it’s autumn
that moment when summer stumbles into autumn.
the summer side [still summer in LA, no?]:
into autumn [and soon winter!] loneliness & chilly chilliest evening times:
what’s the deal with terry, julie, and this watcher-from-windows?
when life was warm and love was true
more stevie for a saturday morning
notes on another viewing of high fidelity
1. john cusack, you make a great troubled [music-]lover
2. how perfect this song is, for itself and for the end of the movie
give it to me gently (knowledge, i mean)
like in star trek, the recent one, when Future Spock transfers decades’ worth of memory and emotion into Not Yet Capt. Kirk’s head by mere touch, and kirk staggers away afterward disoriented and pained. or how in state of war maya lies hand-to-hand and body-to-body on top of her future daughter-in-law, to impart entire personal histories as a way of welcome into the family.
this is what i wish grad school was like: total knowledge import in a single sitting, and any accompanying pain dealt in one huge but quick blow.
instead my narrative is a string of discrete experiences of pain and joy, composed of moments in seminar when i say to myself, i knew that, i should i have said something; during particularly stimulating conference panels or talks when i’m awe-struck at a speaker and a potential future self, thinking, one day i’ll know enough to reach conclusions like these; and most frequently, when i listen to classmates and friends offer accounts that weave together our short lifetimes’ worth of knowledge into neat, intelligent packages, that make me wonder, how and when did you accrue all this knowledge and synthesize it? where was i? what have i been doing all this time?
and of course, those hours and hours of actual intellectual work – me in front of a book, at a talk, in an advisor’s office, sitting passive in seminar.
it used to be the knowledge itself that was torturous. (flashback to my first experience reading foucault: confusion and tears, ‘this man is no roland barthes’) now it’s the experience of acquiring it and seeing it at work that gives me palpitations.