: teacher
I want to work more with this in terms of interlocking interactivity. Bks to consult: Breaking Thru the Glass Ceiling, Intelligent Organization. I’ll be taking a peek at the business section again.

catchy phrase but still I believe in search of meaning

And so for day 559
24.06.2008

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Transplantations

Posted on June 23, 2008 by Francois Lachance

I suspect the following is from an article about the construction of the Music Garden in Toronto. The quotation, like a healthy bulb, it transplants well.

“I’ve been struggling all my life to define what a piece of music is,” says Ma. “Though it’s abstract, music is about something. But in code, like DNA.”

from “It’s Bach to Nature for Yo-Yo Ma” Toronto Star May 10/97 K3

And so for day 558
23.06.2008

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Image and Concept

Posted on June 22, 2008 by Francois Lachance

Words by Austin Warren from his book Richard Crashaw: A Study in Baroque Sensibility

All imagery is double in its reference, a composite of perception and conception. Of these ingredients, the proportions vary. The metaphorist can collate image with image, or image with concept, or concept with image. He can compare love to a rose, or a rose to love, or a pine grove to a cathedral, or religious ecstasy to intoxication.

He now introduces a concern with the pictorial and visualization.

Then too, the metaphorists differ widely in the degree of visualization for which they project their images. The epic simile of Homer and of Spenser is fully pictorial; the intent, relative to the poet’s architecture, is decorative. On the other hand, the “sunken” and the “radical” types of imagery — the conceits of Donne and the “symbols” of Hart Crane — expect scant realization by the senses.

I like how the syntax complicates itself as the paragraph moves on to the other hand examples. Where Homer and Spenser shared epic simile, Crane and Donne have their conceits and symbols respectively. The difference is made palpable.

And so for day 557
22.06.2008

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Found Pieces

Posted on June 21, 2008 by Francois Lachance

fagus

pleated gears and acceleration sequences

images combine when reading quickly readily recombine that is

Phyllis Webb in Sunday Water: Thirteen Anti Ghazals invites the reader to

Hear the atoms ambling, the genes a-tick
in grandfather’s clock, in the old bones of beach.

driftweed is perhaps what the beach washes up but wave upon rushing wave yields the homophony of beech, the tree, the grandfatherly tree, an appropriate chronometer planted for generations to ponder and could perhaps as felled timber be lost at sea, driftweed indeed.

Robert Priest: Sky Sea Night and Skin provokes an urge to reverse some of the sequence: Sea Sky Night Skin.

Lorna Crozier: transposing as transplanting for The Garden Going On Without Us: a flight plan rearranged “like direction and distance” from “Wild Geese”

[…] sadness
passed through generations
like distance and direction
and the longing
for a nesting ground.

Gathered together the refound lines give

like direction and distance
sea sky night skin
in the old bones of beech

A drift in pilfering, rearranging continues in some gnawing sea sky direction.

And so for day 556
21.06.2008

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CMC Old-style

Posted on June 20, 2008 by Francois Lachance

There are some keen pleasures for the telnet set …

Yred played mute on Stingray. no .talk but lots of actions [.emote] and .think It was rather delightful. Pleased arora & midnite nicely.

A quick May 5, 1997 jotting in a notebook.

Yred, a regular on Philly, now hangs out at Madhouse.

madhouse.dune.net 5550

And so for day 555
20.06.2008

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Bonds and Bindings

Posted on June 19, 2008 by Francois Lachance

Totally lifted out of context to sharpen the image of being bound:

My own feeling is that as we interact with any artifact, any device, we become bound to it.

Mark Pesce, co-creator of VRML, in an interview Meme 2.14

A shade of McLuhan and the prosthetic theory of technology but subtly different since being bound to is not the same as being bonded to.

And so for day 554
19.06.2008

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Links versus Pointers

Posted on June 18, 2008 by Francois Lachance

From a journal entry dated 15/09/96

Spent about two hours yesterday with David Findlay reviewing the on-line version of […] What struck me is the importance of storyboarding a site: taking account of the possible paths through the site and indeed making sure one does not succumb to the desire to link everything to everything. The adage you “can’t get there from here” is very apt for Web development.

You can get to a place that will get you there. A pointer is sometimes more valuable than a link because the effort to follow a pointer involves an investment greater than following a link.

And so for day 553
18.06.2008

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Mailboxes

Posted on June 17, 2008 by Francois Lachance

Andrew Holleran’s narrator in The Beauty of Men finds himself waiting behind a school bus and musing

He regards the school bus now with a certain awe — even if he knows it’s filled with bullies and brats trying to inflict pain on gentler children — as he watches them get off the bus at the dirt road that leads into a pool of trailers among the pine trees o the shores of Lake Sampson. Nothing has changed: Some kids get off by themselves, walk over to a mailbox, open the lid, then flip it back in disgust. (They need mail too, he thinks. Perhaps I can spend the rest of my life writing children letters.)

Note the sharp shift in pronouns. It provides some poignancy. No matter how many letters get written few arrive except for the novel that one is reading if that counts as a letter and we the readers as expectant children. We can turn in disgust from a novel not meant for us.

And so for day 552
17.06.2008

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Neighbouring Vitality

Posted on June 16, 2008 by Francois Lachance

There is this novel written in the genre of memoir. What I like about the narrator’s voice is that he presents as a person who is beloved — surrounded by people who care about him. He is rarely describes moments of being alone. Yet this from whence flows the narration, a place of connectedness, a desire to not be alone.

He [Daniel] and I talked for a while longer and then he left and later, when I was alone, I thought about Teddy and I missed him and I sat at my desk with a pad and a pen and began to write.

And a few paragraphs later the focus is future-directed with the same yearning for the image of a group of people delighting in each other’s company.

[Our narrator has been to the park.] When we reached the meadow I watched two shirtless youths, both short, brown, and muscular, passing a soccer ball between them and the sight of the outline of one of their penises made me smile. After I watched them play for a while I spread my jacket on the grass and lay back on it and looked at the clouds passing by in stately order, and gradually I fell asleep to the sounds of the kicking and bumping of the soccer ball and the calls of the young men using it, and just before I slept I wished that death could be like that: falling asleep on spicy-smelling grass with the warm sun on my face while nearby life, youth, vitality, live on.

It is always amazing how a wish becomes a book, how a wish is a source of vitality.

At least it is true for one book: Valley of the Shadow by Christopher Davis.

And so for day 551
16.06.2008

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