A Confederacy of Dunces – quotes and extracts – 38

A Confederacy of Dunces

We do correspond quite regularly, the usual theme of Myrna’s correspondence tending to urge me to participate in lie-ins and wade-ins and sit-ins and such. Since, however, I do not eat at lunch counters and do not swim, I have ignored her advice. The subsidiary theme in the correspondence is one urging me to come to Manhattan so that she and I may raise our banner of twin confusion in that center of mechanized horrors. If I am ever really well, I may make the trip. At the moment that little musky Minkoff minx is probably in some tunnel far beneath the streets of the Bronx speeding in a subway train from a meeting on social protest to an orgy of folk singing or worse. Some day the authorities of our society will no doubt apprehend her for simply being herself. Incarceration will finally make her life meaningful and end her frustration (p. 109).

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Neurotechnology, Invasiveness and the Extended Mind

extended cognitive systems, extended mind, externalism

This from the latest issue of Neuroethics December 2013, Volume 6, Issue 3, pp. 593-605.

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Without the nutrients in our beer, we would have died

beer

Michael Jackson (no, not that one!) on, to my mind, the greatest brewery of all — my #1 brew of all-time being the Rochefort 10.

My tasting notes made the beers sound like foods, and Father Antoine reminded me that they once were. The Trappists still do not eat meat, but once also ruled out fish and cheese. “Without the nutrients in our beer, we would have died.”

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Napoleon in America

napoleon bonaparte

Those of you who know me will know that I’m partial to the writer but with all the objectivity I can muster I have to say that this book is superbly conceived and executed — I know what good writing is. The style is extremely precise and the dialogue authentically rendered in the language of the day. Philosophically speaking, it offers a compelling exercise in what has been variously termed “counterfactual history”, “alternative history”, “speculative history”, and so on. This novel does not wear its research and its philosophical imagination on its sleeve. It’s far more subtle than that: the learning is finely and unobtrusively woven into the tapestry — driven first and foremost by the telling of a cracking yarn.

Speaking of philosophy and Bonaparte, did you know that . . .

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A Confederacy of Dunces – quotes and extracts – 37

A Confederacy of Dunces

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She had chiseled quite a bit of money from her father to go away to college to see what it was like “out there.” Unfortunately she found me. The trauma of our first meeting fed each other’s masochism and led to an affair (platonic) of sorts. (Myrna was decidedly masochistic. She was only happy when a police dog was sinking its fangs into her black leotards or when she was being dragged feet first down stone steps from a Senate hearing.) I must admit that I always suspected Myrna of being interested in me sensually; my stringent attitude towards sex intrigued her.; in a sense, I became another project of sorts. I did, however, succeed in thwarting her every attempt to assail the castle of my body and mind. Since Myrna and I confused most of the other students when we were apart, as a couple we were doubly confusing to the smiling Southern birdbrains who, for the most part, made up the student body. Campus rumor, I understand, linked us in the most unspeakably depraved intrigues.

Myrna’s cure-all for everything from fallen arches to depression was sex. She promulgated this philosophy with disastrous effects to two Southern belles whom she took under her wing in order to renovate their backward minds. Heeding Myrna’s counsel with the eager assistance of various young men, one of the simple lovelies suffered a nervous breakdown; the other attempted unsuccessfully to slash her wrists with a broken Coca-Cola bottle. Myrna’s explanation was that the girls had been too reactionary to begin with, and with renewed vigor, she preached sex in every classroom and pizza parlor, almost getting herself raped by a janitor in the Social Studies building. Meanwhile, I tried to guide her toward the path of truth.

After several semesters Myrna disappeared from the college, saying in her offensive manner, “This place can’t teach me anything I don’t know.” The black pants, the matted mane of hair, the monstrous valise were all gone; the palmlined campus returned to its traditional lethargy and necking. I have seen that liberated doxy a few times since then, for, from time to time she embarks on an “inspection tour” of the South, stopping eventually in New Orleans to harangue me and attempt to seduce me with the grim prison and chain and gang songs she strums on her guitar. Myrna is very sincere; unfortunately, she is also offensive (p. 108).

Feeling Extended

extended mind, externalism

Here is yet another recent EMT or HEC book that I chanced upon.

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Werner Herzog Quotes

werner herzog

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Here’s a compilation of some of my favourite WH quotes. He’s THE man so long as he doesn’t have silly Hollywood money at his disposal which somehow strips his work of any authenticity that makes him the genius that he is — cases in point The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans and Rescue Dawn. One gets a double whammy when one views a Herzog film and then re-watches with the commentary track. He (and Keith Richards) come over as the wisest of old owls.

If you switch on television it’s just ridiculous and its destructive. It kills us. And talk shows will kill us. They kill our language. So we have to declare holy war against what we see every single day on television. Commercials and – I think there should be real war against commercials, real war against talk shows, real war against “Bonanza” and “Rawhide”, or all these things.

By dint of declaration the so-called Cinema Verité is devoid of verité. It reaches a merely superficial truth, the truth of accountants. Cinema Verité confounds fact and truth, and thus plows only stones. And yet, facts sometimes have a strange and bizarre power that makes their inherent truth seem unbelievable.

If I abandon this project I would be a man without dreams and I don’t want to live like that: I live my life or I end my life with this project.

It is my duty because this might be the inner chronicle of what we are, and we have to articulate ourselves. Otherwise we would be cows in the field.

I like to direct landscapes just as I like to direct actors and animals.

The kinds of landscape I try to find in my films…exist only in our dreams. For me a true landscape is not just a representation of a desert or a forest. It shows an inner state of mind, literally inner landscapes, and it is the human soul that is visible through the landscapes presented in my films.

Everyone who makes films has to be an athlete to a certain degree because cinema does not come from abstract academic thinking; it comes from your knees and thighs.

Film is not analysis, it is the agitation of mind; cinema comes from the country fair and the circus, not from art and academicism. Someone like Jean-Luc Godard is for me intellectual counterfeit money when compared to a good kung fu film.

Coincidences always happen if you keep your mind open, while storyboards remain the instruments of cowards who do not trust in their own imagination and who are slaves of a matrix… If you get used to planning your shots based solely on aesthetics, you are never that far from kitsch.

You can fight a rumour only with an even wilder rumour.

I am not an artist and never have been. Rather I am like a craftsman and feel very close to the mediaeval artisans who produced their work anonymously and who, along with their apprentices, had a true feeling for the physical materials they were working with.
I have never been one of those who cares about happiness. Happiness is a strange notion. I am just not made for it. It has never been a goal of mine; I do not think in those terms.

May I propose a Herzog dictum? those who read own the world, and those who watch television lose it.

I think psychology and self-reflection is one of the major catastrophes of the twentieth century.

Every man should pull a boat over a mountain once in his life.

If an actor knows how to milk a cow, I always know it will not be difficult to be in business with him.

Film should be looked at straight on; it is not the art of scholars but of illiterates.

I think the worst that can happen in filmmaking is if you’re working with a storyboard. That kills all intuition, all fantasy, all creativity.

The world reveals itself to those who travel on foot.

I think it is a quest of literature throughout the ages to describe the human condition.

Cosmos + Taxis 1.1

cosmos & taxis

Here is the inaugural issue if Cosmos + Taxis

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