And now for something completely different

My apologies for my long absence. It can be hard to crank out a post a day, I'm finding. Whatever. I hope my audience of 2.5 can deal with it. I'll try to be a better blogger, every day, and in every way.

Today I want to talk a little bit about the different ways in which writing (and possibly gaming, and other technologies of the imagination) can allow people to model subjectivities, play roles, sublimate emotions, and other things. I more or less want to pose this as a series of observations leading to reflection and to elicit some responses from me readers.

Here's my take on writing, self-knowledge, and how I got to thinking about it in this way. More than anything, I have always wanted to be a writer. I love books. I collect them. I read them. I fetishize them. I am concerned with how others treat them. I love them. Funny story to illustrate my position: Back in the day, I sold a math text book to one of my roommates, Kyle. Kyle, for whatever reason, decided to stand on it (at that point his book). This made me very uncomfortable. "Get off it," I said."
"Why?" he asked me, not moving an inch.
"Because," I replied.
"I'm not hurting it," he observed, lauging a bit, sort of starting to play with me.
"It doesn't matter," I said. "It's disrespectful."

I love books. They are my sacred objects. Some people have their cars, or their stereos, or whatever. I have my books.

And I have always wanted to write one, myself. I especially have wanted to write fiction. I finally started doing this as an undergrad, but stopped when I got to graduate school. Too much other stuff to do, I guess. Trying to become a scholar, to write academic prose, and so forth began to fill my time.

When I moved back to Georgia, I found myself at the computer one day, looking through archives of my old fiction. "Damn," I thought. "Some of this shit is actually pretty good." I began to think that maybe I was ready to take another shot at writing, so I came up with what I think is an interesting concept for a book. I won't go into that right (write?) now, because it would be a digression. Let me cut to what I think is important here.

Writing, for me, is a way to indulge in a different kind of fantasy. In this case, I'm trying to imagine various characters, their worldviews, their motivations, the ways in which they would interact, typically, and so forth. As I began to develop the background for this work, working to create characters who seem more real than not (a sin of some fantasy/sci-fi), I discovered that I was forced to rely a lot on what I know or suspect about myself. There are little parts of me in the characters, and parts of my observations about other people as well. Further, as I began to write, I discovered that my strongest authorial voice was yet another version of me. This is the me that loves to have an audience, to perform for others. It's a contrived voice, but a real one nonetheless. It borrows from my own dialect, as well as from those authors, styles, and genres I want to use to capture the mood and manner of the craft bring my imagined world to the page.

I think my greatest role model in this regard has been Stephen King, who is the best damned writer in America, IMHO. No other author has been as prolific and consistently honest in his writing. He, more than anyone I've ever read, knows how to show his characters to others in a way that is at the same time personal and genuine. I'm sort of butchering my description here, but I'm just trying to say that he "gets" his characters, and how they really might handle themselves in the situations in which they find themselves. He does an excellent job tracking their various internal states and trains of thought. It's not just plot and dialogue, but psyche and inner dialogue. Oh, well, I think he's great anyway. He gets what I'm talking about, even if MY readers are a bit lost by now.

This sort of gets at what I'm saying here. We can use technologies like writing to help us to imagine new ways of being, to understand current ways, or even to work through our historical ways. We can use is as a way to overcome our pasts, to make our presents work for us, and to imagine and create futures for ourselves. A key element of successful writing, in this regard, is complete honesty. Really good writing cannot be based on fakery. The result of trying to fake it may be fine, in terms of its readability, but it may also lack the soul that comes from honestly pouring oneself into the process. My worst writing tends to come from situations in which I'm trying to sound like or be something that I'm not. My best comes from putting myself in a position to tell a story that is true, heartfelt, and which does not avoid full disclosure. I know I'm really feeling it when my work makes me laugh or cry, when the words just seem to be there, and I'm just a vessel to convey them to the page. The experience is that of the oracle: The gods themselves seem to be speaking through me. There is no real me. Just the words.

Now, psychologically, this is easily explained in terms of optimal experience. Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi developed this idea in his book, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. More or less, you are completely in control, completely in touch with what you are doing, connected entirely such that where you leave off and what you are doing begins tends to get blurred. It is a matter of feeling as much as of intellect. My observations about writing are, I think, similar, but also tend to take note of the ways in which your "self" as such can get subsumed in the processes of acting.

Now, what's the point of talking about this? This is an education policy blog, right? Yes, it is. However, where in current educational policy, where in the contemporary classroom, is there an opportunity to viscerally feel one's learing in this way? I contend that there is little if any place allowed for this use of technologies like writing to help people work at becoming themselves. That's right. Work. Becoming someone is hard work. If you really want to be someone at least. Now there are plenty of people who want to tell you who you are, and who will give you the tools to get that way: Parents, teachers, advertisers, television, music, etc. These can be legitimate sources of knowledge, but sometimes are lacking in their ability to foster and develop knowledge of self. Where is the space for students to be honest in our schools? Where are they permitted to experience the contemplation who they are, how they got that way, and who they would like to be? Some might say that this is personal, spiritual, something that has little or nothing to do with learning.

Bullshit. If you don't know yourself, you are blind in your minds eye. If you can't help yourself, then no one can help you. If you don't feel the learning in your heart, then you won't put your heart into learning.

Does that make sense? Do you feel that too? What can we do to create a world in which education is not just about learning facts, procedures, getting socialized to be a good little capitalist, consumer-citizen, and so forth?

Sela (pause and reflect)

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Q: What the hell does "Sela" mean?
A: From Ask the Rabbi

Lars-Toralf Storstrand wrote:

There is a word in our "westernized" copies of the Tanach that seems to baffle a lot of people to the degree that they say: "We don't know what it means!" Now I am asking you: What does "Sela" (in the Psalms) mean. I've heard several theories, but I want to get this clear.

Shalom.

Dear Lars-Toralf Storstrand,

The word "Sela" appears not only in our "westernized" translations of Tanach, but in the original Hebrew as well.

Some commentaries maintain that the word "Sela" has no translation; rather it is a word used to control the meter and allow the preceding words to flow correctly. The proof for this is that the word appears only in the "poetic" Book of Psalms and one "Psalm-like" chapter in Chavakuk.

The Ibn Ezra translates "Sela" as "truth" or "so it is."

The Talmud teaches us the meaning of the word in a similar fashion: "Every time the word "Sela" is used, it refers to something that goes on and on without end." Hence the translation of the Targum - "L'almin" - meaning "forever."

Sources:

* Psalms 3:3, Targum, Ibn Ezra.
* Talmud, Tractate Eruvin 54a.