User:Jamesbrooklyn/sandbox
Creativity[edit]
Creativity is a fundamental human process. Defined as the production of something novel and valuable. Creative novelties are either useful or appropriate. Meaning the for-fill a function to solve a problem and do so in a way that is deemed legal and proper by the authorities of said endeavour. Few creative works become influential, meaning, expanding the domain of their creation.
Creativity is a heavily discussed scientific topic. There are many different interpretations of what creativity, such that creativity is deeply imbedded in our personality or is a biological fact.
hers say that creativity is something that can be developed. Either way, in this article, creativity will be explored and uncovered to achieve greater insight on the psychological, philosophical , and artistic views of creativity.
This article first goes over the psychological frameworks that creativity can viewed under. Then we will examine two artists and see their art work framed within the paired constraint model of creativity. We will then see creativity in writing by examining four authors. Through these authors, we will examine their creative styles through the shifting a memoir written by James Kettle. Finally we examine creativity in music, through the album "Untrue" by Burial.
Different Models[edit]
Systems Model[edit]
In this model, pioneered by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, there are three subsections, the domain, the individual, and the field. The domain is the possibility frontier of the activity in question. The domain transmits information to the individual who produces variation within the domain. This variation is then sent to the field, who is composed of the gate keeps of the art. These gate keepers decide what variation is acceptable and what is not acceptable, they control the means of distributions within the community. The field can either accept reject the new variation from the individual. If the variation is accepted then the field then goes on to influence the domain of the art, and then the cycle continues.
Process Model[edit]
Anthony Brandt and David Eagleman develop the The process model In Under the Hood of Creativity. The model contains three sub-models of blending, bending, and breaking. All of the sub-models contribute to the whole model of regarding creativity as an act that can broken down separated in to discrete operations.
Bending[edit]
The original object or idea is modified or twisted out of shape. An example of Bending in within music is an artist taking sounds that are often not considered music and including them into their compositions. A good example of this is Untrue by Burial, which takes samples from video games, such as Metal Gear Solid, and uses them within the album.
Blending[edit]
Combining two or more sources in novel ways. An example of Blending is a musical artist taking two genres together and making an original song based on the motifs between the two songs. UK garage is a prime example of blending, as it took the motifs of Dub music from the Caribbean and electronic music to make a new genre.
Breaking[edit]
Something whole is taken apart and something new assembled out of the fragments. When considering music, an example of Breaking could be an avant grade musician who redefines what music is, such as the Japanese artist noise artist Merzbow.
Paired Constraints Model[edit]
The Paired constraints Model of creativity is a model that uses the idea of a problem space, which contains an initial state, search space, goal space. The model was pioneered but artist and psychologist Patricia Stokes in her work Creativity from Constraints . The model postulates that creativity comes from precluding and promoting certain parts of an initial space and then creating a new object from that space. In general, the Problem space is a representation of the problem and is composed of the initial state, a goal state, and search space. The initial state is what the subject starts with, the goal state is what the subject should end up with, and the search space is how the subject should get there.
Creativity in Art[edit]
Art is considered one of the most creativity fields, however without examinations, it may seem that artists are just naturally creativity or gifted. We will be examining two artists, Kandinsky and Tauber-Arp, to see how they trajectory as artists fit within the model of the Paired Constraints. Will examine three periods of their work to see how it has evolved to bring novelty and in their case innovation.
Kandinsky[edit]
Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky was a Russian painter and art theorist. Kandinsky is generally credited as one of the pioneers of abstraction in western art. We will explore three paintings of this within the Paired Constraints Model
Landscape with Tower - Small pleasures[edit]
We first examie two works from Kandinsky, Landscape with Towers from his early period and Small Pleasures from his middle period. We will break down his progression in a problem space.
Initial State: Landscape with Tower is a great depiction of early Kandinsky. Painted with thick brush strokes, using colour to depict reality, but in a cartoonish, almost dream like state. One can image there are in the painting but also in a dream. The mixing of colours is natural, but still distinct. There are no borders on the objects, but there are still clearly defined. A clear scene of a European town and wilderness. There is a sense of movement, calm but present.
Search Space:
Goal State: The goal state is Small Pleasures, a beautiful painting still depicting a European city, but more than a simple depiction, it goes in depth of the souls of the people there. The paintings abstraction allows a journey into the mind of Kandinsky. It's dreamlike, similar to Landscape with a tower, but the dream is deeper and the meaning is well hidden. Allowing for a More immersive experience for the viewer delving deeper and deeper into the painting.
Small Pleasures - Blue Circle[edit]
Initial Space: Small Pleasures is an abstract painting depicting a European town and its people. It's dreamlike, but you can see reality within the subject. The lines are defined but also blending. Thee colours are natural but not a natural depiction. Thinner brush strokes then earlier work.
| Retain: | Preclude: | Promote: |
|---|---|---|
| Kandinsky retains his use of colour, his abstraction, his blending of some portions of the painting. | Realistic subject, compete use of canvas, natural and curvy shapes, natural colours, geometric themes. | Total abstraction, leaving some portions of the canvas blank. Sharp and perfect shapes, intense blues and blacks, colours that don’t blend and cause deep contrast, a painting based on geometry. |
Goal State: Blue Circle is a great a great example of Kandinsky’s later work. With a completely abstract and geometric painting, he leaves behind the depiction of European life and then goes on to create a new way of painting. It’s hard to say what the painting is about, except itself. With its strong cuts and edges and perfect circle, it's hard not to get lost in the geometry of its beauty. Kandinsky went from giving hints of his abstraction to leaving the view alone, leaving a confusing but thought provoking work.
Evolution: By examining Kandinsky's work within the Paired constraint model, we can see that creativity is a process that entails shifting and precluding and promoting certain elements of a style to get a novel addition to the domain, which in this case is modern art.
Taeuber-Arp[edit]
Sophie Henriette Gertrud Taeuber-Arp was a Swiss artist, painter, sculptor, textile designer, furniture and interior designer, architect, and dancer. An influential Dada artist, she is largely overlooked in popular art culture but is recognised within the artist historian community as a hugely influential part of the Dada community.
We will do an examination of her work within the Paired constraints model of creativity to examine her evolution as an artist.
Vertical, Horizontal, Square, Rectangular (Vertical, horizontal, carré, rectangulaire) - Quadrangular Strokes Evoking and Framing[edit]
Initial State: This painting is an excellent example of a painting that appears to be simple but is far more complex beneath the surface. All of the painting is contained in a box, and this box contains other boxes of varying sizes. Though this structure a sense of movement and space is made, promoting a calm but structured energy like an empty New York City.
| Retain: | Preclude: | Promote: |
|---|---|---|
| Use of colours, use of geometry | Straight Lines, Grid Structure, calm Structured energy. | Semi Straight Lines, Semi Grid Structure, Calm but unstructured energy. |
Goal State: In this painting we see Taeuber-Arp move away from the strict grid structure but towards a more fluid way of painting. It still contains squares, but these are no longer contained in a lager square, however the flaring of the squares at the top give the painting a sense of movement, it appears to be almost like a funnel making the viewer go down towards the the bottom of the painting.
Quadrangular Strokes Evoking and Framing - Line geometricaland wavy[edit]
Initial State: Quadrangular Strokes Evoking and Framing
| Retain: | Preclude: | Promote: |
|---|---|---|
| Use of geometric lines, use of colours. | Squares, straight lines, | Other Shapes, curves lines. |
Goal State: In this painting Taeuber-Arp steers away from using boxes, but then transitions to use other means of geometry. She still uses colours, but in a more muted way. The painting almost seems like it was made on a computer. The lines are thicker and very clear curvy, this provides a difference sense of movement, one that is less regegmemented but still based on the rule of geometry. The viewer. Cant help but move all across the page, unlike in the Quadrangular Strokes piece where the view of the onlooker is brought down.
What makes a Taeuber-Arp a Taeuber-Arp:
A Taeuber-Arp is a painting that pays great respect to colour and geometry. It allows for the onlooker to follow the painting from start to finish, but provide substance that one must look several times to fully comprehend the piece. A level of abstraction is presence making the work hard to interpret but easy to enjoy. The level of precision is high, with each element of the work being placed exactly where it should be.
Creativity in the field of art[edit]
It is clear that artistic creativity is not something that is innate but is built overtime on the shoulder of giants. As seen by the analysis of both Kandinsky and Taeuber-Arp, we can see that they progression is not random but a product of them precluding and promoting certain aspects of their work over time.
Creativity in literature[edit]
The Writers[edit]
In this section we will be discussing 4 prominent writers and how they work can give us insight on the psychology of creativity. Writing is one of the oldest creative endeavours. Since Homer's The Odyssey, writers have had special access to our minds eye and how we view the world. We will be examining 4 writers: Calvino, Kundera, Dillard and Byatt, seeing their work through the Paired constraint model of creativity. In addition we will be examining key elements of their work through the 4 literary devices: metaphor, patterning, minesis, and plain and fine prose. Metaphor being defined as "a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object or action to which it is not literally applicable", minesis being defined "as the act of placing a pieces of prose perfectly within the text, fundamentally effecting the text. Patterning can be described by using patterns of people, events, ideas, and themes within the text to drive meanings. Fine prose can be seen as a text that like is thick and complex like a painting that itself is demonstrating something but at the same time itself. Plain prose is the hand that points to the idea, but the hand is not important, more than the idea; therefor plain prose seeks to describe not to decorate itself.
Calvino[edit]
Italo Calvino was an Italian writer and journalist. We can examine his work Invisible Cites, through the paired constraints model, by examining his various creative constraints.
Source Constraints[edit]
Calvino's source constraints are the writers that use fantasy to create a new system of logic within their writings. These writers include Kafka and Gogol. In addition he continues the tradition of fantasy with authors like Edwin Abbot & Bruno Schultz.
Goal Constraint
His goal constraint is to make a novel that is based on images. The images that exist in his mind that exist because of his imagination. However, he states that imagination is an instrument of knowledge, so he wants to utilise his knowledge to produce images, that can be disseminated through the written word within the framework of fantasy.
Subject Constraints[edit]
His subject constraints are around an extraordinary event, he wises to use images to describe the times around and after the extraordinary event in a way that creates symmetry and an internal structure.
Task Constraints
His tasks constraints are similar to his subject and goal constraints. In the sense he uses writing as a way to deliver images and to work around an extraordinary event. He also uses is goal constraint as a task constraint by using fantasy to deliver his images.
Invisible Cities[edit]
Invisible Cities explores imagination and the imaginable through the descriptions of cities by an explorer, Marco Polo. The book is framed as a conversation between the elderly and busy emperor Kublai Khan, who constantly has merchants coming to describe the state of his expanding and vast empire, and Polo.
Literary Devices within Invisible Cities.[edit]
Metaphor: The cities within the story are the metaphor, they exist to describe the human experience, to describe our desires, human interactions. The book is not about cities, but about the people who occupy the cities. As stated before, the main city is Marco’s city of Venice, which he can only describe through the collection of other cities.
“Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules are absurd, their perspectives deceitful, and everything conceals something else.” - Invisible Cities
This quote demonstrates the power of the city metaphor in describing human existence. The City is place that we occupy but also occupies us.
Mimesis: The book is placed in a very specific way, each chapter is placed mathematically, so the reader is woven in an out of the descriptions to the conversation. Nothing about the structure can change. It is like a strong complex mathematical shape, a three dimensional triangle, that is so strong that any movement of any chapter would destroy the shape entirely.
Patterning: This is very similar to the mimesis of the novel, the pattern is how the poems of the cities are placed. The pattern comes at a cost and at a benefit, it allows the reader mind to wonder and indulge in the new logic of the book, but it makes the book dense, requiring the reader to dive back in many times. The patterning also gives the book strength, and also gives the book no formal end, just new ways to renter it.
Prose
The book is filled with fine prose, as it is complex, has enormous depth, and has lots of room for interpretation, so Calvino's style is defined by his complexity.
Kundera[edit]
Source Constraints[edit]
Leos Janacek, the composer is a source constraint. He states that he wants to make his novel Janackeian, meaning to rid the novel of any automatism of novelistic technique to make a more rhythmic and mathematically novel. Another source constraint is Franz Kafka. This is because Kundera uses the method that Kafka used to make his world like the old novels with the presence of a perfect harmonic plot, but with in the framework of almost a dream like world that feels almost more real than reality.
Goal Constraints
One of his stylistic constraints is to make the novels have a polyphony like style. Which means that each of his novels have several voices of equal volume, but of different keys playing at the same time, which could represent the short nature of his novels and the zig zagging nature of the works. Instead of having one character as the main character, Kundera bounces around, and builds multiple voices.
Subject Constraints[edit]
His subject constraints involve European life, the idea of memory, love, and how one reacts to the changing of history. In addition communism plays a huge role within his works, as a the major former of eastern European life.
Task Constraints
His task constraints involve making a mathematical novel, broken up in to very exact parts, to signal importance and to signal rhythm. In addition to the math involved, he also uses rhythm just like musician, using tempos like moderato, allegretto, and prestissimo, to pace his work, so that his views and novels can be truly digested.
Ignorance[edit]
Ignorance is a novel about the exiles trying to make their way back home after the fall of communism. It delves deeply about loss and love and how ignorance can make shared experiences so different to separate people. The book heavily analyses the feeling of nostalgia.
“The Greek word for "return" is nostos. Algos means "suffering." So nostalgia is the suffering caused by an unappeased yearning to return.” - Ignorance, Kundera.
This quote shows the philosophical nature of Kundera work, and the heavy self reflection that is done by each of the characters within the novel.
Literary Devices within Ignorance[edit]
Metaphor: The book is filled to the brim with metaphors, in Ignorance, the emigre experience is a metaphor for memory, nostalgia and existence, just like patterning, all the characters go through the metaphor in different ways but in the end we as the reader come away with a stronger knowledge of what these themes truly mean.
Mimesis: Everything in the novel is perfectly placed, all the chapter are thought of as pieces of a math equation to demonstrate some part of the human condition. All the words are placed in a way that is delicate, not as poetic as Byatt but in a way that produced awe in the reader.
Patterning: The themes of the books include memory and nostalgia, both are patterned through each of the works. Every character faces these in a different way, but the combination of the all of the experiences produces a picture of how humans live regardless of the time frame.
Prose:
Kundera's proses within Ignorance is more of the plain variety. Rather than leaning on the prose of his novel to bring meaning, he uses dialogue and plot to expand on the themes within the book.
Byatt[edit]
Source Constraints[edit]
For the source constraints of Sugar, Byatt uses both Balzac and Proust, both French writers. She uses Balzac, in the sense that the main character is perceiving and inventing her world. By recounting her life, through the lens of her dead farther, she is recounting truth, but also lies of the mind, bringing together what she thinks is true and the constructive narrative that she perceives.
“As a little girl I had a clear vision of his pale limbs somehow telescoped and contracted into this dirty receptacle, like a discarded dead root, though I think now that he was probably trying to lift it, that the blood ran to his head. I knew exactly where this coal bucket stood in Blythe House. It stood on the threshold between the kitchen and the cellar, whose dark door led into a frightening blackness I remember stepping nervously back from. I must have been three. The coal bucket can never have been there, but I associate the two blacknesses, the fear of uncontrolled falling.”
In this memory she uses both Balzac and Proust as sources, eluding and artfully describing the the recollection of her childhood that she experiences but also creates but recounting.
Subject Constraints[edit]
In Rose Coloured Teacups the subject constraints are about an intergenerational family, the clash of generations. She delves deep into the meaning of what it means to be a mother, daughter and woman, through both memory and the material, such as the rose coloured tea cups and the sewing machine.
In Sugar, It is clear that in Sugar, the subject constraints are the woman’s life, family, and her dying father. Most of the piece is written about her family in relation to her, not solely about herself.
Sugar and other Rose Colored Teacups:[edit]
"A.S. Byatt's short fictions explore the fragile ties between generations, the dizzying abyss of loss and the elaborate memories we construct against it, resulting in a book that compels us to inhabit other lives and returns us to our own with new knowledge, compassion, and a sense of wonder."
Rose-Colored Teacups presents a simple story between mother and daughter. Young fashionable daughter broke her mother’s old sewing machine left by her own mother. Before bursting into a fury, mother remembers a similar story that happened to her at her daughter’s age. When she broke some rose- colored teacups sent by her mother’s friends, her mother’s responses were very furious.
Literary Devices within Byatt's Writing[edit]
Mimesis
In Sugar, it is clear that Byatt is imitating the work of Proust, such as in search of lost time, in a memoir like fashion where the first person perspective recounts but also creates the memory of their life.
In Rose Coloured Tea Cup, she use mimesis with artists like Monet and other impressionists, in her vivid and colour descriptions. Imitating them in a written fashion but still using the themes of light and colour to deepen the themes of her story and placing these references perfectly within the story.
Metaphor
In Sugar, a metaphor that is used, is sugar, signifying the sweetness of life and death through the life of her father.
In Rose Coloured Teacups the metaphor of the china cups that the protagonist and her friends drink Nescafe out of, is a metaphor of the changing of the time, changing of the generations that produces conflict between her mother and her, and her mothers mothers and her mother.
Patterning
In Sugar, one of the many patterns is the constant reference to culture and novels, throughout the story the main character references, compares, and bases her experience on other pieces of art, such as Van Gogh, Arden, and Camus, with many others.
In Rose Coloured Teacups, the pattern is the continued use of the colour rose, plastered throughout the story, with tea cups, the walls, the decor. The story is about an intergenerational struggle, the rose, and the other colours for that matter, allows the read to be engrossed with the fusion of the piece. The constant colour themes is the pattern throughout the story, signally to the reader that these colours mean something.
Dillard[edit]
Fine Prose[edit]
Fine prose is complex. Concretely, fine prose “raids the world for materials to build sentences. It fabricates a semiopaque weft of language. ITs a spendthrift pros and a senses. It hauls in visual imagery of every sort; it stews metaphors about, and bald similes, and allusions to every realm.” Fine prose is thick, its a dense painting that itself is demonstrating something but at the same time itself. The presentation of an idea is as important to the idea itself. Fine writing also contains to sub sections. One section is the use of a voice. This voice is usually someone outside of the main class of people, like a Jewish person, or an emigré. Dillard doesn’t have a name for the other type of writing, but its contemporary, dense, and uses the stream of conscience.
Plain Prose[edit]
Plain prose is simple. It is the hand that points to the idea, but the hand is not important, more than the idea. Like the hand trying to point a puppy to a certain direction, plain prose doesn’t want the reader to observe the hand, it just wants the reader to experience the idea. Where as fine prose, the medium is the message, plain prose seeks the opposite. “The prose is a kind of literally vernacular. It poses the virtues of beauty, clarity and strength without embellishment.” Plain prose, is just as it sounds: plain. That doesn’t mean its easier to write. It is often harder to distill an idea in a combination of simple sentences. But through this difficulty, comes simplicity and beauty.
"Plain writing is by no means easy writing. The mot juste is an intellectual achievement there is nothing relaxed about the about the of this prose; it is as restricted and taut as the pace of lyric poet. The short sentences of plan prose have a good deal of blank space around them, as lines of lyric poetry do, and even as the abrupt utterance of Beckett characters do They erupt against a backdrop of silence These sentences are - in an extreme form of plain writing- objects themselves objects which invite inspections and which flaunt their simplicity. - Fine Writing, Cranks, and the New Morality: Prose Styles - Dillard
False Continuum[edit]
There is not a strict continuum, but an overlapping difference between the two proses. Some works like Flaubert are almost entirely fine prose. And other works are almost entirely plain proses like Hemingway. However most other writers have elements of both within their work.
Similarities & Constraints between the writers[edit]
It's clear that the writers have strong elements of fine prose with the novels. But the question remains, which is the finest. It seems to me that Byatt is the finest prose. This is because every sentence carries an important semantic meaning. The structure of the words within those sentences matter. The form gives the story meaning. An excerpt from Rose Coloured Teacups:”Jane was unusually at home because of some unexpected hiatus in her very busy social life, which flowed and overflowed from house to house, from friend’s kitchen to friend’s kitchen, loud with rock, pungent with illegal smoke, vigorous-voiced.” This quote shows the complexity and simplicity of her writing. It is both fine and plain at the same time, the subcomponents are simple but the structure of sentence is complex, leading to a more fine writing.
Calvino also writes very fine writing, in the sense that it’s not plain. The words of the cities are complex, deep, filled with metaphors. These are all not what makes plain writing plain, so it is complex. The writing is rich, its dense, its mathematical. The structure of the book is apart of the message itself. The novel is saying, look over there but also at the finger which I am pointing with.
Kundera is a somewhere in the middle, as Dillard says, fine prose is often characterised by a voice, a voice that comes from a class of people that are often on the periphery of society and Kundera is an emigré, so it is clear that fits that description, but the sentences with in the novel are simple. The dialogues between the characters are close to real life, but the swirling structure of the book, leads it be also fine prose. Just like Calvino and Byatt, Kundera is neither purely fine or purely plain.
Memoirs[edit]
This section will be dedicated to a section of memoirs written by James Kettle. We begin with an original memoir and shift it via the paired constraints model of creativity, thus creating a new memoir in a new style.
The original[edit]
This memoir is about the moments before leaving for college in Europe and the resulting breakup of James' relationship. It is a story about confession, love, and loss. The original is written in the writers own style and severs as a base for the creative analysis ahed.
It was an orchestra of chaos, everyone in the brownstone was gathering, collecting, packing, moving something. Better put, everything. I was in the broom closet formally called my room, with my soon to be ex-girl friend Rhea. She was on my bed that was exactly the length of the width of the room, which lead there to be an enormous hole at the foot of the bed that I had constructed over the past 4 years I lived there. The room was covered floor to ceiling with posters, maps, poems, pieces of cloth, and anything in-between. I was grabbing everything I needed from the drawers, night stand, and bookshelf, almost destroying each one while searching through them. Rhea began to speak to me.
“I know… I know we’ve already said goodbyes. But I can’t believe you’re going.” she said as she looked up. A tear made its way down her face. “It’s just that — I’ve never felt for someone like I do with you.” She began to sob with her voice breaking at the ends. I heard her distress. I heard a shout from my mother down stairs.
“James! We’re going! Now!” said Ellen. She was a Jewish woman, originally from Ukraine but who grew up in the northeast. While seemingly of normal demeanour she was fiercely in control and had the entire trip to France planed from the moment they left Brooklyn until the moment they returned now without me.
“Mom! I’m coming!” I said as I zipped up my bag, went to the bed and laid next Rhea. I held her and ran my fingers down her hair. She was crying now, leaving a large spot of tears on the sheet beneath her. “It’s going to be ok. Shhhh, it’s all going to be fine.”
“JAMES we have to go!” Ellen howled from the bottom floor.
“Mom! I told you, I’m coming.”
I moved her head so I could see her eyes and wiped the tears from her check. I kissed her, and held there for a while feeling the warmth from her lips, and the pressure of her fingers digging into my side.
“I love you” I said.
“I love you” She said as she stopped crying.
I heard a knocking on the door and large heavy footsteps. It was my father Peter. “Oi, your mother wants you, you best be coming down then.” He said in his British accent. When he saw the scene of the parting lovers, he backed away from the door and said “Oh, umm, finish up in there, yeah? Come down when you’re done.” He walked down stairs with his elephant like footsteps.
I got up and kissed her on the forehead again. I zipped up my bag and picked it up. It contained everything I owed, far over 50 pounds. She feel into her own arms on the bed and started crying again.
I walked the bag downstairs. My house was built as if felt to hold your breath and move your shoulders up to ears. The stairs were comically steep. I broke a sweat trying to carry my bag to the ground floor. I used one leg as leverage and wobbled down, trying my best not to die in the process. When I arrived at in corridor connecting to the living room and entrance, I saw everyone scrambling like ants being terrorised by a sadistic teenager. I walked in to the living room and saw my mother and grandmother arguing in Rusglish over which medication she needed to take.
“Mamma, nyet, you don’t need all of your pills.”
“Oy! Oy! She’s tells me what I need, she tells me what I need.” my grandmother said as she raised her hands in the air.
“Doris, just give me your pills, I’ll put them in my bag.” I said to her.
“Oh my grandson, look at you, three generation! So intelligent.” She said. She was a former Soviet engineer that had immigrated to the USA with my mother in the 70s. She spoke in words, and always let you know if you made a horrible mistake, like being fat for example. When she complimented someone, they were assumed to be in the running for the Noble Prize. When Matthew got in to Columbia, she responded ‘Why not Harvard?’
“Ok everyone, come sit.” My mother said. It was Russian tradition to sit before a big trip. Tt was bad luck not to. It is always the most cursed people to be the most superstitious. They sat down. William, my brother, peered his head in from the kitchen. He narrowly escaped coming with the rest of the family, too busy with “SAT Prep”, which consisted of playing video games and ordering tacos. He wasn’t too upset to see his brother go, it just meant less music from down stairs and more takeout.
“Billy, come sit,” instructed my mother. Rhea snuck her way in to room avoiding a conversation with Doris, who was ecstatic that her grandson had a Jewish girlfriend, but deflated that he was making the mistake of leaving. On numerous occasions Doris had mentioned our future wedding, which unsettled us both.
The family sat in silence, with their hands placed on their thighs. We looked into each other’s eyes, trying to sense when it would be appropriate to get up and break it.
After a few seconds, Peter slapped his hands on his highs, the British signal of ‘lets get a move on then’, and everyone shot up. Ellen and Doris were hugging William, I was hugging Rhea and Peter was on his way to the taxi.
They all piled in, packed like a sardines in a taxi yellow cab. Rhea was on the edge of the sidewalk, waving goodbye. The car left the curb to the airport, and Rhea remained on the street, growing sullen as the car drove further away. I placed my head on the window and imagined what life would be like in France.
In the voice of Byatt[edit]
This version of the memoir is written in the voice of Byatt. The writer decided to promote a sense of philosophy and fine prose within the new edition. This made the text harder to read but has a greater ability to describe complex emotions. One can't say if this revision made the memoir better or worse, but it changed it in a way that it is fundamentally different.
I remember the room, small and cramped around the size of coffin. The beige bed resting on both sides of the wall, with brown and scratched up desk beside it. Lining the wall was the many books I had collected during high school when I was lonely, then besides me, my soon to be ex-girlfriend who replaced the books.
“Transformation” was the word my mother used to describe my change when I met Rhea, there was dark then there was light like her blond hair with brown roots. Her soft and kind face red with tears. The blur of leaving, the energy of collecting your life, permeated the air leaving it hard to breath and even harder to say goodbye. As if I was in Algeria in the world of Camus, on the beach, sun soaked and deprived of sense. She spoke, I could not listen. The words that flew across the room had no meaning. Love and hate, goodbye and hellos, they all meant the same thing, they all represented the unstoppable passage of time.
As all relationships do, mine was ending, I was set to leave for college in France, l’Hexagone. It would then transform me to a new man, to a new person, filled to the brim of my soul with culture, but alas plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose, but now I was alone.
It was amicable, or so we said, but it never is. And I descended down the stairs to my family awaiting me, I knew she realised that she was now a memory in progress, here today, but to slowly disappear as word written in sand, awaiting for the tide to creep behind it, in a process that seems so preventable, but simultaneously unstoppable.
As Russians, or Jews, or Easterners, my family is confused and worried, so to remedy the confusion of movement and change we partake in superstitions. Before every trip, we all sit, in silence, and wait for the spirits to settle and wish us well. Not that we believe it, but just abide. Me and Rhea sit. We stand, and then my family, excluding my brother, gets into a cab. This is the start of my new life, I think to myself. I try to guess what she is thinking as we pull away, but that power, I once had while we embraced together, is gone. “Goodbye”, I think to myself. I assume she thought the same.
In the voice of Kundera[edit]
This version of the memoir is in the style of Kundera. The writer promotes the use of metaphors and plain prose. The writing is deep but at its core simple. The story is the same as the original, but framed in a completely different way that it becomes not a story about the end of James' love, but the story about the end of love as a whole.
I step across the room as the light from the window shifts to a calm grey as the heat of august fades. I’ve done this once before, deja vu, runs over me. It was under different circumstances, but still the act of leaving some place, leaving someone is just the same. You are saying, my life is good, but as time moves, I will find somewhere better. Me and her understood that long distance was not going to work. We have known that early on. A relationship in high school is fickle, its temporary. But, the love that was there didn’t feel fickle.
When one looks to the future, and is set to go a thousand miles away, they are torn to decided to they will stay in the same place with their heart or uproot it and rip it from the ground. That was for the best, the temporary pain is often better than the slow demise of love. Love is like a rose, it can flourish with care, with water, with light. But take it away from its soil, it will live for a time, then it will start to wither.
We both knew that we were too young, it wasn’t apart of our culture to stay together once we went to separate colleges, so thus, this was a final goodbye. We didn’t want the love to wither, so we decided to put it out of its misery, in the processes making her quite miserable.
I’m packing my bags with a last check list of what I will need to finally uproot what I have made here and try my luck somewhere else. She was on the bed crying, mourning of what was going to come. I was too distracted to mourn. My mother calls me to come down, that the cab is waiting.
“I can’t believe you’re really going” She says. I can believe it. Regardless if I believe or don’t, I will be gone. “Don’t worry, it will be ok” I say, as I go to run my fingers through her hair. I start to bring my bags down. The family sits, a Ukrainian tradition to sit before a trip for good luck. It’s always the most cursed people who are the most superstitious.
“Goodbye” I say as my family packs into the car.
“Goodbye” She says.
There was much more that was said with our eyes, but time only allows for so much chatter. We start to drive to the airport, thus plucking the flower from the ground a final time.
In the voice of Calvino[edit]
In this version of the memoir, the writer takes the most drastic stylistic turn by attempting to emulate Calvino. Instead of the cities the Calvino references in his book Invisible Cities Kettle uses ceilings to drive his story. The prose is more difficult to understand and the reader is dropped into a new world, but around the foci of the ceiling, the reader can relive the universal feeling of loss.
1. Her Ceiling:
The tapestry like pattern runs over itself as the colours turns to shades upon one anther. At night, the glow of the street lamps gives it a bluish tinge. There I lay I wake thinking about what is to come. My eyes locked on this ceiling, thinking again this will be the last time in this place. I say my goodbyes to her family and the ceiling that becomes blue with the night.
2. My Ceiling
The wall paper always get complimented when someone new enters the house. Arrows and branches run across from each other creating a zig zag that one can get lost in. The repeating patterns, the shallow depth that runs through your eyes. She’s crying next to me as I stare into the ceiling, this would be our last goodbye. As I stare deeper, my family calls from the floor below. My room, my room since birth. I am set to leave my room and to leave her. My heart cant take much more, so I stare into the ceiling getting lost before I must go.
3. Plane’s ceiling
Its cramped and grey, going with my parents on an overnight flight, we look up at the plane ceiling. It’s the same all the way round, there is no depth, no change of colour, no movement, just grey. The ceiling allows me to see into my self. We are on our way, we have said our good byes, now it is just time to wait. My parents will see this ceiling again, I will not, I will not see a plane’s ceiling for months. The greyness of the ceiling allows me to drift to sleep. When I awake, I see it again, lighter with light.
4. My New Ceiling
The sheets are new, and the day was long, meeting everyone at the college, then saying good bye before drifting off. The ceilings are white, filled with oppruitinuy, who will see them, what will happen under these ceilings. The walls and ceilings are one line with no edges, like a life that has no shifts, the past few days has only been edges. It’s hard to tell where my ceiling ends and my wall begins.
A new memoir in the voice of Dillard[edit]
To change the memoir in the voice of Dillard, the writer chose to write a different story. This way he was able effectively isolate the parts of Dillard that makes her writing unique. This story was about the writer's time in quarantine and how he ran to pass the time. The writing is a mix of plain and fine prose but leans on the plain prose. There are also many allusions to various authors, but also a journalistic style that is present in Dillards work. By changing the story, Kettle used the skills and tools from the other previous writers in addition to exploring the voice of Dillard.
I remember running. I remember the hot summer air heaving around my clean shaven head. I remember the summer heat, sun, blaring down, assaulting the backs of my legs, and tip of my nose. In quarantine, in upstate New York, I was atop of the peak pyramid of privilege. But the top is lonely, and though safe from people, safe from viruses, pathogens, both social and biological, we (my family) were stranded in our own safety. I had always wanted to be alone in the words. Now that I was, I couldn’t stand it. I couldn’t bare the yoke of isolation, I couldn’t bare the burden of safety. I wished to be confined with my comrades in the city. Trapped in lifeless apartments, together but distanced. Now that we were safe and away, I started to lose the little mind I had left. So I began to run.
Runners run away from something. Do not let anyone tell you otherwise. No one runs for fun, we run away. I ran from my isolation. I ran to focus on the here and now, the steep steps stomping away on the street paved with new crisp concrete. There were screens and there was music, but I ran without it. I ran raw, with as little as possible, with no hat, no shirt, no water, if I could have, I would have thrown my shoes away but the cement was too hard and my arches too high. So away I went, in to the breach, as a solo light brigade.
Just a step after the half way mark of a run, the die is cast and one must return to their destination, their goal becomes a requirement. The excitement of completion turns to dread of responsibility. We are responsible for our bodies, we are responsible for our well being. How nice would it be, if we were children and someone could pluck us away from a run too far ran. But no, one must swipe the sweat off the shoulder and prepare the aloe vera, for the sun was strong and the ran was ambitious.
I ran because I couldn’t bare the light of isolation, I couldn’t bare the space between my thoughts, so I ran, and I improved, but in improvement, the sense drained from my ears, and my feet began to bleed, and my arms became thinner. What I gained running, I was losing just the same.
You can’t run from your thoughts, at least not well. Your thoughts follow you, the dash in the space in-between your breath, the white space of your mind, they run with you. I began to not run away from the thoughts, but with them. As soon as I had these partners to run with, I was free, for I was never alone.
Below the sun pelting me, the words drip from my mouth in a whimper. “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so”. I wipe the sweat, and continue on my run, isolated, but no longer alone.
The most effective style[edit]
It is hard to say which style is the most effective. If the metric is the delivery of the original story, then the original memoir is the most effective. However, each of the voices bring something new and something valuable. The Calvino style brings an artistic and style element that breaks the boundaries of what literature can be, while the Kundera style allows of a introspective view into the writers mind and thoughts about love. However, the most unique piece must be the memoir in the style of Dillard. The Dillard memoir brings a new perspective of the covid-19 pandemic and how it effected people, but also says something deep about human nature and the need for togetherness. Its a bold piece that builds about the works of others and itself to provide the reader with new perspective.
Burial - Untrue[edit]
In this section we will be analysing Burial's album, Untrue, with the Paired Constraints model.
Burial, or William Bevan, is now a prolific producer and musician but was a anonymous musician in the south of London. Untrue is Burials second album, often cited as the most important album in electronic music history.He revolutionised how electronic music was produced. He is now extremely popular and continues to produce music.
Sources[edit]
His sources are Electronic music, Garage, and Dubstep and the internet.
Electronic music[edit]
Electronic music is a genre of music that employs electronic musical instruments, digital instruments, or circuitry-based music technology in its creation. He is an electronic musician so he incorporates all the tools that have been developing sense the invention of electronic music.
What is Garage?[edit]
UK garage, abbreviated as UKG, is a genre of electronic dance music which originated in England in the early to mid-1990s. The genre was most clearly inspired by garage house, but also incorporates elements from R&B, jungle and dance-pop. It is defined by percussive, shuffled rhythms with syncopated hi-hats, cymbals and snares, and may include either 4/4 house kick patterns or more irregular "2-step" rhythms. His music primarily uses these rhythms and could be classified as Garage.
Dubstep[edit]
Dubstep is a genre of electronic dance music that originated in South London in the early 2000s. It is generally characterised by sparse, syncopated rhythmic patterns with prominent sub-bass frequencies. His music can also be classified as Dubstep because of its syncopated rhythms and dark atmosphere.
Youtube and the internet[edit]
Many of his samples come from video games or the internet showing that he is an internet explorer and takes much of inspiration from the internet.
Paired constraints model[edit]
Initial State: UK Garage, Dubstep, Electronic music
| Retain: | Preclude: | Promote: |
|---|---|---|
| The basic song structure
Electronic instruments Samples |
Sound quality
Music making software Quantisation Official Samples Happy energy Fast paced |
Grainy Sound quality
Made in sound forge Completely off kilter Samples from Youtube/video games Dark energy Slow pace |
Goal State: Untrue
How creative is Burial?[edit]
Burial is considered one of the most important artists of our generation interns of electronic music. On the surface his is certainly creative, but let's take a deeper look into how exactly his is creative.
Novel and useful[edit]
It is hard to say if music is "Useful", but I would argue that it is. Music is the soundtrack of our lives. Music deeply affects us. It can turn a happy day sad or a sad day happy. If we do consider music to be useful than Burial's Untrue is certainly useful. The album allows for a deep expression of loneliness and isolation while expanding the boundaries of music.
Novel and generative[edit]
Untrue is certainly generative. Through this album that Burial produced in two weeks, a whole genre was born of low-fi and emotional dubstep that we are still hearing today. In addition the methods of production that he used, such as off kilter rhythms are still being used today.
Novel and influential[edit]
In the same way that his music is generative, his music is extremely influential. His signature sound is heavily emulated and the way he has created his music now largely used in more Independent music labels.