Week 0 : exploration
I have set three aims ahead me in constructing this book. First, to be made aware of my own intentions. Secondly, to make aware of my own intentions others [1]. Thirdly, to prepare subsequent pathways, allay fears and disclaim [2].
Though I may later accuse myself of selecting it for purely aesthetic reasons, the numbering system I will be using to describe the process of both creation and subsequent analysis requires some explanation to be useful.
However before we get on to our ripping into the real fleshy mass I wish to note the general nature of the comments which I will be collating. For each of the texts I have selected not only my own opinions but also the opinions of colleagues, family members, celebrities, deceased royalty, imagined archetypes, floral displays and calloused feet. I have chosen to include opinions based solely on one criteria; the intention (though not by any means the successful realisation) of illumination. As a general rule I have favoured the interesting and novel above the strictly true, plausible, logical or rational. I have also pilfered, plagiarised and contradicted wherever seems appropriate. They are drawn from a wide variety of cultural, educational and existential backgrounds and it is chiefly the sheer range of interpretation which we are concerned with.
Whatever the mood may be, in concern to the method I see no reason or justification in being organisationally lax or un-systematic. To this end each discrete comment with be labelled according to the strict decimal system briefly mentioned earlier, with reference to content, in a suitably graduated manner. I will comment on the comments as I see fit. I should also mention, for the sake of completedness, that this is only a small selection of available content which could have been printed in the work, those other items were not selected, in the main for their obscenity or worthlessness.
I have set three aims ahead me in constructing this book. First, to be made aware of my own intentions. Secondly, to make aware of my own intentions others [1]. Thirdly, to prepare subsequent pathways, allay fears and disclaim [2].
Though I may later accuse myself of selecting it for purely aesthetic reasons, the numbering system I will be using to describe the process of both creation and subsequent analysis requires some explanation to be useful.
However before we get on to our ripping into the real fleshy mass I wish to note the general nature of the comments which I will be collating. For each of the texts I have selected not only my own opinions but also the opinions of colleagues, family members, celebrities, deceased royalty, imagined archetypes, floral displays and calloused feet. I have chosen to include opinions based solely on one criteria; the intention (though not by any means the successful realisation) of illumination. As a general rule I have favoured the interesting and novel above the strictly true, plausible, logical or rational. I have also pilfered, plagiarised and contradicted wherever seems appropriate. They are drawn from a wide variety of cultural, educational and existential backgrounds and it is chiefly the sheer range of interpretation which we are concerned with.
Whatever the mood may be, in concern to the method I see no reason or justification in being organisationally lax or un-systematic. To this end each discrete comment with be labelled according to the strict decimal system briefly mentioned earlier, with reference to content, in a suitably graduated manner. I will comment on the comments as I see fit. I should also mention, for the sake of completedness, that this is only a small selection of available content which could have been printed in the work, those other items were not selected, in the main for their obscenity or worthlessness.
T.C., Tynemouth, Winter 2007
[1] I am reminded of a conversation I had many years agowith Yosef (sic) Haddad. Both aware of a general distaste amongst the artistic at the activity of explanation, we neither of us could come to any consensus whether, as a rule, the creator should ever comment on their own work. This becomes an exponentially more thorny issue when that artistic activity becomes solely comment. I am thinking of the possibility of a body of criticism being raised up around a vacated object. Where the original work has been destroyed or lost, dismantled or forgotten, but its trace, like a fossilized foot-print, remains. Haddad suggests, in his seminal lecture given at Keswick, England in 1999; that it does not matter whether the centre of this academia has been vacated, or never existed in the first place. Much like the disgraced Richard Bacon would inflate a balloon, cover it with paper-mache, pop the balloon and removing it unceremoniously with a coat-hanger, then proceed to paint a terrifying faux-death mask with powder paint adulterated with that ubiquitous profusion of poly-vinyl-adhesive upon it, is the whole bloody edifice. Analysing anything is much like riding a bike, at the end of your journey you are more bicycle than man, the bicycle more man than machine, and you may need a shave.
[2] Aims tend to increase post fact, see 1.31.
1 comment:
Marvellous. We're getting there.
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