Justin,
I'm reading Sven Birkerts' The Gutenberg Elegies (which I started a few months ago, and, as usual, never finished).
It's about the effect of the electronic age on the printed word, not just how technology has changed the way information is transmitted, but the way in which we view it and absorb it. He believes that we are losing the soul of our collective body, that we are no longer able to absorb in depth but only laterally.
EVerything is too fast, too much, too overwhelming.
ANd as I was reading last night, I realized that I was frustrating myself because i was rushing- tapping my foot, thinking about the next book, the next project. I was a victim of what he was writing about. I didn't want to stop and consider his sentences which are very well-written and are full of THOUGHTS.
We are under such an onslaught of stimuli. I wonder if shopping would be different if it were done in silence. What about restaurants? I'm so tired of YELLING in restaurants.
Did I ever tell you about the time we got a call from the principal of CW's school (k-6) He was in kindergarten and there was an assembly. The kids wouldn't be quiet and he stood up on his seat and shouted, "EVERYBODY SHUT UP!"
Of course he got in trouble. He was very indignant- he said they were being rude and not listening to the teachers.
I told the teacher that I thought they should have thanked him. Little 6 year old trying to help out their inadequate asses.
I didn't really say that.
We took him out of that school after they called us in first grade because he finished all his work so fast and was getting into trouble distracting the other students by rolling his pencil up his desk with his tongue.
I asked the obvious-- why don't you give him something to DO.
But no-- everyone has to move at the same pace in the system. So we went to private school.
Where was I?
I llike to think that I'm doing now what Birkerts talks about doing in his writing. I think a lot of us here do it. He says-
ideas are not the sum and substance of thought; rather, thought is as much about the motion across the water as it is about the stepping stones that allow it.
Gaugs is the master of this-- "exploratory digressiveness".
Thinking is not simply utilitarian, bur can also be a kind of narrative travel that allows for picnics along the way
We take a lot of picnic breaks. |
