tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5424364424049242300.post2528504561146209716..comments2023-06-21T18:53:11.897+10:00Comments on Pykk: with all my heart, I shall begin to think I have talentUmbagollahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14556344092820711893noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5424364424049242300.post-23310567404464973432011-04-05T02:42:05.951+10:002011-04-05T02:42:05.951+10:00My idea, when I was little, was that if I ran fast...My idea, when I was little, was that if I ran fast enough and jumped in the right way I would take off like that, no wings, nothing else, just flight. <br /><br />I think it's possible to accept that life is confusing and strange and still try to work out what <i>kind</i> of strange it is. What's the flavour of our strange? When it comes to Time, I like the Kantian idea (which I may be about to misrepresent because it's been a while since I read him) which is that we do exist, each of us, and that Time is a mode of being that we're doomed or fated to experience; it's a condition of being alive. And so I wonder, what would we have to do to stop it? What would we have to switch off, or switch on, in ourselves? If a single person stopped time, would they enter an inhuman state (or: a state that no one would recognise as being human)? Would they be able to come back and describe it or would words be inadequate? I wonder.<br /><br />"Load of old tosh" actually makes the book sound more interesting.Umbagollahhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14556344092820711893noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5424364424049242300.post-78197462275137594882011-04-04T13:30:08.556+10:002011-04-04T13:30:08.556+10:00We don't exist, in that every moment we do exi...We don't exist, in that every moment we do exist passes in a moment and is gone - and, with it, we are gone too. Or we exist multiply, as each of the moments. Or we only perceive our own existence, including everything else in it - and all of that disappears as soon as we stop perceiving it. Or, or, or - or we just accept that life is confusing and strange (and, as to flight, we haven't managed to sprout wings: amazing and intricate though the task of engineering machines we can fly in is, it isn't something that involves a mind-bending alteration of reality). <br />I think that Proust website sounds rather charming. I shall go and look at it. <br />Re Netherland, without in any way wishing to prejudice you or speak unkindly, I would have to say that it struck me as a load of old tosh.zmkchttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08972549292961948240noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5424364424049242300.post-81661497202435477552011-04-01T03:27:11.567+11:002011-04-01T03:27:11.567+11:00More than human, definitely, or else Human Augment...More than human, definitely, or else Human Augmented By Some Machinery That Hasn't Been Invented Yet. (I was going to say "impossible" but then I remembered that the once-impossible and superhuman task of flight was made possible with planes, so why not this?) One of the tantalising things about being human is that we can conceive of ourselves doing things that we can't, in fact, do, and when it comes to Time the problem is compounded by the <i>noun</i> -- we use Time as a noun, as Table is a noun, or Horse is a noun, and we can stop a Horse and pick up a Table, so why not stop Time, why not pick up Time and look at it? It seems unreasonable that we can't, when we can frame it so clearly. (And even see it in movies. There's Keanu Reeves in The Matrix, freezing the world around him and picking freshly-fired bullets out of the air as easily as strawberries.) <br /><br />But Time is a state or a perception (a perception of alteration, of things not staying the same) which means that it is not Horse or Table or Object at all, no matter how we make it sit in our sentences, and I wonder if we would have to <i>alter our brains</i> in order to stop it, seeing as our brains are the things that create it in the first place, and perhaps we would have to alter them so far that we would lose the way back and become creatures that could do nothing <i>but</i> stop time, if the ability to stop time is conceived only because time moves forward, (ie, because we can conceive of change and see ourselves moving toward it), and how would we stop it and hold onto the idea of it being unstopped, both at once? <br /><br />I haven't read Netherland. Did you, and didn't like it? How is it? I only read the reviews, and remembered the reviewers calling it "Proustian" and "like Proust". The passages they quoted made it sound chilly and pretty and I was put off. <br /><br />The Proust-church website I was thinking about was this one -- http://www.proustarchive.org/<br /><br />"This website aims to provide an intensive textual and visual experience of the church motif in Marcel Prousts À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time). The main component is a searchable database that pairs all church-related passages in the novel with images depicting the original churches or related scenes."Umbagollahhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14556344092820711893noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5424364424049242300.post-46566296268092191122011-03-26T12:22:20.056+11:002011-03-26T12:22:20.056+11:00"And what would we need to do to find it, hol..."And what would we need to do to find it, hold onto Time, and stop it and examine it" - we would need to be more than human, surely? Great questions, made no less interesting by being completely unanswerable. Look forward to part 2 (where you find the answers that I think can't be found?) Is there, incidentally, a website whose owner visits all the churches ever mentioned by Proust? Please tell me you didn't much like Netherland.zmkchttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08972549292961948240noreply@blogger.com