Month: January 2015

Bored room – Sat 31st Jan

I seem to have been put on someone’s mail list as a manager, and regularly get emails inviting me to different corporate training weekends, focus groups, sandpit sessions, conferences, consultations, and other events larded with the latest jargon. All of these go straight into the trash file. Well, all except this one, which I append for your delight:

As every dog owner knows, it takes a lot of time and patience to train a dog–whether she’s a puppy or an adult dog learning new behaviors. 1000 Best Dog Training Secrets is packed full of useful training tips for new and seasoned dog owners from two experts in the field.

The easy-to-follow advice covers everything from basic skills to socialization, obedience training, manners, tricks and more. ‘X’ and ‘Y’, owners and operators of ‘Z’ Training and Education school in N.E. offer insight into handling dogs at all stages of development from brand new puppy to geriatric, so it’s never too late to get started.

You will learn about:

  • Establishing leadership
  • Socialization–learning from human leaders
  • Obedience training
  • Developing life skills
  • Teaching manners
  • Dog etiquette
  • Behavior problem prevention and solutions
  • Toys, games and leisure activities

Given that the above content is so similar to all the other emails I receive, I suspect that ‘dog’ is the latest euphemism for employee.

(names removed out of courtesy to the owners)

Collected stones. Dec 2014 – Jan 2015

Here’s another page of stones. There are now four in all, collected from ones I’ve found since beginning this exploration. You can find the others if you click the 3 bars icon at the head of the page, after which click ‘stone of the day’.

3 bars

And here to introduce these latest treasures, are the opening lines from Roger Caillois’s book, ‘The Writing of Stones’ first published in 1913:

‘Just as men have always sought after precious stones, so they have always prized curious ones, those that catch the attention through some anomaly of form, some suggestive oddity of colour or pattern. This fascination almost always derives from a surprising resemblance that is at once improbable and natural. Stones possess a kind of gravitas, something ultimate and unchanging, something that will never perish or else has already done so. They attract through an intrinsic, infallible, immediate beauty, answerable to no one, necessarily perfect yet excluding the idea of perfection in order to exclude approximation, error and access. This spontaneous beauty thus precedes and goes beyond the actual notion of beauty, of which it is at once the promise and the foundation.

For a stone represents an obvious achievement, yet one arrived at without invention, skill, industry, or anything else that would make it a work in the human sense of the word, much less a work of art. The work comes later, as does art; but the far-off roots and hidden models of both lie in the obscure yet irresistible suggestions in nature.’

(Translated by Barbara Brey, University Press of Virginia, Charlottesville)

Springs – Weds 28th Jan

Something’s stirring in the bird world of late. There’s been more than the usual to-ing and fro-ing, hopping and bobbing, and some very interesting sounds I’m not going to demean by reducing them to a simple tweet. On Monday I saw four magpies who were most definitely cavorting. The starling at the café seems to be developing a far more brilliant coat than the speckled brown plumage he’s had on all winter. The seagulls are even noisier than ever. Even one of the crows (who, as a species, seem, on the whole, immune to any behaviour beyond the utilitarian) has been practising his (her? probably his) repertoire of croaks on one of the commonly perched-upon railings nearby, or as he struts the beach looking for tidbits.

As a human corollary to this, in the center of town, heart shaped balloonoids (they aren’t proper balloons because they are made out of that crinkly stuff, heat sealed at the joins) bedecked with extravagant and unsupportable assertions like ‘I will love you forever’ float in card shop windows, accompanied by an army of fluffy bears, bunnies, meerkats, and things with big round eyes I can’t find a name for, embroidered with similar slogans.

But this is not the main reason for today’s posting. What I really want to know is why this week everyone also seems to be throwing out their old mattresses? I found three today, and several others over the past few journeys. Is this phenomenon linked to human courtship rituals? Is this where I have been going wrong?

Babel – Tues 27th Jan

As with every language, French has a variety of words for verbal communication. Three that have become important to linguistic theory and psychoanalysis over the last century, particularly as they have been defined and to some extent redefined by Saussure and Lacan, are ‘Langue’, ‘Langage’ and ‘Parole’. Saussure writes:

‘But what is language [langue]? It is not to be confused with human speech [langage], of which it is only a definite part, though certainly an essential one. It is both a social product of the faculty of speech and a collection of necessary conventions that have been adopted by a social body to permit individuals to exercise that faculty. Taken as a whole, speech is many-sided and heterogeneous; straddling several areas simultaneously-physical, physiological, and psychological – it belongs both to the individual and to society; we cannot put it into any category of human facts, for we cannot discover its unity.’ (1)

And a few pages later:

‘Among all the individuals that are linked together by speech, some sort of average will be set up: all will reproduce – not exactly of course, but approximately – the same signs united with the same concepts. How does the social crystallization of language come about? Which parts of the circuit are involved? For all parts probably do not participate equally in it.
The non-psychological part can be rejected from the outset. When we hear people speaking a language that we do not know, we perceive the sounds but remain outside the social fact because we do not understand them. Neither is the psychological part of the circuit wholly responsible: the executive side is missing, for execution is never carried out by the collectivity. Execution is always individual, and the individual is always its master: I shall call the executive side speaking [parole].’ (2)

Elsewhere, regarding Lacan’s ideas:

‘Lacan takes up Saussure’s theory that language is a structure composed of differential elements, but whereas Saussure had stated this of langue, Lacan states it of langage.
Langage becomes, for Lacan, the single paradigm of all structures.
Lacan then proceeds to criticize the Saussurean concept of language, arguing that the basic unit of language is not the sign but the signifier.
Lacan then argues that the unconscious is, like language, a structure of signifiers, which also allows Lacan to formulate the category of the symbolic with greater precision.’ (3)

And:

‘The French term parole presents considerable difficulty to the English translator because it does not correspond to any one English word. In some contexts it corresponds to the English term “speech,” and in others is best translated as “word.” … Lacan’s use of the term parole owes little to Saussure – whose opposition between parole and langue is replaced in Lacan’s work with the opposition between parole and langage – and is far more determined by references to anthropology, theology, and metaphysics.’ (4)

I was reminded of these ideas recently when I came upon a small French Protestant church tucked away behind the Metropole Hotel (despite having lived in Brighton for decades, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen this building before. How easily we take for granted the places we live, sticking to the most efficient routes while ignoring many others because they don’t seem to offer enough to warrant our time or attention). The church is tiny and as you can see from some of today’s pictures, made of brick, with terracotta ornamentation, including a sculpted book over the door, upon which the following legend is inscribed:

LA PAROLE ETAIT DIEU
JEAN 1:1

My French is rudimentary but I can remember enough (augmented by memories of religious studies at school and occasional attendance at church services) to be able to translate this to ‘The word was God’ and to spot that the ‘word’ used in this instance was (in French of course): Parole.

I see it as an advantage that, because English has no direct equivalent translation, this actually gives more scope for exploration in finding an equivalent. In English, we speak, we say; but also: we utter, pronounce, invoke, give voice, whisper, enunciate, deliver…

My understanding of the above arguments, is that for both Saussure and Lacan, ‘Parole’ is an intimate and intensely personal act, a way we reveal our innermost selves in our communications. And yet also (perhaps more for Lacan) because it is so personal, so loaded with private associations and history, it is, to some extent, always unknowable.

This simple phrase in the first verse of the gospel according to John, re-translated via French, now becomes so much more complex, more pregnant.

And, of course, the French version would have been translated from a Latin or Greek text, and the original manuscript by John, was probably written in Greek but could have been Aramaic or Hebrew, and would certainly have owed much to far earlier Hebrew, or Assyrian or Babylonian creation legends (these languages possibly even owing something to early Sanskrit, a language considered by some ancient chroniclers to be so perfect that to utter a name using that tongue, would be to bring the thing it signifies into existence). And how would the notion of ‘the word’ of speech as an intimate act have been understood, and used then, so long ago?

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. (5)

Notes
1. ‘Course in General Linguistics’ Ferdinand de Saussure. Edited by Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye In collaboration with Albert Riedlinger. Translated by Wade Baskin. McGraw-Hill Book Company, New York, Toronto, London. p9
2. Ibid. p13
3. ‘Encyclopedia of Lacanian Psychoanalysis’ http://nosubject.com/index.php?title=Language
4. Ibid. http://nosubject.com/index.php?title=Speech
5. ‘John 1:1’ (King James version)

Appropriation – Mon 26th Jan

The rats dropped the rolling-pin, and listened attentively.
“We are discovered and interrupted, Anna Maria; let us collect our property––and other people’s,––and depart at once.”
“I fear that we shall be obliged to leave this Pudding.”

The Tale of Samuel Whiskers
or
The Roly-Poly Pudding
Beatrix Potter

Shoreham on Sea – Sun 25th Jan

A few miles out of Brighton travelling west is a place called Shoreham on Sea. Cross the bridge south onto the Brighton Road, take a left more or less immediately, and you will find the Shoreham houseboats. Given that one is actually an old minesweeper, another has a top deck made out of two halves of a bus, and that most of the others are cobbled together out of old cars, sheds, garden conservatories and any other conceivable kinds of scrap, the words ‘house’ and ‘boat’ might not immediately spring to mind when looking at them. Nevertheless, people have lived here in these extraordinary ramshackle dwellings for decades, in a small local community that is still resisting the standardisation and gentrification that infects so much of the rest of the world. I hope they survive for many years to come.

Viscous – Thurs 22nd Jan

Whenever I remember to, and I do so often enough, I try to see that the sheet of glass I am looking at, or through or am reflected in, is a liquid. And this fact still amazes me.

Later…

Well, it did until I put out the above an hour or so ago, whereupon I was contacted more or less immediately by a friend telling me that glass is in fact a viscous solid. (Actually, having checked this, I find out it’s an amorphous solid but who’s quibbling?) So, tomorrow, as I am sure to remember to, I will see any sheet of glass I am looking at, or through or am reflected in, as an amorphous solid. And I probably won’t be amazed by this.

The following morning… (the tomorrow I mentioned yesterday) I’m sent a link from another friend (see comments) with more information on the nature of glass. Here’s an extract from the page:

There is no clear answer to the question “Is glass solid or liquid?”. In terms of molecular dynamics and thermodynamics it is possible to justify various different views that it is a highly viscous liquid, an amorphous solid, or simply that glass is another state of matter that is neither liquid nor solid. The difference is semantic. In terms of its material properties we can do little better. There is no clear definition of the distinction between solids and highly viscous liquids. All such phases or states of matter are idealisations of real material properties. Nevertheless, from a more common sense point of view, glass should be considered a solid since it is rigid according to everyday experience. The use of the term “supercooled liquid” to describe glass still persists, but is considered by many to be an unfortunate misnomer that should be avoided…

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/General/Glass/glass.html

So now, the day after the tomorrow I mentioned a couple of days ago, as I am sure to remember to, I will see (and have seen) any sheet of glass I am looking at, or through or am reflected in, as emblematic of an ongoing discussion on borderline states of matter, and it will remind me to avoid bad and rushed attempts at poetry.

(But it still knocks me out that so many of the things we perceive are seen through something else, and that includes windows, screens, camera lenses and our own eyeballs)

Gargoyle – Weds 21st Jan

Over the past few months I’ve visited the beach on most days to look for interesting stones. I’ve found quite a few, including ones that look like a severed finger, a gaping jaw with teeth, a shop mannequin, a pigs snout… I’ve even stumbled upon a fairy loaf – something which would have been prized by our Neolithic antecedents – but none of these finds prepared me for what I came across a few weeks ago.

Most of the pieces I’ve selected have been relatively easy to photograph. Their charm has been apparent in one particular angle revealing the likeness that attracted me to them. Others have been more problematic, losing something in a two-dimensional representation because their objectness has gone beyond one facet. However, even these have succumbed to the camera, allowing one select image to sum them up, rather in the same way that a single photograph out of many, of an unwilling relative or loved one, will be able to capture them. For several weeks now I have re-photographed it from a number of angles. I even made a short video, turning it this way and that for the lens, but without success. I finally gave up selecting one particular viewing point and here instead have opted for a composite of several images to best display its appearance, but even these do not truly convey the experience of holding it.

About the size of a hens egg, it can sit in the palm of my hand as if made for it. Indeed it does seem made, more than developed through some obscure geological process, and while crude, it is perfect in its likeness of a small head; not just a mask, and not just any head, but that of a shrunken effigy, devil or gargoyle; a laughing satyr, something that would truly earn the appellation of a grotesque.

Yet I have no doubt it is naturally formed. There are no marks to suggest any kind of human intervention in its manufacture and I have come across other stones of the same composition, if not likeness. It happened, but how? Why? Is there any reason? Should there be one? It has sat on my desk for over a month now, looking back at me with the same wide smile whenever I glance at it. It delights, but also disconcerts me.