A real thought
Sep. 17th, 2005 11:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cosmolinguistLast Saturday, before last Saturday got all weird, Andrew and I went for a walk and found ourselves talking about post-hurricane New Orleans. Quickly dispensing with the obvious things like our concern for those affected, we ventured onto the new topic of what is going to happen to the city now.
I've never been anywhere near it, but Andrew has visited New Orleans. He's always told me that he found it a little disappointing--too hot, for one thing, but some spring days in Manchester are too hot for him, so I guess that's to be expected. But really, his disappointment was that he didn't get the New Orleans he heard about in old records and films. He didn't get the New Orleans of jazz and Cajun food and voodoo, but instead a party town full of drunken frat boys and strippers with track marks on their arms. (Of course your mileage may vary; anything that big is going to be a lot of things to a lot of different people.)
We both know that the old reputation is at least as decadant and has just as much potential for misery in its participants, so maybe it seems nitpicky or snobbish to claim we prefer one kind of decadance over another. But, unless this is just my ignorance and my liberal-arts education talking again, I think there's something to be said for the fact that our old-school New Orleans heroes like Louis Armstrong, who did not lead easy or "virtuous" lives, at least managed to produce some really interesting and memorable art, something good distilled from the often-bad stuff surrounding them.
Andrew told me about a Sandman story I haven't read yet, wherein Harun al-Rashid, a caliph in ancient Baghdad, makes a deal with Dream to make sure his city, which he knows is as the height of its glory, will be remembered this way rather than as the place it will later become. More or less; I told you I haven't read it, and it was a week ago, so I'm lucky I remember this conversation at all.
Anyway, all this got me thinking about the difference between the idea of a thing and what the thing actually is. If there is any difference.
My new icon is from a picture I saw today, a drawing by a guy called Kurt Halsey. I thought the girl in it looks a bit like me with my new hair, which is the only reason I looked at it long enough to notice that there's also a unicorn in it. I'm not really interested in unicorns but I'm (re)reading Illuminatus at the moment, so I immediately thought "Is the thought of a unicorn a real thought?", which made me smile, and then I decided I could use a new LJ icon.
I don't know if thoughts of unicorns or New Orleans or Baghdad are real. I don't know if any thoughts are real!
And I don't know if it matters. Didn't California got its name because someone thought it resembled an island in a book? The island was imaginary, and California isn't any kind of island, but California is still its real name.
I've never been anywhere near it, but Andrew has visited New Orleans. He's always told me that he found it a little disappointing--too hot, for one thing, but some spring days in Manchester are too hot for him, so I guess that's to be expected. But really, his disappointment was that he didn't get the New Orleans he heard about in old records and films. He didn't get the New Orleans of jazz and Cajun food and voodoo, but instead a party town full of drunken frat boys and strippers with track marks on their arms. (Of course your mileage may vary; anything that big is going to be a lot of things to a lot of different people.)
We both know that the old reputation is at least as decadant and has just as much potential for misery in its participants, so maybe it seems nitpicky or snobbish to claim we prefer one kind of decadance over another. But, unless this is just my ignorance and my liberal-arts education talking again, I think there's something to be said for the fact that our old-school New Orleans heroes like Louis Armstrong, who did not lead easy or "virtuous" lives, at least managed to produce some really interesting and memorable art, something good distilled from the often-bad stuff surrounding them.
Andrew told me about a Sandman story I haven't read yet, wherein Harun al-Rashid, a caliph in ancient Baghdad, makes a deal with Dream to make sure his city, which he knows is as the height of its glory, will be remembered this way rather than as the place it will later become. More or less; I told you I haven't read it, and it was a week ago, so I'm lucky I remember this conversation at all.
Anyway, all this got me thinking about the difference between the idea of a thing and what the thing actually is. If there is any difference.
My new icon is from a picture I saw today, a drawing by a guy called Kurt Halsey. I thought the girl in it looks a bit like me with my new hair, which is the only reason I looked at it long enough to notice that there's also a unicorn in it. I'm not really interested in unicorns but I'm (re)reading Illuminatus at the moment, so I immediately thought "Is the thought of a unicorn a real thought?", which made me smile, and then I decided I could use a new LJ icon.
I don't know if thoughts of unicorns or New Orleans or Baghdad are real. I don't know if any thoughts are real!
And I don't know if it matters. Didn't California got its name because someone thought it resembled an island in a book? The island was imaginary, and California isn't any kind of island, but California is still its real name.
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(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-17 11:55 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-18 08:34 am (UTC)do not left-click select to highlight this post.
Date: 2005-09-18 02:30 am (UTC)- Muriel Rukeyser
what a great link.
you know, i think that the New Orleans that Andrew was looking for has always been a story.
cities are like that.
attempts to escape reality that end up producing ever more realities to escape from.
like a gasoline fire the stor(y/ies)hangs a few inches over the surface of everything in the city, burning. the drunk fratboys, prostitutes, kitchen workers, architecture, muffled sounds of bar bands, gumbo, gunshots and tour guides, along with everything else, are the tinder it consumes.
without the tinder there is no fire, and it is the fire that makes people congregate and create the spatial organism known as New Orleans.
it's reality inspires the attempts at escape that become the burning stories we know of New Orleans. Louis Armstrong was one of the first black astronauts, transforming his soul into burning arrows and blowing them outward into the world in amazing pyrotechnic displays.
the product of these escape attempts adds to the fire that draws people into New Orleans.
i'm interested to see what happens to New Orleans now. what will all these people carrying it's fire or memories of it's fire do with it? whatever decisions are made, however the city re-manifests it's self, how can it not become one of Italo Calvino's invisible cities at this point?
you know what i mean?
ah i dunno, i'm waxing froo froo this evening.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-18 09:02 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-19 04:22 am (UTC)the loosely hinged run on metaphors are a sure tip off ;)
thank you for liking it =)
Re: do not left-click select to highlight this post.
Date: 2005-09-18 09:34 am (UTC)- Muriel Rukeyser
A priceless quote. Thank you.
Re: do not left-click select to highlight this post.
Date: 2005-09-19 04:21 am (UTC)