SAT Word of the Day:  Astounding – adverb meaning to amaze or bewilder.

There is an astounding amount of self help literature, websites, blogs, services, and seminars.  The self improvement global market is enormous.  Type “self help” into Google and you’ll get almost 38 million hits.  Add the word “program” to the search and Google trims it down to a mere 141,000 results.  I read somewhere that the personal self help industry was a $9 billion market and growing. 

George Carlin said that “There’s no such thing as “self-help.”  If you read a book written by someone else it is not self help.  It’s just “help.”  Self help would be if you improved in some way all by yourself with no outside influence. 

Maybe it should just be called “Personal Improvement.”  Or just “PI.” Or just “π.” 

George Carlin also recommended that anyone caught reading a “π” book should be killed.  He said that life is just not that complicated.  You get up, go to work, eat three meals, have one good bowel movement then go back to bed.  What’s the f***ing mystery? 

But what George didn’t understand was that not everyone has the courage to stand up in front of a group of strangers.  Not everyone has the motivation to practice their stand-up comedy routine.  Not everyone can freely tap into their own creativity and write jokes for their performance. 

There are those of us who need some kind of assistance to harvest as much “life” out of “Life” as possible.  Every one of us is born with everything we need to be an extraordinary person.  William Wordsworth said “… trailing clouds of glory do we come from God, who is our home.”  But, as we grow older we “perceive it die away, and fade into the light of common day.”  

When we were children we dreamed big, envisioned ourselves in those dreams and used our creativity to make it happen; even if it was only make believe.  And we only lived in the present.  We rarely fretting about the past and we didn’t worry about the future.  We knew we were going to be rock stars, NBA players, pilots, international spies, Olympic heroes, etc… 

But something happened.  Life got busy.  Life got faster.  Time grew shorter.  We “perceived” our dreams “die away and fade.” 

And so many of us struggle with life and find it unsatisfactory.  The dreams, motivation, creativity and courage are somehow missing.  Or, at the very least, we don’t feel them.

So we buy books, and tapes and CDs and DVDs searching for what we lost.   We can’t find what we lost amongst 38 million places.  Those 141,000 programs usually don’t help either.  It is truly astounding.

NewYork NewYork #1

(Kool G Rap – Streets Of New York)

This week it’s all about NYC..The Big Apple. Why? because I’m going there on Friday to spend a few days with someone very special who is and has been an inspiration. Words don’t tend to do feelings justice so I’ll leave it at that…regular visitors to themusicologist will know that I have a tendency to wax lyrical and believe me I would like to continue in that tradition but being a dyed in the wool romantic the poetry could run away with me so I’ll do me best to rein it in before I get all 18th Century on yer arse and end up prancing about in velvet suits, curling up my ‘locks’ and spouting Wordsworth and Coleridge poems !!

So to balance that out hold this piece of 21st Century hip-hop from one of New York City’s legendary lyricists, the trail blazing, Kool G Rap .. one of the greatest rappers to have ever graced the M.I.C whose legacy runs deep. Member of Marley Marl’s Juice Crew, (along with MC Shan, Roxanne Shante, Big Daddy Kane and BizMarkie), the Cat has influenced many a BIG name and is highly regarded and respected by those in the know as a progenitor of the style which now dominates. A man whose authenticity regarding street narrative is beyond doubt..one final piece of information..he was born in 1968 which seems to be a significant year for many reasons.

Greetings peoples of the blogosphere. My name is Luke ‘The Norwegian Farmer’ Richardson and I would personally like to welcome you to the H!TMO Website. Please read more about us in our – wait for it – About Us section. Yes, not just clever but ALSO funny.

Luc ‘Topdeck’ Benyon and myself produce and present a music come entertainment radio transmission with the self same moniker as this site. The episodes are broadcast live at www.wiredradio.co.uk every Thursday night from 6-8pm. But if you’re sitting there thinking “oh no, I have to look at the stock exchange between those hours, whatever will I do?!” Then please don’t fret. The broadcasts will be streamed live here as soon as possible  so you’ve got your very own Listen Again featuette; this crazy, technological world we live in, ey?

That’s all for now my beauties…but look out for new content daily on this site and add our bookface space group too for updates just here. Let’s make this one hell of a thing!

Luke

xo

Whatever else it is, Fantastic Mr. Fox is bang on brief: a Wes Anderson interpretation of a Roald Dahl creation.

In other words, a quirky American sensibility brought to the grand-daddy of quintessentially English children’s authors. Quentin Tarantino doing Wordsworth might make for a similar coupling- interesting and accomplished but sort of very wrong.

The rustic-style stop-frame animation in a rural countryside setting is nostalgic and inhabited by three farmers who are nicely menacing, albeit in a slightly odd ‘Lock, Stock’ way. The script is witty, the music inventive.

But drop George Clooney, characters called Kristofferson and a sushi joint in the village marketplace and it gets a tad derailed.

The two main problems with the movie are also its selling points: Anderson’s style and the Clooney superbrand.

By means of a small but well-formed body of work Anderson has created one of the most distinctive film-making footprints in Hollywood: visually rich, theatre-like set-pieces; functioning dysfunctioning high-brow family units; a plot segmented by witty titles, wrapped in a droll humour relatively new to American comedy (We get irony! We love The Office!).

It’s a rejection of schmaltz in favour of emotional authenticity, offset using stranger than fiction characters as vehicles.

There’s no doubt a weasel real estate agent delivery predictable sales patter about a walnut tree is funny and the naming of the animals by their original Latin terms in order to motivate them has an intelligent charm.

But wasn’t this a book written for kiddies? Scenes that refer to Mrs. Fox’s easy virtue pre-marriage and end with the line, ‘I love you but I should never have married you’ suggest this detail may have slipped through the net.

Nevertheless, it is actually this sort of Anderson trickery that holds the attention, the story somehow falling short of the promise of the title as Mr. Fox reveals himself to be more arse-tastic than fantastic.

Despite his wild animal instincts defense it is hard not to feel irked by his self-inflicted predicament, which he manages to exacerbate on the behalf of his family and friends with a series of substance-less ‘plans’, to the point where the plot summary might have read, ‘annoying fox forces mean farmers to terrorise him further and further underground’.

Of course, they all pop up again in a balls-out action scene at the end but they are still living in bare cells below ground level and not in a light-filled hill-top tree, their hunting imperative replace with supermarket aisle treats.

When I left the cinema it was George Clooney rather than his furry alter-ego who left a taste in my mouth and not in the smooth, velvety chocolate way of popular myth.

The character he voices and the one he projects in real life blend so seamlessly it is hard to imagine Anderson would have proceeded with the project without Clooney’s acceptance of the role.

The result is that it’s hard to know where the oleaginous national treasure with the unerring sense of his own significance end and the movie’s eponymous hero begins. What Mr. Fox really needed was a lovable rogue to redeem his selfish actions when what he got was the poster boy of smug reinforcing them.

I am unrepresentative of an adoring Clooney strong-hold and Anderson’s artistry is undeniable.

But ultimately the movie is a vintage wooden toy: original, flawed and intended for the amusement of children, destined to be appreciated as an artwork by parents.

Damn…after a night of action packed boxing and a stunning performance by Pac Man!! I woke up to a wonderful Sunday getting ready to spend the day with my daughter and help spray paint her bike pink…I came across this release and I’ve been fortunate to hear alot of new music and have appreciation for the art and craft coming from real life artist. Heres a few of them….

Click to listen and download

Aside from K. Hill(?), you can’t go wrong with this line up…Off Of DJ K. O.’s album “Picture This”…And yes we get a verse from Phonte…YAY!

“Ladder Of Success” Remix

Anonymous – The Wordsworth Collection Of Irish Ghost Stories (Wordsworth, 2005)

Sheridan Le Fanu – Green Tea
Sheridan Le Fanu – The Familiar
Sheridan Le Fanu – Mr Justice Harbottle
Sheridan Le Fanu – The Room In Le Dragon Volant
Sheridan Le Fanu – Carmilla
Sheridan Le Fanu – Madam Crowl’s Ghost
Sheridan Le Fanu – Squire Toby’s Will
Sheridan Le Fanu – Dickon The Devil
Sheridan Le Fanu – The Child That Went With The Fairies
Sheridan Le Fanu – The White Cat Of Drumguinnol
Sheridan Le Fanu – An Account Of Some Strange Disturbances In Aungiers Street
Sheridan Le Fanu – Ghost Stories Of Chapelizod
Sheridan Le Fanu – Wicked Captain Walshawe Of Wauling
Sheridan Le Fanu – Sir Dominick’s Bargain
Sheridan Le Fanu – Ultor de Lacy
Sheridan Le Fanu – The Vision Of Tom Chuff
Sheridan Le Fanu – Stories Of Lough Guir
Michael Banim – The Rival Dreamers
Sheridan Le Fanu – The Spectre Lovers
Thomas Crofton Croker – The Haunted Cellar
Thomas Crofton Croker – Legend Of Bottle Hill
Patrick Kennedy – The Ghost And The Game of Football
Jeremiah Curtin – The Blood-Drawing Ghost
Jeremiah Curtin – St. Martin’s Eve
William Maginn – A Vision Of Purgatory
Gerald Griffin – The Brown Man
Gerald Griffin – The Dilemma Of Phadrig
Shan F. Bullock – Th’ Ould Boy
Letitia Maclintock – Far Darrig In Donegal
Letitia Maclintock – Jamie Freel And The Young Lady
James Berry – The Adventures Of Foranan O’Fergus, The Physician
William Carleton – Moll Roe’s Marriage, or The Pudding Bewitched
William Carleton – The Three Wishes
Bram Stoker – The Judges House
Francis Marion Crawford – The Dead Smile
Oscar Wilde – The Canterville Ghost
Charlotte Riddell – Hertford O’Donnell’s Warning
Charlotte Riddell – The Last Squire Of Ennismore
Douglas Hyde – Teig O’Kane And The Corpse
Daniel Corkery – Eyes Of The Dead
A. E. Coppard – The Gollan
George Moore – A Play-House In The Waste
Rosa Mulholland – The Ghost At The Rath
Forrest Reid – Courage
Dorothy Macardl – The Prisoner
Sheridan Le Fanu – The Watcher
Sheridan Le Fanu – Passage In The Secret History Of An Irish Countess
Sheridan Le Fanu – Strange Event In The Life Of Shalken The Painter
Sheridan Le Fanu – The Fortunes Of Sir Robert Ardagh
Sheridan Le Fanu – The Dream
Sheridan Le Fanu – A Chapter In The History Of A Tyrone Family
Cecil Francis Alexander – The Legend Of Stumpie’s Brae
Traditional – Daniel Crowley And The Ghosts
Traditional – John Reardon And The Sister Ghosts
Anonymous – The Witch Hare
Traditional – Donald And His Neighbours
Patrick Kennedy – Hairy Rouchy
Thomas Crofton Crocker – The Legend Of Knockgrafton
Thomas Crofton Crocker – Daniel O’Rouke
D. R. McAnally, Jr. – About The Fairies
D. R. McAnally, Jr. – Satan As Sculptor
Hermine Kavenagh – Darby O’Gill And The Leprechaun
D. R. McAnally, Jr. – The Defeat Of The Widows
D. R. McAnally, Jr. – The Henpecked Giant
D. R. McAnally, Jr. – The Leprechaun
Thomas Crofton Crocker – Master And Man
D. R. McAnally, Jr. – How The Lakes Were Made
D. R. McAnally, Jr. – Taming The Pooka
D. R. McAnally, Jr. – The Sexton Of Cashel
Joseph Jacobs – The Fields Of Boliauns

Blurb:

With a word of warning to those of nervous a disposition, Wordsworth presents this spellbinding collection of chilling Celtic tales of the macabre, all drawn from the rich and varied literary tradition of a culture long enchanted by things supernatural, ‘a land where ghosts and ghost-seers are so common’. Featuring the imaginative writing of such towering masters of the genre as Sheridan Le Fanu, Bram Stoker, Patrick Kennedy, Thomas Crofton Croker and George Moore, this volume of ghoulish masterpieces from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is an encapsulation of the arcane lore, magical landscape and fantastic creativity of the Irish. Don’t attempt to read these horrifying tales alone in an empty house. Your blood will run cold as the unreal becomes real and the impossible all too possible. Indelible images will possess your imagination and haunt your dreams. Make sure all the lights are on and the doors are bolted.

Thanks to mattofthespurs for suggesting this one!

shakespeare was but a mortal, marlowe did die

donne remins only of the occassioned bone, perhaps two

raleigh lives only in extravagant and glorified parchment

so does the blind seer, milton, – librarians have taken after him

pope still awakens primordial passions of the burning sort

yet his is not the land of the living – neither is johnson, nor hawthorne

and certainly not whitman – that poet of the body

what of the blessed keats or the amorous byron

yet how it stands that in death they yet speak with such vehemence and certainty

how that in death they all become into glorified instructors – even those spurned in their day

for we all be but the attending caretakers in natures vast burrial ground – even the library

for in reading pope, am at once transported into such glories that i dont count it strange to

find myself sitting by his bedside or rather grave

thus in return for elegant companionship – i offer my services even attending to their graves

Some of the translations on Carmelo Mangano’s Blog might be of help to you. He includes line-by-line translations of Tintern Abbey, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Ode to a Nightingale, and Ode to the west Wind. There is some Blake here as well. Please be aware that only part of Tintern Abbey is translated here.

Nuns fret not at their convent’s narrow room;
And hermits are contented with their cells;
And students with their pensive citadels;
Maids at the wheel, the weaver at this loom,
Sit blithe and happy; bees that soar for bloom,
High as the highest Peak of Furness-fells,
Will murmur by the hour in foxglove bells:
In truth the prison, into which we doom
Ourselves, no prison is: and hence for me,
In sundry moods, ’twas pastime to be bound
Within the Sonnet’s scanty plot of ground;
Pleased if some Souls (for such there needs must be)
Who have felt the weight of too much liberty,
Should find brief solace there, as I have found.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850)

Before reading Wordsworth, it may be helpful to revisit Terry Gifford’s early chapter, “Three Kinds of Pastoral”.  In that piece, Gifford explains how Wordsworth intentionally conjures a set of literary and cultural expectations by subtitling his poem “Michael:  A Pastoral.”  According to Gifford, Wordsworth attacks “the pastronising simplification of a common pastoral convention of the rural worker as a bucolic clown.”  This poem, even while it attempts to criticize the pejorative aspects of the pastoral mode, still is an idealization, according to Gifford, a portrait by a privileged writer who reports after his own pastoral retreat to the mountains that “all is better than well there.”  What we’re seeing here is a pastoral reading versus a counter pastoral reading.

How do you interpret “Michael?”  Is this a counter pastoral poem, or is Wordsworth himself oblivious of his own participation in pastoral?

Do we see the same sort of tension between pastoral and counter pastoral interpretation at play in the other two poems (“Lines” and “Ode”?).  Explain Wordsworth’s pastoral strategies in these texts, and use examples from the poem.

- The sky is overcast
With a continuous cloud of texture close,
Heavy and wan, all whitened by the Moon,
Which through that veil is indistinctly seen,
A dull, contracted circle, yielding light
So feebly spread, that not a shadow falls,
Chequering the ground–from rock, plant, tree, or tower.
At length a pleasant instantaneous gleam
Startles the pensive traveller while he treads
His lonesome path, with unobserving eye
Bent earthwards; he looks up–the clouds are split
Asunder,–and above his head he sees
The clear Moon, and the glory of the heavens.
There, in a black-blue vault she sails along,
Followed by multitudes of stars, that, small
And sharp, and bright, along the dark abyss
Drive as she drives: how fast they wheel away,
Yet vanish not!–the wind is in the tree,
But they are silent;–still they roll along
Immeasurably distant; and the vault,
Built round by those white clouds, enormous clouds,
Still deepens its unfathomable depth.
At length the Vision closes; and the mind,
Not undisturbed by the delight it feels,
Which slowly settles into peaceful calm,
Is left to muse upon the solemn scene.

William Wordsworth

finde Aces Stimme immer wieder geil zu hören. Mal gespannt, was noch so auf dem Kollabo Album drauf sein wird.

Radio 420 Beta 22102009

J.Period & K’naan – No Great Message (Interlude)

Sombra – Sangue De Jesus Tem Poder

A Tribe Called Quest  (Jane Doe/Punchline/ Wordsworth /Mos Def) – Rock Rock Y’all

Camp Lo – Boogie Night

Los Carolina (Khrysis/Erica Thompson) – More Than Okay

Brother Ali – Us

A Dupla – Herdeiros Sem Herança

Play na “mô vibe!”

In order for this paper to make sense, I recommend reading the poem shown below: (the paper is below it)

“We are seven” by William Wordsworth

          A simple child,
          That lightly draws its breath,
          And feels its life in every limb,
          What should it know of death?

          I met a little cottage Girl:
          She was eight years old, she said;
          Her hair was thick with many a curl
          That clustered round her head.

          She had a rustic, woodland air,
          And she was wildly clad:                                    10
          Her eyes were fair, and very fair;
          --Her beauty made me glad.

          "Sisters and brothers, little Maid,
          How many may you be?"
          "How many? Seven in all," she said
          And wondering looked at me.

          "And where are they? I pray you tell."
          She answered, "Seven are we;
          And two of us at Conway dwell,
          And two are gone to sea.                                    20

          "Two of us in the church-yard lie,
          My sister and my brother;
          And, in the church-yard cottage, I
          Dwell near them with my mother."

          "You say that two at Conway dwell,
          And two are gone to sea,
          Yet ye are seven!--I pray you tell,
          Sweet Maid, how this may be."

          Then did the little Maid reply,
          "Seven boys and girls are we;                               30
          Two of us in the church-yard lie,
          Beneath the church-yard tree."

          "You run about, my little Maid,
          Your limbs they are alive;
          If two are in the church-yard laid,
          Then ye are only five."

          "Their graves are green, they may be seen,"
          The little Maid replied,
          "Twelve steps or more from my mother's door,
          And they are side by side.                                  40

          "My stockings there I often knit,
          My kerchief there I hem;
          And there upon the ground I sit,
          And sing a song to them.

          "And often after sunset, Sir,
          When it is light and fair,
          I take my little porringer,
          And eat my supper there.

          "The first that died was sister Jane;
          In bed she moaning lay,                                     50
          Till God released her of her pain;
          And then she went away.

          "So in the church-yard she was laid;
          And, when the grass was dry,
          Together round her grave we played,
          My brother John and I.

          "And when the ground was white with snow,
          And I could run and slide,
          My brother John was forced to go,
          And he lies by her side."                                   60

          "How many are you, then," said I,
          "If they two are in heaven?"
          Quick was the little Maid's reply,
          "O Master! we are seven."

          "But they are dead; those two are dead!
          Their spirits are in heaven!"
          'Twas throwing words away; for still
          The little Maid would have her will,
          And said, "Nay, we are seven!"

Learning Why We are Seven

Self-conscious thought hinders the flow of natural learning. To have a thought and then reflect on it questions the validity of that thought, at least in one’s own mind. The process of learning, thinking about what was learned, evaluating that thought based on one’s own experiences, re-evaluating that thought based on the perceived experiences and judgments of others, and then concluding that thought takes precious time away from being better spent learning more information. This constant thought re-evaluation also takes away from what was learned in the first place. Constantly second guessing one’s ideas causes facts to be perceived as fiction and vice versa. Natural learning and thinking, most commonly absorbed by children, as seen in “We are seven” by William Wordsworth, usually comes from observing nature or by trusting one’s own naturally occurring and unadulterated thoughts.

In the preface to “We are seven,” which shows the differences between wise passiveness and active seeking, Wordsworth ironically wrote of this poem as “shewing . . . the perplexity and obscurity which in childhood attend our notion of death, or rather our utter inability to admit that notion” (p. 391). Even in writing a poem that draws from his own childhood experience with the death of his mother, Wordsworth is unable to recognize the passive method of thought used by a child as anything but an inability to comprehend the self-conscious thought of an adult. Coleridge shares Wordsworth’s assumption of children’s ignorance, as seen in the first stanza (written by Coleridge), “What should [A simple child] know of death?” (ll. 1, 4). The child’s thought process becomes judged before it has even been stated, not only because of her age but because of her wild clothes and rustic demeanor. This assumption that youth and a closer association with nature would invalidate her thought process completely opposes the intellectual notion of the superiority of natural learning.

When asked how many children are in her family, the girl answers seven, including her two siblings lying in the church-yard. The man then repeats the list of the locations of the children, excluding the two deceased, as if correcting the girl’s addition, and then repeats the question, expecting the girl to acknowledge and reiterate his “superior knowledge.” The child’s view on death, instead of being recognized as having been absorbed through wise passiveness, is judged as ignorant through an obvious lack of active seeking. The man sees active seeking as the only method by which to learn from, and therefore forfeits the knowledge the girl bestows upon him regarding the obvious (to her) continued existence of her departed siblings through her memories and love for them. The child’s view of death is similar to that in the Incan religion in which the final death occurs at the moment that the memory of that person dies. To believe that death equates to a sudden non-existence is a forced idea, not a natural one. The child knows that her siblings remain in the ground beside her house, where she can read and sing to them while knitting or eating her supper. The man rejects the existence of the two departed siblings because during his active seeking he has never known them and so for him they do not exist. By denying his instinct for natural thought he fails to acknowledge that the children live on in the heart and mind of the girl and so by insisting on their number being five he disrespects the memory of the deceased.

The man takes his insistence on the girl’s departed siblings being non-existent beyond the simple implementation of the forced seeking of truth and into the complete ignorance of any existence of natural thought. Even an adult, beyond the age of natural learning, would be forgiven for if not expected to continue to acknowledge the existence of a recently deceased sibling if asked such a question as, “Sisters and brothers, little maid, / How many may you be?” (ll. 13-14). The graves of the late children are described as green, meaning that they most likely passed within the previous year. One might stop mentioning a previously living family member after a few years, but to be so ignorant of natural thought as to prod a child to cease acknowledging the existence of such recently departed siblings would be to assert forced, self-conscious thought as the only correct way to think. This in itself proves the fallacy of forced thought, as it leaves no room for natural learning, where as natural learning also leaves room for active seeking of knowledge.

Natural learning, or wise passiveness, is the first method of thought, and for some the only one. Forced learning, or active seeking, should be a supplement to natural learning, as it can fill in the gaps left by a lack of absorption of the lessons taught by experiences, instinctual behavior and inherent thoughts. Active seeking finds only details to be added to the broad knowledge found in primary thought, naturally occurring since birth. As wise passiveness is the first and sometimes only method by which creatures learn, and active seeking is the second, it can only be assumed that the foundation of forced learning stems from the learning that comes naturally. This also goes to say that through the sheer observation of evolution of thought, active seeking cannot occur without first natural thinking, but also that natural thought can easily and most commonly occurs without the assistance of forced thought. Knowledge is a pyramid, with a platform made of natural thought and a vertical ascension of active seeking. Without active seeking the platform grows horizontally, covering a broad array of topics. With active seeking, but lacking the platform of natural thought, the pyramid ceases to be and becomes an unorganized pile of rubble, difficult to sift through and near impossible to decipher. Only with the joining of natural and active thought can a pyramid grow broad and statuesque, encompassing the entire range of methods of thought.  The cultural assumption of the superiority of knowledge found in active seeking serves only to undermine the values and meaning found in wise passiveness, so elusive to adults and so perfectly natural for children.

When I first started this blog, I gave it this title.  Since then, the blog has morphed into something other than its original designation.  And yet, I think I ought to give voice to this concept of ‘identity construction through memory construction,’ because I’ve been thinking about it recently, and I think others may find it interesting, as well.

My own experience is the basis of much-if not all- of my understanding of the world and my place in it.  And so it is my own life and my own experience thereof from which I have pieced together this particular puzzle.

_____________

What is a memory to you?  I am not asking for a physiological or otherwise biological definition.  What it is to you?  Images.  Stills? or are they running like a film in your mind’s eye?  Are there sounds?  Do sounds heard now transport you to sounds heard then?  Smells? And tastes?

We have most of us experienced the truly inexplicable phenomenon of memory.  Scientists may be able to explain them, but how can I suddenly be twelve years old again, with my family at the ocean, then driving in the car, windows down next to my sisters?  I sit here in bed, but in a moment I can go to these places.  I do not go physically, of course, but is a person’s entire, or even most important, part of herself her body?  I could look a million ways, but if I am still myself, I have not changed to me.  And so I do go.

In Mrs. Dalloway Virgina Woolf explores the power of mind and memory.  Clarissa may be walking down a London road, but she is also at her parents’ home in the country with her old friends and lovers.  Woolf shows how the mind can travel through space and time, not only back but forward.   Clarissa may be buying flowers, but she is also in the ground, buried with the bones England’s dead.

Wordsworth writes of memory, too.  Not from childhood, necessarily, but from one moment to the next.  He is back at Tintern Abbey with his sister, where they had been hours, days, or months before.  He experiences the sensual memory–visual, audible. And just like Clarissa, Wordsworth’s narrator is transported through space and time, back into memory.

What is the pertinence of these memories in our lives?  Are they to build an understanding of who we are–where we come from?  Are they unrelated snapshots of our developing selves?  Perhaps they are…to most.  But what if one is keenly aware of these memories, even before–or while–they are being formed?

My own memories are not detached, floating images and films reeling through my head.  The memories are connected to my conscious, yet intangible, awareness of existence.  During these events which I can now call to memory, it was as if I was watching myself and my life in a mirror.  It was not “an occurrence that I now recall;”  it was something being blazoned into my being.  I sat in the car, next to my sisters, and I felt me looking into myself.  Somehow I knew that this moment would be forever etched in my memory, altogether with the images, the sounds, the smells, and the feeling.

And so it is for me that memories do not merely inform me of who I was–or indeed, of who I am.  But it was the construction of these memories that built the foundation of my being.  It was not, in other words, what I experienced, but how I experienced it.

The best example I have, is when I lost this part of myself.

My most vivid memories are those during which I experienced the most profound feelings of introspection and awareness of the memory being constructed around me.  I have many of these memories from my childhood and adolescence.  But when a time came in my life when I had lost this part of myself, I ceased to create meaningful memories.  For nine months I experienced such acute depression, that I was nearly unable to construct any of these memories at all.  And as a result, there is a gap of nine months which are hazy, as if I lived them during days of constant rain and shadow.

The memories I have that are not heavy with deep, personal meaning, are flat ideas.  They do not call attention to feelings in my soul, but just to physical stimuli–sight, sound, smell.  It is the memories that involve this deeper part of myself that define who I am and what I have become.  Woolf and Wordsworth articulate this understanding (or lack of understanding) of the power of the mind and soul.  I find retrospection to be moving and mystical, but I feel that these moments in which the memories are created are the most important.  For when we recall these memories, we do not simply recall images and sounds, but we recall poignant feelings of a deeply spiritual nature.  Feelings which I have not yet been able to articulate to my own satisfaction.  For me, so far, it is better to see what I feel in others’ writing or art.  Perhaps I will be able someday.

A stanza of wisdom from Wordsworth:

If Thou be one whose heart the holy forms
Of young imagination have kept pure,
Stranger! henceforth be warned; and know that pride,
Howe’er disguised in its own majesty,
Is littleness; that he, who feels contempt
For any living thing, hath faculties
Which he has never used; that thought with him
Is in its infancy. The man whose eye
Is ever on himself doth look on one,
The least of Nature’s works, one who might move
The wise man to that scorn which wisdom holds
Unlawful, ever. O be wiser, Thou!
Instructed that true knowledge leads to love;
True dignity abides with him alone
Who, in the silent hour of inward thought,
Can still suspect, and still revere himself,
In lowliness of heart. (emphasis added)

You can also download two songs off the upcoming Chubb Rock and Wordsworth album Bridging the Gap on 2dopeboyz.

The following is a copy of the talk I’ve been compelled into delivering for one of my  coursework subjects this semester.

Hello everyone.

Cicero (Who was a kick ass orator, just ask him.)

 I’m from the English, Media and Performing Arts school of UNSW and I’m going to talk to you very quickly about what is the central notion of my Masters Thesis.  We’ll look at two ideas that I’ll be considering further in the full thesis project, and we’ll also have a look at some examples that illustrate these concepts.

 The thesis itself is an examination of the ability of poetic language to make us see visually, or at least to make us experience poetic meaning through visual metaphor.

I tend to approach this idea as a cognitive, phenomenological concept, so that’s the filter I’ll be using for this particular discussion

 1

 There are, ostensibly, two types of ways that images can operate on a basic level, which I refer to as internal and external genesis.  The internal genesis is where, rather than describing a visual sensation, the poet conjures a sense of seeing and experiencing by suggesting the arrangement of elements that are already within the reader’s understanding.

 A regular user of this type of imager was Wordsworth, and a couple of verses pulled from his much longer poem ‘The idiot Boy’ make a good example.

But Betty’s bent on her intent,
For her good neighbour, Susan Gale,
Old Susan, she who dwells alone,
Is sick, and makes a piteous moan,
As if her very life would fail.

There’s not a house within a mile,
No hand to help them in distress;
Old Susan lies a bed in pain,
And sorely puzzled are the twain,
For what she ails they cannot guess.

Wordsworth doesn’t draw the image for you, instead, in the way the Romantics adored, the image comes filtered through human experience, and so we are told ‘there’s not a house within a mile’ leaving us to conjure the lonely pastoral house from our own conceptions. Similarly, are told that Susan ‘is sick’, and ‘lies a bed in pain’ but the image of an ill woman isn’t painted for us, it comes from inside and presses outwards on the experience of the poem, the meaning moving from our knowledge towards the poem.

 The External genesis is where the image is ‘painted’ for us by the poet. This is a more easily understood form of image and has been readily described by the poets and critics for thousands of years. 

William Carlos Williams (kick ass poet)

The Roman poet ‘Horace’ called this ‘ut picture poesis’, paraphrased as ‘poetry is like painting’.  This form of imagery has been a favourite to many of the poetry movements over the years, the neo-classicists, romantics and modern poets had a lot of fun with it. It is probably most famous for its deliberate centralisation by the Imagists of the early 1900s. A number of very good examples can be found for this style, but I think William Carlos Williams is probably the most sophisticated but accessible poets of this type.  One simple example is his poem ‘The red Wheelbarrow’:

 The Red Wheelbarrow

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

beaded with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

 Rather than asking us to conjure the image internally, the objects are painted for us by the poem. They are painted in minimalist, modernist terms certainly, but they are painted. This was Williams’ intent. He wanted us to see the objects, with the aim of breaking down the distance between the word and the thing.  In this way the meaning of the image is directed from its external existence into the reader and the meaning moves from poem to knowledge.

 2

 The second point I wish to make about the cognitive operation of the image is the idea that the image as a figurative unit can be broken down into two halves. I call these the physical half and the symbolic half of an image. As I was casting my mind around for examples I passed a kebab shop and I thought that its name would make a fine example, so well go with that. It was ‘The Golden Kebab.’

 When something is being described as golden, how does it operate in terms of the dual existence of the image?

  The physical half of an image operates by referring to a real physical thing that could be seen and touched. A golden kebab, then, in this shop name would be a physical kebab made out of gold. Yellow, heavy, hard yet pliable and completely unappetising.  

Kebab (just ass)

But the name ‘the golden kebab’ isn’t operating on the physical level the way ‘The red wheelbarrow’ was. That was literally a red wheel barrow, and it’s the physical nature of the image that is being used in that poem.  With ‘the golden kebab’ the metaphor comes from the conceptual side of the image.

 In the conceptual sense refers to the symbolic connotations that are suggested by the physical thing, or the idea of the physical thing. Something golden is precious and valuable.  Something is golden if it is the best of its class, a golden boy, the golden child, the golden crown of a king. It implies authority, value, purity and supremacy. So ‘the golden kebab’ uses transference of the conceptual elements of gold for their metaphor, rather than the physical.

 Conclusion.

  Poetry is one of the ways a culture talks about itself, questions itself, its actions and its values. The image is the way in which experience is brought into the poetry and directed either from the reader into the poem, or from the poem towards a new understanding in the reader.  You can tell a lot about a society by looking at how they used the image in their poetry, it’s like a handshake. Everyone uses it, but always a little differently.

 ~Chris

When all at once I saw a crowd
A host of golden daffodils.

With fall just around the corner I found these spring daffodils in my photo files. They are from a few years past, but every year I say thanks to whoever planted dozens of these in my yard before I bought the house.

Even though they won’t be back for about six months just the memory of the bright yellow ruffles brings a smile to my face. In Wordsworth’s words…

And then my heart with pleasure fills
And dances with the daffodils.

From Daffodils, 1804
William Wordsworth, 1770-1850