Hash for January 16th, 2009

To begin we are going through the memorization of the students….. never gets one wrong (except for the occasional Jim for James and Bill for William). *Batting 1000*

BLOG about: Why is memory so important to oral tradition?

Writing is a form of information: without it you need to maintain information in memory.

Nine Muses recited in class…(I said Calypso *moron* when I meant Calliope, and I knew them all just couldn’t recite them quick enough….I’ll try now, hmmm – Calliope, Clio, Melpomene, Terpischore, Urania, Erota, Euterpe, Polyhymnia, and and…. Uh… Thalia! Damn! How could I forget comedy!? Oh well.) then talked about the empty church once again.

-Went over the skull and cross bone people.

*ASSIGNMENT* Talk to people on the street, and listen in to what they say…..MS hope we will be appalled.

The problem with oral tradition is that it is to fleeting.

“Have you emptied the cooler by the window yet?” “No, cause there’s nothing really important in it.” –It’s lyrical, and important to someone or something, but usually fleeting until written here.

Karate by Robert!

The information may not be particularly important, but the connections are what are important.

TEST MATERIAL- ***Now that we have written it down, it is no longer ephemeral. ***

BLOG about – What do I know today that I didn’t know yesterday?
BLOG about – What the last thing you see as you go to bed is. What it’s importance to who you are and what you remember or dream is?

Reading from Ong’s book – pg. 7 – Talked about the 78 languages that have a literature, very little when there are over 3000 languages out there. Our culture is overwhelmingly oral.

PRIMARY ORALITY (Ong phrase) – Being in a situation in which there are no books and you have to only really on the spoken word. You need to get the oral word out of this area without losing it. The only thing you can do is memorize it.
**In a place like this you’d go to the Chieftain, Shaman, Old Men, and Story Tellers (etc.) to get there wisdom and pass it on**

Very similar techniques between different cultures for memorizing material.

BLOG about – Values and customs of oral community, value and custom of written community.

***My contribution to this is from a book I'm reading for Emergent Lit. called "The Club Dumas" in which a very famous, brilliant and highly acclaimed literary critic named Boris Balkan says (on pg. 95), "As for me, all I know is that I know nothing. And when I want to know something, I look it up in books - their memory never fails."


***Assignment – Caress and fondle the inside of the Yates book (and the outside if you want).***

***End of Odyssey – Penelope and Ulysses engage in the most erotic action known to man……story telling. :)***

The importance of the myth teller – “Everything is existential.” – When everything that comes in, goes out. You become closer to the sounds of the world. In the culture of orality, we are connected.

“Every day we are going to talk about something provocative.” –MS

Put something having to do with the class in the subject title of your blog-address-email when you send it to MS.

***Memory palace, memory castle, memory theatre – Ideas to BLOG on***

“Even language is a technology.” –MS… was it really better before the use of word. Some people hate technology, in this class we should not hate technology.

***NEXT ASSIGNMENT – Look at the room we have class in. If he sees you looking around, he’ll think we are doing our homework. We need to see something in the room… remember something….***

“Why are we writing about something that isn’t even in the zone of writing?” –MS

We’re SAYING that a picture is worth a thousand words, when we should just be showing the picture.

Points to the class:
1. Orality and Literature Debate – Great debate! (BLOG on it)
2. Myth
3. Memory

Cultures go from oral to the written, and the written to the print, print to visual multimedia (what is this one word that can describe our electronic day -- BLOG on it ;).
Those are huge changes in culture and consciousness.

----I can not understand the words coming out of his mouth now….I believe he’s reading the syllabus. Oh well!

***Assignment – Memorize and talk of the things on your walls, room, and such.***