Now, I’m in the process of trying to get an olympic white strat with a mint green pickguard. It was originally anchored in my brain when I saw ONE picture in which Johnny Marr had one (but I’ve always wanted a Strat in general). The problem is that it might not be available if I want to get the best model, so I would have to get the wrong shade of white. Which is unacceptable, seeing how the whole semantic field “Strat” is taken up by the one model, this one:

Now, this is very pretty. I think it’s the prettiest colour. Now, the problem is that I just found out that mr. Marr also had a 1963 sunburst, like this one:

Now, the realities of available models and idol worship collide! It’s now OK to get a sunburst Strat, because it has been included in the general set of “Strats” because of Marr’s sunburst. So it would solve the problem, and I could get the model which is better built and apparently sounds better.

But the white is prettier!

But the other one is available!

But.

But.

Like I said, I feel ashamed for wanting, so I will include a nice Barthes quote, for free:

“There are two musics: the music one listens to and the music one plays.”

So if the aesthetics of the second music includes mental, occipital imagery, I should not feel bad for wanting. I think.

*

Molnen hopar, dundrar åskan

Går iden under vassen

Droppar regnet, barnet skyndar

Hunden skäller gällt

Lingonbusken, spindelnätet

Faller blåbär tätt

Skogen blånar, tjärnen svart

Sitter paret under björken

Daggdroppa, spindelnät!

Myran skyndar hem

Grumlig botten, gör vi klar

Fisken jagar dystert

Kommer knallen mot ett träd

Tystnar trasten tvärt

Fjällen glänser, plumsar vattnet

Ser vi vattenhop

Katten jamar, dundrar spisen

Skogen lyser klart

Hugger iden, skrapar tassen

Kommer barnet snart?

*

And in Russian:

*

Сгущают тучи

Идет голавль под тростником

Каплет дождь, спешит дитя

Раздастся собачьи лай

Брусники, паутина

Падают черники густо

Синеет лес, чернеет озеро

Сидят двое под березой

Пролей, o паутина, росу!

Торопится муравей

Мутное дно, сделаем прозрачным

Ходит рыба грустно на охоту

Раскат над деревом

Затихнут вдруг дрозд

Сверкает чешуя, плескает водой

Видим кучу чернилы

Мяукнет кот, печка гремит

Лес сияет ясно

Клюет голавль, шаркает лапой

Придет ли скоро дитя?

*

Also, the true meaning of Verdi prati from Alcina only comes out on long walks in the forest.

The Top 3 Books of Today Not Currently Owned by Me are:

1. Translation Translation by Susan Petrilli – because it’s the best collection of translation essays to date. If they included something by Jiří Levý it would be perfect.

2. Time and Narrative 1-3 by Paul Ricoeur – because I want to know first-hand how the ego travels through others.

3. Linguistic Supertypes by Per Durst-Andersen – because Mental Grammar used to be my bible and that he’s like totally the coolest guy ever and that his writing is a totally perfective activity that’s intended by him and sufficient for happiness to be existing in my brain.

I’ve had a little obsession with what feels like an “imploded” sign. In short, any “meaning” from a diachronic point of view (where we could possibly find the historical centre of Peirce’s onion, i.e. the nucleus of any given object of semiotic research, say, a linguistic sign) “implodes” at the point of synchronic analysis, and its meaning is scattered among any number of language users. Thus, the last “point of contact” before the arbitrary time of the implosion, constitutes whatever nucleus we can agree on when it comes to the meaning of the sign, or, for that matter, any linguistic expression. People like Alexander Bain would say that the nucleus is an abstract “Definition” (with a nice 19th century capital letter), but that is far too vague in order to have any consequences on the discussion, in part because definition implies explicit agreement, something which is notoriously hard to find among language users. If anything, though, it is perhaps possible to reach a, however small, conclusion about the fuzzy nucleus of meaning.

Reaching a conclusion about the nucleus of the imploded sign and concatenating its parts back together mentally (and also beyond the mental through semiosis) is perhaps only possible taking Peirce’s pragmatic maxim into account. Without a pragmatic approach to this, the sign would never reach its interpretants or receivers and would stay an undefined mental entity (possibly measurable in single neurons). We still speak and understand what other people mean, mostly.

Also, the imploded sign would also have to be approached pragmatically if translation is to be possible (which, according to Ricoeur, it is). This is a subject for another day, but it’s worth mentioning, since it’s something that’s easily affected by how we view signs. If it’s true, however, that the sign is in a constant “imploded” state, meaning really is deferred to the future. Imagine a written note hidden in a bottle in the middle of the ocean: the note still has meaning, but it’s not complete since there is no interpreter there to interpret it (and trees falling in the woods, and bla, bla, bla.). Meaning, again, is deferred to the future. Vincent Colapietro has this to say on the subject:

“The rational meaning of a proposition lies in the future in the sense
that this meaning is what would be revealed to an indefinite community in
the indefinite future. To limit either the scope of this community or the expanse
of this time would be to imprison rational meaning in such a constricted
confinement that such meaning would wither and die.” (Colapietro 2003)

This also sums it up very nicely. However, I think it’s nice to refer to the non-agentive action through which this has taken place, the implosion.

Also because it’s a pretty word. Mmm implosion. It sounds like an ointment for Lincoln FC supporters. HAR HAR GET IT!?

References:

Colapietro, V. (2003): Translating Signs Otherwise. In: Translation Translation. Ed.: Petrilli, S. Rodopi. Amsterdam. pp. 189-215.

This is why I don’t blog. I find it hard to write things down, since you never know when you will have finalised your train of thought. It’s definitely easier to plan ahead and think of subjects and parts which are in the process of being concatenated into wholesome wholes in the brain if they are not perturbed by the writing process. Thinking is not speaking, and therefore it’s safe to say that writing also isn’t thinking (and vice versa).

This is essentially a problem of translation, since every thought-process, apart from perhaps the utterly basic ones, are translated from their mental form to their open form (from covert to overt, in a linear fashion) and is ultimately reified in the process. The fact that we are dealing with a translation process makes it painfully clear that one can not publish a translation unfinished (while the original author could publish as many unfinished works as he likes).

Thoughts, then, are non-reified interstitial translation drafts, which means that texts such as these mostly consist of gibberish. But they do make sense at one discrete moment in time, and perhaps at a point in the future, when the author returns and realises he is thinking exactly what he sees written down.