Writing: Changing Language, Changing Consciousness

I like to think of myself as a writer. In the course of a typical day, I will jot down to-do lists or copy notes during lectures, but when I think of the word "writing," what comes to mind is setting down a story on paper. When I think of writers, I think of authors penning novels or crafting poems, something permanent to be left behind for others to read. What stayed with me most to me after reading this article was the fact that writing did not always exist for this purpose.

Although somewhere in my subconscious I was aware that writing has not always existed for the purpose of creating works of fiction (especially given the relatively young age of the "novel"), the idea that writing wasn't always intended as a permanent means of recording information had never occurred to me. As Bernstein points out, in early Greek scripted writing, "The page is not the final destination but a preliminary stage, a prompt for final presentation elsewhere" (506). This distinction between these "holdover" writing practices and the more textual ones we are familiar with today is that, with our newer transcriptive practices, "the writing takes on the work of memory rather than being an aid to memory and this function is not compromised by writing that is difficult or impossible to memorize" (506). That is to say, once writing started being an end in and of itself, it did not need to be as lyrical as, say, Greek epics, and gradually shifted in form.

Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that it gradually broadened in form. For as Bernstein points out, "Alphabetic technology does not replace oral technology anymore than cars replace walking" (508). These older forms can exist alongside these newer possibilities, just as Bernstein notes on page 513. We still have performed poetry, alongside books, alongside digital animated texts. The birth of newer forms doesn't cause the death of older ones; instead, it marks the creation of new possibilities in writing.

These new possibilities seem to be the reason Bernstein advocates working with animated (electronic) text. Havelock and McLuhan, he notes, not only "draw attention to what it means to work within a medium, but also. . . acknowledge the value of using a medium to do what can only be done in that medium" (514). A work could be written in poetry or prose, read or recited, and it could be good; however, there may be a power to it that comes only when it is animated, only when the text flashes before the reader on a computer screen. That is to say, what we write is not limited by the technology and mediums available to us, but what we convey may be.

It is important to recognize that the purpose of writing has changed over the centuries and continues to today. Our human capacity for inventiveness has only opened the doors to new ways of expressing ourselves and our ideas, never limited us. As Bernstein says, "Poetry in a digital age can do more than simply echo the past with memorable phrases. It can also invent the present in a language never before heard" (516). Still, it is important to remember that this new medium, while preferable in some instances, may not be the best way of conveying one's message in every situation. I think this is the point I should try to hold onto most in the weeks to come – I can't just write something and animate it (or rather, I can, but it won't be as effective); what I write must be created with animation in mind, with the idea that it is something that would not be as powerful if printed statically piece of paper.

All mimsy were the borogoves...

For my next project, I plan on animating the word "mimsy."  This word first appeared in Lewis Carroll's "The Jabberwocky," where it is but one of the many words Carroll invented for the sake of his own writing.  In the first stanza alone, a fair number of these words can be found:

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

A preliminary read-through of this poem may be very confusing for the reader.  Eleven of the twenty-three words in this stanza could be construed as pure nonsense.  However, Carroll when Carroll later explained the definitions of some of these words, it was realized that many of them were portmanteaus.  Portmanteaus are words formed by blending two or more words and their meanings together to form a new word.  For instance, "slithy" is formed by combining "lithe" and "slimy," while "mimsy," the word I chose, is formed from "flimsy" and "miserable."

My plan for animating "mimsy" is to play off of the idea of this word being a portmanteau.  I plan on having the words "flimsy" and "miserable" collide and then transform to create "mimsy."  In this way, I will not only be able to convey the meaning of the word itself, but give the viewer a lesson about portmanteaus.

After viewing my word animation, I guess I hope viewers will understand how it is pretty miserable to be flimsy.

Q: A Love Story

Here is my final animation of the story of Q.  Enjoy!

"The death of fire is the birth of air..."

For this assignment, I chose to analyze the piece "from Heraclitean Variations" by Ian Hamilton Finlay. As this piece is a whopping twelve words long, I thought it might be helpful to also analyze the title, so as to give myself more to work with. The first and last words of the title seemed self-explanatory enough, but as I didn't know the meaning of the word "Hericlitean," I decided to start there.

With a little research, I found out that the word derives from the name Heraclitus, who was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher [site wikipedia page, probly]. Among other things, one of his major beliefs was in the unity of opposites. He believed that everything that exists is characterized by pairs of contrary properties, and in the idea of transformation as the replacement of one element by another (e.g. "The death of fire is the birth of air, and the death of air is the birth of water.")

Armed with this knowledge, not only did the title of the poem make more sense, but also Finlay's choice of structure. Although he could have easily written the poem in two horizontal lines across the page, having the two intersect suggests a sort of connectedness between the two otherwise opposing ideas. Where the notions of life and death meet, there we see an archer's bow, which symbolizes both. This idea of two opposites coming together to create something is key to Heraclitean philosophy, giving Finlay's choice of form all that more significance.

In terms of how these two intersecting lines look, I also thought Finlay made some wise artistic choices. The line "The name of the bow is life but" is curved and meandering, having an overall softer appearance than the straight horizontal line "its work is death," a much harder truth. It is also important that the line about death cuts through the line about life, as opposed to life interrupting death. In this way, the poem's format more accurately reflects the work of an arrow (death) piercing something alive and killing it.

In an even less in-depth analysis, one could simply describe the poem as being in the shape of a bow and arrow, which it is. Although an analysis this brief would severely fail to take into account the symbolism inherent in the poem's form, I do find it interesting to note how simple it is to create the shape of a bow an arrow with only two lines of poetry. This reflects not only how simplistic the bow is in design, while still being very capable of inflicting death, but also reminds the reader of the power that can be contained within just two short lines of poetry.

Obviously, in order to fully appreciate the intricacy of this poem's structure (not to mention, title), one should understand the basic premise of Heraclitean philosophy (i.e. the unity of opposites). However, in order to understand the text itself, one needs to consider the context in which this poem's content stems from. In the past (and in the present, in some places), bows were used both for hunting game and in battle. In both these circumstances, the archer in question had to kill or be killed: if s/he did not kill an animal, s/he would starve; if s/he did not shoot his/her foe, s/he would be shot instead. In this way, the bow represents life to one being, while at the same time, represents death to the other.

In terms of the text, I also thought it was a good stylistic choice to have the conjunction ("but") be contained at the end of the first line, rather than the beginning of the second. In this way, not only are you encouraged to keep reading by the cliffhanger of the first line, but the second line is also much more concise and to the point. The harshness of the idea "the bow is death" comes quick, giving the reader little time to prepare. Death comes quickly and suddenly, and it is very apt.

Overall, I very much appreciated the author's use of opposites in unity, not only in the text of his poem, but in his form as well. I really liked the way two intersecting ideas look when formatted in this way, and may try to use this as a template for future works of my own. I think this inspiration is probably what Finlay was hoping his readers would feel after reading his poem: an interest in finding unity in opposites, just like Heraclitus. The reiteration of this idea, in both his form and text, suggests little else.

Artistic Choices

Although my initial letter animation was not super-complicated thus far, I feel like it still possessed some expressive capabilities.

I don't think the part where the Q is rolling is particularly expressive in itself. Rather, it is the part where Q encounters difficulties that it begins to be more expressive. Once stuck, it rocks back and forth a little, like a person fretting or a overturned turtle trying to right itself.

Failing in this endeavor, it hunches down, like a person's shoulders drooping or a sad animal, and lets a lone tear escape it.

As far as choosing its colour went, I mostly just went with what felt instinctive. I read somewhere that round shapes are associated with cool colours, such as blue and green, which is probably why it felt so right.

The font I chose according to how rounded the Q was and what shape the tail (which it would get stuck on) was.

In terms of other people's artistic choices, the two that stood out to me the most were someone's letter L and someone's letter V.

The L in question was an uppercase L, written in cursive. It appeared on the page as that particular student writes it, which I appreciated, as I too enjoy the way some letters feel to write, particularly if they have such twisting loops. It then morphed into a butterfly and flew away. It felt like it was drawing off of the letter's shape and its mental association very nicely.

I also liked the letter V, just because it was very different. It bounced around the screen and eventually grew to consume the whole thing until you couldn't tell what letter it was. I like the way it allowed one to feel as if a camera was zooming in on the letter.

I chose these two because they were both very distinct styles, and therefore provided me with two very different ways I could manipulate my own animations in the future.

A Preliminary Proposal

After pondering this letter and performing a thorough investigation into its history, I am delighted to say I have several ideas. Or rather, I have one idea for a story with many twists and turns for poor old Q.

However, I worry somewhat about the size of the endeavor I am thinking about undertaking. What I have in mind will probably be too long or too complicated for this particular project.

That in mind, what I have so far, and will no doubt tweak and build off of (or rather, reduce), is as follows:

1) Open on a lineup of the Greek alphabet. Q drops out, left all alone.
2) Q is dazed and confused, shakes self, morphs into lowercase form.
3) Little q makes friends with p and g, but as it grows up, they have less in common.
4) Q tries to make friends with O.
5) O rolls away, leaving Q disheartened.
6) Q spies u and excitedly inches itself toward it.
7) Once together, we briefly see Q flash into its cursive form, which looks like a 2 (representing the pair).
8) Q wags its tail happily.
9) The end!

Q Through the Ages

The letter we now recognize as Q began originally as the Phoenician letter Qoph. There are several hypotheses about why the letter is named this:  one story suggests that it came from the pictogram of a monkey (with the letter forming the monkey's rear end and hanging tail), as Qoph was the Phoenician word for "monkey;" others suggest that it came from the proto-Afro-Asiatic word for "neck," which is "qaw." By looking at the shape of the letter, one can see how both of these conclusions make sense.

The Greeks then adopted this letter, renaming it Koppa, slightly modifying its shape in the process. However, they already had the letter Kappa, which was their older letter for the /k/ sound, and ultimately preferred it. They eliminated Koppa from their alphabet, retaining it only as their number 90.

However, it has been suggested that the Greek letter Phi, which we pronounce as /f/, also originated from Koppa. As I am currently studying the Russian language (whose Cyrillic letters drew from the Greek alphabet), I find it interesting to note that their /f/ sound looks very much like Phi and, similarly, Koppa.

Ultimately, though, the Etruscans and Romans kept Qoppa. The Etruscan Q retained the vertical tail, but the Romans eventually gave it the curved tail we recognize today. However, so as to not have the same dilemma as the Greeks (who decided they did not need two /k/ sounds), the Romans dictated that it was only to be used before a /w/ sound or, more simply, the letter U.

I found it interesting to learn about how this letter was ultimately eliminated from the Greek alphabet because it was a redundancy, as our modern-day Q still feels that way sometimes. I had hoped to play off of the notion of Q having a hard time finding its place in the world before I read Q's history, but learning about its origins only reinforced this idea in my mind. Q had, and still has, a rather hard time of it.

Sources:
"Alphabet Letter Q" http://www.alphabetandletter.com/Q.html
"The Letter Q" http://www.fonts.com/AboutFonts/Articles/Letterseries/LetterQ.htm
"The Origin of the Alphabet" http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/alphabet.html
"Q" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q
"Qoph" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qoph

The Problem with Q

Click here to see my first attempt at animating the letter Q.

Q

On the first day of class, when given only a few moments to scribble down my favourite letter, I impulsively chose the letter G. When asked to explain my reasoning, the only rationale I could provide was that it was the most recently modified letter in my handwriting and, therefore, still new and fun for me to write.

On further consideration of the project at hand, however, I began to feel that this was not sufficient reason to choose a letter. If I am to fully explore the expressive possibilities of a letter, I would rather begin with a letter that I have stronger mental associations with. With this in mind, I chose the letter Q.

When I think of the letter Q, the first word that comes to mind is the adjective “unique” (which, interestingly enough, contains said letter). It is the second most rarely used letter in the English alphabet. In addition, unlike other letters in the English alphabet, its presence in a word almost always depends on the presence of the letter U (which in turn has no such dependency on Q). It is not your everyday letter.

Despite my fascination with Q, I confess to feeling rather neutrally towards it. Perhaps it is its absence from everyday words that has led me, over the years, to not give it much thought one way or the other until receiving this assignment. I suppose, though, that asked to give my opinion, I would respond more positively to the uppercase Q as opposed to its lowercase counterpart (probably due to the lowercase's similarity in appearance to a p or a g). Uppercase cursive Q's have always vexed me for looking too much like the number 2.

I feel that the letter Q is often used in conjunction with question marks, probably due largely in part to its commonly serving as the abbreviation for the word “question.” I therefore feel that the letter Q instinctively has an air of being quizzical or inquisitive. I hope to play off of this in the way I make it look, as well as maybe trying to emphasize its distinctiveness from other letters.

If the letter Q was capable of movement, I imagine it would inch itself forward, pulling itself by its tail. It could try to roll, similar to an O, but would inevitably get caught on its own tail and probably get stuck, like a bike's kickstand. If happy, it would probably wag its tail.

Martha Mae: An Introduction

If I had to describe myself, I would like to think that I could call myself a writer. Even if I am less prolific than I would like to be, it is a passion that has extended through enough of my life that, by now, I consider it part of my identity. Over the years, my life aspirations have changed a half dozen times, but, inevitably, I always return to that which I concluded when I was still in preschool (penning stories about dinosaurs and insisting, despite what anyone told me, that all words had to begin with a capital letter) – I want to be a writer.


Now here I am, seventeen years later, three-quarters of the way done with a college degree in creative writing. Although sometimes I wonder what I am going to do with such a degree upon graduating into the “real world,” I realize the importance of the advice, “Do what you love,” and that is exactly what I am doing.

I am never so fulfilled as when I have just completed a piece of writing I am immensely proud of. Lately, this has been in the form of short fiction, though I also occasionally dabble in poetry. I like playing with narrator voice, exploring the role of the imagination, and having fun with words (adding unnecessary capitalizations less frequently than before, though still every once in a while to change its inflection). I am taking my second fiction workshop this semester, before advancing onto my capstone workshop.

I vaguely recall studying Flash about six years ago, but I doubt any of it stuck so this class will be a new experience for me. The most I have every really worked with in changing the shape of, say, poetry, is adding line breaks, so even studying static shapes of writing should be interesting as well.