Fourth Day of Individual Presentations

***Friday mandatory attendance! (Talk to Dr. Sexson if you won't be there) We'll do a review and wrap up the semester.***

Snake Hair Kayla - what makes story/myths so important to us... now in secondary orality, and in primary orality

Lisa of the Little Legs - Ichi (sp) - last wild indian that came out of the woods in 1911 - lived an oral culture til his 40's where he spent time in San Francisco

Two-Tongued Charlie - How much orality is found within the bible, mostly old testament - Epic Lists and their power - Performance and Torah

Joan Gossimer von Goss - The Power of Words

Jana the Tamer of Horses - The Power of Names - Three aspects: Naming something gives power to the person giving the name, forced familiarity, junk mailing names and prizes; the power they give the thing that is named

Steve of the Rivers - The Raven, The Light, and My Failure as a Mythteller - He wrote a native-type story but found out there just was no magic there

Parker of the Outback - Film and the Oral Tradition of Storytelling - Films and Dream Logic and Movies as the next evolution of storytelling

Chris the Scribe - The Story Shower - My Father and why he's the greatest storyteller ("story shower") I have ever known

Charismatic Kari - The Power of Names - Religious Names and the Power they give the people in the bible

(*** I think that even calling something what we have told ourselves they are - like desk, table, tree - gives us power over them... imagine seeing that green, woody thing outside and not knowing what it was... we would have absolutely no power over it, and that's the point.***)

Kate of the Beautiful Eyes - Tristram Shandy vs. The Literate Tradition - couldn't convey what he wanted through print alone, so he used many oral aspects to get his point across

Summer Breeze - T.S. Elliot's "Four Quartets" and connections with poetry starting somewhere other than where Professor Sexson said they did! Ah! Blasphemy! What the shaman speaks is law ;)!

Third Day of Individual Presentations

Chris of Laughing Rats - Kabala and Oral Traditions - A Word is a thing, the letters define that thing

Wise Wandering Shannon - Oral Traditions with the deaf people - History of sign language - Every letter looks like greek alphabet, more like writing rather than oral... but reading lips and gestures are hugely oral tradition

Check Mark Parker - Big Box of Goodies - Convey Meaning by building off past language and the evolution of it - Order out of Chaos

*** (The Degree to which you are text bound is also the degree to which you are seperated from all others)

James the Rat - Reoccuring Dream - Homer reading Illiad - Poetry and the beginning of story telling - Plato's thoughts - Fight Club and Images in movies taking Oral schemes out of Literature and putting them into Iamgery and Stimulus

Kyle of the Skinny Jeans - "The Alphabet vs. The Goddess" Book - Oral and Literate Tradition Different from Ong - Ong sets the two apart... Schlane? approaches them as being parallel and internalized - Rise of Patriarchal Society and Male Dominance Influence... Brain structures and purposes for the way we are

Tautologic Tai - The Medium is the Massage - Works directly with the Ong Book - Secondary Oral people can not perceive Primary Orality... Mcluhan says all media and mediums now do this - Juxtapositions and Experimental Book - Huge Scroll Writing/Comic/World and Meaning of Life!

Big Rich - Evolution of Orality - How complimentary these papers have been sit in his mind - Anatomically modern man and the ability to speak about the same time as the evidence of culture - Also spoke of why we speak and where it comes from (Natural Sounds and Beautiful Song)

1st Day of Individual Presentations

Jared and Sutter went.... I had their ifo stored in computer, then my battery died. So if you want to know what they talked about, I'll either update this soon after visiting the muse of their blog or you can go read their muse as well. ;)

Kelsey of the Free Rent- Played "Let it be" - Music, Muses, & Oral Traditions - Music
- Can be an oral tradition - A frame of existence
- Muses called upon before recitings.
- Mother Mary for personal salvation rather than performance.
- Music transcends oral & Literate traditions.

KK Ben - Creating a good story from Vivid Dreams, Personal Experience Memories
- Meaning Making
- Telling Story

Bearded Brandon - Situational and Existential - Abstract (song that never ends) and written to perfection - Song down on print - The song made up on stage, then they forgot the song, then they wrote a tribute and wrote that down, and sung about it (Tribute - Tenacious D). Box in box song. Myse-em-abyme.

ZZ Zach - What he learned - Advantages of the memory theatre
- Being able to reach into that part of your brain

Nick - Flyting as an oral tradition
- David and Goliath
- Beowulf and Unferth
- Greenland Eskimoes verbally abusing on drums
- Inuit excommunicated after losing verbal battles
- 16th Century word contest, chastise with/Scottish poets
- Dunbar and Kennedy - sounds a lot like rap
- Agonistic Oral Cultures

Carly - T.S. Elliot connection for her and class - Interrelated connections of time - Four Quartets circle (Tradition of Individual Talent)

Ugh...Computers

So maybe a really tiny computer wasn't the best idea I've ever come up with..... they seem reliable and all, but if something gets lost electronically, like....say, a couple days a class notes..... you can't blame yourself, you can only blame the little computer as it blinks there so innocently in front of you. Sometimes you can blame yourself, but it's so terribly easy to click the wrong button on this little thing that it doesn't feel like it's your own fault.

Let's say I had written it on paper and then erased the two pages with my eraser.... on accident. Then I know that it would be my fault and only my fault... couldn't blame it on the eraser or the paper. Oh woe is me.....

Hopefully I'll be able to pull those little guys out of some hidden folder or dark and doomy tab/link/jargony jarg jarg place on this thing they call a pc. Hmm...

2nd Day of Individual Presentations

1. Sweet Smiling Melissa - Names - Adam named animals, man now has power over animals - Lolita and list of names

2. John of the Striped Hat - Sang and poetry for everything he has learned this semester

3. Deep Sea Fishing Jeff - Books, Letters, Periodicals, Radio, Television, Internet, Mobile Phones (collective wisdom available to all in world, rather than just those listening to mythteller) as an Aid to oral tradition, rather than undermine its progress

4. Zach of the Saving Bells - On Tonality... present in text and print too? Used Ong to support his theory.... it causes people to perceive language differently (relationship problems ;)

5. Willy Quiet Willy - List and literature - Oral tradition into Literate Tradition

6. Lisa the Luddite - Sound and Poetry - Wallace Stephens Quote - Orality allows poetry to come alive and awaken the senses in ways the print culture can not... pace, tones, monotony, creations of the voice...

7. Bright Eyes Kevin - Memory....Orality and Literacy... Mythtelling (connections with Memory, Imagination, and Soul)... Myths and Creating connections with Earth and Self and Sound

8. Robert of the Worded Limbs - Men of Japan who are (were?) the social class of taletellers in their society... they did this for money, and stories about happenings in their area... Performed Samurai poem/song/story... Tradition of strong warrior still living in strong businessmen today

9. Helena of the 10,000 Lakes - Nature as the inspiration for sound and orality - The Seasons and there sounds of the patterns of life - We've lost connection with the earth's myth because of our movement to literate world

Hash for April 13, 2009

*** Assignment - Required - Call for Help on the Rough Draft of your paper ***

- He also wants us to comment on the other's blogs.... he would love to see this happen more.

Groups - 1+2 Wednesday, 5+6 Friday, 3+4 Monday.... then z-a for presentations after that.

Correct Tests!

- Automatic A for anyone who builds Camillo's Memory Theatre to the big scale! (Hmm...:)

In Response to John Nay - Music as a Matter of Discussion

I completely agree with what you are saying here.... and you are right, not enough people see the dangers because they are either the happy rich man or the numbed poor.

What I'm wondering, just for the sake of conversation, was what television shows you had in mind for the lazy, overconsumption, and snobbery? (I know there's plenty, but did you have any in mind?) For some reason as soon as you said that, I thought of the shows that are the exact opposite.... shows like "The Biggest Loser" that are making hugely overweight people get up and do something to better their health and the people around them; shows like "Lie to Me" or "CSI" that stimulate the thought processes and surprise you at every turn. These shows don't really address the problem at hand that you speak of... but one show that did pop up into my head right now that contributes heavily are shows like "Paris Hilton's New BFF". Shows like disgust me.

I think another thing that you might want to address are the insane amounts of money our society poors into sports and the athletes involved. Talk about a material era :).

Ze Test!

Oh, it should be interesting to see how this one turns out. Looking at it one way, I knew almost everything on it..... but looking on at it the other, the ones I didn't know, I really didn't know. Sooo, through amazing eduguessing perhaps I puller around some amazing numbers. Ve vill find out sune!

Hash for April 06, 2009

-Talking of throwing darts at the Kane book to make a paper topic. He says anything can come from it.

-Crazy Coffee Carly to the board to write questions for the test!!!!

Chapters 4,5,6 of Ong.... Ramone Lull, Bruno, Camillo from Yates's Memory Treatises Chapters

Here we go:

1. Nietzsche says we are all walking __________ . dictionaries
2. Off Sutter's Talk of Ramone Lull, name these terms for given to him: Motion, No Images, Non-Corporeal, Ladder, Tree
3. Ong Chap. 6 - Triangle vs. Box (questions will go along these.... remember Fritag Triangular form as reference to Aristotle's Poetics vs. Mis-en-Abyme (into the abyss) Box within Box form of Orality)
4. The Protestant Reformation = Printing Press
5. Mandala - Squaring of the Circle
6. Democratic/Alphabet
7. Ong 142 - Gesang ist dasein. (Means "song is existence" in German)
8. Ong 130 - Finality and Closure (print)
9. Yates 224 - The Memory System of ______ would require the memory of a divine man, the Magus. Bruno
10. What does alithiometer stand for? A Truth Measurer
11. 7 Pillars of Solomon's House of Wisdom - Camillo (The 7 Planets of Yore)
12. Iliad - "Such was the funeral rights of Hector, The Tamer of Horses"
13. Ong Chap. 4 - How many times was the alphabet invented? Once
14. What are the chances of something happening? 1 in 3 (The longer you live and the older you get, you just realize that coincidences are always happening because you realize they do.)
15. What did Tai and Robert use for their memory systems? Their Bodies
16. FW Article - Before writing their was speech, and before speech their was gesture.
17. Yates 188 - Lull and Kabala - System that arose from this
18. FW Article - Hypertext & Portmanteau - (James Joyce and Cyberspace language)
19. Ancient Hebrew language was lacking what? Vowels
20. LTRTR NGLSH
21. Yates 203 - What is Bruno doing when he's said to be crazy and unrestrained? Bruno rushes out of convent/Divination of Man through memory
22. Ong 126 - Tristram Shandy's Silence - Blank Space (I read another book about this this semester too!)
23. George Herbert's Poem "Easter Wings" (Hourglass Shape + Butterfly Wings) - Ong 126
24. The most notorious book that nobody reads? FW
25. Myths are repository for practical knowledge.
26. The ability to hears colors? Synesthesia

In Reference to Tai's Book Report....

Read Tai's Book report and do as it says (read it ;). This book is an amazing book for the modern mind. It is my favorite (mostly because it contains every aspect of a book I want.... mythology, mystery, action, and dark humor).

And as I said in the comment I left on his blog, I think that Neil Gaiman's works always find a way back to Sexson's classes, one reason being because both Sexson and Gaiman are heavily rooted in the mythological stories that show up in our modern lives today. (The classic Romeo and Juliet, Beauty and the Beast, and other famous stories have been played out in myths from thousands of years ago.) It is also this connection that makes Sexson so enjoyable to listen too and Gaiman so enjoyable to read. I wonder how my perceptions of them would change, however, if I had only ever been able to read Sexson's thoughts and listen to Gaiman speak. I'm sure it would make these people completely different in my mind's eye. But that is one thing I will never know..... but once again, read American God's or any other Gaiman literature (for graphic novelists, his Sandman Series are untouchable.... for children's literature, Coraline.... and for fun fantasy, Neverwhere.... and for dark fantasy, American Gods or Anansi Boys). So go out, read and be happy, and if you by chance decide to read one of these books because of this blog please come tell me about it, I'd love to talk to you about your experience! -Chris

Hash for April 03, 2009

Talking of people's ideas for their papers and some going off on Oral Traditions but not having them connected to the books and the ideas expressed in class.

****Last day of the class is the last day to cross your t's and dot your I's on your blogs****

Talking more of correctness Nazis and reading Kevin's term paper on his blog.

He's reading a wonderful paper on "Right Writing" and every sentence is the wrongness it speaks about. :)

Speaking on Term Paper topics and discussing problems and what can be worked with to make them better on the paper.
-Bog People and The Ceremony/Sacrifice
-Paleolithic Art and Orality
-Post-Modernism and Ong's Six Points
-Power of Names
-Oral Poetry and The Sacred Meaning Behind It
-Pure Sound (he then recites Finnegan's Wake); when words don't matter in your song
-Tone of Voice
-The Medium is the Message (Ong and McLuhan connections); Sexson against any type of video of classes, teachers, and students.
-Science as a Degradation to the Oral Tradition (The Alphabet & The Goddess - Book being lent to him for his paper)
-Oral Poets; The Oral Tradition and the Individual Talent; Standing on the Shaman's Shoulders as well as Shakespeare.

Group Meetings!

- Change in group presentation days:

Wednesday April 15th - Group 1+2
Friday - Group 5+6
Monday - 3+4

Everyone please read....

I have posted all of the pictures I have to date on a separate blog that is linked over to the right called "Memorize Us!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"..... hopefully this will make it easier for all of you to memorize your peers rather than sifting through my blogs to find the pictures. Enjoy!

Nothing is ever learned, only remembered...

Far off from these a slow and silent stream,
Lethe the River of Oblivion rolls
Her wat'ry Labyrinth, whereof who drinks,
Forthwith his former state and being forgets,
Forgets both joy and grief, pleasure and pain.

John Milton
Paradise Lost

Of Triangles, Circles, and Squares....

Philosophy is written in this grand book - I mean the universe - which stands continually open to our gaze, but it cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and interpret the characters in which it is written. It is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometrical figures, without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it; without these, one is wandering about in a dark labyrinth.

Galileo
Il Saggiatore

For Bright Eyed Kevin....

Have not we too? -yes, we have
Answers, and we know not whence;
Echoes from beyond the grave,
Recognized intelligence!

Such rebounds our inward ear
Catches sometimes from afar-
Listen, ponder, hold them dear;
For of God,- of God they are.

-William Wordsworth
"Yes, It was the Mountain Echo"

Hash for April 01, 2009

Talking schedules:

***8th of April is Second Quiz... Monday of next week discusses the quiz. Responsible for 4,5,6 in Ong. Yates up to Bruno. Finnegan's Wake Article. Ramone Lull. Camillo. We contribute to the creation. Bring question.****

*** Assignment - Comment on Kevin's Paper***

Friday - meeting in class with groups

6th of April - Talk of quiz
8th of April - Quiz
10th of April - Holiday
13th of April - Review of Exam
15th of April - Group 1+2
17th of April - 3-4
20th of April - 5-6
22nd of April - Begin our Individual Oral Presentations.... getting in 10 people a day. Going to be asked to be scytsophrenic. Formal.... beginning, middle, and end. Clarity. Stick to literate rules (MLA, paragraphs, ya know! Then be crazy and redundant and informative in our Oral Presentations (papers due during presentations).
1st of May - Conclusions and Evaluations
7th of May - Thursday of Finals Week - 6 pm - Final Test

Strunken White rules - Tai's Presentation - talking of our papers and who said we need to write and write a certain way. Typographic space.

pg. 130 - Ong - 2nd Paragraph end with quote by Yeats - "More Diffuse Affects" - Learned tongues textualize the language of the world.

"The Debate between Orality and Literacy is kind of a fake one - as Ong sets them up." -MS

"Writing is something we come naturally by, speaking is something we learn." -MS quoting Jacque Derida.

Finishing our talk of Finnegan's Wake Article:

Explanations again of Ramone Lull, Camillo, Bruno.
pg. 204 Yeats- Bruno explanations. ":The Philosopher's Stone in the psyche..." Astral Images. Such a memory would be the memory of a divine man. "A Magus..." The Divination of man was considered occult.

"Joyce, like Camillo before him, found himself at a loss to explain what it was he was creating."
The squaring of the circle, the circling of the square... The Mandala... like no other book that ever existed and still a replication of every book ever made.
Trying to capture orality before writing even came about... before ever writing.
"Cock and Bull Story"... Tristram Shandy... A Shaggy Dog story... A story that has no point, no end, beginning or point.
Portmanteau - One word during double, triple whatever duties. Joyce uses Lewis Carrol's word to the utmost in Finnegan's Wake.
***Aegypt - To Follow Bruno out of this class. Use this book.***

Triangles vs. Boxes (Circles and Squares) once again:

Sophocles - Ong - Great person of the literate tradition.
Sheharazad for Orality

Book of Judges - Oral Tradition in Spades - Redundancies and Repetitions in original forms. More powerful in its pure form.

***For Friday come up with more things to put into triangle and box.***

Hash for March 30, 2009

- Passing around the term paper topics paper.

- Talking of Kevin's imagination, memory, and soul paper topics.

- Talking about "rough giraffes"

- ****Assignment - Give Kevin his criticism on his blog, because he asked****

- pg. 144 in Ong, Talking of linear, chronologic plots not coming from epics, but rather boxes within boxes coming from epics. It's Fritag's Pyramid (the triangle) + (beginning, middle, and end) + (model for the literate tradition) vs. frames within frames within frames (unrelated, repetitions, oral traditions).

- Reading of the beginning of Tristram Shandy.

- pg. 145 in Ong, singers plot narrative not by conveying information with the same way as a man of linear thought... singers remember in a public way... themes, formulas... that other singers sing.

- Discussing teachers and the square within square and how well it works sometimes with the right teacher.

- Continuing down the road of our "Finnegan's Wake Article"

- Inscription is when you go to the genuine museum and all of history is played out and you become a participant of all this history rather than an observer of it.

- Yates has three chapters dedicated to trying to understand what Bruno is doing in his memory treatises.

- In Article, he breaks Bruno and Camillo into one simple paragraph. If you uderstand Bruno's memory theatre, well, then you understand THE UNIVERSE. Stupefyingly complex. Imprisoned in terrible situation of forgetting.

- Jana the Tamer of Horses is dripping a red juice on her jacket, accident.

- We had drank from the great river of letha, and it is "lethal" because we forget.

- Though virtually forgotten today, Camillo was one of the most well known persons of the 16th century. Not content to theorize of memory theatres, he built one of wood. He built the Seven Pillars of Solomon's House of Wisdom. The arranged items in the bleachers became the show to the person on stage. You could give an amazing speech on what was in the pillars. "THEIR OWN DIVINITY" is what they reach for. This is something to remember for the test.

- Novel talked about in this class.... told we should go read it now (all about Ovid):

An Imaginary Life by David Malouf

"Best book Zack has read in a long time." + "It's the imagined clash between a literate man banished to a land of oral people."

Everything is still with you, somewhere that can't be reached.

Hash for March 27, 2009

Synesthesia (sp?) - a person who hears colors... going back to primary orality

Walter Ong - pg. 122 - Print encourages closure. A sense of what is written has been finalized.

(Introduction, Body, and Conclusion)

Model for the storyteller is Shahara Zad. She figures out how to keep them going so she doesn't die. Her stories do not have a finalization.

Think about TV shows that never end.... Lost, Heroes, and such..... secondary orality makes them never end. With a literate society, things have endings. Where is society moving?

Websites, Blogs are all just like this... never ending and always changing. Always changing.

Kindle gets passed around. We talk about the amazing book technologies and how to keep hundreds of books with you.... your iphone, kindle, other phones, etc. Quite amazing now.

***Aristotle was the first to say that a story needed a beginning, body, and conclusion like Oedipus Rex, the first detective story.***

Finnegan's Wake now subject.... going back to his story, third paragraph...

Talking about grunts and moans... oooo... ahhhhh..... sounds. Linguists believe this is how language originated. Chain gangs and dwarves in the mine.

"Before books there was speech, and before speech there were mute gestures."

Echolalia - Sexson says that babies are wonderful at it. It is the joy you take in hearing any sound you make. Their gutteral bubbles and gurgles that they love to make.

When pure sound becomes carnal, it is echolalia.

****Assignment - Listen for Echolalia, study it and makle your own. Blog on it too.***

Joyce read Vico, who understood that thunder bolts change things. Joyce onomonopiatizes lightning many times with a hundred letter word in his book.

Musey Room - Joyce's word for museum.


"In order to remember, you have to be dismembered." -MS

A book is tactile. Lisa said she laughed at the "Black Book of Colors" because black is the absence of colors.

***Turn to pg. 203 in Yeats, she says something about Bruno. **** Important pg. for next exam.**** The Googlable Guy! (Next book title)

***BLOG ABOUT YOUR TERM PAPER FOR MONDAY. HE'LL WANT THESIS STATEMENT FOR IT.***

Rich is here, Kayla, Carly, Danielle, no James, Kevin, Bri, Tai

*****My boundaries group meets at 4:30..... Thursday next week....

Lynn, Alex, Brian, Claire..... not in class anymore...

Hash for March 25, 2009

- ***Term Paper Topics coming up*** By Monday... need topic and thesis statement.
"Oral Traditions" need to be somewhere in the title of your paper.

- Any subject in the Kane book related to the Oral Tradition is ok for term paper. Ong ok too. Yeats could get a little troublesome because it goes off our subject at times.

- In this paper I'm going to talk about... I'm going to talk about it by using the examples of... I will try to get this result in the end...

Passed around:

Great Beginnings: Great Endings

- Ong pg. 32 very important for Joan's "Word Magic" paper.

Talking about the connections between classes.

The bible was written in Latin, and since everyone was incapable of reading Latin, all the information from it was in the hands of the priests. The whole protestant reformation wouldn't have been possible without the printing press.

"Intestate and Without Issue"

Secondary Orality in the world - Is there no place where there is closest to Primary Orality.

pg. 136 - Ong - He talks to us about electronic technology and how they are fostering a new literary movement. He died before he could see the huge movement to electronics instead of writing.

Expalanations to the memory theatres:
Deep Sea Fishing Jeff - beaches back home
Bearded Brandon - an outline form
Christine of the Laughing Rats - a huge building worked at in Iraq
Jared of the Open Plain (will be remembered now because we discussed it)
- Parker of the Outback Steakhouse (didn't explain...just discussed his name)


I will not have these two pictures
Quick Wit Nick - Not Pictured
Christine of the Laughing Rats - Not Pictured

pg. 136 of Ong discussed at the end - Discusses Secondary Orality and how it applies to the electronic word. "Relationship between electronically published word and the polarity discussed in his book." (MS wants Carly to write the book)

- Talked to Zack of the Saving Bells about his retrograde technology of ordering movies from Netflix and having them sent.

- We all download movies now (most of us) for free from the net.

Electronic: Orality and Literacy will be my book. :)

Camillo and Bruno need to be addressed in class Friday.

Hash for March 06, 2009

- Chris is passing around the big book of Hebrew - The Gemara

- Helena is going to spout off a list of like 70 people that she memorized for her prayers before she went to bed.
- An experiential demonstration of what we have been discussing.

Ong - End of Chapter 5 - Beginning of 6 - ***No matter how we have rid ourselves of the oral tradition, it survives in the strangest places.***

***Rhetoric was thought to have to do with the oral tradition - but not now.***
***Typographic is more important than the Chyrographic.... printing press more important.*****

***Eisenstein - Printing press is the significant invention of last 1,000 years. No reformation without it in protestant church.... because no widespread bibles.***

- Defending the doctrinal dissertation - Privileging speech or print

Zach of the Saving Bells and Two Tongued Charlie are in the Teaching Option - Sexson wants them to do something in the oral tradition in their classes in the future.

Great Beginnings, Great Endings - A Book written by Sexson a long time ago about great beginnings and great endings in books.
- We are reading from it.

- Kubla Khan - Mantra in opening lines. Opius (Opium induced ;)

- "Sometimes what we only imagine is happening enough to satisfy us."- MS

- Pantomimes, important, period.

- "An authentic remembering gives the book back its body."- MS

Why no conflict between the book saying the same thing each time you come back to your book? You're never the same person coming back to it.

Isis remembering and recreating her husband to bring him back!