The Unarrated & Disnarrated

Any mention of an event that is not explicitly narrated.

For example: “We talked and talked and it was witty and biting, yet recounting it in written form would never give justice to the actual experience.”

Any event within a logical sequence that goes unmentioned because of a natural call for rhythm, characterization, suspense, etc.

Disnaratted.

Any events that do not happen within the narrative proper but could have and are referred to in a negative or hypothetical mode in the text.

Unrealized events. The parralelism between the unrealized and the realized. Wishes, intents, and obligations. They do not merely reflect actual events but also delineate virtual ones.

Alethic expressions of presumed impossibility or unrealized possibility. Deontic expressions of observed prohibition, epistemic expressions of ignorance, ontologic expressions of nonexistence, purely imagined worlds, desired worlds, intended worlds, unfulfilled expectations, unwarranted beliefs, failed attemps, crushed hopes, erroneous suppositions, false calculations.

“His expectations turn out to be foolish” (cue face of surprise)

notes for novel

19/07/08

A book about a writer overlooking the shooting of the movie adaption of one of his novels.

He comments intelligently about the ontology of adapting a novel for the screen. He comments thoroughly on the validity of the director’s cinematic interpretation of his novel. At the same time, he comments on his novel and on the ontology of the novel, of language, of writing.

Basically, he outlines his novel’s characteristics, he witnesses the shooting of the director’s interpretation, and as he witnesses he narrates along the accuracy of the interpretation.

A novel about novels, about the filming of a novel.

The coup de theatre is that the account of the filming is the story (so what can they be filming?).

The other coup de theatre would be if Fincher decided to adapt it!

23/07/08

…And the third coup de theatre would be if there was a film about Fincher’s adaptation.

One question might be…What is the story of the novel they are adapting?

This is a problem that must be solved because

If there is an actual story: everything becomes allegorical because by introducing a proper story the audience can clearly make out the seams of the levels being overlayed. There is a writer. A novel he wrote that is being adapted. He is at the shooting of this adaptation and he will walk us throughout the story, commenting on the director’s interpretation. The fact that there is a story seduces the viewer into an immersive state (the urge to experience the story of the novel being mounted in a hopefully compelling film). The real question would become: how do we make this metanovel be as compelling as the story. A weak solution in the past has been to simply have a compelling inner story…and to have the outer story not be an actual story but only a mere framework. Weak.

The challenge is to make the outerstory as compelling as the inner one.

But the initial problems are these:

1. What is it they are shooting?
In order to answer that question, the narrator would have to reveal the story of the novel they are adapting. Yet, there is not supposed to be a novel. The only novel is the one about the novel being made into a film.

The reader wants to know the story of what is being filmed. But the narrator is only giving the story of the shooting, not the story of what’s being shot.

(That is because there is nothing being shot. It is only an excuse to wax philosophically about the nature of writing, the nature of filming, the nature of filming writing, and the nature of self-refexive art.)

So what to do? How to reveal a story that does not exist?

… … …

On Hal Hartley

I remember that in Amateur, like most of my other films, a lot is not shown. I was more interested in what happens when people talk about something that happened in the past or something that will happen in the future or is simply happening somewhere else. There’s something else going on. The immediate intimate manoeuvering of people around each other while they are dealing with information. I thought that I don’t want them to talk about what is happening or will happen, I want to witness them doing; I want to look at the actual event. It’s funny, I talk to other filmmakers and they tell me “Well that’s why we got into filmmaking in the first place”. That was our first urge.” My first urge was to watch the people conversing or struggling with each other about other things.

The thing about calculation that I’ve always resisted is that there’s an assumption being made that I know who you are and I know what you think is important and what is funny and what is moving. And I really don’t think that’s true in life: I think that we’re mysterious to each other and that’s one of the reasons for instance that we keep telling ourselves stories. Stories can be told and retold because we really don’t know how we’re going to react.

Your talent often arises from your weaknesses and misconceptions.

On Additive Abstraction in Narrative

Bordwell

Because the narrative progression relaxes, we can weave our own connotations out of what we see and hear.

1. I’m not sure if this is additive abstraction but here’s the idea. You start out with a given situation, let’s say a story about a bike messenger who has a brother in a wheelchair. If there is an element of the story that involves his bike getting stolen it is important to NOT HINT at it. In other words, one should find a way to set up logical events without calling attention to them (or by using distractions). Another thought regarding this might be…to not have levels of hierarchy for events in a story. All events should be treated equally with the same degree of importance (which is the same thing as without any importance).

Andre 3000 - Better Than Jigga?

http://www.zshare.net/audio/5040759cd8c5f4/

Is Andre 3000, the rap Bob Dylan? He could be. In this verse here he seems to be driven by intention of expression first, eschewing conventional rhyming until the 5th bar. In the verse, he offers excuses for his down to earth approach to subject matter, as if he feels the need to justify his anti-party rap rhymes. What’s interesting is that he relates his verse as an answer to a question posed by a woman he had a casual date with. There’s a tradition in songwriting, and Bob Dylan passed through it as well, where women evoke the expression of sentiments. The difficulties of love married to the difficulties of writing.

But rap is more than writing, especially today when most rappers reveal that they don’t write but instead think up their verses as they record the song. I dont know if Andre does this, I would assume that he doesn’t exactly, as he appears to be more cohesive and ‘together’ in his verses than say Lil Wayne of Jay-Z, two write-less rappers. But regardless of his technique, he still delivers his vocals filled with unexpected inflections, unique rhythmic sections, and flawless breath control.

So what do we have here? It is not the simile-filled free-associative rhyming of Jay-Z and Wayne. Although both those rappers are probably the best in their league. Andre is another kind of poet. He is situational in his approach, rooting the listener into a situational reality. He sees the verse as an unified element for one urge when others have more of a cut+paste approach, and pastiche conventional tropes. Not to say that Andre doesnt use those tropes, because he does, but their nature is always subservient to the expression of the primary urge in his subject matter. In other words, Jay-Z has punchlines with similes because he wants them to stand out in the verse; Andre uses them simply as literary devices to convey a primordial intention. It is another kind of rapping intelligence, very unique in the industry. My guess is that it has its roots in the storytelling blues songs from the South of which Andre (I’m sure) is a huge fan.

Artist: Outkast
Year: 2007
Title: The Art Of Storytellin Part 4

[Andre 3000:]
Verse One:
So I’m watchin’ her fine ass
Walked to my bedroom, and thought to myself
That’s the shape of things to come
She said, “Why you in the club, and you don’t make it precipitate?
You know, make it rain when you can make it thunderstorm”
I’m like, “Why? “
The world needs sun
The hood needs funds
There’s a war going on and half the battle is guns
How dare I throw it on the floor
When people are poor
So I write like Edgar Allen to restore, got a cord?
Umbilical attached to a place they can’t afford
No landscaping, Or window draping
This old lady told me,
“If I ain’t got nothin’ good, say nathing”
That’s why I don’t talk much
I swear it don’t cost much, to pay attention to me
I tell like it is, and I tell it how it could be
The hood be
Requesting my services, Oh don’t get nervous it’s
Step yo game up time, These ain’t them same old rhymes
Designed to have you dancin’ in some club
Niggas write to me
Woman be up in they tub
Exfoliating with hey pom poms
Yellin’ “GO 3000! “
I’m in my whatever bumpin’ what?
A 100 miles in
Runnin’ Runnin’ Runnin’ Runnin’
Summon
Woman
Come in
Sit down, heard you need some plumbing
Done and
I’m in
A swell mood
A rather swoll mood
Until she told me that she told dood
That’s she’ll be back, she’s going to the store
I didn’t know she had a boyfriend, so the door
I pointed her too
I said, “Call me when ya’ll break up
I don’t fuck nobody bitch”
And never owned a Jakob, know what time it is
Nigga just tryin’ to live
Like a Nigga suppose to live
If I still drink that malt liquor
I pour that beer
On the ground for niggas not around
I started out starvin’
Now they got me out here Brett Farvin’
Try’n to see if I still got it… (got it…)
I guess it’s like the right thing about it… (’bout it…)

About Ideas

Whenever I get an interesting idea, instead of writing it down, my first instinct is to let it float in my head awhile. Eventually I drift into another thought and the initial idea gets lost.

Frame analysis for social movements

Framing has been utilized to explain the process of social movements (Snow & Benford, 1988). Movements are carriers of beliefs and ideologies. In addition, they are part of the process of constructing meaning for participants and opposers (Snow & Benford, 1988). Mass movements are said to be successful when the frames projected align with the frames of participants to produce resonance between the two parties. This is a process known as frame alignment.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frame_analysis

Metalepsis

Metalepsis: the narratorial confusing of narrative levels or the actual movement of a character from one narrative level into another.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2342/is_1_35/ai_97074175

folded dreams

had a dream about a non-existent documentary of movie “Mauvais Sang”. Dream consisted in renting this documentary and proceeding to watching it, but everything was folded with the reality of the documentary and the reality of my idea of the documentary (my expectations). My dreams have begun to contain more and more codes for nested dreams.