Pangloss:
I haven’t said it for awhile. I write for myself here. A discussion group for me is something like a magic notebook. It contains my notes, and it also occasionally suggests interesting things to think about and provides space to play and build ideas. I seldom address people here directly or respond. It makes no difference to me if my notes are read. I’m happy enough if others occasionally seem to find some value in my scribbling and send kind words my way, but response, let alone approval, are not my motivations.
If I seem to respond to something it is likely because I found it interesting enough to trigger some idea building. My responses are more notes. I save a few, and a few of those I may rework into a project sometime. Notes are not finished writing meant for others to read, and my final results seldom confirm to wire service style books, since that is not what I do. First my notes must go to my wife editor, my life creditor. A well lived life almost always is accompanied by another who is willing to lead credit to a valued life. Writers learn to pay attention to their editor since we all need to improve our own stories and seldom can do it alone. But now I wax cryptic again, so I might as well continue.
It might be interesting to note that my word processor default font is Bembo Std., designed in the 1400’s by an apprentice cookie mold maker who was commissioned by a Cardinal Bembo to design a typeface for a book about his trip to Mount Etna. The font is still going strong today, and especially for long texts. I don’t intend or desire to be brief. Times New Roman, a usual default font for word processors, was designed in the 1930’s by Stanley Morrison as the new font for the London Times. The font was designed to be legible on the presses and newsprint of the day, and more importantly, to save space. To me Bembo invites readers into a text by its simple eloquence while TNR assaults readers of small spaces with its LEGIBILITY. If I had to write to the requirements of mechanical apparatus and assault readers to be read, I wouldn’t. Ghost Boy, whom you may recall, is the name of several related graffiti fonts. Ghost Boy himself is a graffiti artist in the UK. My ****** quote above came from work presented on his website. I use a different graffiti font, but I thought the name Ghost Boy was appropriate when I was working with a metaphor about reflections of things that may not wholly exist.
Candide was originally published by Voltaire as a response to a criticism from Rousseau. The book was published three years later. I wonder what would have happened if Voltaire and Rousseau were participants in the discussion groups of today. Both are still read after a few hundred years. The words of fairly obscure pamphleteers can still be found, and many private letters from the period are considered part of literature today.
Much of what is accepted as writing today seems to me to be more disposable. Perhaps it is a conclusion of what we call the information age. We may have taken raw numbers and information as if they were the meaning of life. But possibly, on their own, numbers may simply numb and information fail to inform, or at least inform or nourish the thing that says ‘I,’ which some call a soul. To inform and nourish the ‘I ‘ thing, we perhaps need to let imagination rule our lives, where we can experience anything we can think of in full detail, as in a good story. And if we imagine enough perhaps it will lead to wonder at ourselves and the world around us. Imagination means to make an image of, and wonderful means to fill with awe or wonder. The world is like that if it’s allowed to be.
We’d perhaps do better if we led storybook rather than information lives, but we cannot help each other with such things here. Each of us can never be anything more than cyber-personalities to other participants. A cyber-personality seems similar to the reflections I described above as the NYT editorial mirror.
Please understand that these comments and those above are simply notes about thought processes of mine. They are not about you or anybody else, and are not intended as slights, attacks or criticisms. Besides, cyberspace is not an adequate medium to support an honest attack even if I were so inclined, and I’m not.
Ah Dark:
As you can see I don’t take advice easily or often, I quite happily place myself in the hands of my life editor who provides advice as needed, which is often.
You perhaps understand when I say that I must nourish my soul, and to do that I must take my human contact real-time in the flesh. After all, I live in a place where I usually do not see anybody during a day that I have not known for years. Even the wildlife here are known individually. When a neighbor observes that they haven’t seen the fox in a few weeks and we respond that the fox is spending most of its time in our bush now that the marten has moved closer to the river, we are referring to a specific fox and marten. And, we know them to have individual personalities. Everybody here knows exactly what ‘the fox’ means. It is not an abstraction. We keep track of them as we do each other. The wildlife are more real to us then are our political leaders who come to us only through phosphorescent screens and printed pages to deliver their conclusions as if they were entire stories; and also to deliver their pretenses that somehow they know and care about our needs. Since we live real time in the flesh, perhaps we are less inclined to confuse stories, which we need, with conclusions that belong to somebody else then are people who live their lives surrounded by strangers.
