#TalkNerdyToMeLover's Ian Daley
The following is a very random stream of consciousness from a very random nerd ...
Don’t you think shows that are really good the first time but not as good later can be because they were so much better when you really were on the edge of your seat till the end? You pretty much know they good guys are going to come thru safe, unless there an injury or death is part of a plot twist or a need for suspense. Conflict rubs two unlike surfaces together and the substance of the rest of the two pieces providing use of their epidural zones for this generation of fractious energy, a common cause of static electricity as well as energy to drive the plot along, adds depth to the story which brought the two objects together with forces behind them acting toward some end. Re-watchability is certainly great, but I really enjoy movies which might not be rewatchable, but I really liked them the first time before I knew what was going to happen. If my past experience hasn't made the present me figure out what's coming next, I'll be at the edge of my seat that first time, and you can never really re-create that emotion. Sure, re-watching things and noticing depth and detail are great, but sometimes I'll just take adrenaline, intrigue and unpredictability. Maybe that's why I'm impulsive at times.
Any English/Literature or Liberal Arts major in college heard the phrase “conflict is the basis of any good story”- or some derivative of such clinché-sight. But, conflict, in this sense, like any word, can be spun from its literal meaning, in this case, I’m using it and friction somewhat interchangeably whilst dismissing the predjudice a reader, speaker or listener might bestow upon conflict or friction.
I often read when I have trouble falling asleep, when considering the notion that I have to get up for work in the morning for work, conflict earns back that negative connotation. Who knows what tomorrow brings each of us? And why even worry about tomorrow when you still have today to make it through? Plan for tomorrow, certainly, dread it if you have to, but don’t forget to appreciate today. It’s amazing how many today’s we get to practice, and how often we fail, repeatedly; maybe yesterday you didn’t get enough sleep, which brings me back to dreading tomorrow. Perhaps, I should be thinking about that, trying to catch some shut-eye before my alarm rings at 6am so I can scuttle off for another day and another dollar, which I need to meet priorities which were largely gained by making the previous dollar in anticipation that yet another dollar would follow. It’s not a wonder circles are seemingly the perfect geometric shape (apologies to squares, but you’re boring and predictable and if you bang your elbow on a corner, it’s not funny, especially if you strike the humorously named funny bone, which, I think, is called the humorus—yes I’m too lazy to Google it), but when life throws you curveballs, which are actually arcs, the collision of the pitch can cause that circular path of logic you follow and form a spiral, like the starecase heading to a higher floor, or the swirl which appears when you flush a toilet.
Sir Thomas Crapper, was roughly a contemporary of James Joyce, but, contrary to what you heard on the playground, he did not invent the toilet, like Bill Gates a century later, he took someone else’s idea and convinced a wide swath of the population his product would well serve society, although, judging by the many hours of collected work we have all lost due to a bug in an MS product society, and the critical function Sir Crapper’s device serves, as well as the possibility Gates may have crafted his masterstroke on the Throne, we’ll probably side with Crapper in this instance, especially since so many of us, especially men, do our best thinking in proximity to his product, although I guess you could say much the same about Gates, hmmm, I’m still going with the toilet, clogging one sucks but losing work in an Excel or Word doc … I’d take the flooded toilet. Final answer.
I’m conflicting ideas in this essay, rubbing several ideas together in order to soften your thought process sufficiently to contemplate one of my favorite pieces of a James Joyce book, from early on in “A Portrait of an Artist of a Young Man”, ranked as the third greatest English language novel of the 19th century by an entity called “Modern Library”. At first, I was quite impressed with the designation, and even more proud of myself for having read it, such a designation, however hopelessly shrouded in controversy and confusion, mean something? But consider Modern Library is the entity who created the above list, it started off as the owner of Random House, now it’s the other way around, also, this designation does not imply, but it is, in fact, restricted to English language books, you now have probably begun to suspect who may have begun investing in reprinting “The Classics” in 2000 and needed a little hype to push their sales drive, no matter how many “Classics” wind up as coffee table books. Another day another dollar; wherever you look.
All these conflicts, and yet the one I wanted to consider, at its best, is soft, but firm, moist but not wet, and most certainly timed-perfectly, the kiss, of course. Joyce says in a brief aside during his stream-of-conciousness first chapter, a characteristic of Joyce which spills this loose, fluid prose; it’s too bad the ADD generation -and the ones to follow, we all love our distractions, don’t think this is confined to this generation, it’ll get worse- doesn’t read as much as pre-TV/radio generations, although I still have my suspicions that, again, our proportion isn’t quite as bad as we may think, we read differently, that’s for sure, but weren’t their plenty of illiterates in the good old days? – oh sorry, lost my train of thought, Joyce said,” … (in this cases the boys mother, but the situation translates widely, one might think) put her lips on his cheek, her lips wetted his cheek; and they made a tiny little noise: kiss. Why did people do that with their two faces?”
He’s questioning the sound, directly; indirectly, maybe he’s questioning the ritual which seems a result of human social evolution. Kissing is a part of every culture, whether its common or someone has felt the need make it taboo, every society deals with it somehow; and where, when and how you kiss often determines the sound produced by the kissor, kissee, or both…
See, at a molecule level, even a soft, gentle kiss, a thing of beauty, a treasured memory, caused some friction between the lips and any other body part which got involved. That’s why, moisture, whatever the context in multi-body interactions, is a necessity to enhance the pleasure, the noise a communication device. I’ll remember that next time I share a really pleasant kiss. I hope I’m enjoying the moment, and the series of events which led to it, and any sound I may make conveys the intended aural signal so the future will have a happy past to lead into it.
Sunday, September 12, 2010 at 4:15AM
