Game Time!

Eternal Optimism

"The Sound of No Music"

In life there is no music
To warn us of danger,
Or sudden love. No strings
Start sobbing, no shark-attack
Knife beats, no gothic
Heart-clutching crescendo

ell (sic) us, don’t go down those stairs!
The shocks
Of burglar in your bedroom, metal
Railing through your chest, bus
Driving through your car, all
Happen, like sudden joy,
To totally inappropriate soundtracks
Or none at all. Blackbirds practise
Their phrasing, soap operas bleat,
A toilet flushes, as our life changes
Or ends, as we think, more
Than our pre-cinema ancestors did,
How, how can this happen, and to me?-Quantum Sheep

Red Pill? Or Blue Pill, Neo?

Why Kill Off Authors?

"The author is the ideological figure by which one marks the manner in which we fear the proliferation of meaning"

- Michael Foucault, "What is an Author?" (1979)

How else can you appropriate their mental labour? If there are no "author's" proper, only "author functions", then the individual's role as "cog in the machine" is affirmed and the writer's legal rights (to "property" - copyright) "erased". You may now through "custom" begin to legally appropriate the author's already completed efforts and attach new meanings (and authorities) to them for whomever (and whatever) project you wish!

From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.

- Randall Jarrell, "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner" (1945)

Yorkshire Greetings!

At this moment the door was flung open, and a shrill voice was heard singing:

'To the Looking-Glass world it was Alice that said,
"I've a sceptre in hand, I've a crown on my head;
Let the Looking-Glass creatures, whatever they be,
Come and dine with the Red Queen, the White Queen, and me."'

And hundreds of voices joined in the chorus:

'Then fill up the glasses as quick as you can,
And sprinkle the table with buttons and bran:
Put cats in the coffee, and mice in the tea—
And welcome Queen Alice with thirty-times-three!'

Then followed a confused noise of cheering, and Alice thought to herself, 'Thirty times three makes ninety. I wonder if any one's counting?' In a minute there was silence again, and the same shrill voice sang another verse;

'"O Looking-Glass creatures," quoth Alice, "draw near!
'Tis an honour to see me, a favour to hear:
'Tis a privilege high to have dinner and tea
Along with the Red Queen, the White Queen, and me!"'

Then came the chorus again:—

'Then fill up the glasses with treacle and ink,
Or anything else that is pleasant to drink:
Mix sand with the cider, and wool with the wine—
And welcome Queen Alice with ninety-times-nine!'

- Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking Glass"

Verfremdungseffekt

from Wikipedia -

The distancing effect, more commonly known (earlier) by John Willett's 1964 translation the alienation effect or (more recently) as the estrangement effect (German: Verfremdungseffekt), is a performing arts concept coined by playwright Bertolt Brecht. Brecht first used the term in an essay on "Alienation Effects in Chinese Acting" published in 1936, in which he described it as "playing in such a way that the audience was hindered from simply identifying itself with the characters in the play. Acceptance or rejection of their actions and utterances was meant to take place on a conscious plane, instead of, as hitherto, in the audience's subconscious" Brecht's term describes the aesthetics of his epic theatre.

Is the essential function of "fiction" and "rationality" generally, to create a subjective "distance"?

You Can Quote Me On This!

Missed Me?

And
for every word
a dream
every vision
a cumulous joy
the dream
summoning vastness
the world
wide asleep.

- Pablo Soborio