You look through the peeping hole and you see these boots. Black suede boots. Medium-high heels. They're young and wild! Then you see this woman, old and wrinkled. They don't fit, it doesn't work, and you're truly not attracted to her, but somehow the sight of her is strong enough to pull you from the room you entered, back in the hallway, strong enough even to give you the courage to enter the house of leaves through the one Good Door, the door of wonderment. Nevermind you're not attracted by her. That is really of no importance. The only thing that matters is the clear assignment the echo-chamber has given us: recreate wonderment. That's what the woman in the hallway has come to show you and us too. Hope to find you there.
yours truly,
hazel courier
Monday, November 13, 2006
Tuesday, October 31, 2006
reading group chapter V house of leaves
Reading Group: HOUSE OF LEAVES, Chapter V
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Reapercussions06-13-2001, 11:03 PM
Starting today, Wednesday, June 13, I want you to read Chapter V (pp 41-73), by Friday, June 15. This is the 'echo' chapter. It diverts from the story for awhile and talks about the science of echos. Then halfway through it picks up again in the story. A lot of stuff happens in this chapter...soak it up!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SpacePerson06-13-2001, 11:14 PM
*break*
I'm on it!
eef
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
foolish_mortal06-15-2001, 07:42 AM
I haven't quite finished it but I find it a bit confusing and difficult to follow... so I hope someone intelligent is going to explain it all. :b
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Reapercussions06-15-2001, 09:26 AM
Might have to be someone other than me...not feeling very intelligent this morning...(read: graduation party....) :m :g ;o
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
delicious dish06-15-2001, 10:52 AM
I read it. I loved the mythology part ( read the Echo stories twice :f ) but the science part bogged me down a bit. I had to ask my husband to go watch TV in the other room so I could concentrate better.
Did the Calculations make sense to anyone? i.e.:
Sound + Time + Acoustic Light (?)
Sound + Time + Acoustic Touch (?)
or the real biggie:
f + c/2 [ (n/l)2 +(m/w)2 + (p/h)2 ] 1/2 Hz
WTF? ( the "2" is supposed to be a superscript for square, but I have no idea how to do that :f
Anyone able to make sense of those?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
jezebel3606-15-2001, 12:47 PM
Yo-
I read this chapter. Actually I skipped the echos part for the most part.
Acoustic touch= I have no idea. Anyways using subtraction: Sound = Acoustic Touch - Time. OR Time= Acoustic touch- sound. HA, neither of those help.
I thought the rest of this chapter was pretty interesting. Johnny's mental state seems to be getting worse and worse, mirroring Zampano's.
That's all I have to say.
jeni
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
foolish_mortal06-15-2001, 12:54 PM
I think the Sound, time, acoustic light/touch equations don't really have any scientific meaning. I mean 'sound', 'touch' and 'light' aren't really measurements of anything meaningful. Also I remember underneath the big formula he says that if l, w and h are infinity then f=0, which isn't really something that you can say. What you're supposed to say is that as l, w and h tend to infinity p tends to 0. The message here is, don't take the 'scientific' stuff too seriously.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Davento06-15-2001, 11:13 PM
I enjoyed the echo myths as well. What I got from the echo passages that had any true meaning was the distance sound has to travel to effectivly echo. (1,130 ft) or (56 1/2 ft.) which truly relates to the size of the 5 1/2 min. hallway episode.
I also enjoy hearing how curious the children are. They are the first to find the hallway and immediatly go in to explore it. Not only that but the fortifacation built to keep them out.
I can't believe no one mentioned Nadvidsons exploration.
foolish_mortal ask away I'll try my best just ask away.
I want others to write their thoughts about things so I'm going to stop. Just one last thing.
DAMN THAT WAS A LONG LIST OF NAMES.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SpacePerson06-16-2001, 12:17 AM
okay kids, i'm trying my best...please please PLEASE PLEASE give us (me) an extra day to read this chapter. please please please. i don't want to fall behind. i just keep getting frustrated.
eef
ps. grianne, big party eh?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
i am a cat.06-16-2001, 01:52 AM
I'm with you, SpacePerson. I've read the chapter before, but I want to read it again before I discuss it.
[Too much other stuff is smushing around in my brain at the moment.... but tomorrow... I'll get my butt in here and talk!]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SpacePerson06-16-2001, 06:06 AM
i'm glad someone understands :l
eef
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
i am a cat.06-17-2001, 01:34 AM
Okay. I was feeling kind of yucky and sick after I came home from work tonight, so I curled up in bed with my book, re-read Chapter V and Appendices II-D and II-E (our next assignment ;)), and formulated some thoughts on each.
Here's my Chapter V randomness:
* There is a misprint (?) on page 41. The line reads "Echo, however, rejects his amorous offers and Pan, being the god of civility and restraint, tears her to pisces, burying all of her except her voice." Shouldn't that be "pieces"?
* Can someone explain why the "error" in The Figure of Echo when Hollander quotes William Wordsworth's poem is so "startling"? I'm not getting it.
* I find Johnny fascinating, the way he describes that his maddening focus on Zampano's words seems to draw him farther and farther away from his room and reality. He is also quite frightening, in the moments in which his mind becomes so twistedly violent toward his boss. Do you think he associates this man with someone else, perhaps in his past, that made him feel inferior? [I don't want to bring anything from the Appendices into this yet, but there's a connection that I made with this.]
* Thumper. Wow. There's that whole passage about how infatuated Johnny is with this woman... and then there's the short, steamy, and ultimately sad paragraph on page 54 afterwhich there is a footnote that says that Mr. Truant would not comment on that particular passage. What do you guys make of that paragraph? A dream maybe? A vivid dream after which you wake up and feel so distant from your dream and then take to longing?
* Karen's perfectly practiced smile. I made a connection with a bit of a letter in one of the Appendices that perhaps parallels Karen's condition. Won't say what just yet. ;)
* The hallway is so baffling. As it says in the footnote on page 57, it seems to have either changed location or there was a mistake on Zampano's part. I particulary liked the commentary about Navidson's steady hand during his Exploration. Even in a time of potential need for panic, he is still able to film without shaking. The penny incident was very interesting... It showed how the house seems to grow and shrink, which I think shows a correlation between the state of mind of the characters and the size of the corridors. When Navy first entered and was poking around in the hallways, the corridors seemed endless, but it seemed that there was some sort of organization to the endlessness (if that makes any sense). There are somewhat orderly rooms with no windows, one after another. Once Navy becomes afraid that he will become lost, things become jumbled and he is disoriented. The voice of his daughter echoing back to him is what finally leads him to safety... even though she has had a nightmare. Do you think this nightmare, whatever it was, occured because of Navy entering the hallway?
* The first time I read the part about Daisy asking to play "always"/hallways, I had chills. This thing is just so much bigger than can be imagined...
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
QueenElizabeth06-17-2001, 01:57 AM
Does anyone think there is a connection between Daisy the little girl and Thumper's daisy sunglasses, or am I thinking too hard here?
Jamie
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
i am a cat.06-17-2001, 03:15 AM
You know, I didn't even notice that!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
foolish_mortal06-17-2001, 12:44 PM
Originally posted by Davento
foolish_mortal ask away I'll try my best just ask away.
I don't really know what questions to ask... what's it all about? Heh :e
Well I suppose it's where he says "When a pebble falls down a well, it is gratifying to hear the eventual plunk. If however the pebble only slips into darkness and vanishes without a sound the effect is disquieting. In the case of a verbal echo, the spoken word acts as the pebble the subsequent repetition serves as "the plunk". In this way speaking can result in a form of "seeing"." which comes back to the idea of using narrative as a way of trying to understand life.
Originally posted by Eyes me like a Pisces
There is a misprint (?) on page 41. The line reads "Echo, however, rejects his amorous offers and Pan, being the god of civility and restraint, tears her to pisces, burying all of her except her voice." Shouldn't that be "pieces"?
Yeah! And his mother does the same thing in one of her letters I noticed. No idea what that's about :)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Davento06-17-2001, 02:34 PM
I don't really know what questions to ask... what's it all about? Heh
Wouldn't you like to know. :p I have my notions on what it's about. As to the echo part, could it be he is refering to life. To vanish with out a trace or proof we were ever here. Only by writting do we leave a trace of our thoughts and views, who we were.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Reapercussions06-17-2001, 02:47 PM
The 'pisces' misprint is also somewhere else - turn to the front of the book, to the color collage right after the cover. On the type-written scrap (beginning "perhaps I will alter the whole thing.") at the very bottom is something written in red ink. Part of it is obscured but what we see is "...to primary sense: to wound, tear; pull to pisces."
I like what Johnny says on p 49: "Inside of me, a long dark hallway already caressed the other music of a single word, and what's worse, despite the amazements of chemicals, continued to grow."
Anyone who has Poe's album...do you ever sometimes match up songs to scenes? When I first read Navidson's Exploration A, I was thinking of the latter half of "Wild". Especially when he got lost.
Oh, and more mirroring with the album - but this is actually mirroring with their father. Right before the song "Terrible Thought", Tad Danielewski says, "And at the end of it all lies of course the final phenomenon of deterioration - entropy, which is a predictable disintegration when the creative life ceases: everything has to fall apart." Isn't that COOL? You can actually see where Mark got it from. He said in an interview that he'd been tinkering around with certain aspects of the story prior to his father's death in 1993, but it didn't really come together cohesively until he and Poe found their father's tapes. In fact, here is what I believe inspired the creation of the house:
"Communication is more than just words, communication is architecture. Because of course it is quite obvious that a house which would be built without that sense, without that that desire for communication, would not look the way your house looks today."
:O
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Snow White06-17-2001, 03:14 PM
I'm only on page fourty nine...but so far my favorite passage was:
Chi Dara fine al gran dolore?
L'ore.
Who will put an end to this great sadness?
The hours passing.
I too have chalked the meaning of the echo up to the meaning of writing.
It fills empty space...helps us answer our own questions...and leaves something of ourselves even when we have long since died...like Zampano's writing..he is gone...but his writing has survived for others to entangle themselves in...it leaves questions..and answers a few..and of course...Johnny does not feel alone anymore *evil laugh*
I'm going to catch up on the rest of the chapter tonight.
(I've been working..and I've had no time...yeah..I know...excuses...excuses...)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
IrisMagpie06-20-2001, 05:48 PM
whew. finished ch 5 yesterday. What a whopper. That echo stuff was starting to get to me, until navidson went in the hallway. then it made perfect sense. Argh. My book is downstairs. I'll come back and make some more comments in a minute...
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
IrisMagpie06-20-2001, 06:13 PM
OK, random odds and ends...
One of my favorite Johnny quotes(p53): "Quick note here: if this crush-slash-swooning stuff is hard for you to stomach; if you've never had a similar experience, then you should come to grips with the fact that you've got a TV dinner for a heart and might want to consider climbing inside a microwave and turning it on high for at least an hour, which if you do consider only goes to show what kind of idiot you truly are because microwaves are way too small for anyone, let alone you, to climb into."
It just made me laugh. :)
The paragraph at the end of the echo part of the chapter, that says "Myth makes Echo the subject of longing and desire. Physics makes Echo the subject of distance and design. Where emotion and reason are concerned both claims are accurate." Really sums up what the idea of echo, and the hallway itself, represents. Here is this vast space, without distinguishing characteristics, that by all intents and purposes should not exist. But there it is. All anyone can do is project their own definitions on the hallway. You have to say something, start the echo, to get an echo back. Like in quantum physics there is no such thing as an objective viewer. The act of observing affects the outcome of the experiment.
Something that i guess is more of an ongoing discussion: so did Zampano make up The Navidson Record? Was it all a figment of his imagination? Or is it all a product of Johnny's imagination? Or does it, somehow, somewhere, exist?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
samara07-29-2004, 10:33 PM
Does anyone think there is a connection between Daisy the little girl and Thumper's daisy sunglasses, or am I thinking too hard here?
Jamie
Cool -- I thought that too.
The celebrities?
The HUGE-ASS list of names?
Johnny's panic attack?
The growling?
Interesting stuff...
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
vBulletin v3.5.4, Copyright ©2000-2006, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Reapercussions06-13-2001, 11:03 PM
Starting today, Wednesday, June 13, I want you to read Chapter V (pp 41-73), by Friday, June 15. This is the 'echo' chapter. It diverts from the story for awhile and talks about the science of echos. Then halfway through it picks up again in the story. A lot of stuff happens in this chapter...soak it up!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SpacePerson06-13-2001, 11:14 PM
*break*
I'm on it!
eef
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
foolish_mortal06-15-2001, 07:42 AM
I haven't quite finished it but I find it a bit confusing and difficult to follow... so I hope someone intelligent is going to explain it all. :b
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Reapercussions06-15-2001, 09:26 AM
Might have to be someone other than me...not feeling very intelligent this morning...(read: graduation party....) :m :g ;o
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
delicious dish06-15-2001, 10:52 AM
I read it. I loved the mythology part ( read the Echo stories twice :f ) but the science part bogged me down a bit. I had to ask my husband to go watch TV in the other room so I could concentrate better.
Did the Calculations make sense to anyone? i.e.:
Sound + Time + Acoustic Light (?)
Sound + Time + Acoustic Touch (?)
or the real biggie:
f + c/2 [ (n/l)2 +(m/w)2 + (p/h)2 ] 1/2 Hz
WTF? ( the "2" is supposed to be a superscript for square, but I have no idea how to do that :f
Anyone able to make sense of those?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
jezebel3606-15-2001, 12:47 PM
Yo-
I read this chapter. Actually I skipped the echos part for the most part.
Acoustic touch= I have no idea. Anyways using subtraction: Sound = Acoustic Touch - Time. OR Time= Acoustic touch- sound. HA, neither of those help.
I thought the rest of this chapter was pretty interesting. Johnny's mental state seems to be getting worse and worse, mirroring Zampano's.
That's all I have to say.
jeni
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
foolish_mortal06-15-2001, 12:54 PM
I think the Sound, time, acoustic light/touch equations don't really have any scientific meaning. I mean 'sound', 'touch' and 'light' aren't really measurements of anything meaningful. Also I remember underneath the big formula he says that if l, w and h are infinity then f=0, which isn't really something that you can say. What you're supposed to say is that as l, w and h tend to infinity p tends to 0. The message here is, don't take the 'scientific' stuff too seriously.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Davento06-15-2001, 11:13 PM
I enjoyed the echo myths as well. What I got from the echo passages that had any true meaning was the distance sound has to travel to effectivly echo. (1,130 ft) or (56 1/2 ft.) which truly relates to the size of the 5 1/2 min. hallway episode.
I also enjoy hearing how curious the children are. They are the first to find the hallway and immediatly go in to explore it. Not only that but the fortifacation built to keep them out.
I can't believe no one mentioned Nadvidsons exploration.
foolish_mortal ask away I'll try my best just ask away.
I want others to write their thoughts about things so I'm going to stop. Just one last thing.
DAMN THAT WAS A LONG LIST OF NAMES.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SpacePerson06-16-2001, 12:17 AM
okay kids, i'm trying my best...please please PLEASE PLEASE give us (me) an extra day to read this chapter. please please please. i don't want to fall behind. i just keep getting frustrated.
eef
ps. grianne, big party eh?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
i am a cat.06-16-2001, 01:52 AM
I'm with you, SpacePerson. I've read the chapter before, but I want to read it again before I discuss it.
[Too much other stuff is smushing around in my brain at the moment.... but tomorrow... I'll get my butt in here and talk!]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SpacePerson06-16-2001, 06:06 AM
i'm glad someone understands :l
eef
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
i am a cat.06-17-2001, 01:34 AM
Okay. I was feeling kind of yucky and sick after I came home from work tonight, so I curled up in bed with my book, re-read Chapter V and Appendices II-D and II-E (our next assignment ;)), and formulated some thoughts on each.
Here's my Chapter V randomness:
* There is a misprint (?) on page 41. The line reads "Echo, however, rejects his amorous offers and Pan, being the god of civility and restraint, tears her to pisces, burying all of her except her voice." Shouldn't that be "pieces"?
* Can someone explain why the "error" in The Figure of Echo when Hollander quotes William Wordsworth's poem is so "startling"? I'm not getting it.
* I find Johnny fascinating, the way he describes that his maddening focus on Zampano's words seems to draw him farther and farther away from his room and reality. He is also quite frightening, in the moments in which his mind becomes so twistedly violent toward his boss. Do you think he associates this man with someone else, perhaps in his past, that made him feel inferior? [I don't want to bring anything from the Appendices into this yet, but there's a connection that I made with this.]
* Thumper. Wow. There's that whole passage about how infatuated Johnny is with this woman... and then there's the short, steamy, and ultimately sad paragraph on page 54 afterwhich there is a footnote that says that Mr. Truant would not comment on that particular passage. What do you guys make of that paragraph? A dream maybe? A vivid dream after which you wake up and feel so distant from your dream and then take to longing?
* Karen's perfectly practiced smile. I made a connection with a bit of a letter in one of the Appendices that perhaps parallels Karen's condition. Won't say what just yet. ;)
* The hallway is so baffling. As it says in the footnote on page 57, it seems to have either changed location or there was a mistake on Zampano's part. I particulary liked the commentary about Navidson's steady hand during his Exploration. Even in a time of potential need for panic, he is still able to film without shaking. The penny incident was very interesting... It showed how the house seems to grow and shrink, which I think shows a correlation between the state of mind of the characters and the size of the corridors. When Navy first entered and was poking around in the hallways, the corridors seemed endless, but it seemed that there was some sort of organization to the endlessness (if that makes any sense). There are somewhat orderly rooms with no windows, one after another. Once Navy becomes afraid that he will become lost, things become jumbled and he is disoriented. The voice of his daughter echoing back to him is what finally leads him to safety... even though she has had a nightmare. Do you think this nightmare, whatever it was, occured because of Navy entering the hallway?
* The first time I read the part about Daisy asking to play "always"/hallways, I had chills. This thing is just so much bigger than can be imagined...
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
QueenElizabeth06-17-2001, 01:57 AM
Does anyone think there is a connection between Daisy the little girl and Thumper's daisy sunglasses, or am I thinking too hard here?
Jamie
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
i am a cat.06-17-2001, 03:15 AM
You know, I didn't even notice that!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
foolish_mortal06-17-2001, 12:44 PM
Originally posted by Davento
foolish_mortal ask away I'll try my best just ask away.
I don't really know what questions to ask... what's it all about? Heh :e
Well I suppose it's where he says "When a pebble falls down a well, it is gratifying to hear the eventual plunk. If however the pebble only slips into darkness and vanishes without a sound the effect is disquieting. In the case of a verbal echo, the spoken word acts as the pebble the subsequent repetition serves as "the plunk". In this way speaking can result in a form of "seeing"." which comes back to the idea of using narrative as a way of trying to understand life.
Originally posted by Eyes me like a Pisces
There is a misprint (?) on page 41. The line reads "Echo, however, rejects his amorous offers and Pan, being the god of civility and restraint, tears her to pisces, burying all of her except her voice." Shouldn't that be "pieces"?
Yeah! And his mother does the same thing in one of her letters I noticed. No idea what that's about :)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Davento06-17-2001, 02:34 PM
I don't really know what questions to ask... what's it all about? Heh
Wouldn't you like to know. :p I have my notions on what it's about. As to the echo part, could it be he is refering to life. To vanish with out a trace or proof we were ever here. Only by writting do we leave a trace of our thoughts and views, who we were.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Reapercussions06-17-2001, 02:47 PM
The 'pisces' misprint is also somewhere else - turn to the front of the book, to the color collage right after the cover. On the type-written scrap (beginning "perhaps I will alter the whole thing.") at the very bottom is something written in red ink. Part of it is obscured but what we see is "...to primary sense: to wound, tear; pull to pisces."
I like what Johnny says on p 49: "Inside of me, a long dark hallway already caressed the other music of a single word, and what's worse, despite the amazements of chemicals, continued to grow."
Anyone who has Poe's album...do you ever sometimes match up songs to scenes? When I first read Navidson's Exploration A, I was thinking of the latter half of "Wild". Especially when he got lost.
Oh, and more mirroring with the album - but this is actually mirroring with their father. Right before the song "Terrible Thought", Tad Danielewski says, "And at the end of it all lies of course the final phenomenon of deterioration - entropy, which is a predictable disintegration when the creative life ceases: everything has to fall apart." Isn't that COOL? You can actually see where Mark got it from. He said in an interview that he'd been tinkering around with certain aspects of the story prior to his father's death in 1993, but it didn't really come together cohesively until he and Poe found their father's tapes. In fact, here is what I believe inspired the creation of the house:
"Communication is more than just words, communication is architecture. Because of course it is quite obvious that a house which would be built without that sense, without that that desire for communication, would not look the way your house looks today."
:O
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Snow White06-17-2001, 03:14 PM
I'm only on page fourty nine...but so far my favorite passage was:
Chi Dara fine al gran dolore?
L'ore.
Who will put an end to this great sadness?
The hours passing.
I too have chalked the meaning of the echo up to the meaning of writing.
It fills empty space...helps us answer our own questions...and leaves something of ourselves even when we have long since died...like Zampano's writing..he is gone...but his writing has survived for others to entangle themselves in...it leaves questions..and answers a few..and of course...Johnny does not feel alone anymore *evil laugh*
I'm going to catch up on the rest of the chapter tonight.
(I've been working..and I've had no time...yeah..I know...excuses...excuses...)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
IrisMagpie06-20-2001, 05:48 PM
whew. finished ch 5 yesterday. What a whopper. That echo stuff was starting to get to me, until navidson went in the hallway. then it made perfect sense. Argh. My book is downstairs. I'll come back and make some more comments in a minute...
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
IrisMagpie06-20-2001, 06:13 PM
OK, random odds and ends...
One of my favorite Johnny quotes(p53): "Quick note here: if this crush-slash-swooning stuff is hard for you to stomach; if you've never had a similar experience, then you should come to grips with the fact that you've got a TV dinner for a heart and might want to consider climbing inside a microwave and turning it on high for at least an hour, which if you do consider only goes to show what kind of idiot you truly are because microwaves are way too small for anyone, let alone you, to climb into."
It just made me laugh. :)
The paragraph at the end of the echo part of the chapter, that says "Myth makes Echo the subject of longing and desire. Physics makes Echo the subject of distance and design. Where emotion and reason are concerned both claims are accurate." Really sums up what the idea of echo, and the hallway itself, represents. Here is this vast space, without distinguishing characteristics, that by all intents and purposes should not exist. But there it is. All anyone can do is project their own definitions on the hallway. You have to say something, start the echo, to get an echo back. Like in quantum physics there is no such thing as an objective viewer. The act of observing affects the outcome of the experiment.
Something that i guess is more of an ongoing discussion: so did Zampano make up The Navidson Record? Was it all a figment of his imagination? Or is it all a product of Johnny's imagination? Or does it, somehow, somewhere, exist?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
samara07-29-2004, 10:33 PM
Does anyone think there is a connection between Daisy the little girl and Thumper's daisy sunglasses, or am I thinking too hard here?
Jamie
Cool -- I thought that too.
The celebrities?
The HUGE-ASS list of names?
Johnny's panic attack?
The growling?
Interesting stuff...
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
vBulletin v3.5.4, Copyright ©2000-2006, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
Wednesday, October 25, 2006
Thursday, October 19, 2006
Wednesday, October 18, 2006
a special one for ellen, but of course it is here for everyone to read
This one is for you especially, ellen, because you were in my dreams (in a very weird way though). I have once told myself that whenever I dreamt of someone concretely, I would contact that person the day after that dream to tell him/her about it. So, here it is. I post it in the echo-chamber, because, obviously, you, Ellen and the echo-chamber are already strongly connected.
I was sitting in a car with elke. I can't remember who drove the car, but anyway, we also picked you up, Ellen, and also your brother (who didn't look like your real brother at all). The plan was to drive to your father and mother (not in their huge house though) because they were rehearsing a play and they wanted Elke and me to be in it. We waited for a long time at a market, then you and your brother appeared carrying vegetables. Next thing I know we are sitting in a room and your father is handing the script of the play to Elke and me and apparently also to a few other people in the room, including my father. Your father (i never saw the real one) was about sixty years old, bald, tanned, with silvery spectacles and frowning eyebrows. He talked in a very gesticulative way. As he had run out of typed scripts before he had given one to me, he gave me his personal one. This script was a special one. It was made of sheets of very light cotton canvas on which the text was written - or better, sewn - with very colorful knitting thread. None of the people in the room, however, had any time to read the script, because there she popped up, suddenly, your 'mother', also in her sixtees, wearing a green dress with trees and flowers, a bit on the fat side, with a strong and determined look in her eyes, and a remote control in her hands. The next moment we sit in a kind of auditorium, at which point I can't remember Elke being there. My father however was sitting a few rows in front of me. The overall feel of the place was kind of a bit like a church, with more people sitting there than before with the scripts. Especially an older woman on one of the front rows catches my attention. I know there are more people, but mainly that woman, my father, your father, your mother and you are dominant in the space.
Then it happens: your mother pushes play on the remote control, and doing this, she sets something in motion, something very peculiar. On a television in front of the people in the auditorium a documentary starts playing. It is about the war in Irak. It discusses it extensively, showing many dead people, until at one point, it goes on to talk about the islam world, about its history, about its present, but most of all about its future. Slowly the documentary evolves into a sort of propaganda film against the islam. Its pouncing and rhythmically more and more repeated message is: the islam is going to kill the world, the islam is evil. My father (he's a socialist and lover of everyone) looks back at me and frowns, trying to ask me 'what the hell are we doing here?'. I try telling him 'I hadn't expected this, we are here for a play, surely ellen will be able to explain'. Then, as the pouncing 'islam is evil' rhythm is gaining volume, the woman sitting in the front row is starting to shake back and forth on her chair, going in a kind of a trance with rolling eyeballs and everything, saying repeatedly 'islamislamislamislam'. Really scary. At which point your 'father' and 'mother' smile a big smile, look at the puzzled faces of me and my father and freeze the image. Your 'father' then says: this is what this play is going to be about: about the islam and about the mutual lover of my daughter and me: Dyonysus. In my dream I can't see your reaction on this, because out comes your 'mother' holding something in her hands which she calls a piece of mouth furniture. It doesn't look good, it really doesn't. This, she says, we will, in order to play the play, all insert in our mouths, like this - and she puts it in her mouth, this metal thing with (scharnieren) to open and close the mouth, and really it doesn't look good at all.
At this moment, in my dream, I decided to open my eyes, which I did. I didn't save the rest of the auditorium though. Then I got attacked by a mosquito.
Voila, that's it. I know it's really strange and I have absolutely no idea why I posted it on the blog.
I was sitting in a car with elke. I can't remember who drove the car, but anyway, we also picked you up, Ellen, and also your brother (who didn't look like your real brother at all). The plan was to drive to your father and mother (not in their huge house though) because they were rehearsing a play and they wanted Elke and me to be in it. We waited for a long time at a market, then you and your brother appeared carrying vegetables. Next thing I know we are sitting in a room and your father is handing the script of the play to Elke and me and apparently also to a few other people in the room, including my father. Your father (i never saw the real one) was about sixty years old, bald, tanned, with silvery spectacles and frowning eyebrows. He talked in a very gesticulative way. As he had run out of typed scripts before he had given one to me, he gave me his personal one. This script was a special one. It was made of sheets of very light cotton canvas on which the text was written - or better, sewn - with very colorful knitting thread. None of the people in the room, however, had any time to read the script, because there she popped up, suddenly, your 'mother', also in her sixtees, wearing a green dress with trees and flowers, a bit on the fat side, with a strong and determined look in her eyes, and a remote control in her hands. The next moment we sit in a kind of auditorium, at which point I can't remember Elke being there. My father however was sitting a few rows in front of me. The overall feel of the place was kind of a bit like a church, with more people sitting there than before with the scripts. Especially an older woman on one of the front rows catches my attention. I know there are more people, but mainly that woman, my father, your father, your mother and you are dominant in the space.
Then it happens: your mother pushes play on the remote control, and doing this, she sets something in motion, something very peculiar. On a television in front of the people in the auditorium a documentary starts playing. It is about the war in Irak. It discusses it extensively, showing many dead people, until at one point, it goes on to talk about the islam world, about its history, about its present, but most of all about its future. Slowly the documentary evolves into a sort of propaganda film against the islam. Its pouncing and rhythmically more and more repeated message is: the islam is going to kill the world, the islam is evil. My father (he's a socialist and lover of everyone) looks back at me and frowns, trying to ask me 'what the hell are we doing here?'. I try telling him 'I hadn't expected this, we are here for a play, surely ellen will be able to explain'. Then, as the pouncing 'islam is evil' rhythm is gaining volume, the woman sitting in the front row is starting to shake back and forth on her chair, going in a kind of a trance with rolling eyeballs and everything, saying repeatedly 'islamislamislamislam'. Really scary. At which point your 'father' and 'mother' smile a big smile, look at the puzzled faces of me and my father and freeze the image. Your 'father' then says: this is what this play is going to be about: about the islam and about the mutual lover of my daughter and me: Dyonysus. In my dream I can't see your reaction on this, because out comes your 'mother' holding something in her hands which she calls a piece of mouth furniture. It doesn't look good, it really doesn't. This, she says, we will, in order to play the play, all insert in our mouths, like this - and she puts it in her mouth, this metal thing with (scharnieren) to open and close the mouth, and really it doesn't look good at all.
At this moment, in my dream, I decided to open my eyes, which I did. I didn't save the rest of the auditorium though. Then I got attacked by a mosquito.
Voila, that's it. I know it's really strange and I have absolutely no idea why I posted it on the blog.
my first blog post ever and quite nervous
oehoe, my first blog post ever. i am quite nervous. taking a break to watch The Shining.
Back from watching The Shining. What a film! If - as Johnny Truant tells in The House of Leaves - horror can lie in a quarter of an inch of too much space, then certainly there lies an equal amount of horror in a space with a faintly beating heart and blood vessels running through its walls, ready to burst at any instant. Space as a living being - or, better, a very specific space as a very specific living being. A murderous and imploding one in the Shining, an annihilating and growing one in the House of Leaves. Both of them called into being by the echoes of the past. It throws quite a different light on the space everyone of us personally inhabits. What if space not only sends back what it receives 'in the moment' - as what you get when you 'oehoe' in a space, where you instantly get 'hoe' 'oe' oe' back? What if a space is more - let's say - flexible in sending things back; flexible in time as well as flexible in the things it sends back? What if a space is a sponge in the first place? What if any kind of space is a living sponge, absorbing everything in resonance with what has happened, is happening or will happen in that space? Then could a house become murderous when it comes into contact with a person that has a murderous chord in him/her, so that if the house strikes that chord, BANG! Or, then, could a house grow and annihilate when it comes into contact with the darkness or with a void in a person? Or better, can emptiness, darkness and oblivion grow in a person because of a space?
Yes, yes, I know, all this is fiction. Just to say that it's a nice idea to have a space become a character rather than 'just being an environment'.
This blog thing is really weird, it makes me sound american and philosophical. I hope I can straighten that out in time, and make more contact with the nymph.
Back from watching The Shining. What a film! If - as Johnny Truant tells in The House of Leaves - horror can lie in a quarter of an inch of too much space, then certainly there lies an equal amount of horror in a space with a faintly beating heart and blood vessels running through its walls, ready to burst at any instant. Space as a living being - or, better, a very specific space as a very specific living being. A murderous and imploding one in the Shining, an annihilating and growing one in the House of Leaves. Both of them called into being by the echoes of the past. It throws quite a different light on the space everyone of us personally inhabits. What if space not only sends back what it receives 'in the moment' - as what you get when you 'oehoe' in a space, where you instantly get 'hoe' 'oe' oe' back? What if a space is more - let's say - flexible in sending things back; flexible in time as well as flexible in the things it sends back? What if a space is a sponge in the first place? What if any kind of space is a living sponge, absorbing everything in resonance with what has happened, is happening or will happen in that space? Then could a house become murderous when it comes into contact with a person that has a murderous chord in him/her, so that if the house strikes that chord, BANG! Or, then, could a house grow and annihilate when it comes into contact with the darkness or with a void in a person? Or better, can emptiness, darkness and oblivion grow in a person because of a space?
Yes, yes, I know, all this is fiction. Just to say that it's a nice idea to have a space become a character rather than 'just being an environment'.
This blog thing is really weird, it makes me sound american and philosophical. I hope I can straighten that out in time, and make more contact with the nymph.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)