“Cut-ups” or “Breaking the eye”

Oh no, here come the beats. My first formal introduction to the Beats came to me by way of my cousin Joel. He’s a strange cat who once told me that he pretends to act crazier than the people outside his building whom he thinks are truly crazy. He does this because he figures, “If I look crazier than they are, then maybe they’ll leave me alone.” He works long hours at a hospital and lives in a rough neighbourhood. Joel lent me “On the Road” when I was set to be on a plane for 20 hours or so. I read it and didn’t get it. I was 15.

The second time I met up with the Beats was last year in Contemptuous Lit. (Yes, I said contemptuous instead of contemporary on purpose) Again I read “On the Road” and this time I got it. I got it and didn’t like it. I guess it’s all good if you like that American-misogynist-racist-asshole thing, or if you take it as a joke. A really bad, uncalled for even if you take in context, kind of joke. But I live in a tolerant society, I can tolerate this and I can use it. I can see how the Beats have broken the eyes of many young writers. I can see how they have taken a chisel to that iris to cut away conceptions and misconceptions of what writing can be. This is what I admire of the Beats.

So I’m reading these cut-ups and I start thinking, actually, I start feeling like it’s a cheap trick to me. I suppose it has something to do with the assumption that all things worth reading leave the reader with something of benefit to him or her. We usually get this from the content of the writing, what the words that have been selectively chosen and set in specific orders are training our thoughts to focus on something. With cut-ups we get something different. The original content becomes superfluous; it’s the connections, the points of linking that leave the reader with something to ponder. Reading without a safety-net I suppose, and actually come to think of it, it’s writing without one, too.

Re-reading what I said previously about the Beats I sort of want to retract it, but not really. Burroughs “The Job” has bits that I truly do heart. The parallels drawn between virii and words really spark something in me. I especially love this, “ ‘It is worth noting that if a virus were to attain a state of wholly benign equilibrium with its host cell it is unlikely that its presence would be readily detected or that it would necessarily be recognized as a virus.’ I suggest that the word is just such a virus.” Words are not viruses, they are symbiotes. Now I’m not too sure which kind though, I know that there are 3 kinds: Parasitism, Commensalism, and Mutualism.

Parasitism is when one animal (the parasite) lives at the cost of the other (the host). The host is often times harmed, but rarely killed. Killing the host, words in this case, would probably, most likely defeat the purpose of the relationship since the parasite (us) would lose the use of words. Commensalism happens when one animal (the symbiont) benefits and the other (the host) is unaffected. The symbiont may get food or protection but the host is neither harmed nor benefited. An example is the clownfish and the sea anemone. The clownfish gets protection by the stinging tentacles but the anemone is not affected either way (yay for watching Finding Nemo). And finally Mutualism is when both animals benefit, and in some cases cannot live without each other. An example is the termite and the protozoan that lives in its gut. The termite can eat wood but cannot digest it, while the protozoan can digest it but cannot eat it.

Of the 3, I lean more to either the 1st or 2nd. I can see parasitism in our relationship to words in that we thrive on words, our ability to communicate hinges on it. I can see how words can suffer, me being privy to some exceedingly poor writing. (haha) I can also see how in commensalisms we the readers or writers of words use them for our benefits while words are left unaffected. I really don’t see Mutualism because, well, I don’t know that words feel. So yea, I can’t really tell which is our relationship to words.

Wow, that was a tangent.

The interview was fascinating. I heart this: “To compete with television and photo magazines writers will have to develop more precise techniques producing the same effect on the reader as a lurid action photo.” I don’t know that cut-ups is the way, maybe montaging writing and film would be better. I know there are movies made of novels, but they never do the novels justice. Movies are just too short. Maybe if we serialized books into film? Maybe turn books into made for TV movies that run the course of a whole season wherein the TV show stays true and does not stray one inch from the book. Now wouldn’t that shit be something…

Okay, this post is getting way too long and I haven’t even touched the Gysin. I’ll say this one thing then I’ll hit the “post” button.

I believe that cut-ups are only yield benefits to people if they perform them for themselves. There is something that happens in a person when it’s revealed to them that what they intended to write has many more angles than they intended.

“I believe that. Yield benefits to cut-ups are only people. If they, for themselves, perform them there is some in a person. Thing that hap’ when it’s rev, that what they to them intended to write. More angles than has many they intended.”

Thought I’d give it a go.

Hmmm…

"Wolf-Alice" OR "Lycanthropolicious!"

The plot is always a good place to start. To me, Wolf-Alice seems to be the story of a feral child. What, you ask, is a feral child? Well… A feral child is a child that is not raised as most human beings would regularly be raised. A Feral child is a wild child, they are usually children lost or abandoned in the wild, the result being the formative years of the child’s life are spent without the usual human interaction. I know, that’s really formal sounding, but think “Tarzan” and you’ll get the picture. I took a children’s literature course one summer and one of the lectures dealt with the topic of feral children. Lemme to scrounge up the notes and see what I can find.

Aha. Here we go.

Such cases are rare; there are only about 6 documented cases. But these cases raise interesting questions. “What does it mean to be human?” “What is the role of biology?” “What distinguishes from animals? Is it biology? Education?” “What role does socialization play in the acquisition of language and communication skills?” the child that isn’t socialized, how does it effect their communication?

From the first few paragraphs that I read of Wolf-Alice some of the questions above were set off in my mind and I had a sneaking suspicious that this story would serve as a vehicle where in Angela Carter would discuss the speculations and finding surrounding feral children. In terms of plot I thought the story would be about a young doctor trying to understand the enigma of a child raised by wolves. Yea… Not so much. Seems Angela Carter decided to veer away from that and go gothic and have werewolves and shit like that. That’s cool, a totally unexpected, yet welcomed twist.

There are a couple of themes I picked out this short story. There is Transformation (obviously), The Gothic (Très obviously), Mirrors, and if I really wanted to reach I could say Identity. I suppose I could also link that up with Transformation. I suppose it could be done if we’re talking about the feral child coming into her realization that the image in the mirror is not a playmate but a representation of herself. I take Alice’s realization that the image in the mirror is actually a reflection of herself as a symbolic turning point in the story as well as for Alice herself. See, Alice knows herself to be a wolf, a pack creature. When she sees the other feral girl in the mirror she instantaneously assumes that the “other” girl is another wolf-cub. When Alice realizes that the other wolf-cub is actually just her reflection in the looking glass she experiences epiphany; she understands the idea of a separate self. It’s kinda heavy handed the way Carter goes about showing us all this, not that I’m complaining (thank god for heavy handed.) She writes, “She poked her agile nose around the back of the mirror; she found only dust, a spider stuck in his web, a heap of rags.” While her playmate is ruined for her now, Carter writes, “A little moisture leaked from the corners of her eyes, yet her relation with the mirror was now far more intimate since she knew she saw herself within it.”

Hmmm… I guess I had more to say about Identity and Transformation than I thought. Moving on.

It’s kinda fun to think about how wolf-Alice starts off as a human child, but is really more wolf than she is human, but then she becomes a wolf in (excuse the following) children’s clothing (I couldn’t resist) It’s like she is all these things at once, and the only determining factor, the element that allows her to stay in one form, are the blocks within her mind that are at first erected involuntarily, due to her upbringing, and by the end of the story how Alice learns to “conform”. She is aware that she is a wolf, yet she is also aware that other modes of being benefit her in specific situations.

Now I don’t really know what to make of the Duke. He’s kind of a crackpot. I can’t really tell if he’s actually a werewolf, or if he just thinks he’s a werewolf, or if the villagers just think he’s a werewolf. Since I only really understand Alice I guess I can see why she’s drawn to him. Weather or not he’s really a werewolf is not really a big deal. Sure it gives the piece a different reading when you change what the Duke may or may not be, but the one thing that is finite is that Alice sees something in him that’s familiar. She’s obviously not pissing herself scared when she sees him because she is a wolf-girl. She sees something like herself, especially when we see the Duke hurt. In the last few paragraph we have a description of Alice tending to the wounds of the Duke... Giving it some thought I’m thinking that since Alice sees herself in the mirror and realizes her own image and thus the idea of an individual self, the act of caring for the Duke who is so much like her kind of reaffirms, for me anyway, that though Alice realizes herself, she doesn’t see human. Since she tends to the familiar “hurt animal” the Duke, it’s gotta have something to do with being an individual but yet being part of a larger group.

I wanna say something about how Alice’s shifting between herself and her “pack” ties into our transformations that we the reader go through in our daily lives. We come to York; we are part of that pack. We go home; we are part of that pack. If we are religious, we go to church; we are part of that pack. But all the time we are ourselves. Some people say they are alone they can be “themselves”, but doesn’t it then beg the question, “what does it mean to be ‘yourself’”? If I had to answer satisfactorily or else have a piano dropped on my head I’d probably say that we don’t really have a singular “self”, and that the self that we refer to is really an amalgamation of the “selves” we are.

Or something like that.

“Doubles” or “I’d much rather watch the people watching Kircher’s production”

There wasn’t much reading this week, not that I’m complaining. Poe’s story was strange, and I kinda feel coerced into making the connection between the narrator and the man of the crowd. First, I do give myself credit that I might’ve seen the connection between the sickly observer of human condition (what a neat-and-tidy title) and the man of the crowd who is almost mindless and void of personality due to his affliction of being unable to be alone. But I don’t know that I would, without the directed reading of the story due to the topic of the week, have made the whole “doppelganger” connection between the two. Yes, possibly I might’ve some how meandered toward the conclusion that the sickly narrator was in fact coming to grips with the idea that he himself had the “great misfortune of not being able to be alone”. But knowing that I didn’t know that a predominant trait of dopplegangaresque writing is that “these alters relate to your innermost, secret self, and act epiphanically to unveil you to the world – and to yourself” well…my faith in my brain kinda ends there.

After reading Warner and accumulating the knowledge contrary to my previous belief of doppelgangers, specifically the notion that “It [the doppelganger] can mean [be] a lookalike who is a false twin, or, more commonly, someone who does not resemble oneself outwardly but embodies some inner truth.” To further drive the point home if I read the Poe story through that lens it’s more than a strange story, it’s kind of creepy.

Unnerving? Check. Creepy? Check.

Why is it creepy? I guess this is where I get into specifics.

I'm a writer. When I read I read greedily. A) I look for what I can steal and B) I look for what I can learn, which are kinda the same thing, but not really. When reading Poe’s story or any story for that matter, I tend to put myself in the position of the protagonist. I want to know what it is that I can learn from this characters experience. What do I learn from the sickly observer?

That which I see in others that sickens might only be a reflection of myself.

OOOOOOOOOOO… that is creepy. Aside: I wonder if this shows something about me, something that can be interpreted through some kind of blogology, some kind of forerunner of graphology?

While I was reading the first bit of the Warner I started to think, “gee, this doppelganger/doubling stuff can’t all be bad… I can see how it could be goo—oh, there it is.” Warner wrote, “the double also solicits hopes and dreams for yourself, of a possible becoming different while remaining the same person, of escaping the bounds of self, of aspiring to the polymorphous perversity of infants…” Yeaaaaaaaaa… what he said. I started thinking about how better off a person would be with this revelation of kind of deep-rooted problem, condition or affliction, but I guess it could’ve been said better. And was.

I think I need to back it up a bit. What exactly are we talking about this week? We’re talking about doubles, doppelgangers, the possibility of the other “us” revealing something. We’re talking about Representation (as always) and the effect of it. If we’re looking at doppelgangers as a mirror of our true self, then what are we looking at? If we’re talking about the possibility of other realities, what are we talking about? All of these subjects were touched upon in Warner’s essay and I have a problem with them. The problem is that I can’t seem to resolve the connection between parallel worlds and doppelgangers/doubles. I can see that there is a connection, but I can seem to cross that synaptic gap.

Ummm… yea.

This is me throwing cohesive blogging to the wind. *throw*