doublespeak, triplespeak?

It is not the medium
it is the message that counts
The medium is the message, some say
Oh well, as long as they convey...

Perspectives
Whose perspective?
whose lens, whose manner?
Explain, won't you, pray

With words
Of oppression/liberation
politicians speak, news-readers speak
dalits speak, women speak
dalit women speak
writers speak, narrators speak
children speak, grown-ups speak
of the same things, do they speak?

Language
Whose language, which language?
Of sounds, movements or words
Of codes - cultural or natural
In color or black and white
oh, but does language have color
In India or Ireland
but must language have context?

Thoughts
these thoughts
stubborn thoughts, silly thoughts
language of thoughts?

Ah, well as long as they convey
(fudging concepts on their way?!)
It is not the medium
it is the message
the message is the medium, some say
Oh well, as long as they convey.


i'd better be going now. yes, kitchen duty awaits me. time to go make some money. i am but a poor PhD student ;)

Today the sun is lighting up the pale walls of the houses outside the window of this computer room. I'm not in a very good mood, however. Even though Radhika sorted out a way to be the co-author of this blog, and has written yet another poem, I'm feeling rotten today. The only thing I am doing with any sense of clarity these days is writing this blog.

I saw the news after getting up at 6.30 this morning, and felt how removed I am from the rest of the world, being here. The headlines were pretty dreary, as I guess most headlines are.

I suppose this blog should also have some sort of connection with the news, and current affairs. Instead of pondering about poetry all the time, I should also be thinking about what's going on all around.

It's a fashion now to quote Orwell before saying something about the news, but I guess I'll fall into it anyway. Orwell wrote in his news chronicles that it is vital to keep a record of what actually happens - politically, socially, physically - just in case somebody comes along afterwards and tries to distort it. So perhaps a quick record of my day is in order.

Got up, got dressed, made tea, watched the news, collected teaching materials, went to school building, tried photocopying, failed, got to 7.40 staff briefing late, went to lessons, taught an English lesson on "Translations" and a Theory of Knowledge lesson about Reason and Emotion, then spent an hour reading through English materials for lessons. Got a sandwich in the shop, and bought fruits. Coffee break, chatted, wrote about residence heating and electrical breakdowns, then came here.

Our school doesn't have any tremendous news, but it's worth describing sometimes. We're preparing for the trial exams in a week's time, so the students are doing their best to get ready for it. But last night the poor souls were shivering their way around the residence, because the heating keeps breaking down. Our residence is really a summer vacation place, and isn't designed for the winter. We rarely have enough hot water to go round.

I live and teach in the same place. I come across the same faces inside lessons and out every day, at home and at work. Home is work. But the sun, the light makes it feel easy sometimes. The light in Duino reflects off everything as if it were hanging. Just like when it snows, and only one side of a branch or a car door is covered with snow. That's how the light sticks to things here. When I get a moment to look out the window, I look for metaphors which could describe the light.

But I haven't found any good ones yet.

Orwell talks of the language of politics, saying that doublespeak covers up thought like snow, smothering the detail. Maybe that's the way I see the light here.

D

stepping in

Not so Shakespearean a tale
this evening I have to tell
With neither Barthes, nor Foucault
shall I compare
You’ve claimed your space
I must make mine
You’ve put up your name
but I already have mine
Wishes can’t be horses
and dreams don’t always come true
But we must go on (w)riding…

- the Outsider


That’s what came into my head when I first read David’s posts. Nothing clearly thought of, just jottings on paper of poetry that flashed across my mind. Ah, the master’s tools and the master’s blog, the trouble with stepping in second, or shall I say the challenge? An overdose of feminist criticism? I don’t know.

So blogfinder, when you do read this, and wonder who I am (apart from what David has chosen to say or post), and why I write here, I have only this to say. I write to find myself. In voices, in experiences, in writing, in praxis. I invite you to share this space with us. Make it alive.


I leave you with some musings of mine from another evening –


Ek aur kavita

Apney aap ko khojney ke liye
Apney khayaalon ko syaahi se rangney ke liye
Apni bhaavnaaon ko kaagaz par utaarney ke liye
Apni duniya ko shabdon mein dhaalney ke liye
Apney ghussey ko thaamney ke liye
Apney pyaar ko jataaney ke liye
Apney adhoorepann ko sweekarney ke liye
Apni kalpanaaon ko samajhney ke liye
Apni yaadon ko jodney ke liye
Apney aaney waley kal ko taakhney ke liye
Likhti hun main
Kavita

Kavita
Haqueekat nahin
Kavita
Parchhai hai uski
Pratibimb hai uska
Kavita
Kavita ke liye
Jeevan jeeney ke liye

Aao saath chalein
Do pal
Haathon mein haath chalein
Kal ki raah mein…



a possible translation:


One more poem

To seek my self
To color my thoughts with ink
To pen my feelings on paper
To capture my world in words
To calm my anger
To express my love
To accept my incompleteness
To understand my imaginings
To weave my memories together
To await my tomorrow
I write
Poetry

Poetry
Not reality
Poetry
Its shadow
Its representation
Poetry, for poetry’s sake
Life, for living

Come, lets walk together
Two moments
Hand in hand, lets walk
In the direction of tomorrow/Awaiting tomorrow.

Wriding on

Dear Blogfinder,

I have been unwillingly the single author of this blog since my last post, struggling desperately to hand over my authority to Radhika. But no avail so far, I am stuck in my role as the single author of this page. So instead of introducing her like I would have liked to, I will give you some of her poetry, and how it has informed my own thoughts. I won't go into detail of teaching today, but keep this post fairly short, to bring in a new idea I have been kicking around, on the same theme as before, but with a different twist. My question remains the same simple but yet painful difficult one, which I hope someday to at least overcome:

Why do we write?

Perhaps that question is a little too general, and should be more like "Why do we write literature" or " What do we gain from writing?". But for the moment, I need to keep it like this. I hope to approach it like a child sitting in the back of a car, asking adults annoying questions. Those are the questions which are the most important ones. "Where did I come from?", "Why is the sun hot?"... If I could approach this question like a child, I would be on a very good start.

Today is about wriding the question in terms of the need for writing. That strange urge which pushes so many people to put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboards) and splurge their thoughts for everyone else to see. It doesn't really make much sense, given what psychologists seem to agree on; that much of our social behaviour consists of concealing what we really think or feel. But then again, we have to express ourselves somewhere. It feels a lot safer to do it in front of a computer or a page than to another person.

Here are 3 poems which express what I think the author wouldn't have wanted to say out loud, without first writing them. She doesn't openly reveal a catastrophic or ground-shaking emotion, but yet the content is more than what we put into everyday conversation. She is reflecting, in the way that Jacques Lacan would understand it. Thinking in such a way that she is seeing herself and her own thought processes, like a child discovering itself in a mirror.

Dilemmas of a DPhil Student, Take One:

Woke up at ten

Had brunch at twelve

Read some Barthes,

read some Camus

Went out for coffee

discussed Bourdieu

at Clowns

Got back, had a nap

Soaked in feminist theory

Wrote some more poetry

Shall I read more theory

or indulge in poetry

One dilemma led to another

Shall I wear blue,

shall I wear brown

Just going to watch Fellini

down town

Then messaged a few friends

Tied up a few loose ends

Got back to feminist theory

Slept till night turned to day

One day like another

No two days the same

Dilemmas of a DPhil Student, Take Two:

Woke up with a back ache

Too many hours on the computer

too many theories to read

too many notes to type

Suffered a panic attack by twelve

By one, head threatened to fall off neck

By two, had taken to bed

Till four, of Devi-devatas I read

By six, from feminist theory

to new chair, new mattress my dilemmas had spread

Should I steal a chair

or should I buy a new one

Should I write to my tutor

or should I just barge in

With thoughts hanging in the air

lights on, darkness outside

I slept

till night turned to day

One day like a another

No two days the same

Dilemmas of a DPhil Student, Take Three:

Woke up at nine

an hour too early

Was snowing outside

green lawns covered in white

Meeting with supervisor today

must make sure I have my way

Its not until two

there’s time to read Marvell

another verse, another line

Its five to two, am running late

More theory, more work

‘Be specific, be more direct

be more explicit, be more articulate’

One word, “Rewrite”

Back from faculty

Get messages on the way

‘Lets have dinner

won’t you, pray’

Shall I go

shall I not

‘Fertile ground to find men’, said auntie

Where are the men

which line of admirers

I have a PhD to write

not, over men, contrite

I am in Cambridge

And here to stay

Where one day’s like another

No two days the same

Cut cut cut-

Good life, bad life

Its never been quite the same

I am in Cambridge

And here to stay.

(Winter 2004/2005)

------

Radhika is wriding in a very ordinary, accessible style here, but this doesn't stop her from revealing something new and out of the ordinary. For someone who has never done a PhD, Take One is an extremely cliche'd view of what PhD students do in the round of a day. A lazy lifestyle of reading and bourgeois concerns, divorced from the realities that the working world is faced with. But Take 2 and Take 3 draw us into her world a little bit more. She is more human, more real. We pry into the strange environment of constantly thinking and living your work. Of carrying the office inside your head all day and all night. Where most of us leave it behind when we call it a day and go home in the evening, PhD students can't.

Take Two gives a new angle one Take One. Where we first got the feeling that it is all terribly easy, Take Two starts to show some of the strange problems she is faced with. The last two lines show how time collapses for her, in a way which it wouldn't for you or I. Whereas for most jobs we have fairly clear starting and finishing times, and other people to interact with, the speaker doesn't. Doing a PhD is very lonely, and time telescopes in a way which it wouldn't in other jobs.

Then, when we get to Take 3, her work and her feelings are completely inextricable. Cambridge becomes a symbol not only of the intellectual side of her work, but collapses her social, sexual and professional anxieties. "Rewrite" is not only the echoed voice of the supervisor, always asking her to challenge her work, but an indeterminate voice pushing her to question all the other sides of her personality. She is rewriting herself, redifining who she is and what she's doing. Being "here to stay", in the reflective environment of Cambridge conveys a feeling safety, but also an acceptance of having to "rewrite" herself perpetually, admitting that permanent insecurity.

Writing is, for Radhika, a way of expressing an inner voice which usual interactions don't allow. When we're worried about what others will think of our clothes, or getting to the shops on time, we're not going to stop and imagine what it would be like to be a doctoral student. We're busy being ourselves. Stepping outside our ordinary roles - as mothers, children, friends, professionals... - is not something we can afford to do in the hubbub of routine.

To finish this post, I suppose I've digressed onto another question instead of answering the one set up above. Rather than saying anything very telling about the writing process itself, I think I've hit upon some ideas of what it means to be a reader. If by reading Radhika's writing we can stop being ourselves for a while (put away the person who's worried about the clothes and getting to the shops), then perhaps reading is about taking on identities. Similar to children playing cowboys and indians, testing out different identities, then maybe we are doing something like this when we read.

Not that I've got an answer now, but at least I can finish on a better question:

Do we read to know ourselves better, or to know someone/something outside of us?

Yours,

D

Blogging a dead horse?

Dear blogfinder,


I am an teacher lost in a small world of fanciful ideals, in a village in Italy. I am writing this blog on the incentive of a friend who knows me only too well. She has encouraged me to write for fear that the fleeting blizzard of moments which passes endlessly by me will be lost forever lest it be recorded soon. As an English teacher, every day brings a different experience of life, of literature, to feed upon memories and awareness. I don't have the chance to sit on my laurels in what I do. I have to keep up with the sudden changes of identity my students go through. At least I would like to think I do.

So Radhika, who will also be writing here, pushed me to write. I chose the title of this post because I have the sinking sensation there is little left for me to say about literature. After all, so many shelves have been filled with books about literature; what it is and what it aims to be. Why keep at it? According to Roland Barthes, the author is dead. Why torture the poor deceased carcass?

Because it is not the horse that is of interest, it is its rider. If I am recording my own experiences as a literature and Theory of Knowledge teacher, it's because there are plenty of people out there ready to ride (wride? write?) the same horse, taking the same old journeys. Like children riding poneys on a beach, perhaps. For the poor guy who drags the poneys back and forth across the beach all day long, it's not a very novel experience. But if he taps into the joy and novelty the children feel, it could be fascinating. If my students can enjoy a new journey, then this is what I hope to tap into.

My students were responding to Translations by Brian Friel today. They were laughing at the scene in Act 2 scene 2 where Yolland and Maire are conveying their love for each other, even though they can't understand the other's language. It was a little ridiculous reading this scene aloud in class, as the students found the idea simplistic, and were skeptical regarding its literary merits. But why?

I suppose it's obvious in a school which boasts 83 nationalities that there are some things which are communicable via spoken language and many others which rely on all the other ways in which we communicate. Perhaps they didn't need Brian Friel to teach them this. Perhaps the Irish playwright would have had a stronger effect on students who had never been away from home... Or perhaps my class was on a bad day.

Either way, I feel that somehow this scene held its meaning in spite of the students' skepticism. Cynical though they may be, they have experienced these moments of mysterious communication, where language barriers dissipate unheeded, and one can magically see the other's meaning. Sometimes in spite of oneself. The play is set in 19th century Ireland, in a small village where Irish is the only language spoken. Maire is a milkmaid who speaks no English, but hopes for a change in her life when she is awestruck by an enthusiastic English soldier. He, of course, speaks only English.

Maire says to Yolland in this scene "Don't speak - I know what you are saying" and Yolland - the English soldier come to rename Irish towns into English - repeats this exact phrase a few lines later. Their attraction is conveyed in a dialogue where neither can understand the other's words, but yet they communicate in this way. I left the students with the thought that Friel is conveying the ultimate strength of translation, outside actual language... translating genuine emotion rather than words.

I would like to think that this little bubble in Duino, on the Adriatic coast, will leave me the chance to translate much of what I experience, the singular meanings I ponder here, to a few readers. Just like Friel's characters, I may not be able to get across what I say immediately, but through some strange and wonderful process, perhaps it's possible. Even if the horse is dead, language can always find other means of transport to take meaning to its rightful place.

Time's up, and its past my teacherly bedtime.

A la prochaine...

c