Books / writing

• Wednesday, 24 February 2010

  • Repetition in prose, poetry and lyrics

    Scott Carrier observes the world as if it's an alien planet. Everything is strange, and everything is on the brink of something. He wrote this:

    I was hired to interview men and women in the state of Utah who receive Medicaid support for treatment of mental illnesses generally diagnosed as schizophrenia. I had little understanding of schizophrenia before I began, and I have little more understanding now. I took the job because I had no other. I took the job because I'd just quit my steady job, my professional job, after realizing that what I wanted more than anything was to put my boss on the floor, put my foot on his throat, and watch him gag. Then my wife moved out, took the kids and everything. She said, "I've thought about it and I really think that this is the best thing for me at this time in my life."

    I was so firmly struck by the repetition here that I had to listen to it over. This was some months ago, and still I come back to it. The words are densely packed, and the repetition saves us from meandering sentences, from whiches, from buts, from on the other hands. Repetition makes emphatic.

    Joanna Newsom writes long and complicated lyrics that often draw in themes from nature. You can get lost in them, listening to the pretty harp sounds before they command attention again. Sometimes it's repetition that draws you back. The song has come in a circle and you have no idea how that happened. Perhaps "Emily" is the best example:

    The meteorite is the source of the light
    And the meteor's just what we see
    And the meteoroid is a stone that's devoid of the fire that propelled it to thee

    This refrain appears twice in the song, providing structure to the tangle, and providing a way in to the rest of the words. It is the most memorable part on the song, which is right as it is after all intended as a mnemonic.

    The concept of repetition was deeply embedded in the Mayan understanding of the world. However, it was imperfect repetition, repetition with change. Repetition like the curls of a helix, crossing slightly different territory with each return.

    Mayan poetry uses the structure of repetition, telling and retelling, repeating and enriching:

    'This is the writing, the speaking of the dream of a skilled observer, a person from Maccan[?]. Born of a lady who offers gems, lady shell star, lady of green lake, in the quarter where the sun sets, begotten by a penitent man who let his blood for three score stones, the lord who offers gems for the crossroads, a lucid artisan.

    This clip is from an ABC interview with Dennis Tedlock, and he says, "Most of the world that doesn't have alphabetic writing systems does verse that way [with repetition] rather than with a strict metre."

    Links:

    • Scott Carrier, "The Friendly Man" This American Life.
      www.thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?sched=1293
    • Joanna Newsom, "Emily", Last.fm.
      www.last.fm/music/Joanna+Newsom/_/Emily
    • Ramona Koval and Dennis Tedlock, "2000 years of Mayan Literature", The Book Show, 12 February 2010.
      www.abc.net.au/rn/bookshow/stories/2010/2817700.htm
    Posted by Matthew at 12:27:00 AM | Permanent link | Comments (0) | Email Matthew | Books / writing | Back to top

• Wednesday, 16 December 2009

  • Reference frame

    [This is not quite right, but I am too lazy to finish anything.]

    Forget the drive home, forget the news of the day. Forget to feed the cat. Forget that thing you found on the beach. Forget your poor performance. Forget being kind to strangers. Forget your career  and your mortgage. Forget having babies and forget leaving it too late. Forget your childhood. Forget clothes and shelter. Forget to get enough sleep. Forget that new restaurant. Forget the lines on your face, forget your liver. Forget your neglected friends (forget all your difficult relationships). Forget climate change, forget the melting snows of Kilimanjaro. Forget war for oil. Forget cancer, forget your impending death. Forget pain, forget grief. Forget love. Forget guilt and judgement. Forget the nature of free will, forget temptation. Forget language, forget punctuation. Forget to eat (forget your tongue altogether). Forget the miracle of life. Forget to breathe in. Forget you exist. Forget God. Forget the periodic table. Forget dark matter. Forget the proton. Forget mass. Forget the vacuum. Forget you exist (for real this time).

    There are ripples, and there is a field. Now, what?

    Posted by Matthew at 8:28:01 PM | Permanent link | Comments (0) | Email Matthew | Books / writing | Back to top

• Monday, 17 August 2009

  • Changes

    Your life changes in the banal moments
    because they form the bulk of it.
    You might be writing a submission to Council
    or teasing the cat
    or wondering whose toothbrush
    that is in the jar.

    Without consultation
    or adequate notice,
    life shifts,
    and you feel you are trapped on a train,
    staring back at the platform
    as it pulls out of view.

    When the Aymara indicate the past,
    they point ahead.
    When they indicate the future,
    they point behind.
    You live that way
    for a little while —
    until that moment,
    that beacon in the past,
    has nothing more to teach you
    about how wrong you are
    about everything.
    

    Posted by Matthew at 9:03:07 PM | Permanent link | Comments (2) | Email Matthew | Books / writing | Back to top

• Saturday, 25 July 2009

  • Chilli plant

    I am sorry to see
    The chilli plant,
    Like my father,
    Did not survive winter.

    Posted by Matthew at 5:34:42 PM | Permanent link | Comments (0) | Email Matthew | Books / writing | Back to top

• Sunday, 1 February 2009

  • The atoms you were

    This is where we left you —
    I am sure, then unsure, then sure again.
    I push back summer dry leaves,
    Thinking of wet earth, snow, rivulets,
    Mud under fingernails.
    I linger for a few minutes, wondering.
    I depart; the atoms you were persist.

    Posted by Matthew at 8:41:35 PM | Permanent link | Comments (1) | Email Matthew | Books / writing | Back to top

• Sunday, 17 August 2008

  • The Iceland conspiracy

    My friend Tracy bought Sigur Rós tickets,

    which led me to browse eMusic for Sigur Rós music (I already have a lot, but you never know what you might find),

    which led me to discover (see?) the melancholic film soundtrack Angels of the Universe, featuring three of their tracks, which I duly did not buy.

    What I did instead was to read about the film: the story of an Icelandic man descending into madness.

    Next I discovered the book by Einar Már Guðmundsson which adapts the story of  Guðmundsson's brother Pálmi.

    Finally, I discovered that the local library has a copy.

    Now, they are threatening to take away my borrowing privileges unless I return it.

    I think this means something: Iceland is conspiring against me.

    Posted by Matthew at 10:21:34 PM | Permanent link | Comments (0) | Email Matthew | Books / writing | Movies | Music | Back to top

• Thursday, 14 August 2008

  • Barack’s Prosody Problem

    Trochaic (e.g., DUH-da) first names are much more common than iambic (e.g., da-DUH) names. This is bad news for bar-RACK hus-SEIN o-BAM-a, a treble iambic, and it’s good news for HIL-lary CLIN-ton. (Last names are also more likely to have initial stress. I think we have to go all the way back to Mc-KIN-ley for an unstressed initial syllable in a president’s last name.)

    The trochaic trend in presidential first names probably doesn’t put Obama at much of a disadvantage. But part of our tradition of English names may be a subtle bias toward hearing initial stresses as more powerful. (There may also be a gendered dimension to the prosody of names. English derived female names may be more likely to be iambic – think e-LIZ-abeth, or anNETTE.

    Posted by Matthew at 10:52:29 PM | Permanent link | Comments (0) | Email Matthew | Books / writing | Politics / Media | Back to top

• Thursday, 17 July 2008

  • Existence 1

    I am only here in the words you write, in the colour in your ink. My existence is tenuous. I hold my breathe at the end of each line, as if a small sacrifice is due. You write less now. I would shout, don't forget! But I am unable. I express nothing, although I feel it. Yesterday I hated you; today I loved you. Everything passes through you. There is only me; only you. I am not here.

    Posted by Matthew at 9:54:53 PM | Permanent link | Comments (0) | Email Matthew | Books / writing | Back to top

• Tuesday, 1 July 2008

  • Three unrelated paragraphs

    I can touch the wall but I cannot feel it. My fingertips are numb as if burned on a hot element, as if dipped in plastic. I shift my weight from foot to foot to pretend I am balancing. But really I am falling, ever so slowly, down.

    I wish to sprout green feathers that would fly me away. The use of passive voice betrays unwillingness to accept responsibility for my own desires. I know myself well enough for that.

    As a child, I would rescue daisies by the hundreds and sail them away on leafy lifeboats. I was moved to action by the grisly plight of the lawn daisy on mowing day. Only this is true.

    Posted by Matthew at 11:37:22 PM | Permanent link | Comments (2) | Email Matthew | Books / writing | Back to top

• Monday, 30 June 2008

  • One crowded hour

    Augie March sings, "for one crowded hour you were the only one in the room." This line reminds me of another piece from Kundera's The Curtain, a discussion under the heading, "The beauty of a sudden density of life."

    We do not lead lives of epic proportions, but we have our moments. Kundera describes the epic beauty of the boyhood fantasy of encountering three women in a single day.

    We lurch from stasis to change to stasis again, just like the geology of plate tectonics and erosion. It is the duty of a short story to capture a single shift, and the duty of a novel to collect them all.

    At this point, infused with Kundera, Augie March and the final scenes of As it is in Heaven, I suggest the following metaphor, that the novel should press on the keys of our lives' changes and play a single chord. 

    Next thing, I read the final sentences Milan wrote and realise I have just plagiarised him: "and their three bodies were like three long notes played each on a different instrument and bound together in a single chord. It was a quite particular beauty, the beauty of a sudden density of life." I guess I read this passage a couple days ago and forgot the details but retained the images. My brain cannot be trusted.

    "But one crowded hour would lead to my wreck and ruin."

    Posted by Matthew at 10:06:57 PM | Permanent link | Comments (0) | Email Matthew | Books / writing | Music | Back to top