the gross misrendering of the ant, a tiny creature with its own strange and perfect alien proportions, seems inappropriate for a project that tries to inspire awe re:relative sizes and dimensions
are there no comment titles on lj anymore? hmm....
i don't think i agree that words should be ignored in the effort to perceive more closely. the set of tricks that humans know and use to attempt to shape your reading of their thoughts is not noise, in my view, but another channel of signal. as your discernment of sighs, twitches and limb geometries sharpens it might be appealing to dismiss those signals as amateur and comical, how you would laugh at the dog when he feigns disinterest in the chicken only as long as you're in the kitchen. but with a human i think the conscious attempts he makes to distract and manipulate your impressions partly expose how his thoughts are transformed between genesis inside and release to the world... as interesting and revealing as the unconscious information he leaks, if you ask me.
i'm reading the "spurious" post you linked to. i do not like the writing, but i have to reread to decide if i understand the main ideas.. the repeated idea of parenthesizing is not compelling to me, but maybe i'm confused. what do you think he means?
i like this part: "Language thickened and congealed; the clot of language as it blocks the arteries of what is ordinarily understood as sense. Now the heart of meaning beats no more; there is no commerce between language and what it names. Language is impassable; every word has been put out of use.
But now, in its impossibility, language is pressed upon itself, thickened, until it resembles the things of which it would speak." he goes on in other directions that i did not care for, but the image of a self-forming word clay is disgusting and wonderful to me.
in your entry you left two things out. what did eran say to your question to him about chattering into the void? what did your wife say to your question about being known?
i'm grateful for your journal each and every year.
god loves that ant no less for being a loserlostcosmonautFebruary 6 2012, 22:08:58 UTC
aahh this is th only komment on here that reminds me of th el jay of old -- well done, C. Anyhow words can't be avoided, and you're right to point out that our fumblings w/ language do contain useful signal, manipulated or not. Th formality or informality of someone's language, for instance, will certainly tell you something real about them. Word choice will tell you something. What a person says he feels or thinks will tell you something, whether or not it is a lie. But we never judge a person solely on his words, not even on th Internet, and th more we perceive a person's statements in th context of his behaviour as a whole, th more accurate our reading of that person will be. We can evaluate a work solely by th words in it, but if we want to know a person, words will do a great deal to confuse th matter. IF you are going to study somebody's words, ah reckon th phrase "read between th lines" is a good caveat here
... meaning: pay attention to tone, pay attention to what is left out, pay attention to th use of active and passive voice, etc.
You're a good reader of words, and most people aren't, so you have an advantage over them in that regard; but even for a good reader, it is safer to ignore what people say and pay attention to what they do than it is to do th reverse. Nonverbal communication is pushing us around invisibly every day, we might as well become fluent in it. Unfortunately I have no unified theory or comprehensive dictionary for nonverbal comm; whatever I know came from experience, trial & error, walking dogs, eating mushrooms, reading Love & Rockets, and watching people like they're actors and I'm th director
Iyer is not as clear as I want him to be in those paragraphs, but I suppose he has th defense that he is trying to discuss, in language, things that are not of language. Yes, I liked that passage you quoted, too, and wanted to use it, but it might have been confusing out of context. Hell, it is sort of confusing in context. But I think what he's getting @ is how reality is much more thorny than language can handle -- that it really is a miracle that when we say "tree", people seem to know what we mean and be satisfied that we are talking about th same thing, even though we are no closer to capturing our experience of everything a tree is (which is infinite). Like th gap between our description of something and our experience of it is so massive that it's not a joke, it's not funny, it's like a magick. And so language that can, through tone, simulate th bizarreness of experience, is even more tree-like than "tree".
Think about a baby playing w/ an iPad. A baby is perfectly capable of entertaining himself w/ an iPad, but he doesn't know what an iPad is. In th same way, we adults are playing w/ language.
I don't remember what E. & th wife said in those instances, exactly. Some words, you know. I remember in th wife's case, something nonverbal happened after that that was th equivalent of "yes"
You are v. welcome, and you are getting more genius each and every year
--mza.
P.S. i have not clicked yet on yr links, but I will when my stomach is not empty
are there no comment titles on lj anymore? hmm....
the speed of thought is most certainly slower than the speed of light. (light appears to travel slower in various media depending on the material.. but the perceived speed is about the interaction of photons with the lattice structure of the material).
i don't think i agree that words should be ignored in the effort to perceive more closely. the set of tricks that humans know and use to attempt to shape your reading of their thoughts is not noise, in my view, but another channel of signal. as your discernment of sighs, twitches and limb geometries sharpens it might be appealing to dismiss those signals as amateur and comical, how you would laugh at the dog when he feigns disinterest in the chicken only as long as you're in the kitchen. but with a human i think the conscious attempts he makes to distract and manipulate your impressions partly expose how his thoughts are transformed between genesis inside and release to the world... as interesting and revealing as the unconscious information he leaks, if you ask me.
i'm reading the "spurious" post you linked to. i do not like the writing, but i have to reread to decide if i understand the main ideas.. the repeated idea of parenthesizing is not compelling to me, but maybe i'm confused. what do you think he means?
i like this part:
"Language thickened and congealed; the clot of language as it blocks the arteries of what is ordinarily understood as sense. Now the heart of meaning beats no more; there is no commerce between language and what it names. Language is impassable; every word has been put out of use.
But now, in its impossibility, language is pressed upon itself, thickened, until it resembles the things of which it would speak."
he goes on in other directions that i did not care for, but the image of a self-forming word clay is disgusting and wonderful to me.
in your entry you left two things out. what did eran say to your question to him about chattering into the void? what did your wife say to your question about being known?
i'm grateful for your journal each and every year.
Reply
... meaning: pay attention to tone, pay attention to what is left out, pay attention to th use of active and passive voice, etc.
You're a good reader of words, and most people aren't, so you have an advantage over them in that regard; but even for a good reader, it is safer to ignore what people say and pay attention to what they do than it is to do th reverse. Nonverbal communication is pushing us around invisibly every day, we might as well become fluent in it. Unfortunately I have no unified theory or comprehensive dictionary for nonverbal comm; whatever I know came from experience, trial & error, walking dogs, eating mushrooms, reading Love & Rockets, and watching people like they're actors and I'm th director
Iyer is not as clear as I want him to be in those paragraphs, but I suppose he has th defense that he is trying to discuss, in language, things that are not of language. Yes, I liked that passage you quoted, too, and wanted to use it, but it might have been confusing out of context. Hell, it is sort of confusing in context. But I think what he's getting @ is how reality is much more thorny than language can handle -- that it really is a miracle that when we say "tree", people seem to know what we mean and be satisfied that we are talking about th same thing, even though we are no closer to capturing our experience of everything a tree is (which is infinite). Like th gap between our description of something and our experience of it is so massive that it's not a joke, it's not funny, it's like a magick. And so language that can, through tone, simulate th bizarreness of experience, is even more tree-like than "tree".
Think about a baby playing w/ an iPad. A baby is perfectly capable of entertaining himself w/ an iPad, but he doesn't know what an iPad is. In th same way, we adults are playing w/ language.
I don't remember what E. & th wife said in those instances, exactly. Some words, you know. I remember in th wife's case, something nonverbal happened after that that was th equivalent of "yes"
You are v. welcome, and you are getting more genius each and every year
--mza.
P.S. i have not clicked yet on yr links, but I will when my stomach is not empty
Reply
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