The Eternal Loop of One's Own Rationalism

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to Will on 13 December 2014. It should be noted that, since 1 November 2014, all Art's emails have originated from Farthington's account.

Actaeon by Titian

I thought it would be an interesting exercise to try to make sense of one another's notes. There is an ongoing motif of communication and miscommunication in this story, both electronic communication and earlier forms of communication. Messages get distorted, misunderstood, and/or appropriated for dubious purposes.

Intended meanings get buried under frames of interpretation.

If you ever get time, I think it would be interesting to see what sense you make of my scribblings. I would be happy to do the same for you.

I think it could uncover unseen connections for us and perhaps engender some new creative leads. I don't know how much you actually write in journals anymore, but I still do that quite a bit. I occasionally use word processing to help me get out of writer's block, but usually I'm only typing things up as an absolute last step. Whenever I have a thought and I'm near one of my journals I jot it down with the hope that I'll notice it at some later point when I need some "serendipitous" connection.

I need all the help I can get.

I know the picture isn't the greatest, but is there a part of it that you think you understand? What sentences or paragraphs can you write that bring any concepts or connections into focus? If that's too much to ask, can you articulate any questions?

I have students do an exercise where they take another poet's poem (they can also use poems they wrote themselves) and type it up on a computer, double space it, and fill in the spaces with new words, such that those words work with the preceding and subsequent lines. Then, they delete the original lines, single spacing the remaining text (the new words) and hammering it out until it becomes an entirely new poem.

I think an exercise like this one is entirely appropriate given our motif of framing, embedding, reposting, retweeting, etc. As you interpret the original primordial wildness of my scribbles, trying to impose your own rationality on it, the original disappears, like the skittish deer in the clearing who flees at the slightest footfall.

Or better, Diana bathing naked with her nymphs when Actaeon stumbles on the scene.

What's left is your own text, which is, in turn, transformed into the wild stag to be torn apart by hounds, the eternal loop of one's own rationalism.