Posted by Jerry on August 10th, 2004 — Posted in Journal, Travel, Writing
I have just finished reading William Gibson’s book Pattern Recognition – this has to be one of his best books (yes Neuromancer was and remains stunning) – once again demonstrating how great writer Gibson is. i love his use of language, and the description of jet lag as having to wait for the soul to catch the body is an enduring image. His opening line:
“Five hours’ New York jet lag and Cayce Pollard wakes in Camden Town to the dire and ever-circling wolves of disrupted circadian rhythm.”
This is a must-read book!
must go
cheers
Jerry
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Posted by Jerry on August 8th, 2004 — Posted in Journal, Writing
Hybridity
I’ve been wrestling with an old novel idea that has come back to haunt me from my 1996 electronic archives. Discussing the concept (parallel worlds story) with an author acquaintance who seems hell bent on getting me to write this thing and publish it, I have come to reflect on my own sense of hybridity. The academic Jonathon Lamb once noted in a lecture a couple of years back that Horace (?) had said that travel makes us monstrous to our own kind. Whether it was Horace or someone else of the Classical era, they were right!
Not only are we irrevocably changed by our contact with another culture, but our return is rendered problematic. And not just our return to the country of origin, but the return a year later to the adoptive country is equally difficult, because the return ‘home’ means we also see the adoptive country once more as an outsider. In the novel idea I’ve been sketching out the heroine is precipitated into another world, where there are differences in culture, technology, approach to communication – many differences, and the difficulties she encounters in ‘reading’ the nuances of the new culture. But there will also be questions about her return – will she be welcomed back, having been ‘written off’ as a permanent departure, and what of her return when she gets to see her own culture as a stranger? Will her return be taken as a threat to the old world order?
What is clear is that the heroine will remain a hybrid in her own culture. As we all are in various ways, whether we move between classes, or just move to another state, or just learn to think differently – whatever the form the travel takes, the outcome seems inevitable – we are changed by our experience, and those around us notice our change and are unsure of their own reaction to that change.
So much for my musings on a Sunday evening!
cheers
Jerry
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Posted by Jerry on July 27th, 2004 — Posted in Journal, Writing
The world is _precisely_ as it seems: an illusion of the most persistent kind. And our understanding of it constrained and limited by the language in which we express its terms – the terms being themselves metaphors sliding on metaphors throughout the great sedimentation of stories and narratives told about the way the world is. There are no spirits, just stories of spirits, no hidden crevices, gods or godesses, no souls no afterlives heavens or hells, just surfaces caressing other surfaces – what you see is what you get. The world is simply that which impinges on our senses – howsoever extended or enhanced by technologies of self…
… a response to a good friend’s WYSIWYG view of the world.
Cheers
Jerry
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Posted by Jerry on July 18th, 2004 — Posted in History, Technology, Travel, Writing
I have been reading Carlo Pedretti’s recent book on Leonardo da Vinci – it seems that Leonardo took a great interest in the emerging information technology explostion of his time – printing. And he designed a printing press with an automatic sheet feeder. But despite arranging and paginating some of his work to facilitate printing, none of his works were printed in his lifetime. In about 1505 Leonardo designed a basic system for the simaltaneous printing of text and images – a method eventually used by William Blake some two centuries later. It is fascinating work.
He also revisits the notion of an automobile, to be driven by springs which was also designed by Leonardo – And now the Italians are working on a full scale working model. It is as yet incomplete, but the site is well worth visiting!
Cheers
Jerry
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Posted by Jerry on July 8th, 2004 — Posted in Journal, Writing
Someone got wrapped up talking about “after 9/11, what’s the next big world event?” And he was thinking of all these negative things… so I said: “what if the next big thing were POSITIVE?” and in quick succession came up with three:
1. next big world event: viral song gets loose from the Eurovision song contest and gets stuck in 400 million heads at once. Police called to ensure massed joggers crossing the Brooklyn bridge don’t jog in synch with each other…
2. crazed moped riders swarm onto the freeways making a mockery of speed limits…
3. Bio-terrorists release a cure for the common cold – western
economies stagger under the weight of increased productivity…
Of course we all know that the next big world event will be the Olympic Games in Athens – May this one be just about sports and spectacle
Cheers
Jerry
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