hwithumalut

I am really interested in conceptual art and the idea of the gesamtkunstwerk. What is the Gezamtkunstwerk? It is an all encompassing work of art. Every art form in one artwork. How literally should we take that? Has it ever been done? I’m not sure…

Why do I want to have a 7 hour long movie opera, which you have to watch in a theater designed specially for the movie, and like half way through the movie everyone has to take a one week intermission to read a novel about some side characters?

Well primarily it’s because I think that multi-stylism is an aesthetic virtue. I want to see anime mixed with cubism and realism, abstract art and Ancient Egyptian art, all combined into one giant masterpiece. The sheer novelty of it is beautiful to me. I want your jazz and your rock and your opera to be brewed together. Blessed is the day when I can list all the adjectives I want and they would appear before my eyes! Blessed is the describable!

Blessed is the indescribable! There is something interesting about subtle non-sequitur. Something you can never put your finger on, because if you do you might lose it. Oh… What was I saying? I must have gotten distracted. Oh yes! Indescribable non-sequiturs! The slight change in style to another creates a bewildering effect on the tired brain. The uncanny valley of seeing so many things at once. This brings me pleasure. Nothing greater…

Greater and greater I seek to grow my knowledge, and yet my skull drains out further onto the floor. I have a leak. Oh no. Did someone stab me in the head? I must be an idiot. I can’t let anyone see me, else they may laugh at how stupid I am. I forget things, and everyone else has an impervious memory. I forget things. I can’t even remember my own name. All I know is that I have to keep on focusing on my important work. One day I’ll finish it. Oh? Other people have even worse memories than me? Well let’s move on.

Movies and prose fiction both feature cutting (montage, ect). Movies do not need to feature cutting. Something can be taken in one shot. Novels do need cutting. No novel provides the whole picture of something. You always skip over some small details, even an avant-garde list of mannerisms book could not escape the cut. Writing is cutting.

The cut-up technique has many uses. It can be used to rearrange the words of one text. Or to combine a variety of texts. This will generate a bunch of voices, all mashed up against one another. This is polyphony. Polyphony is a trait that Russian literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin seems to favor. In his essay Epic and Novel he claims it is only present in the novel. I disagree. It can be present in all literary and artistic forms that involve voice. It simply is almost always present in the novel. The cut up technique allows polyphony to be created endlessly.

(This is my thesis) The role of the critic is similar to the role of the writer. They are both creatives. The critic is the writer. So they should flow seamlessly between one another. Harold Bloom says something like “The best writer may not be a good reader of anyone but himself” so I conclude this…

“Literature should be analyzed using an experiment based method. Experiment based literary analysis occurs by hybridizing the role of the critic/theorist and the role of the artist. The theorist becomes a fanfiction writer of sorts. When someone is interested in a theme, literary device, mood, ect in a text they should write an experiment text to try to imitate that literary element. The experiment text serves as a way of acquiring a lot of information about the theme.” (a quotation from a writing of mine of another dimension)

Now basically what I am proposing is the merging of the writing genre called literary criticism and the genre called fiction. This is nothing new. Writers have been doing fictional reviews for ages probably. I am just saying that it’s good and cool. I am thinking back… “Father, who invented pi” “Pi was discovered, not invented, by a man named Leonhard Euler. He also invented a number called e, which is called that because his name, Euler, was spelled with an e”

I thought of a man in a children's book of great and famous discoverers, including some mathematicians. Years later, now, in a shower, I would realize that Euler was not this man. This man wore a modern business suite and had glasses. But at the time I imagined this was what Euler looked like. Memory fiction is an interesting genre I am not yet fully acquainted with (no one ever is fully acquainted with anything). In the novella Something to Do with Paying Attention by David Foster Wallace, Chris Fogle looks back in a disorganized rambling fashion on his wastoid youth and time spent smoking endless pot, and disrespecting his father. The genre is this sort of stream of consciousness. Another strong example is Car Crash While Hitchhiking by Daniel Johnson. I haven’t finished it yet, but Zadie Smith’s Swing Time does this too.

How does memory fiction make me feel? (this is an important part of the aesthetic analysis, because it’s the aesthetic part). It makes me feel like I am stumbling along with the narrator. I feel in the moment and out of the moment. Memory fiction is thrilling, because you can go anywhere in the narrator’s life at any moment. There is nothing like it. It has artificial naturalness and is filled with fun ironic nods and gimmicks! I am attracted to the cleverness and joy of these gimmicks.

Gimmick. Gimmick. Gimmick. Gimmick. Gimmick. I am gimmicking. Get Gimmed, sir. I tip my hat. What else are we to do but be gimmicks? The whole of life is a gimmick, but we must treat it very importantly. Without it we have nothing. Why not commit to gimmicks and fun? Committing to creativity is the only way we have forward. Else what do we do? Live uncreativelly? That's a novel contrarian idea indeed.

Living wholly uncreatively is quite impossible. You're stuck in creativity, so you might as well fall in love with it. You must be creating constantly, and so many people try to run from this fate. Maybe they are too serious, or too lazy. But they prevent their own growth by running from that universal constant of creativity. Any connection between things is creative. Creativity is present when I draw with my pen or use it to fill tax forms with ink. Creativity is any joining of things. Union, or marriage is creative. Creativity need not be new, or original. Only that it makes something. Creation is actually at the heart of creativity. So everything is really creative.

I am starting to sound a bit like a half rate process philosopher. So let it be known that I am in full support of creativity as a principle for everything that happens, but that I am an OOO-ist through and through............