Symptom: common definitions are not shared especially regarding the following terms: conflicted; friendship; protection; respect. The absence of eye-contact, le visage and the shifting tenor of voice-- its hesitations, its punctuation marks-- has caused a severe bulging in close reading practice. In a word, writing is broken.
Cure: speak out loud, as one does, frequently. Do not try to count the leaves on trees, but do listen differently to how they sound especially when you think you've understood them perfectly. Finally, make a practice of looking at your hands as you type.
4 comments:
Dear Doctor Wild,
all very good advice there.
Also, Derrida has taught us in his discussion of the "utterance", we shouldn't try to resolve or prioritize the tension between the written and the spoken word - meaning will always already live elsewhere. It falls elsewhere, out side - "between word and image" as your service promises. Perhaps we should also try to accept a lack of precision in communication - miscommunications as constitutive parts of dialogue and hence of ourselves. Translations, in text or in the head, puts even further stress on this.
A well-known tennis player, now retired, infamous for his poor behaviour on court, rarely commented on his behaviour. Rarely apologized and hardly ever tried to explain it. Commentators speculated wether it was a game to make the opponent nervous, other tended to treat it as childish and a display from a poor looser. But it was another player, Pete Sampras who laid it out best, he explained that the reason for his frustration on court was that he wanted to play the game perfectly, without misses and errors - "the total game." Anger materializes as this is impossible to do, refs included. Some of his bad behavious even comes in a match that he has all but won, and still wins, but winning the game was only a minor ambition for him. (When his major opponent took himself out of the game, it all dies for him. The possibility to play the close to the perfect game was gone, and winning meant even less.)
All best and keep up the good work, J. McE.
Dear J. McE.,
A few questions to potentially assist you with your symptoms:
a. Who was Sampras' (true) interlocutor?
b. Who is yours?
c. When a word falls elsewhere, is it like a tennis ball when it is "out"--still a real ball but just beyond the boarders of the playing field?
d. If we accepted a "lack of precision in communication," as you suggest, would this lead to happy tennis players, more fair play, or simply more fun? Or none of the above?
e. Can you name three reasons why Sampras' major opponent would take himself out of the game?
Finally, since I tend to like Agassi more than Sampras:
“It's shocking how little there is to do with tennis when you're just thinking about nothing except winning every point.”
Andre Agassi
drw
I'll have to pass on the interlocutors(for reasons of not having the term fresh enough in mind to comment on). which might be a better answer than I expected it to be.
Now, when a ball is called out, it all depends on how it is called out to draw any larger conclusions from it: by the linesmen (with or without a slight delay), by the head umpire (who thereby corrects the ruling by the linesmen and calls the entire system in question), or by a "beep" via a sensor that determines wether the ball was in and overrides all human agencies to determine a balls whereabouts. once the ball is out, it is real, and in play, safe in the hands of the boys and girls running around catching them. until "new balls" are called and the old ones are discarded. And, as Mr McEnroe has demonstrated, one can, as a player, always question the whole procudere, but the system will protect itself by fining you and by making sure that the surrounding world will participate in the negative sanctions with regards to the questioning.
Otherwise, tennis would not be my sport-metaphor of choice (we slipped into this one sideways I think), if I wanted to say something personal, it would be football (but you know me, right, I'm slightly too focused on the quotodian to indulge in metaphors to explain myslef). But tennis works well to talk about film: it has all to do with the movement, the eyesight, the geometry of the court, and as Godard has pointed out (an avid player himself) that it's nothing but "shot-reverse-shot".
I like Agassi too, I didn't really like Sampras that much until 1. I saw him on Letterman, where he was lively and funny in a casual way (begging to be spared all questions about tennis), and 2. when he retired. what a gentlemen (without ever becomming boring or a silly twat).
Actually, regarding your initial reflection on Sampras, it seems Sampras's actual interlocutor was himself. He needs his opponent only to play his best game; but he seems really only to be talking to himself--his anger, his frustration.
I think the negative sanctions you describe regarding Mr. McEnroe are actually about civility. Tennis is such a civilized game and questioning that means that you care perhaps to play only by your own rules rather than participate in an established framework of a back and forth.
You may have chosen football. We are talking about tennis. And until now, singles. Perhaps you'd care to reflect upon doubles? In America, we often refer to "Canadian doubles" for that game of three-person tennis. I've played it, and usually it stops before anyone has one. Then again, winning perhaps isn't the goal in that form. It usually occurs when someone hasn't shown up.
drw
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