What's the point?

I have to do a conversational analysis in Language Theory class tomorrow. Of course, I had to dig up one of my old favorites:

MOTHER: He's been depressed. All off a sudden, he can't do anything.

DOCTOR: Why are you depressed, Alvy?

MOTHER: Tell Dr. Flicker. . . . It's something he read.

DOCTOR: Something he read, huh?

ALVY: The universe is expanding.

DOCTOR: The universe is expanding?

ALVY: Well, the universe is everything, and if it's expanding, someday it will break apart and that would be the end of everything!

MOTHER: What is that your business? . . . He stopped doing his homework.

ALVY: What's the point?

For some reason, Annie Hall has been a big contributing factor to my worldview. It was funny tonight in Compostion Theory class tonight to reveal that I am never afraid of making a fool of myself when I speak. For some reason, I don't mind being the class idiot. However, when writing I'm much more self conscious about it. I don't like to be an idiot when I write. Except in my blog, for some reason it doesn't bother me as much. Maybe because I know it will scroll off into oblivion and no one reads it much anyway. Sort of like conversation. But it's a weird sort of conversation. I always have the floor, because no one else ever says much. Like Meg, I think of this activity as just an amusing diversion. Real writing is much harder. This is more like thinking outloud.

I was looking at Larry Fink's Social Graces before class started. It's photographs similar to the sort of thing I've done (Fink was a big influence on me), pictures of parties in New York, Washington, and Martin's Creek, Pennsylvania. Sort of a high and low culture thing. One of my classmates exclaimed: "I'd love to sit in when you start to teach composition. I can imagine you showing people pictures like these and asking them to write about them!"

Maybe if I was teaching art. Visual vocabulary and written vocabulary are two very different things. But I won't say the thought never crossed my mind.