I bought the oatmeal. (Thanks for the offer, Jess. I managed to find 3.49. Though I saved it by not spending on RAISINS. Which are at present a luxury. Also in all caps because I'm increasingly addicted to the idea of putting nouns in all caps in order to reify them. As if I were a dictionary.)
Meanwhile I continue to make myself sick with anxiety over everything else, even though the actually ilness is (slowly, but surely) fading. I'm currently fretting over a presentation I'm giving thursday which has taken on a lot of the breadth, but none of the refinement of a conference paper (or at least what I think a conference paper is), and so I'm using this forum to debate my ideas with myself. Because somehow I have the idea that posting them publicly, or at least pretending that I'm going to post them publicly, will make me think them through more clearly.
So. The project of the class I'm presenting in is called "How Poetry Moves Us." The title sounds perhaps touchy-feely. That's precisely what it is -- and in a very productive way. Because what we're exploring is the way in which poetry physically, emotionally, supernaturally touches its readers, moves them, makes them feel. We're exploring idiosyncratic reactions, or the possiblity of them. We're exploring the use of and space for those reactions. The act of reading connected with the acto writing connected with the act of feeling. (That's key. The act of feeling.)
The project of my presentation is to explore the way in which I think Antony and Cleopatra, particularly in terms of Cleopatra's description by others and her consequent self-description fits in with that. What's different about what I'm exploring? Well, for one, it's a play. For another, it makes everything concentrate on one very famous body, a body that by the end of the play becomes a corpse. And when you get corpses, everything gets...um....overdetermined? No, superdetermined. That's more of it.
One problem I'm having is that I keep confusing my terms. I keep confusing Cleopatra with a real person, confusing her staged body with a real body, confusing both staged and real bodies with tomb effigies -- it spirals out of control way too quickly. That's part of my point -- that this sort of confusion is almost impossible to avoid -- but it also makes my project way harder.
But I can't quite figure out if what I just said is true. Is this confusion genuine or is it just endemic to myself and my constant swirling interests around these topics. It's impossible for me to think "drama" without "represenation," "representation" without "image," "image" without "idol" [for this at least I have the backing of the 16th century Homily on Idolatry, which is quite harsh on people who try to separate the two, "idol" without "effigy," "effigy" without "corpse." They're all linked by the idea of that which seems flat but is 3d, that which seems dead but also seems to live. One book I've started is called The Dream of the Moving Statue, and that's apropos.
The problem, as usual, is that my topic has immidiately spiraled out of manageable size to take on aspects of very broad thought best left to dissertation work. (Or to the work of a book after the dissertation, should I get so far.) Sometimes I take this as evidence that I'm in the right line of work at least, even if I'm not doing so hot right this second, but sometimes -- as right now -- it seems to be evidence of precisely the opposite. (That I find evidence of both a thing and its opposite in everything I examine may actually be stronger proof for at least my comfort level with the type of thinking required of a person with a doctorate in English. That, or doublethink. Which is maybe the same thing...NO STAY AWAY GEORGE ORWELL I CANNOT DEAL WITH YOU NOW!)
So. The upshot is that I have settled almost none of my problems with this presentation and have instead simply talked myself back around to my current despair with continuing in the profession I have ostensibly chosen. Great. Man, you would think I enjoyed overwhelming and semi-indefinable anxiety, wouldn't you? Or rather, you would think that if you presumed that the underlying motive for all human behavior both emotional and goal-oriented was enjoyment -- but as Antony and Cleopatra seems to prove, enjoyment and avoidance, attack and retreat are not only linked, but inseperable. There. At least I put it back in at the last moment.
Meanwhile I continue to make myself sick with anxiety over everything else, even though the actually ilness is (slowly, but surely) fading. I'm currently fretting over a presentation I'm giving thursday which has taken on a lot of the breadth, but none of the refinement of a conference paper (or at least what I think a conference paper is), and so I'm using this forum to debate my ideas with myself. Because somehow I have the idea that posting them publicly, or at least pretending that I'm going to post them publicly, will make me think them through more clearly.
So. The project of the class I'm presenting in is called "How Poetry Moves Us." The title sounds perhaps touchy-feely. That's precisely what it is -- and in a very productive way. Because what we're exploring is the way in which poetry physically, emotionally, supernaturally touches its readers, moves them, makes them feel. We're exploring idiosyncratic reactions, or the possiblity of them. We're exploring the use of and space for those reactions. The act of reading connected with the acto writing connected with the act of feeling. (That's key. The act of feeling.)
The project of my presentation is to explore the way in which I think Antony and Cleopatra, particularly in terms of Cleopatra's description by others and her consequent self-description fits in with that. What's different about what I'm exploring? Well, for one, it's a play. For another, it makes everything concentrate on one very famous body, a body that by the end of the play becomes a corpse. And when you get corpses, everything gets...um....overdetermined? No, superdetermined. That's more of it.
One problem I'm having is that I keep confusing my terms. I keep confusing Cleopatra with a real person, confusing her staged body with a real body, confusing both staged and real bodies with tomb effigies -- it spirals out of control way too quickly. That's part of my point -- that this sort of confusion is almost impossible to avoid -- but it also makes my project way harder.
But I can't quite figure out if what I just said is true. Is this confusion genuine or is it just endemic to myself and my constant swirling interests around these topics. It's impossible for me to think "drama" without "represenation," "representation" without "image," "image" without "idol" [for this at least I have the backing of the 16th century Homily on Idolatry, which is quite harsh on people who try to separate the two, "idol" without "effigy," "effigy" without "corpse." They're all linked by the idea of that which seems flat but is 3d, that which seems dead but also seems to live. One book I've started is called The Dream of the Moving Statue, and that's apropos.
The problem, as usual, is that my topic has immidiately spiraled out of manageable size to take on aspects of very broad thought best left to dissertation work. (Or to the work of a book after the dissertation, should I get so far.) Sometimes I take this as evidence that I'm in the right line of work at least, even if I'm not doing so hot right this second, but sometimes -- as right now -- it seems to be evidence of precisely the opposite. (That I find evidence of both a thing and its opposite in everything I examine may actually be stronger proof for at least my comfort level with the type of thinking required of a person with a doctorate in English. That, or doublethink. Which is maybe the same thing...NO STAY AWAY GEORGE ORWELL I CANNOT DEAL WITH YOU NOW!)
So. The upshot is that I have settled almost none of my problems with this presentation and have instead simply talked myself back around to my current despair with continuing in the profession I have ostensibly chosen. Great. Man, you would think I enjoyed overwhelming and semi-indefinable anxiety, wouldn't you? Or rather, you would think that if you presumed that the underlying motive for all human behavior both emotional and goal-oriented was enjoyment -- but as Antony and Cleopatra seems to prove, enjoyment and avoidance, attack and retreat are not only linked, but inseperable. There. At least I put it back in at the last moment.
Labels: anxiety, death/mourning/corpses, early modern, idolatry, the_profession, theatre, writing
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