homecoming and solitude
I had my school homecoming dance this past weekend and it was loads of fun. Once again Ridley, I have to voice my opinion that you should go to prom. Academic programs are a dime a dozen, but to miss a historic opportunity to musick? Shameful.
Partially due to my weekend musicking, I'm now trying deperately to write a research paper on One Hundred Years of Solitude. It brings back memories of TASP, but my mum is even more of a stickler than Adam and Jenny about getting to bed on time, so I better get back to work.
Top five artists for writing papers:
1. Yo-yo Ma
2. James Taylor
3. Charlie Daniels Band
4. Potato Moon
5. Alison Kraus
posted by Emma at 8:26 PM
14 Comments:
"in solitude with all of you."
Oxymoron alert!
9:31 PM, February 22, 2006
Mayhaps she's right, minus the magic and incest and stuff...
/crosses eyes
Maybe... :-P
11:38 PM, February 22, 2006
And minus the dying. Personally, I'm kind of hoping that academes condemned to one hundred years of solitude will get a second chance to be together on this earth.
Okay, um, that sounds super wierd out of context. Read the book if you haven't already, then read that last bit again.
9:11 PM, February 23, 2006
"in solitude with all of you"
I don't know that it's paradoxic or oxymoronic (is that a word?). It sounds to me like an analysis of semi-monasticism.
7:23 PM, February 24, 2006
"It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinions; it is easy in solitude to live after your own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude."
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
I don't think that's an oxymoron in the slightest, just very difficult. And I still say Bah Humbug! to prom. And I still say Gabriel Garcia Marquez is a genius of the first degree. And I still say One Hundred Years of Solitude is a masterpiece. And I just did a radio show with a couple of friends. And it was way, way good.
10:27 PM, February 24, 2006
Solitude with others = impossible. Think about the root. From solus (or some such) no? Meaning all alone.
Wait... I looked it up
[Middle English, from Old French, from Latin solitudo, from solus, alone.]
Synonyms: solitude, isolation, seclusion, retirement
These nouns denote the state of being alone. Solitude implies the absence of all others: “The worst solitude is to be destitute of sincere friendship” (Francis Bacon). “I love tranquil solitude” (Percy Bysshe Shelley). Isolation emphasizes total separation or detachment from others: “the isolation of Crusoe, depicted by Defoe's genius” (Winston Churchill). Seclusion suggests removal, though not necessarily complete inaccessibility; the term often connotes a withdrawal from social contact: enjoyed my walk in the seclusion of the woods. Retirement suggests a withdrawal or retreat from active life, as for serenity or privacy: “an elegant sufficiency, content,/Retirement, rural quiet, friendship, books” (James Thomson).
12:25 AM, February 25, 2006
Stomped. No other way to put it. Dylan, you make a strong argument indeed. Not that I'd expect less. Let me dig around for something else to say...how bout: I think we differ in our definition. That's always a good fallback. In my mind there's a difference between physical isolation and psychological solitude. You can be sitting in a stadium listening to the screaming of 60,000 other people and still possess an identity and awareness of the world around you that’s separate from the whole which you’re a part of. Likewise you can attend a political debate and maintain an opinion that is objective from the propagandist maneuverings of the speakers. It’s the same kind of thing in everyday life. It doesn’t matter who you’re with or what situation you’re placed in, your identity transcends these shifts in scenery. You can say that humans are social creatures, but to be alive is to be alone in your individual perspective and understanding of the existence you inhabit. No other person can view the world from the place your where your toes land. I’d go so far as to say that solitude with others = unavoidable. And far from being a point of despair, I think that this is the foundation of real, self-aware identity. This state of solitude amongst the crowd is something that's talked about by Emerson, along with a number of other folks along the lines of Rainer Maria Rilke, Walt Whitman, William Blake, and (My Boy!) Gabriel Garcia Marquez. In fact, this is the single point that Marquez elaborates in his hundred year history of the Buendia family. You can, like Marquez did, make generations of people personify this beautiful, inescapable truth of human existence, or you can look for it in the individual case study, but every one of us lives in solitude. Don’t get me wrong, I entirely believe that you are on point as always Dylan, I simply think we’re talking about two different things.
Much Respect Due,
Isaac
P.S. Call me out on this one. Its been too long since I've had a real meaty, blood red TASP-style discourse on matters of import.
1:31 AM, February 25, 2006
Oh absolutely. As always, Isaac, you've taken the discussion to a much deeper level. You always have my respect for that. Indeed, you'll get no real argument about the possibility of psychological solitude (though you might from Thomas Nagel) but I think that your definition plays off of the very paradoxicality of solitude with others. If "solitude with others" were not seemingly a paradox, the power of that sense of psychological isolation would be lost. That said, I'm not sure we were psychologically isolated from one another at TASP, but I suppose that if you treated our group as a unit.
8:22 AM, February 25, 2006
In general, I'm an introvert, but at TASP, the only times I was ever alone were in the shower and when I was asleep, but I never felt peopled-out. We could all be sitting in the couch room doing our reading, even talking about the reading, but I felt completely alone even though I was surrounded. I read this essay in English-10 about a woman who felt that way when she moved to New York City-always surrounded, but alone on stage. I think "solitude with all of you" is perfectly possible, and what's more, when we all have that feeling together, it creates a sense of solidarity.
And Garcia Marquez is amazing.
2:05 PM, February 25, 2006
Taking a look at this argument, and how it models after almost all of our discussions in Telluride, I see how reactionary (in the most positive sense) we are to each other. Dylan made one of his simple, witty remarks to Ridley's magnificent diction, and like self-duplicating DNA it erupted into this profound conversation. Although we have our individual elements, and were quite solitary during our six week long journey in A-squared, we clearly feed off each other. In turn, it is our solitude, our respective unique intellectual journeys that made us a group. For me, it was all a month and a half of purely continuous epiphany. I was quite alone in my perspective on things at times, but I'm sure we all shared similar growths that make us a little less 'alone'.
11:04 PM, February 26, 2006
hokay, Cat Stevens wants to put in his two cents.
Listening to Ridley's "They're Playing my Song" Song I caught this line:
"Sitting on my own, I'm by myself/ Everybody's here with me."
1:35 PM, February 27, 2006
Is it just me or does that girl in the front right of the photo look remarkably similar to Jenny?
5:07 PM, March 01, 2006
it's just you
3:33 PM, March 02, 2006
Thanks for bringing it back to earth, Jason. :)
10:16 AM, March 05, 2006
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