(Untitled)

[birchswinger3]

Siegfried (however the hell you spell that) Kracauer discussed the photographic portrait as a collection of all the transient, incidental, non-essential details of a person. Most salient in the picture are the antiquated fashions, the long gloves, the absurd hairstyles. You see your grandmother not as you knew her, but free of wrinkles, virtually

Comments

[foxfour]

i take great issue with the idea that the pieces of the past are foreign and mean nothing to [me]. some of us live very much with an awareness of the past, and a feeling of it as real. such a statement, on kracauer's part, seems painfully shallow and unconnected.

which leads me to my other objection: it's all very well to talk of grand universal experience, but such things are made real by quotidian details and mundane elements. admittedly, i have a connectionist approach to AI, and it colors my thoughts on many subjects, but i think that the universal itself cannot be described so much as alluded to by mundane things.

of course, all that aside, i still don't read most of my friends page. something's gotta stand out as interesting. but if people stopped speaking unless they would say something profound, they'd forget how to speak at all.

[birchswinger3]

i absolutely agree. in fact, i was beginning with this notion of his in order to hopefully figure out why, exactly, i objected to his view. unfortunately i got lazy after laying out the jist of what he said. granted, the essay in which he discusses this stuff is far more intruiging and convincing than my poor summary of it, and there is a much better case made for it in his context, so if you're interested, you should check it out (i could try to dig it up). also the utter lack of meaning of the past was more a slipup on my part, and not quite what he said

[foxfour]

:D didn't mean to be attacking you; only kracauer. but i'd be interested to read what he actually said.

of course, we all make stories of our lives, if that's what you mean by the synthetic quality. it's something i always struggle with, because it sort of offends me when people do it, but we all do. and stories are always approximations of truth.

interesting indeed.

[birchswinger3]

haha, no attacks perceived at all... i always enjoy these kinds of discussions.

good point. interestingly, i always enjoy reading journals of people who have taken to the next level the fantasization and storylike construction/view of their daily lives. i know it's synthetic and a construction and perhaps false, but who knows. we all do it, and it hits home for me more than stark enumerations of details a la my first grade journals ("i am now eating brekfist. now i'm standing in line. i'm still standing in line. there is a lady with a long nek in frunt of me.")

[uberjason]

Just a thought - why does it matter that you only write about things that "really matter"? What's wrong with incidentals?

[birchswinger3]

haha, oh, that really wasn't the point at all.
i was actually going for a justification to myself of why it's worth more to write about details and specifics than to write nothing at all (which is what i've been doing for the last few years). that part of it got kind of shafted in this entry, though, because i got lazy after laying out the counterargument (kracauer's), and then didn't have the energy at 4am to explore why i still feel some resistance to it. i, of all people, certainly don't write about things that "really matter."

[followbliss]

(probably taking Kracauer on too personal a level, but so it goes) - how is the essence of a person being defined? photos of my grandmother thirty or fifty or sixty, to take one example, do better at capturing what one might call her 'essence', despite the fact that they do not represent her as I knew her. Perhaps because they do not represent her as I knew her: you're only trading one lens or one angle of perception for another, at any rate, and I what I view(ed) as meaningful about her would likely be as transient, incidental, and non-essential (according to her, or according to someone else who knew her) as what is in a given photograph. Perhaps I'm missing the mark, here

[birchswinger3]

hmm... i think as far as the kracauer bit goes, he does not mean to say that a current photo of the grandmother would do any more justice to the grandmother's essence (a ridiculously hard-to-get-at notion... i'm not sure exactly how he, or anybody else, means it) than the older photographs. i think he wants to communicate, rather, that no particular snapshot of material or temporal specifics can aptly capture the essential, and rather merely capture a facet of effluvium of that essence, as you've said

[followbliss]

okay, if his argument is that it is the fact that it is a single photograph (not because it is a photograph /in the past/) that has the shortcoming, then that's fine by me. I was just having trouble with the past vs. present distinction, I suppose.

and you should absolutely post again. there is my assessment of the situation. you won't be at swat this, summer, will you? out of rather random curiosity-

[birchswinger3]

no :/
i'll be in nyc, though, so i might get inspired and make the trek down for a weekend sometime. also, i'm thinking of coming back june 1st for graduation. what will you be doing this summer?

[puckling]

A totally reductionist, non-deep, not really responding to your post reply:
Long time, no internet see, yet I still totally knew your icon. Huh.