The long day.
Monday is my 7am to 9pm day. But it was a good day. I love working with writers. I heard several essays with potential today, and I can’t wait to read the final drafts. I tried to convince everyone to take responsibility for their writing, to ask questions, and not accept “I like it” for an answer. They just don’t know how lucky they are, to have people who have to listen to what they have to say. Real life isn’t like that. That’s the great thing about school.
I really need to get going on my templates for Movable Type, that will cure the comments problem I suspect, but is bound to create others. Technology is a good thing, but so many of the people in my class are scared of it. I tried to convince them that using blogger is no more difficult than using a telephone or a microwave oven, and that’s the way they should think of it. So far, about half of both classes have started blogs. I think it’s a good thing.
But the real treat of the day was the long night class. Three hours of textual analysis for the most part, trying to draw distinctions between “healing narratives.” A bunch of good stuff, dealing with the levels of language and levels of displacement when people tell stories about traumatic events. I can’t discuss most of it here, because I have taken the “vow of secrecy” but I certainly will elaborate on the theoretical aspect of it as I dig in. Language is really a magical thing.
One of the oddities was the usage of the naming function of language, which had me constantly flashing back to Wordsworth’s poems on the naming of places. Another thing was a rather unique slant on the complex nature of the postmodern self. I really liked the introduction to a collection of essays called Healing Narratives edited by my teacher. He deals rather well with the problem posed by taking the “self” out of writing in the postmodern classroom. I’ve often remarked here that I don’t think we can be expected to be purely cogs in the Marxist discourse machine. I’m glad Dr. Anderson feels that way too.
I love taking apart writing to see what makes it tick. Especially when it isn’t my own.
I could weave a tragic narrative around the photograph I posted yesterday, but I won’t. For those who might wonder, yes, unless otherwise credited all the photographs on this site are mine. But it’s kind of the “other me,” the me that I’m still having problems dealing with. Once upon a time, I was a photographer instead of a writer. I’m hoping that one day in the future I will be both.
