Alphabetty Spaghetti

The methods with which we express ourselves are as evocative as what it is we are trying o say. Doubtless there is some mystery as to why some people ‘have’ to paint or write, as doubtless there are certain ideas that pertain better to various art forms.
As society’s ideas have progressed, so have many of the methods we use in order express them, often becoming so accepted that we barely notice their implication.

Take recorded music as the most obvious. It is undeniable that the experience of listening to music being played by a person sitting in front of you is different from putting on a record – a definitive and finite version of song – and listening to it. When you play records, are you actually listening to music? You say you are, but what you are actually doing is listening to a recording of music. A ‘here is one I made earlier’. This disconnection does a lot of things, but to sum up over a century of its use, it basically makes pop stars. This may or may not be a bad thing, I could debate it either way, but without sounding too obnoxious: I can’t be bothered.

What I am instead making blind stabs in the dark at is the invisibility of this relatively new medium. Music is so much a part of our lives, yet the major way in which we engage with it has a sinister aspect of removal from the thing it actually is.

When records were on vinyl they were an art form in themselves; assuredly, one which utilised another to validate its existence, simultaneously to packaging and promoting said art form in a way it could be distributed to the masses. But this way only the beginning. As recorded music has ‘progressed’ onto CD, then mp3, the actual physical thing, which carries the music has all but disappeared from our consciousness. What is the difference between ridges on vinyl and a computer file? Or, more importantly, what does this difference mean?

The earliest form of writing, dating from about 9000 years ago from the famous Mesopotatoeheads was in the form of carving. The content – as has been drummed into me by Radio 4 - was NOT poetry. It was about money, and ownership (little change there then). But it is not primarily the content I am concerned with here.

In those early days of self-expression, in order to make a mark the writer negotiated with something that already existed. This initial act of writing was carving, a method that consisted with the removal of something from something else. Similar to sculpture, where a piece of stone can be said to ‘reveal’ the Madonna within it, early writing engaged with the world by bending objects to express their whim.

Consider the actual physical act of carving and what it is expressive of: its making an impact upon something else. Today, according to various psychologists, carving is associated with depression, but that is not really what I am getting at. Carving requires an exertion, a physical effort, and surely the human instinct it reveals is one of struggle and enterprise. It is an interaction with the world in order to make sense.

Anyone who has ever done any painting will know, that it is not the brushstrokes you make, but the brushes you leave out, which make an image. When you are making a painting, it is not the outlines of shapes which make the image make sense, but the space in between the objects, and how they relate to each other, which creates the ‘truth’ of a picture.

This was evidently once true of writing, but not so any longer.

Now when we write, we are adding to things. Sure, it is still the same contrast, which allows a reader to make sense, but the writer is no longer writing into something, but writing onto it. Now we cover something up, in order to make a mark. I don’t think I need an extra metaphor to get across the intrinsic difference in intention that this reveals.

So what is the actual difference between the content and method of early writing - making an impact upon a surface to signify ownership and authority – and modern day writing - leisurely passing a pen over paper in order to find beauty and truth, or just writing a shopping list? It is hard to tell, and as writing is now so widespread, no doubt in many circumstances it barely matters. Perhaps the only people it matters to are those stuck in the profession, once the endeavour o the most powerful people in a society, and now a set of largely ignored and unsuccessful types: writers. To consider argument, plot and execution for a writer is important, but perhaps more so is thinking about what exactly it is you are doing when you tap away at a keyboard and little black lines form at your will on the constant light of your Apple Mac.

P.S. Also, I don’t want to let you leave under the impression that the content of early writing was in any way superior to what we do today. In fact, most of the oldest surviving texts concern the celebration of booze.

P. P.S. The Iron Age Celts didn't ever write things down but passed on their knowledge, stories and poems by word of mouth. They were a highly sophisticated society, for their day and knew about the existence of writing, only preferred to learn everything by heart. I am not asserting the significance of this, only to draw a conjecture with the method of learning used n British schools up until recently – when lessons consisted of parrot style regurgitation. This method of teaching has largely been abandoned, but why? There is something to be said for knowing something off by heart, so that 70 years later you can still recite it word for word. Does this prompt a better understanding of the material? Or is it merely a glib ownership of the surface of something? Who knows.

I don't go to clubs.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R54xrcjgzJQ&has_verified=1

The Brat

My Favourite Phobias

That there is a name for all these things, which must mean someone sometime once suffered from it makes me feel one fuck of a lot better about, er, something.

Allodoxaphobia: Fear of opinions

Arachibutyrophobia: Fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of the mouth. So sweet.

Chronophobia: Fear of time

Dikephobia: Of justice

Cherophobia: Fear of joviality

Bacillophobia: Of microbes

Euphobia: Of hearing good news

Barophobia: Of gravity.

Autophobia: Of being oneself

Gnosiophobia: Of knowledge

Oneirogmophobia: Of wet dreams

Eleutherophobia: Of freedom

Ecophobia: Of home.

Iophobia: (just cos its almost how you spell my name but) of poison.

Phobophobia: Phobia of phobias

Personally, I'd just go for Panophobia. Fear of everything.

*Nicked off a site with the charming disclaimer: If you are looking for a phobia that is not on the list, I'm sorry but I don't have it.

To Einstein not only did God not play dice with the universe, the universe didn't play at all.

Imagine a person on the top of a moutain with a clear view of each of the peaks and valleys until the mountain range's end. Then, imagine another person strapped to a train track with a metal sphere around their head and an eight foot pole to look out through.

Moronic Acid

....That's All Folks

Calchus, a Celtic soothsayer was said to have predicted the moment of his death. On getting to it and finding himself still breathing, he chuckled to himself, before starting to laugh so hard he choked himself.

Greek philosopher Chryssipus fed his donkey wine. It seem watching the drunken mule try to eat figs tickled him so, he laughed until he dropped down dead.

King Martin I of Aragon died from indigestion after eating and laughing too much at once.

Pietro Aretino, an Italian playwright suffocated from getting the giggles.

Nanda Bayin, King of Burma, Nanda Bayin laughed to expiration after being told Venice was a free state.

Scottish aristo Thomas Urquhart died laughing after hearing that Charles II had taken the throne.

And the most accurate, on 24 March 1975 Alex Mitchell, a bricklayer from Kings' Lynn laughed himself to death watching an episode of The Goodies where a Scotsman battles a black pudding with bagpipes. After twenty-five minutes of hysterics Mitchell died of heart failure. His widow sent The Goodies a letter thanking them for making Mitchell's final moments so amusing.

In 1989 Ole Bentzen, a Danish audiologist died laughing at A Fish Called Wanda. His heartbeat was estimated at between 250 and 500 per minute before he succumbed to cardiac arrest.

In 2003 Damnoen Saen-um, A Thai ice-cream seller died laughing in his sleep. His wife tried to wake him up but he stopped breathing after 2 minutes of the giggles.

a poem reasoning what is time which stopped making sense when i made it rhyme.

Time is a sausage and thyme is a herb.
Time is a doing word but not a verb.

The present divides the future and past
What could happen next and what happened last.

Black holes, mountains tops or the equator
Force us to make time early or later.

Linear, cyclical, dilation, space,
Pastimes and good times or one moment’s grace.

The time of the season or of our lives
Nothing which makes up these things will survive

Running and passing and ticking on clocks
Metering out evenings with each of its tocks.

We live in a bubble where time is squeak.
But you will forget that this time next week.

Bugs & Brats

if i owned this i swear i would wear it every single hour of every single day.