No matter how Debbie Downer I feel…I always feel so completely inspired and uplifted every time I read a physics article or watch some Universe Discovery Show. It’s strange though, my beloved NYMag brings us the heading “You Became Even More Insignificant Today”, which was about how there are 3 times more stars in the universe then originally thought, which then came with many depressing comments about how small and pointless we are (http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2010/12/you_became_even_more_insignifi.html). I actually don’t understand this frame of mind at all, as instantly as I saw the title I clicked to the Discover Magazine article and read (http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2010/12/01/the-estimated-number-of-stars-in-the-universe-just-tripled/). I can’t for the life of me understand how this couldn’t be uplifting. I find myself humorously wondering if they offer artist residencies at observatories. I know it sounds stupid but they seriously should.
truth
the signified
” In part, intellectual influence has become the domain of nonfiction. People want first person “true” narratives of war or politics or adventure. And many fiction writers, like many Americans, feel politics is a degrading form of engagement. The irony is that we celebrate reality over fiction at a time when truth has never been more manipulated.”
Amy Rowland, Norman and Me, The Smart Set
Signs
Last night I was driving home and I noticed the message on a sign by a near-by church “God is the potter, we are only clay”….this has really been bothering me. Now, without trying to sound like the she-devil, I’d just like to say that I find this metaphor not only illogical, but also irresponsible for the following reasons.
1. Last week while walking to the LRT, a man a couple people in front of me fell down the steps, losing his shoes, bag, and dislocating his shoulder. Absolutely nobody other then me stopped to help him or see if he was all right. Every other person (and it was pretty busy) was completely passive, thinking “Someone else will help him.” We can see this passivity everywhere, people litter because “someone else will pick it up.” People just don’t care about things because “someone else will care.”
“Passivity is bred by the forces of society today. A desire to be entertained is nurtured from childhood, with increasing efficiency, cultivating generations willing to be led by whoever proves skillful at appealing to superficial emotions.”…. – The Universal House of Justice 2010
I find myself “stepping in” often, perhaps too often at times…(I try not to be as exhausting as Barbara in “The Way we Were”) but I find this world and its people frustrating. It’s so popular to negate yourself as being shallow, materialistic and passive.
2. Passivity versus Conviction. Although I harbor myself in the grey areas of absolutism, I strongly believe in the ability to form the skills to negate one’s own opinions and path. To argue this point in the same domain, I believe that God would want us to hold an empowered understanding his reign. As a religious person is never condoned to shame or passively misplace their faith…would God therefore not want a true believer instead of a complacent lump of thoughtless clay?
3. To go against all that I was saying, people aren’t that insipid and terrible. Don’t they deserve a little credit towards themselves? Has the world fallen to pieces through secularization? No, it’s as good-bad as ever. Perhaps giving our true heroes credit as being a regular person who made the right decision will empower others to do the same.
4. Really? You mean I can’t clone myself or jot down to the nearest sperm bank? And if a fifteen-year-old girl gets raped in the street by a serial killer and is impregnated, it’s God’s will for her to keep it?
I’m getting ahead of myself, the argument becomes cyclical at this point…but truly, I do see merit in religion. It may not be for me personally, but I do see it as an opportunity to bring light and hope into peoples lives, but this message to me gives the same hope to its believers as the lottery does to the superstitious.
Oh Edgar…
“Truth, in fact, demands a precision, and Passion, a homeliness (the truly passionate will comprehend me), which are absolutely antagonistic to that Beauty which, I maintain, is the excitement or pleasurable elevation of the soul.” – Poe, The Philosophy of Composition
He totally stole me idea…jk
wizards.
waiting…
I can’t move forward with the dictionary (401 project) until I solve a presentation problem with myself. The question is; Do I make my own website, or use the wiki?
To understand my question, I first must explain my piece so far. The point of this piece is to create an emphasized subjective-reality, (I’m aware of the paradox in putting subjective and reality together, it’s the point, to put emphasis on the ironic truth) it’s basically another view or an abstracted view of the world of narrative. The words are facts interpreted through subjective thoughts, arguments, and situations. The point of view is stressed through the element of colour, each colour is a single facet, it stands as a cognitive embodiment of expression. Each coloured expression reveals a perspective and a list of words. These words are put in particular lists because they share fibers that fall suite to that particular facet revealed through the mood of the colour. Now, that’s not to say that one word can only fall suit to one colour, they can be expressed through multiple colours, this is what makes up the irony, the putting together of two (or more) truths. So far, they’ve developed a surprisingly funny dialogue, I’m considering putting some of it together for a play, which would un-abstract (is there an actual term I could use here? perhaps reconstruct? but that doesn’t work as it implies that it was deconstructed, which it isn’t it was simply translated into a new identity) from the alternate view of narrative that I have created. Now this is where my question comes in, if I leave it in it’s wiki-state, it will be at it’s purest form, it will exist as cognitive exploration through software that was made with the intention of collective understandings, and differences in mind. The concept of wiki software is like the bottom layer or skeleton of the concept. However if I make my own website, it will follow the specific narrated design plan needed to convey a more horizontal hierarchy, which would relay the point most effectively. This is important because, I guess it would reveal my own opinion as the artist, it would make the entire thing have a signiture moral or viewpoint. My own reasons for creating this piece is based on my feelings, that there is no value in being ignorant. The egocentric or ethnocentric mentality, will only be lost and celebrated among those of your colour, and will only represent a theory of the truth, therefore the more worldly your view is, the more applicable it is to reign truth.
So do I create a narrative? or do I set the stage? Which brings me to this, is it possible to simply just set the stage? I guess it depends on what my narrative is. I’ve been stumped on this for weeks.
…I’m not sure if any of that makes sense.
anyways, here it is if you want to look
http://facetedwords.wikia.com
all or nothing; the exception
The rule that everything is a narrative, is a narrative truth in itself. ie: a completely debatable opinion. The point being, is that some things are absolutes, or are seemingly absolute because they are based upon an undeniable fact free of logic. When this is the case, there are no words, no debate, nothing, you’ll know it when you feel it, because everything surrounding it is darkness. Call it blindness, free of illusion. It’s still out there.
AMANDA LEHMAN-CHOI 